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Dulles Toll Road users will pay more beginning Sunday
At the beginning of 2023, tolls will rise to $6 for most drivers
Commuters make their way through the tolls at the Spring Hill Road toll plaza on the Dulles Toll Road in Northern Virginia. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Dulles Toll Road users will pay more for their trips starting Sunday, part of a set of toll increases designed to pay for the cost of building the Silver Line rail project, the final phase of which opened in November.
A typical trip on the toll road will cost most drivers $6 — $4 at the main toll plaza and $2 at a ramp — an increase of $1.25 over previous rates. The rate increase, the first since 2019, was planned and is not tied to cost overruns on the $6 billion rail project.
Dulles Toll Road users will pay more in 2023 to fund the Silver Line
Other changes also are coming to the toll road in 2023.
The exact-change payment machines will be removed during the year as the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages the roadway, shifts to all-electronic toll collection. The change will mean drivers will have to pay tolls using an E-Z Pass or via a mobile app. There also will be a “pay-by-plate” option in which a driver’s license plate is scanned and an invoice for the toll and an administrative fee is sent by mail. Users must pay within 30 days or face additional penalties.
Under the current plan for paying off bonds used to fund the construction of the Silver Line, MWAA officials said tolls are to increase $1.25 every five years, rising by 75 cents at the main toll plaza and by 50 cents at ramps.
Although plans call for the increases to continue until 2048, when rates for a single trip would rise to $12.50, it is possible that increases could end in 2033, when most one-way trips would cost $8.75, depending on MWAA’s ability to repay bonds used to finance Silver Line construction. | 2022-12-30T11:10:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dulles Toll Road users face higher tolls starting Sunday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/30/dulles-toll-road-rate-increase/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/30/dulles-toll-road-rate-increase/ |
‘I’m excited to get them out of my attic and send them back into the wild,’ wildlife expert Mary Warwick says
Mary Warwick gives a Mexican free-tailed bat a checkup after it fell to the ground in the freezing temperatures. The bats are about three inches long. Warwick, executive director of the Houston Humane Society TWRC Wildlife Center, is caring for them in her home before they're released back in the wild. (Courtesy of Houston Humane Society)
Mary Warwick’s heart sank when she realized temperatures were plunging below freezing in Houston in the days before Christmas.
She raced over to downtown Houston before sunset on Dec. 21 to check under the Waugh Drive Bridge, where a colony of 250,000 bats has lived for almost 30 years and is a popular attraction.
Her fears were confirmed: There were dozens of tiny bats on the ground suffering from hypothermia, too weak to hold on to the narrow crevices in the concrete beneath the bridge. They had dropped 15 to 30 feet to the cold cement below and looked lifeless.
“They’re only three inches long at the most, they don’t have much body fat and they get cold very quickly,” said Warwick, executive director of the Houston Humane Society TWRC Wildlife Center. “When they shut down from hypothermia, they release from the bridge and some of them will die.”
“I put the box on my heated car seat, and as the bats warmed up, they started moving around,” she said.
Warwick said she was horrified to see the small animals in distress, but glad she had taken a break from her holiday shopping to check on them. They are part of a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that thrive in temperatures above 50 degrees. While most Texas bat populations head south for the winter, she knew that a sizable number remained behind.
She was determined not to have a repeat of the time in February 2021 when Texas endured arctic temperatures for nine days, and more than 5,000 bats dropped from the bridge and died in the cold.
Warwick decided to take them home to warm them up in an incubator. She injected fluids beneath the bats’ skin with a needle and syringe and hand-fed them a gruel made of mealworms, she said.
“By the time I was up to 900 bats, I decided it was time to slow down their metabolism so they wouldn’t need to eat as much,” she said. “It was becoming pretty time-consuming to care for them all.”
“When it’s cold, but not freezing, their metabolism will slow down,” she said.
“I adore sky puppies — not just for their adorable faces and gentle natures, but for everything they do for us in Texas, mosquito wise,” one person commented on Facebook. “Happy to donate and thank you for helping these beautiful, so misunderstood little guys.”
“I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a local TV story about what Mary was doing,” said Cruz, 31. “I thought that was something I could help with, so I grabbed a foam cooler and poked some holes in it.”
“I was worried that one or two might not make it through the night, so I was happy when they all started scurrying around in the box,” he said, noting that he didn’t dare take the lid off.
“It was a fun way to spend Christmas,” Cruz said. “Bats don’t really ask for anything, and I was happy to help them. Besides, they’re pretty cute.”
By Christmas night, Warwick said she had more than 1,500 bats hanging inside dog kennels in her attic. She kept bats from the two colonies in separate containers and made sure to keep them hydrated.
“What she did for these bats is incredible,” said Beverly Brannan, board chairwoman for the Houston Humane Society.
“Mary is really the only bat expert in our area — she’s a one-woman show,” she said. “When she saw that those bats needed help, she didn’t sleep for several days so she could save them.”
Brannan, 82, said she picked up several boxes filled with bats from volunteer rescuers and delivered them to Warwick’s house.
“When I got there, she was triaging bats, doctoring them and feeding them, one bat at a time,” she said. “Her dedication to the bats was next level.”
All creatures — no matter how small — have value on the planet, she said.
“Mexican free-tailed bats are common in Texas, and I’d received some training on caring for them,” she said. “These bats are important to our ecosystem and they eat lots of mosquitoes. The bridge is also a popular tourist attraction, so the bats deserve our help.”
Although 115 of the bats couldn’t be saved, the rest perked up after five or six days. Most of the Waugh Drive Bridge bats were released back to their colony after sunset on Dec. 28, and the others will be released in the coming days, Warwick said.
“I’m excited to get them out of my attic and send them back into the wild,” she said. “I hope they’ll stay warm and happy, but if they need help, we’re here.” | 2022-12-30T11:15:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mary Warwick rescues 1,500 bats in Houston's cold temps - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/houston-bats-rescue-cold-attic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/houston-bats-rescue-cold-attic/ |
This was the tired year
What did it mean to be a working mother in America in 2022? It meant needing sleep — and being unable to sleep.
The things I have tried in an effort to get my toddler to sleep past 5 o’clock in the morning would baffle you, or at least they baffle me, and I’m the one who tried them. Later bedtimes, earlier bedtimes, night logs, blackout curtains, wake windows, sleep cycles, dream feeds, Woolino sacks: If you have no idea what these terms mean, then you probably do not have a toddler who wakes up at 5 a.m., in which case, congratulations, and also bugger off.
I talked to one sleep consultant who said my daughter just needed to cry it out, but that did not work. I talked to another sleep consultant who said we needed to move dinner 30 minutes later, but that did not work. I tried a method called “wake to sleep,” wherein my husband or I were supposed to creep into my daughter’s bedroom at 4 a.m. every night for two weeks and lightly jostle her, which would theoretically reset her body and disrupt her habitual 5 a.m. wake-up, and that temporarily worked, except it gave me, myself, a habitual wake-up of 4 a.m., and nobody was willing to jostle me at 3.
It’s been one year since I returned to work after maternity leave, and I told my editor that this column was going to be about everything I’ve learned about being a working mother in America, except that nobody I know in 2022 felt as if they were parenting in America; they felt as if they were parenting from a crater on the moon.
It’s a rocky landscape, where one day seems like 29.5 days, and an onslaught of viruses — the tripledemic — keeps attacking your family like alien life-forms, and when you squint, you can see Earth, a planet you vaguely remember once living on and to which you one day hope to return. Covid was “over,” except that child-care shortages, plus your children’s pandemic-rattled immune systems, plus employers who had used up all of their patience before omicron, left parents still gasping for air and desperately seeking gravity.
We are living in virus hell
In the middle of all this, I wanted to sleep past 5 a.m.
What I learned about being a working mother in America is that nobody feels as if they are doing it particularly well. What I learned is that day-care teachers can somehow get your child to eat chicken when she absolutely does not eat chicken. What I learned is that cheerfully kvetching about parenting is encouraged — the kind of kvetching embodied by a T-shirt reading, “I run on coffee and chaos!” — but agitating for actual systemic support, such as guaranteed sick leave or universal preschool, is seen as greedy. Any politician who smarmily calls mothers “superheroes” is telling on himself: The whole point of superheroes is that they don’t complain and that they would never dream of asking for tax dollars to pay for state-subsidized child care.
I learned to only buy pajamas with zippers, not snaps.
I learned that string cheese and 97 peas are fine for dinner.
I learned that the way your daughter says hi when you get her in the morning — even when morning is the pitch black of 5 a.m. — feels like a new color has been invented. A new color that only you can see, one that matches you exactly, but you can’t really describe it, and when you try, it sends the breath right out of your body.
Forget about being a working mother. Forget about being a working woman. This was an exhausting year to be any kind of woman, or any kind of person who cared about any kind of woman.
This was a year to learn that the Supreme Court considered it a private matter if a man wanted to take over the 50-yard line after a high school football game to pray in public, but not a private matter if a woman wanted to end a pregnancy in her own uterus.
This was a year in which state legislators who couldn’t chart an ovulation cycle if their lives depended on it felt free to blithely propose legislation that other people’s lives did depend on: “heartbeat” laws that prohibited abortions after six weeks, a point in time at which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant. Bills banning rape and incest exceptions.
The year 2022 had whole dystopian side plots related to targeting womanhood. Groups persecuting drag queens who were just trying to read children’s books at library story hours, or persecuting transgender girls who were just trying to run cross-country. In Ohio, the House passed a bill that permitted gynecological exams performed on any student whose gender had been questioned. (The state Senate modified the bill to replace pelvic exams with birth-certificate checks.)
“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) demanded of Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The point wasn’t that Blackburn needed a biology lesson; the point was that she wanted a culture war.
Throughout this year, I kept thinking about a moment in one of the comedian Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up routines. “I’m clearly gender not-normal. I don’t think even lesbian is the right identity for me. I really don’t,” she told her audience. “I might as well come out now. I identify as tired. I’m just tired.”
Can you imagine what it would be like to not be tired? To wake one morning not because democracy was screaming in the nursery next door, but because you were actually refreshed and rested?
Can you imagine what it would be like to feel as if you could catch a breath, to go to sleep secure in the knowledge that the things that desperately needed your attention could wait until the morning? The country wouldn’t startle you awake in the middle of the night. The country wouldn’t pull off its own diaper.
To be a parent or to be a citizen means knowing there is nobody to fix this but you: in the nursery, in the voting booth, at protests, in conversations with your own family. It means acknowledging that sometimes when we’re asked the most is when we have the least to give, but somehow, you give it anyway. You just keep getting up.
I’ve been thinking about something a friend told me, a friend whose children are old enough to get themselves out of bed in the morning. I had told her about how my daughter wakes at 5 a.m. And my friend said: “Yes, she does that now. She did that today. But maybe she won’t do that tomorrow. She won’t do it forever.”
A few days before I typed this, my daughter slept until 6:07 a.m. I don’t know why. Nothing special had been attempted; no new schedules had been employed. A car honked, and she slept. A dog barked, and she slept. And I slept, too, for the first time in months. It was enough to show me the possibility of better things.
The next morning, she was back up at 5.
This is my New Year’s wish for you: I wish for restful pauses. Chances to gather yourself. Glimpses of better things. I wish for you to struggle on, tired as you are, toward the better things — and then, eventually, to sleep through the night. | 2022-12-30T11:15:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Being a working mother in America in 2022 was sleepless - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/new-year-working-mothers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/new-year-working-mothers/ |
New Year’s Day is trash
Is there a worse day than the first day?
Perspective by Ellen McCarthy
(Dominic Bugatto For The Washington Post)
Alexis McCrossen once took her daughter to New York City for New Year’s Eve. The little girl was only 5 years old at the time, so they didn’t stay out very late. But the McCrossens woke the next morning and headed to Time Square to catch a glimpse of all the revelry, romance and intoxicated hope and optimism of the previous night.
What they saw was trash.
“It was so sad,” says McCrossen, a history professor from Texas. “There was just trampled-on confetti everywhere, and it was empty. It just didn’t not feel like the triumphant beginning of the new year.”
Does it ever? The holiday is billed as a juncture of hope and renewal, fresh starts and clean slates. But for many of us New Year’s Day is more often marked by hangovers and to-do lists. Late starts, soiled slates. Sparkly outfits rumpled on the floor. Regrets about not having had a good enough time. Remorse about having had too good of a time.
Should old acquaintance be forgot... but now it all comes rushing back. Work is coming. School is coming. If the carols are to be believed, we were just in “most wonderful time of the year.” Now it’s just … January.
New Year’s Day. The ultimate Sunday Scaries.
“New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, the week after, I often get the most referrals I’ll get in the entire year – 50, 70 a day,” says Jessica MacNair, a therapist in Falls Church, Va. “This is when I see the most clients in total crisis.”
Yule logs and reindeer games notwithstanding, the winter holidays are a grueling stretch for many people. Some people need to process whatever happened with their families, or the experience of going through that time without family or friends and “dealing with feelings of rejection or loneliness,” MacNair says.
And then there’s the pressure of all those promises you made to yourself.
“Whenever my clients use the term New Year’s resolution I make a cringe face,” she says. “I don’t want them to do that. Because it sets you up,” says MacNair. “It’s a very confronting day, New Year’s. There are all of these expectations and then people feel like they’re not good enough or they’re not measuring up.”
Brian Moller is a goal-setter. In the lead-up to the New Year, Moller, a 34-year-old actor who lives outside of Boston, really does reflect on the highs and lows of the past 12 months and sets intentions for the year ahead.
And then he wakes up on Jan. 1 and forgets them.
“I’m too exhausted,” he says. “It doesn’t even matter if I went out and drank. I was up late. On New Year’s Day, I’m always too tired to do all the things I said I was going to do.”
Haleigh Booth gets that. In a video she posted on TikTok last year, Booth, a 32-year-old Realtor who lives in Louisville, Ky., caricatured the annual collapse of her will to be a New Person: She filmed herself proudly consuming half a grape and a glass of water at 8 a.m., but by 10 a.m. she’s hitting the chips, then the fast food, then the cookies, brownies and wine.
“Every year I say I’m gonna do something and then I end up slipping up on it,” Booth told the Post.
That goes for the night before, too, by the way. Each New Year’s Eve she swears she’s going to “maybe have just one glass of wine” so she doesn’t wake up feeling like crap. But then the party is fun, the music is loud and the wine keeps flowing. And the next morning she wakes up to a pile of health goals stashed in the corner with last night’s noisemakers.
And even though she doesn’t work a typical 9-5 schedule, each New Year’s Day also brings the mother of two a wave of anxiety over the return to routine.
“Just me having to get ready to get the kids to school,” she says. “I like to sleep in.”
McCrossen, the history professor, stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago. “I feel like, if I need to make a change, I need to make it now,” she says. In the 14 years since she and her daughter encountered that detritus-strewn scene in New York City, she’s begun working on a book about the history of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. And it’s not all pretty.
For hundreds of years New Year’s Day was when the Catholic church would commemorate Jesus’s circumcision. (It was changed by the Vatican in the mid 20th Century to honor the “Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.”) More horrifying is the history of New Year’s Day in America. Before the Civil War, McCrossen says, New Year’s was sometimes referred to as “Heartbreak Day,” when many enslaved people would be sold or hired out to new enslavers, pulling families apart.
In Northern cities, New Year’s Day was a day of formal social visits, and by the early 20th century, people started gathering in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The first New Year’s Eve ball made its descent in 1907 and the expectation of great things happening that night simultaneously shot through the stratosphere. Perhaps you’ll kiss a charming stranger! Get engaged! Have the best night of your life!
Or not, but you can still dress up and hope for the best. Then you can wake up, as Moller, the actor, put it in a TikTok video, with a mouth that “tastes like buttered foot.”
That’s why Moller thinks New Year’s Day should be a skip day. Just an automatic pass. Because sometimes the first day turns out to be the worst day.
“It’s always January 2nd,” he says, “when I finally get my life together.” | 2022-12-30T11:15:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Year's Day: the ultimate Sunday Scaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/new-years-day-sunday-dcaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/new-years-day-sunday-dcaries/ |
The newly relevant relationship between Trump and ‘Sunset Blvd.’
As the former president’s misfortunes mount, comparisons to Norma Desmond and the movie he loves seem increasingly apt
Analysis by Karen Heller
Gloria Swanson as faded silent screen star Norma Desmond in “Sunset Blvd.” released in 1950. (Everett Collection)
“No one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.” — Norma Desmond
Former president Donald Trump adores the 1950 classic “Sunset Blvd.,” the saga of a silent-screen legend eternally ready for her close-up and plotting a comeback long after her star has dulled. Trump has repeatedly praised the movie. He declared it “one of the greatest of all time” — on this, he will get little disagreement — and held screenings at the White House and Camp David. He lauded it during a 2o20 speech, where he disparaged the Oscars for awarding “Parasite” Best Picture.
But as Trump mounts a third presidential run amid the lacerating Jan. 6 report recommending four criminal charges against him, multiple other investigations and lawsuits, his election fraud-claiming endorsees losing in the midterms and a depleted inner circle, comparisons between his misfortunes and “Sunset’s” sunsetting Norma Desmond seem increasingly apt.
In a recent New York magazine story, Olivia Nuzzi draws parallels between Norma Desmond and her ardent fan at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lavish Palm Beach club and winter redoubt: “A washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed.”
(That comparison is timely for another reason. “Sunset Blvd.” — the title is officially abbreviated though it is often written out as Boulevard — includes among the most horrifying New Year’s Eve fetes committed to film. It’s the “Halloween” of New Year’s movies.)
Norma’s baronial L.A. manor is a central character in the movie, “a big white elephant of a place” as Joe Gillis (William Holden) puts it, excessive, dated, dark and similar in style to Mar-a-Lago, a “Mediterranean-style villa adapted from the Hispano-Moresque style” according to its website. Norma stuffs her rooms with images of herself. Trump favors a similar decorating scheme, framed photos and painted likenesses. He also views his likeness as a wise investment. This month, he began selling $99 digital trading cards featuring Barbie-like iterations of himself: Cowboy Trump, Astronaut Trump, “Top Gun” Trump.
“The whole enterprise exudes decadence like a stale, exotic perfume,” wrote the late critic Pauline Kael of the Billy Wilder movie, listed as the 12th greatest on the American Film Institute registry. Trump, who has also cited “Citizen Kane” and “Gone With The Wind” among his favorites, did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump “could never sit still for anything,” former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham writes in her memoir, but he sat “enthralled” watching “Sunset Blvd.” among other movies. Grisham, who had never seen the seminal classic before, was “shocked at all of the similarities” between Trump and Desmond, the latter “obsessed with her looks” and “convinced that everyone loved her and lived in a fantasy world of her own making.” Grisham notes, “I’m sure that Trump has no clue — like none — how similar to him she was.”
Nancy Olson Livingston, 94, is the movie’s last surviving lead cast member. She portrayed talented script reader Betty Schaefer, Norma’s romantic rival. “Trump is interested in Norma Desmond, the greatest star of all and how dare anyone throw her away,” says Livingston in a phone interview from Beverly Hills. “His focus is on being a celebrity, about being talked about and followed and worshiped.” In her new memoir, “A Front Row Seat,” she writes that the movies that “survive through time are those that tell a compelling truth.”
Hollywood loves movies about itself, even ones about a delusional, egotistical, murderous has-been. “Sunset Blvd.” was a commercial and critical success. It was nominated for 11 Oscars — all four leads snagged acting nods — and won three, including for the eminently quotable screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr.
Norma blossoms before the cameras. Trump, too. He has a proclivity for wearing television pancake so he is always ready for his close-up. Before his dive into politics, Trump was a successful reality television host and racked up an impressive list of movie cameos, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” Invariably, his favorite role was as himself.
Norma has three husbands. Trump has three wives. Norma appreciates a younger, pulchritudinous partner in the dimple-chinned Joe, played by Holden, 19 years Swanson’s junior. Trump has a penchant for younger models, Melania nearly a quarter century his junior. Melania also cites “Sunset Blvd.” among her favorites, in “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump” by The Washington Post’s Mary Jordan, along with “Gone With The Wind” and “An Affair to Remember.”
Norma puts a former family member to work. Trump’s children are among his favored lieutenants, first in real estate, then television and now politics.
Norma has a weakness for massive jewelry, and gifts Joe with gold bibelots. Trump has a taste for gilding everything from domiciles to escalators. Norma brands her 1929 Isotta Fraschini 8A with her initials. Trump also likes to leave a mark, stamping his name onto all his properties.
“Sunset Blvd.” is often viewed as a cynical take on a the movie industry. Wilder perceived it as more than that. “It’s a valentine. But is not just [about] the picture industry — it is every industry,” Wilder said in 1974 interview. “Every industry has this kind of slush that is underneath the whole thing.”
Norma is regal and resistant to all things casual. Relentlessly vain, she is in constant search of a mirror, an industrial spotlight or, preferably, both. As befitting a screen queen, Norma’s head is invariably crowned: turbans, peacock-feathered fur bands, jewel-encrusted veils. The hair is performance art, a palmier one day, a Medusa nest of towering curls the next. Trump, too, is known for his unwavering traditional style in attire as well as the architectural marvel that is his hair.
Norma believes she knows better than those who came after her. “Those idiot producers. Those imbeciles! Haven’t they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them. I’ll be up there again, so help me!” In a June column, Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien recalls watching the Billy Wilder movie almost 20 years ago with the real estate dealer aboard his private plane. “Is this an incredible scene or what? Just incredible,” Trump whispered to him. O’Brien writes: “Trump doesn’t want anyone questioning his star power or impeding his storylines. Like Norma Desmond, he plans to show any doubters what he’s made of. He’ll be up there in the White House again, so help him.”
Joseph McBride, author of the 2021 critical study “Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge,” says in an interview that “Trump is worried about being forgotten by the public. Norma is basically forgotten by the public.”
Norma is always serious, every utterance a pronouncement. “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small,” she boasts. “They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who’ve we got now? Some nobodies!” A natural showman, Trump is frequently funny but rarely laughs in public.
Both maintain complex relationships with the press. Norma dreams of being a bold-faced name again, yet gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, as herself, feasts on her misfortune, and breathlessly reports Norma’s ultimate downfall from the star’s bedroom. Trump simultaneously courts and filets the “fake news,” one of the greatest hits at his rallies.
And Norma becomes dead set, literally, on stopping Joe from returning to his previous life as a copy editor at the Dayton Evening Post. She insists on absolute loyalty, as does Trump, and turns on anyone who abandons her.
Grisham writes that Trump likes the classic film and others perhaps “because he saw the world as a movie, of which he was usually the star.” In “Sunset Blvd.,” Norma waits 20 years for a comeback. In Palm Beach, Trump hopes to wait only four.
Livingston remains mystified about Trump’s fascination with her film. “I’m surprised he likes it so much. He’s missing something in the movie, while he relates it to stardom,” she says. “Every character in ‘Sunset Blvd.’ is tragic.” Norma’s life is a lesson. “Movie stars did not have happy lives.” | 2022-12-30T11:15:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Sunset Blvd.’ and Trump: An increasingly relevant relationship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/sunset-blvd-trump-norma-desmond/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/30/sunset-blvd-trump-norma-desmond/ |
Kenny Blakeney has high hopes for Howard, and they’re not far-fetched
Howard Coach Kenny Blakeney huddles with his team during a timeout in Thursday's game against La Salle at Burr Gymnasium. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
La Salle basketball coach Fran Dunphy was walking down the hallway in the basement of Burr Gymnasium late Thursday afternoon with an exhausted smile. Joe Mihalich, one of his assistants, walked past him and shook his head.
“Wow,” Mihalich said.
Dunphy and Mihalich have been Division I head coaches for 53 years combined. The game they coached Thursday at Howard University deserved a wow. The Explorers escaped with an 80-76 victory.
Despite the disappointment of a close loss, the Bison can take solace in the state of their program, which is clearly headed in the right direction.
“[La Salle] just made a lot of shots in the second half,” said Howard Coach Kenny Blakeney, in his fourth season with the Bison. “We made some mistakes on defense, but they also made a lot of tough shots.”
La Salle shot 68 percent from the field in the final 20 minutes, including 6 for 8 from three-point range. The Explorers made 7 of 8 from the line down the stretch and rebounded their only miss, which turned out to be the difference in a taut, entertaining game.
The loss dropped the Bison to 7-9, but there is ample reason to believe Howard has turned a corner in its fourth season under Blakeney. A week ago, the Bison beat Harvard for the first time in school history (0-7 previously), and they have a solid mix of experience and youth that will make them a threat in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
A year ago, Howard went 16-13 overall and 9-5 in the conference, good for second place in the league behind perennial power Norfolk State.
“The league’s a lot better than it has been, deeper,” Blakeney said. “I mean, Maryland Eastern Shore beat Temple [Dec. 20]. That says a lot about the league’s depth.”
Blakeney’s basketball pedigree is impeccable. He played for Morgan Wootten at DeMatha and for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke — including as a part of Krzyzewski’s first two national championship teams. He coached under Mike Brey and Tommy Amaker before coming to Howard in 2019 after Kevin Nickleberry was fired. Nickleberry had put together a solid group of players but they all transferred when he lost his job, leaving Blakeney to start from scratch.
Now he has a star freshman in Shy Odom — 22 points Thursday — an impressive junior in Steve Settle III and graduate students Jelani Williams and Marcus Dockery, who have degrees from Penn and Cornell, respectively.
Settle is 6 foot 9 but has the skills of a guard. He grew a foot since his freshman year at DeMatha, but he didn’t play very much for the Stags and was recruited by Blakeney as a gamble. It’s paying off.
Williams, who is 6-5 and can play both inside and outside, grew up in Washington and graduated from Sidwell Friends before going to Penn. He is a sixth-year player because Penn didn’t play at all in the covid season of 2020-21. When it came time to pick a place to play his extra year, Howard was a natural fit.
Svrluga: Georgetown basketball was once a hot ticket. Now the Hoyas are giving them away.
“My parents met at an HBCU [Hampton], and I knew a lot about Howard academically and because I went to middle school right here on the campus,” he said. “Plus, Coach Blakeney and his staff did a good job of telling me exactly what they expected from me in terms of playing and leadership. I liked the idea of leading a team that had a chance to be good — which we do, today notwithstanding.”
This game was Dunphy’s idea. When he returned to his alma mater in April, he needed a game to fill out his La Salle’s schedule.
“I wanted to try to play an HBCU if possible,” he said. “I thought of Howard and Kenny right away. It’s a great school, and I knew he had the program headed in the right direction, so I called him.”
The two agreed to a home-and-home, the first game at Burr. The only problem was the timing. With Howard on semester break, there were fewer than 1,000 on hand and no band, cheerleaders or dance team.
There also nearly was no Jordan Wood, Howard’s starting small forward who was among the thousands stranded this week because of Southwest Airlines’ flight cancellations.
Wood finally got back to campus at 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning. Blakeney started him, hoping he could shake off the exhaustion of 48 hours stuck in a Texas airport, but it just didn’t work. Wood, averaging better than nine points, never scored.
Howard, which trimmed a nine-point deficit to one in the final seconds, couldn’t get the basket it needed down the stretch, but Blakeney is optimistic as the Bison get ready for the start of MEAC play next week.
Howard last played in the NCAA tournament in 1992, and that’s a step he very much wants the Bison to take. He also wants to host a multiple-team showcase event next season to honor a distinguished Howard alumnus. There are plenty to choose from, including Vice President Harris, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young.
For now, though, the focus is on the MEAC. There are several two-a-day practices in the Bison’s immediate future.
“Championship teams get better during the Christmas break,” Williams told his teammates in the quiet locker room afterward. “That’s what the next week is about — getting better.”
The Bison have come a long way since Blakeney took over. While they haven’t yet arrived, the train is picking up speed. | 2022-12-30T11:28:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Howard men's basketball and Kenny Blakeney have high hopes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/howard-mens-basketball-kenny-blakeney/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/howard-mens-basketball-kenny-blakeney/ |
The new rules, included in the latest omnibus package, come as the pandemic forced employers and the public to reexamine how child care disproportionately affects working mothers
Rachel Siegel
The PUMP Act expands on legally protected breaks for workers who are nursing babies. (iStock)
The measures are included in the sprawling omnibus bill that funded everything from defense spending to emergency aid for Ukraine to election reform. Provisions for working mothers aren’t expected to affect overwhelming swaths of the workforce — fewer than 2 percent of all workers in the United States are pregnant each year, according to estimates from the National Women’s Law Center. But experts say these provisions will help close the gender wage gap and improve conditions for pregnant workers, especially in physically demanding jobs — such as janitors, home health aides and waitresses — who also tend to be lower-wage workers and women of color.
“Pregnant workers were falling through the cracks with our existing laws,” said Dina Bakst, co-founder of A Better Balance, a legal advocacy nonprofit that helped draft the bill. “This is an incredible milestone for gender, racial and economic justice.”
What does it cost to raise a child?
Pregnant workers did have some legal protections from the landmark Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which specified that pregnant workers should be treated the same as those who are “similar in their ability or inability” to work. But under the law, workers with severe morning sickness and other serious conditions such as preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening blood vessel disorder, have been denied pregnancy accommodations because they have been unable to identify co-workers in similar roles with the same accommodations they are asking for.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for all pregnant workers, unless it would cause the employers “undue hardship.” The law is modeled after the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled workers but doesn’t apply to most pregnant workers. Pregnancy is not considered a disability.
“For decades, women have been fired, passed over for promotion, or forced out on leave when they become pregnant, when they simply required a modest accommodation to continue working without jeopardizing their health,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of the leaders of the bill, said in a statement. “Guaranteeing pregnant workers reasonable accommodations will erode pernicious discrimination against pregnant women, strengthen our economy, and keep women and children healthy and safe.”
The loss of her job had a severe effect on Jackson’s finances. She was forced to back out of buying a house she had already put a down payment on. She also spent part of her pregnancy living in her car.
“When I got the news that the law passed, I cried and cried and cried,” Jackson said. “I have two daughters and I have nieces. I am so grateful that they won’t have to choose between starting a family or keeping their jobs.”
“If there were people who were forced to decide between continuing to work or be pregnant or nursing, it no longer needs to be that difficult choice,” Rodgers said. “People can do both.”
The measures drew bipartisan support, plus backing from workers rights groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a letter, the big business group wrote that the Pump Act would improve current law by protecting small businesses, since the rule does not apply to employers with less than 50 employees where compliance would present an “undue hardship.”
But there were a few outliers. Speaking on the Senate floor earlier this month, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) argued that the rules could compel employers to make accommodations “such as leave, to obtain abortions on demand under the guise of pregnancy-related conditions.”
“The federal government should not be promoting abortion, let alone mandating that pro-life employers, and employers in states that protect life, facilitate abortion on demand,” Tillis said.
Tillis voted against the omnibus package. | 2022-12-30T11:50:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Omnibus bill helps pregnant workers via PUMP Act, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/30/omnibus-pregnant-breastfeeding-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/30/omnibus-pregnant-breastfeeding-congress/ |
Why Croatia Sees Joining the Euro as Path to Security
Analysis by Jasmina Kuzmanovic and Alexander Weber | Bloomberg
A Euro symbol at a currency exchange bureau in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. Russian markets brushed off reports that the U.S. and its allies are considering sanctions targeting the country’s banking sector should President Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Croatia, the European Union’s newest member, adopts the euro as its currency on Jan. 1. The move vaults the nation of around 4 million people into the EU’s core, making payments easier and cheaper and giving its financial system a safety net in future crises. The country, whose economy is highly dependent on foreign tourists, also joins the Schengen zone, allowing Croatians to travel more easily around Europe.
1. Why is Croatia joining the euro?
Croatia began its push to join the single currency as soon as it won accession to the EU in 2013, a step that was delayed by the bloody wars in the 1990s as Yugoslavia disintegrated. The move is partly aimed at cementing a Western alignment after about half a century of communist rule following World War II.
2. What about the economic logic?
That’s arguably even more compelling. The country relies more than any other EU state on tourists, who generate a fifth of gross domestic product and find holidaying much easier when they don’t have to grapple with exchange rates. Meanwhile, most private and corporate bank deposits in Croatia are held in euros, along with more than two-thirds of debt totaling about 520 billion kuna ($74 billion). Euro-area membership can lower interest rates, improve credit ratings and make Croatia more attractive to investors, according to central bank Governor Boris Vujcic.
3. What are the pros?
Adopting the euro formalizes a chunk of economic activity that’s already carried out using the common currency — from apartment and car sales to short-term rentals for vacationers. It trims foreign-exchange costs outside tourism to the tune of about 1.2 billion kuna a year, according to the central bank. Croatia gains access to ECB liquidity and potential bailout financing from the European Stability Mechanism during periods of crisis. With Greece’s troubles now largely in the rear-view mirror, there was popular support to switch to the euro. Almost all political parties backed the move.
4. And the cons?
In terms of monetary policy, there’s not much to lose by relinquishing control to the ECB since the kuna’s exchange rate has been locked in a tight trading band to the euro and, before that, to the Deutsche Mark since the 1990s. Croatia’s euro adoption will cost local banks about 1 billion kuna annually in lost conversion fees, but the switch reduces currency risks and improves stability, according to the national association of banks. The euro is also expected to have cost banks €80-100 million in one-time expenditure to adapt their IT services and ATM networks.
5. What hurdles did it face?
EU member states gave their final approval for Croatia to join the euro on July 12, following eastern European peers Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the single currency. Inflation has proved the biggest challenge after the war in Ukraine sent prices of energy and other commodities soaring. But it’s a problem that’s gripping everywhere: The pace of inflation in the euro area dropped in November, the most recent data, but consumer prices still soared 10.1% from a year earlier.
6. What other countries want to join the euro?
One certainly does: Bulgaria. But it has pushed back its timetable by a year to 2024 after being accepted into the euro-area waiting room known as ERM-2 in 2020, the same time as Croatia. Romania has also expressed a desire. Despite being obligated to join themselves at some point, however, the biggest countries in the region aren’t rushing. Poland, for example, attributes its ability to survive the 2008 global financial crisis without a recession to it retaining an independent monetary policy.
8. What do Croatia’s new coins look like?
The coins feature a map of the country and the national checkerboard motif. They also have images of a kuna, or weasel, and feature inventor Nikola Tesla, an ethnic Serb born in the present-day Croatian town of Smiljan. Serbia’s central bank had said it would take action if Croatia was allowed to use Tesla’s image.
• Bloomberg articles on the European Commission’s recommendation on Croatia, the country’s central bank urging citizens to move their savings into banks, and its plans for euro coins.
• A Bruegel analysis of the euro coming of age.
• A Brookings Institution study on whether European integration increases people’s life satisfaction in Croatia and elsewhere. | 2022-12-30T11:50:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Croatia Sees Joining the Euro as Path to Security - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-croatia-sees-joining-the-euro-as-path-to-security/2022/12/30/faf50b4a-8833-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-croatia-sees-joining-the-euro-as-path-to-security/2022/12/30/faf50b4a-8833-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
‘There’s no reason to expect that the trends will reverse,’ says one federal scientist who tracks costly weather disasters
By Brady Dennis
Hurricane Ian, which ravaged parts of Florida after making landfall on Sept. 29, will become one of the costliest hurricanes on record. (Ted Richardson for The Washington Post)
A deadly collection of 83 tornadoes tore across the South. Golf-ball sized hail battered swaths of Minnesota and Wisconsin, damaging homes, vehicles and businesses. Unprecedented flooding inundated Yellowstone National Park. The Christmas-week winter storm for the ages blasted much of the nation with biting cold, and blizzard conditions pummeled Western New York, leaving more than two dozen people dead.
Here are some numbers that help describe the toll such calamities inflicted on the United States over the past year and what threats likely lie ahead:
Over the past four decades, the United States has experienced an average of 7.7 billion-dollar disasters annually. But since 2017, the average has jumped to nearly 18 each year.
More frequent disasters means less time to prepare for each one. An analysis by the research nonprofit Climate Central found that from 2017 to 2021, the nation experienced a billion-dollar disaster every 18 days on average, compared with 82 days between such events on average in the 1980s.
Wallman said that in the decade preceding 2005, wildfires burned average of 6.3 million acres each year. By 2021, that 10-year annual average had risen to more than 7 million acres — a more than 10 percent increase.
The problem is playing out around the globe, deepening catastrophes such as the monumental flooding in Pakistan this year that displaced millions of people. In the United States, extreme precipitation in many communities has laid bare how government flood-insurance maps often fail to reflect the risks that Americans actually face.
Even as scientists and federal officials are still tallying its toll, Hurricane Ian seems destined to become the third most destructive storm on record, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
But, Smith told The Post this year, “Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” | 2022-12-30T11:50:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The toll extreme weather took in the U.S. during 2022, by the numbers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/30/blizzard-hurricane-drought-flood-tornado-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/30/blizzard-hurricane-drought-flood-tornado-2022/ |
2022 saw conservative gains on education issues. But they may be short-lived.
Conservatives’ veneration for the founders opens the door for a secular vision for America’s public schools
Perspective by Adam Laats
Adam Laats is professor of education at Binghamton University (SUNY) and author of "Fundamentalist U." and "The Other School Reformers."
Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court as the case of former high school assistant football coach Joe Kennedy is argued before the court on April 25. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
On the surface, it seems like 2022 was a year of conservative triumph in the courts and in schools, as U.S. Supreme Court decisions about religion and education joined other precedent-smashing opinions about abortion rights and gun control. The school decisions seemed to fulfill long-held conservative dreams about pushing prayer back into public classrooms and diverting tax funding to explicitly religious schools.
But looking at the language of these rulings — especially Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s majority decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District — points to another conclusion. These rulings unwittingly opened the door to a secular vision for America’s public schools by emphasizing the need to look at history, especially the original intention of the founders, when making decisions on the role of religion in public schools.
In Kennedy, a football coach insisted on his right to lead students in prayer after a football game. On its face, the case seemed open-and-shut. The Supreme Court had ruled in 2000, for instance, that students could not lead prayers at public school football games. It seemed to follow that teachers and coaches could not as well.
To evade that precedent, Gorsuch turned to a 1963 decision, Abington School District v. Schempp, but flipped it on its head. “‘[T]he line,’” Gorsuch wrote, quoting Justice William Brennan’s much-quoted concurring opinion in Schempp, “that courts and governments ‘must draw between the permissible and the impermissible’” has to “accor[d ] with history and faithfully reflec[t] the understanding of the Founding Fathers.”
With this, Gorsuch hoped to cram prayer back into public schools. He imagined that in the time of the Founding Fathers, religion — and specifically an evangelical Protestant kind of Christian religion — was welcomed into schools and government institutions.
Despite Gorsuch’s efforts, however, the real history is much more complicated, and the founders were decidedly mixed on the proper role of religion in public schools.
For one thing, it is utterly anachronistic to talk about “public schools” in the 1780s and 1790s. They simply did not exist in a recognizable form. But the founding generation did have a variety of different visions for the future of public schools and how they should function.
Some founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, explicitly and intentionally barred religion from the public schools they had imagined. In 1779, Jefferson offered his vision of what a public school system might look like. He listed the subjects to be taught — “the Latin and Greek languages, English grammar, geography, and the higher part of numerical arithmetick” — conspicuously leaving out any instruction in religious ideas. The omission was intentional. “Instead of putting the Bible and Testament” in the hands of schoolchildren, Jefferson wrote in 1781, children should instead learn “the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and American History.”
Jefferson was far from alone. Noah Webster, the famous dictionary writer and textbook author, envisioned public schools as explicitly civic, not religious institutions. In his early textbooks, Webster even went through old classics and removed references to God and Christianity. For instance, in an early reader, Webster took out the famous Puritan opening line from the New England Primer: “A. In Adam’s Fall, We sinned all.” Webster replaced it with a more cheerful, American, secular line: “A. Was an Apple-pie made by the cook.”
Certainly, some prominent founders assumed that truly American public schools must inculcate the Christian religion. When Philadelphia’s Benjamin Rush envisioned a new system of public schools, he sketched a definition of public education that some of today’s conservatives might like. As Rush explained, the “only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion.” And the correct American religion, Rush made clear, “is that of the New Testament.”
Yet even Rush made some stipulations to ensure that the government’s needs would take definite priority in all questions of education. Children, Rush specified, must be seen as “public property,” with their careers guided first by government need and only second by their own private desires. They must be taught to “forsake and even forget” their family if the state demanded it.
Moreover, while the founders had no single opinion on the role of religion in school, they tended to agree on two broad issues. First, in language that has been lost and distorted by today’s conservatives, Americans in the late 1700s and early 1800s usually agreed that any religion in public schools must be aggressively “nonsectarian.” By that, they meant that public schools must exclude any religious idea that was considered controversial at the time, or any idea that was specific only to one religious group and not widely shared as a generic moral truth.
Did Christians need an adult baptism, as many Baptists insisted? Were Christians really devoid of free will, as some Congregationalists still preached? Was Jesus merely a sublime teacher of morals, as Deists believed? These questions might seem finicky now, but in the late 1700s they could spark riots and bloodshed. The founders did not agree on much, but they agreed that public schools must fervently avoid any whiff of religious controversy.
And perhaps more important, the Founding Fathers — as well as the founding mothers and their children — agreed that any truly public school could not be run by a church for religious reasons. They believed that a public school had to be something that promoted purely public purposes. They thought a public school must teach citizens how to protect their republic, not how to save their souls.
This year’s Supreme Court decisions contradict those founding principles. They cram controversial religious ideas into public schools and funnel public funding to church schools. Instead of answering difficult questions about the proper role of religion in public schools, Gorsuch’s opinion only raises a host of new, unsolvable dilemmas.
If today’s lines are to be drawn based on the dreams of the founding generation, does that mean a broad support for Rush’s Christian schools, wherein families lose their right to control their children’s education? Or does it mean Jefferson’s secular ones, in which the Bible takes a back seat to every other subject?
The founders offered no clear guidance or consensus on the matter, creating a real problem for conservatives today. If the courts try to follow Gorsuch’s opinion and look to the Founding Fathers for answers, they will be sure to find perspectives advocating for more secular schools. They will find opposition to sending tax dollars to church schools. The supposed triumph of conservative ideas will instead turn into a rejection of their controversial edicts. | 2022-12-30T11:50:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 2022 saw conservative gains on education issues. But they may be short-lived. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/30/2022-saw-conservative-gains-education-issues-they-may-be-short-lived/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/30/2022-saw-conservative-gains-education-issues-they-may-be-short-lived/ |
‘I Just Wanna Surf’: Photos of Black female and nonbinary surfers
From “I Just Wanna Surf,” published by Mass Books. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones)
The end of the year is upon us, which means this will be the final post of the year, and it’s a good one! It’s a little offseason, but as many of us are blanketed by cold air and carpeted with snow, revisiting the joys of splashing around in the frothy waters of the beach is a welcome diversion.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones’s book, “I Just Wanna Surf” (Mass Books, 2022), brings together images celebrating surfing. But it goes beyond that, documenting mostly nonbinary and Black female surfers. It’s no secret that surfing, like most sports, is heavily male-dominated.
So Angotti-Jones’s photos are a welcome reminder that surfing is for everyone. Unfortunately, photos of people in the surfing community who fall outside the dominant coverage aren’t all that readily available. And this is one of the chief reasons Angotti-Jones trained her camera on her friends, to begin to compile an alternate view of the surfing community.
As she says right at the beginning of her book, “I photograph Black female and non-binary surfers because there are no historical images of us.”
For Angotti-Jones, surfing isn’t merely about gliding through the water — it holds a more personal place in her life. Describing what surfing means to her, Angotti-Jones says, in the book, “I associated the ocean with the trauma in my life. A trauma I wasn’t sure if I could navigate.”
After spending time away from surfing, Angotti-Jones found that there was much she needed to relearn. And as she navigated that process, she also began to relearn old parts of herself.
While “I Just Wanna Surf” documents Black female and nonbinary surfers, it’s also a personal reckoning. And I, for one, see it as a supremely joyful collision between the two.
The book itself is casual and relaxed, reminiscent of a zine. The photos are joyous and intimate in a way that could be accomplished only by someone passionate about surfing.
It’s this mix of intimacy and joy showing that surfing is for everyone that sets these images apart from the well-trod narratives of the past. It’s a wonderful, honest and vibrant book. And it’s well worth checking out. | 2022-12-30T11:50:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of surfers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/12/30/i-just-wanna-surf-photos-black-female-non-binary-surfers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/12/30/i-just-wanna-surf-photos-black-female-non-binary-surfers/ |
Since 2018, Republicans have lost confidence in U.S. institutions
And Amazon is no longer one of America’s most beloved institutions, our research finds
Analysis by Jonathan Ladd
Sean Kates
(Michel Spingler/AP)
In June and July 2018, we launched a U.S. survey that asked 5,400 Americans how much confidence they had in a series of national institutions, called the American Institutional Confidence (AIC) Poll. These included political, social and business institutions. The survey asked about some institutions specifically (i.e., the “FBI”) and others in more general terms (i.e., “major companies”). We included several major technology firms (Facebook/Meta, Amazon and Google/Alphabet) alongside the other institutions.
With these questions, we collected detailed demographic and background data on respondents that allowed us to weight their responses toward approximating U.S. adults nationwide on age, gender, education, region, party identification and income level, as estimated by the census. Respondents were part of YouGov’s opt-in survey panel.
In August and October 2021, we returned with a follow-up survey. We were able to reinterview nearly 2,400 of our original respondents, and add an additional 1,700 participants through YouGov.
We had several major takeaways from our 2018 survey. As other national surveys had found, Democrats were more confident in some institutions and Republicans in others. Americans across the political spectrum agreed about whether still other institutions did or did not deserve their confidence.
Specifically, Democrats were more likely to think highly of the news media, colleges and universities, the FBI, organized labor and the tech company Google. Republicans were more likely to respect local police, the U.S. executive branch, religion, banks and major companies.
Meanwhile, Americans across the political spectrum agreed that they trusted the military, nonprofit organizations and Amazon, and that they distrusted Congress, political parties and Facebook.
We found two crucial changes in our 2021 results: Republicans are losing confidence in everything, and everyone is losing confidence in “big tech.”
TMC (The Monkey Cage) is moving from the Washington Post. Here's what to know.
Republican lost confidence in U.S. institutions across the board
First, since 2018, Republicans’ confidence in American institutions has dropped across the board, with no similar trend among Democrats. The figure below compares responses to confidence questions among Republicans in 2021 vs. 2018 (results shown are averages of the 4 response options, coded 1-4).
Republicans lost confidence in every institution that we asked about except one: the local police, in which their confidence was slightly higher. That may have been because the Black Lives Matter movement, generally backed by liberals, criticized police brutality, while conservatives made a point of “backing the blue.” Yet even this increase is very small. In contrast, Republicans’ declines in confidence were often large, especially toward Amazon, Google, Facebook (even from a low 2018 baseline) and Congress. They also lost a significant amount of confidence in the military, major companies, colleges and universities, and the press.
The Republican loss of confidence in the executive branch and Congress could be seen as a normal consequence of the fact that Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2019 and the White House and Senate in 2021. But election results wouldn’t normally prompt such a loss of confidence in so many other institutions.
Democrats didn’t similarly lose faith in U.S. institutions
We didn’t find any similar across-the-board decline in Democrats’ confidence in institutions, as you can see in the figure below. Democrats did respond to their party’s 2018 and 2020 election gains by gaining much more confidence in the executive branch and Congress.
Democrats were less confident in the technology companies we asked about. Amazon dropped from Democrats’ most popular institution to the middle of the pack. They lost confidence in Google and Facebook, as well. And Democrats lost confidence in organized religion, dropping it to the second-least popular among them.
Beyond that, Democrats’ confidence in other political and social institutions hardly changed, in contrast to Republicans’ widespread drop in confidence.
Americans are turning on technology companies
Second, we found that Americans have lost confidence in major tech companies, especially when compared with other institutions. While Facebook was fairly unpopular in 2018, Amazon and Google were quite popular — the second- and third-most popular institutions among Americans overall, trailing only the military. Some pundits speculated about why — maybe because Amazon delivers a tangible product at a low price, while Facebook’s goods are much less tangible, or because Facebook was widely seen as spreading misinformation? Some even cautioned politicians not to cross companies like Amazon.
Something has changed. Amazon is now much less popular with Americans generally — the fifth-most popular institution overall, after local government, nonprofits, local police and the military. Google has dropped from the fourth- to the tenth-most popular institution. Facebook got even less popular, falling behind even political parties and Congress, dropping from the third-least popular institution to rock bottom.
While the AIC Poll asked about only three large tech companies, the shift does suggest that something has happened to the popularity of major tech companies since 2018. Confidence in all three declined substantially; the trend is similar across different types of tech companies; and Democrats and Republicans responded similarly.
A worrying trend
Overall, Americans have lost confidence in their national institutions since 2018. The second half of the Trump presidency and beginning of Biden’s term seem to have taken a toll on Republicans’ confidence in U.S. institutions across the board. Democrats and Republicans’ confidence in institutions have diverged beyond what we might expect from the Democrats taking control of Congress and the presidency. Much of U.S. democracy relies on bipartisan support for norms and institutions. Large shifts like this deserve ongoing scrutiny.
Jonathan Ladd is an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy and the department of government at Georgetown University.
Sean Kates is the associate director of programs in data analytics at the University of Pennsylvania and a core instructor at the Fels Institute of Government.
Funding for the American Institutional Confidence Poll was provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at New York University, and by the Baker Trust, the Massive Data Institute and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. | 2022-12-30T11:50:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Since 2018, Republicans have lost confidence in U.S. institutions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/since-2018-republicans-have-lost-confidence-us-institutions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/since-2018-republicans-have-lost-confidence-us-institutions/ |
Friday briefing: Southwest Airlines’s recovery; Trump’s tax returns; Pelé; Vivienne Westwood; ‘Dry January’ benefits; and more
Southwest Airlines said flights will be nearly back to normal today.
The latest: Only a handful of flights have been canceled so far, compared with about 2,500 yesterday, as tens of thousands of passengers try to return home from the holidays.
This will be a huge relief: A storm and a breakdown of the airline’s internal technology caused a travel meltdown over the past week, stranding people across the country. Over 15,000 flights were canceled.
Donald Trump’s tax returns are expected to be released today.
How we got here: A House panel voted last week to make the former president’s financial information public after a years-long legal battle.
Why it matters: Trump broke with tradition by not making these returns public as a candidate and president. Today’s reported release could help explain why.
What else to know: This is coming in the final days of Democratic control of the House. Republicans will hold the majority when a new session of Congress starts Tuesday.
It looks like 2023 will begin with storms across the South.
What we know: Multiple storm systems are expected to hit the south-central U.S. in the days ahead, bringing flooding rains, damaging winds and possibly some tornadoes.
The bigger picture: The U.S. suffered 15 “billion-dollar disaster” weather events this year, according to federal officials, driven in part because the planet is warming.
Pelé, Brazil’s “king of soccer,” died yesterday.
How we’ll remember him: The 82-year-old was the world’s most celebrated athlete for decades. He helped Brazil win World Cup titles in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
What else to know: Pelé died at a hospital in São Paulo of complications from colon cancer, his manager said.
The tributes: Soccer’s biggest present-day stars, including Brazil’s Neymar and Argentina’s Lionel Messi, have paid their respects.
Vivienne Westwood, the provocative British fashion designer, has died.
Her legacy: She was a style icon and environmental activist who helped clothe the 1970s punk movement before dressing supermodels on the runways of Paris and Milan.
The 81-year-old died in London yesterday, her fashion house said. We don’t yet know the cause.
The College Football Playoff semifinals are tomorrow.
In the Fiesta Bowl: Michigan will face TCU at 4 p.m. Eastern. This is TCU’s first time in the playoff.
In the Peach Bowl: Top-seeded Georgia, the defending champion, will play Ohio State at 8 p.m. Both games will be on ESPN.
What next? The winners will meet in the championship game Jan. 9.
There are lasting benefits to “Dry January.”
What to know: People who take a month-long break from alcohol often drink less in the long run, research shows. They also report benefits like lower blood pressure, better sleep and weight loss.
If you plan to participate: Try using one of these habit-tracking apps and replacing alcohol with some fancy mocktails.
And now … the moment you’ve been waiting for: Dave Barry’s take on 2022. Plus, we’ve got easy appetizers and drink ideas for your New Year’s Eve party. | 2022-12-30T11:50:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, December 30 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/30/what-to-know-for-december-30/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/30/what-to-know-for-december-30/ |
Instead of constantly pushing themselves, some disabled people embrace a more relaxed approach to goal-setting
(Hayley Wall for The Washington Post)
1Focus on how you want to feel
2Don’t set goals that drain you
3Avoid resolutions with number goals
4Recognize your limits
5Resolve to do less
6View failure as an opportunity to reset
7Know that you can always quit
Living with a disability can teach you to approach New Year’s resolutions with a healthier and gentler mindset.
Just ask Claire Richmond, 38, who has a rare liver condition that can cause severe fatigue, migraines, pain and vomiting. In her younger days, Richmond made ambitious resolutions — a low-carb diet to lose weight and a plan to run a marathon — that landed her in the hospital.
“I was getting sick because I was pushing myself and pushing myself,” said Richmond, who lives in Des Moines. “It wasn’t kind to my body. It wasn’t complimentary to my well-being at all.”
Eventually, Richmond came to a realization: improving herself didn’t need to involve punishing herself. She’s one of many disabled people who say their experience of coming to terms with their disability fundamentally shifted the way they approached goal-setting.
The Post spoke with several disabled people about their approach to New Year’s resolutions, and how their disability gave them new insights into setting more realistic and successful goals. Here’s what they had to say.
Focus on how you want to feel
Richmond said that she now approaches New Year’s resolutions by thinking about how she wants to feel in the new year, rather than specific things she wants to do. That might mean wanting to laugh more often, or wanting to feel more connected to her family. From there, she focuses on the actions she can take to create those feelings — such as watching a funny movie, or staying home with her family more often.
Don’t set goals that drain you
Dawn Gibson, 46, founder of Spoonie Chat, an informal community group for people with chronic conditions, said she used to ignore the chronic pain and fatigue she felt from her spinal arthritis, partly because it seems normal in society to feel tired, even for those who don’t have a chronic condition.
But, as she learned to manage her disability, she shifted her thinking: instead of viewing time and energy as something to be depleted or spent, she started thinking about it as something to be cherished.
“We don’t have to be worn out all the time,” she said.
She suggests making New Year's Resolutions that feel empowering or replenishing.
Avoid resolutions with number goals
Emily Ladau, an author and disability rights activist, uses the acronym FUN — which stands for flexible, uplifting and numberless — to guide her resolutions.
She chose “numberless” because many resolutions focus on measured goals like losing 20 pounds or exercising five days a week. Ladau has a syndrome that affects her bone growth and used to make similar resolutions like “go to the gym every day,” but realized that having overly rigid goals was setting her up for failure.
“I can’t predict what my body is going to feel like on any given day,” she said. “I thought I could just force it to perform, to somehow outsmart my body and take total control. But it’s not about controlling my body, it’s about listening to my body.”
Now she makes resolutions like “move in a way that feels good,” and doesn’t tie her sense of self worth or personal growth to any sort of measurement.
Recognize your limits
Your goals should reflect what you are physically capable of doing, said Sam Bosworth, 31, who lives in Northern England.
Bosworth has a progressive disability that makes it hard for him to walk or use his hands, yet he once made a New Year’s resolution to “get ripped” — even though going to the gym would cause him to feel exhausted and in pain for a week.
Eventually his pain and fatigue worsened, and he had to drop out of college, which he said was an eye-opening moment.
“Eventually it got to the point where my body was like, you cannot keep doing this,” he said. “Recognizing your limits can actually be really healthy and liberating.”
If you want to set an activity-based goal, Bosworth recommends taking some time to reflect on what your daily or weekly schedule already looks like. Be honest with yourself about whether you truly have the time and energy to devote yourself to the goal, while still giving your body time to rest or relax.
Resolve to do less
It can be easy to think that New Year’s resolutions are valid if they only involve productivity, said Travis Chi Wing Lau, an assistant professor of English at Kenyon College who has chronic pain related to scoliosis.
For a long time, Lau measured his success by his work. In college, he worked multiple jobs on top of his classes and frequently pulled all nighters because he felt pressure to keep pace with everyone around him. But, trying to “tough it out” exacerbated his scoliosis-related chronic pain and put his health at risk.
That’s when he began to realize that making a resolution to do less can be just as valid as making a resolution to do more. Lau noted that the etymology of the word “resolution” comes from the Latin root “resolvere,” meaning to loosen or to release.
Rather than having fixed expectations for how he wants the year to go, Lau embraces the fact that things won’t always go as planned.
“It’s not about doubling down, it’s about letting go,” he said. “What would it mean to take the spirit of that Latin word into your New Year's resolutions?”
View failure as an opportunity to reset
While it can be helpful to establish a routine to help reach your goals, it’s important to recognize that you will probably get off track, said Renée Yoxon, 35, of Montreal, who has chronic pain.
Yoxon is a coach who teaches voice alteration techniques to trans and nonbinary people, which can take years to master. When a client struggles, Yoxon simply encourages them to reset when they are ready. “If you know it’s part of the practice, it’s not failure; it’s expected,” Yoxon said.
Know that you can always quit
Your resolution is not set in stone, said Ingrid Tischer, a coach at FireSeed Facilitation who works with disabled people, caregivers, and others.
Tischer, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, said that a resolution is a personal goal, which means you should be doing it for yourself and your own happiness. For that same reason, it’s also perfectly okay to quit your resolution, she said.
“If you’re doing yoga and you discover that there’s something about the process that’s not sparking joy anymore, then quit,” she said. “Why not? Why shouldn’t you?” | 2022-12-30T11:51:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What disabled people know about making better New Year’s resolutions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/30/disability-new-years-resolutions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/30/disability-new-years-resolutions/ |
Lawsuit alleges D.C. Housing’s cameras could ‘capture intimate details’
Transmitters at a Southeast Washington public housing complex. (Court documents)
A D.C. public housing resident sued the city’s housing authority and D.C. police earlier this month, saying that “disproportionate surveillance” at her complex is an invasion of privacy.
Schyla Pondexter-Moore has lived in Southeast Washington’s Highland Dwellings for 14 years, according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In 2017, the suit says, the D.C. Housing Authority began installing a security system and modifying video surveillance at the property. When Pondexter-Moore received notice that personnel would have to enter her property to complete this work, according to the suit, she refused.
“DCHA made multiple attempts to install a camera on Ms. Pondexter-Moore’s home and a power box in her bedroom, while refusing to respond to Ms. Pondexter-Moore’s repeated requests for basic information about the cameras’ capabilities and purpose,” the suit said.
On Jan. 31, 2018, Pondexter-Moore was arrested by a D.C. Housing Authority security officer who intervened as she questioned workers at the property, telling her that “she did not have any rights as a public housing resident and that she could not stop the worker from installing the cameras,” according to the suit.
The encounter turned violent, the suit said, as the security officer pinned Pondexter-Moore against the building and “slammed [her] son against a wall” when he tried to intervene. Minutes later, eight D.C. police officers showed up at the complex to arrest the mother and son, who spent the night in jail as the cameras were installed, according to the suit.
Court records show Pondexter-Moore was initially charged with simple assault and destruction of property, but the charges were dropped.
Today, the suit said, the security system at Highland Dwellings is vast — 80-plus cameras that are part of the D.C. Housing Authority’s 650-camera “massive surveillance program” across public housing complexes, monitored from the agency’s headquarters near Union Station.
The cameras, with infrared and zoom capabilities, can “capture intimate details about Ms. Pondexter-Moore’s life,” including views within her apartment unless her windows are covered, the suit said. Some cameras at Highland are installed “right next to residential windows,” and the apartment complex’s security system “can observe both public and private spaces,” according to the suit.
“The large number of cameras in such a small area creates a level of surveillance that is highly offensive in a residential context where residents are carrying out their personal daily routines, including, among other things: sleeping, eating, raising their children, gathering, and bathing,” the suit says.
The suit says Pondexter-Moore was “a victim of disproportionate surveillance” and seeks unspecified compensatory damages and removal of the cameras.
The D.C. Housing Authority declined to comment, as did Pondexter-Moore through her attorneys. D.C. police referred questions to the attorney general’s office, which also declined to comment.
This week, the Clinic filed a lawsuit against DC’s public housing authority, alleging that DCHA uses an unconstitutional network of cameras to surveil the District’s public housing residents.
— Civil Rights Clinic @ Georgetown Law (@gulccivilrights) December 15, 2022
Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, said the proliferation of cameras, particularly in Black and working-class neighborhoods, means that minor crimes like graffiti result in a disproportionate police response. There’s no evidence, however, that such surveillance increases neighborhood safety, he said.
“The more people live their lives under microscopes, the more authorities are going to find to be suspicious about,” he said.
In a statement posted on Twitter, the Georgetown Law Civil Rights Clinic, which represents Pondexter-Moore, said the D.C. Housing Authority shares surveillance footage with D.C. police, “which uses it to preemptively monitor residents and intervene in their lawful, day-to-day activities.”
“DCHA’s 24-hour-a-day surveillance of public housing residents — who are overwhelmingly people of color — is another example of over-policing and surveillance of Black and brown communities in DC,” it said.
The suit was filed days before the D.C. Council passed legislation to reduce the size of the housing agency’s board while the authority is under fire for alleged mismanagement.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) proposed legislation with D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) earlier this month to shake up and shrink the board amid criticism of its vacancy rate of 1 in 4 units. Legislation passed Dec. 20 appears to give the mayor more influence over the agency.
In a report released earlier this month, outgoing D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) recommended the D.C. Housing Authority be “truly independent.”
“DCHA has been hijacked by political influence and the prioritization of political loyalty over knowledge and expertise,” Racine said in a statement. “This has led to a loss of mission focus, a lack of checks and balances, and an exodus of talent, the consequences of which have fallen on our most vulnerable residents.”
Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report. | 2022-12-30T12:11:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Housing sued for ‘offensive’ level of resident surveillance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/dc-housing-authority-surveillance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/dc-housing-authority-surveillance/ |
Jonathan O'Connell
Former president Donald Trump announces a third run for president, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 15, 2022. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
The Democratic-led panel released the financial documents for six years, capping a protracted legal and political battle that could have been prevented had Trump followed presidential precedent and released his returns voluntarily.
Democrats have pushed for more than three years to make Trump’s tax returns public, and the documents were finally made available to the Ways and Means Committee late last month after the Supreme Court denied a last attempt by Trump to withhold the records.
The returns show that Trump paid little, if anything, in income taxes over six years including the four in which he served as president. They have also raised questions over the lengths he took to claim tax deductions on items that may not warrant it to evade paying taxes.
“A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility," Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee, had said in a statement last week.
The release marks another blow to Trump, who is struggling to mount a campaign for president as numerous investigations and controversies continue to swirl around him. His most recent actions, from dining with avowed white supremacists to suggesting terminating the Constitution, have left many in the Republican Party reconsidering whether he remains the most viable candidate to lead the GOP after midterm voters largely rejected candidates backed by the former president.
The IRS handed over the Nixon tax returns on the day that Congress requested them, a fact noted by House Democrats who were seeking the Trump documents. Republicans denied any similarity, The Washington Post has reported, noting that Nixon requested the investigation into his returns, while Trump fought such a probe.
Trump — who broke with a decades-long tradition of presidential candidates and presidents by refusing to make his tax returns public — has for years falsely claimed that he could not release them while under “routine audit” by the IRS.
Last week, the Ways and Means Committee revealed that the IRS did not audit Trump’s returns during his first two years in office, despite a rule mandating such reviews, and never completed any audits while he served.
If the IRS completes its audit work and validates some of the concerns raised by the report, the likelihood that Trump could subsequently face serious legal trouble — something beyond adjustments or fines — appears to be low. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which has been conducting a criminal investigation of Trump since the summer of 2018, has had access to Trump’s tax returns for more than a year and has not charged him.
Trump’s chief financial officer and his company were both convicted of tax crimes after investigators found that the CFO and another Trump Organization executive had received perks like luxury apartments and Mercedes Benzes while purposely concealing them from tax authorities.
The release comes as special counsel Jack Smith oversees the Justice Department’s criminal probe of Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home and his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Last week, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol referred four criminal charges against Trump to the Justice Department: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, inciting or assisting an insurrection, and conspiracy to make a false statement.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who has said she had access to Trump’s federal income tax returns “for a series of years,” has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump, his eldest children and executives at the Trump Organization accusing them of manipulating property and other asset valuations to deceive lenders. Trump and his company have denied the allegations. A trial is set for October 2023.
Sentencing for the Trump Organization on the conviction earlier this month of tax crimes committed by two of its longtime executives is set for Jan. 13. A fine of $1.6 million is possible.
Trump also is facing a probe in Georgia where a Fulton County grand jury was investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in the state. District Attorney Fani Willis (D) has said she expects the grand jury to issue a report on its findings before the end of the year. Willis said she will then decide whether to bring criminal charges.
IRS agents began but failed to complete multiple audits of the Trumps during their time in the White House, according to a letter from acting IRS Commissioner Douglas W. O’Donnell and a detailed report from congressional tax experts, both of which the committee released. The records paint a picture of an agency struggling to meet the demands of auditing a sitting president whose finances involve nearly 500 business entities, many of them actively operating.
The agency began an audit of the Trumps’ 2015 taxes in January 2018, O’Donnell said in a letter this month to Neal, with a plan specifically to examine the Trumps’ charitable donations, capital gains, supplemental income and the couple’s having used losses from one tax year to reduce their taxes in a subsequent year (called a net operating loss carryforward).
As the audit began, an IRS agent began examining a $21.1 million deduction Trump claimed for a conservation easement at his Seven Springs estate in New York, according to a 40-page report from the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, which advises Congress on crafting and deciphering tax bills. The easement’s value was based on an appraisal, obtained by The Post in 2020, that appears to have relied upon unsupported assertions and misleading conclusions.
The IRS agent investigating the easement visited the property Jan. 24,. 2022, according to the report, and met with appraisers on Nov. 22. The agent kept notes mentioning two possible adjustments: disqualifying the entire deduction “based on the fact that the appraisal was not a qualified appraisal” or reducing the deduction to $8.95 million.
The issue remains unresolved, according to the report. Despite that work starting four years ago, O'Donnell, who began as acting commissioner on Nov. 12, wrote that the audit had not been completed.
For the 2016 tax years, the IRS also began an audit. That time, one of the issues raised by an IRS agent was a tax credit Trump claimed for rehabilitating a historic building, the Old Post Office in downtown Washington, into a luxury hotel. (It has since been turned into a Waldorf Astoria.) But the IRS did not appear to request the tax returns for that property so they were not considered in the report.
The audit of the 2016 tax year was “initially completed,” O'Donnell wrote but required information from the other audits to be finalized, which was “pending resolution.”
The IRS similarly began audits for tax years 2017, 2018 and 2019. In September 2020, after the New York Times began reporting on Trump’s taxes, IRS officials met to discuss myriad issues raised by the newspaper’s reporting, according to the report, among them Seven Springs, loans to family members, consulting payments to family members and expenditures for “fuel, meals, haircuts, makeup artists, etc.” that Trump wrote off as business expenses in his 2017 return. The discussions lead to conversations with a representative for Trump, who was not named in the report, about the parameters of the inquiry.
But for each of those years, O’Donnell repeated the same line in his letter to Neal: “The examination team has not yet concluded its work.” He said the Trumps’ 2020 returns “were not yet under examination.”
O’Donnell also told Neal the IRS is auditing two of Trump’s companies, DJT Holdings LLC and DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC. The dual companies reflect Trump’s personal ownership of his businesses; combined, they hold stakes in the vast majority of Trump’s real estate properties and businesses, according to disclosure forms Trump filed with the government as president.
The IRS has begun audits of both companies for every year from 2015 through 2019, O’Donnell wrote to Neal, but he said none of those audits is fully complete either. Other records released by the committee indicate the IRS has repeatedly sought extensions to the statute of limitations for those audits.
To ensure that the IRS can audit future president’s returns, the House passed legislation in a 220-201 vote last week that would make it mandatory for the IRS to expedite an audit on the president and their businesses and release them within 90 days of filing. The Senate did not consider the legislation before the end of the congressional term, killing the effort.
“The American people want to have trust that the most powerful individual in this country, who has vested in them all the powers of the executive branch, is making decisions based on the interest of American people and not their own self financial interest,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview. | 2022-12-30T14:44:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House panel releases Trump tax returns in another setback for former president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/trump-tax-returns-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/trump-tax-returns-congress/ |
By Sara Sorcher
Amar Nadhir
Andrew Tate — the former kickboxing champion, internet personality and self-described misogynist — has been detained in Romania along with his brother, Tristan, and charged with human trafficking and forming an organized crime group.
A Romanian anti-organized-crime unit is seeking authorization from a judge to hold Tate, his brother and two Romanian suspects for up to 30 days. A warrant on Thursday concerning the four suspects was valid for up to 24 hours. One also was charged with rape, but the spokesperson would not name that person, citing local laws.
The Tate brothers were expected to be physically present at the court in Bucharest. Prosecutors are seeking to send the suspects to trial where, if convicted, they could face years of prison time.
“No matter what the judge decides [on the longer detention], we will take further action in investigating this crime,” Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, or DIICOT, said in a telephone interview.
Romanian prosecutors said in a statement Thursday that they identified six people whom they allege were recruited and then sexually abused in Ilfov county, which includes the capital, Bucharest.
Authorities allege that the victims were coerced into participating in pornography for distribution on social media and that one of the suspects twice raped a victim in March. The statement, which did not name the Tate brothers or specify which suspect was accused of rape, alleges that the victims faced “acts of physical violence and mental coercion.”
Andrew Tate, who was born in the United States and also is a British citizen, has previously said he lives in Romania. Bolla confirmed that the Tates were legally in the country and said the investigation started in April, after the U.S. Embassy called the Romanian authorities with information that a U.S. citizen was being held involuntarily at a house in Ilfov. The embassy in Bucharest did not immediately respond to questions from The Washington Post early Friday.
Police said the four suspects organized a group in early 2021, conspiring to commit human trafficking, not just in Romania, but also in the United States and Britain. Conviction in Romania on charges of human trafficking can carry penalties of between three and 10 years. For rape, penalties can range between five and 10 years.
Police earlier reported a search of two properties in April in Ilfov county, in which they said they seized assets related to the case. The Tates’ detention came after police executed five home search warrants, police said. The alleged American victim is no longer in the country, Bolla said. The other five alleged victims were Romanian and Moldovan.
A spokesperson for the brothers declined to comment on whether they had been detained. “Andrew and Tristan Tate have the utmost respect for the Romanian authorities and will always assist and help in any way they can,” the spokesperson said. Tate’s talent agent said in an email that the allegations of human trafficking were “an orchestrated hoax put on by the matrix.” A lawyer for the Tates could not immediately be identified.
A tweet on Andrew Tate’s Twitter account early Friday said: “The Matrix sent their agents.”
Photographs showed Tate escorted in handcuffs by masked law enforcement officers near the DIICOT headquarters Thursday.
In a deleted YouTube video that was reposted to Reddit, Tate said “40 percent” of the reason he moved to the country was that he believed sexual assault cases were less likely to be investigated there.
Tate has been banned from several social media sites — including TikTok, Facebook and Instagram — after posting misogynist remarks. Tate’s Twitter account was reinstated after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. Tate has tweeted that people who are raped “bear some responsibility” and argued women are the property of their husbands. His fans refer to him as the “king of toxic masculinity.”
In 2016, he was kicked off the British version of the reality television show “Big Brother” after a video surfaced that appeared to show him hitting a woman with a belt. (Tate reportedly said what occurred was consensual.)
His detention comes shortly after he tweeted at the climate activist Greta Thunberg boasting of his 33 cars and “enormous emissions.” Thunberg told him to get a life.
Speculation swirled overnight Thursday that Romanian authorities were able to locate Tate after he posted a video in response to Thunberg containing a pizza box from a local spot that gave away his location. Bolla denied that this played a role in the detention or its timing. “It was a hard job gathering all the evidence” in the months-long investigation, Bolla said. | 2022-12-30T14:44:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Andrew Tate detained, charged in human trafficking investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/andrew-tate-detained-romania-brothers-crime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/andrew-tate-detained-romania-brothers-crime/ |
Ask Damon: My husband’s favorite waitress is racially insensitive
Dear Damon: A few years ago, the high school seniors in our small town organized a Black Lives Matter rally. My husband and I went. It was a moving, successful event. After, I walked into the local diner to get my husband some takeout lunch. I was behind a tall gentleman, a veteran, and he said to a waitress standing next to him, “I don’t get it, we used to have a guy in our platoon who called himself the n-word on the trigger. What are these people talking about?” To which the waitress replied, “Yeah, I don’t get it either.”
I was floored. I am an interracial woman, but I am as pale as can be … White folk often confuse me as White. But walking through the streets of New York City with my Black father and hearing that word leveled at both of us in an attempt to steal our humanity still stings to this day. Hearing that word makes me feel unsafe.
The problem is, this is my husband’s favorite waitress. Several months after telling him about this incident he started telling me a story with her as the charming star. My jaw dropped. I was hurt and disappointed he didn’t feel protective of me, but I said whatever you want to do is fine, just please don’t talk to me about this waitress in the future. He persisted. When I quietly reminded him of my request, he started yelling at me that I was crazy and trying to control him.
My husband is 70 and with every violence aimed at Black folk, especially police brutality, he sides without hesitation with the Black community. I don’t understand what is going on here. Any thought would be most healing.
Anonymous: It’s interesting sometimes how a question like this can be something of a Trojan horse. Meaning that there’s the issue the person writes in about, which is causing them enough consternation to ask for a stranger’s advice, but there’s language in the question that reveals a bigger (and presumably hidden) issue.
The Trojan horse here is your husband’s lack of response to the racism exhibited by his favorite waitress. Unfortunately, I’m actually going to take his side here. Well, not his side as much as the waitress’s side. Yup. Hers.
I believe that White people should confront and challenge other White people when witnessing racism. Racists should, at the very least, be made to feel uncomfortable. But it’s helpful here to consider power, status and place. In a perfect world, where everyone is as brave and conscientious as we think we are, this waitress would’ve responded to the racist man with an immediate rebuke. She obviously didn’t. But it’s possible that her reply (“Yeah, I don’t get it either”) was less about her agreeing with him and more about her being confronted by this large man, while at work, and saying what she needed to say to get him out the door, continue with her day and keep her job.
Also, um, why didn’t you say anything? You were close enough to them to hear the conversation, it offended you, and they presumably assumed that you’re White. Why not call him out then and there? Maybe your reasons for not saying anything — maybe you didn’t want to make a scene, or were too shocked, or felt unsafe — were the same as hers.
There is something in your letter that stopped me in my tracks. You calmly expressed to your husband that hearing about this waitress made you uncomfortable, and his response was to yell at you and call you crazy. I am less concerned with his affinity for a woman who might be apathetic to racism and more concerned with the scale of his reaction to you. If this behavior is an anomaly in an otherwise safe and healthy partnership, fine. Well, not fine. Forgivable, though. But if this is how he tends to respond to you, correction is necessary, as it should be made clear that his behavior is unacceptable. Perhaps even some professional intervention is necessary if this is a marriage that needs to continue.
I’m also curious about the timeline. The rally and the incident with the waitress happened a few years ago, as did your request to not hear about her, and his subsequent outburst. Yet it’s still bothering you enough to write in about it. This leads me to suspect that maybe his reaction wasn’t that uncommon, and perhaps it’s a symptom of you just not feeling valued by him. If this is true, again, I think the waitress is a red herring. “Is this a relationship I feel safe and valued in?” is the question you need to ask yourself.
I don’t want to create an issue out of thin air. But you wrote what you wrote, and I read what I read, and I can’t ignore that.
This is Damon’s final column for The Washington Post. You can follow his work on Instagram. | 2022-12-30T14:53:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: My husband’s favorite waitress is racially insensitive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/30/ask-damon-husband-waitress-racism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/30/ask-damon-husband-waitress-racism/ |
Dog flu is going around in D.C. area, but vets urge caution, not panic
Dan Teich, medical director for District Veterinary Hospital, examines a dog with assistance from Jade Martin, vet technician, in D.C. on Dec. 29. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Amy Cocuzza, a federal government lawyer from Arlington, made sure her husband and two teenagers were fully vaccinated against the flu and coronavirus — but it didn’t occur to her until recently that her dogs could be at risk for their own version of the flu.
Canine influenza has been circulating for weeks in the Washington region and in pockets around the country. While officials haven’t detected a significant increase in cases compared with previous years, a local dog day care closed briefly for deep cleaning and a boarding facility canceled an event as a precaution to avoid the spread of the virus. Veterinarians urged owners to isolate dogs who show symptoms and consider vaccinating their pups.
Part of the increased awareness is because of the coronavirus pandemic; people accustomed to looking for the telltale cough and other signs of covid-19 in humans are also on high alert for respiratory symptoms in their dogs.
Cocuzza’s German shepherd-American Eskimo mix, Talula Barkhead, is healthy but elderly at 11 years old and probably due for a canine flu booster, while Maizel, a 10-month-old “Australian cattle dog, Australian shepherd, everything else mutt” might benefit from protection, too, Cocuzza said.
Maizel, a puppy, explores the world with her mouth, forcing Cocuzza and her husband, Steve Trickey, to run after her at the dog park with a constant refrain of, “Drop it! Drop it!”
Concern over keeping dogs healthy has led some businesses to take extra precautions; Perfect Pet Resort in Anne Arundel County hasn’t seen dog flu at its boarding, training and day-care facility, but it canceled its annual Santa Paws photos to be extra-safe.
Lori M. Teller, president of the American Veterinary Association and a Houston-based veterinarian, said there’s no reliable way to track canine influenza because cases are not required to be reported like the coronavirus or rabies.
“There does not appear to be a significant increase in the number of cases,” she said, “I think we’re all just more hyper-alert to respiratory viruses being passed around, whether it’s the canine or human population.”
Veterinarian Dan Teich, medical director and founder of District Veterinary Hospitals, said he hasn’t noticed an uptick in respiratory disease at any of his three locations, which are all in D.C., but there have been some isolated cases in Maryland and Virginia.
It’s a testament to people’s relationships with their animals that the first sign of illness in a dog tends to warrant at the very least a call to the veterinarian, he said.
“It’s dogs, and people have much more interest in dogs than they do in people,” he said. “When people see a threat to their dog, they take it in many cases more seriously than they do a threat to their own health.”
Dogs with a mild cough who are eating and drinking as normal should isolate for two weeks, Teich said. A subset of dogs that have influenza will develop symptoms such as excessive coughing day and night, nasal discharge and restlessness, and secondary bacterial infections in severe cases that can lead to pneumonia and more advanced respiratory disease, which can be treated with antibiotics. Very young, very old or immunocompromised dogs can also be at greater risk for severe disease.
Veterinarians can give dogs a canine influenza test that usually takes a few days to return a result and probably won’t alter treatment, which consists of supportive care, but he said it’s helpful to have a diagnosis to prevent spread of the virus.
Teich also recommended the canine influenza vaccine, which is part of a category of “lifestyle vaccines” for dogs that go to day care, the kennel or frequently visit dog parks.
“That vaccine is highly effective, very safe and can prevent the onset of clinical disease. It’s very similar in nature to getting an influenza vaccine if you’re a human,” Teich said of the two-dose bivalent dog flu vaccine.
A vaccine could have prevented Salvatore Hunter’s pit bull Pippa from contracting a serious respiratory illness two years ago during a kennel stay in Pennsylvania. After a trip to Seattle, Hunter picked up Pippa with a hacking cough and weeks’ worth of medication.
For weeks, Hunter had to isolate Pippa, who missed her usual walks around their dog-centric Brookland neighborhood.
“It wasn’t fun,” said Hunter, who works in distribution. “She was miserable. She was super lethargic. She could hardly walk around without hacking up a lung … She was a very sad dog.”
Today, Pippa and his 2-year-old English sheepdog, Pearl, “my big fuzzy wuzzy,” are fully vaccinated.
“We all love our dogs like our children,” he said. “They’re part of our family, and we’re willing to do everything we can to make sure they are happy and healthy.”
Service dogs navigate the challenges of covid: ‘The dog doesn’t understand social distancing’
Christine Klippen, an emergency room doctor at Friendship Hospital for Animals in Friendship Heights in D.C., said that respiratory disease is always an issue and that canine influenza appears to be a more virulent type disease not seen in the Washington area for about six years.
As with people, dogs contract illnesses the more they socialize after a period of isolation, she said.
“We see this every year,” Klippen said. “We see it every summer. We saw this when quarantine restrictions were lifted. They went to dog parks and weren’t up on their vaccines. We saw cases in the emergency room.”
She said it’s understandable that dog owners might worry but cautioned against panic because most cases of respiratory illness in dogs improve with “good old-fashioned TLC.”
“I think people are just scared in general, especially as we’re coming out of dealing with a global pandemic and dealing with stuff with kiddos this fall. It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. | 2022-12-30T15:59:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dog flu is going around in the D.C. area, but vets urge caution, not panic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/dog-flu-vaccine-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/dog-flu-vaccine-washington/ |
Woman dies in a crash in Fauquier County, Va.; teen is injured
A woman died in a crash when she ran off the road in Fauquier County, Va., on Wednesday night, and a teenage passenger was seriously injured, the Virginia State Police said.
The crash happened about 11:30 p.m. on Lee’s Mill Road near Route 29, which is also called James Madison Highway, state police said.
According to an initial investigation, the woman was driving a Ford Focus west on Lee’s Mill Road and going around a curve when she ran off the road, hit a tree and the car caught fire. The driver, Anna M. Frye, 50, of Bealeton, Va., was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
An 18-year-old passenger in the car suffered life-threatening injuries, police said. Both were wearing seat belts, police said. | 2022-12-30T15:59:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman dies in Fauquier County crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/woman-dead-crash-fauquier-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/woman-dead-crash-fauquier-county/ |
Why Belarus Is Backing Russia in Its War in Ukraine
Analysis by Aliaksandr Kudrytski | Bloomberg
After breaking away from a crumbling Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Belarus became increasingly aligned with Russia, unlike its neighbors. Those bonds strengthened with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Longtime President Alexander Lukashenko has allowed Belarus to be used as a staging ground, while avoiding sending his own troops to take part in the war. The tight embrace is payback after Russian President Vladimir Putin bankrolled his government for many years and came to Lukashenko’s aid following a disputed 2020 election which sparked a popular uprising, repression and sanctions.
1. Why is Belarus important to Russia in the conflict?
The nation of 9.3 million people sits just to the north of Ukraine and their common border is several hundred miles long. Belarus’s southern territory extends close to Kyiv, which made it a useful base for Russian troops in their failed attempt to quickly capture the Ukrainian capital early in the conflict. Belarus borders on Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all members of the western NATO military alliance, ensuring its strategic importance for Moscow. It’s also the shortest route between Russia’s mainland and Kaliningrad, an isolated Russian-held territory further west on the Baltic Sea.
2. Why is Belarus helping Russia in the war?
In the past, Lukashenko tested Putin’s patience by casting Belarus as an independent nation despite its heavy dependence on Russian energy and financial aid. Minsk stopped short of recognizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and tried to mediate in that crisis. The relationship began to change in 2020 when Putin gained more sway over a weakened Lukashenko by supporting his crackdown on a well-organized opposition movement that threatened to topple him. Moscow gained further leverage by providing $1.5 billion in loans and striking preferential deals to supply oil and gas to its smaller neighbor. Sanctions imposed on Minsk by western governments pushed Belarus further into Russia’s arms. Putin visited Lukashenko in December in Belarus, a rare foreign trip for the increasingly reclusive leader, underscoring how close the two had become.
3. How about the military relationship?
Russia’s army held joint drills with Belarus in the weeks leading up to its invasion of Ukraine. This allowed Russia to transport equipment and troops into Belarusian territory close to the Ukrainian border. About 30,000 Russian soldiers may have been in Belarus at the time, making it the largest military buildup there since the Cold War, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Those forces stayed on after the drills finished, and many took part in the invasion. A few days into the war, Belarus scrapped its neutral status, giving it legal cover to host Russian troops and weapons. Lukashenko made his allegiances clear, saying he could request the return of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus if NATO placed nuclear weapons in Poland or Lithuania. (Belarus gave up nuclear weapons stationed on its soil after the Soviet Union collapsed).
4. What’s happened since?
Lukashenko remained aligned with Moscow even after Russian forces retreated from northern Ukraine. In October, he confirmed that Belarus was taking part in Russia’s “special military operation,” though he said it was “not killing anyone” and wasn’t sending its soldiers to Ukraine. Russia has supplied Belarus with advanced weapons, including the S-400 air defense missile system. It’s also positioned MiG fighter jets capable of carrying hypersonic weapons in the country. In December, the Belarus military said it had shot down a Ukrainian rocket fired during a Russian missile assault. Russia began to amass conscripted troops in Belarus toward the end of 2022, although there appeared to be fewer arriving than during the previous build-up ahead of the invasion, according to an assessment by Ukrainian military intelligence.
5. How are Russia’s adversaries treating Belarus?
To punish the Minsk government for its involvement in the conflict, they tightened the sanctions imposed after Lukashenko’s post-election crackdown. The European Union blocked exports of goods and technology that could be used by the Belarus military. Financial penalties imposed on Russia by the US and the UK following the invasion were also applied to Belarus, while the EU targeted Belarusian individuals helping in the Russian war effort. EU members Poland and Lithuania, which have offered shelter to opposition figures from Belarus, accused Lukashenko of retaliating by channeling thousands of migrants, many from the Middle East, across their border.
6. Are the sanctions working?
They’re testing the country’s established economic model based on exporting fuels made from imported Russian oil and selling potash, a fertilizer, to major markets such as China, India and Brazil. But they have not been enough to make Lukashenko, in power since Belarus’s first presidential election as an independent republic in 1994, rethink his alliance with Putin. There were renewed protests when Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to flood into Ukraine. At least 1,500 people were arrested in the first month of the war, while some underground activists began destroying rail infrastructure, disrupting some Russian military shipments. But the 68-year-old leader has maintained his grip. | 2022-12-30T16:25:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Belarus Is Backing Russia in Its War in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-belarus-is-backing-russia-in-its-war-in-ukraine/2022/12/30/63a74b5a-885a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-belarus-is-backing-russia-in-its-war-in-ukraine/2022/12/30/63a74b5a-885a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Alongside the short-story collection “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” books such as Virginia Woolf's “To The Lighthouse,” Ernest Hemingway's “Men Without Women,” William Faulkner's “Mosquitoes” and Agatha Christie's “The Big Four” — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023.
Musical compositions — the music and lyrics found on sheet music, not the sound recordings — on the list include hits from Broadway musicals like “Funny Face” and jazz standards from the likes of legends like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, in addition to Irving Berlin's “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream” by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll and Robert A. King. | 2022-12-30T16:25:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 2023 public domain debuts include last Sherlock Holmes work - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023-public-domain-debuts-include-last-sherlock-holmes-work/2022/12/30/125a8598-8858-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023-public-domain-debuts-include-last-sherlock-holmes-work/2022/12/30/125a8598-8858-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Skywatch: Shooting stars, a planetary conjunction and brighter days
By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
The new year starts with Mars and the moon in revelry, shooting stars in early January, and the planetary duo of Venus and Saturn preparing for a late-month conjunction. Oh — and the days are growing brighter.
As the night stage begins, Earth’s reddish neighbor is visible at -1.1 magnitude, nice and bright, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. You’ll find it ascending the eastern heavens after sundown. On the night of Jan. 3, the reddish dot of Mars will be just above the gibbous moon in the constellation Taurus. Other parts of the world — the southern parts of Africa, for example — will see a lunar occultation (blocking) of Mars, according to the International Occultation Timing Association, or IOTA. Washington will not see it.
Throughout January, Mars will become less bright from our earthly perspective, dropping to -0.3 magnitude, according to the observatory. On the night of Jan. 30-31, we will see another close encounter between Mars and the moon. Gazers in Washington will not see the occultation, but places far to the south — such as Florida — will see the occultation after midnight Jan. 31, according to IOTA.
Jupiter starts the new year prominently in the southern sky at sunset. You’ll find this large, gaseous planet in the constellation Pisces at -2.4 magnitude (very bright) now, and it dims throughout January to -2.2. The young moon — about four days past new — approaches Jupiter on the evening of Jan. 25.
The planets Venus and Saturn are actually not close, but thanks to our earthly angle, they seem to get quite sociable in our early-evening western heavens. Tonight, our neighboring planet Venus can be spotted (in the constellation Capricornus) after sunset in the southwest at -3.9 magnitude (very bright), according to the observatory. Also in Capricornus, Saturn is +0.8 magnitude (visible but not as bright).
Over the next three weeks, Venus and Saturn seem to become friendlier. They conjunct on Jan. 22, very low in the western sky just after sunset. On Jan. 23, spy the sliver of a very young moon above and to the left of Venus and Saturn. The two planets then have space between them.
The usually robust Quadrantid meteors peak on the night of Jan. 3-4, according to the American Meteor Society. The pesky news is the waxing gibbous moon will be more than 90 percent lit, as our lunar companion becomes full on Jan. 6. Effectively, the bright moon will wash out many shooting stars. The society predicts 120 meteors an hour during the short peak, but set your expectations low, as there probably will be substantially fewer later in the evening (Jan. 3) and after midnight (Jan. 4).
The new year — quite literally — becomes a little brighter, as Washington now enjoys 9 hours 30 minutes of daylight on Jan. 1, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. By adding a minute or two of sunlight daily, illumination starts adding up. By Jan. 31, we will see 10 hours and 13 minutes of daylight.
Down-to-Earth Events:
* Jan. 14 — Guided by museum staffers, observe the sun safely through a properly filtered telescope for “Second Saturday Sungazing” at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free admission to the museum. Parking $15. airandspace.si.edu.
* Jan. 14 — “Imagining the Surfaces of Distant Stars,” a talk by Kenneth Carpenter, a project scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, at the regular online meeting of the National Capital Astronomers. He will explain how ground- and space-based observatories contribute to our understanding of the surfaces of stars beyond our sun. 7:30 p.m. For access, visit: capitalastronomers.org.
* Jan. 28 — Telescopically tour the star-filled midwinter heavens at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. Enjoy the space outings through telescopes provided by Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC) members. Meet at the museum’s bus parking lot, 5:30-7:30 p.m. airandspace.si.edu. | 2022-12-30T16:25:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skywatch: Shooting stars, a planetary conjunction and brighter days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/30/skywatch-shooting-stars-planetary-conjunction-brighter-days/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/12/30/skywatch-shooting-stars-planetary-conjunction-brighter-days/ |
Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz throws the ball during the San Francisco 49ers' win over Washington Dec. 24. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“I’ve always tried to have that be my MO,” Wentz said Wednesday. “Obviously, there’s moments I’m kicking myself, where I should have got the ball out quicker. … Obviously, [when defenses are] bringing the pressure, I don’t want to go down with a ball in my hand back there — just get it to the playmakers. I’m going to continue to try and keep doing that.”
“Your feet are the clock in your head,” Turner said. “Like, we’re supposed to throw this route off one hitch, and then the next route is off your second hitch, and if you haven’t done that by then, then it’s fine to check down or throw the ball away. If you’re hanging too long on the route … that’s where it gets out of whack.”
In the first six weeks, when Wentz held the ball longer than 2.5 seconds, he was sacked 16 percent of the time, tied for the second-highest rate in the NFL. But against the 49ers, his urgency helped him avoid the rush and get the ball to playmakers. This was most obvious when he simply threw over the blitz, such as on one third and one, when, just before the snap, he noticed the slot corner shift from covering receiver Curtis Samuel to the edge of the offensive line. Wentz rifled the ball over the blitzing corner to the uncovered Samuel for a first down.
Perhaps the best encapsulation was his fourth play. Running back Jonathan Williams said Wentz told him while he was walking to the line, “Hey, make sure you get out.” Wentz was talking about what the Commanders call a sneak route. If Williams’s defenders didn’t blitz, Wentz wanted him to leak out of the backfield and become a checkdown. To Williams, the comment was an acknowledgment of how quickly the 49ers’ pass rush was getting pressure, and Wentz didn’t want Williams to dally while reading the defense.
this was Carson Wentz's fourth play back lol pic.twitter.com/JpT9CdK4H9
“For me, going into this week, you know, ‘OK, on that kind of look, I got to be alive. I got to be expecting that kind of pass from him,’” McLaurin said. “That's exciting for a receiver, when you know any route is pretty much live.”
Svrluga: Don’t let the next two games fool you. Carson Wentz isn’t the answer. | 2022-12-30T16:25:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Quick decision-making is key for Commanders QB Carson Wentz - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/carson-wentz-commanders-offense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/carson-wentz-commanders-offense/ |
Fiesta Bowl: No. 2 Michigan vs. No. 3 TCU, 4 p.m. Eastern on Saturday (ESPN)
TCU quarterback Max Duggan was emotional following the team’s 31-28 overtime loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game on Dec. 3. (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
Stetson Bennett always had star potential. Just ask Georgia’s scout team.
Eventually, he sharpened that: “I think the love that we’ve got for each other, the love that we’ve got for this university, you know, for this school to be proud of the team that’s out there on the field. You know, I know we came short, but this team competes, they fight, they fight for each other, they fight for this university. There’s nothing more that we wanted for each other, and for this school, and we fell short, so, you know, we’re sorry for that.”
Then he cried on his sleeve.
He has become a Heisman Trophy finalist, declared for the NFL draft and marched to graduate on Dec. 17.
That’s some blur, and just seven years after he played quarterback at 14 for Lewis Central and for his father, Jim, which couldn’t have been the easiest. Jim Duggan would wind up telling the Heisman show in New York about the lad’s colossal and built-in will.
Lewis Central would have a big season in Duggan’s senior year in 2018, and would make it to the state semifinals at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, with Duggan telling Iowa media outlets, “I think it brought the community together,” a matter about which he seems to care. But back in 2015, with things just getting going, Kevin White of the Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs reported from the field after a closing playoff loss, including some input from a quarterback still 14.
Wrote White: “‘I love this group of seniors,’ a red-eyed Max Duggan said after the game.”
Always get the guys who aren’t afraid of red eyes. | 2022-12-30T16:25:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Max Duggan has TCU in the Playoff thanks to his arm, grit and tears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/max-duggan-tcu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/max-duggan-tcu/ |
Atmospheric river sweeps down West Coast with flooding, mountain snow
Recent rainfall has left the ground saturated, heightening the risk of flooding and landslides
A Caltrans crew works to clear a flooded portion of northbound Highway 13 on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. (Aric Crabb/AP)
Some of the most drought-stricken stretches of the West Coast are about to get drenched, as several atmospheric rivers ― tongues of deep tropical moisture with origins in the central Pacific — sweep through over the next few days.
The downpours will provide much-needed rainfall to parts of Washington, Oregon and California. But these heavy rains also raise the risk of flooding and landslides.
In the higher elevations, the same systems have been dumping feet of snow. Parts of the Sierra Nevada are bracing for another 3 to 5 feet, with blizzard conditions likely at the highest mountain summits.
The next in a conga line of atmospheric rivers lapped at the coastline of Oregon early Friday and was poised to drop into California. Flood watches cover much of the Golden State, including central and northern parts of the San Joaquin Valley along with the coastal plain.
In many areas, wet conditions this week have saturated the soil, making flooding more likely.
“We’re definitely seeing some wet soil,” said Andy Bollenbacher, the lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Hanford, Calif. “We had a decently sized atmospheric river come through the area on Tuesday. That gave the Valley between an inch or two in the foothills, with three or four in the Sierra Nevada and up to five inches in the mountains beneath the snow line.”
So far, flooding has been modest, but this could shift during what is likely to be a busy travel period surrounding New Year’s Eve.
“The soil won’t absorb water nearly as well as it normally would,” he said. “That will bring nuisance flooding in poor-drainage areas and perhaps some rockslides in the mountains. You still have some water on roadways from Tuesday’s storm.”
About 1 to 2 inches of rain is likely in the San Joaquin Valley, with the atmospheric river north of the Bay Area, with lesser amounts — around a half-inch, — in central and southern portions of the Central Valley.
Atmospheric rivers carry most of their moisture a mile or more above the ground, which is why heavier precipitation is usually limited to the higher elevations. The Coastal Range could receive 2 to 4 inches of rain, with 3 to 7 inches in the Sierra Nevada below the snow line.
San Francisco is running 1.59 inches above average for the month to date, and Sacramento is about 1.65 inches ahead of the mean.
Above 7,000 feet elevation, mainly snow is expected. A general 1 to 3 feet of snow is likely, with 3 feet or more above 8,000 feet of elevation and potentially as much as 5 feet or more above 9,000 feet.
Several low-pressure systems have triggered the atmospheric rivers. The first, a mature low west of Vancouver Island, is tugging a strip of moisture from the tropical Pacific eastward, thanks to its counterclockwise spin. That moisture plume will be aimed more directly at California on Saturday as a more intense low develops west of the state and moves southeast.
It will slip over the Great Basin of Nevada into Sunday morning, kicking off the new year with stormy conditions including heavy rain, winds gusting 40 to 60 mph and mountain snow. Reno, is under a flood watch and a wind advisory.
Drought raises prospect of 'doomsday scenario'
The rains are welcome news in the West, where the U.S. Drought Monitor reports that 64 percent of the region is experiencing a “moderate” or worse drought. In California, 7.16 percent of the state is facing a top tier “exceptional” drought — level 4 out of 4 on the scale — which is nine times more territory than was affected this time last year.
Fortunately, more atmospheric rivers are on the way, particularly Tuesday onward.
“In this case, it looks like the jet pattern is much more [west to east], which suggests that more of the moisture tap, the “Pineapple Express,” is going to be coming here rather than Oregon, Washington or western Canada,” said Bollenbacher. “That’s the big difference-maker we’ve been seeing. It looks to be that way for the next couple of weeks, and we didn’t have that this year.” | 2022-12-30T16:26:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Atmospheric river sweeps down West Coast with flooding, mountain snow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/30/atmospheric-river-flooding-west-coast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/30/atmospheric-river-flooding-west-coast/ |
Why many rule-loving Germans love rogue New Year’s fireworks
Most private firework purchases are banned in Germany, except for the days leading up to New Year’s. (Marcus Brandt/Picture Alliance/Getty Images)
BERLIN — As Ralf Schreiber’s car screeched to a halt on a dimly lit road in the suburbs of Berlin this week, two men were already waiting for him. Carefully, they heaved a box of firework rockets into his trunk.
“I’m not quite sure what I bought,” said Schreiber, 57, examining the box with a label that read “Apocalypse.”
“Five hundred eighty shots!” his wife, Manuela, responded. They both smiled.
Until just hours earlier, everything about this sale would have been illegal. Most private firework purchases are banned in Germany, except for the days leading up to New Year’s, and they were completely prohibited over the past two years due to concerns that injuries could push pandemic-strained hospitals to the brink of collapse. But as covid-19 fears have faded, the tradition of whistling rockets, sparkling pyramids and bursting firecrackers is seeing a controversial resurgence this year.
For the millions of fireworks enthusiasts in rule-obsessed Germany, the minutes around New Year’s Eve are a rare opportunity to break out of daily routines and light the skies above their homes.
“It’s all about having fun,” said Schreiber, who paid $532 for his box of rockets that will captivate the attention of his neighborhood for five to six minutes.
A different customer, Valentin Lübbert, 45, compared Germany’s annual firework mayhem with a national experience of “catharsis and self-cleansing.”
“In the past, when things got especially out of control” on New Year’s night, he said, it was particularly calm afterward. “People let off a lot of steam.”
But many regret that the pandemic ban on private firework sales has now been lifted. Surveys suggest that criticism of the tradition is growing, and more than half of all Germans favor at least a limited ban on private firework displays. Many would prefer displays organized by city authorities, like the annual fireworks around the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, over having their own neighbors experiment with supermarket-purchased rockets on the front lawn.
Jochen Kopelke, head of the German police union, said he fears a particularly bad situation this New Year’s Eve — including firework rocket attacks on officers. He supports a permanent ban, saying that over the past two years “the positive effects were too substantial, too clear, and too noticeable” to argue the opposite.
On New Year’s Eve celebrations before the pandemic, thousands of Germans were injured by rogue fireworks over the span of just a few hours. Masuod Yousefzada, a doctor practicing near Berlin, said the sudden influx of patients in emergency rooms has reminded him of war casualties in places like Afghanistan, where he grew up.
“Hand burns, face burns,” he said, adding that the stream of victims usually starts arriving around 20 minutes after midnight. “Why are people okay with this happening?” he wonders.
Germany is one of the few big nations in Europe that allow private fireworks on this scale. Critics say that besides leaving people seriously injured, the displays pollute the air with particulates, kill birds and risks re-traumatizing Ukrainian refugees.
Researchers say the debate reflects broader trends in Germany. “New Year’s Eve is a culmination point for the tensions and all the divides in our society,” said Manuel Trummer, a comparative European ethnologist at the University of Regensburg. He suggested that support for firework displays is akin to the dynamics that drove anti-mask protests during the pandemic, or that are behind the resistance to climate action. “Sacrifice is politically very difficult to convey,” he said.
Jürgen Resch, the head of the Environmental Action Germany, said his nonprofit’s campaigns against New Year’s fireworks often prompt the most serious safety threats it faces. At one point, the NGO had to be placed under police protection, he said.
“We don’t see this with other topics in that intensity,” he said. Perhaps as a result, German lawmakers have largely shied away from efforts to curb firework use, despite a number of past promises to do so, he said.
Historically, firework displays were a status symbol of European emperors who competed for attention. Their lavish celebrations are the foundation of the organized displays that still regularly light up the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tower Bridge in London and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
But Germany’s more privatized approach may at least in part be rooted in the centuries-old New Year’s shooting tradition — in Bavaria and other regions, the new year was long greeted with gun salutes. After World War II, as Germany saw rapid economic growth, the country’s pyrotechnics industry succeeded in making fireworks an essential part of New Year’s celebrations for many, partly “because they could build on existing customs that were not common in other countries,” Trummer said.
While the widespread private use of fireworks only goes back around two generations, criticism of their use is much older. Some records show that as early as in the 16th century, churches were concerned over excessive spending on the displays.
Germany’s pyrotechnics industry — which has some of the biggest fireworks production sites in Europe and is also one of the world’s biggest exporters — hopes it will sell at least as many fireworks this week as before the pandemic, when rockets and other items worth at least $128 million were purchased in Germany each year.
“That would be necessary for companies to at least somewhat compensate their losses of the past two years,” said Klaus Gotzen, head of VPI, a pyrotechnic industry association in Germany. But increasingly, German companies are facing foreign competition — both in terms of legal fireworks produced in China and the United States and illegal fireworks that don’t meet German certification standards. Gotzen said the pandemic ban has amplified an illicit trade with fireworks from Eastern Europe.
German authorities warn that such fireworks — often imported from Poland or the Czech Republic — are more dangerous than the ones certified in Germany. Many would be categorized as explosives in Germany, meaning that their purchase and use could land buyers in prison.
“They’re louder and have a bigger explosive power — that seems to fascinate many people,” Gotzen said.
German companies want to be seen as the more responsible competition. At a pub‐turned‐store in the south of Berlin, some items sold this week included labels such as “reduced plastic,” “reduced noise” or “carbon neutral.”
But many customers still congregated around the more traditional rockets that were on sale. Christian Mann, one of the store executives, acknowledged that demand for the adapted fireworks has remained limited.
For many, he said, what makes the tradition so appealing is the “reviving of old memories and old customs.”
While industry representatives say they walk a thin line trying to adapt without disgruntling their core customers, some think a real solution would need to be more radical.
Environmental activist Resch cited recent experiments with laser shows or drone displays, accompanied by music, in some German towns. “Suddenly, many people — especially the elderly — came back out into the streets and said: ‘This is beautiful!’ For years, they had not dared to leave their homes” on New Year’s Eve, Resch said.
“What could be nicer than celebrating the new year with friends, neighbors or maybe strangers, by hugging each other — and not by having to worry about getting hurt,” he said.
Schreiber, the buyer of the Apocalypse-themed box of rockets, agreed.
“We managed to live without it for two years,” he said. “If they ban it, that would be fine. But given that it’s legal, one just does it.”
As he got into his car, another driver honked to alert him of a misdemeanor. The issue was not that he had purchased more than 580 shots of fireworks but that, to load up his car, he had parked in the middle of the road. | 2022-12-30T16:26:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why many rule-loving Germans love rogue New Year’s fireworks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/fireworks-new-years-germany/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/fireworks-new-years-germany/ |
How Benedict, first German pope in centuries, lost sway with the German church
Pope Benedict XVI waves to the crowd at the end of a papal Mass in Regensburg, Germany, in September 2006. (Wolfgang Radtke/AP)
VATICAN CITY — As Pope Emeritus Benedict’s health falters, with Pope Francis asking for prayers, the relationship between Germany and its most famous modern Catholic figure has perhaps never been more fraught.
In Germany, the pace of secularization, a force Benedict XVI spent decades warning about, has been dramatic. Abuse scandals, including one that showed Benedict mishandling cases, have hastened the emptying of pews. Attempting to salvage credibility, German Catholic leaders have shown new willingness to reconsider stances on hot-button issues like homosexuality and celibacy — areas where Benedict sees church teaching as immutable.
Pope Emeritus Benedict’s health ‘serious’ but ‘stable,’ Vatican says
It's a part of Benedict’s legacy, as one of Catholicism’s foremost conservatives, that his viewpoint has lost ground above all in his home country.
If anything, Benedict’s version of Catholicism has more currency in the United States, which has emerged during Pope Francis’s pontificate as the epicenter of global traditionalism.
“If you look at the news right now in Germany, they’ll talk about [Benedict’s] health, but just with some short impressions from Rome — nothing from Berlin or Munich,” said Gregor Maria Hoff, a theologian involved with the German church’s reform process. “It is not that touching for Germans.”
With the given name of Joseph Ratzinger, the man who would become the first German pope in 1,000 years was baptized in a small Bavarian town, came of age during World War II, was mandated as a teen to join the Hitler Youth, and later cited wartime cruelties as one of the reasons he was attracted to religion. He gained prominence in the church as a theologian at German universities, and even after moving to Rome — becoming a powerful cardinal, then pontiff — he said he tended to read books mostly in German. “Being German is a very strong part of my cultural identity,” he said.
But during the years Benedict has spent in Rome — particularly in his decade as retired pope — the German church, which long had a liberal streak, has undergone massive changes that have turned it into something of a testing ground for how far progressivism can go.
German report documents more than 3,600 abuse cases within the Catholic Church
A 2018 church-commission investigation into seven decades of church abuse, documenting cases involving more than 1,600 clerics, provoked a crisis of confidence among German Catholics, including bishops, who acknowledged rot at the core of the system. They, in turn, drew up a multiyear process to reassess some of the most fundamental — and controversial — questions in the church.
Though the series of meetings is not yet finished, participants, including German bishops, have called for the church to bless same-sex relationships, while requesting that the pope loosen rules on celibacy and allow for the ordination of women. All would mark historic shifts for the Catholic Church, and would need to be approved by Rome.
In the United States, some in the largely-conservative Catholic leadership have issued specific warnings for Germany, or even spoken of the possibility of schism if changes come to pass.
Francis, meantime, finds himself in a tough spot. He has espoused a vision for the church that includes more autonomy for national-level churches, and he has been more conciliatory than his predecessors were to groups such as gays. But his lieutenants in the Vatican are clearly alarmed. Last month, in meetings with German bishops in Rome, Vatican higher-ups called for a “moratorium” on the process; the German bishops declined.
German bishops want to modernize the church. Are they getting too far ahead of Pope Francis?
“There’s fear [in the Vatican] that this will be like a fire that spreads elsewhere,” Georg Bätzing, the head of the German bishops’ conference, told reporters. “We are Catholic. But we want to be Catholic in a different way.”
Benedict, who has been frail for years and vowed to remain silent on church affairs, has not spoken about the German process, known as the synodal way. But one like-minded German cardinal in the Vatican, Gerhard Müller, has regularly criticized it. Benedict’s biographer, Peter Seewald, said in an interview with The Washington Post that one can “imagine” how Benedict feels.
“This is actually exactly the opposite of what Ratzinger proclaimed all his life as a theologian and what he fought for,” Seewald said.
More than taking a stand on any one issue, Benedict holds a universal feeling about the faith: that it shouldn’t bend to cultural whims. As pope, he warned about “aggressive forms of secularism” and worried about the church making concessions to the norms of modern culture that might weaken the eternal truths of Catholicism.
“We need a moral force in our time,” Benedict said in 2011, at the beginning of a visit to Germany.
Though the gap between Benedict and the German church has widened, he had long been something of an outlier among peers. Seewald said Benedict had a “difficult” relationship with his country’s church for decades, based first on differences over how to interpret the Second Vatican Council, and later based on tensions over student protests in the late-1960s.
Relative to the church in Italy, for instance, the German church has always had a reformist streak. Scholars say that is in part because of the influence of Protestantism, even centuries after the Reformation. Germany also has a network of powerful lay Catholic organizations, diffusing the power of clerics. The German church, though imperiled, is one of the wealthiest national churches, thanks to a state-backed church tax.
“Ratzinger sees in Germany a church of facades that is no longer filled with faith,” Seewald said.
He’s had some great moments in Germany. When he was chosen as pope in 2005, the Bild tabloid, as if hailing a national victory, blared the headline: Wir Sind Papst! (We are pope!)
Months later, Benedict enjoyed a triumphant visit to Cologne, celebrating a Mass in front of 1 million people.
But his reputation, even among some supporters, has been damaged. Earlier this year, a church-commissioned investigation accused him of wrongdoing in several cases when he led the archdiocese in Munich from 1977 until 1982. In one instance, the investigation said, Benedict knowingly accepted a priest into his archdiocese even after the cleric had been convicted of sexual abuse in a criminal court.
German investigation accuses Benedict XVI of ‘wrongdoing’ in handling of abuse cases while archbishop of Munich
The law firm that carried out the probe said Benedict’s claims of having no knowledge of the cases were not credible.
Benedict soon after had to correct the record, admitting his presence at a 1980 meeting in which church officials discussed a predator priest.
“Even people who are friendly to Ratzinger are very disappointed that he didn’t say the truth,” said Christian Weisner, a spokesman for Wir Sind Kirche, a movement advocating for church reforms. Weisner cited his elderly in-laws, who spent their lives as active parishioners. “They are disappointed in Ratzinger and also in the whole church,” he said. | 2022-12-30T16:26:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Benedict XVI, a German pope, is at odds with the German church - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/pope-benedict-german-church/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/30/pope-benedict-german-church/ |
Naomi Duguid explores the ‘The Miracle of Salt’ in her new cookbook
Updated December 30, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. EST|Published December 30, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EST
Cookbook author Naomi Duguid, author of “The Miracle of Salt,” at a cafe in Paris. (Paul Burke)
Naomi Duguid returned from Tbilisi in time for the launch of her newest book, “The Miracle of Salt,” and she’s excited. After over two years staying put in Toronto, the author, photographer and cook has finally been able to return her most prized title back to her name card: traveler.
The Georgia trip wasn’t for book research. Duguid leads intimate group tours to places she loves and has written about, partnering with local food-focused friends to do what she calls “immersing through”: approaching other cultures through food, informed by an intense drive to understand how things work.
Destinations have included Thailand, where much of her classic book “Hot Sour Salty Sweet,” co-written with ex-partner Jeffrey Alford, is based; and Georgia, one of the Caucasus countries featured in her “Taste of Persia.” On an upcoming trip to Japan, she’ll delve into sweet and salty shio koji, for what she calls “salt and rice magic.”
How to choose the right type of salt for your recipe
The former geographer and lawyer starts from a place of not knowing. “In travel, I think about what’s fruitful to explore, as opposed to what I know,” she says. “I don’t go looking for specific answers. It’s better to keep my eyes open so I can stay present to the human landscape.”
“The Miracle of Salt” brings together the elements that readers love about the James Beard Award winner: endless curiosity, respect for other cultures, a spirit of experimentation and fearlessness in the kitchen. “I want to un-intimidate, while at the same time generating a sense of wonder,” Duguid says.
Why salt, when there are so many places still to discover?
“Salt is a forever subject,” Duguid says. “To say that we need it to live means that it goes back to the earliest humans.”
Unlike her other books — this is the third she has written three on her own and six with Alford — “The Miracle of Salt” is the first with extensive non-travel research. Duguid complemented pre-pandemic visits to Morocco, Japan, England, Italy and Peru with explorations of academic papers and books about salt archaeology and production, older cookbooks and “a zillion online rabbit holes.” The result is an artfully photographed, resource-rich 400-page book replete with history and essential information about cooking and preserving with salt. And, of course, recipes.
“In all the other books, I wrote about things I’d seen myself,” she says. Duguid never looks at photos of places she’s about to visit, because she doesn’t want those pictures in her head. “I’m too literal minded to take anybody’s word for anything. I was a complete beginner in the land of salt.”
Duguid was initially perplexed about how to structure the book, ultimately deciding to break it down into two major sections. The Salt Larder explains the types of salt, how to determine the salinity and preservation approaches. There are also instructions for making some staples, including flavored salts, kimchi, preserved lemons and corned beef. The second section, From Larder to Table, uses these salt-preserved ingredients in recipes.
An improviser in the kitchen — fish sauce with olive oil remains her go-to seasoning for pretty much everything, she confesses — Duguid again draws on her myriad influences in these recipes. “I like the notion that there are solutions to similar food preservation problems in different parts of the world. Everyone just goes about it in different ways,” she says. She loves the juxtaposition of Korean kimchi jjigae and Polish kapusniak in the book, a lush photo of the two fermented soups taken in her own kitchen, side by side.
Make the recipe: Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes With Salt Pork
At root a home cook happy with simple meals, Duguid recommends the potato, Brussels sprouts and salt pork (or pancetta) dish in the book as an easy starting point, or bucatini with bottarga. It’s the ice cream recipes that really surprised her, though. “I’m not an ice cream person,” she says. “But when I developed the tamarind-miso one with chocolate chips, I thought: This is something I would eat.”
Another departure from her usual flexible approach in the kitchen, “The Miracle of Salt” nods to the need for precision when preserving. Duguid suggests readers use a jewelry scale for small amounts, and a regular kitchen scale, with the comforting admonishment, “You’ll find it relaxing to be able to rely on exact measurements.”
Some of the recipes in the larder section require time more than anything else: homemade miso, Georgian ajika and salt pork aren’t exactly fast food. What if those experiments fail? Duguid recounts telling herself, “Well, there will be a bit of food wasted. But I’ll have learned something, and I’ll be able to pass it on.”
Lerner-Frank is a former oratorio singer and Canadian diplomat, now a food and travel writer based in Montreal. | 2022-12-30T17:17:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Naomi Duguid explores the 'The Miracle of Salt' in her latest cookbook - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/12/30/naomi-duguid-miracle-of-salt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/12/30/naomi-duguid-miracle-of-salt/ |
Scientists find new clues to mystery of Nevada fossil-rich graveyard
The dozens of giant marine reptiles believed to have died there probably did so thousands of years apart, new study says.
An artist’s illustration of adult and newly born Triassic ichthyosaurs. A Nevada fossil site might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth. (Gabriel Ugueto/AP)
Scientists have uncovered clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles. Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth.
The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs (pronounced ICK-thee-uh-sorz) — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a school bus. The creatures — the name means “fish lizard” — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.
Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, many paleontologists have investigated how all these creatures could have died together. Now researchers have proposed a different theory in a study published recently in the journal Current Biology.
Once a tropical sea, the site — part of Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town, said lead author Randall Irmis, a paleontologist at the University of Utah.
A major break came when the researchers spotted tiny bones among the massive adult fossils and realized they belonged to embryos and newborns, Pyenson said. The researchers concluded that the creatures traveled to the site in groups for protection as they gave birth, like today’s marine giants. The fossils are believed to be from the mothers and offspring that died there over the years.
The new study offers a reasonable explanation for a site that’s puzzled paleontologists for decades, said Dean Lomax, an ichthyosaur specialist at Britain’s University of Manchester who was not involved with the research.
The case may not be fully closed yet, but the study “really helps to unlock a little bit more about this fascinating site,” Lomax said. | 2022-12-30T17:17:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scientists find new clues to mystery of Nevada fossil-rich graveyard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/12/30/nevada-fossils-marine-reptiles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/12/30/nevada-fossils-marine-reptiles/ |
The US Can Solve Its Housing Crisis. It Just Needs to Start Building
For all its complexities, America’s nationwide housing crisis boils down to a problem of supply and demand: The country needs a lot more homes than it has, yet even ambitious reforms won’t provide developers with enough incentive to bridge the gap. Addressing this dilemma could well be the defining public-policy challenge of the next few decades.
The problem is enormous: To close an accumulated shortfall estimated at 3.8 million units, the pace of housing construction would need to be about 50% higher over the next decade. Liberalized zoning and other regulatory reforms can certainly help improve this picture, especially if they spread to more places and types of housing, simplify building codes and speed up approvals. But they’re not sufficient to ensure adequate supply. Even in Los Angeles, where a new state law has engendered a boom in “granny flats” and other so-called accessory dwelling units, the effect on overall housing supply has been minimal.
Policymakers need to think more creatively.
One promising option is manufactured housing, which can be produced much more quickly and at much lower cost than traditional homes constructed stick by stick onsite. It comes in two main forms: “mobile” homes, built to a federal code and delivered complete with metal chassis, and modular or panelized homes, assembled onsite from factory-made components. As recently as the late 1960s, it accounted for more than half of new single-family housing. Whole neighborhoods of Sears kit homes from the 1910s survive to this day.
Yet even as manufactured homes have improved immensely in design and quality, they’ve fallen out of favor. Many residential districts have banned mobile homes, which must typically be financed like automobiles with relatively expensive “chattel” loans. As of 2021, they accounted for just 10% of single-family production. To at least partially reverse this decline, government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should improve financing options by purchasing and securitizing chattel loans, and legislators should consider reducing cost and complication by eliminating the unnecessary chassis requirement (the homes tend to stay where they’re installed).
Modular homes have even greater potential. They offer consumers plenty of options, and once installed they look no different — and sometimes a lot better — than the typical stick-built home. By moving much of the construction process into factories, they can cut costs and project timelines by more than 20% — revolutionizing an industry than has seen no significant productivity gains in decades. Yet they must contend with a tangle of local building codes, which prevent producers from reaching profitable scale: As of 2021, they accounted for just 2% of new single-family homes.
California’s housing reforms point the way to a possible solution. Recognizing the suitability of modular homes for accessory dwelling units, as well as ample interest among potential homeowners, Los Angeles has pre-approved a list of standardized building plans. The more localities adopt such standards, the more manufacturers will be able to scale up, further reducing the cost of quality housing.
Taxation is another area that deserves attention. Most local governments tax buildings at the same rate as land, an approach that unduly favors landowners and inhibits development. If, by contrast, they taxed land at a higher rate, they could encourage developers to put it to its best use — for example, by building apartments on expensive plots near job centers. Ample research suggests that nudging municipalities to adopt such a split-rate tax would boost local economies and reduce urban sprawl. The experience of Pittsburgh, which increased its tax rate on land to more than five times the rate on buildings, demonstrates the possibilities: Building permits boomed, even amid declines elsewhere in the state, and helped kick off the city’s decades-long revival.
No doubt, such initiatives will face plenty of opposition. One must hope that the urgent need for more housing will prevail. Few challenges will be harder for the US to confront in the 21st century — or more rewarding to solve.
• When Fixing the Housing Market, Don’t Forget the Neediest: The Editors | 2022-12-30T17:57:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The US Can Solve Its Housing Crisis. It Just Needs to Start Building - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-us-can-solve-its-housing-crisis-it-just-needs-to-start-building/2022/12/30/4d5b3940-8866-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-us-can-solve-its-housing-crisis-it-just-needs-to-start-building/2022/12/30/4d5b3940-8866-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
The decision — a setback for various industries — broadens which wetlands, streams and rivers can be regulated under the Clean Water Act but stops short of a controversial Obama-era rule
James Miron, 4, the grandson of Fran Miron, plays on the family farm in Hugo, Minn., in 2019. Fran Miron is the fourth generation to farm this land in Hugo. His grandfather is among the many farmers who objected to the Obama administration’s expansion of waterways regulation under the Waters of the United States rule. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
The Biden administration on Friday imposed a rule expanding the definition of waterways that the government has authority to regulate, reversing a Trump-era change and replacing it with language the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said should prevent the need for future revisions — including any that a pending Supreme Court case might require.
The EPA said it would return the Waters of the United States regulatory framework to something resembling its pre-2015 state — before the Obama administration significantly and controversially widened the scope of the Clean Water Act to include even ephemeral streams and ponds.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the agency aimed “to deliver a durable definition of WOTUS that safeguards our nation’s waters, strengthens economic opportunity, and protects people’s health while providing greater certainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners.”
Although the Biden rule is less expansive than Obama’s, Republicans quickly attacked it as overly burdensome.
At EPA, a fight over numbers in water protection rule reveals a shift in ideology
“The rule announced today is the latest round of regulatory overreach regarding what waters are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act, and will unfairly burden America’s farmers, ranchers, miners, infrastructure builders, and landowners,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a statement.
The Supreme Court heard a case in October challenging the reach of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 legislation that aimed to restore the health of polluted and degraded rivers and lakes. Members of the court’s conservative majority raised concerns about the law’s broad reach.
The Biden administration said its rule would define the law’s oversight as covering what it called “traditional navigable waters,” including interstate waterways and upstream water sources that influence the health and quality of those waterways. The definition is based on the legal framework established before 2015, with adjustments based on court rulings and newer science, EPA said. | 2022-12-30T17:57:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EPA issues rule widening oversight of U.S. waterways, reversing Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/30/biden-epa-wetlands-regulation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/30/biden-epa-wetlands-regulation/ |
FILE - New York Cosmos’ Pele stands with others at news conference in New York on June 10, 1975. Dozens of meetings over four years led to Pelé agreeing to sign with Cosmos in June 1975. His 2 1/2 seasons in New York elevated the sport, putting U.S. soccer on a path to hosting the World Cup in 1994 and launching Major League Soccer two years later. (AP Photo, File) (Anonymous/AP) | 2022-12-30T17:58:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pelé invigorated US soccer, paved way for '94 World Cup, MLS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/pele-invigorated-us-soccer-paved-way-for-94-world-cup-mls/2022/12/30/f48f5f1e-8863-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/pele-invigorated-us-soccer-paved-way-for-94-world-cup-mls/2022/12/30/f48f5f1e-8863-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Biden grants full pardons to six individuals who served their sentences
President Biden speaks in the East Room of the White House ahead of the holidays on Dec. 22 in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
President Biden on Friday granted full pardons to six people, from a decorated Army veteran involved in marijuana trafficking more than 25 years ago to an 80-year-old woman convicted of killing her abusive husband nearly a half-century ago.
Among those granted pardons — one of the most unlimited powers the Constitution bestows upon the president — are individuals who volunteered in their communities and mentored young people. This latest set of pardons joins the categorical pardon Biden announced earlier this year of former inmates convicted of simple marijuana possession.
“President Biden believes America is a nation of second chances, and that offering meaningful opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation empowers those who have been incarcerated to become productive, law-abiding members of society,” said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement. “The President remains committed to providing second chances to individuals who have demonstrated their rehabilitation — something that elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree our criminal justice system should offer.”
Biden’s end-of-year pardons affect individuals who are not well-known, unlike the recipients of pardons from former president Donald Trump. In a chaotic flurry announced by the White House less than 12 hours before the end of the Trump presidency, he granted 144 pardons and sentence commutations, with entertainers, politicians from both parties and several well-connected Trump allies among the recipients.
* Gary Parks Davis, 66, of Yuma, Ariz., who pleaded guilty to using a telephone to facilitate an unlawful cocaine transaction more than 40 years ago. After serving his six-month sentence in a county jail, Davis completed probation in 1981. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree and now owns a landscaping business and manages construction projects. He continued to serve in leadership of a local high school booster club, even after his children graduated, and helps raise funds for a local rotary club and chamber of commerce.
* Edward Lincoln De Coito III, 50, of Dublin, Calif., who pleaded guilty to involvement in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy more than 25 years ago. De Coito had previously served in the Army and the Army Reserve, where he received the Southwest Asia Service Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. After his release from prison, De Coito worked as a skilled electrician for approximately 15 years before launching a second career as a pilot.
* Vincente Ray Flores, 37, of Winters, Calif., consumed ecstasy and alcohol at age 19 while serving in the military. He was sentenced to four months’ confinement, forfeiture of $700 pay per month for a four-month period, and reduction in rank. Since then, Flores remains on active duty and has been awarded the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award and the Meritorious Unit Award among other honors. He has also volunteered for a number of causes through his military units, including Habitat for Humanity, a cancer research fundraiser, and events for military members returning from deployment.
* Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, 80, of Columbus, Ohio, was convicted of murder in the second degree while armed for killing her husband. The then-33-year-old was pregnant and testified that her husband physically and verbally abused her moments before she shot him. During her trial, the court refused to allow expert testimony regarding battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition and pattern of behavior that develops in victims of domestic violence, and Ibn-Tamas was sentenced to a term of one to five years’ incarceration. Ibn-Tamas was recently the director of nursing for an Ohio-based health-care business, and continues to manage cases at the facility.
* Charlie Byrnes Jackson, 77, of Swansea, S.C., who pleaded guilty to one count of possession and sale of distilled spirits without tax stamps. He was sentenced to five years’ probation for the crime he committed as an 18-year-old. Jackson attempted to enlist in the Marine Corps after graduating high school, but was rejected because of the federal conviction. He has since been an active member of his church and has volunteered his carpentry skills to maintain and renovate church buildings.
* John Dix Nock III, 72, of St. Augustine, Fla., pleaded guilty to one count of renting and making for use, as an owner, a place for the purpose of manufacturing marijuana plants. He was sentenced to six months’ community confinement in lieu of imprisonment in 1996. Nock now operates a general contracting business and mentors young contractors through a professional networking group. He also helps organize an annual fishing tournament to benefit abused young men. | 2022-12-30T18:18:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden grants full pardons to six individuals who served their sentences - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/biden-pardons-military-domestic-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/biden-pardons-military-domestic-abuse/ |
By Lizzie Johnson
An old booking photo of Lamont Butler. (Courtesy of Prince George's County Police Department)
LA PLATA, Md. — At 8 a.m. Friday, nine sheriff’s deputies were bunched behind the security desk at the entrance to the Charles County Circuit Court.
But Butler — who claims to be the consul general of the “Morocco Consular Court at the Maryland State Republic” — argued that the mansion fell under an 1836 treaty between Morocco and the United States and actually belonged to him. It didn’t work.
On Friday morning, the judge had barely spoken when Butler made his first objection. He went by a different name — Lamont Maurice El — and did not consent to standing in for this other person, even though that “other person” was legally him.
As Butler spoke, four Moorish-Americans dressed in red filed into the court room.
“Do you have a home address?” Judge Brown asked.
“I object,” Butler said.
“I can’t have you speaking when I’m speaking, sir,” she said. “Only one of us can speak at a time. … I speak, and then you speak, and we will go back and forth until we are completed.”
Butler said he had a representative in the court room. But the woman wasn’t a lawyer, so Judge Brown asked her to sit.
“Unless you’re licensed in the state of Maryland, you cannot speak on anyone’s behalf,” Judge Brown said.
When the woman refused to sit down, sheriff’s deputies tried to usher the entire group out. But they balked at the idea of leaving and refused to budge.
“If you’re willing to sit quietly, I’m happy to have you here,” the judge said.
The court room quieted.
Brown tried to move forward with the hearing, going over Butler’s charges — which include possession of a firearm with a felony conviction — and advising him that he had a right to legal counsel.
“I’m not making an appearance, first of all,” Butler replied. “As long as the grass grows green, as long as the water runs downhill, as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we never come together. We are separate people.”
The judge asked if he’d like a referral to the Office of the Public Defender.
“Objection,” he said.
“I have to mute you, because you’re talking while I’m talking,” she said.
His next court date, she said, was scheduled for Feb. 3. Though he’d objected, she was going to send him a referral for a public defender.
In the back of the room, the group of Moorish Americans stood, attempting to speak on Butler’s behalf. They refused to quiet down.
“Please remove them from the courthouse,” the judge said. “… Once you’re removed, I’ll come back.”
“This is treason!” one man shouted.
“You don’t have to put your hands on me,” an older man with gray hair said to a sheriff’s deputy, pulling his mask down to talk. He gripped the red flag.
“You cannot touch me and harass me by grabbing me,” shouted another woman in a long green coat.
“I am invoking my treaty right,” he immediately said, referencing Morocco, a country 4,000 miles away.
“Only one of us can talk at a time,” the judge chided.
“I am not consenting to an appearance,” Neal-Bey said.
“Objection,” Neal-Bey said.
On Zoom, Neal-Bey’s screen went dark.
“Can we call our next case?” the judge asked. | 2022-12-30T19:11:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Moorish Americans facing gun charges create disarray in Maryland courtroom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/moorish-americans-gun-charges-court-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/moorish-americans-gun-charges-court-maryland/ |
What we’ve learned from Trump’s tax returns
Copies of the 2018 individual tax returns for former president Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump released by the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. (Jon Elswick/AP)
The House Ways and Means Committee on Dec. 30 released former president Donald Trump’s tax returns, as he faced multiple federal and state investigations. (Video: Reuters)
Want to know more? Read more about the release of the returns in our coverage here. Check out the congressional committee’s summary of their findings. And below, find the top numbers from each year of Trump’s taxes. | 2022-12-30T19:29:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A look at some of the key numbers from Trump's tax returns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/trump-taxes-charitable-contributions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/trump-taxes-charitable-contributions/ |
The Christmas storm shows that we have to change our ways
Bulldozers clear snow after a Dec. 25 storm that caused fatalities, left rescue crews stranded and caused widespread power outages in Buffalo. (Malik Rainey for The Washington Post)
Regarding the Dec. 28 front-page article “Buffalo’s no stranger to snow. So why was the storm so deadly?”:
My flight to California on Christmas morning was canceled — yes, it was on Southwest. I struggled to find another flight but found one (on a different airline) for Dec. 27. That was canceled. I was painfully sad and angry to know that I would not see two of my sons, their wives and five grandchildren for Christmas.
The bad weather just before Christmas didn’t just affect people who had hoped to travel. Buffalo is a city that knows how to handle snow, but it was hit with “a once-in-a-generation” storm that killed dozens of people. I don’t think it will be “once.” This is climate change. We have to change our ways or this disaster will be repeated many times.
Margo Dunlavey, Rockville | 2022-12-30T19:59:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Christmas storm shows that we have to change our ways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/christmas-storm-change-behavior-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/christmas-storm-change-behavior-climate-change/ |
The Commanders belong where taxpayers want them. That’s not Virginia.
Washington Commanders quarterback Taylor Heinicke on Dec. 24 in a game against the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) originally proposed spending hundreds of millions of Virginia tax dollars to entice the Washington Commanders to move to Virginia. What that investment would have bought was kind of a mystery. See, the team didn’t actually own the land. The team owned an option to purchase. That option included surrounding acreage for commercial development. Maybe billions of dollars’ worth.
I guess there was not sufficient interest in Mr. Youngkin’s public subsidy of a billion-dollar NFL team at the expense of the Virginia taxpayer. Now, as the Dec. 27 editorial “Unfit and unapologetic, Mr. Snyder needs to go” noted, he wants to spend $500,000 on “planning” and an evaluation of “potential economic incentives” to get the team to build a stadium in the commonwealth.
As a Virginia taxpayer, I believe the appropriate place for the new stadium would be in D.C. I welcome the fact that D.C. is willing to pick up the tab. Alternatively, St. Louis needs a team. Maybe the Washington Football Team, whatever its name, will sneak out in the dead of night. Could happen. St. Louis got a good settlement from the NFL and the Rams.
David M. Siegler, Oakton | 2022-12-30T19:59:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Commanders belong where taxpayers want them. That’s not Virginia. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/commanders-belong-where-taxpayers-want-them-not-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/commanders-belong-where-taxpayers-want-them-not-virginia/ |
Getting George Santos out of the House won’t be simple
George Santos campaigns on Nov. 5 in Glen Cove, N.Y. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
“Santos acknowledges ‘résumé embellishment’ but says little about wealth,” the Dec. 27 news article about George Santos, who was recently elected to the House from New York, did a good job on the facts, but it neglected to mention a terribly important Supreme Court interpretation of a line from the Constitution that I regularly teach to my U.S. history students.
At the end of the article, Fred Zeidman, a GOP donor who sits on the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board of directors, was quoted as saying, “But I certainly think that the leadership of the Republican Party has an obligation not to seat someone that is obviously totally phony.” Alas, more than 50 years ago, in Powell v. McCormack, the court said the House’s power not to seat an elected member (by majority vote) must rest on the constitutional requirements of office (age, length of citizenship, residence, duly elected, other federal office) alone. Mr. Santos’s repulsive lying behavior, sadly, has nothing to do with any of the constitutional requirements of office. The House certainly can “expel” him with a two-thirds vote (fat chance!), but otherwise the constituency that elected him is stuck with him for two years, until it votes him out.
In honor of the season, should we call this the Santos clause?
Richard Avidon, Washington | 2022-12-30T19:59:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Getting George Santos out of the House won’t be simple - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/george-santos-house-expulsion-not-simple/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/george-santos-house-expulsion-not-simple/ |
No resolutions for me, but here’s hoping there’s a reckoning for Trump
Trump supporters climb and surround the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
I resolve to neither renew old New Year’s resolutions nor add any new ones. I do, however, fervently wish that 2023 will bring about a reckoning between Donald Trump and the law; that in the new year, the former president will be called to account for betraying his oath of office — and, if there is sufficient evidence to prove he has committed other crimes, that he be indicted. Neither is too much to hope for, and both are much desired. Trump, divisive and demagogic at home and pro-autocratic regimes abroad, is the greatest scourge on public service in the United States’ 21st century.
Among U.S. presidents, Trump stands out most for his dereliction of duty.
His oath was simple and direct: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But on Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol — the symbol of U.S. democracy — was assaulted by a mob summoned to Washington by him, Trump did nothing.
It was the most violent domestic attack on the U.S. government since the Civil War. There it was: a mob seeking to delay and disrupt a joint session of Congress empowered by the Constitution to transfer presidential power.
This is not after-the-fact guesswork. We learned what happened not only from the report by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, but also through our own eyes and ears.
Trump supporters were seen assembling on the Capitol grounds and the Ellipse. We saw mobs removing police fencing and clearing out areas so their fellow rioters could access restricted Capitol grounds.
It was not our imagination: We witnessed mobs clashing with and overtaking the police. We saw them storming the Capitol building, climbing scaffolding and smashing windows. We saw one carrying a full-size Confederate battle flag into the building.
We learned, to our horror, as viewers and listeners, that Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House and Senate leaders, and the rest of Congress were evacuating the Capitol and hiding in their offices or wherever they could find safe space and protection.
No one needed to tell us: We watched for hours as law enforcement, including a large contingent of courageous D.C. police officers, fought to clear the mob of insurrectionists out of the Capitol and off its grounds.
The president of the United States watched, too.
But now, because of the Jan. 6 committee’s report, we know so much more.
We know that from the time Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse in which he announced his intentions to join his mob of supporters in a march to the Capitol, he was aware of efforts in the House Chamber to delay the electoral count and overturn the election.
Trump knew, as did we, that violent mobs were marauding the Capitol. He knew because his advisers and family members tried and tried to get him to tell the mob to leave the Capitol. And he would not.
Only after it became clear that violent insurrection would not stop the certification of the electoral vote did Trump release a video telling rioters to go home.
As commander in chief, Trump had the capacity to marshal the power of the U.S. government to stop the blatant attack on a constitutional process. For more than three hours — 187 minutes, as the committee clocked it — Trump sat back and didn’t lift a finger.
Despite his sworn obligation to “protect and defend the Constitution,” Trump shamefully and shamelessly violated his oath.
What kind of political party would ever again put forward for public office such a betrayer of the Constitution? The Republican Party, if it stands for anything, should work up its nerve and tell Trump, “Thus far and no further.”
In addition, Trump and federal criminal statutes could have a day of reckoning in 2023.
The Jan. 6 committee, concluding an 18-month investigation, said Trump did more than sit in the White House and sulk on Jan. 6.
In a referral of criminal charges to the Justice Department, the committee said that the former president, among other things, incited or assisted the Jan. 6 insurrection and obstructed an official proceeding of Congress. The committee unanimously agreed to the referral.
More to the point, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations that involve Trump: First, whether there was any unlawful interference with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the electoral college vote, and second, the alleged mishandling of classified documents and other presidential records and possible obstruction of an investigation.
Trump is up to his eyeballs in both.
Partisan GOP grousing and Trump’s witch-hunt claims notwithstanding, the Garland-led Justice Department can be expected to follow the facts and the law in reaching decisions about Trump and his confederates.
Here’s hoping 2023 will see Trump meeting at the bar of justice, with verdicts to follow. | 2022-12-30T19:59:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A reckoning for Trump is my one hope for the new year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/reckoning-trump-hope-new-year/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/reckoning-trump-hope-new-year/ |
Ukrainians and Afghans need help now to stay in the U.S.
Afghan refugees board a bus on Aug. 23, 2021, at Dulles International Airport after arriving in the United States. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
More than 200,000 besieged Afghans and Ukrainians were rescued and brought to this country under “humanitarian parole” in 2022. As their time to legally remain in that status runs out, they face horrendous consequences unless help comes soon. Appropriations for Adjustment Acts for both groups were proposed by the Biden administration but excluded in the recent end-of-year omnibus legislation; therefore, the Afghans and Ukrainians await a questionable future in the next Congress.
Almost unprecedented private support exists for both groups in this country, as reported by the Dec. 19 news article “Retired officers press for Afghan act” and Karyna Falko’s Dec. 26 letter, “A Ukrainian refugee deadline.” Of the Afghans, Adm. Mike Mullen said, “If anything should be above politics, this should be it.” Of the Ukrainians, Ms. Falko said, “Because of the dates we arrived, we are not eligible for either temporary protected status or the Uniting for Ukraine program.” Both groups would be subject to deportation unless help arrives.
The United States made promises to both groups but is falling short. For the sake of humanity, it is essential that our nation keep its word. Either Congress must immediately approve Adjustment Acts for Afghans and Ukrainians, or both groups should immediately be awarded refugee status under the provisions of the 1980 Refugee Act (which would provide permanence, status and necessary support without additional authorizing legislation).
James N. Purcell Jr., Columbia
The writer was director general of the U.N. International Organization for Migration from 1988 to 1998 and was a director of the State Department’s refugee programs. | 2022-12-30T19:59:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ukrainian and Afghan parolees need help now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/ukrainians-afghans-parolees-help-stay-united-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/ukrainians-afghans-parolees-help-stay-united-states/ |
Let the people decide on Trump
Supporters of President Donald Trump at the Capitol during a riot on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Dec. 29 Thursday Opinion essay by Bruce Ackerman and Gerard Magliocca, “Use the 14th Amendment on Trump”:
Let’s leave aside the challenge of achieving a simple majority in favor of executing the partisan proposal by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) to essentially determine via the courts former president Donald Trump’s eligibility for office under the disqualification clause and persuading the conservative Supreme Court to uphold such a disqualification. Let’s not forget that Trump has already been impeached and acquitted by Congress for his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot. Bringing this question up one more time reeks of a second political trial.
I would be concerned with the precedent of disqualifying future candidates like this.. Our Constitution sets a much higher burden of a two-thirds majority for removal from office; disqualification should not be any different. Though there is no doubt Jefferson Davis had committed treason by leading an armed rebellion against the United States, legally speaking, treason is far from clear-cut with Mr. Trump and his role in the Capitol riot.
The reason to hold a former president accountable is to reinforce that nobody is above the law. House Democrats won’t be sending that message by proposing to circumvent Mr. Trump’s right to due process.
The American people are exhausted by this debate. At this point, the best course of action would be to trust the American people to determine the answer to this question one more time, just as they did in 2020 and 2022.
Srikanth Pallavaram Srinivasan, Lilburn, Ga. | 2022-12-30T20:00:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Voters, not Democrats in Congress, should decide Trump's fate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/voters-not-democrats-congress-should-decide-trump-fate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/voters-not-democrats-congress-should-decide-trump-fate/ |
People attend a vigil in Moscow, Idaho, for the four University of Idaho students who were killed in a home on Nov. 13. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Police have arrested a 28-year-old man in the killings of four University of Idaho students after a seven-week search that led law enforcement to the opposite side of the country from the off-campus home where the victims were found.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger was arrested Friday in northeastern Pennsylvania in the investigation of the Nov. 13 fatal stabbings that rattled the 9,000-person campus and prompted the university to increase security and offer a remote learning option for the rest of the fall semester.
Kohberger was taken into custody by Pennsylvania State Police and is being held in a Monroe County, Pa., jail while awaiting his Tuesday extradition.
He was listed as a Ph.D. student in Washington State University’s department of criminal justice and criminology department before the page was taken down Friday.
Moscow officials are scheduled to discuss the case in Friday afternoon a news conference.
On the Saturday evening before they were killed, Mogen and Goncalves were at a downtown bar, while Chapin and Kernodle — a couple — were at Chapin’s fraternity house before they all returned to the women’s King Street home at about 1:45 a.m.
When two surviving housemates woke up later that morning, they saw one of their roommates on the second floor and believed that the person had passed out. They called friends to the home, and people used one of the surviving housemates’ cellphones to report an unconscious person to a 911 dispatcher.
An autopsy by the Latah County coroner’s office later revealed that each student was stabbed multiple times and that some showed signs of having tried to fight their attacker. There were no indications of sexual assault.
During the search for a suspect, investigators at times faced scrutiny for issuing confusing or seemingly contradictory updates about the case. Police initially assured the public that it was not in danger, but later reversed course and said they could not rule out the possibility of a threat to the Moscow community. They repeatedly called the killings “targeted” but struggled to clarify what they meant by that term.
On Nov. 30, students gathered in the University of Idaho’s indoor athletic stadium for a candlelight vigil to honor the victims. Stacy Chapin, Ethan Chapin’s mother, told the crowd that her triplets had enrolled at the school because of its beautiful campus, Greek system and “small-town feel.”
Hundreds gathered for a vigil on Nov. 30 for four University of Idaho students killed earlier in the month. (Video: Reuters)
The family knew they had made the right choice, she said — never imagining what was to come.
“The circumstances that brought us here tonight, they’re terrible,” Stacy Chapin said. “The hardest part? We cannot change the outcome.”
Chapin was a freshman from Conway, Wash., majoring in recreation, sport and tourism management. Kernodle, a junior from Post Falls, Idaho, and Mogen, a senior from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, were studying marketing. Goncalves was a senior from Rathdrum, Idaho, pursuing a major in general studies. All belonged to a sorority or fraternity.
Nick Parker contributed to this report. | 2022-12-30T20:08:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bryan Kohberger arrested in killings of 4 University of Idaho students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/30/idaho-students-homicide-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/30/idaho-students-homicide-arrest/ |
Ian Tyson, Canadian folk singer with cowboy soul, dies at 89
Ian Tyson performs at the Western Folklife Center's annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 2012 in Elko, Nev. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk singer who wrote the modern standard “Four Strong Winds” as one half of Ian & Sylvia and helped influence such future superstars as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, died Dec. 29 at his home in southern Alberta. He was 89.
The death was confirmed by his manager, Paul Mascioli. No cause was given. He had stopped performing because of heart problems.
Mr. Tyson was a part of the influential folk movement in Toronto with his first wife, Sylvia Tyson. But he was also seen as a throwback to more rustic times and devoted much of his life to living on his ranch and pursuing songs about the cowboy life.
Mr. Tyson was born Sept. 25, 1933, to parents who emigrated from England. He attended private school and learned to play polo, then he discovered the rodeo.
Mr. Tyson soon met Sylvia Fricker and they began a relationship — onstage and off, moving to New York. Their debut album, “Ian & Sylvia,” in 1962 was a collection of mostly traditional songs. Their second album, 1964′s “Four Strong Winds,″ was the duo’s breakthrough, thanks in large part to its title track, one of the record’s only original compositions.
Married in 1964, the pair continued releasing records with regularity. But as the popularity of folk waned, they moved to Nashville and began integrating country and rock into their music. In 1969, the Tysons formed the country-rock band Great Speckled Bird, which appeared with Janis Joplin, The Band and the Grateful Dead among others on the “Festival Express” tour across Canada in 1970, later the basis for a documentary released in 2004.
Mr. Tyson moved back to western Canada and returned to ranch life, training horses and cowboying in Pincher Creek, Alberta, 135 miles south of Calgary. These experiences increasingly filtered through his songwriting, particularly on 1983’s “Old Corrals and Sagebrush.″
In 1987, Mr. Tyson won a Juno Award for country male vocalist of the year and five years later he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame alongside Sylvia Tyson. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.
Despite damage to his voice resulting from a heart attack and surgery in 2015, Mr. Tyson continued to perform live concerts. But the heart problems returned and forced Mr. Tyson to cancel appearances in 2018. | 2022-12-30T20:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ian Tyson, Canadian folk singer with cowboy soul, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/ian-tyson-singer-canada-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/ian-tyson-singer-canada-dies/ |
Long a fan favorite, Southwest’s model now faces questions
The airline’s holiday debacle dings its fabled reputation as a poster child for the industry
Julian Mark
Passengers wait in line to handle their baggage claim issues with Southwest Airlines at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Tuesday. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Two weeks before Southwest Airlines’ epic meltdown, its chief executive was exultant about the company’s profitability, performance and customer service, praising his team to Wall Street analysts as the best, “not just in the airline industry, but on the entire planet.”
That exuberance did not last long. By this week, CEO Bob Jordan was apologizing to customers as a winter storm forced Southwest to cancel more than 15,000 flights, leaving thousands of travelers stranded over Christmas. Federal authorities have vowed to investigate the failure, as union officials argued the airline’s outdated operational systems prevented it from quickly resuming service after the storm passed — as other airlines had.
Even as Dallas-based Southwest has begun to stabilize its operation, industry observers say the impact of this week’s implosion could weigh on its fabled reputation for customer service. It’s a rare moment for Southwest — seen as an industry pioneer that distinguishes itself as the only U.S. airline to post consistent profits over five decades.
But experts say the company’s business model and recent growth made this week’s debacle inevitable.
“It’s more than just the storm of the century,” said Andrew Inkpen, a professor of management at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, pointing to union statements that Southwest had deferred upgrades on its information-technology systems. “This exposed them, but they were going to get exposed at some point or another.”
The winter storm that crippled Southwest’s operations was extreme, but some of the logistical problems that ensued weren’t completely unforeseen.
In October 2018, then-CEO Gary Kelly said on an earnings call that controlling costs was the company’s top priority — and that other items might have to wait. As an example, he cited technology upgrades for the operations team, according to a transcript compiled by S&P Capital IQ. “We have starved them a little bit over the last decade because again, our focus was more on the commercial side,” he said.
In February 2021, Southwest updated a disclosure on information technology risks in a securities filing, noting that it “deferred a significant number of technology projects” during the pandemic. The company continued to invest in technology, including “flight planning and scheduling,” it added.
Southwest declined to make an executive available for an interview. “It is too soon for us to speculate on the root or contributing causes to this week’s disruptions,” the company said in response to written questions.
The sudden turmoil cast a pall over Southwest’s robust recent performance. The company expanded to 18 new cities during the pandemic, more than any of its peers, and this month, it became the first airline to reinstate its dividend to shareholders. Southwest posted a record quarterly profit in the summer, and executives said it delivered one of its best operating displays over Thanksgiving, with less than 1 percent of its flights canceled.
By the company’s telling, what is now a 742-plane operation in 42 U.S. states and 10 other countries began in 1967 on a cocktail napkin at a hotel bar in San Antonio. Herb Kelleher, then a lawyer, and Rollin King, a pilot, sketched out their idea for a low-cost airline that shuttled passengers between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Southwest distinguished itself as a scrappy underdog airline whose flight attendants wore go-go boots and hot pants, and whose marketing grew out of the airline’s beginnings at Love Field in the Dallas area. The airline’s logo is a heart, and LUV became its stock ticker.
The business worked. As it grew, Southwest became an exemplar of corporate success, feted in business-school case studies and known for its healthy company culture and customer relations. Unlike other major U.S. airlines, Southwest remained consistently profitable and grew to become one of the largest domestic airlines by number of passengers.
For years, “if you want to have a case study about a well-run company, it’s Southwest Airlines,” said Michael Mazzeo, a professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
A company report for shareholders is laden with plaudits for its workplace and customer service, and on-time performance and customer-satisfaction metrics are embedded in calculating executive bonuses. And some of its customers are fiercely loyal, thanks largely to its relatively inexpensive flights and simple customer perks like travel vouchers that don’t expire.
Before the pandemic, Southwest delivered an unbroken streak of annual profits — in a famously turbulent industry — going back to at least 1978, according to Capital IQ data. Experts point out that Southwest is the only major U.S. airline never to have been forced into bankruptcy.
As it expanded to other cities, the airline kept fares low by routing passengers to smaller airports in metropolitan hubs like Midway in Chicago. It also flew only one type of plane — the Boeing 737 — and stripped away frills, serving peanuts instead of an in-flight meal and offering no assigned seating. Crucially, it adopted a system that flew passengers from city to city, instead of routing them through a central hub like other airlines — a strategy intended to cut down on costs and reduce layovers.
Yet that strategy, known as point-to-point, also has vulnerabilities. When problems emerge at one airport, or point, in its network, they can set in motion a chain reaction that is harder to contain than with a centralized hub model.
“It is difficult for our point-to-point network to catch up with on-time performance if we do not begin on time,” Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief operating officer, told analysts this month. “We have initiatives planned to help lessen the impact of disruptions and improve our recovery time.”
Upgrading the technology of old systems can be costly, and Southwest has spent heavily to improve its reservations system, maintenance records and ground operations such as baggage handling.
The work of ensuring that crews are in the same locations as planes and scheduled flights is part of the enormously complicated dance of modern aviation that is largely invisible to the flying public until something breaks down. When a blast of Arctic air swept through much of the nation last week, bringing airports in Denver and Chicago nearly to a halt, Southwest’s aging software suddenly spilled into public view.
Southwest couldn’t get crews in those cities to the rest of its network. The software the company relies on to reboot its operations was overwhelmed, and much of the work had to be done manually, company officials have said.
Mazzeo, the Northwestern professor, said Southwest hasn’t been known to invest in technological upgrades and have the capabilities to promptly deal with such problems, despite its reputation as a model company.
“The irony here is that everything that’s quintessentially amazing about Southwest as a business model has a downside,” he said. “It’s like fine china. It looks great.” But if it’s exposed to a strong force, “it breaks.”
This isn’t the first time in recent memory that Southwest has been forced to cancel flights en masse for days. In October 2021, a smaller disruption cost the company $75 million. Analysts at Raymond James & Associates expect the company — which reported earning $277 million last quarter — can still eke out a profit for the final three months of the year.
In some ways, fixing the scheduling technology that broke down could be more straightforward than repairing Southwest’s reputation with consumers who were stranded, said Donna Roberts, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who specializes in psychology. Although she has never flown on a Southwest flight, she said she is well aware of the company’s larger-than-life founder in an often colorless industry.
“Southwest has been like America’s sweetheart,” she said. “They need to win back hearts and win back the trust of the consumer.” This can be done if they lean into the intense burst of publicity, she added, urging them “to be flamboyant in how they make this up to people.”
Jeff Galaska, a 37-year-old Dallas area resident, told The Post that he waited nine hours with his family at Love Field on Christmas Day before eventually having to go home. He said the experience was vexing, especially as his bags reached his destination without him and his family.
But the father of two said the bags are now on their way to him, and the airline fully refunded his tickets and included extra travel vouchers.
“This kind of seems like a once-in-a-million type of situation with [Southwest],” he said. “I’m sure we will probably go back and utilize them again in the future.” | 2022-12-30T20:38:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Long a fan favorite, Southwest’s model now faces questions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/30/southwest-airlines-christmas-flights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/30/southwest-airlines-christmas-flights/ |
FILE - Steven Tyler presents the award for song of the year at the iHeartRadio Music Awards on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. A woman who has previously said Tyler had an illicit sexual relationship with her when she was a teenager is now suing the Aerosmith frontman for sexual assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022 under a 2019 California law that gave adult victims of childhood sexual assault a three-year window to file past claims. Sunday is the deadline to file any lawsuits. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-12-30T21:01:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman sues Steven Tyler, alleging child sex assault in 1970s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/woman-sues-steven-tyler-alleging-child-sex-assault-in-1970s/2022/12/30/6409ec90-887f-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/woman-sues-steven-tyler-alleging-child-sex-assault-in-1970s/2022/12/30/6409ec90-887f-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Chesapeake Bay cleanup calls for a bottom-up approach
Carr Creek and the Severn River, tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, on July 11. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Regarding the Dec. 26 editorial “A clever plan to open up and clean up the Chesapeake”:
Thanks to the Clean Water Act, more attention, analysis, planning, creation of governmental and nongovernmental institutions and regulations, and investment have been made in the Chesapeake Bay than in any comparable water body in the world. All involved in the process and the leaders of the bay states have declared victory more than once, and each time they eventually realized their prized solutions and management regimes had not worked. There are many reasons for this, but the same process and thinking repeated, with the same aspirations, have led to the same result. Is it that the darned bay is simply not cooperating with us? Or has something been fundamentally wrong with our thinking — and perhaps even training — about how such very difficult environmental problems should be addressed?
After decades of working on these problems around the country and elsewhere, I came to realize the limits of centralized, top-down approaches. As director of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1999 to 2016, I advocated that a decentralized bottom-up process blended with a centralized orchestration was perhaps the only way to arrest the bay’s decline. Such solutions take time and patience, commodities that are not in great supply today.
The bill proposed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) essentially contains the seeds for crafting bottom-up solutions — by empowering community- and place-based coalitions — to help resolve environmental problems over large areas such as the Chesapeake Bay. It clearly recognizes that to add another comprehensive top-down federal jurisdiction would only distract everyone from the good things they were already doing, even though the bay is continuing to decline. Much of the nation’s governing environmental legislation since the 1972 Clean Water Act has driven top-down “big government” approaches — the only way Congress could perceive addressing the national environmental crises of the 1970s.
Almost a decade ago, we began small steps to create an alternative place-based community management approach in the bay now embodied in the Van Hollen-Sarbanes bill. This fledging attempt identified historically important maritime heritage sites and the communities that value them in the bay. The recently designated Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary was the first on this list. It took more than a decade to create. It is exactly the type of site the bill proposes.
For the Van Hollen-Sarbanes bill to deliver, the process of selecting, designating and opening sites must be greatly accelerated. The bill must create a logic of urgency. The glacial movement of bureaucracy — federal and state — is this bill’s primary enemy and will defeat its intent if it is not given special authority to overcome it. Residents of the bay deserve more than another “business as usual” implementation scheme. The bay itself will only cooperate if we change “our tune” — pursuing effective bottom-up community-based solutions.
Daniel J. Basta, Silver Spring | 2022-12-30T21:01:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Chesapeake Bay cleanup calls for a bottom-up approach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/chesapeake-bay-cleanup-calls-bottom-up-approach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/chesapeake-bay-cleanup-calls-bottom-up-approach/ |
The precariousness of homeownership
Megan McArdle wrote her Dec. 26 op-ed, “When owning does make better sense than renting,” from the perspective of a 49-year-old successful, upper-middle-class journalist who, in the course of her young and middle-aged adulthood, has transitioned from being a renter to a homeowner. Her analysis of that transition was logical but omitted any mention of what lies ahead in the next decades. That is understandable, as it’s not yet part of her experience. However, others should recognize that her validation of the choice to be a homeowner times out.
A house ages along with its owner and, after 30 — or 50 — years, suffers similar interior and exterior maintenance issues, often very expensive and hard to sort out. In a traditional single-family home, the stairs become a challenge and risk to homeowners in their 70s or 80s, turning the home into a prison for some. Absent financial resources, or the channels to deploy them, to make the home accessible, the chores doable and the repairs imaginable, the homeowners’ safety and quality of life might deteriorate and their social connections fail. The task of clearing out a lifetime’s accumulated possessions and detritus is overwhelming mentally and emotionally, so moving becomes unthinkable. These problems and tasks then devolve upon their children, if they have them.
I reluctantly sold my house in my 70s, then unexpectedly morphed into a grateful renter. There are many ways to enjoy aging, or at least to minimize the more intractable burdens. Renting is one of them.
Jane Lang, Washington
Michelle Singletary, who advocated renting in her Dec. 18 Business column, “5 reasons you (still) shouldn’t buy a house,” and Megan McArdle, who advocated buying in her Dec. 26 op-ed, “When owning does make better sense than renting,” could both be right.
Thirty-six years ago, I bought a house on Capitol Hill and sold it 17 years later for five times what I paid for it. This was not because I was a shrewd real estate investor but, rather, because I was lucky enough to have purchased the right house in the right neighborhood for the right price at the right time with the right real estate agent.
In the early 1970s, I had bought three houses that provided modest financial returns when I sold them by the mid-1980s. During that period, real estate values grew moderately. I bought the Capitol Hill house in 1986, just as the real estate market was starting to accelerate, and sold it in 2003, while the market was still growing rapidly. I sold that house because my wife and I were moving into a new house in southern Maryland that we had just built. Twelve years later, in 2015, my wife and I sold that dream house for less than it cost to build.
There is no hard-and-fast rule as to whether renting or buying is financially preferable. That decision needs to be made in the context of the buyer’s age, health, financial condition, likely job mobility, the economy and mortgage rates. Currently, with higher interest rates, Ms. Singletary would seem to have the stronger argument for renting. However, Ms. McArdle’s arguments regarding the long-term financial benefits of buying are also compelling. Under the right circumstances, a home buyer could realize a windfall, but there are no guarantees.
Len Zuza, Solomons, Md. | 2022-12-30T21:01:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Owning a home can hurt or give you a windfall - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/owning-home-can-hurt-or-give-windfall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/owning-home-can-hurt-or-give-windfall/ |
Accepting all with love
Sid High, 18, has a conversation with his stepfather, Ben, left, and his mother, Jess, on Sept. 18 at their home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Rachel Mummey for The Washington Post)
The Dec. 26 front-page article “Iowa teen navigates life as transgender Christian” helps us understand that we are on this Earth to learn, to grow and to love. Any “religion” that is judgmental, condemning and intolerant goes against the command of all authentic religions of compassion.
Sid High’s family story shows an important distinction between a narrow religion and the embracing love of the universe, which is also accessible as a personal, empowering love for each of us. My family has been blessed with beautiful grandchildren, one of whom is a creative and kind transgender boy. He (they) has been a catalyst for us to grow in our understanding of the world.
Helen Mclean Heller, Bowie | 2022-12-30T21:01:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Transgender teen's story shows the embracing love of the universe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/transgender-teen-embracing-love-universe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/transgender-teen-embracing-love-universe/ |
Wireless companies need help to alert more Americans to danger
I was pleased to see the Dec. 24 news article on the role of wireless companies in transmitting emergency alerts to the public in times of natural disasters [“With no cell service, some are left disconnected in storms”]. Since 2012, consumers have received more than 70,000 alerts. And wireless companies make substantial investments in their networks every year — $35 billion in capital expenditures in 2021 alone — to ensure that those alerts get to their intended recipients.
More than 99 percent of U.S. households have wireless coverage, and wireless companies are adding more home broadband subscribers than their wired competitors. With the industry investing heavily to close the digital divide, Congress sought to complement those efforts in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, which included a $42 billion broadband grant program administered by the Commerce Department. Unfortunately, the Commerce Department’s rules favor wired deployments over wireless, even where a wireless network is faster and less expensive to deploy and where wireless can be a lifesaver for consumers such as those featured in the article.
I urge the Commerce Department to revisit its rules and ensure that wireless networks get an equal shot at this unprecedented opportunity to finally solve the digital divide. Lives are depending on it.
Meredith Attwell Baker, Washington
The writer is president and chief executive of CTIA, an association of wireless carriers and technology firms, and served as commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission from 2009 to 2011.
Opinion|Accepting all with love
Opinion|Zelensky’s historical references, and his history | 2022-12-30T21:01:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Wireless companies need help to alert more Americans to danger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/wireless-companies-commerce-department-digital-divide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/wireless-companies-commerce-department-digital-divide/ |
Zelensky’s historical references, and his history
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to a joint session of Congress on Dec. 21. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Regarding David Von Drehle’s Dec. 26 op-ed, “Rising to a historic destiny, Zelensky embodies our values”:
In his historic address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky referenced the importance of the Battle of Saratoga to the ultimate victory of the 13 states against the British in the American Revolution.
Mr. Zelensky stated that “just like the battle of Saratoga, the fight for Bakhmut will change the trajectory of our war for independence and for freedom.”
If Mr. Zelensky’s sole aim had been to point out that Americans had to fight for freedom, he would have cited the Battle of Yorktown. As the last major land battle of the war, Yorktown paved the way for the Treaty of Paris that ended the war.
By citing Saratoga, Mr. Zelensky conveyed a more immediate and important message. Although France provided the former American colonies with much-needed supplies, French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, count de Vergennes hesitated before committing military aid. America’s envoy, Benjamin Franklin, used news of the victories at the battles of Saratoga to convince the French, especially Vergennes, that the British could be defeated.
Just as the French concluded after the battles of Saratoga that the Americans could win the war, with assistance from France, Mr. Zelensky made the case that Ukraine can win the war against Russia with continued assistance from the United States.
It is impressive that Mr. Zelensky cited this historical event in his appeal to Congress to provide increased aid to Ukraine.
Ralph D. Nurnberger, Arlington
David Von Drehle’s analogy with the historical context of Volodymyr Zelensky to that of Abraham Lincoln, while romantic as it beats the drums of war all the more vigorously, missed some qualitative caveats. Lincoln put his life on the line quite literally “dedicated to the proposition [for his “nation” that] all men are created equal.” Mr. Zelensky strives and pleads and subjects the whole world to war’s devastation with him in his zeal for ownership of Ukraine.
When it comes right down to it, rhetorically Mr. Zelensky is fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin over which history has greater validity, the old or the new. Lincoln went back 87 years, Mr. Zelensky but 31. Yes, neither leader folded in the perilous struggle, but considering the onerous costs of war, the benefits had better be worth it for everybody involved.
The Ukraine-Russia war can be readily ended. Compromise for President Lincoln would have been sacrificing the United States as a dream for the world ever after to come to realize a life where each person has a chance to live on equal footing with his fellow person. Compromise for Mr. Zelensky would mean, what? That Ukrainians couldn’t be chief executives until they rose up and threw off the shackles of a state-controlled economy, as did the Russians in history’s grandest bloodless revolution ever? On the other side of that coin, compromise for Mr. Putin means jeopardizing his nation’s existential security.
Finally, I stopped believing in the domino theory long ago. Mr. Zelensky is today's bandwagon propelled by this pseudo doctrine.
Daniel Evans, Reston | 2022-12-30T21:01:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Zelensky’s historical reference to Saratoga was no accident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/zelensky-referencing-saratoga-shows-ukraine-can-win/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/30/zelensky-referencing-saratoga-shows-ukraine-can-win/ |
FILE - TCU head coach Sonny Dykes, right, hugs quarterback Max Duggan (15) after an NCAA college football game against Bayor in Waco, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2022. Duggan has thrown for 3,321 yards with 30 touchdowns and only four interceptions, and run for 404 yards with six more scores, heading into the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 31. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File. (LM Otero/AP) | 2022-12-30T21:02:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TCU brings 'fight for credibility' to CFP against Michigan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/tcu-brings-fight-for-credibility-to-cfp-against-michigan/2022/12/30/aec35668-887a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/tcu-brings-fight-for-credibility-to-cfp-against-michigan/2022/12/30/aec35668-887a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Prince George’s juvenile curfew continues, and will be reevaluated in January
Curfew enforcement for children under 17 was announced in September and will continue through the end of the year.
A Prince George’s County police cruiser patrols near the AMC Magic Johnson Capital Center movie theater in Largo, Md., on Sept. 10. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
The juvenile curfew for children under 17 in Prince George’s County remains in effect and will be reevaluated in January, officials said.
The initiative was announced on Labor Day by County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) and Prince George’s Police Chief Malik Aziz as a response to a rise in juvenile crime and homicides. After one month of enforcement, officials decided to extend it through the end of 2022.
Alsobrooks will “announce next steps for the curfew” in early 2023, a spokesperson for the county executive said.
Initial reactions to the curfew were mixed, with some community members praising officials for responding to rising crime and others calling it a politically motivated solution to a deeper and more complex issue. In the months since, Alsobrooks and Aziz have said that the curfew was always intended to be one tool in officials’ broader efforts to prevent and reduce violent crime, especially among young people.
What to know about the Prince George’s County juvenile curfew
County leaders have pointed to a decline in the rate of carjackings since Labor Day as evidence of the curfew’s success, though certain crimes often tail off as summer ends and school resumes, according to a Post analysis of data going back to 2017.
“PGPD is constantly evaluating crime statistics and adjusting its strategy as need dictates. We are pleased to have experienced a steady decline in the rate of carjackings since Labor Day,” Gina Ford, Alsobrooks’s communications director, said in a statement. “What we know is that we will end the year with more juvenile arrests for carjacking than adults, and we remain deeply concerned about the disproportionate youth involvement in these incidents.”
Alsobrooks and Aziz announced the curfew after the county endured one of its deadliest months in history, with 24 homicides in August. Though the curfew had been county law since 1995, it had not been enforced by the department in decades.
Under the law, children under 17 must be home from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 11:59 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
Since the new enforcement period began, Prince George’s police officials said officers have had a total of nine interactions with young people who had violated curfew. Those interactions involved 14 children under 17, according to a police spokesperson, including one incident in which two 16-year-old boys and a 17-year-old boy crashed a car on Ritchie Road at about 3:15 a.m. The car, according to police, had been reported stolen in the District.
In each instance, police issued a first offense curfew warning letter to the parents of the children who had been found in violation of the curfew.
During a news conference in October announcing the extension of the curfew, Alsobrooks and Aziz said overall crime had decreased by 20 percent during the hours of curfew in the first month of enforcement compared to the previous 30 days. Parents and community members cooperated and became more involved in keeping youths safe too, Alsobrooks said.
Curfew data released by the department in October showed mixed results, with a 2 percent increase in overall crime during all hours of the day since curfew enforcement began but a decrease by 5 percent during curfew hours compared to the same time last year.
In an interview, Aziz said it was never the department’s strategy to crack down on youths — but to remind the community that curfew enforcement was one way that county leaders were trying to keep people safe.
“The initial focus was made to address the juvenile crime, to protect our juveniles, to give parents a tool to use to protect their very own children … and a chance to understand what was revolving around that overall crime,” Aziz said. “Our goal was to do something, and not do nothing.”
Jawanna Hardy, director of Hope in Action, Alsobrooks’s anti-violence initiative, and Prince Hamn, a community advocate with Hope in Action, went out the first night of the curfew and a few weeks after to educate youths about the newly enforced policy. Much of the initial buzz around the curfew has passed and many teens are inside this time of year, Hardy said.
“It’s kind of died down. You don’t really hear people talking about it anymore,” Hardy said. “When it first happened, parents and kids, they were on it.”
Hardy said she thinks the curfew would be effective over the summer when most children are outside.
With crime still happening outside of curfew, Hamn said the solution to protecting teens starts with creating more community-centered places and activities for them, such as go-cart racing or trampoline parks.
“Creating places they can come to feel safe at,” Hamn said. “And still be a kid.” | 2022-12-30T21:22:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George's juvenile curfew will be reevaluated in January, officials said - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/prince-georges-curfew-continues/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/prince-georges-curfew-continues/ |
Who is Andrew Tate, ‘king of toxic masculinity’ accused of trafficking?
As a child, his boredom was occupied by chess in hope of following his dad’s footsteps as a great player because, he once said, “that’s the only thing I want to do most.” When he got bored with defeating adults, he turned to kickboxing, laying to waste opponents throughout Europe. And when he got bored with physical combat, he turned to verbal assault, becoming a men’s rights influencer known for his extreme misogynistic, violent remarks against women. He went on to build online followings in the millions from the darkest corners of the web, making him one of the most watched personalities on social media by his mid-30s.
Tate, who along with his brother Tristan was arrested in Romania on Thursday and charged with human trafficking and forming an organized-crime group, is a self-described misogynist and sexist who has been dubbed “the scariest man on the internet” by critics and “the king of toxic masculinity” by fans. (A lawyer for the Tates could not immediately be identified Friday.)
The former kickboxing champion is known for his attacks against women — whether it’s saying women who are sexually assaulted need to shoulder “some responsibility,” claiming that women are “given to the man and belong to the man” or noting in online videos that he dates women who are 18 and 19 because he can “make an imprint” on them.
“I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want,” he once said in one of his videos about why he moved to Romania, according to Sky News, adding that “probably 40 percent of the reason” he moved to the country was because it might be easier to evade rape charges. “I like being free.” In another video, he described how he would react if a woman accused him of cheating, saying, “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck.”
Tate, 36, who has portrayed himself as a self-help expert for men and was regularly photographed smoking cigars in front of fast cars and guns, has seen his profile rise after chats with far-right figures such as Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich. He largely gained attention on TikTok — one of the many platforms that has now banned him for his repeated misogynistic remarks — where videos tagged #AndrewTate were viewed roughly 13 billion times as of last August, according to NBC News. In July, Tate’s name was a bigger search term on Google than some of the search engine’s most significant queries, including former president Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian and covid-19, Forbes reported.
Days after Tate’s back-and-forth with Thunberg dominated Twitter, he now finds himself detained by a Romanian anti-organized-crime unit that is seeking authorization from a judge to hold Tate, his brother and two Romanian suspects for up to 30 days, a spokesperson for the Romanian prosecutor’s office told The Washington Post. One person also was charged with rape, but the spokesperson would not identify that person, citing local laws.
Romanian prosecutors said in a statement that they identified six people whom they allege were recruited and then sexually abused in Ilfov county, which includes the capital, Bucharest. Authorities say that the victims were coerced into participating in pornography for distribution on social media and that one of the suspects twice raped a victim in March. The statement, which did not name the Tate brothers, alleges that the victims faced “acts of physical violence and mental coercion.”
“I know that I’m in the position to turn Andrew into a Bobby Fischer, but it’s a common-sense dilemma,” his father, Emory A. Tate Jr., the top-ranked chess player in Indiana at the time, told the South Bend Tribune in 1993, noting the lack of financial stability in becoming a chess master. While his father told the Tribune that he wished his son would pursue other interests, Tate said that he played so much because he was “bored all the time and that’s the only thing I want to do most.”
His next chapter amplified his notoriety and criticism of his treatment of women. In 2016, Tate appeared as a housemate on the 17th season of “Big Brother” in the United Kingdom. Tate was kicked off the reality television show after a video surfaced that appeared to show him hitting a woman with a belt. (Tate and the woman in the video said what occurred was consensual sex, according to the BBC.)
From there, fans of the show discovered past tweets in which Tate used homophobic and racial slurs at users. The string of controversial behavior continued in 2017, when he falsely claimed that depression “isn’t real.”
Tate was denounced by critics and advocacy groups who said his mere presence on social media, and the following he was developing for his “extremely misogynistic” remarks, could present a “dangerous slip road into the far right.” At the same time, he was promoting an online marketing program for a monthly membership of $49.99 that claimed he could give people “high-income skill development.” (“Hustler’s University,” which one marketing professor likened to a social media pyramid scheme, shut down this year, despite having about 127,000 members, according to the Guardian.)
TikTok and Meta ban self-described misogynist Andrew Tate
As backlash mounted, platforms took action against Tate this year. He was banned from Facebook and Instagram after violating Meta’s policy on “dangerous organizations and individuals,” NBC reported. TikTok, the platform where he grew his audience the most, also kicked him off for promoting content, the company says, “that attacks, threatens, incites violence against, or otherwise dehumanizes an individual or a group.” YouTube suspended him for hate speech and covid misinformation after he amassed millions of dollars in ad revenue.
YouTube remains rife with misogyny and harassment, creators say
Kelsey Ables, Taylor Lorenz, Amir Nadhir and Sara Sorcher contributed to this report. | 2022-12-30T21:22:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Andrew Tate? A 'king of toxic masculinity' and Greta Thunberg's foil. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/30/andrew-tate-explainer-arrested-greta-misogyny/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/30/andrew-tate-explainer-arrested-greta-misogyny/ |
New legal fight erupts in lawsuit over fatal Virginia Beach police shooting
Donovon Lynch's family and friends, including his father Wayne, center. (Stephen M. Katz/AP)
A lawsuit settlement between the city of Virginia Beach and the family of a Black man killed by police has hit a last-minute snag, with the father of the dead man now embroiled in a court dispute with his attorneys over the terms of the agreement.
The shooting of 25-year-old Donovon Lynch in March 2021 by a Black officer in Virginia Beach sparked days of protests in the community almost a year after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis ignited national unrest. Although authorities said Lynch was holding a handgun when he was killed, his loved ones contend that he did not pose a threat. His family and the city recently negotiated a settlement of a wrongful-death lawsuit, with Virginia Beach agreeing to a $3 million payout.
But just as the civil case, in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, seemed to be ending, a new round of litigation has begun. Lynch’s father, Wayne Lynch, is at odds with his lawyers, including former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax. The family wants to make changes to the settlement agreement while Fairfax and his co-counsel, Thomas Martin, as well as lawyers for Virginia Beach, argue that the settlement should be finalized as currently written.
In early December, Wayne Lynch signed a legal “memorandum of understanding,” agreeing to the $3 million payout, but he has declined sign the final settlement papers. He said he wants the judge in the case to remove Fairfax and Martin as his attorneys and replace them with another lawyer, Joseph Sherman.
Sherman, in a statement Friday, cited “unacceptable differences between the Memorandum of Understanding and the formal settlement agreement.” Unlike the memorandum, Sherman said, the settlement agreement would bar Lynch from assisting the Justice Department in any future civil or criminal action against the city or the officer. He said Lynch objects to that language.
“Mr. Lynch holds out hope that the Department of Justice will investigate the City for the intentional killing of his son,” Sherman said, adding that Lynch “cares about the safety of the community and its young adults and will participate and aid any action by the Department of Justice related to Donovon’s unprovoked killing.”
The changes sought by the family are not specified in public court records, but Wayne Lynch alluded to them in a statement he issued in response to a request for comment.
“Money does not motivate me,” he said. “My son deserves zealous advocacy in negotiating the final terms of any settlement because my family … cannot agree to waive the right to participate in any investigation by the Department of Justice, or any other entity, of the City and its training, culture and hiring practices for police.”
Fairfax (D), who left office in January 2022 after a term as lieutenant governor, began representing the Lynch family in October after the attorneys who filed the lawsuit in 2021 withdrew from the case because of an “irreconcilable dispute” with Wayne Lynch regarding strategy, according to court filings. The original attorneys included New York lawyer Alex Spiro, whose roster of celebrity clients includes Grammy Award-winning musician Pharrell Williams, a Virginia Beach native and relative of the Lynch family.
In seeking to remain in the case and enforce the $3 million settlement, Fairfax told a judge in writing Thursday that Wayne Lynch has received poor advice from lawyer Jeffrey Reichert, who represents Donovan Lynch’s estate.
Reichert “improperly and without legal basis” instructed Wayne Lynch to back out of the settlement, Fairfax said in the court filing, adding that Reichert “has not provided a reason — let alone a compelling or legally permissible one — for his opposition.”
Sherman, who also represents Reichert, denied those allegations, saying in his statement that “Justin Fairfax refused to fight for Mr. Lynch’s right to participate and aid in other actions against the defendants related to Donovan’s death.”
Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for Fairfax, declined to discuss the dispute in detail.
“Justin E. Fairfax and Thomas B. Martin have been honored to secure a $3M settlement in the death of Wayne Lynch’s son,” she said in a statement. “They remain the attorneys of record in this case.”
Martin did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
A Virginia Beach police officer, Solomon D. Simmons III, fatally shot Donovon Lynch on March 26, 2021, during a chaotic night of violence on the city’s beachfront in which several people were wounded in separate outbreaks of gunfire. Friends and relatives of Lynch said he was not involved in the mayhem. They said he was out for a night on the town and was shot without warning.
In a recorded interview, Simmons told investigators that he happened upon Lynch while responding to a report of a shooting in the vicinity of a parking lot. He said he saw Lynch rise with a handgun from a crouching position behind bushes near the lot. He said he shouted at Lynch, then opened fire because he feared Lynch would shoot at officers and others in the area.
A grand jury cleared Simmons on criminal wrongdoing. In announcing the findings at a news conference in November 2021, authorities said Simmons was justifiably protecting himself and others.
“There were numerous people in that parking lot when Officer Simmons saw Mr. Lynch starting to come up with the firearm,” Virginia Beach’s top prosecutor, Colin Stolle, told reporters.
By then, the family had filed the wrongful death lawsuit, in June 2021, seeking $50 million from the city. Among other allegations, the plaintiffs said the city failed to properly train its police officers. Yet when Fairfax and Martin began representing the family a few months ago, “not a single deposition had been taken” in the case, Burke said in her statement.
“In 64 days, the case was settled,” she said.
She was referring to the memorandum of understanding signed by Wayne Lynch and attorneys for the city in early December in which they agreed to the $3 million settlement pending approval by Virginia Beach City Council, which subsequently authorized the deal. On Dec. 13, after the settlement was announced, Wayne Lynch stood with Fairfax before a cluster of TV news cameras.
“What a great day,” the father said. “We’ve come a long way in this fight for justice for Donovan Lynch, and I’m here today to tell you we have justice. … I can smile today with confidence and peace of mind — and a broken heart. Donovan is vindicated.” Putting an arm around his lawyer, Lynch added, “I want to thank my attorney, Mr. Justin Fairfax, who came in in a nick of time.”
The three-page memorandum, filed in court, said nothing about prohibiting the family from assisting in a federal investigation of the shooting.
According to court records, the agreement provides slightly less than $2 million for the Lynch family, $466,704 for Fairfax, $267,935 for Martin, $238,902 for other lawyers and $48,895 for a company that gives loans to people awaiting legal settlements. As part of the deal, neither the city nor Simmons acknowledged wrongdoing or liability.
In a joint statement at the time, Virginia Beach officials and the family said, “As we have learned more over time about the facts of that fateful night and encounter, we have come to understand that a series of unfortunate occurrences led to Donovon’s death that night — which in hindsight should never have occurred as it was later determined that neither Donovon nor the officer set in motion the events that transpired.”
Now suddenly the parties are at odds over the final settlement papers.
In his court motion Thursday, Fairfax asked a judge to force Lynch to take the payout, while a city spokeswoman, Tiffany Russell, declared in a statement: “The case was settled as of Mr. Lynch’s signing of the memorandum. … The City considers this case resolved and … will not engage in any renegotiation of the settlement terms.” | 2022-12-30T22:54:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Settlement over Virginia Beach police shooting of Donovan Thomas in dispute - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/police-shooting-lawsuit-settlement-dispute/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/police-shooting-lawsuit-settlement-dispute/ |
Vehicle fleeing Secret Service traffic stop strikes pedestrians in D.C.
The crash occurred about 4:30 p.m. at New York Avenue and 14th Street NW, about a block from the White House complex.
A marked U.S. Secret Service vehicle. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The driver of a vehicle apparently fleeing a traffic stop by the U.S. Secret Service on Friday afternoon in downtown Washington struck two pedestrians, critically injuring one, according to an agency spokesman.
The incident occurred about 4:30 p.m. at New York Avenue and 14th Street NW, about a block from the White House complex. Streets at that intersection were closed for the investigation.
Few details about the incident were immediately available. D.C. police dispatched its Major Crash Unit, which handles the most serious traffic crashes, to the scene.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the traffic stop was being attempted by members of the uniformed division, which helps secure the White House grounds and the area around it, as well as embassies throughout the District.
Guglielmi could not immediately say why the officers were trying to stop the vehicle. He also did not know whether the driver of the vehicle sped off when the officers tried to stop it or whether the officers followed the vehicle for some distance.
The ages of the victims were also not immediately available. | 2022-12-30T23:33:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vehicle fleeing Secret Service traffic stop strikes pedestrians in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/pedestrians-struck-secret-service/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/30/pedestrians-struck-secret-service/ |
Arata Isozaki, architect who melded styles of Japan and West, dies at 91
Arata Isozaki poses in front of the Palahockey palace designed with Italian architect Pier Paolo Maggiora in Turin, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2005. (Daniel Dal Zennaro/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Arata Isozaki, an architect who fused styles and sensibilities from the West and his native Japan during a career of restless exploration, including a twisting metal obelisk at the Art Tower Mito in Japan and the meditative halls of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, died Dec. 28 at his home on Japan’s Okinawa island. He was 91.
His death was announced in a statement by his longtime companion, Misa Shin, whose gallery in Tokyo recently had an exhibition of Mr. Isozaki’s designs. No cause was given.
Mr. Isozaki’s wide-ranging architectural interests defied easy labeling and his innovations could sometimes bring local objections, most notably clashes with the museum project overseers in Los Angeles in the 1980s that almost led to Mr. Isozaki walking away.
Even late in his career, his work was debated in architectural circles over why he had not been awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize — which he eventually received in 2019. “Isozaki demonstrated a worldwide vision that was ahead of his time and facilitated a dialogue between East and West,” wrote the Pritzker jurors.
“Originality of ideas is not important,” he told London’s Observer newspaper in 1991. “We can borrow anything.”
Mr. Isozaki’s more than 100 major commissions around the world carried no signature elements. He found inspiration in the geometric austerity of modernist and Brutalist schools in projects such as the Oita Prefectural Library (now Oita Art Plaza) in his hometown in Japan or the glass-cube facade of Barcelona’s D38 office park.
He could also draw from the sinuous contours of nature such as the reptilian curves of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing or find playful touches. He added loops resembling Mickey Mouse ears to the entrance of the Team Disney Building in Orlando, and made the Fujimi Country Club — a golfing hot spot in Oita — in the shape of a question mark as if to ponder: Why did Japan become so obsessed with golf?
On a rocky outcrop in Spain’s northwest Galicia region, Mr. Isozaki’s Domus: La Casa del Hombre, a science museum, mixes fortresslike walls with a shield-shaped cover as if to protect from the maritime gales.
But a guiding principle connecting it all, he said, was having the empty space of the structure as much part of the design as what is constructed. The concept in Japanese is described as “ma,” the power and possibility of a pause or spatial emptiness. He often called it an essential part of “Japan-ness.”
In 1945, when Mr. Isozaki was 14, he was at his home in Oita — midway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki — when the atomic bombs fell. Oita was spared the direct devastation, but the images of the two razed cities left Mr. Isozaki wondering how they could ever be rebuilt.
“So, my first experience of architecture was the void of architecture,” he said.
The war never really left him. His theoretic concepts on urban design had impermanence as a central theme — the idea that cities rise and fall and are always in flux. Several 1968 drawings and photo collages for the Milan Triennial included “Re-Ruined Hiroshima,” imagining domed communities atop a nuclear wasteland.
To rise above Tokyo’s teeming streets, Mr. Isozaki imaged in 1962 “The City in the Air,” pod-style apartments on an ever-evolving forestlike canopy. Mr. Isozaki envisioned mimicking cellular growth in biology, rather than relying solely on technology, as a future of architecture. (A design based on “The City in the Air” was proposed for the Qatar National Library, but the project did not move ahead.)
“When I think of the hollow sound of the slogans for building, renewing and improving cities — in reality the political propping-up of the metropolis — I come to think in terms of destruction as the only reality,” he wrote in a 1962 essay “City Demolition Industry, Inc.”
Aaron Betsky, director of School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech, described Mr. Isozaki as a realist in the most literal sense — acknowledging the “passing of all things.”
“More than anything else,” Betsky wrote in the journal Architect in 2019, “he has produced memento mori for the modern age, reminding us that all our vaulting ambition will someday be swept away, as we will be, and thus we must examine, cherish, and question our own productions.”
Arata Isozaki was born on July 23, 1931, in Oita on Japan’s southern Kyushu region, where his father ran a prominent transport company and relaxed by writing haiku. One translation of Arata is “new field,” which Mr. Isozaki said could have reflected his father’s desire to bring more modern approaches to his poetry.
Mr. Isozaki studied architecture at the University of Tokyo, receiving an undergraduate degree in 1954 and doctorate in 1961. He became a protege of renowned modernist architect Kenzo Tange before opening his own office in Tokyo in 1963.
Mr. Isozaki’s early connections to Western culture were mostly through his interest in jazz and playwrights including Arthur Miller. A trip to Europe in the early 1960s was a pivotal introduction to a mix of traditional and modern design as the continent rebuilt from the war. In Rome, he began a lifelong fascination with the marble statue “Sleeping Hermaphroditus” at the Borghese Gallery. He said he was transfixed by its tranquility and ambiguity.
His marriage in 1972 to sculptor Aiko Miyawaki, who had lived in Paris for years, brought him deeper into Western art and design circles, including artist Man Ray and experimental composer John Cage.
Mr. Isozaki’s projects were only within Japan until 1980, when he was commissioned to build the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. His vision of grand halls with chiaroscuro interplay of sunlight and shadow clashed with some members of the oversight board. Its director, business magnate and art collector Max Palevsky, said it lacked “sophistication.”
Mr. Isozaki said was ready to “quit or be fired” rather than make too many concessions. Los Angeles-based architect Frank Gehry — who would later design the city’s Cubist-style Walt Disney Concert Hall — persuaded Mr. Isozaki to court support from other museum trustees to find a way forward.
In the end, Mr. Isozaki’s ideas remained mostly intact, and the museum opened in 1986 as a collection of galleries in bold red Indian sandstone lit by pyramid-shaped skylights. On sunny days, the exterior shines with a light-and-dark pop of an Edward Hopper painting.
Some critics, such as Paul Goldberger at the New York Times, took issue with Mr. Isozaki’s design of having visitors descend stairs to approach the galleries. “It feels a bit like going into a basement to view art,” he wrote.
But architecture critic Jed Perl described the light in the galleries as “beatific, serene.” Ironically, the skylights were later covered and replaced by spotlights to protect the artworks; museum curators have explored options to reopen them.
Mr. Isozaki’s wife died in 2014. He is survived by a son, Hiroshi; a grandson and a sister.
During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a hub of activity for journalists and officials was Mr. Isozaki’s Qatar National Convention Center in Doha. The roof is buttressed by massive trunks and branches intended to resemble the country’s desert Sidra tree.
“A design should be first practical. It should work,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “But to be architecture, it also must be conceptual.” | 2022-12-30T23:47:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arata Isozaki, architect who blended styles of Japan and West, dies at 91 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/arata-isozaki-architect-japan-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/arata-isozaki-architect-japan-dies/ |
By Lizzie Knight | AP
FILE - Queen guitarist Brian May performs during the Platinum Jubilee concert taking place in front of Buckingham Palace, London, on June 4, 2022, on the third of four days of celebrations to mark the Platinum Jubilee. Brian May is now a “Sir.” May, who also has a doctorate in astrophysics and is an animal welfare advocate, received a knighthood Friday Dec. 30, 2022 as part of the U.K.’s annual New Year’s Honors list. (Jonathan Buckmaster/Pool Photo via AP, File) | 2022-12-31T00:04:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brian May: Knighthood comes with 'a little bit more clout' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/queen-guitarist-receives-knighthood-becomes-sir-brian-may/2022/12/30/2c16b88c-8892-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/queen-guitarist-receives-knighthood-becomes-sir-brian-may/2022/12/30/2c16b88c-8892-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz is celebrating Germany’s progress in freeing itself from reliance on Russian gas, urging people to keep saving energy in the new year and vowing to keep up help for Ukraine.
Scholz’s televised new year message, the text of which was released by his office before its broadcast Saturday, focused squarely on the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and his government’s efforts to cushion the impact for people in Germany. | 2022-12-31T00:04:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | German leader focuses on energy, Ukraine in new year message - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/german-leader-focuses-on-energy-ukraine-in-new-year-message/2022/12/30/d6e48d40-8895-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/german-leader-focuses-on-energy-ukraine-in-new-year-message/2022/12/30/d6e48d40-8895-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Cristiano Ronaldo signed with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr after cutting ties with Manchester United last month. (Al-Nassr Club Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A month after a tumultuous departure from Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo signed with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr on Friday in a big-money move that probably marks the end of the 37-year-old forward’s storied career playing in Europe’s top leagues.
Ronaldo, a five-time Ballon d’Or winner as the men’s soccer player of the year, joined the Riyadh team on a deal that reportedly will pay the Portuguese star $75 million a year until the summer of 2025.
“History in the making,” Al-Nassr said in a tweet announcing the deal. “This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves. Welcome Cristiano to your new home.”
Ronaldo had been a free agent since parting ways with United by mutual agreement Nov. 22, shortly after he blasted club ownership and Manager Erik ten Hag in a TalkTV interview with Piers Morgan. He subsequently played in all five matches and recorded one goal for Portugal at the World Cup in Qatar, becoming the first man to score in five World Cups. But the aging star’s lack of speed and mobility up front limited the Portuguese attack, and he was benched by since-ousted manager Fernando Santos in the knockout round as his team was upset in a quarterfinal loss to Morocco.
CBS Sports first reported the terms of Ronaldo’s deal with Al-Nassr in late November. Spanish outlet Marca subsequently reported that the contract could be worth as much as $200 million per season when taking into account advertising agreements and other add-ons.
“I am excited to experience a new football league in a different country,” Ronaldo said in a statement. “... I am fortunate that I have won everything I set out to win in European football and feel now that this is the right moment to share my experience in Asia.”
Ronaldo began his career with Sporting Lisbon before heading to Manchester for his first stint with United in 2003. The prolific scorer developed into one of the world’s top players over six seasons at Old Trafford, winning three Premier League titles, the 2007-08 UEFA Champions League crown and the 2008 Ballon d’Or. After joining Real Madrid via a then-record transfer in 2009, Ronaldo led the Spanish power to two Liga titles and four Champions League triumphs and won the Ballon d’Or in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2016.
Following a three-year stint with Juventus, during which he helped the Italian power to two Serie A titles, Ronaldo made a surprising return to United in 2021 and led the team with 24 goals in all competitions last season. But he clashed with ten Hag, who took charge of United in April, and the manager told reporters in October that Ronaldo refused to come on as a substitute in a win over Tottenham before heading to the locker room with time still on the clock.
“I don’t have respect for him because he doesn’t show respect for me,” Ronaldo told Morgan of ten Hag. “If you don’t have respect for me, I’m never going to have respect for you.”
During that interview, Ronaldo also said that he felt “betrayed” by United, criticized the club for a lack of sympathy after his newborn son died in April and claimed that the Glazer family, the team’s American owners, did not care about the team.
Ronaldo now joins an Al-Nassr club that has won nine league titles — most recently for the 2018-19 season — and sits second in the Saudi Pro League at 7-1-2. The team also features Vincent Aboubakar, a striker who recently captained Cameroon at the World Cup; Luiz Gustavo, a Brazilian midfielder with stints at Bayern Munich, Wolfsburg and Marseille on his résumé; and David Ospina, a Colombian goalkeeper who previously played for Arsenal and Napoli. | 2022-12-31T00:56:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cristiano Ronaldo signs with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/cristiano-ronaldo-al-nassr/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/cristiano-ronaldo-al-nassr/ |
Terrapins 16, Wolfpack 12
Maryland Coach Mike Locksley wore a big hat as he was doused with mayonnaise after Maryland defeated North Carolina State, 16-12, in the Duke's Mayo Bowl on Friday. (Nell Redmond/AP)
CHARLOTTE — The Maryland football team got another sparkling performance from its defense, including an interception in the closing minutes from cornerback Jakorian Bennett, to spark a 16-12 win against No. 23 North Carolina State on Friday in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl at Bank of America Stadium.
The second interception of the season for Bennett, named Mayo Bowl MVP, came with 2:28 left in the fourth quarter and allowed the Terrapins (8-5) to run out the clock on the way to their most victories in a season since 2010, when they went 9-4 in the final year under former coach Ralph Friedgen.
Maryland secured a second straight bowl triumph for the first time since 2002 and 2003 and, on the heels of a 37-0 victory over Rutgers Nov. 26 in College Park, closed this season with consecutive triumphs in which it did not surrender a touchdown.
This time the Terrapins yielded just 27 rushing yards and 296 yards of total offense while limiting North Carolina State (8-5) to 5 of 18 on third down and holding an advantage in time of possession of more than 11 minutes. They also forced two turnovers via interceptions of quarterback Ben Finley.
“The defense played their butts off,” said Maryland Coach Michael Locksley, who celebrated with a mayonnaise bath customary for the winning coach. “We put them in some tough situations today with short fields. Holding them to field goals saved the day because we weren’t as clean as we needed to be on offense. … That was the difference in the game for us.”
Maryland trailed only briefly in front of an announced crowd of 37,228 despite program record-setting quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa tossing a pair of interceptions and completing 19 of 37 passes for 221 yards. A completion in the fourth quarter did send the redshirt junior over 3,000 passing yards for a second consecutive season.
Tagovailoa’s 19-yard scoring pass to Octavian Smith Jr. with 8:07 to play in the second quarter produced the games’ only touchdown. Maryland also received a lift from kicker Chad Ryland, who booted three field goals, the last of which was from 45 yards with 5:36 to play in the fourth quarter for the final margin.
Maryland’s touchdown unfolded on third and 14 when Smith produced an acrobatic catch on the way to the ground, beating cornerback Derrek Pitts Jr., on a fade pattern. Tagovailoa went 4 for 5 during the series, with the only incompletion a drop by fullback Joseph Bearns III.
On the ensuing possession, North Carolina State drove to the Terrapins’ 2 before Finley threw three consecutive incompletions, forcing the Wolfpack to settle for the second of three first-half field goals from graduate kicker Chris Dunn, who made four field goals overall to match a Mayo Bowl record.
Maryland collected the first turnover of the game when linebacker Fa’Najae Gotay caught a pass that deflected off the hands of Wolfpack wide receiver Darryl Jones on a crossing route in the first quarter. It was the first career interception for Gotay, a redshirt senior.
But three snaps later, the Terrapins’ defense was on the field again after Tagovailoa heaved a pass toward the back corner of the end zone while attempting to escape pressure. The ball landed in the arms of diving safety Cyrus Fagan, whose right toe touched inbounds while securing the catch.
The Wolfpack converted that takeaway into Dunn’s 38-yard field goal with 6:10 left in the first quarter for the game’s first points.
“It’s meant a lot,” Bennett, a senior, said of his time at Maryland. “It’s really changed my life. Coming from [junior college], coming here and [helping] change this program around, from the culture to this year to last year, back-to-back bowl wins, it means a lot to see that, all the labor coming to fruition.”
Shorthanded at wide receiver
The Terrapins played without a handful of their most productive wide receivers after Dontay Demus Jr. and Jacob Copeland, both seniors, as well as Rakim Jarrett, a junior, announced they were declaring for the NFL draft and would not participate in the bowl game.
Jarrett, a native of Palmer Park, Md., who played high school football at St. John’s in the District, led Maryland in receiving yards per game (42.8) and entered Friday tied for first in receptions (40) with Jeshaun Jones, a redshirt senior who also has NFL aspirations.
“The eight-win season is huge,” said Jones (79 yards on four receptions), who missed last year’s Pinstripe Bowl win because of injury. “Just believing in [Locksley’s] message was a big thing. When he got there everybody believed in what he had to say. That’s the biggest thing, is belief and trust.”
Tagovailoa comes off the bench
Tagovailoa stood on the sidelines for the first series of the game as second-stringer Billy Edwards Jr. trotted out with the starters. Locksley indicated Tagovailoa sitting for the opening drive was a “coach’s decision” because of a minor violation of team rules.
Tagovailoa has started 27 of 29 games over three seasons at Maryland and owns the school’s record for career passing touchdowns (51).
“We’ve had games where there are other people who haven’t started for whatever reason, and you don’t notice it, but when it’s the quarterback it’s a big deal, and it really wasn’t,” Locksley said. “Sometimes you’ve got to do things to send a message, and I thought the message was sent obviously.” | 2022-12-31T00:56:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland wins Mayo Bowl as Coach Locksley gets mayonnaise bath - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/maryland-mayo-bowl-victory/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/30/maryland-mayo-bowl-victory/ |
Wielding a bemused and intimate style, she became one of television’s premier interrogators of the newsworthy
By Laurence I. Barrett
Newscaster Barbara Walters, the nation's first female anchorwoman, sits in her office as she prepares for her debut on ABC's evening news program on Oct. 4, 1976. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Ms. Walters, whose death was reported by ABC on Dec. 30, spent the following decades overcoming her mangled r’s and became one of television’s premier interrogators of the newsworthy. At NBC and later ABC News, she was tireless in her pursuit of “gets” — interviews with the hard-to-corner. She questioned presidents from Richard M. Nixon to Barack Obama, dictators from Fidel Castro to Bashar al-Assad, murderers and crooks, and stars of stage, screen and scandal.
“What will you tell your children when you have them?” Ms. Walters, then with ABC’s “20/20,” asked Lewinsky in March 1999, a month after Clinton was acquitted in the Senate of charges related to lying about his sexual encounter in the Oval Office.
“And that,” Ms. Walters said, turning to the camera, “is the understatement of the year.”
Ms. Walters repeatedly enjoyed the last guffaw over doubters and detractors during a career spanning five decades. She shattered glass ceilings, sending shards into many male egos. She became the most durable and versatile TV host of her era, as well as a celebrity more controversial than many of the ones she covered.
Ms. Walters’s ascent was fueled by grit rather than raw talent. “Pushy cookie,” she called herself. Her hard-won female “firsts” — co-host of “Today” from 1974 to 1976 and co-anchor of ABC’s evening news show from 1976 to 1978 — opened the field to younger women. In 1976, she became the first TV news personality of either gender to get a $1 million contract, prompting pay spikes for male competitors.
Unlike her TV pantheon peers, such as Mike Wallace, Johnny Carson and Winfrey, Ms. Walters mastered diverse time slots and genres. She straddled entertainment and hard news.
'60 Minutes' creator Don Hewitt dies at 86
Periodic “specials” attracted huge audiences. For extended periods, Ms. Walters starred on two programs. While doing “Today,” she presided over “Not for Women Only.” In 1997, while a mainstay on “20/20,” she helped create “The View,” a frothy talkfest also featuring panelists such as Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Star Jones, Meredith Vieira, Rosie O’Donnell, Lisa Ling and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
Ms. Walters’s fans loved watching what often seemed like a private conversation in a cozy setting. Even her critics struggled to look away when a Barbara Walters “special” was on the air. Guests returned for sequels because she avoided Wallace-style confrontations and often persuaded them that she wanted to hear their side — that she cared.
In a 1980 interview on “20/20,” Nixon conceded, after Ms. Walters’s persistent coaxing, that he should have destroyed the Oval Office recordings that sealed his ouster.
Ms. Walters spent two years trying to arrange an interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Her efforts came through in 1977.
“You did become the symbol of the woman wronged,” Ms. Walters said in the broadcast.
Ms. Walters said she regretted her handling of a much-watched 1981 interview with Oscar-winning actress Katharine Hepburn. The conversation stumbled into bizarre territory when Hepburn said she was a strong person — “like a tree or something.”
“What kind of tree are you, if you think you are a tree?” Ms. Walters asked, in one of the oddest follow-ups in TV history.
Hepburn, flummoxed, said she’d probably be an oak. Ms. Walters received years of taunting for the question, but she said it was not as terrible as her worst interview ever, with actor Warren Beatty.
“I asked him ‘How are you?’ ” she recalled years later. “There was interminable dead silence. Finally he said, ‘Fine.’ ”
Ms. Walters scored the two-hour Lewinsky coup. Four years after Ms. Walters scored the two-hour Lewinsky coup, knowing that the interview had angered the Clintons, ABC executives told her not to compete for another major “get” — Hillary Clinton, who was preparing to promote her memoir “Living History.”
Ms. Walters stood aside for a colleague, and was astonished when then-Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) invited her in anyway. Clinton knew that her husband’s philandering would come up but may not have expected so direct a query: “What if he does it again?” Ms. Walters inquired.
Writing in The Washington Post, television critic Tom Shales described the interview as an “hour-long book plug masquerading as a news special.” Ms. Walters, he added, “seemed now and then to get Clinton to spill a bean or three more than she wanted to, or at least to be more intimately revealing than she maybe planned on being. It was by no means an hour chock-full of surprises, but neither was it ever a bore.”
Ms. Walters frequently focused on her subjects’ formative years. “I like difficult childhoods,” she once observed. Her own qualified.
‘I was never young’
Whatever the venue, Lou was rarely present. Worries about money and her older daughter preoccupied Dena. From an early age, Ms. Walters wrote in “Audition” that she knew she would be responsible for Jacqueline, if not the whole family. “I realize I was never young,” she wrote.
The manager wanted all staffers to learn the rudiments of production, and Ms. Walters was an avid pupil. She had an affair with the executive, whom she recalled as “balding and short, with a bit of a belly.” She had decided “it was time” to part with virginity. He lost his temper when she dated someone else, and she lost the job.
When she married in 1955, she wrote, “My heart never felt so heavy. But . . . my heart would be heavy every time I married.” She divorced Katz in 1957. With her second husband, Lee Guber, a theater owner, she adopted a daughter, Jacqueline, after suffering three miscarriages. That union also ended in divorce. Her third partner in marriage and divorce was Merv Adelson, a television producer.
The initial assignment died just as a slot for a regular staff writer opened, and Ms. Walters got it. The program in that period had a succession of “Today girls,” usually decorative former models or actresses who flanked the male host but had limited aptitude for live give-and-take. When another “girl” flunked in 1964, managers decided to give the diligent, serious Ms. Walters a tryout.
He reciprocated by telling national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to grant Ms. Walters their first on-camera interviews. During a royal visit in 1969, Nixon even brokered a Walters session with Prince Philip, who had long declined such requests.
Might Queen Elizabeth abdicate, Ms. Walters asked, in favor of Prince Charles? “Who knows,” Philip responded. “Anything can happen.” In Britain, their repartee became the sensation du jour.
Nixon, she wrote later, “turned out to be one of my greatest champions.” While Ms. Walters never displayed partisanship, and chatter on “The View” decades later tilted liberal, she had particularly close relationships with prominent Republicans. Kissinger and Roy Cohn, the notorious former aide to redbaiting Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.), were good friends for decades.
She never let romance trump work. By 1971, Ms. Walters was “Today’s” untitled co-host. When Frank McGee took over as host and demanded that she revert to “girlie” material only, she eked out a crumb of compromise. She would be able to participate in some major interviews — after McGee asked the first three questions.
McGee’s diktat did not apply to pieces done outside the “Today” studio, so Ms. Walters accelerated her pursuit of “gets” in Washington. Her standing with the White House got her a seat on the press plane accompanying Nixon to China in 1972. She was the only female network correspondent.
Playing to her strengths
And it became generally known that Reasoner wanted no co-pilot — certainly not a female derided as the “million dollar baby.” On air, their chemistry curdled. “Harry and I were mismatched, misguided and so painfully uncomfortable together,” Ms. Walters later said.
Their program remained in third place. Then Ms. Walters’s first special got mixed reviews. “I felt very wounded,” she told the New York Times in 1992. “I had a mother, a father, a retarded sister and a daughter I was supporting. And my career [seemed] finished.”
But the new head of ABC News, Roone Arledge, knew that changes would be necessary and enabled Ms. Walters to play to her strengths — major interviews and big events.
The incident strengthened her news credentials. Arledge soon revamped the evening news format, Reasoner left the network, and Ms. Walters became a roving correspondent while continuing the entertainment specials. She found a firm base at “20/20” in 1979 and did most of her serious work there over the next 25 years.
CBS, once home to her sternest critics, in 1991 offered a $10 million annual contract and stewardship of her own news magazine program. Ms. Walters declined, explaining later that she wanted to avoid further professional upheaval. | 2022-12-31T03:07:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barbara Walters, TV’s tireless pursuer of the newsmaker ‘get,’ dies at 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/barbara-walters-tv-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/30/barbara-walters-tv-dies/ |
Mark Meadows represented North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District from 2013 until 2020, when he became White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff to President Donald Trump, will not be charged for voter fraud related to his 2020 registration and absentee vote in North Carolina, the state’s chief law enforcement official announced Friday.
Meadows and his wife, Debra, were under investigation after media reports that the former North Carolina congressman’s voter registration listed a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C., that he had never owned, stayed at or visited. But authorities were shown proof that Meadows and his wife leased the home, Debra did stay there for short periods, and there was no evidence the couple “knowingly swore to false information considering the signed lease,” said Attorney General Josh Stein (D).
Meadows is “explicitly excepted from certain residency requirements as a result of his service to the federal government,” Stein added.
“The State Bureau of Investigation conducted an extensive investigation into the fraud allegations against Mr. and Mrs. Meadows concerning their registration and voting in the 2020 elections,” Stein said in a statement. “After a thorough review, my office has concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges against either of them in this matter.”
In 2020, Meadows registered to vote at N.C. mobile home that he reportedly never lived in
Meadows’s spokesman, Ben Williamson, declined to comment about the prosecutorial decision.
In 2020, Meadows changed his registration after he sold his home in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, which he represented from 2013 until that year. From March 2020 to January 2021, Meadows served as Trump’s chief of staff. He had a condo in Virginia near Washington, but he did not own property in North Carolina.
The New Yorker, which first reported on Meadows’s registered address, interviewed a previous property owner who said Meadows’s wife had rented the property for a short period and spent only one or two nights there during each visit.
According to a state Department of Justice memo about reasons for declining to charge in the case, the couple provided investigators with a signed year-long lease for the home that began on Sept. 1, 2020. Debra Meadows also shared cellphone logs for two days in October that showed her placing calls in the area.
Meadows was removed from North Carolina’s voter rolls while the fraud investigation was ongoing. North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon said Meadows was removed “after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there.”
Inside Mark Meadows’s final push to keep Trump in power
Although Stein said Meadows should not be charged with voter fraud, he criticized Meadows’s history of supporting Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election that stoked the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. Last week, the bipartisan panel investigating the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob released a report placing blame on “one man,” Trump, but naming others in the former president’s circle, such as Meadows, who supported him.
“I urge federal prosecutors to hold accountable every single person who engaged in a conspiracy to put our democracy at risk,” Stein said. “None of the matters involving January 6th, however, are relevant to the specific allegations of voter fraud concerning Mr. and Mrs. Meadows that were referred to my office for review.” | 2022-12-31T03:08:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mark Meadows not charged in North Carolina for voter fraud - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/meadows-voter-fraud-no-charges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/30/meadows-voter-fraud-no-charges/ |
ATLANTA — LeBron James scored a season-high 47 points on his 38th birthday with many of the sellout crowd at State Farm Arena cheering his every move and the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Atlanta Hawks 130-121 on Friday night.
NEW ORLEANS — CJ McCollum scored 42 points, making a career-high 11 3-pointers, and Zion Williamson added 36 to power New Orleans past Philadelphia. | 2022-12-31T04:41:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James has season-high 47 points on 38th birthday, Lakers win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/james-has-season-high-47-points-on-38th-birthday-lakers-win/2022/12/30/787f40c2-88ba-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/james-has-season-high-47-points-on-38th-birthday-lakers-win/2022/12/30/787f40c2-88ba-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Ask Amy: Why am I meeting so many argumentative men while dating?
Dear Amy: I am a divorced 52-year-old woman who is experiencing a disturbing situation. Men I meet for possible relationships have what I describe as argumentative personalities. They are never agreeable with any topics that come up in conversation. The topics range from personal decisions to politics to differences between men and women.
They often present topics that are inflammatory and then say women can’t handle the conversations because we are too caught up in our feelings. I don’t entertain these men for long, but I keep having these experiences. Just what has happened to the art of decent conversation?
After talking to these men for a short period of time, the focus turns away from seeking companionship to sparring partners. I don’t understand it and it is very frustrating.
Missing: At the risk of being accused of misandry, let’s state for the record that men undoubtedly also have a laundry list of gender-based frustrations with the women they are meeting.
Dear Amy: I regularly speak with a person who uses an earphone and mic device so they can talk on their phone while doing other things. This person does not realize that the speaker picks up ALL noises in their vicinity, which are amplified into my ear.
It’s worse than just being on “speaker.” I have said, several times, “Can we talk when you are not so busy so that I can hear you without all the background noise?” — and get snark in return.
They are so very busy that single-tracking is just not possible, I guess. I had something important to say one time, and just gave up.
Ear Phoned: Remote mics can pick up a lot of ambient noise.
If this person calls you (not if you call them), you should try again: “I hope you understand that I actually cannot hear you when you use your ear buds and mic. Can you at least put me on speaker?”
3). My husband was a client — why isn’t Upset calling him out for patronizing a sex worker?
4). You’d be very surprised at the number of seemingly “normal” young women who have been sex workers at some point in their life while trying to make ends meet during their college or post-grad years.
Holding: I don’t often run rebuttals to previously published Q&A, but you make a very good point. | 2022-12-31T05:31:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Why am I meeting so many argumentative men while dating? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/31/ask-amy-dating-argumentative-men/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/31/ask-amy-dating-argumentative-men/ |
Miss Manners: My usually chatty in-laws didn’t try to get to know my sister
Dear Miss Manners: I have an unusual houseguest situation. My in-laws visit frequently to see their grandkids, so much so that we call the guest bedroom Grandma and Papa’s room. This, I do not have a problem with; I have a good relationship with my in-laws and the break I get from the kids is welcome.
Their last visit was a little unusual because my sister was also coming for one night, just to sleep on the couch as she traveled to another state. She was not taking anyone’s bed; she arrived after the kids had already gone to sleep, and would be leaving before many people even woke up. No one’s time or space was being hijacked.
My in-laws have never met my sister, beyond her being my maid of honor at the wedding 10 years ago. When she arrived, I grabbed glasses of wine for everyone and we all sat outside on the back patio. My in-laws said their hellos, and soon my husband excused himself to finish the dishes. My father-in-law also promptly got up, followed him inside and got on his laptop, never to come back out.
My mother-in-law, upon finishing her glass of wine, then also went inside and never came back out. My husband came out after the dishes were done, talked with us for about 20 minutes and then went inside to check on his parents, but never came back out. My sister and I were left outside for over two hours by ourselves with half our guests ignoring another guest.
There are likely many things at play here. Your in-laws clearly feel at home in your house and that they are free to come and go as they please. And they may have thought that they were giving you and your sister some time alone to catch up.
But Miss Manners agrees that they should have said that before rudely disappearing for the night. “Please excuse me, I’m tired” or “I have some work to do,” followed by “I’ll let you two have some time to yourselves,” would have been polite. At which point, your protests to stay could be met with gracious compliance — or at least a more convincing excuse than checking their stocks on the internet.
Leave them only two. | 2022-12-31T05:32:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: My usually chatty in-laws didn’t try to get to know my sister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/31/miss-manners-in-laws-sister-houseguests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/31/miss-manners-in-laws-sister-houseguests/ |
What to watch this weekend: ‘Kaleidoscope’ premieres on Netflix
Saturday, Dec. 31 and Sunday, Jan. 1, 2023 | ‘Lizzo: Live In Concert’ airs on HBO Max
Live to Lead (Netflix) Executive produced by Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, this series allows leaders who are committed to making a difference to tell their stories. Featuring Greta Thunberg, Jacinda Ardern and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A Toast to 2022! (NBC at 8) “Today” hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager reflect on the biggest moments of 2022.
CNN New Year’s Eve Live with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen (CNN at 8). Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen host this New Year’s Eve celebration from Times Square in New York, with guests including Usher, Kevin Hart, Ellie Goulding, Patti LaBelle, Ava Max and more.
Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest 2023 (ABC at 8/10:30) Celebrating from New York, Disneyland and New Orleans, hosts Ryan Seacrest, Billy Porter, Ciara, D-Nice, Jessie James Decker and Liza Koshy celebrate New Year’s Eve all over the United States.
New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash (CBS at 8/10:30) Jimmie Allen, Elle King and Rachel Smith host this country music New Year’s Eve event.
United in Song 2022: Ringing in the New Year Together (PBS at 8) A concert that celebrates the diversity in the nation, with music ranging from folk and rock to opera and hip-hop.
Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party (NBC at 10:30) Live from Miami, musicians Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton count down to 2023 with performances and surprise guests.
Best of Stand-Up 2022 (Netflix) A compilation of the best jokes of the year from stand-up specials on Netflix, including jokes from Jo Koy, Bill Burr, Ali Wong, Gabriel Iglesias, Trevor Noah and Taylor Tomlinson.
Lizzo: Live In Concert (HBO Max) Lizzo rocks New Year’s Eve with special guests SZA, Cardi B and Missy Elliott, and her band the Lizzbians.
The Real Housewives of Potomac (Bravo at 8) Karen hosts a live show as the ladies prepare themselves for a Grande Dame Experience and Mia and Gordon figure out their relationship with Jacqueline.
The Simpsons (Fox at 8) The rise and fall of the Simpsons vlog is revealed through videos recommended on YouTube.
The Great North (Fox at 8:30) Moon and the Junior Janitors are enmeshed in a teacher scandal and the rest of the family finds themselves involved with crabs.
Kaleidoscope (Netflix) A thief and his crew attempt a $7 billion heist, but betrayal, greed and mysterious threats may ruin their plans.
Paul T. Goldman (Peacock) This dramatic docuseries mixes fact and fiction to tell the bizarre tale of Paul T. Goldman, who plays himself in the project by Woliner.
The Dog Lover’s Guide to Dating (Hallmark at 8) To win over the woman of his dreams, Simon enlists a dog trainer to get closer to her pup but finds a genuine connection in an unexpected place.
Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over (CNN at 9) Narrated primarily by Dionne Warwick, this documentary blends archival footage with photographs and newsreels that tell the story of her music and life.
Worst Cooks in America (Food at 8) Season 25. | 2022-12-31T06:12:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to watch this weekend: ‘Kaleidoscope’ premieres on Netflix - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/12/31/what-watch-this-weekend-kaleidoscope-premieres-netflix/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/12/31/what-watch-this-weekend-kaleidoscope-premieres-netflix/ |
Traditional Ukrainian dancing marks a night of fun for students in Kyiv. The war has forever changed the lives of many young people in the country. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
KYIV, Ukraine — For at least one night, they thought, they would use the basement of the university building not as a bomb shelter but as a place to twirl and hop and stomp — to celebrate their Ukrainian heritage, to again relish being young.
“They have forgotten normal life,” said Valerii Valiiev, an 18-year-old who managed a molotov cocktail factory during Russia’s assault on the capital but on the evening of the students’ exuberant gathering was helping to sell entrance tickets. “Dancing … will be very good.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the country’s young people have been at the forefront of both its resistance and its trauma. Some fled their homes or were separated from their families. Others volunteered or deployed to the front line. Many lost relatives, friends or neighbors. All are grappling with how the war has forced them to grow up overnight, altered the direction of their lives, reordered their priorities, derailed their dreams.
Stress or grief are never far away.
The proceeds from the student dance in September were headed straight to the front line — to support the battalion of 18-year-old Sviatoslav Syrotyuk’s father, who was battling Russian forces in the east. Syrotyuk fought alongside his dad early this year after joining the territorial defense and deploying in and around Kyiv. The experience turned him from a first-year college student majoring in archaeology into a soldier risking his life for Ukraine.
Positioned in a trench preparing for the Russian attack last February, the teenager didn’t have “any fear”; he had trained since he was a young boy to handle weapons and was teaching other recruits how to shoot. Yet in the weeks that followed, he got a crash course in war. He saw bullets whiz right past him. He helped evacuate civilians from a front-line town and suffered a concussion when an antitank shell exploded next to them.
After Russian forces finally pulled back from the capital in April, his father opted to deploy again but encouraged him to stay back and pursue his studies. He “understands that I am a person who in the future will build our country,” Syrotyuk said.
Before the war, 14-year-old Valeria Levtsova dreamed of leaving Izyum, Ukraine, to study in a larger city. Since then, her life has changed almost completely. (Video: Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
Valiiev, a law student and close friend, has encountered the war far differently. When it began, his mother asked him to come stay in the small village where she and his 5-year-old brother lived near Bucha and where she hoped her older son would be safer. He said no, deciding he needed to support Ukrainian forces from Kyiv.
He soon lost all contact with his family. And for more than a month, as Valiiev threw his energy into packaging and distributing hundreds of petrol bombs, he feared his mother and brother were dead. Not until the Russians retreated did he learn otherwise. His mother got a call through to say that while the village had been occupied and their home looted, both she and his brother had survived.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I cannot describe this moment. It was very, very emotional. I was just shocked.”
Valiiev’s priorities and values have shifted, he acknowledges: “Back in the day, I was wondering about something bigger — a big salary, big material things. Now I think it just doesn’t matter.” What does matter: “The possibility to just live a normal life.”
Still, the war consumes much of his time. Valiiev starts and ends each day reading casualty numbers, and in between studying, he’s training in a gym as preparation for joining the military. “I want to feel the feeling when you defend your country,” he said. Before February, “I never felt that connection with my people.”
The trauma of the past months is simultaneously collective and highly personal.
Nineteen-year-old Maria Mileyko learned from a message on Telegram that a sister’s camp counselor had been killed defending the city of Mariupol. Daria, who is 16, had looked up to him as a mentor since she was a little girl. She continues to rely on his guidance: “Every time I’ve had like some breakdowns or I become overstressed about things, I just hear [his] voice saying: ‘What are you doing? Keep your life in your hands, go live your life.’”
The sisters spent part of this year far from their home in Kyiv, having fled with their mother and another sister to the relative security of a village in western Ukraine. Both had been helping in the capital to cook for troops there, even delivering hot meals to Syrotyuk’s position. Being yanked away was jarring.
Yet Maria later had a chance to volunteer on a team rebuilding a dormitory for Ukrainians displaced from the east. Doing so, she said, allowed her to “make something with my hands to help my country.”
As Russia intensifies its military campaign, some civilians in Kyiv are taking up arms. Others are preparing food. Everyone is doing something to help. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post, Photo: Heidi Levine for The Washington Post/The Washington Post)
For some young Ukrainians, resilience remains a day-to-day challenge.
Two other sisters — Katya, 27, and Nastya, 15 — endured the Russians’ lengthy occupation of their northeastern city of Izyum. They were trapped at home with their mother, grandfather, two grandmothers and Katya’s boyfriend. They had no electricity, gas, water or any way to communicate with the outside world.
“We were only thinking about survival,” Katya said. On one of the rare occasions the sisters ventured out, they came under cluster munition shelling and shrapnel hit Katya on her arm and back. She didn’t seek medical care for fear she would be sent to Russia for treatment. The fragments were only removed after one of the soldiers took her to a local school turned military clinic.
After that, Nastya started to panic at the sound of any boom. Some neighbors had been killed when a shell landed on their house. “It became really scary,” the teenager recounted. “The whistling sound … you immediately understand it is flying and will hit the ground as well.”
She was in the ninth grade when the invasion began. By fall, she was trying to teach herself the 10th-grade curriculum so she wouldn’t fall behind. Katya had been a bartender at a small local cafe. Izyum didn’t offer many opportunities for work, she said, but before the war, “it was nice to live here.”
Though the area was liberated in September, there was no returning to normal. Most of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed and its roads littered with explosives. Planning even a few days ahead felt impossible. So many people were still missing — with hundreds of buried bodies ultimately discovered in the woods. Thinking much about the future wasn’t on anyone’s mind. Fears that the Russians could return were, which was why the sisters spoke on the condition that only their first names would be used.
Nastya once loved studying human rights and legal issues. “Now,” she said, “I don’t know.”
In Kyiv, Syrotyuk has been able to reflect on the fighting, loss and deaths he witnessed. What he now wants most is “to make history.”
He sees two ways of doing so. The first is by way of the front line where “I can fight, but I can die.” The second: “I need to study all four years and after studying, I will go into our government, and I want to be president of this great country.”
“That’s your dream?” he is asked.
“It’s my duty,” he replies.
O’Grady reported from Kyiv and Izyum. Khudov reported from Kyiv. Anastacia Galouchka in Izyum contributed to this report. | 2022-12-31T06:12:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As war drags on, young Ukrainians are rethinking their futures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/31/ukrainians-students-russia-war-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/31/ukrainians-students-russia-war-future/ |
LONDON — Cristiano Ronaldo completed a lucrative move to Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr on Friday in a landmark deal for Middle Eastern soccer.
TAMPA, Fla. — Buccaneers backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert became an unexpected hero Thursday when a helicopter crashed into Hillsborough Bay.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has officially been ruled out Sunday at New England after suffering a concussion in Miami’s Christmas Day loss to Green Bay.
TEMPE, Ariz. — The Arizona Cardinals are set to start their fourth quarterback in four games, saying David Blough will get the nod Sunday at Atlanta.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A radio play-by-play announcer for No. 25 North Carolina State was suspended indefinitely after making a reference to “illegal aliens” while announcing the score of a bowl game in El Paso, Texas, during the Wolfpack’s game against Maryland in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
MADISON, Wis. — Quarterback Tanner Mordecai announced on social media that he is transferring from SMU to Wisconsin.
ATLANTA — Atlanta Hawks coach Nate McMillan said he has no plans to retire in the middle of the season, brushing back a report citing unidentified sources.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Wofford basketball coach Jay McAuley, who has been on leave from the program for the past four weeks, has resigned. | 2022-12-31T07:43:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Friday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/fridays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/31/920a96de-88d5-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/fridays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/31/920a96de-88d5-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Saudi forward Saleh Al-Shehri (11) celebrates after scoring against Argentina during the World Cup in Doha, Qatar, on Nov. 22. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
BEIRUT — When Saudi Arabia upset Argentina in the World Cup in November, one phrase dominated Saudi social media, repeated in tweets and videos: “Our falcons are our pride.”
National fervor swelled. Op-eds in Saudi newspapers praised the win as proof that a new era had arrived: “One should erase from his mind any previous stereotypical image of the kingdom, and let him recalibrate the kingdom’s reality from that point of view,” wrote one columnist.
The displays of national pride stood out in a place where, traditionally, Saudi identity has taken a back seat to the country’s dominant Islamic identity. Social life was dictated by the decisions of hard-line clerics and religious police, who discouraged participation in patriotic events. The monarchy’s long alliance with the clergy reinforced their power.
No longer. Saudi pride is at the forefront of a social and economic transformation spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s young, de facto leader, whose grand plans for the country are grounded in a more explicit expression of Saudi nationalism.
The burgeoning entertainment sector is rallying young people to the cause. Saudis are being encouraged to explore the country, with the state promoting heritage sites such as Al-Ula and emphasizing its pre-Islamic history. The Saudi flag is more visible in the capital Riyadh than ever before.
“The idea that we’re proud that we’re Saudi has become something that is encouraged, not just condoned in the public sphere,” said Mohammed al-Yahya, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
Underpinning this new nationalism is a push for greater self-sufficiency — aimed at shifting perceptions of Saudi Arabia in the region, from a tribal society that relies on oil revenue to one powered by a homegrown professional class. No longer will citizens be able to depend solely on benefits from the state, Mohammed has signaled, but are now expected to contribute to, and help shape, the new Saudi Arabia.
Creating jobs for the overwhelmingly young population has been key in the prince’s Vision 2030, an ambitious package of reforms announced in 2016. “Saudization” policies have been rolled out to ensure private-sector companies employ Saudi nationals in lieu of the cheaper foreign workers that have long staffed hospitals, restaurants, taxis and hotels.
The purview of “Saudization” is still expanding, with new professions being added to the roster. In October, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development mandated more local hires in consultancy work, a fast-growing field across the Gulf. It set a target of 35 percent Saudi employment by April 2023 and 40 percent by March 2024.
After 2023, Saudi Arabia has said, it will sign contracts with foreign companies only if they have headquarters in the country. Taken together, the government hopes these moves will address high youth unemployment, shrink the bloated public sector and shore up state coffers.
For many young Saudis, especially for women entering the workforce, these decisions are empowering, Yahya said.
“This type of pride that is happening right now is mostly among young Saudi women,” he said. “Of course the lives of young men changed a lot over the last five years, or ten years almost, but it’s young Saudi women who [are living] a totally different life.”
Though Saudi society may be opening, the government is no more open to dissent. An updated anti-terrorism law in 2017 gave the authorities new tools to quash public criticism. A phone application called Kulluna Amn, meaning “We Are All Security,” allows citizens to report on those who criticize the state.
And there can be consequences for insufficient patriotism: When two judges did not stand up during the national anthem in 2018, an investigation was opened into them, followed by a flurry of op-eds decrying them as agents of a blacklisted organization.
During his six years in power, the crown prince has repeatedly emphasized his Saudi-ness, differentiating himself from relatives in the ruling class who studied and vacationed abroad and enjoyed strong relations with foreign governments. His “Made in Saudi” initiative put certification marks on local goods to promote them. Saudi textbooks introduced in 2019 glorified pre-Islamic life in the Arabian Peninsula, previously presented as a dark and ignorant period.
This “Saudi First” approach has also come to dominate foreign policy decisions. In October, a decision by a coalition led by Russia and Saudi Arabia to slash oil production came under fire from the United States, especially after a visit to the kingdom by President Biden.
OPEC, allies move to slash oil production, eliciting blistering White House response
The decision was a blow to the White House, which had hoped to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections and had pressed the Saudis to produce more oil to make up for the global shortage caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In response to allegations that Saudi Arabia was manipulating the market and aligning with Russia, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told an investor conference in October, “I keep listening, ‘Are you with us or against us?’ Is there any room for, ‘We are for Saudi Arabia and for the people of Saudi Arabia?’”
Saudi Arabia’s growing assertiveness has been viewed as “ingratitude by Americans who still expect support or even deference from their security partner,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, an analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. But “it plays well at home with a young population hungry for global recognition,” she added.
For more than a decade, Saudis were not permitted to freely celebrate National Day, the first official holiday not mandated by Islam. Islamic scholars issued fatwas banning any related celebrations, fearing they would overshadow religious holidays.
With the influence of religious scholars and police on the wane, National Day celebrations this year were larger than ever. The country even adopted another holiday: Founding Day.
In December, a new televised competition show, Saudi Idol, debuted. A government body is hosting a musical night in Riyadh to honor a late legendary Saudi musician, Talal Maddah.
“In the past, the state took a certain distance from these musicians,” said Yahya. “The entire idea of having a Saudi superstar musician was a taboo issue. Today, the state is trying to say, ‘No, we’re making amends, we’re playing catch-up.’” | 2022-12-31T07:43:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Saudi Arabia's crown prince is trying to instill national pride - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/01/saudi-arabia-mbs-crown-prince/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/01/saudi-arabia-mbs-crown-prince/ |
Barbara Walters, the trailblazing broadcast journalist whose career spanned over five decades, died Dec. 30 at her home in New York. Walters was best known for her legendary interviews with newsworthy guests, ranging from Katharine Hepburn to Fidel Castro.
Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, center right, responds to a question from Barbara Walters, center left, during a news conference granted to members of the U.S. press covering Senator George McGovern's trip to Cuba, in Havana, May 7, 1975.
Walters, center right, as President Jimmy Carter prepares to be interviewed by four television reporters on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 1977 in the Red Room of the White House at Washington.
Barbara Walters, co-host of NBC's Today Show, sips a beverage as she relaxes in her office after her appearance as co-host on NBC's Today Show, in New York City, April 23, 1976.
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger gives a kiss to Barbara Walters at the Plaza Hotel in New York, November 28, 1978, after Walters was honored with an awards from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
Suzanne Vlamis/AP
NBC "Today" cast members past and present are reunited in New York City Jan. 14, 1987, including Barbara Walters, center.
Oprah Winfrey is greeted by Barbara Walters, left, as she arrives at New York's Plaza Hotel, Nov. 11, 1994.
Clark Jones/AP
President Barack Obama speaks to Barbara Walters during his guest appearance on ABC's '"The View" on July 28, 2010, in New York.
Martinez Monsivais/AP
Barbara Walters speaks on stage at the 39th Daytime Emmy Awards in Beverly Hills, California June 23, 2012.
Television newswoman Barbara Walters smells a flower given to her by her co-workers of the NBC Today Show after her final live appearance on the show, New York City, June 3, 1975.
Produced by Monique Woo | 2022-12-31T09:14:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barbara Walters: Her iconic TV career in photos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/barbara-walters-her-iconic-tv-career-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/barbara-walters-her-iconic-tv-career-photos/ |
Air Force hosts Blackshear and Nevada
Nevada Wolf Pack (11-3, 1-0 MWC) at Air Force Falcons (9-5, 0-1 MWC)
Colorado Springs, Colorado; Saturday, 2 p.m. EST
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Air Force -3; over/under is 130.5
BOTTOM LINE: Nevada plays the Air Force Falcons after Kenan Blackshear scored 20 points in Nevada’s 74-72 victory against the Boise State Broncos.
The Wolf Pack are 1-0 against MWC opponents. Nevada is sixth in the MWC giving up 64.8 points while holding opponents to 39.1% shooting.
The Falcons and Wolf Pack square off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jake Heidbreder averages 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Falcons, scoring 15.0 points while shooting 39.8% from beyond the arc. Camden Vander Zwaag is shooting 48.9% and averaging 9.3 points over the past 10 games for Air Force.
Jarod Lucas is scoring 16.6 points per game with 2.4 rebounds and 1.3 assists for the Wolf Pack. Blackshear is averaging 14.3 points and 5.1 rebounds while shooting 45.9% over the past 10 games for Nevada.
LAST 10 GAMES: Falcons: 8-2, averaging 71.3 points, 27.9 rebounds, 16.8 assists, 7.2 steals and 5.2 blocks per game while shooting 49.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 60.0 points per game. | 2022-12-31T09:14:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Air Force hosts Blackshear and Nevada - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/air-force-hosts-blackshear-and-nevada/2022/12/31/4fa5ea8c-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/air-force-hosts-blackshear-and-nevada/2022/12/31/4fa5ea8c-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Austin Peay hosts Berry and North Florida
Austin Peay Governors (6-8, 0-1 ASUN) at North Florida Ospreys (5-7)
BOTTOM LINE: North Florida hosts the Austin Peay Governors after Oscar Berry scored 23 points in North Florida’s 87-85 victory against the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats.
The Ospreys are 4-0 in home games. North Florida allows 76.9 points to opponents and has been outscored by 2.2 points per game.
The Governors are 0-1 in conference games. Austin Peay is 1-7 against opponents over .500.
The Ospreys and Governors match up Saturday for the first time in ASUN play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jarius Hicklen is averaging 14.3 points and 3.3 assists for the Ospreys. Carter Hendricksen is averaging 14.1 points over the last 10 games for North Florida.
Cameron Copeland is shooting 33.9% from beyond the arc with 1.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Governors, while averaging 9.1 points. Elijah Hutchins-Everett is shooting 50.0% and averaging 14.4 points over the last 10 games for Austin Peay.
LAST 10 GAMES: Ospreys: 5-5, averaging 76.6 points, 33.0 rebounds, 14.5 assists, 5.9 steals and 3.7 blocks per game while shooting 45.9% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 74.4 points per game. | 2022-12-31T09:14:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Austin Peay hosts Berry and North Florida - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/austin-peay-hosts-berry-and-north-florida/2022/12/31/f7283ca6-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/austin-peay-hosts-berry-and-north-florida/2022/12/31/f7283ca6-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Boston College hosts Mintz and Syracuse
BOTTOM LINE: Syracuse hosts the Boston College Eagles after Judah Mintz scored 24 points in Syracuse’s 84-82 loss to the Pittsburgh Panthers.
The Orange are 6-3 on their home court. Syracuse averages 75.3 points and has outscored opponents by 5.9 points per game.
The Eagles are 1-1 against conference opponents. Boston College is 1-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jesse Edwards is averaging 14.4 points, 11.1 rebounds and 3.1 blocks for the Orange. Mintz is averaging 15.6 points over the last 10 games for Syracuse.
Makai Ashton-Langford is scoring 11.5 points per game and averaging 3.4 rebounds for the Eagles. Mason Madsen is averaging 1.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Boston College. | 2022-12-31T09:15:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boston College hosts Mintz and Syracuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/boston-college-hosts-mintz-and-syracuse/2022/12/31/ecc885cc-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/boston-college-hosts-mintz-and-syracuse/2022/12/31/ecc885cc-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Boykin and Appalachian State host Southern Miss
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Southern Miss -7; over/under is 134.5
BOTTOM LINE: Appalachian State visits the Southern Miss Golden Eagles after Tyree Boykin scored 20 points in Appalachian State’s 79-53 loss to the Marshall Thundering Herd.
The Golden Eagles are 7-0 on their home court. Southern Miss is 12- when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 11.6 turnovers per game.
The Mountaineers have gone 0-1 against Sun Belt opponents. Appalachian State is 1-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Felipe Haase is shooting 47.7% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Golden Eagles, while averaging 16.1 points and 7.3 rebounds. Austin Crowley is shooting 47.1% and averaging 16.2 points over the last 10 games for Southern Miss.
Donovan Gregory is scoring 11.6 points per game and averaging 3.8 rebounds for the Mountaineers. Boykin is averaging 2.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Appalachian State. | 2022-12-31T09:15:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boykin and Appalachian State host Southern Miss - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/boykin-and-appalachian-state-host-southern-miss/2022/12/31/41cf769e-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/boykin-and-appalachian-state-host-southern-miss/2022/12/31/41cf769e-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Brown and Louisiana host Old Dominion
BOTTOM LINE: Louisiana visits the Old Dominion Monarchs after Jordan Brown scored 25 points in Louisiana’s 77-76 loss to the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.
The Monarchs have gone 7-1 at home. Old Dominion is 2-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Ragin’ Cajuns are 0-1 against Sun Belt opponents. Louisiana ranks eighth in the Sun Belt with 10.0 offensive rebounds per game led by Terence Lewis II averaging 2.8.
The Monarchs and Ragin’ Cajuns square off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tyreek Scott-Grayson is scoring 13.2 points per game with 5.0 rebounds and 2.8 assists for the Monarchs. Chaunce Jenkins is averaging 13.1 points and 3.2 rebounds while shooting 51.2% over the past 10 games for Old Dominion.
Brown is shooting 57.1% and averaging 20.1 points for the Ragin’ Cajuns. Lewis is averaging 13.6 points over the last 10 games for Louisiana. | 2022-12-31T09:15:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brown and Louisiana host Old Dominion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/brown-and-louisiana-host-old-dominion/2022/12/31/13382ca8-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/brown-and-louisiana-host-old-dominion/2022/12/31/13382ca8-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Canisius -3.5; over/under is 141.5
BOTTOM LINE: The Rider Broncs and the Canisius Golden Griffins play at Gallagher Center in Lewiston, New York.
The Golden Griffins have a 2-7 record in non-conference games. Canisius is second in the MAAC scoring 72.9 points while shooting 40.3% from the field.
The Broncs have a 3-6 record in non-conference play. Rider has a 3-2 record in games decided by at least 10 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tahj Staveskie is averaging 13 points for the Golden Griffins. Jordan Henderson is averaging 13.5 points over the last 10 games for Canisius.
Dwight Murray Jr. averages 2.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Broncs, scoring 18.3 points while shooting 41.8% from beyond the arc. Mervin James is averaging 12.4 points and 6.6 rebounds over the last 10 games for Rider. | 2022-12-31T09:15:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canisius takes on Rider - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/canisius-takes-on-rider/2022/12/31/5779be2c-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/canisius-takes-on-rider/2022/12/31/5779be2c-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Oklahoma -2.5; over/under is 133.5
BOTTOM LINE: No. 6 Texas faces the Oklahoma Sooners after Marcus Carr scored 41 points in Texas’ 97-72 victory over the Texas A&M-Commerce Lions.
The Sooners have gone 5-1 at home. Oklahoma has a 0-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Longhorns play their first true road game after going 11-1 with a 2-1 record in neutral-site games to start the season. Texas scores 83.8 points and has outscored opponents by 21.6 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Grant Sherfield is scoring 18.0 points per game with 2.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists for the Sooners. Tanner Groves is averaging 11.1 points and 6.9 rebounds while shooting 55.4% over the last 10 games for Oklahoma.
Carr is averaging 17.8 points, 4.3 assists and 1.8 steals for the Longhorns. Tyrese Hunter is averaging 11.3 points and 3.2 assists over the past 10 games for Texas. | 2022-12-31T09:15:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carr leads No. 6 Texas against Oklahoma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/carr-leads-no-6-texas-against-oklahoma/2022/12/31/e5a2724e-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/carr-leads-no-6-texas-against-oklahoma/2022/12/31/e5a2724e-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Charleston Southern and South Carolina Upstate face off in conference matchup
South Carolina Upstate Spartans (6-6, 1-0 Big South) at Charleston Southern Buccaneers (4-8, 0-1 Big South)
North Charleston, South Carolina; Saturday, 3 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Charleston Southern plays South Carolina Upstate in a matchup of Big South teams.
The Buccaneers are 3-2 on their home court. Charleston Southern ranks eighth in the Big South in team defense, allowing 75.4 points while holding opponents to 45.6% shooting.
The Spartans have gone 1-0 against Big South opponents. South Carolina Upstate ranks ninth in the Big South with 29.5 rebounds per game led by Mysta Goodloe averaging 5.3.
The Buccaneers and Spartans meet Saturday for the first time in Big South play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Claudell Harris Jr. is scoring 16.8 points per game with 4.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the Buccaneers. Taje’ Kelly is averaging 11.8 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting 57.6% over the last 10 games for Charleston Southern.
Trae Broadnax is averaging 9.5 points for the Spartans. Jordan Gainey is averaging 16.0 points over the last 10 games for South Carolina Upstate. | 2022-12-31T09:15:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Charleston Southern and South Carolina Upstate face off in conference matchup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/charleston-southern-and-south-carolina-upstate-face-off-in-conference-matchup/2022/12/31/45736304-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/charleston-southern-and-south-carolina-upstate-face-off-in-conference-matchup/2022/12/31/45736304-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Georgia Southern Eagles (8-6, 1-0 Sun Belt) at Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (7-5, 1-0 Sun Belt)
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Coastal Carolina -4; over/under is 134
BOTTOM LINE: Coastal Carolina faces the Georgia Southern Eagles after Jomaru Brown scored 28 points in Coastal Carolina’s 77-76 win over the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns.
The Chanticleers are 5-2 in home games. Coastal Carolina is fourth in the Sun Belt in rebounding averaging 36.0 rebounds. Essam Mostafa paces the Chanticleers with 10.4 boards.
The Eagles have gone 1-0 against Sun Belt opponents. Georgia Southern is seventh in the Sun Belt scoring 34.4 points per game in the paint led by Andrei Savrasov averaging 6.0.
The Chanticleers and Eagles face off Saturday for the first time in Sun Belt play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Henry Abraham is averaging 4.7 points and 4.2 assists for the Chanticleers. Brown is averaging 16.3 points and 2.3 rebounds while shooting 46.8% over the last 10 games for Coastal Carolina.
Savrasov is scoring 12.3 points per game and averaging 6.5 rebounds for the Eagles. Tyren Moore is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Georgia Southern. | 2022-12-31T09:16:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coastal Carolina takes on Georgia Southern following Brown's 28-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/coastal-carolina-takes-on-georgia-southern-following-browns-28-point-game/2022/12/31/c2a9ece0-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/coastal-carolina-takes-on-georgia-southern-following-browns-28-point-game/2022/12/31/c2a9ece0-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Davis and Detroit Mercy host Milwaukee
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Detroit Mercy -7.5; over/under is 149.5
BOTTOM LINE: Detroit Mercy hosts the Milwaukee Panthers after Antoine Davis scored 24 points in Detroit Mercy’s 76-59 victory against the Green Bay Phoenix.
The Titans are 4-0 in home games. Detroit Mercy ranks ninth in the Horizon with 11.4 assists per game led by Davis averaging 3.2.
The Panthers are 2-1 in conference matchups. Milwaukee ranks fourth in the Horizon with 14.4 assists per game led by Justin Thomas averaging 2.9.
TOP PERFORMERS: Davis is scoring 24.1 points per game with 3.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists for the Titans. Damezi Anderson is averaging 9.9 points and 4.7 rebounds while shooting 39.0% over the past 10 games for Detroit Mercy.
Kentrell Pullian is shooting 38.8% from beyond the arc with 1.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Panthers, while averaging 9.3 points. Markeith Browning II is averaging 9.8 points over the last 10 games for Milwaukee. | 2022-12-31T09:16:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Davis and Detroit Mercy host Milwaukee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/davis-and-detroit-mercy-host-milwaukee/2022/12/31/16a485a8-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/davis-and-detroit-mercy-host-milwaukee/2022/12/31/16a485a8-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Davis and Memphis host Tulane
Memphis Tigers (11-3, 1-0 AAC) at Tulane Green Wave (7-5, 0-1 AAC)
New Orleans; Sunday, 5 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Memphis takes on the Tulane Green Wave after Kendric Davis scored 24 points in Memphis’ 93-86 victory against the South Florida Bulls.
The Green Wave are 5-1 in home games. Tulane scores 78.5 points and has outscored opponents by 7.2 points per game.
The Tigers have gone 1-0 against AAC opponents. Memphis ranks eighth in the AAC shooting 31.4% from downtown. Johnathan Lawson paces the Tigers shooting 57.9% from 3-point range.
The Green Wave and Tigers meet Sunday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jaylen Forbes averages 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Green Wave, scoring 17.1 points while shooting 34.9% from beyond the arc. Kevin Cross is shooting 49.2% and averaging 14.8 points over the last 10 games for Tulane.
Davis is averaging 19.6 points, six assists and 2.1 steals for the Tigers. DeAndre Williams is averaging 15.3 points and 7.1 rebounds while shooting 56.2% over the last 10 games for Memphis.
LAST 10 GAMES: Green Wave: 5-5, averaging 77.8 points, 27.8 rebounds, 14.9 assists, 8.5 steals and 3.8 blocks per game while shooting 44.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 73.1 points per game.
Tigers: 9-1, averaging 80.0 points, 32.1 rebounds, 17.0 assists, 10.2 steals and 5.5 blocks per game while shooting 48.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 69.5 points. | 2022-12-31T09:16:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Davis and Memphis host Tulane - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/davis-and-memphis-host-tulane/2022/12/31/6458ddf4-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/davis-and-memphis-host-tulane/2022/12/31/6458ddf4-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Dickinson and the Michigan Wolverines host conference foe Maryland
Maryland Terrapins (10-3, 1-1 Big Ten) at Michigan Wolverines (7-5, 1-0 Big Ten)
Ann Arbor, Michigan; Sunday, 4:30 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Hunter Dickinson and the Michigan Wolverines host Jahmir Young and the Maryland Terrapins in Big Ten play.
The Wolverines have gone 4-2 in home games. Michigan is ninth in the Big Ten with 8.1 offensive rebounds per game led by Dickinson averaging 2.4.
The Terrapins are 1-1 in conference play. Maryland has a 0-1 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Wolverines and Terrapins meet Sunday for the first time in Big Ten play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Dickinson is averaging 17.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks for the Wolverines. Jett Howard is averaging 2.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Michigan.
Young is shooting 42.9% and averaging 14.7 points for the Terrapins. Don Carey is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Maryland.
Terrapins: 7-3, averaging 75.5 points, 34.3 rebounds, 11.2 assists, 4.3 steals and 4.0 blocks per game while shooting 46.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 65.2 points. | 2022-12-31T09:16:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dickinson and the Michigan Wolverines host conference foe Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/dickinson-and-the-michigan-wolverines-host-conference-foe-maryland/2022/12/31/61582280-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/dickinson-and-the-michigan-wolverines-host-conference-foe-maryland/2022/12/31/61582280-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Drexel and William & Mary meet for conference
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Drexel -8.5; over/under is 128.5
The Dragons have gone 5-2 in home games. Drexel leads the CAA at limiting opponent scoring, giving up 61.2 points while holding opponents to 42.8% shooting.
The Tribe are 0-6 on the road. William & Mary is third in the CAA with 13.5 assists per game led by Anders Nelson averaging 5.2.
The Dragons and Tribe match up Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Amari Williams is averaging 14.3 points, 8.8 rebounds, 1.8 steals and 2.1 blocks for the Dragons. Coletrane Washington is averaging 2.5 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Drexel.
Nelson is scoring 11.0 points per game with 2.0 rebounds and 5.2 assists for the Tribe. Ben Wight is averaging 10.5 points and 4.8 rebounds while shooting 53.4% over the past 10 games for William & Mary. | 2022-12-31T09:16:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drexel and William & Mary meet for conference - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/drexel-and-william-and-mary-meet-for-conference/2022/12/31/e93f38ce-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/drexel-and-william-and-mary-meet-for-conference/2022/12/31/e93f38ce-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Ellis and USC host Washington State
USC Trojans (11-3, 3-0 Pac-12) at Washington State Cougars (5-9, 0-3 Pac-12)
BOTTOM LINE: USC visits the Washington State Cougars after Boogie Ellis scored 27 points in USC’s 80-67 victory against the Washington Huskies.
The Cougars are 3-2 on their home court. Washington State is 4-4 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Trojans are 3-0 in Pac-12 play. USC is ninth in the Pac-12 with 8.3 offensive rebounds per game led by Joshua Morgan averaging 2.1.
TOP PERFORMERS: TJ Bamba is scoring 16.0 points per game and averaging 4.4 rebounds for the Cougars. Justin Powell is averaging 2.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Washington State. | 2022-12-31T09:17:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ellis and USC host Washington State - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/ellis-and-usc-host-washington-state/2022/12/31/532bb484-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/ellis-and-usc-host-washington-state/2022/12/31/532bb484-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Elon hosts Nelson and Delaware
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Delaware -12.5; over/under is 143.5
BOTTOM LINE: Delaware takes on the Elon Phoenix after Jameer Nelson Jr. scored 22 points in Delaware’s 87-73 loss to the Hofstra Pride.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens are 4-3 in home games. Delaware is 3-4 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Phoenix are 0-1 in CAA play. Elon ranks ninth in the CAA with 22.2 defensive rebounds per game led by Max Mackinnon averaging 4.0.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens and Phoenix meet Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nelson is scoring 20.0 points per game and averaging 4.8 rebounds for the Fightin’ Blue Hens. L.J. Owens is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Delaware.
Mackinnon is averaging 11.3 points and 5.1 rebounds for the Phoenix. Zac Ervin is averaging 2.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Elon. | 2022-12-31T09:17:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon hosts Nelson and Delaware - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/elon-hosts-nelson-and-delaware/2022/12/31/5a10df86-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/elon-hosts-nelson-and-delaware/2022/12/31/5a10df86-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Florida State faces No. 17 Duke, looks to break road losing streak
BOTTOM LINE: Florida State will try to stop its five-game road skid when the Seminoles visit No. 17 Duke.
The Blue Devils have gone 7-0 in home games. Duke averages 72.9 points and has outscored opponents by 12.5 points per game.
The Seminoles are 2-1 in conference games. Florida State is ninth in the ACC with 13.2 assists per game led by Jalen Warley averaging 3.6.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kyle Filipowski is scoring 14.4 points per game and averaging 8.8 rebounds for the Blue Devils. Jeremy Roach is averaging 1.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Duke.
Cam’Ron Fletcher is averaging 10.8 points and 7.5 rebounds for the Seminoles. Matthew Cleveland is averaging 13.7 points over the last 10 games for Florida State. | 2022-12-31T09:17:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida State faces No. 17 Duke, looks to break road losing streak - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/florida-state-faces-no-17-duke-looks-to-break-road-losing-streak/2022/12/31/b4bd5e46-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/florida-state-faces-no-17-duke-looks-to-break-road-losing-streak/2022/12/31/b4bd5e46-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Furman visits Western Carolina after Foster's 23-point game
Furman Paladins (10-4, 1-0 SoCon) at Western Carolina Catamounts (7-7, 0-1 SoCon)
Cullowhee, North Carolina; Saturday, 4 p.m. EST
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Western Carolina -11.5; over/under is 146
BOTTOM LINE: Furman visits the Western Carolina Catamounts after Marcus Foster scored 23 points in Furman’s 85-62 victory over the VMI Keydets.
The Catamounts are 3-3 in home games. Western Carolina is 3- when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 11.5 turnovers per game.
The Paladins have gone 1-0 against SoCon opponents. Furman ranks sixth in the SoCon with 32.9 rebounds per game led by Jalen Slawson averaging 7.1.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tyzhaun Claude is scoring 15.2 points per game with 8.4 rebounds and 0.6 assists for the Catamounts. Tre Jackson is averaging 12.9 points over the last 10 games for Western Carolina.
Mike Bothwell is shooting 55.9% and averaging 19.6 points for the Paladins. Slawson is averaging 14.4 points over the last 10 games for Furman.
Paladins: 8-2, averaging 83.4 points, 32.7 rebounds, 20.9 assists, 8.3 steals and 3.7 blocks per game while shooting 49.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 72.6 points. | 2022-12-31T09:17:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Furman visits Western Carolina after Foster's 23-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/furman-visits-western-carolina-after-fosters-23-point-game/2022/12/31/d0c594c8-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/furman-visits-western-carolina-after-fosters-23-point-game/2022/12/31/d0c594c8-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Gardner leads Little Rock against Tennessee State after 23-point performance
Little Rock Trojans (5-9, 1-0 OVC) at Tennessee State Tigers (8-6, 0-1 OVC)
BOTTOM LINE: Little Rock visits the Tennessee State Tigers after Myron Gardner scored 23 points in Little Rock’s 88-74 win against the UT Martin Skyhawks.
The Tigers have gone 7-2 in home games. Tennessee State ranks sixth in the OVC with 8.9 offensive rebounds per game led by Adong Makuoi averaging 2.0.
The Trojans are 1-0 against conference opponents. Little Rock allows 78.4 points to opponents while being outscored by 4.7 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jr. Clay is averaging 16.5 points and 4.5 assists for the Tigers. Marcus Fitzgerald Jr. is averaging 14.4 points over the last 10 games for Tennessee State.
Gardner is averaging 14 points, 9.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.8 steals for the Trojans. Chris Walker is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Little Rock. | 2022-12-31T09:17:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gardner leads Little Rock against Tennessee State after 23-point performance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/gardner-leads-little-rock-against-tennessee-state-after-23-point-performance/2022/12/31/4cafdc10-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/gardner-leads-little-rock-against-tennessee-state-after-23-point-performance/2022/12/31/4cafdc10-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Hall, Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks to visit Wilson, UT Arlington Mavericks
Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks (9-5, 1-0 WAC) at UT Arlington Mavericks (5-9, 0-1 WAC)
Arlington, Texas; Saturday, 2 p.m. EST
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: UT Arlington -3.5; over/under is 135.5
BOTTOM LINE: Sadaidriene Hall and the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks visit Shemar Wilson and the UT Arlington Mavericks on Saturday.
The Mavericks have gone 3-2 in home games. UT Arlington scores 66.9 points while outscoring opponents by 3.0 points per game.
The ‘Jacks are 1-0 in WAC play. SFA scores 78.6 points and has outscored opponents by 11.9 points per game.
The Mavericks and ‘Jacks face off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Wilson is scoring 9.8 points per game with 7.9 rebounds and 0.9 assists for the Mavericks. Kyron Gibson is averaging 8.8 points and 1.7 rebounds while shooting 38.7% over the past 10 games for UT Arlington.
Hall is shooting 62.3% and averaging 13.8 points for the ‘Jacks. Nigel Hawkins is averaging 11.6 points over the last 10 games for SFA.
‘Jacks: 6-4, averaging 76.9 points, 30.9 rebounds, 17.1 assists, 9.0 steals and 1.8 blocks per game while shooting 48.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 67.2 points. | 2022-12-31T09:17:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hall, Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks to visit Wilson, UT Arlington Mavericks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/hall-stephen-f-austin-lumberjacks-to-visit-wilson-ut-arlington-mavericks/2022/12/31/3b045cc0-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/hall-stephen-f-austin-lumberjacks-to-visit-wilson-ut-arlington-mavericks/2022/12/31/3b045cc0-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Bryant -13.5; over/under is 153
BOTTOM LINE: Binghamton faces the Bryant Bulldogs after Armon Harried scored 25 points in Binghamton’s 86-70 loss to the Cornell Big Red.
The Bulldogs are 4-1 on their home court. Bryant is second in the America East with 40.6 points per game in the paint led by Antwan Walker averaging 10.0.
The Bearcats are 1-5 in road games. Binghamton is fourth in the America East with 32.2 rebounds per game led by Harried averaging 6.6.
TOP PERFORMERS: Sherif Kenney averages 2.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Bulldogs, scoring 16.1 points while shooting 38.3% from beyond the arc. Earl Timberlake is averaging 15.5 points and 7.8 rebounds over the past 10 games for Bryant.
Harried is averaging 11.4 points and 6.6 rebounds for the Bearcats. Jacob Falko is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Binghamton. | 2022-12-31T09:17:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Harried and Binghamton host Bryant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/harried-and-binghamton-host-bryant/2022/12/31/28f4a76a-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/harried-and-binghamton-host-bryant/2022/12/31/28f4a76a-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Iowa State hosts George and No. 12 Baylor
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Iowa State -2; over/under is 132.5
BOTTOM LINE: No. 12 Baylor visits the Iowa State Cyclones after Keyonte George scored 21 points in Baylor’s 85-56 win against the Nicholls State Colonels.
The Cyclones have gone 7-0 at home. Iowa State is 1-0 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Bears have gone 0-1 away from home. Baylor is fourth in the Big 12 scoring 80.8 points per game and is shooting 47.1%.
The Cyclones and Bears square off Saturday for the first time in Big 12 play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tamin Lipsey is averaging 6.1 points, 4.4 assists and 1.9 steals for the Cyclones. Jaren Holmes is averaging 13.8 points and 3.5 rebounds while shooting 39.0% over the past 10 games for Iowa State.
Adam Flagler is averaging 16.1 points, 5.2 assists and 1.8 steals for the Bears. George is averaging 15.6 points and 3.9 assists over the last 10 games for Baylor. | 2022-12-31T09:18:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iowa State hosts George and No. 12 Baylor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/iowa-state-hosts-george-and-no-12-baylor/2022/12/31/8bb4953c-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/iowa-state-hosts-george-and-no-12-baylor/2022/12/31/8bb4953c-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: FGCU -6; over/under is 130.5
BOTTOM LINE: FGCU hosts the Jacksonville Dolphins after Zach Anderson scored 22 points in FGCU’s 84-81 win over the Canisius Golden Griffins.
The Eagles are 4-0 in home games. FGCU averages 72.5 points while outscoring opponents by 6.0 points per game.
The Dolphins are 3-4 in road games. Jacksonville is eighth in the ASUN scoring 30.5 points per game in the paint led by Mike Marsh averaging 10.7.
TOP PERFORMERS: Isaiah Thompson is shooting 40.6% and averaging 13.6 points for the Eagles. Chase Johnston is averaging 2.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for FGCU.
Kevion Nolan is averaging 13.8 points, 4.5 assists and 1.5 steals for the Dolphins. Gyasi Powell is averaging 8.6 points over the last 10 games for Jacksonville. | 2022-12-31T09:18:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jacksonville visits FGCU following Anderson's 22-point outing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/jacksonville-visits-fgcu-following-andersons-22-point-outing/2022/12/31/2fcf5eae-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/jacksonville-visits-fgcu-following-andersons-22-point-outing/2022/12/31/2fcf5eae-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Jones and Weber State host Northern Arizona
BOTTOM LINE: Weber State plays the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks after Dillon Jones scored 26 points in Weber State’s 81-72 victory over the Northern Colorado Bears.
The Wildcats have gone 3-1 in home games. Weber State is fifth in the Big Sky at limiting opponent scoring, giving up 68.9 points while holding opponents to 46.3% shooting.
The Lumberjacks are 0-1 against conference opponents. Northern Arizona ranks ninth in the Big Sky shooting 33.2% from 3-point range.
The Wildcats and Lumberjacks face off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jones is scoring 15.3 points per game and averaging 9.4 rebounds for the Wildcats. Steven Verplancken Jr. is averaging 12.2 points and 1.4 rebounds over the last 10 games for Weber State.
Jalen Cole is scoring 17.3 points per game and averaging 3.5 rebounds for the Lumberjacks. Xavier Fuller is averaging 9.9 points and 3.6 rebounds over the last 10 games for Northern Arizona. | 2022-12-31T09:18:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jones and Weber State host Northern Arizona - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/jones-and-weber-state-host-northern-arizona/2022/12/31/6b363234-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/jones-and-weber-state-host-northern-arizona/2022/12/31/6b363234-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Kentucky -23.5; over/under is 137.5
BOTTOM LINE: No. 19 Kentucky plays the Louisville Cardinals after Oscar Tshiebwe scored 23 points in Kentucky’s 89-75 loss to the Missouri Tigers.
The Wildcats are 7-0 on their home court. Kentucky ranks seventh in the SEC with 32.8 points per game in the paint led by Tshiebwe averaging 10.8.
The Cardinals have gone 0-2 away from home. Louisville has a 1-9 record against teams above .500.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tshiebwe is averaging 15.8 points, 13.6 rebounds and 1.7 steals for the Wildcats. Antonio Reeves is averaging 2.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Kentucky.
El Ellis is averaging 17.1 points and 4.2 assists for the Cardinals. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield is averaging 8.1 points over the last 10 games for Louisville. | 2022-12-31T09:19:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Louisville visits No. 19 Kentucky after Tshiebwe's 23-point performance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/louisville-visits-no-19-kentucky-after-tshiebwes-23-point-performance/2022/12/31/88458e10-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/louisville-visits-no-19-kentucky-after-tshiebwes-23-point-performance/2022/12/31/88458e10-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Morehead State visits UT Martin after Freeman's 30-point game
Morehead State Eagles (8-6, 1-0 OVC) at UT Martin Skyhawks (8-6, 0-1 OVC)
Martin, Tennessee; Saturday, 4:30 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Morehead State faces the UT Martin Skyhawks after Mark Freeman scored 30 points in Morehead State’s 83-75 victory against the Tennessee State Tigers.
The Skyhawks are 7-0 in home games. UT Martin ranks eighth in the OVC at limiting opponent scoring, giving up 74.6 points while holding opponents to 42.7% shooting.
The Eagles have gone 1-0 against OVC opponents. Morehead State ranks second in the OVC with 34.4 rebounds per game led by Alex Gross averaging 7.1.
TOP PERFORMERS: Parker Stewart is averaging 16.9 points and 1.6 steals for the Skyhawks. K.J. Simon is averaging 15.4 points over the last 10 games for UT Martin.
Freeman is averaging 12.8 points and 3.8 assists for the Eagles. Gross is averaging 11.7 points and 7.1 rebounds over the last 10 games for Morehead State.
LAST 10 GAMES: Skyhawks: 6-4, averaging 82.8 points, 34.9 rebounds, 14.9 assists, 8.0 steals and 3.5 blocks per game while shooting 45.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 75.7 points per game. | 2022-12-31T09:20:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Morehead State visits UT Martin after Freeman's 30-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/morehead-state-visits-ut-martin-after-freemans-30-point-game/2022/12/31/d431d5b8-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/morehead-state-visits-ut-martin-after-freemans-30-point-game/2022/12/31/d431d5b8-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Moreno and Saint Francis (BKN) host Cent. Conn. St.
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Francis (BKN) visits the Central Connecticut State Blue Devils after Larry Moreno scored 20 points in Saint Francis (BKN)’s 89-66 win against the Medgar Evers Cougars.
The Blue Devils are 1-4 on their home court. Cent. Conn. St. is seventh in the NEC in rebounding with 28.4 rebounds. Andre Snoddy leads the Blue Devils with 5.9 boards.
The Terriers are 1-5 in road games. Saint Francis (BKN) has a 3-5 record against teams over .500.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nigel Scantlebury is averaging 9.9 points, 3.5 assists and 1.9 steals for the Blue Devils. Kellen Amos is averaging 14 points over the last 10 games for Cent. Conn. St..
Rob Higgins is averaging 11.5 points and 3.8 assists for the Terriers. Moreno is averaging 10.4 points over the last 10 games for Saint Francis (BKN). | 2022-12-31T09:20:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Moreno and Saint Francis (BKN) host Cent. Conn. St. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/moreno-and-saint-francis-bkn-host-cent-conn-st/2022/12/31/64c97e8c-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/moreno-and-saint-francis-bkn-host-cent-conn-st/2022/12/31/64c97e8c-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
New Mexico State and Sam Houston face off in conference showdown
BOTTOM LINE: Sam Houston plays New Mexico State in WAC action Saturday.
The Aggies are 4-1 in home games. New Mexico State ranks third in the WAC with 26.5 defensive rebounds per game led by Deshawndre Washington averaging 7.1.
The Bearkats are 0-1 in WAC play. Sam Houston leads the WAC giving up just 54.8 points per game while holding opponents to 36.5% shooting.
The Aggies and Bearkats face off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Washington is averaging 13.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.7 steals for the Aggies. Xavier Pinson is averaging 12.8 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico State.
Qua Grant is averaging 12.9 points, 4.3 assists and 2.5 steals for the Bearkats. Donte Powers is averaging 2.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Sam Houston. | 2022-12-31T09:20:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Mexico State and Sam Houston face off in conference showdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-mexico-state-and-sam-houston-face-off-in-conference-showdown/2022/12/31/48a7054a-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-mexico-state-and-sam-houston-face-off-in-conference-showdown/2022/12/31/48a7054a-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
No. 18 TCU hosts Obanor and Texas Tech
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: TCU -4.5; over/under is 140.5
BOTTOM LINE: Texas Tech visits the No. 18 TCU Horned Frogs after Kevin Obanor scored 24 points in Texas Tech’s 110-71 victory against the South Carolina State Bulldogs.
The Horned Frogs have gone 7-1 at home. TCU averages 79.0 points and has outscored opponents by 17.7 points per game.
The Red Raiders play their first true road game after going 10-2 with a 2-2 record in neutral-site games to begin the season. Texas Tech averages 81.7 points and has outscored opponents by 19.4 points per game.
The Horned Frogs and Red Raiders face off Saturday for the first time in Big 12 play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Mike Miles is scoring 18.1 points per game with 3.4 rebounds and 3.2 assists for the Horned Frogs. Emanuel Miller is averaging 10.5 points over the last 10 games for TCU.
Daniel Batcho is averaging 13.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 1.6 blocks for the Red Raiders. Obanor is averaging 16.6 points over the last 10 games for Texas Tech. | 2022-12-31T09:20:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No. 18 TCU hosts Obanor and Texas Tech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-18-tcu-hosts-obanor-and-texas-tech/2022/12/31/5de92144-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-18-tcu-hosts-obanor-and-texas-tech/2022/12/31/5de92144-88e0-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
No. 22 New Mexico faces Wyoming after House's 26-point game
BOTTOM LINE: No. 22 New Mexico faces the Wyoming Cowboys after Jaelen House scored 26 points in New Mexico’s 88-69 victory over the Colorado State Rams.
The Cowboys are 4-2 in home games. Wyoming is 2-7 against opponents with a winning record.
The Lobos have gone 1-0 against MWC opponents. New Mexico is second in the MWC scoring 84.8 points per game and is shooting 49.3%.
House is averaging 17.2 points, 5.3 assists and 2.7 steals for the Lobos. Jamal Mashburn Jr. is averaging 16.9 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico. | 2022-12-31T09:20:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No. 22 New Mexico faces Wyoming after House's 26-point game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-22-new-mexico-faces-wyoming-after-houses-26-point-game/2022/12/31/bb968706-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-22-new-mexico-faces-wyoming-after-houses-26-point-game/2022/12/31/bb968706-88df-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
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