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The past provides a key lesson to minimize the damage from the omicron surge
People wait for a free coronavirus test outside the Lincoln Park Recreation Center in Los Angeles on Dec. 30. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
By Christopher McKnight Nichols
Christopher McKnight Nichols is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, associate professor of history and director of the Oregon State University Center for the Humanities. He is the author of "Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age" and editor and author of the just released volume "Rethinking American Grand Strategy” (Oxford UP, April 2021).
Overall, nearly 675,000 Americans died during the 1918-19 flu pandemic, the majority during the second wave in the autumn of 1918. That was 1 in roughly 152 Americans (with a case fatality rate of about 2.5 percent). Worldwide estimates differ, but on the order of 50 million probably died in the flu pandemic.
Those lifesaving advantages, however, can only help as much as Americans embrace them. Only by getting vaccinated, including with booster shots, can Americans prevent the health-care system from being overwhelmed. But the vaccination rate in the country remains a relatively paltry 62 percent, and only a scant 1 in 5 have received a booster shot. And as in 1918, some of the choice rests with public officials. Though restrictions may not be popular, officials can reimpose them — offering public support where necessary to those for whom compliance would create hardship — and incentivize and mandate vaccines, taking advantage of our greater medical technology.
As the flu waned in 1919, one Portland, Ore., health official reflected that “the biggest thing we have had to fight in the influenza epidemic has been apathy, or perhaps the careless selfishness of the public.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Crises can turn into a positive for savvy businesses
The history of successful crisis management
In 1982, Johnson & Johnson set the gold standard for crisis management after someone laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide in Illinois. (Richard Drew/AP)
By LaShonda L. Eaddy
LaShonda L. Eaddy is assistant professor of public relations at Penn State University and editor of Routledge’s upcoming book “History’s Impact on Crisis Preparing and Preventing.” Accredited in public relations, Eaddy is a crisis history expert investigating its impacts on current crises and exploring historical and contemporary crisis parallels.
Companies, ranging from Peloton to Amazon Web Services to the newly rebranded Meta, confronted crises in 2021 that threatened their bottom line and, in some cases, even posed an apparent existential threat. (Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Meta in November announced that starting Jan. 19, Facebook will discontinue targeted advertising options related to sensitive topics such as health causes, sexual orientation, religious practices (and groups) and political beliefs. Facebook’s rebranding and targeted-advertising revamp are a timely example of how crises sometimes require organizations to make drastic changes. But they don’t have to. In fact, companies that have weathered crises with minimal damage to the bottom line — some even emerging better than before — employ strategies dating to crisis management’s roots. They move proactively and use crisis situations to help innovate, rather than simply reacting and awaiting a return to business as usual.
In 1982, Johnson and Johnson faced a major crisis when someone in Illinois tampered with its Tylenol medicine bottles, lacing capsules with cyanide. Seven people died. At this time, crisis management plans were nonexistent, but J&J executives had the foresight to assemble a team to focus on their strategy in the immediate aftermath of the deaths.
The company moved swiftly to ensure no one else got sick or died. J& J created an 800 number for consumer inquiries and immediately removed all Tylenol from store shelves — more than 31 million bottles — a move that cost the company millions of dollars, while it investigated the problem. No regulatory body or external entity mandated these moves. Instead, J&J followed its credo, which challenged the company “to put the needs and well-being of the people we [J&J] serve first.”
J&J also used the crisis as an opportunity to review its standard practices and create innovative solutions. It developed tamper-resistant packaging, like the foil seal, and pills that were harder to tamper with, yet easy to swallow. Those innovations not only changed the nation’s No. 1 pain reliever, but became the industry standard. J&J’s massive communications and media effort also created a new norm, with other companies following suit and offering myriad ways for consumers to communicate with them and get vital information.
J&J’s actions inspired not only its fellow drug companies, but also public relations and communications executives. They set out to replicate the systems and infrastructures that were integral to J&J’s success. Within a year, Tylenol was back to being the country’s most-used pain killer. In the process, companies launched modern-day corporate crisis management (informal crisis management was probably occurring centuries prior).
In crisis management’s infancy, the field focused on tactical tools such as checklists and plans. In the 1990s, the emphasis shifted to strategy regarding contingencies, uncertainty and various possible outcomes.
Contemporary crisis management builds upon these tools, stressing the importance of taking proactive steps, including precrisis planning (i.e., monitoring, mitigating and preparing for crises); crisis planning (i.e., recognizing, responding and containing crises) and post-crisis planning (i.e., rectifying and revising actions and processes). Although the field has evolved since the 1980s, foundational standards such as compassion, transparency and the importance of timeliness remain.
Yet while crisis managers and organizational leaders probably remember previous crises, they frequently haven’t learned from the history or improved organizational practices and infrastructure in moments when their companies are not in crisis. Insufficient time to adequately debrief and substandard infrastructure to support or encourage crisis history learning probably explain this reality.
But it is a mistake — one that has plagued companies across industries, from the newly rebranded Meta to J&J itself, which has had a rockier time of dealing with problems in recent years.
Consider the benefit to another company when organizational learning became a catalyst for meaningful and sustained improvement. SeaWorld successfully reimagined its brand by turning crises into opportunities, although it still faces significant challenges because of high executive turnover and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
While animal rights groups, activists and conservationists always had contentious relationships with the park (and industry), they became an imminent threat to Sea World when a trainer, Dawn Brancheau, was killed by an orca (a.k.a. “killer whale” and “blackfish”) named Tilikum during a live show at SeaWorld Orlando. The crisis was exacerbated by the 2013 release of the documentary “Blackfish,” which chronicled Tilikum’s life up until Brancheau’s death, alleging animal mistreatment and potential catastrophe. The documentary debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and CNN later purchased the television rights, drawing more than 20 million viewers in one month.
All of a sudden, previously fringe groups and their criticisms gained newfound legitimacy — and posed a serious threat to the park’s bottom line.
Initially, SeaWorld was reactive, going through the typical and obligatory motions expected in the aftermath of crises. Even a year after the release of “Blackfish,” SeaWorld’s stock had plunged by more than 30 percent, profits declined by nearly 30 percent and park attendance plummeted by more than 3 million visitors. The company also lost several corporate partners, and many artists refused to perform at its venues.
SeaWorld clung to its orca program despite the allegations contained in “Blackfish” and the ensuing scrutiny. Later, the company had a failed awareness campaign when activists and members of the public hijacked its #AskSeaWorld hashtag and its “Blackfish: Truth About the Movie” website missed the mark.
By 2015, desperate times required desperate measures. Hoping to stanch the financial and reputational hemorrhaging, SeaWorld hired an outsider, Joel Manby, as CEO.
A year later, SeaWorld acknowledged the situation was untenable. According to Manby, SeaWorld “built the brand around Shamu many years ago and made people fall in love with killer whales … but now the paradox is that it’s one of the leading reasons people are uncomfortable with SeaWorld.”
Ultimately, in 2016, SeaWorld resorted to changing its core business, by removing the iconic orca from its logo, discontinuing its orca breeding program and modifying its signature shows featuring trainers swimming alongside orcas to display the animals’ innate behaviors.
SeaWorld seized the opportunity to reinvent its brand to ensure future success and prosperity. Although SeaWorld’s hand was forced, the case still provides an example of how organizational learning and reflexivity are game-changing. SeaWorld’s reluctant rebranding provided a lifeline to survive an existential threat.
J&J’s handling of the 1982 Tylenol crisis continues to be the gold standard, demonstrating the agility and foresight required to not only weather crisis storms, but to also use organizational and crisis learning as well as unconventional means to create meaningful and enduring change.
While taking such steps can be expensive and painstaking, they leave a business in much better shape than if they use reactive crisis management that lacks the strategic insight and foresight required. Enacting meaningful change can spur innovation, prevent future crises and even contribute to the greater good. | null | null | null | null | null |
"Manhattan Bridge" from "Red Eye to New York" (MACK, 2021). (Janet Delaney)
These photos of New York in the 1980s are a vivid reminder of the city’s enduring vitality
New York is my favorite city in the United States. Having grown up overseas in a heavily populated urban area, it’s really the only place that has felt home here.
New York’s status in the pantheon of global cities is downright mythical. Like so many urban centers, it’s constantly changing. On my last trip there more than a year ago, I met a friend on the Lower East Side. What used to be mostly lamp shops and a few bars and storefronts had been transformed by all kinds of new development in the form of steel and glass apartments. To be honest, it kind of reminded me of the bland cubes sprouting up all over D.C. C’est la vie.
Although there is constant change happening in New York, some things do stay the same. For me, Janet Delaney’s book, “Red Eye to New York” (MACK, 2021) brings that realization right home. Despite the many changes, Delaney’s book reminds us of some of the things you’ll still see and experience in New York. In an afterword to the book, Amanda Maddox, associate curator in the department of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, writes of the time Delaney’s photos show:
“It is the 1980s in New York, the place to be. Brass tokens are still valid subway currency. Ed Koch is the mayor, an office he will hold throughout the decade. Grindhouse theaters litter the Deuce, packaging the grime of New York as a seedy subculture. … SoHo has not yet transformed into a shopping mall.”
Although Delaney herself didn’t live in New York, she was drawn to its magnetism. She lived and worked in San Francisco but had a friend who would hook her up with courier opportunities that would bring her to New York. A lot of those trips were made on a “red eye” flight, thus the title of the book. She’d make numerous trips over the years, soaking up the character and places you’ll still find on the streets.
A lot has changed, it’s true: New York is far less gritty than it was in Delaney’s time. Rents are higher and a lot of legendary places cease to exist. But you can still run into hot dog vendors selling “dirty water dogs” on the sidewalks; get caught on a stifling subway platform — and maybe catch sight of a scurrying rat — while waiting for an uptown or downtown train; roam the fruit and vegetable stalls of Chinatown; and take a free ferry ride to and from Staten Island, catching a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty as the ferry sluices through the Hudson River. The city is still full of characters, too: buskers, police officers, furry mascots in Times Square and always the teeming masses of pedestrians ambling the streets at all hours.
Although much has changed even from the time Delaney made these photographs, I think there will always be that strong draw that New York has had as a place where people flock to “make it.” There’s still a vitality that comes from a place packed with people of all shapes, sizes and persuasions. You’d be hard pressed to be bored in a place where you can stumble into so many things just by walking down the street. That was true in the ’80s and it’s still true now. And you can see that in every vibrant color photograph in “Red Eye to New York.”
I’ve lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Southeast Asia and now in the Washington area. And I’ve traveled to Marrakesh, Kabul, Tel Aviv, London, Paris and Hong Kong. But I think I can safely say that there’s no place quite like New York. Delaney’s book is a pleasant reminder of many of the things that make New York so special.
You can see more of Delaney’s work on her website. And you can buy her book on the publisher’s website. | null | null | null | null | null |
Trump activated what we call a ‘MAGA faction,’ motivated by animus toward marginalized groups
A supporter holds up a hat during former US president Donald Trump's “Save America” rally at the Georgia National Fairgrounds on Sept. 25, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
By Lilliana Mason
Julie Wronski
John V. Kane
As the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol approaches, it’s clear that the ever-increasing gap between the Republican and Democratic parties includes different views about the nature of U.S. democracy and core American values.
Our recent research finds that this divergence grows in no small part from a particular group of Americans whose politics are predominantly driven by hatred toward marginalized minority groups. These individuals – whom we call the “MAGA faction” – may be relatively few in number, but hold ideals that are antithetical to multiethnic democracy.
The parties have split over multiethnic democracy
A democratic system of government ideally affords all citizens equal representation and protection, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, income, gender, or other areas of difference. That has not always been the case in U.S. history, which has included official and unofficial prejudice, hatred and violence toward non-White, non-Christian citizens, manifested in such ways as Jim Crow laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act, racial profiling, and anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. While civil rights legislation and court decisions reduced some discrimination in recent decades, U.S. society continues fiercely debating whether to strive toward guaranteeing equal protection under the law and voting rights for all Americans.
That debate now divides the United States’ two major parties. The Democratic Party tends to push for further advances in the pursuit of racial and gender equality. The Republican Party tends to resist such change, sometimes even leaning toward a past when White, Christian men stood unquestioningly at the top of the American social hierarchy. The phrase “Make America Great Again” invokes that time in a tacit endorsement of democratic backsliding.
Rep. Boebert labeled Rep. Omar a jihadist. Why wouldn't GOP leaders condemn the slur?
Animus in the U.S. electorate
In our research, we found that Donald Trump’s politics activated and attracted the MAGA faction – a group that had not been securely attached to any particular party.
We used data from the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group survey, which interviewed the same Americans repeatedly between 2011 and 2018, and continues to do so. This publicly available data acts somewhat like a time machine, allowing us to identify the common characteristics of Trump supporters before Trump announced his candidacy. We found about 30 percent of Americans surveyed in 2011 reported feelings of animosity towards African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community. These individuals make up our MAGA faction. Members of the MAGA faction were approximately 25 percent more supportive of Trump in 2018 than everyone else in the survey, even after taking into account many other factors, including partisanship.
No Trump-like figure emerged among Democrats. Rather, pre-existing animus towards these four groups consistently predicted less support for prominent figures in the Democratic Party. Nor did we find that disliking Whites or Christians – groups associated particularly with the Republican Party — in 2011 predicted higher support for Democratic leaders. Trump was unique.
Our findings reveal that Trump did not himself create this animosity; he merely harnessed it and benefited from it politically. But democracy in an increasingly multicultural society can be threatened when a faction of citizens motivated by animosity towards marginalized groups are particularly influential within a political party. As you can see in the figure below, nearly half of Republican Party identifiers also belong to this MAGA faction.
However, our research does not suggest that all Trump voters, or all Republicans, harbor animosity toward marginalized groups. In fact, we find evidence of animus toward marginalized groups everywhere, in both parties and among political independents, across the ideological spectrum, and among non-Whites and non-Christians.
Our key finding is that, regardless of one’s party identification, greater animus toward African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, or the LGBTQ community predicted substantially greater support for Trump.
What is the MAGA faction’s likely future?
Our research does suggest that, as long as this MAGA faction exists, politicians may be tempted to appeal to it, hoping to repeat Trump’s success. In fact, using inflammatory and divisive appeals would be a rational campaign strategy, since they can animate independent voters who dislike these groups. Other rank-and-file members of the party can willfully ignore such rhetoric in the name of partisan loyalty, however destructive and venomous it may be.
The result is a winning candidate whose platform is rooted in, or at the very least attracts, intolerance of marginalized groups – and then rewards that animus, as Trump did with his Muslim ban and Southern border wall, and as Republican state legislatures are doing with attempts to restrict access to the vote, ban schools from teaching about the history of racial bias, and so on.
150 years ago, Frederick Douglass predicted America's predicament today
What is the MAGA faction’s future? We see evidence of animus across all age groups; in 2011, we found that included a little over 20 percent of citizens ages 30 and under. This faction remains available for future politicians to court, and will likely influence U.S. elections for years to come.
But identifying this MAGA faction as both separate from and related to partisan politics can help us better understand the real conflict. When a small, intolerant faction of citizens wields disproportionate influence over nationwide governance, democracy erodes. Avoiding discussion about this group only protects its power.
Lilliana Mason (@LilyMasonPhD) is SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
Julie Wronski (@julie_wronski) is an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi.
John V. Kane (@UptonOrwell) is an assistant professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. | null | null | null | null | null |
SEOUL — A man who crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea is believed to be a previous defector from the North to South Korea.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Monday that the man, who was seen crawling up a barbed-wire fence on the eastern side of the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, is believed to be a North Korean in his early 30s who entered South Korea in November 2020 through the same area. Defections to North Korea are extremely rare.
Upon arriving in South Korea, the man told intelligence officials in Seoul that he used to be a gymnast in North Korea and demonstrated his jumping skills in front of them, according to the news reports.
The South Korean government said it notified North Korea of the man’s crossing to ensure his safety. The North confirmed that the notification was received but did not give any response about his safety, a South Korean defense official said Monday, briefing reporters under the condition of anonymity. | null | null | null | null | null |
If that’s not worrisome enough, the trailing price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500’s top tier in November was 68% higher than their average multiple over the past 25 years, according to JPMorgan Asset Management. And that quarter of a century included the tech bubble years of the late 1990s.
In most periods of excessive speculation, the lesser lights are the first to fall before the woes spread to the leaders. In the tech arena, fitness equipment company Peloton Interactive Inc. plunged 76% in 2021, social-commerce Poshmark Inc. tumbled 81% and education tech company Chegg Inc. dropped 66%. These and other so-called stay-at-home companies aren’t necessarily headed for bankruptcy, but in 2020 their stock jumped much more than their sales and profits growth could justify.
Sure, many stock investors like to put their money in “One Decision” stocks, as they were called in the early 1970s. These were companies with underlying earnings expected to grow so rapidly and steadily that investors only had to make one decision—to buy them—since they never would need to be sold. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. One-decision stocks eventually climb to the point where they have only one way to go—down.
Not only is the Fed reversing course from ease to credit restraint, but barring a recession, further rounds of fiscal stimulus are unlikely. So the consumer-driven economy is on its own. | null | null | null | null | null |
If that’s not worrisome enough, the trailing price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500’s top tier in November was 68% higher than their average multiple over the past 25 years, according to JPMorgan Asset Management. And that quarter of a century included the tech-bubble years of the late 1990s.
In most periods of excessive speculation, the lesser lights are the first to fall before the woes spread to the leaders. In the tech arena, fitness equipment company Peloton Interactive Inc. plunged 76% in 2021, online resale platform Poshmark Inc. tumbled 81% and education tech company Chegg Inc. dropped 66%. These and other so-called stay-at-home companies aren’t necessarily headed for bankruptcy, but in 2020 their stock jumped much more than their sales and profits growth could justify.
Sure, many stock investors like to put their money in “One Decision” stocks, as they were called in the early 1970s. These were companies with underlying earnings expected to grow so rapidly and steadily that investors only had to make one decision — to buy them — since they never would need to be sold. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. One-decision stocks eventually climb to the point where they have only one way to go — down.
Not only is the Fed reversing course from ease to credit restraint, but barring a recession, further rounds of fiscal stimulus are also unlikely. So the consumer-driven economy is on its own. | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON — Forecasting economic change in a pandemic was always going to be hard. Now omicron, the new COVID-19 variant sweeping across the globe, has made it even harder. Economists and policymakers, after all, have no real-world experience contending with the economic fallout from a worldwide pandemic. In the United States and other wealthy countries, massive government spending fueled an unexpectedly strong rebound from last year’s coronavirus recession; a surprise surge in demand overwhelmed factories and ports and led to a resurgence in inflation. To learn more about the economic implications of omicron, the Associated Press spoke with Megan Greene, chief economist at the Kroll Institute and a scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sharif Durhams, Monica Norton and Mark W. Smith named deputy managing editors at The Washington Post
Announcement from Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, Senior Managing Editor Cameron Barr, Managing Editor Tracy Grant, Managing Editor Krissah Thompson and Managing Editor & Chief Product Officer Kat Downs Mulder:
We are thrilled to announce that Sharif Durhams, Monica Norton and Mark W. Smith will become deputy managing editors of The Washington Post. Each of these journalists brings a wealth of expertise and a record of accomplishment to these important new positions. We are excited about adding their energy and perspectives to the crucial task of directing the daily report across our platforms, overseeing our enterprise journalism and strengthening our capacity to cover breaking news in a way that prioritizes urgency and accessibility.
Sharif, Monica and Mark will work with Deputy Managing Editors Scott Vance and Barbara Vobejda, Enterprise Editor Tim Curran and News Projects Editor Ed Thiede in running weekday and weekend coverage. The addition of three DMEs is a significant expansion of our masthead, one that will allow us to marshal the resources of our growing staff more effectively in covering the news for a global audience that consumes our work around the clock, seven days a week.
Sharif has been managing editor of North Carolina’s News & Observer and Herald-Sun since January 2021, where he launched a plan to increase the staff and served as interim editor from July to September. This will be a return to The Post for Sharif; he was our night homepage editor for much of 2020 after a three-year run as a senior editor for programming at CNN. Before that, he was one of our homepage editors from 2015 to 2017. Sharif’s pre-Post career included overseeing social media and digital strategy at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he also spent three years on its breaking news hub as a general assignment reporter; covering state government and serving as a GA reporter at the Charlotte Observer; and, in his first stint at the Journal Sentinel, covering higher education. Sharif made history by becoming the first African American editor of the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied journalism and political science.
Sharif has long been an advocate of improving diversity and representation in newsrooms. He is a member of NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, which he has led as elected national board president since 2018, and of the National Association of Black Journalists. His work as an adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute has focused on diversity in digital media.
As deputy managing editor, Sharif will oversee the GA team, the Morning Mix and our live desk, and collaborate with Foreign to continue the integration of our hubs in London and Seoul into a seamless 24/7 workflow. He’ll work with coverage departments to enhance their capacity to cover breaking news, acting as the day-to-day architect of our Live Updates Files. He’ll also become the convener of breaking-news teams across the newsroom, so that best practices and workflow improvements can be widely shared.
Monica, the deputy Local editor for planning and enterprise since 2011, is one of our most respected and trusted newsroom leaders. Editors and reporters across the newsroom have long valued her news judgment, the improvements she makes in stories and her empathetic approach to management. She has led some of Metro’s most ambitious efforts, including a project on the 1968 riots, which received the National Press Foundation’s Innovative Storytelling Award, and a package of stories on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans who were captured and brought to what would become America. She has helped run coverage of some of the most tumultuous events of recent years, including the racial justice protests after the killing of George Floyd and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Since her arrival at The Post in 2005, Monica has also served as Metro’s day editor, technology editor and assistant Maryland editor for education. In previous roles at Newsday, she edited Washington news and served as assistant and then deputy Long Island editor. Before that, she was a bureau chief and assignment editor at Gannett Suburban Newspapers and a reporter at the Evening Sun and the Baltimore Sun. Her degree from the University of Maryland is in journalism.
As deputy managing editor, Monica will work with Barbara, Mark, Scott and Sharif to reinvent the role of a “running the day.” We envision two DMEs leading our news coverage each weekday, one starting early enough to take the handoff from the London editor and concentrating on the digital report. The second DME will take over in the early afternoon, continuing to oversee the digital report, finalizing A1 and handing off to the Seoul editor in the 8 p.m. hour. This team of five DMEs, working in concert with other senior editors, will also provide high-level oversight of our enterprise journalism and serve as news czars when a run of coverage requires steady coordination among several departments.
The posting for these opportunities late last year announced the creation of two new DME positions, a result of our focus on the Monday-Friday workweek. The interviewing process convinced us of the wisdom of adding a third position to bolster weekend coverage. As deputy managing editor, Mark has agreed to work a Wednesday-through-Sunday schedule, taking on the responsibility of leading our coverage early in the day on Saturday and Sunday, partnering with Tim and Ed, respectively.
Mark has been director of social and operations on the Audience team since 2018, and before that served as deputy Audience editor and mobile web editor. Under his leadership, the social team has become an industry leader in distributed storytelling, winning a 2017 Murrow Award for excellence in social media. Mark came to us from USA Today, where he spent two years as senior manager for social media marketing. At the Detroit Free Press, he ran the website during the early morning hours, assigning and editing breaking news coverage while curating the home page and social media feeds. Mark was also the paper’s technology columnist. After earning a degree in journalism at Central Michigan University, he got his start as a multimedia specialist at the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot.
Mark has been a relentless promoter of this newsroom’s digital evolution, training most of us, at one time or another, in strategic thinking about audience and the mechanics of optimal workflows – always seeking to turn the aircraft carrier in the direction of providing readers with the news they want and need, when and how they want and need it. Throughout the pandemic, Mark has been a near-constant presence in our news meetings, often advocating for sharper, more accessible coverage. He has been a valued and creative leader in establishing and deploying our Live Updates Files and in the creation of the London and Seoul hubs, coordinating with Foreign on handoffs and other ways of managing coverage across the 24-hour cycle.
Please join us in congratulating our three new DMEs. They’ll start Jan. 31. | null | null | null | null | null |
Huntsville, Alabama saw record warmth and a tornado on Saturday. It snowed there Sunday.
A pedestrian runs along Carrleigh Parkway as snow falls on Monday in Springfield, VA (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Winter storm warnings stretch from Alabama to New Jersey, while areas in the Southeastern U.S. are likely to see strong winds and a chance of tornadoes. Half a million were without power at sunrise Monday due to strong winds.
Heavy snow was falling at midnight in Birmingham, Alabama, with thundersnow reported northeast of Tuscaloosa in western parts of the state. Light rain broke out after midnight farther to the northeast in the nation’s capital, but that quickly switched to snow as cold air spilled south into the deepening, or intensifying, low pressure system.
Many are regarding the parent storm as a sneak-attack system, the disturbance confounding weather models tasked with simulating its impacts. Only on Sunday did the scope and magnitude of the storm’s true impacts begin to come into focus; last week, it was hardly a blip to be concerned about.
Parts of the Mid South in northern Alabama and the Cumberland Plateau of eastern Tennessee, as well as western North Carolina, picked up 2 to 4 inches in the lowlands and as much as 8 inches in the higher elevations. Huntsville saw snow barely 28 hours after being under a tornado watch, with at least one twister striking near the city’s airport. They hit a record high of 79 degrees on Saturday.
Data suggested a strip of mid-level frontogenesis, or the formation of a cold front several thousand feet up in the atmosphere, draped from the Carolina Piedmont to southern parts of the Delmarva Peninsula. A conveyor belt of warm air forced up atop that encroaching lip of cold will result in enhanced upward motion and high snowfall rates.
Up to 8 inches of snow is expected in southwest Virginia when all is said and done, with a plowable snow of a half foot, give or take, between Richmond and Washington D.C. The Delmarva Peninsula could be a jackpot zone as well. Baltimore and Philadelphia were predicted to be on the fringe of the heaviest snows, with winter weather advisories in effect and a couple inches possible. Temperatures Monday are slated to be up to 30 degrees cooler than on Sunday, when D.C.
Snow will exit the Mid-Atlantic west to east during the afternoon, ending in Washington D.C. after lunch and Richmond by 2 or 3 p.m. By this evening, only the eastern tip of Long Island and perhaps Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket will see flakes flying.
A tornado watch was issued for northeastern parts of South Carolina and eastern North Carolina until 11 a.m. Eastern time, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center hoisting a level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” of severe weather. Damaging winds and a few tornadoes were expected as a squall line of rotating thunderstorms pushes east.
Most should move offshore of the Outer Banks by noontime or 1 p.m., with a break in the precipitation inside the storm’s “dry slot.” Temperatures will quickly cool, followed by a round of snow squalls and chilly winds gusting upward of 40 mph. At least 100,000 people were without power at 6 a.m. in western North Carolina as the winds began to kick up. Charleston International Airport gusted to 62 mph.
Chilly air swirling southeast behind the system could be the coldest in years in the Mid-Atlantic. Washington D.C. is expected to dip to 20 degrees Monday night, the coldest since January 31, 2019. Temperatures didn’t fall below 22 degrees in 2020, and 24 in 2021.
Raleigh, N.C. is predicted to make it to 23 degrees Monday night, and Baltimore will likely wind up around 19 degrees. Even far removed from any storminess, the storm’s broader circulation is playing a role in yanking down a frigid Canadian air mass. Even New Orleans and Houston are under freeze warnings. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kristen Santos, second from right, competes in the women's 1,000-meter during the U.S. Olympic short-track speedskating trials Dec. 19, 2021, in Kearns, Utah. (Rick Bowmer/Associated Press)
No spectators will be able to watch a U.S. Olympic Team Trials event scheduled for this week, a change that comes as the hyper-contagious omicron variant continues to spread across the nation.
Ahead of U.S. speedskating long-track trials this week, Executive Director Randy Dean of the Pettit National Ice Center announced spectators would not be allowed at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials event in Milwaukee. The decision was made by the US Speedskating Board of Directors following an emergency meeting and was “based upon early results from its testing of athletes and the high COVID infection rates in Milwaukee,” Dean said in an email to ticket holders on Sunday. The event is scheduled for January 5-9.
The change will affect only U.S. speedskating long track trials, Kevin Butler, a spokesman for the Pettit Center confirmed to The Washington Post. No other trials were planned for the center.
US Speedskating did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Beijing Olympics are set to begin with the Opening Ceremonies on Feb. 4. The winter games will operate in a bubble, meaning individuals involved will not be able to exit the network of Olympics venues once they have arrived. Those entering the bubble will need to be fully vaccinated.
The United States was averaging more than 400,000 new cases a day as of Monday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post, and health experts have warned the country could soon face as many as 1 million cases a day.
New daily reported cases in the state of Wisconsin have spiked 27 percent in the past week, while covid-related hospitalizations have increased 10 percent, according to data tracked by The Post. In Milwaukee County, there has been a 6 percent rise in daily cases in the last week.
Perspective: The NHL skipping the Olympics makes sense — and is a crying shame
The NHL’s Olympic decision forces new questions about rosters, schedules | null | null | null | null | null |
Climate Solutions with Matt Damon, Sylvia Earle, Jane Goodall, PhD & More
Check out The Washington Post’s Climate Solutions section, in partnership with Rolex, focusing on the individuals working to find answers.
Climate Solutions: One Clean Plate with Felix Brooks-church & Alice Waters
Where and how we get our food has never been more important. As climate change continues to affect global food systems, the call to reduce animal product consumption to decrease emissions is making headlines. Climate change is also increasing malnutrition rates around the world. Efforts to mitigate these challenges include focusing on food sustainability and food system innovations. On Monday, Nov. 8, join Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters and Sanku CEO Felix Brooks-church for a program examining how global efforts to combat malnutrition and local, sustainable agriculture are emerging as key solutions to combat the climate crisis. (The Washington Post)
Climate Solutions: Wildlife Conservation with Jane Goodall, PhD & Paula Kahumbu, PhD
Over the past four decades, we have lost close to 70 percent of global wildlife. The great challenge for humans now is to figure out how to rectify this extinction storm. Experts agree that protecting land and marine animal wildlife offers one of the most substantial solutions to the climate crisis, which remains crucial to the survival of nature and humanity. Iconic conservationist Jane Goodall joins Washington Post Live to discuss opportunities aimed at recovering and protecting endangered species and combating the ongoing consequences of climate change. WildlifeDirect CEO Paula Kahumbu will talk about how her life's work in safeguarding elephants against environmental change and poaching is helping to solve this two-pronged crisis. Join the conversation on Wednesday, Sept. 22 at 10:00am ET. (The Washington Post)
Climate Solutions: A Conversation with Sylvia Earle
With the acceleration of global warming, plastic pollution and destructive fishing practices, the health of the planet’s most important life-giving resource is imperiled. Washington Post Live, in partnership with Rolex, will spotlight the world’s oceans crisis and examine innovative ideas and solutions for keeping our oceans clean and working towards bluer communities around the globe. Join the conversation on Tuesday, June 15 at 10:00am ET with special guest Sylvia Earle, president & chair of Mission Blue. (The Washington Post)
Climate Solutions: Preserving Our Water Systems with Matt Damon, Arun Krishnamurthy & Gary White
With rising temperatures, plastic pollution and carbon emissions in dangerous numbers, leading scientists and advocates examine the impact of climate change on our waterways and water supply, the consequences for humanity and solutions that could turn the tide before it’s too late. Washington Post Live, in partnership with Rolex, will spotlight innovative ideas for expanding access to clean and safe sources of water and conserving this precious resource. Join the conversation on Tuesday, March 23 at 10:00am ET. (The Washington Post)
Climate Solutions: Saving Our Living Planet with Jeff Corwin & David Suzuki
Several animal populations are in danger of extinction. The impact reaches far beyond the potential loss of iconic species like tigers, rhinos, and whales. Animal extinction contributes to the undoing of our planet's sustainability, the balance of biodiversity that affects every living being on Earth. Washington Post Live will share the stories and perspectives of individuals working to protect the lives of endangered animals around the world. We will bring together scientists, conservationists, and wildlife activists who are championing new proposals for protecting the health of our living planet, combating deforestation, and tackling continuing harmful wildlife trades. Join us on Tuesday, March 9 at 10:00am ET. Check out The Washington Post’s Climate Solutions section, in partnership with Rolex, for more content focusing on the individuals working to find answers. (Washington Post Live)
Climate Solutions: Next Generation with Sarah Evans, Karan Jerath & Miranda Wang
Social consciousness around fighting climate change is expanding. Many around the globe are responding to the crisis with new ideas, including a new and galvanized generation of young people, who are calling on everyone to work towards reducing carbon footprints and living more sustainable lives. BioCellection Co-Founder & CEO Miranda Wang joined The Post to discuss how her company is finding new ways to move towards a more sustainable world. (Washington Post Live) | null | null | null | null | null |
Big snow in D.C. region triggers power outages, shuts down Metrobus service, museums
More than 100,000 customers were without power, while the federal government, museums, courthouses and some school districts were closed.
A winter storm on Monday delivers heavy snow to the Capitol. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
A winter storm dumped several inches of snow across the D.C. region Monday, a day after temperatures reached into the 60s, bringing a whiplash of cold weather, triggering power outages and creating dangerous conditions for drivers and pedestrians.
Crews in several jurisdictions treated roads and highways as the snow accumulated and was expected to fall as fast as 1 to 2 inches per hour in some parts, transportation officials said.
By midmorning, the region was covered in heavy, wet snow, leaving many vehicles stuck on roads, bridges and ramps. Traffic along the outer loop of the Capital Beltway near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was stopped around 11 a.m. because the snow had made it impassable, transportation officials said. In Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, the eastbound side of U.S. 50 near Interstate 97 was closed because several tractor trailers jackknifed.
In Maryland and Virginia, many coronavirus testing sites were closed due to the weather conditions. Metrobus suspended its service in the region due to the storm, and by midmorning, power outages swept across the region.
Dominion Energy said roughly 74,000 customers were without power in Northern Virginia, and Pepco said 31,800 of its customers in Maryland and D.C. also had no power. None of the power companies gave estimates as to when service would be restored.
Peggy Fox, a spokeswoman at Dominion Energy, said crews reported multiple trees and poles down throughout Northern Virginia. The biggest problem, she said, is the heavy, wet snow causing trees branches to fall on power lines. Another issue, she said, is that branches are weaker after cicadas lay their eggs on them.
Fox said the company had no estimate as to when power would be restored, and it would be “an all day event at least,” likely going into tomorrow. The good news, she said, is that it’s a one-day storm, and crews are out making repairs as fast as possible, though she cautioned that replacing poles is an intensive process. Experts warned people to stay away from any downed wires.
The federal government closed Monday, and employees are expected to telework. Several school districts in the region, including in the District, are closed and others have delays for the first snowfall of the season.
The National Gallery of Art, National Zoo, Smithsonian museums in D.C., and some courthouses also closed because of the storm.
In Northern Virginia, about 2,000 trucks and snowplows worked to treat roads, according to Ellen Kamilakis, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Transportation.
Virginia State Police said they’d responded to more than 300 crashes by midmorning. Officials said vehicles were stuck as drivers were “going too fast” for the roads’ snowy conditions.
“Stay off the road throughout the height of the snow,” said Kamilakis. “We’re concerned about the rate of visibility. It really is best to stay off the roads, and if you can’t, then allow as much time as you can and go as slow as you can.”
Several roads were closed in Fairfax County due to the snowy conditions. There were reports of several crashes involving tractor trailers, including one along part of Interstate 95 south in Stafford County.
Air Force One had issues when a stair lift couldn’t get through the snow on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, according to reports. President Biden, staff and media were “stuck on board,” according to Bloomberg News reporter Justin Sink.
In the District, officials said more than 100 snowplows were out as of midnight. In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said that enhanced patrols would be on the roadways and that crews were treating bridges and toll areas.
Paulette Jones, an official with Prince George’s County, said crews will clear snow on primary roads in the county, unless they find total white-out conditions and need to temporarily stop.
The winter weather also adds to days of delayed flights at area airports and on Amtrak lines along the East Coast.
Metro’s rail system is running on a limited schedule, and riders should expect delays and increased wait times. Many bus routes in the region are also running on revised schedules.
Forecasters said accumulation will range from 4 to 8 inches in the immediate D.C. area and could be as high as 5 to 10 inches in the southern parts of the region, with the possibility of thundersnow, according to The Post’s Capital Weather Gang.
Experts said the snowfall is expected to end by the late afternoon, as temperatures are forecast to drop to the upper 20s and low 30s.
The winter storm comes as the D.C. region had one of its warmest Decembers.
In the District, public works officials said there are likely to be delays in picking up trash and Christmas trees in the area. Some fire stations in the city had been expected to stay open so residents could get coronavirus testing kits but were closed due to the weather.
Samson Moy, owner of Sweat Shop Fitness in Kensington, Md., said the storm wasn’t great for his business but good for kids to play in the snow as he shoveled.
“We’re staying alive and doing the best we can,” he said.
Jorge Ribas contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The U.S. is vulnerable to cyberattack — ‘layered deterrence’ is the way forward
A cyberattack in May crippled the Colonial Pipeline for days, leading to gas shortages as drivers bought up limited fuel supplies. (Dustin Chambers/For The Washington Post)
Angus King, an independent, is a senator from Maine. Mike Gallagher, a Republican, represents Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District in the House. They are co-chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
The United States is under attack. The battlegrounds couldn’t be more disparate, from our largest military installations and enormous energy-grid operators to the smallest mom-and-pop stores on Main Street and even our individual smartphones. Hackers, other criminals and foreign actors are seeking out any digital vulnerability to disrupt our lives, stall our economy and shut down access to vital information.
The pandemic accelerated an already-in-progress shift to a more digitally focused life. There’s no doubt this connectivity saved lives and kept our economy afloat over the past two years, but it came at a cost: massive, potentially devastating weak points in the systems that power our daily lives.
What happens if those networks are compromised?
Recent attacks have affected our energy sector, slowed our supply chains and damaged government institutions ranging from federal offices to local municipalities. What is the impact on society if power grids and communications systems shut down? What is the impact on the individual if they can no longer work or learn remotely or access sensitive medical documents or their bank account?
These difficult questions are why Congress created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission in 2019 to rethink our national security posture for the digital age. The commission, which we co-chair, is made up of bipartisan congressional leaders, executive branch officials, and experts from private industry, think tanks and research institutions. It met some 50 times to scrutinize the United States’ vulnerabilities in cyberspace and seek solutions. Our conclusion: America is woefully unprepared for the cyberthreats developing around the globe, but we can change that.
As the commission wraps up its scheduled work this month, more than three dozen of its recommendations have been enacted into law. These include the creation of a Senate-confirmed national cyber director to coordinate the federal government’s efforts in cyberspace.
But as we reach the end of our commission’s tenure, we believe there are important, common-sense next steps that can help protect key U.S. networks and the people who rely on them. Our strategy — “layered cyber deterrence” — is rooted in the idea that, rather than a single solution, we need a multipronged approach to both prevent attacks before they’re launched and withstand the attacks that come.
To change our enemies’ calculations, we must first harden our national defenses and resiliency. One major step toward that goal is improving the working relationship between the government and the private sector, which our commission team estimated controls over 80 percent of our threatened networks, including energy systems and financial markets. Although these systems are not under federal control, an attack on them would have a devastating impact on all Americans.
We must bridge the government-private sector gaps by passing legislation that secures our nation’s critical infrastructure and requires companies to report cyber-incidents, so that the federal government can better identify potential risks to national security and help with damage mitigation. Both of these efforts made major progress in terms of building awareness and urgency in Congress this year but ultimately fell short. We must continue to push the ball forward.
Layered cyber deterrence also calls for the United States to shape behaviors in cyberspace by working with partners and allies. The nonmilitary tools at our disposal include law enforcement, sanctions and diplomacy, which can establish clear rules for cyber-engagements and consequences for those who step out of line.
We must also be able to impose costs on those who violate these norms, so our enemies — from nation-states to criminal organizations — know that if they attack us, they will pay an unacceptable price. The best cyberattack is the one that doesn’t occur — and the best way to prevent these attacks is through a clear, unambiguous policy of deterrence.
After years of work, the cyberspace commission is wrapping up, but our members have unfinished business we don’t plan on stepping away from — and we’ll continue our work through legislation and negotiation and pressure when necessary. Just as the United States has defended its interests on land, sea and air, it must recognize that the nation’s interests in a fourth domain — cyberspace — are central to our country’s long-term security and prosperity.
The threat will continue to evolve, but this is a challenge we can and must meet with imagination, determination, cooperation and engagement — from the desktop at the end of the supply chain to the top desk in the Oval Office and every place in between. | null | null | null | null | null |
Huntsville, Ala., had record warmth and a tornado on Saturday. It snowed there Sunday.
A person runs along Carrleigh Parkway as snow falls on Monday in Springfield, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
A rapidly developing and dynamic storm system will bring a slew of meteorological chaos as it lashes the East Coast on Monday, yielding hefty snow totals for some along the Interstate 95 corridor and a dose of severe weather in the Carolinas.
Winter storm warnings stretch from Alabama to New Jersey, while areas in the Southeastern United States are likely to see strong winds and a chance of tornadoes. About half a million customers were without power at sunrise Monday in the Southeast due to strong winds.
Heavy snow was falling at midnight in Birmingham, Ala., with thundersnow reported northeast of Tuscaloosa in western parts of the state. Light rain broke out after midnight farther to the northeast in the nation’s capital, but that quickly switched to snow as cold air spilled south into the deepening, or intensifying, low pressure system.
Many are regarding the parent storm as a sneak-attack system, with the disturbance confounding weather models tasked with simulating its impacts. Only on Sunday did the scope and magnitude of the storm’s true impacts begin to come into focus; last week, it was hardly a blip to be concerned about.
A surface low over the southeastern United States will shift northeast over the Carolinas and intensify, energized by a mid-level shortwave, or dip in the jet stream filled with cold air, low pressure and spin, approaching from the west. The counterclockwise-rotating low will drag a tongue of warm, moist air northward on its eastern flank, with a cold air mass crashing south behind the storm.
Parts of the Mid-South in northern Alabama and the Cumberland Plateau of eastern Tennessee, as well as western North Carolina, picked up 2 to 4 inches in the lowlands and as much as eight inches in the higher elevations. Huntsville saw snow barely 28 hours after being under a tornado watch, with at least one twister striking near the city’s airport. It hit a record high of 79 degrees on Saturday.
Up to eight inches of snow is expected in southwest Virginia when all is said and done, with a plowable snow of a half-foot, give or take, between Richmond and Washington. The Delmarva Peninsula could be a jackpot zone as well. Baltimore and Philadelphia were predicted to be on the fringe of the heaviest snows, with winter weather advisories in effect and a couple inches possible. Temperatures Monday are slated to be up to 30 degrees cooler than on Sunday.
Multiple flashes of thundersnow were reported in Carvers Gap, N.C., on the Tennessee border, about 5 a.m.
Snow will leave the Mid-Atlantic region west to east during the afternoon, ending in D.C. after lunch and Richmond by 2 or 3 p.m. By Monday evening, only the eastern tip of Long Island and perhaps Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket will see flakes flying.
A tornado watch was issued for northeastern parts of South Carolina and eastern North Carolina until 11 a.m. Eastern time, with the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center hoisting a Level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” of severe weather. Damaging winds and a few tornadoes were expected as a squall line of rotating thunderstorms pushes east.
Most should move offshore of the Outer Banks by noon or 1 p.m., with a break in the precipitation inside the storm’s “dry slot.” Temperatures will quickly cool, followed by a round of snow squalls and chilly winds gusting upward of 40 mph. At least 100,000 people were without power at 6 a.m. in western North Carolina as the winds began to kick up. Charleston International Airport gusted to 62 mph.
Chilly air swirling southeast behind the system could be the coldest in years in the Mid-Atlantic. Washington is expected to dip to 20 degrees Monday night, the coldest since Jan. 31, 2019. Temperatures didn’t fall below 22 degrees in 2020, and 24 degrees in 2021.
Raleigh, N.C., is predicted to make it to 23 degrees Monday night, and Baltimore is likely to wind up around 19 degrees. Even far removed from any storminess, the storm’s broader circulation is playing a role in yanking down a frigid Canadian air mass. Even New Orleans and Houston are under freeze warnings. | null | null | null | null | null |
Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan made three-pointers at the buzzer to win two straight games. (Nick Wass/AP)
DeMar DeRozan doubled the fireworks over the New Year’s weekend, lifting the Chicago Bulls to the top of the Eastern Conference standings with a pair of buzzer-beating game-winners.
On Friday, the 32-year-old forward closed out 2021 by walking into a casual one-legged pull-up three-pointer over Torrey Craig for a 108-106 road victory over the Indiana Pacers. In Washington against the Wizards on Saturday, DeRozan collected an inbounds pass and deftly used an escape dribble to clear two defenders for a double-pump corner three-pointer that sealed a 120-119 win.
“I don’t know if I’m dreaming [or] if it’s real right now,” DeRozan said after the win over Washington, which moved the Bulls (24-10) past the Brooklyn Nets (23-11) into the East’s top seed.
The four-time all-star’s seamless integration in Chicago and his stellar run since being sidelined by the NBA’s coronavirus protocols in December have given the Bulls their most promising playoff outlook in a decade and delivered a badly needed dose of hope to a league still grappling with the omicron wave.
Don’t be fooled by DeRozan’s game-winners, which trended on social media and generated some MVP chatter. Those two daggers were the only three-pointers he made while scoring a combined 56 points in 70 total minutes against the Pacers and Wizards. Indeed, DeRozan has positioned himself as a surefire all-star selection and a fringe MVP candidate by sticking to his bread-and-butter scoring combination, leading the league in two-pointers and making the second-most free throws. He’s the same midrange master cutting against the grain of the NBA’s three-point revolution.
The 13-year veteran is enjoying a flame-throwing run, shooting a career-best 54 percent on midrange attempts and 44 percent on long twos while averaging 26.8 points per game, good for sixth in the NBA. In the final five minutes of games that are within five points, DeRozan is shooting 56 percent from the field, trailing only Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid in clutch scoring. Unlike other stars who have struggled to adjust to the NBA’s “non-basketball move” rule changes, DeRozan has plugged along just fine with his well-honed and gimmick-free game.
Bulls Coach Billy Donovan has set up DeRozan for success by deploying him as an undersized power forward in small ball lineups. Loading up with perimeter players has given Chicago a relentless, athletic identity and eased the spacing concerns created by DeRozan’s lack of outside shooting. Chicago’s offensive efficiency has improved from 21st last year to fourth this season, as DeRozan and Zach LaVine have defied preseason fears that they would clash or be redundant.
LaVine, who is potentially in line for a max contract this summer, has bought into a vision that could see him make the playoffs for the first time in his eight-year career. Meanwhile, Nikola Vucevic, acquired from the Orlando Magic at last year’s trade deadline, has sacrificed significantly when it comes to shots and usage in Chicago’s new and much more potent alignment. The 31-year-old center has appeared in just two playoff wins during his 11-year career, making this his best chance yet to play meaningful basketball after a decade in anonymity.
“Thank God we have DeMar DeRozan on our team,” LaVine said Saturday. “[This season] is the best feeling I’ve had. … The chemistry came really, really fast. Really easy. We don’t have any egos.”
While the Bulls have been rolling since October, when they opened the season with four straight victories, their post-Christmas work is noteworthy because they were one of the first teams beset by a serious outbreak during the omicron wave. DeRozan and LaVine were among the players placed in the health protocols in December, and the NBA was forced to postpone three of Chicago’s games because they didn’t have enough healthy and available bodies. Since DeRozan cleared protocols for his Dec. 19 return, Chicago is 7-0 with three double-digit victories. In other words, the Bulls’ outbreak now looks more like a bump in the road rather than a season-altering catastrophe.
That’s an encouraging indicator for other teams dealing with outbreaks during a dizzying stretch of positive tests and replacement call-ups, adding credence to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s recent statement that vaccinated players who test positive for the omicron variant have suffered relatively minor symptoms and have cleared the virus from their bodies more quickly. With the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association recently agreeing to shorten the standard isolation period from 10 days to as little as five days, basketball’s messy and exasperating December could give way to a steadier and more credible product as January unfolds.
Clearly, 2022 has opened with good cheer and swelling expectations for the Bulls, who haven’t won a title since Michael Jordan’s “Last Dance” in 1998 and haven’t reached the Eastern Conference finals since 2011. Skeptics will want to see DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic prove it in the playoffs, but optimists might point to the 2020 Heat as a relevant comparison point for the untested Bulls.
Like Jimmy Butler two years ago, DeRozan swept into town and immediately brought an offensive pop while helping to establish a no-excuses, team-first culture that is essential to consistent winning during a pandemic. Just as the 2020 Heat were cast as underdogs for much of their surprise run to the Finals, the Bulls will face serious doubts in potential playoff matchups against the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks. Unlike Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo, DeRozan has consistently hit the wall in the postseason, where he has shot just 42 percent overall and 23 percent on three-pointers and been outclassed by A-listers like LeBron James and Nikola Jokic.
DeRozan knows that painful history better than anyone. After repeated playoff failures with the Toronto Raptors, he was traded to the San Antonio Spurs for Kawhi Leonard, who promptly delivered the 2019 title to Canada. The castoff DeRozan languished during his three years in San Antonio, unable to earn an all-star nod or win a playoff series.
“People were saying I was washed for the last two years,” DeRozan said in November, charting an early course for his transformative season. “The narrative that I wouldn’t fit. I could find all types of chips I use as my motivation. The hours I put in during the offseason. I can go down the list. Being counted out. Being looked over. So many chips on my shoulder. I just want to be a winner.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Violent rioters loyal to then-President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP)
What makes someone think that the 2020 election was stolen? Part of it, obviously, is that a former president of the United States has insisted it was for more than a year. Part of it, too, is that his claims are elevated by a galaxy of people and organizations eager to siphon off some of the attention that he generates. And part of it is that accepting or tolerating Donald Trump’s assertions about voter fraud are increasingly part of what it means to be a Republican in the United States.
Last year, I spoke with Rachel Blum, a political scientist at the University of Oklahoma who described how issues become part of a partisan package.
“Ideology, and then parties as purveyors of ideology, serve this really important role as bundlers or packagers of issue positions,” Blum said. “And once somebody decides, either via one issue or via a candidate or whatnot, that the Republican Party is the party for them, they will then seek information that is from friendly sources, whoever they see that as, and they will be receptive to information that confirms these biases. They will also sample information that confirms these biases, and then will implicitly pick up on the rest of the packaging.”
In other words, speaking specifically about this fraud question, if the party is saying that this happened, members of the party would be expected to look for confirmation of the idea. And many have clearly found it in the coverage provided by Fox News.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post released new polling data, conducted in partnership with the University of Maryland, that looks at how Americans view the violence that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year. What we found was a deep partisan split on the causes of the riot, on culpability and on fraud, the justification used by many of the rioters. But we also asked respondents where they got their news, allowing us to see how Republicans — generally receptive to Trump’s false framing of the 2020 election results — might differ in both news sourcing and in beliefs.
Consider, for example, the question of how those who entered the building on that day behaved. Most Americans describe the rioters as “mostly violent,” though Republicans are more likely to say that they were “mostly peaceful.” If we break out those Republicans into those who do or don’t get their news from either Fox News or Fox’s website, we see a significant difference: Fox News Republicans are 15 points more likely to say the rioters were “mostly peaceful” and non-Fox News Republicans 16 points more likely to say they were “mostly violent.”
One of the ways in which Trump’s allies have sought to redirect concern over the violence that day has been to insist that those detained for their roles have been treated unfairly by the justice system. Here, too, our poll found a significant difference: Fox News-consuming Republicans were 15 points more likely to say that the legal punishments faced by accused rioters have been too harsh.
We will note an important caveat here: This correlation doesn’t prove that Fox News viewership caused these Republicans to hold this position. It may be the case that Republicans who choose not to watch Fox News are also ones less likely to adhere to the sorts of rhetoric that Trump and his allies promote. But it is also the case that, particularly on this issue, Fox News has actively promoted the idea more commonly held by Fox News viewers. Host Tucker Carlson, for example, has repeatedly hosted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to make claims about how those accused of participating in the riot are being unfairly treated.
As we reported Monday morning, most Republicans say that Trump bears little to no blame for what happened at the Capitol that day. Fox News Republicans are 18 points more likely than non-Fox Republicans to say that Trump bears no blame at all.
Fox News Republicans are also much more likely to say that President Biden’s election was illegitimate — which it wasn’t — than are Republicans who don’t watch Fox News. There’s a gap of more than 20 points between the views expressed by those two groups.
Notice that even Republicans who don’t use Fox as a news source are about split on this question, so it’s not as though it’s a group that generally aligns with the overall national sentiment on the question. But even in this pool of people that’s generally more receptive to false assertions about Biden’s legitimacy, they’re much less conspiratorial than the Republicans for whom Fox News is a news source.
And, getting back to the original point: That also holds true for assertions about there being evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
Again, there is no solid evidence of significant fraud in that election. Yet two-thirds of Republicans who use Fox News as a source of information think there was — a bit of data that at the very least would prove that Fox does a poor job of informing its audience, if we could be confident that Fox spent a lot of energy trying to disprove these rumors, which it doesn’t.
As a corollary, Fox News Republicans are also less confident than Republicans overall and than non-Fox-watching Republicans to think that votes in this year’s midterm elections will be counted accurately.
It is again important to differentiate between Fox News Republicans who accept these false claims because they watch Fox News and those who accept the false claims and watch Fox News.
But if my job were to accurately inform the public (which it is) and members of my audience repeatedly demonstrated a disproportionate acceptance of clearly false theories and assertions, I might not take much comfort in the fact that they may simply be seeing my outlet as one worth relying on for information, even if I’m not why they believe those false theories in the first place. | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. Capitol Police officers stand guard Sept. 27 on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A year later, the House of Representatives can still look like a crime scene some days.
Five metal detectors ring the outer doors to prevent weapons from getting onto the chamber floor, including one that stands just a few feet from where a Capitol Police officer shot and killed a Jan. 6 rioter trying to crawl through a door just off the House floor.
But the detectors aren’t there to deter armed insurrectionists. Instead, those detectors are there to prevent lawmakers or their staff from trying to commit violence against each other.
Trust in one another, whether to clinch a critical legislative deal or to protect each other from violence, seems to be at an all-time low one year after the pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol with both Democrats and Republicans in their crosshairs.
The Democratic majority, which ordered that the metal detectors be put in place a few days after the attack, grew so frightened of some GOP colleagues that they stripped two of their committee posts after learning of violent social media comments directed at high-profile Democrats. A third is awaiting a possible similar punishment.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. We never were threatened with people who carry guns and had to set up machines by which to detect whether or not we were armed,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a 31-year veteran of Congress, standing next to one of the detectors.
“This is — it’s kind of scary.”
Republicans, rather than reining in their most controversial members, have dug in with their support for them and now accuse Democrats of a massive overreaction to the threats against the Capitol.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who voted to certify Joe Biden’s win and supported an independent commission to investigate Jan. 6, accused Democrats of painting every Republican with an overly broad brush and stoking fear that any lawmaker actually wants to commit violence. And Davis contends that Democrats overlooked their own poor actions — Waters encouraged protesters to get “more confrontational” if a Minneapolis jury acquitted a police officer last April — while only punishing Republicans.
“They manufactured a false narrative about Republican members being a threat to Democrat members and passed a rule requiring members to go through magnetometers or face fines. In practice only Republican members have been fined,” Davis said during a Dec. 17 hearing of the House Administration Committee.
But fear, and the trauma from last year’s attack, continue throughout the Capitol. Some lawmakers and staff continue to receive help from counselors to deal with post-traumatic stress. Shouting matches are common occurrences, with the potential for actual physical confrontation lingering.
Interviews with more than 20 members, including Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, revealed a Congress that remains on edge and where worries about more violence are front of mind for many — and for good reason.
Threats against lawmakers are at an all-time high, with 9,600 being recorded in 2021, according to U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger, continuing an alarming trend. In 2017, there were fewer than 4,000 threats against lawmakers, a number that rose to more than 8,600 threats in 2020.
The raw feelings are most evident in the House. A handful of House Democrats, for instance, are a year into a protest in which they vote against any legislation whose main sponsor is a Republican who opposed certifying President Biden’s election, even noncontroversial matters such as naming post offices.
The tension is less palatable in the Senate, a traditionally more chummy place, where Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of the highest-profile objectors to Biden’s election, believes he just had his most bipartisan year ever.
But the anger is still there. A pair of the most bipartisan Democrats, Sens. Christopher A. Coons (Del.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), said they cannot forget that day. Coons went more than six months without saying a single word to the eight Senate Republicans who voted against signing off on Biden’s clear victory, and Klobuchar said she thinks about their Jan. 6 votes “every time I see them or work with them.”
Some lawmakers sense the tensions easing a bit.
In the days following the Jan. 6 attack, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) questioned whether the rioters had inside information because they found his somewhat hidden office on the third floor of the Capitol.
But in recent weeks, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress felt a shift in tone. Rank-and-file Republicans, who months ago would have ignored him, have been greeting him with a smile, calling him “Mr. Whip,” and acting differently from the GOP leadership team’s lock-step march with former president Donald Trump.
“I see a lot of Republicans who are not in that mix, whose interactions with those of us on the other side of the aisle have improved significantly in recent years, and it’s much better,” Clyburn told The Washington Post.
“I have seen that in the last four, six to eight weeks, while at the same time you see Kevin McCarthy acting like a dunce,” he added, referring to the House minority leader.
Some Democrats are less worried about the state of current tensions than the future, viewing last January’s attack as an opening salvo by Trump and his supporters that laid the groundwork for bigger clashes to come.
“There’s a great alarm about how they will behave after the 2024 presidential election,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said.
Democrats’ anger
Democrats generally fall into two categories when it comes to their level of anger about the attack: those who still have trauma about the events and fear that something similar might happen again, and those who simply cannot believe that the Trump-inspired attack has not dampened his support among Republicans.
Many Democrats have directed their ire over the GOP’s continued embrace of Trump at McCarthy (R-Calif.), who in the hours and days afterward blamed the then-president for encouraging his supporters to go to the Capitol. A week later, as the House voted to impeach Trump, McCarthy even offered a censure resolution blaming Trump instead of a full impeachment, because his presidency had only seven days remaining.
But with an eye on the 2022 midterm elections, McCarthy soon did an about-face and abandoned his criticism of Trump and began courting his support when it became clear the former president remained overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters despite his role in the attack.
That move radicalized some of the most centrist Democrats, the type who usually brag about their bipartisan credentials, and hardened them toward their Republican colleagues.
“I don’t know what’s going to kind of wake us from this slumber. It’s hard to square. The division within our own caucus is one thing, but what’s happening to the Republican Party, I mean, it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.,” said Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), a leading figure among the centrist New Democrat Coalition.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) expressed disbelief that some of the Republicans who faced the greatest threats on Jan. 6 still fall in line behind Trump.
“Greg Pence didn’t vote to throw out Arizona but he did with Pennsylvania, after we learned that they wanted to hang his brother,” Casten recalled in a recent interview, noting that the Republican congressman from Indiana, brother of then-Vice President Mike Pence, voted with Trump after spending hours in hiding with the vice president and the Secret Service.
A few weeks after the attack, Casten informed Democratic leaders that he would force votes on noncontroversial bills that usually get approved without a roll call, if the sponsor was one of the 139 Republicans who voted to oppose Biden’s win in Arizona or Pennsylvania. He has been joined over and over by Waters and Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) and Sylvia Garcia (D-Tex.).
If no one else objects, they will. On Dec. 8, for instance, those five joined with 15 of the most conservative, pro-Trump Republicans to vote against the Improving the Health of Children Act that would help prevent childhood birth defects.
The bill’s author, Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.), voted against Biden on both Jan. 6 votes.
Democrats have grown most concerned about a group of fairly new Republicans who focus on being provocateurs and promoting Trump rather than any legislative agenda. Several of them, including Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), have highlighted weapons in social media posts and made public statements that Democrats said have made them fearful.
Waters, 83, said she thinks the metal detectors might not be enough of a security measure. “I’ve been thinking about if someone got in a heated argument on the floor, someone could run out and run through here with their gun and shoot somebody. I really think about that,” she said.
Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, believes that Democrats have consistently overstated security concerns in and around the Capitol, creating a culture of fear on that end of the building while the Senate continues to function in a more normal fashion.
He points to the cancellation of the House legislative session on March 4, a day when pro-Trump conspiratorialists had been predicting he would be reinstated as president, the original date of inaugurations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) shuttered her chamber after a concerning bit of intelligence.
On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate stayed in session — even calling in Vice President Harris to cast a tiebreaking vote for Democrats.
Obviously, Davis said, the threat wasn’t that dangerous; otherwise, Harris would not have been allowed anywhere near the building.
Davis summed up his views of House Democrats in a few words: “We can’t live in fear.”
But some Republicans have warned the increase in threats against lawmakers are worrisome and should not be ignored, noting they are coming from all over the nation and are reported to a Capitol Police force that is unable to conduct far-flung investigations or protect lawmakers when they travel to their home districts.
“We are confronted with a concerning, and frankly dangerous, security posture when we consider these numbers relative to the limited resources available,” Rep. John Katko (N.Y.), the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said at a Dec. 17 hearing.
A handful of Democrats, to advance policies they say will help the country, have put aside their anger to work with Republicans who are most supportive of Trump and dismissive of the attack.
One of the leading liberals, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), has not let Jan. 6 get in the way of his strange-bedfellows coalition, working with Trump’s biggest backers in the House on reining in the Pentagon’s powers.
It sometimes means he is working hand in hand with Republicans who were more than passive supporters of the effort to overturn the election.
“I will not let the legacy of Donald Trump dictate the efforts to pass legislation or move forward for the American public,” Khana said in an interview, explaining how he can “disagree vehemently on the election of 2020” with these lawmakers yet still work with them. “I mean, John Lewis worked with people who did much worse,” he said, referring to the civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia who died in 2020.
A less tense Senate
Coons also had a John Lewis moment, back in the summer as he prepared remarks for one of the bipartisan prayer breakfasts he co-chairs, thinking about how Lewis forgave people who assaulted him during his days as a civil rights activist.
The next morning, as he looked into the audience, Coons saw several senators he had not spoken to since they cast votes against Biden’s election and thought he needed to find a way to deal with his anger toward them.
“If I want to hold up John Lewis as a role model,” Coons said in an interview, “this guy didn’t beat me over the head, but he cast a vote to invalidate Biden’s election. I’m mad, I’m really mad, and I’m still mad, but I have to start.”
One of his best friends in the Senate, James Lankford (R-Okla.), is the other co-chairman of the prayer breakfast, and the duo run the Ethics Committee, a highly sensitive job traditionally given to two of the most trusted senators.
But on Jan. 6, Lankford stood with those objecting to Biden’s victory, ready to support challenges to six states’ electoral count, enough to deny him the 270 votes needed to be certified as the winner. Lankford was speaking that day when Pence was evacuated from the Senate and the proceedings stopped, as rioters stomped outside the chamber doors.
During the five-hour delay to secure the Capitol, Lankford and a few other Republicans withdrew their support for challenging the election, while the others agreed to limit the objections to just Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Only eight Senate Republicans voted against Biden on either of those votes, a small amount compared with the two-thirds of House Republicans who opposed Biden. Lankford believes that by only challenging the two states, every Senate Republican certified Biden’s victory, because even if Arizona and Pennsylvania’s results were not accepted, he still had more than 270 votes, enough to win.
“At the end of the day all 100 senators all certified the election. Every one of them. Because you have to challenge enough states that day to be able to challenge the election,” Lankford said.
That approach infuriates many Democrats, who view any vote against those two states as supporting Trump and his insurrectionists. “Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night,” Casten said of Lankford’s logic.
But Klobuchar found the actions by Lankford and those few other Republicans to be courageous, switching sides when they realized how out of control things got in the Capitol.
“They could not stomach being on the side of an insurrection. And that actually brings me great solace,” she said.
That tone in the Senate — with Pence delivering a very bipartisan speech at the start of the evening session after the riot, followed immediately by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — set a foundation that led to fewer enduring grudges.
“I would say it’s been our, I think, maybe our most productive year in working across the aisle,” said Hawley, one of the lead objectors to Biden’s election. He has not felt ostracized, joining Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on legislation to force the military to better investigate sexual assaults and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) on cybersecurity.
“It’s been a pretty productive year that way, bipartisan,” Hawley said.
Republicans who completely turned on Trump — 10 voted to impeach in the House, seven voted to convict in the Senate trial — have faced the most isolation.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of the seven, lost friends and supporters back home, but also found deeper bonds. “People who no longer take a phone call. People whom you formerly had lunch with, who frankly don’t want to have lunch with you anymore. But there’s other people who kind of seek you out. And one Republican put a yellow ribbon around my tree right afterward,” Cassidy said.
He spent the spring and summer working with a bipartisan group that wrote an infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law. Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), a staunch conservative who voted to impeach Trump, said he’s considering working with the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of centrist lawmakers not typically from the South.
“I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said.
There is one issue related to Jan. 6 on which lawmakers in both parties have recently found common ground: beefing up their own security in the event of another attack.
On Dec. 22, Biden signed into law the Capitol Police Emergency Assistance Act. It allows for the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police to call for assistance from the D.C. National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies without first seeking approval from the four-person police oversight board.
Delays in getting Guard troops to the Capitol surfaced quickly as a key lapse that helped lead to that day turning more deadly, including confusion about the Capitol Police Board’s process for requesting help.
The measured passed the Senate on Dec. 13 by unanimous consent, sending it to the House for consideration the next day.
No one even asked for a recorded vote, and it won unanimous approval.
“Every minute counts during an emergency,” Klobuchar said in a statement.
Rhonda Colvin contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The Jan. 6 committee must consider Trump’s criminal liability
Members of the Jan. 6 House select committee deliver remarks on Dec. 1 about their probe into the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The Jan. 6 House select committee appears to be assembling a powerful case that, as president, Donald Trump conducted a months-long effort to overturn the 2020 election results and, ultimately, instigated an assault on the U.S. Capitol to try to block the electoral vote count. Both the Democratic chairman and the Republican vice chair have indicated this could constitute criminal activity.
According to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee vice chair, Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” “there are a number of … potential criminal statutes at issue here.” She previously has hinted at obstruction of Congress as a possible charge.
The facts might also meet the four corners of the federal anti-sedition statute, which covers those who would “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” Conviction under this statute, however, requires proof Trump intended the violent mob to achieve what his previous machinations (e.g., strong-arming the Georgia secretary of state, cajoling the Justice Department) did not. That is where Cheney seems to be going when she says Trump acted to “provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes.”
Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) appears to be in general agreement. Also appearing on ABC, he noted that “what people saw on January 6 with their own eyes was not just something created at one moment. It was clearly … based on the information we have been able to gather, a coordinated activity on the part of a lot of people.” He’s describing a conspiracy to overthrow the election, to prevent Congress from fulfilling its obligation and to block the people’s selected choice from assuming the presidency. Thompson continued in this exchange:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: What more can you do besides issue a report? How do you hold those responsible accountable?
THOMPSON: Well, that’s really up to the Department of Justice. Our charge is to get to the facts and circumstances of what occurred on January 6. We will do that. In addition to that, we will make some recommendations in terms of legislation to hopefully, if adopted, this will never, ever happen again. …
STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, sir, several legal experts have suggested it would be counterproductive for your committee to make criminal referrals. Is that still on the table?
THOMPSON: Well, to be honest with you … we all take an oath of office, and part of that is in the pursuit of doing our day-to-day activities. If we find something that is irregular or illegal, we’re obligated to report it. … We’re not looking for it, but if we find it, we’ll absolutely make the referral.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Thompson picked up again on the obligation to make a referral to the Justice Department to prosecute: “It’s highly unusual for anyone in charge of anything to watch what’s going on and do nothing.”
Ultimately, the decision to prosecute is up to the executive branch, but from a practical perspective, it matters greatly whether Congress believes criminal activity has occurred. The public will want to know: Was this a crime? Observers are unlikely to be satisfied if the committee offers no official opinion. And if the committee refuses to make a referral where the facts and law indicate criminal liability, its silence would be interpreted as exoneration or at the very least a plea not to prosecute.
A consensus among Republicans and Democrats on the committee reached independently of the executive branch also would serve to reassure voters that any subsequent prosecution by Biden’s Justice Department would not be political but based on accumulated facts and a reasonable application of the law. And conversely, it would go a long way toward forcing the Justice Department to justify a decision not to prosecute: If a bipartisan committee thinks there was a crime, why doesn’t the attorney general?
Congress is not obliged to make a referral, and if it doesn’t, the Justice Department technically remains free to prosecute. However, the Jan. 6 committee’s task is to forge historical, moral and legal certainty about the 2020 coup. It therefore would behoove the committee to tell us whether, in the view of the lawmakers who have conducted the most comprehensive review to date, the former president not only violated his oath but committed a serious felony. Frankly, it would be absurd for the committee in such circumstances to be silent on Trump’s criminal culpability. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Crowds enter the convention center on the first day of the CES tech show ,Jan. 7, 2020, in Las Vegas. A long-simmering question in the tech world will finally get its answer as the influential gadget show returns to the Las Vegas Strip after a hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The sprawling exhibition floors open Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2021 as the spread of COVID-19’s omicron variant has heightened concerns about the safety of indoor events and international travel. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
A traveler passes under a row of departure boards at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. (Bloomberg)
By Naomi Kresge and Charlotte Ryan | Bloomberg
The coronavirus also can be transmitted via smaller particles that people emit from their noses and mouths. Known as aerosols, they can float through the air and be inhaled. The airline industry says modern aircraft ventilation should mitigate the risk of this sort of spread. The air on a plane is generally a 50-50 mix of sterile outside air and recirculated cabin air that’s been filtered. Airbus SE and Boeing Co., the world’s two biggest planemakers, say that since the 1980s they have been fitting their aircraft with HEPA filters, which capture particles as small as the virus. Some older aircraft, however, use less efficient filters. Cabin airflow goes from ceiling to floor rather than front to back and is split into sections, which should limit the movement of particles along the length of the plane. Even so, modeling suggests this airflow can be influenced by factors such as seat and cabin layout and how full the aircraft is. Also, these ventilation systems may not be fully operational when planes are parked at the gate; an influenza outbreak in 1979 resulted from passengers being kept on board a grounded aircraft with the ventilation turned off. Some airlines say they are now keeping the systems turned on until everyone exits the aircraft.
• Get vaccinated: Full vaccination against Covid, plus a booster shot, if available, offers the best protection against the virus in any setting.
• Mask up: Public health specialists increasingly have urged people to wear medical-grade masks, preferably the tight-fitting type known as respirators but at least surgical masks, rather than cloth ones. If it’s necessary to remove a mask to eat or drink, some researchers suggest waiting until those nearby have already done so and have replaced their face coverings. In a study published in March, researchers estimated that taking off a mask for an hour-long meal service on a 12-hour flight increases the average probability of infection by as much as 59%, compared to masking continuously. Authors of an article in the Journal of Travel Medicine recommended that passengers keep their masks on in the lavatory.
• Keep your distance: As much as possible, it’s important to maintain a distance from other people and to avoid face-to-face contact especially. A study published in Germany in mid-2020 concluded that passengers could reduce contact with one another, and thus the potential for spreading the virus, by bringing fewer and smaller bags on board.
• Don’t relax your guard: Navigating the airport also requires vigilance as travelers wait in queues, check in for flights, visit food vendors and use bathrooms. | null | null | null | null | null |
Schools, government offices close as storm dumps snow
DOVER, Del. — Schools and government offices in central and southern Delaware were closed Monday as the winter storm dumped several inches of snow on the mid-Atlantic region.
State courts also were closed in all three Delaware counties, although the brunt of the storm was being felt in central Kent and southern Sussex counties. Delmarva Power reported about 1,000 customers without power in Sussex County as of late Monday morning, and a similar amount on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, mostly in Queen Anne’s, Talbot and Dorchester counties.
The Delaware Electric Cooperative, which serves mostly rural areas in Kent and Sussex counties, reported about 440 customers without power.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning in effect through 4 p.m. for Delaware and much of the Eastern Shore and southern New Jersey, with expected snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches.
More than half a foot of snow had already fallen in parts of Delaware by midday, with 7.2 inches in Woodside and 6.8 inches in both Dover and Harrington, according to the Delaware Environmental Observing System, based at the University of Delaware. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: While victims of Jeffrey Epstein finally get justice, questions remain
An undated photo shows Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Epstein’s airplane. The photo was entered into evidence by the U.S. attorney’s office on Dec. 7 during Maxwell’s trial. (Reuters)
“Who would believe them?” That question was posed by a federal prosecutor in the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. “The defendant never thought that those teenage girls would have the strength to report what happened. . . . And if they did, who would believe them?” In fact, the accounts of those vulnerable girls, now grown up, were believed by the jury which convicted Ms. Maxwell of helping disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein operate a years-long sex ring. The verdict should serve as a warning to other sexual predators and, hopefully, will encourage other victims of sex trafficking to come forward.
After six days of deliberation, a federal jury in Manhattan this past week found Ms. Maxwell, 60, guilty of charges she facilitated the sexual abuse of minor girls by her longtime millionaire companion. Epstein killed himself in a federal detention facility two years ago while awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges. Attorneys for Ms. Maxwell, who said they will appeal, sought to separate her from Epstein. They argued that prosecutors scapegoated her for Epstein’s crimes. Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers also attacked the credibility and motivations of the women who testified.
The evidence presented by the prosecution centered on the wrenching accounts of the four women who took the stand to describe how they were baited into Epstein’s orbit and then molested. It detailed how Ms. Maxwell worked closely with Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse teenage girls. “Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing,” said federal prosecutor Alison Moe. “She manipulated her victims and groomed them for sexual abuse.” Maxwell, the daughter of British media baron Robert Maxwell, presented herself as a type of mentor or big sister to girls offered for sex and sexualized massages to Epstein and allegedly some of his acquaintances.
Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District, rightly hailed the bravery of the women who “stepped out of the shadows and into the courtroom” and he also noted that “the road to justice has been far too long.” The abuse stretched more than a decade and involved far more victims than the four who testified. In 2008, Epstein was given lenient treatment in a secret plea deal after pleading guilty to Florida charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. Only after Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown shone a light on the shady deal with an investigative series, “Perversion of Justice,” were the complaints about Epstein seriously investigated and he was arrested.
Questions persist about the involvement of others, including allegations against some prominent and powerful men. The women who were victimized by Epstein and Ms. Maxwell deserve answers. If justice is truly to be done, the verdict against Ms. Maxwell, who faces up to 65 years in prison, cannot be the last word. | null | null | null | null | null |
Spectators barred from Olympic speedskating trials because of high covid-19 rates around Milwaukee
Casey Dawson, left, of the United States, leads teammates Emery Lehman, center, and Ethan Cepuran during the men's team pursuit competition at the ISU World Cup speedskating event in Calgary on Dec. 12, 2021. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press, via AP)
No spectators will be able to watch a U.S. Olympic team trials event scheduled for this week, a change that comes as the hyper-contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to spread across the nation.
Ahead of U.S. speedskating long-track trials this week, Executive Director Randy Dean of the Pettit National Ice Center announced that spectators would not be allowed at the U.S. Olympic team trials event in Milwaukee. The decision was made by the US Speedskating board of directors after an emergency meeting and was “based upon early results from its testing of athletes and the high COVID infection rates in Milwaukee,” Dean said in an email to ticket holders Sunday. The event is scheduled for Wednesday-Sunday.
The change will affect only U.S. speedskating long-track trials, Kevin Butler, a spokesman for the Pettit Center, confirmed to The Washington Post. No other trials were planned for the center.
In a statement, U.S. Speedskating Executive Director Ted Morris said the decision was made as a precaution for athletes just weeks before the Games.
“It’s vital that we continue to keep a strong focus on the health and welfare of our athletes,” Morris said. “Our ability to create a competition bubble provides us with the best situation to protect our athletes while providing them with the opportunity to qualify for the Beijing team at the Olympic Trials.”
The Beijing Olympics are set to begin with the Opening Ceremonies on Feb. 4. The Winter Games will operate in a bubble, meaning individuals involved will not be able to exit the network of Olympics venues once they have arrived. Those entering the bubble will need to be fully vaccinated, and Olympic organizers are allowing medical exemptions for athletes who will need to quarantine before entering the bubble.
The United States was averaging more than 400,000 new cases a day as of Monday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post, and health experts have warned that the country could soon face as many as 1 million cases a day.
New daily reported cases in Wisconsin have spiked 27 percent in the past week, while covid-related hospitalizations have increased 10 percent, according to data tracked by The Post. In Milwaukee County, there has been a 6 percent rise in daily cases in the last week. | null | null | null | null | null |
Politics and Prose becomes first unionized bookstore in D.C.
An audience listens as former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe (D) speaks at Politics and Prose in 2019. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
Longtime D.C. institution Politics and Prose became the first unionized bookstore in Washington, D.C., after the union and owners announced Monday they reached an agreement to voluntarily recognize the union.
Employees will join United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400, after the store reached a card check agreement for 54 union eligible employees. Politics and Prose Bookstore employs just over 100 workers at its three locations.
“We are proud to join the growing movement of booksellers and baristas across the country who have unionized their workplaces," the bookstore’s organizing committee wrote in a statement. “Forming our union has not only served as an affirmation of our shared values within the Politics and Prose community, it will also strengthen our workplace and ensure the long-term success of our beloved community hub.”
Bookstore workers across the country are organizing. D.C.’s Politics and Prose employees are among them.
Owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine initially declined to voluntarily recognize the union effort and hired Jones Day, a firm known for aggressive union contract negotiation. But they pivoted two weeks ago to work with a local labor attorney who represents unions and nonprofits and negotiate the scope of who would be included in the bargaining unit.
Last week, the union and owners reached an agreement on which employees would be included in the bargaining unit and moved forward with the card check process, which was conducted by a third party. The union had 35 out of 54 cards signed, triggering Graham and Muscatine to recognize the union as the collective bargaining for the bookstore on Friday.
"As stewards of a local, independent business with a 37-year legacy of progressive management and mission, we’ve valued collaborating with employees to solve problems and address needs, and we look forward to working with the union in the same spirit,” Graham and Muscatine wrote in a statement released Monday morning.
Now that the union is recognized, the bookstore will move forward on negotiating its first contract. Workers at Politics and Prose said they hope a union contract will help them get a larger voice in health and safety policy decisions and earn a living wage. They also said they hope the contract can help address issues with understaffing and pay transparency.
Politics & Prose owners move toward voluntary recognition of union effort
The unionization is part of a national labor movement that’s been surging over the past two years, intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and labor market demands. Politics and Prose also joins a subset of the labor movement among independent bookstores, where unionizing has traditionally been rare.
Alan Hanson, an organizing director with UFCW Local 400, said this is the most organizing he’s seen in his 22 years working in labor.
“It’s unprecedented in my time in the labor movement,” Hanson said. “And it’s indicative of some larger movement in the country.”
Workers first approached Graham last month with signed union authorization cards from what they said was 70 percent of 55 employees they determined were eligible for the bargaining unit. The bargaining unit negotiations agreed upon last week shifted which departments and employees would be included, bringing the new total to 54 and including a range of different people.
Two days after they were initially asked to voluntarily recognize the union, Graham and Muscatine sent out a staff email explaining that they were choosing not to recognize the cards, opting instead to hold a formal election through the National Labor Review Board to ensure that no employees were left out of the decision, including those who they said they knew opposed unionizing.
Strikes are sweeping the labor market as workers wield new leverage
The bookstore, which opened in Chevy Chase in 1984 and attracts appearances from high-profile figures such as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton for book talks broadcast on C-SPAN, initially received some criticism from its loyal customer base on its decision to not voluntarily recognize the union.
A week later, after looking at the different options to move forward, Graham and Muscatine announced that negotiating the scope of the bargaining unit, or determining who would be eligible in the union, would be the best way to represent all the interests of their employees.
The news received a range of response on Twitter from longtime customers, authors and other unions on Monday, many congratulating the union for being formally recognized.
“Starting the new year with fantastic news,” one user wrote. “DC’s first unionized bookstore!” | null | null | null | null | null |
Man slain in D.C.’s first 2022 homicide
Stabbing was reported in Northeast Washington
A man was fatally stabbed Monday in Northeast Washington in what appeared to be the District’s first homicide of the new year.
The stabbing was reported about 3:45 p.m. in the 500 block of 55th Street NE, said Officer Hugh Carew, a D.C. police spokesman.
A man was taken into custody in the incident, Carew said. No other details were available Monday night. | null | null | null | null | null |
Iowa forward Keegan Murray grabs a rebound in front of Maryland forward Qudus Wahab in the first half Monday in Iowa City. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
IOWA CITY — The Maryland men’s basketball team spent much of Monday night’s first half climbing out of a sizable deficit, a product of the Terrapins’ poor start against Iowa in their first road game of the season. And yet they managed to build a lead as large as five points not long after halftime.
But then there was Keegan Murray, a breakout star for the Hawkeyes, who refused to let Maryland put a damper on his terrific outing and ensured his team would start the new year with an 80-75 victory at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, ending Maryland’s three-game winning streak.
Murray, the nation’s leading scorer, finished with 35 points against a Terps defense that had no answer for the versatile 6-foot-8 sophomore forward. After Maryland cut its deficit to 74-70 with 1:05 to go, Murray provided the response. For his final basket, he made a layup to match his career high and push Iowa closer to a win.
Eric Ayala’s three-pointer with 10 seconds to go cut Iowa’s lead to 77-75, and Patrick McCaffery then only made one of two free throws. Leading by three with just a few seconds on the clock, the Hawkeyes chose to foul. Ayala missed his first attempt. His intentional miss then didn’t draw iron, and Iowa’s Jordan Bohannon hit a pair of free throws to seal a win that drifted to a tight conclusion despite Murray’s dominance.
Murray had never hit more than three shots from deep, but Monday evening he made 5 of 6 three-point attempts. When Murray hit his final three of the night with six minutes to go, he lifted his team to a 66-58 lead and ignited the crowd.
Murray helped his team secure that early advantage, which forced the Terps (8-5, 0-2 Big Ten) to claw back to make it a tight contest. He scored 14 points in roughly eight minutes to start the game. The Terps managed to hold him to just two for the rest of the half. But then Murray had another hot start to the second half, notching nine points in the first 3:06, including a three-pointer that tied the score at 47 and energized the crowd after the Hawkeyes (11-3, 1-2) had trailed since late in the first half. This time, the Terps couldn’t slow Murray as the half wore on.
The Terps, after trailing by 12 points just over eight minutes in, generated a 11-0 burst midway through the first half. Maryland used a half-court press and played some zone defense to force five empty possessions for the Hawkeyes. Murray was on the bench for the bulk of a Maryland run that lasted about three minutes. Maryland took its first lead at 33-30 with a three-pointer from Fatts Russell with 5:57 left, and by halftime the Terps had turned their double-digit deficit into a 40-36 lead. With Murray’s career-best performance, that soon evaporated.
Led by Ayala, who made 5 of 9 attempts from three-point range, Maryland got a boost from five players in double figures — Ayala (19 points), Russell (16), Qudus Wahab (12), Hakim Hart (11) and Donta Scott (11) — and the Terps trimmed their deficit late, clinging to hopes of a comeback into the final minute. But then there was Murray. And once again, the Terps had no answer.
Here’s what to know from Monday’s loss:
Iowa’s critical run
In the first 14 minutes of the second half, neither team led by more than five. Then the Hawkeyes generated a 9-0 burst that allowed them to take control. Ahron Ulis scored on a jumper after Scott’s turnover, and by the time Tony Perkins capped the run with a pair of free throws, the Hawkeyes led by 10.
Russell’s adjusted role
Since Danny Manning took over as Maryland’s interim coach, he has wanted Russell to take on less of a ballhandling role to give him more opportunities to score. As the Terps have begun implementing the tweak, Russell has thrived. He has scored at least 16 points in the past three full games he has played. (He scored just two points when he had to leave the Lehigh game early with a knee injury.)
Russell said recently that Manning “gives me the freedom to make decisions and be a playmaker.” Against the Hawkeyes, he used his speed to carve through the Iowa defense while also hitting a pair attempts from deep.
Missing a coach and a player
Maryland assistant Matt Brady did not make the trip. He stayed on campus later than the team Sunday to host a recruit on an official visit, according to a team spokesman, and his flight to Iowa on Monday morning was canceled because of the snowstorm blanketing the D.C. area. Brady’s absence left the Terps with two assistant coaches on the bench: Bruce Shingler and Greg Manning Jr., who was elevated from his role as director of operations after Mark Turgeon’s departure.
Forward Pavlo Dziuba also did not travel because of a non-covid illness, a team spokesman said. Dziuba has appeared in four games, averaging 0.8 points in 5.8 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
A fifth-round draft pick in 2021, cornerback Nate Hobbs has started nine games for the Raiders. (Rick Scuteri/AP File)
Heading into a crucial game to end the NFL’s regular season, the Las Vegas Raiders were hit with another off-field headache. Las Vegas police said Monday that rookie cornerback Nate Hobbs was arrested early that morning on a misdemeanor DUI charge.
According to police (via NFL Network), the 22-year-old was found asleep behind the wheel of a vehicle shortly after 4 a.m. The vehicle was parked at the time on the exit ramp of a parking garage on South Las Vegas Boulevard, police said. Hobbs was said to have then failed a field sobriety test and was taken to the Clark County Detention Center for booking.
The Raiders said Monday their organization was aware of the incident and “has been in communication with local law enforcement and is in the process of gathering more information.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to a request to provide the incident report.
At a previously scheduled news conference later in the day, interim coach Rich Bisaccia told reporters the Raiders were “certainly disappointed in the news.”
“I don’t have all the facts yet,” Bisaccia said. “I’ll be able to comment, I would think, as the end of the week comes, when I get more information about what’s going to actually happen with that.”
Asked how he could prevent the incident involving Hobbs from becoming a “distraction” going into Sunday’s key matchup with the Los Angeles Chargers, Bisaccia replied, “As far as the distractions go, we’ve kind of learned how to deal with distractions around here.”
The Raiders’ season has been beset with turmoil, including a November car crash that took the life of a Las Vegas woman and her dog, for which wide receiver Henry Ruggs III was charged with four felonies related to those deaths while driving under the influence. The Raiders quickly released Ruggs, a 2020 first-round pick who could face 50 years or more in prison.
Shortly after that, the team released cornerback Damon Arnette, also a 2020 first-round pick, who was shown making death threats while brandishing a firearm in a video shared on social media.
Bisaccia, the Raiders’ special teams coordinator, was named interim coach in October after Jon Gruden stepped down. Gruden, who was in the fourth year of a 10-year, $100 million contract, resigned after the emergence of racist, homophobic and misogynistic language that he used in emails while working as a TV analyst before joining the Raiders in 2018. In November, Gruden filed a lawsuit that accused the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell of leaking the emails to “publicly sabotage” the ex-coach’s career and pressure him into leaving the team.
Hobbs’s DUI arrest is the Raiders’ third such incident in approximately a year. In early January 2021, running back Josh Jacobs was booked by Las Vegas police after he allegedly crashed into a tunnel wall at McCarran International Airport. Later that month, the Clark County District Attorney’s office said it was dropping the charge because Jacobs’s blood alcohol level tested below the legal limit and instead would charge him with a misdemeanor count related to his “failure to exercise due care.”
On Monday, attorneys for Hobbs said in a statement that “the facts and circumstances related by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to the news media leave serious concerns that this does not qualify as a DUI under Nevada law.”
“I don’t have all the information on [the Hobbs arrest], but I feel good about saying they’ve been hit over the face with distractions and things of that nature,” Bisaccia said. “We’re very cognizant of the city in which we live in, so I’ll leave it at that and we’ll see what it looks like by the end of the week.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Covid-19 live updates: Omicron pushes New York virus hospitalizations past ...
The USS Milwaukee is back at sea after a coronavirus outbreak. (Anderson W. Branch/U.S. Navy/AP)
Andrew deGrandpre
The U.S. Navy combat ship that was sidelined by a coronavirus outbreak among its crew last month has returned to sea, even as some sailors on board remain positive for the virus, officials said on Monday.
The USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship with a crew of 105 plus a detachment of Coast Guard personnel and an aviation unit, had been at port in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since Dec. 20, after stopping at the U.S. military base there to refuel. The Associated Press reported that about 25 percent of the ship’s sailors had tested positive.
Officials said Monday that “all affected sailors exhibited mild or no symptoms.”
Cmdr. Kate Meadows, a spokeswoman for U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, did not specify how many crew members were still positive but said in an email to The Washington Post that they were “isolated aboard” the ship. The entire crew was not tested before departure, she added.
“Leadership decisions are informed by fleet medical and public health experts,” Meadows said.
The ship was less than a week into its months-long counternarcotics mission in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific when virus infections forced the crew to pause.
“It is great to be heading back out to sea,” Cmdr. Brian Forster, the USS Milwaukee’s commanding officer, said in a statement. “The crew worked together as a team to ensure we are ready to conduct the mission.”
Last week, Navy commanders said they would offer coronavirus vaccine booster shots to the crew. Even though the Navy has said it strongly recommends boosters and expects them to be required soon, they are not yet mandatory for the Milwaukee crew.
The ship’s two-week layover highlighted the heated political debate over President Biden’s approach to vaccination for military personnel and other federal workers. The Defense Department has ordered U.S. troops to receive the first round of inoculations but has not yet announced a booster requirement. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s top health officials have urged Americans to get the additional jab as the country confronts a wave of infections fueled by the omicron variant. | null | null | null | null | null |
Attorney General Merrick Garland. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Attorney General Merrick Garland will give a speech Wednesday about the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, stressing the department’s “unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence,” a Justice Department official said.
In the address, scheduled for the day before the anniversary of the attack, Garland will not speak about specific people or charges, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the speech had not yet been officially announced.
Rather, Garland, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, will offer broad remarks about “the department’s solemn duty to uphold the Constitution, follow the facts and the law and pursue equal justice under law without fear or favor.”
Read The Washington Post’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack
The remarks will be directed at Justice Department employees and the public, the official said. They come as the agency has been under growing pressure — especially from the political left — to hold former president Donald Trump and others in his orbit criminally responsible for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Federal prosecutors in D.C. announced last week that they have charged more than 725 people with crimes in connection with the events of Jan. 6, including 225 with assault or resisting arrest and some 640 people with entering a restricted federal building or its grounds.
About 165 people have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said. A Washington Post review of court records late last year found that the vast majority of those charged federally were not part of far-right groups or premeditated conspiracies to attack the Capitol.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of that committee, recently told The Post that lawmakers are particularly interested in why it took Trump so long to call on his supporters to stand down after they stormed the Capitol.
Thompson said the delayed response could be a factor in deciding whether to make a criminal referral, which is when Congress tells the Justice Department it believes a crime has been committed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Avoiding coronavirus context collapse.
People line up for a coronavirus test at a hospital in the Bronx borough of New York City, New York, Jan. 3, 2022. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
It was just under two years ago that the first infection from the novel coronavirus that was first detected in China was confirmed in the United States. We don’t use that word “novel” much anymore, given the complete lack of novelty associated with an illness that has reshaped our country for the past 22 months. But it’s important to keep in mind when considering how the pandemic has unfolded — and how efforts to leverage it for political gain have evolved.
We can summarize the pandemic by thinking of it in terms of two overlapping patterns. We’ve seen five surges in new cases, including the current, largest one, spurred by three different versions of the virus: the original strain, the delta variant that arrived last summer and the omicron variant that emerged last month.
Over that same period, there have been a number of changes in how infectious-disease experts have recommended dealing with the virus, usually a function of changes in our understanding about how the virus works. An initial statement that people didn’t need to wear face coverings (offered in part to avoid straining availability for medical professionals) became a recommendation that people wear masks in public — and, then, that they wear high-quality face coverings.
The initial response of shutting down businesses and schools — driven in large part by uncertainty about the virus’s spread — was rescinded, with other efforts to limit indoor gatherings replacing them in many places. We learned that transmission of the original virus in the open air was infrequent to the point of almost nonexistent. We learned effective treatment methods and developed drugs to aid in recovery. And then, in December 2020, we got vaccines that very effectively limited the spread of the virus and protected against severe illness.
Month by month, we learned how the virus worked and what worked against it. Experts and close observers tracked the changes obsessively. To many Americans — ones not paying close attention — this seemed scattershot, like the “so-called" experts were simply making up new rules on a whim. Some ascribed this belief to nefarious intent, that government scientists were helping to usher in a new autocratic state. It was useful for former president Donald Trump to stoke this skepticism as he pushed for the country to quickly move past efforts to contain the virus in hopes that it would boost his reelection chances.
Trump and his allies for a long time insisted that masks weren’t necessary and didn’t do much. They assured everyone that — hundreds of thousands of deaths notwithstanding — the virus wasn’t much worse than a bad cold. Trump defenders and those seeking to rationalize their own inaction against the virus trotted out figures that they claimed represented the percentage of infected individuals who survived the illness, as though having 98.5 percent of 55 million people survive a largely preventable disease didn’t mean that 825,000 people would die.
All of that was true as of a month ago. Last summer’s surge in cases (surge 4) was disproportionately centered in places where vaccinations were low. Thanks to the skepticism that Trump had fostered and stoked, Republicans were much less likely than Democrats to get a vaccine dose and more-Republican parts of the country were harder hit. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that at least 90,000 of the deaths that happened last summer during the surge prompted by the more-virulent delta variant were preventable, had the decedents simply gotten vaccinated.
Now, though, the situation is different. That should be obvious from the graph above: the surge in cases is unlike anything prior. The grim days of the pandemic’s beginning in March 2020 have become the potentially grimmer days of 2022 — despite what we’ve learned and despite our efforts at prevention.
As The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond has reported, this is probably due to the nature of the omicron variant of the virus — not a novel virus itself, but a novel strain, requiring that we once again have to learn how it works and what it does. Initial indicators suggest that it’s far, far more contagious than prior strains, but also potentially less severe. It may more readily infect the fully vaccinated (as anecdotal evidence has suggested), but also lead to less problematic outcomes. States are seeing surges in hospitalizations, but it may be the case that those stays are shorter and the worst-case outcome — death — less frequent.
We’ll have to see. But, as has been noted, this potential introduces a remarkable situation: omicron may have become the form of coronavirus that Trump and his allies insisted the original strain was. It may be highly transmissible, hard to avoid contracting and less dangerous for most people.
There have already been attempts to conflate the now-virus with the then-virus, as in a Twitter thread from right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro. His goal is simple: use the apparent nature of the omicron variant to disparage efforts focused on the pre-omicron virus. It’s immediately transparent, but almost certain to convince some people — particularly those who are inclined to assume that everything was made up and all initial efforts to address the virus some combination of insincere and evil.
A term that could describe this effort is “context collapse.” To understand that omicron is (again, apparently) different is to understand that the response is different and the old recommendations potentially less effective or appropriate. But by simply sweeping it all under the umbrella of “the virus,” you can score political points at will, proving yourself right over and over by ignoring the distinction between what we were fighting then and what we’re fighting now. It’s a bit like waving away someone’s cancer diagnosis by comparing it, a disease, with the disease that is the common cold: They’re just diseases, after all, and as I’ve been saying all along, diseases simply require some tissues and DayQuil. This is not a generous analogy, to be sure, but it’s about what’s deserved.
To be clear: a version of the coronavirus that 1) grants broad immunity to all strains for an extended period, 2) leaves far fewer people at risk of severe illness and 3) offers only brief periods of illness for the infected would be a much better strain to have circulating. But it’s not clear that omicron does all of those things. It’s also the case (as Diamond writes) that the current surge is likely to strain hospitals anyway given the sheer number of people who are getting infected and will be seeking care. While initial research points to reduced effects and illness for the fully vaccinated, it’s not yet clear how much better the protections are for that group — and there remains an outsize risk for those who can’t get vaccinated or are immunocompromised.
All along, the reason for highlighting the political divide in the effects of the virus has been to call attention to the ways in which many Americans are choosing not to protect themselves against illness. Republicans are more likely not to get vaccinated and that has left them at increased risk. Perhaps that increase is smaller than it used to be with omicron, which would be good news.
But we’re still early in this new phase, meaning that guidance and data may change. We can hope that this time, people are paying close enough attention to understand how and why. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) speaks during a news conference in February 2020 about legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) said Monday that he will not run for reelection this year, citing his desire to spend more time with his grandchildren.
Rush, 75, first won election to Congress in 1992 and will have served for three decades when he retires early next year. He is the only Democrat to have defeated Barack Obama, who unsuccessfully challenged him during Rush’s 2000 reelection bid. This year, Rush had been facing primary challenges from several Democrats, including activist Jahmal Cole and pastor Chris Butler.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday, Rush said he arrived at his decision after a recent conversation with his 19-year-old grandson, Jonathan.
“I don’t want my grandchildren . . . to know me from a television news clip or something they read in a newspaper,” Rush told the newspaper. “I want them to know me on an intimate level, know something about me, and I want to know something about them. I don’t want to be a historical figure to my grandchildren.”
Rush’s office said the congressman will discuss his “plans for the future” at a news conference Tuesday morning at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. The Chicago church was the site of the 1955 funeral of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy whose brutal torture and murder in Mississippi sparked the civil rights movement.
Rush helped found the Illinois Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and is a longtime civil rights activist. In 2012, he was escorted from the House floor for wearing a hoodie to protest racial profiling while calling for an investigation into the fatal shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
In recent years, Rush has introduced legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. He also has pushed the federal government to reveal files related to the killing of Fred Hampton, a Black Panther activist targeted by an FBI informant and shot by police in Chicago in 1969.
“We want to bring light, a bright light, to a dark history of our nation. And I think it’s very timely and very important that we do it at this time,” Rush told The Washington Post in an interview last year on his search for answers about Hampton’s killing.
Rush is the 24th House Democrat to announce that he will not run for reelection this year. Although his district leans strongly Democratic, the House Republican campaign arm nonetheless argued that his retirement shows that Democrats “are abandoning ship as fast as possible because they know their majority is doomed.”
“If Democrats thought their retirement crisis would get better over the holidays, they were wrong,” Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement.
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
A community volunteer hands over eggs to a buyer at a temporary food store to provide supplies to residents outside a residential block in Xi’an city in northwest China’s Shaanxi province Monday, Jan. 03, 2022. Authorities in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an say they can provide food, health care and other necessities for the roughly 13 million under an almost two-week old lockdown. But some residents describe difficulties obtaining supplies and frustration and the economic impact on the city that is home to the famed Terracotta warriors, along with major industries. (Chinatopix Via AP) (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW YORK — The NBA has rescheduled all 11 games that were postponed in December for virus-related reasons and either shifted the times or dates of 10 other games to help accommodate those changes.
NEW YORK — Outfielder Cameron Maybin is retiring after 15 major league seasons.
HOUSTON — Paulo Nagamura was hired as coach of Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo on Monday.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — USA Swimming has canceled its first major meet of the year because of the surge in COVID-19 cases.
ASHLAND, Ohio — Jud Logan, a four-time U.S. Olympic hammer thrower who was also a successful college track coach at Ashland University, has died. He was 62. | null | null | null | null | null |
A security official holds part of the wreckage of a drone with Arabic that reads, “revenge operations for our leaders,” at Baghdad airport, Iraq, Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. Two armed drones were shot down at the Baghdad airport on Monday, a U.S.-led coalition official said, an attack that coincides with the anniversary of the 2020 U.S. killing of a top Iranian general. (International Coalition via AP) (Uncredited/International Coalition) | null | null | null | null | null |
Muslim women in New Delhi protest Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies in January 2020. (Altaf Qadri/AP)
Quratulain Rehbar, a journalist in India, found a profile of herself on a website on Saturday. The page was unauthorized, labeled her as up for “auction” and invited people to bid to own her.
The fake auction website Bulli Bai, which takes its name from a slur against Muslim women, was filled with profiles of dozens who were purportedly for sale. Most were Indian, and some were high-profile figures, such as the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. Many were also opponents of Hindu nationalism who have publicly criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in India.
The website, which was built on the popular U.S.-based coding platform GitHub, was no longer accessible Tuesday, after a burst of online outrage against its misogyny and racism. A GitHub spokesman said in an email that it had suspended a user account that violated its policies on harassment, discrimination and the incitement of violence.
Rehbar, who is based in Indian-controlled Kashmir, is no stranger to fake auction sites that aim to demean Muslim women by pretending to sell them. This past summer, she wrote about a similar platform, which also took its name from a slur about Muslim women.
“In a place like India, one could expect [that] something like this could happen,” Rehbar said in an interview. “But it affected me a bit because it affects one’s mental peace. You think about your family and your relatives.”
Authorities have pledged to investigate the incident, which comes as Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party pursue an agenda that emphasizes Hindu primacy in India — a vast, multireligious democracy founded on secular ideals.
Spates of religious violence between Hindus and Muslims have flared up in recent months, while critics of the BJP are frequently attacked and trolled by online mobs. Internet — and occasionally physical — abuse is particularly rife against female opponents of Hindu nationalism.
The auction sites exemplify the “extreme xenophobia and misogyny used by Hindu nationalists to foster ascendancy,” said Angana Chatterji, an anthropologist specializing in Indian politics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Police in Mumbai have detained a man in connection with Bulli Bai, said Satej D. Patil, a junior minister in Maharashtra state, which is governed by the Congress Party that sits in opposition to the BJP at the national level. He said a “large group of people who intend to disrupt … communal harmony” could be behind the website.
The operators of the fake auction websites aren’t known, but they appear to be part of a “decentralized apparatus of attacks, trolling and vilification of Muslim women,” said Gilles Verniers, a politics expert at Ashoka University in India. He added attacks on Muslims were often downplayed or tolerated by Indian leaders, many of whom are BJP members.
The BJP and Modi’s office didn’t immediately return requests for comment. The BJP has said that it acts promptly to manage religious tensions and that reports of hate crimes against Muslims sometimes reflect efforts by the media to malign the central government.
Analysis: Why India’s modern women say it’s a ‘burden’ to be female
There are about 200 million Muslims in India, representing roughly 14 percent of the country’s population. Many face discrimination in employment and housing and fare poorly on measures of socioeconomic progress. Modi’s government has clamped down on Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority region, by taking away its long-standing semi-autonomy. New Delhi has also passed a citizenship law that many see as aimed at Muslims in the country.
Hiba Bég, a Columbia University graduate student who was targeted by the fake auction websites, wrote on Twitter that she no longer felt safe speaking out about the treatment of Muslim women in India.
“I am not safe in this country. Muslim women like me are not safe in this country. How many online deals will it take for us to see action?” she said.
In Modi’s quest to transform India, a grand Hindu temple rises | null | null | null | null | null |
Are lukewarm takes on this film possible? Let’s find out!
This image released by Netflix shows Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee, Tyler Perry as Jack Bremmer, Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy and Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky in a scene from “Don't Look Up.” (Niko Tavernise/Netflix via AP)
Over the Christmas break Netflix dropped “Don’t Look Up,” the Adam McKay-directed film that is very obviously a satire about the United States’ inability to cope with climate change. While I suppose it is theoretically possible to ignore a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, and Ariana Grande, that would seem to require a willingness to, um, not look up at a screen for a good long while.
The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts saw the film and neither loved it nor hated it. That lukewarm take was in the decided minority, however. The division of opinion on this film is — like the movie itself — strong and not very subtle.
A lot of political scientists I know and trust loved the film, believing it to be an important cautionary tale. Media critics felt similarly. The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz explicitly compared it to “Dr. Strangelove,” asserting that McKay’s film was “the first film in 57 years to equal the comedy and horror of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.” The New York Times’ Ben Smith observed that “great satire amplifies obvious truths, and there’s no doubt that ‘Don’t Look Up’ contains those moments of recognition.”
Film critics were less impressed. The AV Club’s Jesse Hassenger embodies a lot of the critical reaction, describing “Don’t Look Up” as a “lurching 145-minute catchall for the ills of American society, though, it’s as exhausting as any number of media-blitz distractions the film wants to decry,” asking at the end: “Is it churlish to wish this end-of-the-world warning with a Network-style rant from one of the world’s biggest movie stars had more consistent joke quality?”
Why the big disconnect? I can think of several reasons.
First, a lot of people want this movie to be good. Climate change is a serious problem and way too many people do not take it seriously enough. If it takes a star-studded film such as this one to make people take the issue seriously and shift the status quo, that might seem like something worth supporting.
Second, do not underestimate the role of self-loathing. The sharpest satire in “Don’t Look Up” is the sendup of the media and academics. Blanchett and Perry are great as morning anchors trying to keep things light as the academics try to warn everyone that there’s a comet coming to destroy us all. DiCaprio smartly plays his tenured professor as self-effacing at first, way out of his depth as the film goes on, and then entirely co-opted by the establishment when he gets a whiff of influence and popularity. There are entire books one could write about that phenomenon. I suspect any academic or reporter who has had a modicum of professional success recognizes those tropes for just a second when they look in the mirror.
Third, the film is cleverly critic-proof. One of its main themes is that human beings are so easily distracted by pop culture and goofy memes that they can no longer focus on what is important, such as anthropogenic climate change. Criticizing the movie for not being a great movie feels a lot like providing a convenient data point for that theme.
All that said, the best things in the movie work against each other. “Dr. Strangelove” had a consistent tone that ran throughout Kubrick’s film. “Don’t Look Up” has Jonah Hill clowning around in some scenes and DiCaprio and Lawrence earnestly screaming at the camera a few minutes later. The last act of “Don’t Look Up” is affecting but also seems imported from a different film given everything that has happened in the two and a half hours that preceded it. Finally, the central metaphor of climate change being akin to a comet threatening to hit the Earth has some issues.
“Don’t Look Up” is worth watching for its cast alone. I laughed a lot. It is not “Dr. Strangelove,” however, and making that comparison does a disservice to both films. That is my lukewarm take on a film that seems to arouse an awful lot of passion. | null | null | null | null | null |
A year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, political scientists largely agree that U.S. partisanship has become deeply toxic, even dangerous
Supporters of President Donald Trump at a Save America March event on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington before the breach of the Capitol. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
How dangerous is this moment for U.S. democracy? Some analysts, like Barbara Walter, believe that U.S. democracy is in decline and that we are perilously close to civil war. Others have expressed concern about the normalization of violent discourse and how prominent figures on the right celebrate it. While political-violence expert Thomas Zeitzoff characterizes warnings of impending civil war or secession as both wrong and dangerous, political scientists largely agree that U.S. partisanship has become deeply toxic. A group of leading scholars of democracy warned that U.S. elections and U.S. democracy face potentially existential threats that Congress must act to forestall. Many experts and political observers agree that the systematic partisan attack on voting and voting rights by the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party is unprecedented in U.S. history.
As a constitutional scholar who studies political institutions in historical context, I’m not convinced that civil war is on the horizon. But I do take seriously the problematic nature of Trump followers’ dominance in the Republican Party. For example, in 2018, I cautioned that dedicated Trump supporters might not accept the end of his presidency. But rather than foreseeing civil war, I contend that a better historical analogy lies in what happened in the United States after Appomattox.
Civil war or post-Reconstruction?
The U.S. civil war — the only one the country has endured — bore familiar hallmarks: extreme partisan division, geographic sectionalism, and the existence of radically incompatible visions for the role of state and federal government, particularly regarding slavery.
A constitutional crisis, however, need not involve a shooting war. As Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn and Yaniv Roznai argue in their 2020 book comparing constitutional revolutions, major transformations may take place without broad democratic engagement. They also note that constitutional change in response to popular mobilization may not take a revolutionary form. Such a transformation took place in late 19th-century America, and one possible path forward today is for this to happen again.
As I note in an article soon to be published the Maryland Law Review, after the Civil War’s end, the United States attempted to reconstitute itself around a new vision of national citizenship and equality. This attempt failed. As political scientist Pamela Brandwein has shown, national institutions then in the hands of the Republican Party initially tried to hold states accountable for enforcing rights. That did not continue. The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, retrenched federal authority. Rather than pursue a long civil war, the national Republican Party capitulated, deferring U.S. transformation for generations.
The retreat of national institutions left the playing field open for a pitched battle on the state level. In the south, Democrats relentlessly and systematically attacked voting and voting rights to secure their hold on state governments. With the Supreme Court’s complete repudiation of the project of Reconstruction in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Southern states reconstituted themselves around the ideal of white supremacy, as John Knox advocated in his opening remarks at the 1901 Alabama constitutional convention. By then, no significant national will remained to challenge these anti-democratic and racist developments.
Americans have split over whether to support multiethnic democracy, our research finds
The Republican Party’s Trumpist core is not just dedicated to Trump and to their identities as Trump supporters. They are dedicated to continued participation in politics, using loosely democratic mechanisms in state and local elections as well as more visible and prominent venues to promote a fundamentally undemocratic agenda.
Given this, the Republican Party faces some hard choices. Trump and his supporters have been securing and expanding their power, threatening anyone who does openly oppose them with ouster or primary challenges. Prominent party leaders offer little support to the few who try to push back. These leaders probably recognize that fighting what looks like an increasingly necessary internal war may lead to short-term party losses and defections, as some Trump loyalists attempt to start alternative political organizations or leave politics entirely, depriving the party of their motivated participation.
Democrats face a predicament, as well. Certainly there is political hay to be made by attacking the worst elements of the Republican Party and presenting their anti-democratic and violent rhetoric as representing the party itself. More difficult and costly responses would include searching for and partnering with elements within the Republican Party. Such elements, while disagreeing with Democrats on many major policy issues, would recognize that democracy needs two robust reality-based political parties. These factions could find common ground over such principles as voting is a fundamental right, public health emergencies should not be politicized, and U.S. democracy must be protected and sustained. Few Republicans currently in Congress, however, have appeared to be willing to collaborate in these terms.
Why Republicans haven't abandoned Trumpism
Without work within each party and sustained engagement across party lines, polarization will probably make it difficult or impossible to collaborate nationally to resist anti-democratic elements. The compromise that ended Reconstruction may begin to look like a plausible way out: leaving states to develop and implement policies based on the world views of those who control their dominant parties, with all that that could mean for those living there. The groundwork is present in the form of newly revitalized federalism and a Supreme Court that seems willing to grant states latitude, at least in some policy spheres. But even this might be an optimistic vision, given possible Republican dominance in Congress, gained from more than 30 Republican-controlled states’ changes to districting and election laws that could tilt results against majority rule.
Julie Novkov (@NovkovJulie) is the interim dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and a professor of political science and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, SUNY, where she teaches courses on constitutional law and civil liberties. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, unveiled the new “Sunrise in Ohio” license plate in Columbus, Ohio. A backwards image of the Wright Flyer that appeared on the initial version of Ohio’s new license plate was added to the design early and never changed or questioned throughout the approval process, according to public records obtained by The Associated Press. The error was fixed only after the public unveiling in October drew attention to it. (Jessie Balmert/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Tuesday briefing: Covid hospitalizations; back to school; Elizabeth Holmes verdict; missing girl; and more
More than 103,000 Americans are hospitalized with covid-19.
That’s the highest number since late summer, when there was a surge of delta variant cases, but still below last winter’s peak.
Why it’s significant: Hospitalizations (rather than cases, which are still skyrocketing) are the best way to track the pandemic now, experts say, because vaccines are preventing severe illnesses.
What else to know: The FDA cleared boosters for 12-to-15-year-olds yesterday, and final CDC approval could come by tomorrow.
The founder of Theranos was found guilty of fraud.
A jury convicted Elizabeth Holmes, who led the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup, on four counts. She was found not guilty on four counts, and the jury deadlocked on three others.
What the verdict means: The jury agreed that Holmes knowingly misled investors about her company’s technology, which didn’t work as promised.
What’s next: The 37-year-old could get up to 20 years in prison for each count.
Schools are pushing ahead with in-person classes this week.
Only one of the nation’s 20 largest districts has moved to remote learning, even with record coronavirus cases.
Why? There’s widespread agreement that in-person learning is better for kids, both academically and emotionally.
How are schools handling cases? Many are ramping up testing requirements, with some pushing back the start of the semester to make sure everyone gets one.
A huge storm covered parts of the East with snow.
The D.C., Virginia and Maryland region got 5 to 10 inches, the most in three years. Parts of Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina saw snow, as well.
Hundreds of thousands still don’t have power, at least three people died in a storm-related crash, and major traffic delays continued this morning.
What’s next? It’s going to get very cold, from the East Coast all the way down to the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana.
A little girl last seen in 2019 was just reported missing.
What we know: Not a lot. Seven-year-old Harmony Montgomery disappeared from a home in southern New Hampshire over two years ago, but police found out about it only last week.
Officials are launching a search and are asking for any information. Harmony is White, about 4 feet tall and 50 pounds, with blond hair, blue eyes and glasses.
The classic BlackBerry phone will stop working today.
Why? Cellphone carriers are shutting down support for older 3G networks this year to make way for 5G, and BlackBerry is cutting off support for devices on its original operating systems.
This is just the beginning: The “3G sunset” will impact older iPhones this year, too, as well as some smart devices, like security systems and fire alarms.
David Bowie’s estate sold his songwriting catalogue.
The buyer: Warner Music Group, an industry giant, which paid around $250 million, according to one report.
Music copyrights have become big business — think of the streaming, film and commercial potential — and this deal covers the star’s studio albums and more, including songs like “Starman.”
And now … looking for your next read? We’ve got some suggestions based on the books you loved in 2021. | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic is heading back to Melbourne for the Australian Open. (Patrick Hamilton/AFP via Getty Images)
Novak Djokovic put to rest questions about whether he would play in the Australian Open, announcing on Twitter that he will compete in the first Grand Slam tournament of 2022 after receiving a medical exemption from being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 player, has declined to reveal his vaccination status and said he was uncertain about playing in the tournament, which he has won nine times. It is especially significant because he is tied with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer with 20 all-time Grand Slam singles titles. Nadal intends to play in the Australian Open, which runs Jan. 17-30 in Melbourne. Federer will not, with his future in doubt after having another knee surgery.
“I’ve spent fantastic quality time with my loved ones over the break and today I’m heading Down Under with an exemption permission,” Djokovic wrote on Instagram. “Let’s go 2022.”
Australian Open organizers confirmed the medical exemption, saying it was approved by independent experts.
“Djokovic applied for a medical exemption which was granted following a rigorous review process involving two separate independent panels of medical experts,” they said in a statement. “One of those was the Independent Medical Exemption Review Panel appointed by the Victorian Department of Health. They assessed all applications to see if they met the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization guidelines.”
Tennis Australia said part of the process involved the redaction of personal information. | null | null | null | null | null |
Both sides of I-95 in Fredericksburg area closed due to icy conditions
Drivers were stranded overnight without food or water
Both sides of Interstate 95 in the Fredericksburg area of Virginia are shut down due to icy, snowy roads. (VDOT)
Both sides of Interstate 95 in Virginia’s Fredericksburg area are shut down Tuesday due to icy conditions.
Transportation officials said there were multiple crashes, some of them involving jackknifed tractor-trailers on the highway. Some traffic reports said drivers were stuck in their vehicles for more than 10 hours without food and water.
Virginia highway officials said they were trying to get vehicles to nearby exits and clear the area but gave no time as to when the highway would reopen. Crews are also treating the highway and trying to clear off ice that refroze overnight in the cold temperatures. The Fredericksburg area got around 12 inches of snow Monday, and officials gave no exact time for when the highway would reopen.
“This is unprecedented, and we continue to steadily move stopped trucks to make progress toward restoring lanes,” said Marcie Parker, a district engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Anne Gould told NBC 4 that she and her husband were stuck on the highway overnight as they tried to drive Monday from Philadelphia to Florida.
“It’s like being stuck on an airplane that you can’t get off,” she said. “Cars and trucks are just stopped in front of me and behind me.”
“Never would I have believed it would have gone this long.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The collection’s themes are broad yet intricately rendered. The book opens with three stories that ground the reader in the disparate struggles that will haunt each of the women throughout her life. In “The Night Market,” Jane is 18 and visiting her father in Taiwan. Her mission is to bring him back to Los Angeles, where she lives with her mother, and where Jane believes her father belongs. However, her plans are thwarted with the arrival of her father’s longtime friend Lee, with whom her father is in love. This revelation of queer love is doubly confusing for young Jane, who has recently begun a romantic relationship with her female piano teacher. But by the time Jane is ready to come to terms with her queer identity, her father is dead.
“Go Slow” focuses on the pair’s teen years as they drink in a Koreatown strip mall and contend with the vulnerability of their bodies. “The Inheritance” highlights the class differences between Jane and Fiona as Fiona comes into an unexpected sum of money that allows her to follow her writer boyfriend, Jasper, to New York City while Jane stays behind.
Over the years, there are career switches and divorces. Fiona, on the cusp of 30, moves back in with her parents; Jane navigates queer shame. They do nothing on society’s strict timetable. In fact, “Fiona and Jane” celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.
Through “Fiona and Jane,” Ho honors the hours put into a relationship, while also acknowledging the ways in which our lives are irreversibly changed by short-term engagements. The collection explores the dichotomy between deep and lengthy bonds, like Jane and Fiona’s, and fleeting encounters with lovers, fair-weather friends, colleagues, even parents. In the collection’s titular story, 27-year-old former Marine Julian, who struggles with PTSD and suicidal ideation, serves as a vehicle for a 37-year-old Jane to work through her persistent guilt over her father’s death. Jane and Julian’s bizarre and brief relationship signifies the power of being close to someone ostensibly different but emotionally similar, and the piercing impact of these ephemeral encounters.
Julian and Jane view the work of an artist who documents everyday life in telegrams and postcards. The words that the artist writes become a mantra for resilience and connection between the couple: “I got up today. I am still alive. I am still alive.”
Fiona and Jane, too, take life one day at a time, tapping in and out with each other as they plod along. The collection ends with the two women at 37, no more “resolved” than they were at 17. By concluding with Fiona and Jane as works in progress, Ho asserts that resolution is a pointless life goal. Instead, we are left with the beautiful tangle of two lives in the midst of being lived.
Rosa Boshier is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, the Guardian and Vice, among other publications.
Viking. 288 pp. $26 | null | null | null | null | null |
Fortune Feimster in her Netflix comedy special “Sweet & Salty,” which debuted in January 2020. (Peter Taylor/Netflix)
Fortune Feimster’s confessional brand of comedy is designed, first and foremost, to elicit belly laughs. It wasn’t until the stand-up released “Sweet & Salty,” her hour-long Netflix special, in January 2020 that Feimster realized she had a knack for tugging at heartstrings as well.
Packed with anecdotes about her North Carolina upbringing, as a gay, self-described “fat kid” in a deeply religious and body image-conscious environment, the special amplified Feimster’s message of self-discovery and acceptance for a global audience. Although viewers may have known Feimster from her appearances on such TV shows as “Chelsea Lately” and “The Mindy Project,” “Sweet & Salty” gave them a taste of her more personal comedic stylings.
Get to know former ‘Chelsea Lately’ star Fortune Feimster
“That Netflix reach is so huge, and I was getting really incredible messages from straight people, gay people, parents of gay people,” says Feimster, 41. “It certainly took me back, just because when you are a comedian, your first goal is to be funny. You don’t really realize that by telling that story, you’re sharing that story with other people who’ve felt like they’re different or that they don’t fit in. There’s a lot of power in that.”
After a pandemic-induced break from stand-up, Feimster is back on the road with her follow-up act, “2 Sweet 2 Salty,” with stops in the D.C. area at the Lincoln Theatre on Jan. 8 and Capital One Hall on Jan. 9. In a phone interview last month, Feimster discussed responding to “Sweet & Salty’s” success, rewriting her material in quarantine and getting married during the pandemic.
Q: Let's start by rewinding to January 2020. What do you recall from the release of "Sweet & Salty"?
A: The response right away was really incredible. The byproduct of me telling my story was that it seemed like it helped people in their journey. I even had parents email me and say, “I didn’t know what to expect when my kid came out. I didn’t necessarily handle it the best way. I watched your special and learned some things about how to be there for them.” And I had people say, “I’ve been afraid to come out to my mom or dad, and I played them your special and I watched them watch you. When I saw that they were smiling and laughing, I felt safe to come out.” I mean, that kind of thing just really blows you away.
Q: How did you imagine the rest of 2020 playing out as you looked to build off the special's momentum?
A: Right after it came out, we put up this big tour. It was my first theater tour and we didn’t know what to expect, and that whole tour sold out, like, in a month. So 2020 was looking like it was going to be a very exciting year — and the first show was supposed to be March 14, which obviously did not happen. I had my suitcases packed to go to Michigan and the world basically shut down.
Q: What was your response to the pandemic putting your stand-up career on pause?
A: I kind of sulked for a good month of just watching TV and being sad. But at some point, after [the pandemic] just kept going and going and we kept being at home and the waves kept coming, you just had to figure out how to make life okay. I got to spend a lot of time with my wife, [Jacquelyn Smith,] and my dogs and just let go of the stress of the business and the grind, and I think it did a lot for my mental health. My brain was clear and I felt really good after a while, aside from obviously the horror of trying not to get covid. When I could just be at peace at home, it allowed me to free up my brain, and I wrote an entire new hour of stand-up. And that’s the tour that I’m doing now.
Q: Did you work the material you originally planned on touring in 2020 into the new hour or is it on a shelf?
A: It’s on a shelf. A year and a half later, it just didn’t work. Some of it is in this new set, but most of it is all new. It really picks up where “Sweet & Salty” left off. That was a story of my journey and trying to figure out who I was. This is who I am as an adult, and here are things about me where you might think I’m one way but I’m really this way. It just shows people who I am at this stage in my life.
Q: I saw you and your longtime partner got married in October 2020 with a small ceremony in Malibu. How did the wedding come together?
A: We were planning to get married at some point in 2020, but we got to a place where we were like, “I guess we’re not getting married because, I mean, how could we?” And then it was a pretty bleak fall. The politics were really all over the place. Everyone was super divided. [Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. And we honestly didn’t know what the future had in store. We were like, “Are gay rights in trouble? We shouldn’t wait. We’ve been together six years. Let’s just get married.” So we ended up planning this in, like, three weeks, and it ended up being really perfect.
Q: How have you adjusted to the larger venues on this tour, making the jump from comedy clubs to theaters?
A: Pre-covid, I had been doing clubs and colleges for 11 years. But the theater part, for me, it’s perfect because I am more of a storyteller. I consider myself not a traditional comic. I’m not doing a bunch of setups and punchlines. I am telling a lot of stories, and I feel like theaters are way more conducive to that. It’s a perfect setting to hear stories, whereas clubs, you have to work that much harder because I’m telling these longer stories while people are yelling for ketchup for their cheeseburger. So the theaters feel like this beautiful payoff of the last 10 years of building my act and trying to become a better stand-up.
Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St. NW. thelincolndc.com.
Dates: Jan. 8 at 6:30 (sold out) and 9:30 p.m.
Prices: $30-$35.
Capital One Hall, 7750 Capital One Tower Rd., Tysons, Va. capitalonehall.com.
Dates: Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. | null | null | null | null | null |
Every January, as the holiday approaches, politicians of every stripe start posting quotes from the famed civil rights leader to social media. A lot of the time, it’s the quote about King’s children being judged by the content of their character from the “I Have a Dream” speech.
The quote-a-thon has gotten to the point where King’s daughter Bernice King has told people to “enact policies that reflect your birthday sentiments,” and at least a dozen times, urged them to learn another quote and/or stop taking that one out of context. So has King’s son Martin Luther King III.
And his children regularly respond when officials and lobbyists wrongly invoke his name while pushing their agendas in support of, say, a border wall, or concealed-carry permits, or their boss who might get impeached.
But the context in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his views on the filibuster is the same one in which the Senate now finds itself: amid battles over voting rights legislation.
In July 1963, King was in Washington when he gave a few interviews about a potential civil rights act. President John F. Kennedy had pitched it a month earlier in a speech to the American people, saying he wanted to end segregation in public accommodations and to strengthen voting rights.
For decades, a coalition of Southern Democrats and some Republicans had successfully used the “talking filibuster,” cloture rules and other delay tactics to stop civil rights legislation, including bills that would have ended poll taxes and literacy tests at the ballot box. In 1946, five senators spoke long enough to kill a bill that would have cracked down on workplace discrimination. The longest speech in Senate history — 24 hours and 18 minutes by South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1957 — was a failed attempt to stop another civil rights bill.
So in 1963, everyone assumed the greatest challenge Kennedy would face with his “omnibus” bill would be the dreaded filibuster.
Kennedy, of course, did not live to see his bill put to vote, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, did, successfully pushing through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson, a former Senate majority leader who had once tweaked filibuster rules, still endured record-breaking filibusters on his way to victory.
The Supreme Court struck down key sections of that Voting Right Act in 2013. Senate Democrats are now trying to restore some of the protections it provided. Martin Luther King III announced in December he would spend his father’s birthday in Arizona campaigning for voting rights and an end to the Senate filibuster.
In the late 1980s, Senate rules changed, making it easier for lawmakers to filibuster; an extended floor speech was no longer necessary. One of the last of the old “talking filibusters” went down in 1983, when Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) led an unsuccessful 16-day effort to block King’s birthday from becoming a federal holiday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: What a sensible Ukraine policy would look like
From left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden. (AFP via Getty Images)
With tensions between the United States and Russia over tens of thousands of Russian troops now massed near Ukraine’s border, recent phone calls between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and the announcement of U.S.-Russia talks in Geneva this month were both wise and welcome.
But instead of demanding de-escalation before progress in talks could be made, imagine if Biden had taken the first steps toward negotiations between the two countries. What would a sensible U.S. posture look like?
It would start with a serious review of U.S. security concerns — and how a “foreign policy for the middle class” would prioritize those concerns. Surely, the global pandemic — which has taken 824,000 American lives and counting — would be top of the list. Addressing that demands massive efforts both inside the United States and around the world to provide vaccines and build public health capacity to track, test and treat.
The existential threat of catastrophic climate change — already costing lives and billions of dollars in extreme weather events — would come next. That would require not only a Green New Deal at home, but engaging other countries — particularly China and India — to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
And then there are the many domestic concerns — rising “deaths of despair,” declining life expectancy, extreme inequality, racial tensions, a democracy under siege. Solving these problems means a respite from adventures abroad — avoiding a resumption of the forever war in Afghanistan and pulling back on drone assassination bombings.
In this context, Biden would take a hard look at Russia and Ukraine.
The United States has no significant national security interest in Ukraine. A civil war has been internationalized into a geopolitical struggle. Ukraine’s people are divided, with millions speaking Russian and looking to the East. The poverty rate is over 50 percent. We’re not about to spend the money and energy needed to bolster the country internally.
The esteemed diplomat George Kennan correctly predicted in 1998 that Russia would “react quite adversely” if NATO expanded to the East. “I think it is a tragic mistake,” he said. “This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.” Since then, NATO has added 11 member countries that were once either Soviet republics or a part of the Warsaw Pact. NATO expansion has, unsurprisingly, driven Russia and China closer together, a strategic debacle that no U.S. president should encourage.
If he’d taken stock early, a sensible Biden might have decided to defuse tensions with Russia so we can focus on real security concerns. Extending the New START arms-control pact, as Biden did, would be only a first step.
Instead of ramping up military aid to Ukraine and allowing loose talk about Ukraine joining NATO, Biden could call for a joint guarantee of Ukraine’s independence and neutrality. The United States and NATO would agree not to station troops or offensive weapons in former Soviet republics; the Russians would guarantee not to threaten them with military force. Both would pledge not to interfere with those countries’ internal political affairs.
With NATO already encompassing many of the former republics, right up to the Russian border, full disengagement now is too difficult politically. But even at this late stage, a declaration of Ukrainian independence and nonalignment as part of an internationally negotiated settlement, perhaps protected by the U.N. Security Council or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would de-escalate tensions and make a durable cease-fire possible.
Biden is already under fire from the hawks in both parties for even entering into negotiations. But despite all the bellicose blather, the real security interests of Americans are clear. Ukraine is not among them. Even if Ukraine were part of NATO, no U.S. president would go to war with Russia to defend it. Paradoxically, NATO now largely exists to manage the risks created by its existence. We have a compelling interest in cooling tensions with Russia, and in sustaining the independence of countries on its border. That may be uncommon sense in today’s national security establishment, but it surely is wiser than a conventional wisdom that seems intent on gearing up for a violent conflict on Russia’s border. | null | null | null | null | null |
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! If you live in the D.C. area, we hope you enjoyed the snowstorm yesterday, which some Twitter users were calling “snomicron.” ❄
Former congressman says demise of cap-and-trade bill offers lessons for Build Back Better
In 2010, then-Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) watched as the biggest climate bill in U.S. history died an unceremonious death in the Senate, despite months of round-the-clock negotiations in both chambers of Congress and the White House.
It's beginning to look a lot like 2010 again, and instead of a cap-and-trade bill, Democrats are scrambling to resuscitate the stalled Build Back Better Act, which contains a historic $555 billion investment in reducing the emissions that are heating the planet.
Waxman, who served as a lead author of the cap-and-trade bill when chairing the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is hoping BBB does not meet the same fate.
“We had difficulties which tended to be fatal,” Waxman told The Climate 202. “Build Back Better is having difficulties which I hope will not be fatal.”
The cap-and-trade bill was known as Waxman-Markey after then-Rep. Edward J. Markey, the other lead author in the House. It proposed establishing a cap-and-trade system in which the federal government would set a limit (cap) on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that could be emitted nationwide. Companies would need to buy and sell (trade) permits to emit those gases, and the cap would get lower and lower over time.
If passed, Waxman-Markey would have been the most significant piece of climate legislation ever enacted in the United States. But many factors converged to spell the bill's demise, including the Great Recession and opposition from industry interests.
Build Back Better would similarly represent the biggest investment in clean energy in the nation's history. But Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said in late December that he could not support the bill, citing rising consumer prices, a growing federal debt and the arrival of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Back in 2010, of course, Manchin was mounting his first run for the Senate by firing — literally — at his own party's climate policy. Manchin released a campaign ad in which he shouldered a rifle and shot a hole in a copy of the cap-and-trade legislation, saying, “I’ll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill because it’s bad for West Virginia.”
Troubles with timing, filibuster
Waxman, who now runs a public relations and lobbying firm called Waxman Strategies, said he learned several lessons from his experience with cap-and-trade that Democrats could heed today. One was the importance of timing.
Waxman noted that President Barack Obama took office pledging to address two pressing issues: climate change and health care. But after the Senate spent so much time debating the Affordable Care Act, there were precious few days left on the legislative calendar for cap-and-trade.
“There is a myth going around that is often repeated that President Obama didn't care that much about the cap-and-trade bill. That wasn't true. His efforts were essential to get it through the House,” Waxman said.
“[Obama] once said to me, 'I've got two babies here — two children here — and I love them both equally. But I do want the Affordable Care Act through. That's my more important goal,'" he said. “And there's not much he could have done after we spent all that time on the Affordable Care Act.”
Democrats will also have to manage their time carefully in the coming months, as Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) targets a vote on changing the Senate rules by Jan. 17 — and as the party stares down the midterm elections in November.
Waxman said he enthusiastically supports changing the Senate rules requiring a 60-vote threshold, which would have ensured the passage of cap-and-trade in the chamber.
“Had they broken the filibuster in the Senate, they would have passed it in the Senate because they had a majority vote ready to go for it,” he said. “So the lesson is we shouldn't have a filibuster in the Senate.”
The importance of executive action
After Waxman-Markey fizzled out in the Senate, Obama sought to cut emissions in ways that did not require congressional approval. In 2015, he unveiled the Clean Power Plan, which set the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants.
If BBB flounders in the Senate, President Biden's ambitious emissions reduction goals will depend on Environmental Protection Agency regulations and executive action.
“[Biden] is trying to do everything he can right now with executive action. There are some things you can do, and I've recommended it to them,” Waxman said, although he declined to offer specifics on his suggestions to the White House.
Markey, who is now a senator, is not ready to give up on BBB.
“More than a decade after we worked to get Waxman-Markey across the finish line but were stymied by Republican opposition and entrenched big money interests, Congress has the opportunity to pass life-saving climate action that would take steps to drastically reduce emissions, address environmental injustice and create millions of good-paying union jobs,” Markey said in a statement to The Climate 202.
“We must get this done,” he added. “While the best time to act on climate was decades ago, the next best time is now.”
Texas's gas industry is still not ready for the cold
It’s been nearly a year since a deep freeze killed hundreds and knocked out power across Texas. But the state’s natural gas industry was still caught unprepared for a cold front last weekend, Bloomberg’s Gerson Freitas Jr, Francesca Maglione, and Sergio Chapa report. Although the latest chill was nowhere near as severe as the storm last February, it still caused instruments to freeze, production to plunge and natural gas companies to spew pollutants into the air.
Nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas was burned or wasted in weather-related shutdowns in Texas on Sunday. It’s a testament to the fact that the industry remains vulnerable to extreme weather despite calls for natural gas producers to make their infrastructure more resilient.
One roofing company hopes ‘solar shingles’ will increase solar uptake
Installing solar energy systems on a home has usually meant mounting solar panels on racks. But that could change: One of the largest roofing companies in the United States, GAF Energy, started selling a solar shingle product yesterday, The Washington Post's Tik Root reports.
By combining roofing and solar installation, the company is hoping to make going solar more accessible and affordable. While solar shingles have been around in some form for decades, GAF’s offering is notable because of the company’s expansive installer network and the fact that the shingles can be nailed onto a roof.
Ask a climate reporter
The Washington Post's Tik Root talks climate solutions around the world
Over the past year, our colleagues have told the stories of a dozen people around the world who are working to find solutions to climate change. Tik Root, a climate solutions reporter at The Post, spoke with The Climate 202 about the project.
Climate 202: Is there any particular person or moment that stands out to you from the climate visionary series?
Root: There was this moment when I was in the Yukon and Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm was bouncing his then-3-week-old baby on his lap and talking about the future that she would live in. It was a theme that came up over and over again, not just with him, but with the other visionaries: how much future generations motivated them.
Climate 202: When you were looking for people to profile for the series, what drew you to certain stories?
Root: The main bar that we had was that their contribution had to be relatively tangible. It wasn’t theoretical or unbuilt or unplanned. It was in progress, in action, whether that was someone installing solar in Brooklyn or finding gas leaks in Boston or building fruit ethylene sensors out West. And then, we made sure we had a diversity of visionaries, both in their demographics, but also in their geographic location and what they were doing.
Climate 202: Did this series change your own thinking in any way?
Root: I think it made me excited more than anything. It was a great look at what is possible. Each of these people was so passionate and energetic. All of them would text or email at crazy hours. This is what they had devoted their lives to doing, and it was inspiring.
Climate 202: When experts predict that the United States is on a path to catastrophic climate change, how do you view positive climate stories? How do you highlight moments of hope without sounding like a Pollyanna?
Root: I would say I don’t necessarily see them as positive stories. I just see them as stories. I see solutions journalism generally — but particularly in the climate space — as a new and different way of engaging with what is clearly a massive problem. The idea, at least as I see it, is to teach people through a solution about the problem, as a different way of engaging. Some people might feel more inspired by the doom and gloom, but I think a lot of people like to read about hope. This is in no way meant to ignore or minimize the massive challenge. It’s just another way into it. | null | null | null | null | null |
(The Washington Post) (TWP/The Washington Post)
Tony Burns thought he knew Washington. He grew up here, went to school here, worked here. It was here that he learned he was HIV-positive, that he was diagnosed with cancer, that he came close to losing his home. It was in Washington that he turned to Miriam’s Kitchen for help.
And it’s here that he chose to help Miriam’s Kitchen.
“ 'Lived experience’ is the catchphrase that everybody now is using,” Burns told me. That means that the best advocate for fixing what’s broken is someone who has dealt with the broken pieces firsthand.
Last year, Burns, 62, held a unique position at Miriam’s Kitchen, a charity that is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand. He was the nonprofit’s advocacy fellow.
“People with lived experience are part of our steering committee at every meeting, with whom we’re developing strategy, whether that’s deciding what to advocate for or the tactics used,” said Lara Pukatch, chief advocacy officer at Miriam’s Kitchen.
At its most basic, advocacy is lobbying. It is marshaling your forces and your data, then visiting legislators to persuade them to see things your way — and to pass budgets and laws accordingly.
But there’s another way to look at it, one articulated by a previous Miriam’s Kitchen advocacy fellow, Waldon Adams (who died in 2021, along with Rhonda Whitaker, after both were hit by a car in Hains Point).
Adams used to say that advocacy is really just caring about something and then telling people about that thing.
“I love to use that quote,” Pukatch said. “At the end of the day, it’s just caring and telling other people you care.”
Burns had already done some of that with Whitman-Walker Health, supporting the work it does with the LGBTQ community. He turned to Miriam’s Kitchen in 2015, after the apartment he was in became unlivable because of mold. Someone recommended he contact Miriam’s Kitchen, which in addition to providing daily meals from its Foggy Bottom headquarters helps clients who are experiencing homelessness.
Said Burns: “I was like, ‘What is Miriam’s Kitchen? I’m not hungry, so why refer me to a place like that?’ However, I've got to say that they really did come through for me in helping me relocate.”
The advocacy team asked if Burns would be interested in becoming an advocacy fellow. That’s when he realized there was more to learn about Washington.
“It helped me to learn, for instance, some of the inner workings of the D.C. government, particularly as it related to housing,” Burns said.
He learned about the mayor’s budget and the money she set aside to address homelessness. He learned about the D.C. Council committee that oversees such issues, the Committee on Human Services, and how the council can add money to the budget. He met with legislators. He met the mayor.
“Most local folk who have a history of being challenged financially, they aren’t often in those forums,” Burns said.
Last year, Miriam’s Kitchen was among a coalition of groups that helped secure money to lift more than 2,000 people from chronic homelessness. The funds will be raised via a tax increase on the city’s wealthiest residents.
Burns has also been a member of the speakers bureau at Miriam’s Kitchen. I asked if it was difficult to be so open with strangers about his life, whether in front of a government committee or a community organization.
“You don't go through cancer, HIV and issues with decent, safe and affordable housing and not develop some kind of strength and backbone,” he said. “If it happened to you, you know it can happen to somebody else.”
And that’s what Burns hopes his advocacy can do: help somebody else. His advocacy is broad and policy-focused. But it’s also narrow and human-focused. It’s one part testifying to politicians and one part testifying to people he encounters on the streets. Burns mentors individuals experiencing homelessness, telling them that Miriam’s Kitchen helped him and it can help them, too.
“I do let folk know it’s going to take a minute,” he said. “It’s not a quick fix. But if you follow through and are patient, we can get you off the streets.”
You can help Miriam’s Kitchen, too. This is the final week of our annual fund drive. The Washington Post Helping Hand campaign ends Friday. Please give. You can contribute online by visiting posthelpinghand.com. Click where it says “Donate.”
To give by check, write Miriam’s Kitchen, Attn: Development, 2401 Virginia Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ranking the NFL’s potential coaching openings, from Raiders to Bears
The Las Vegas Raiders, led by quarterback Derek Carr, are on the verge of making the postseason. (AJ Mast/AP)
There were seven head-coaching changes in the NFL last offseason, and not all of the newcomers have found instant success. Brandon Staley has the Los Angeles Chargers on the verge of the playoffs, and Nick Sirianni is already in with the Philadelphia Eagles. But the remaining five will be shut out of the postseason, with four of them having won four games or less. (And one of those, Jacksonville’s Urban Meyer, didn’t even last the full season.)
We don’t yet know how many coaching changes we’ll get this year, but I could see the total being five or six. Let’s take a look at how each of the potential openings stacks up:
Las Vegas Raiders: At 9-7, they enter the final week with a chance to make the postseason. If they beat the Chargers on “Sunday Night Football,” they’re in. That is a testament to this team’s resilience; it has been able to overcome the midseason resignation of Jon Gruden and other challenges.
It also is a testament to the team’s talent level, most notably its pass rush and at quarterback, where Derek Carr has had a strong season. The presence of a reliable QB is a major asset for the next coach; the Raiders could continue to build around Carr or trade him for a package of draft picks and/or players.
It’s unclear whether General Manager Mike Mayock will be back, and the roster has room to improve after some questionable draft choices in recent years. But the Raiders remain a popular team with plenty of fans. That, plus the fact that they have the best QB situation of any team on this list, is enough to earn the Raiders the top spot.
Minnesota Vikings: It’s not a guarantee that Mike Zimmer will be fired, but after Sunday night’s loss to Green Bay eliminated the Vikings from the postseason, there is a good chance. He has been good over eight seasons, but the Vikings have missed the playoffs in the past two years, and the defense — his specialty — has been a disappointment.
There is a lot about this job that would be attractive to a coaching candidate. The Vikings have good, stable ownership. They have a dedicated fan base and strong home-field advantage. There is plenty of talent, including wide receiver Justin Jefferson and running back Dalvin Cook.
Whether Kirk Cousins is viewed as a positive might depend on the candidate. He brings more stability than many teams have at quarterback, but his contract is expensive and his long-term future with the team is uncertain. Regardless, Minnesota should be one of the more enticing jobs if Zimmer is let go.
Denver Broncos: Vic Fangio is unlikely to last another season, and there should be plenty of interest among candidates to replace him. GM George Paton has done a good job of building the roster, which includes 2021 draft picks Patrick Surtain II at cornerback and Javonte Williams at running back. The secondary is one of the best in football, and the receiving corps is young and talented.
The biggest issue is at quarterback, with Teddy Bridgewater and Drew Lock both struggling, but the Broncos can address that in the offseason. They have lots of salary cap room and draft choices if they want to sign or trade for a veteran. Or they could select a QB in the draft.
This is a good team in a great football city. It shouldn’t have any trouble fielding a strong pool of candidates.
Jacksonville Jaguars: They would be higher on this list if it weren’t for their poor talent level; they are in line to pick first in the draft for the second straight year.
The presence of 2021’s No. 1 pick, quarterback Trevor Lawrence, is a plus, even though he has had a rough rookie year. He has the talent to make a leap in his second season, similar to how Joe Burrow did for Cincinnati. The Jaguars also have a ton of cap room, which could allow them to address needs such as the defense and the offensive line in free agency.
They have supportive ownership and more resources than many teams in the league. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they went with an offensive-minded coach to develop Lawrence, which is why former Eagles coach Doug Pederson and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coordinator Byron Leftwich are possible candidates.
Chicago Bears: This isn’t a bad job by any means, but there are a few barriers to winning right away. The roster is an issue, with help needed along the offensive line, at wide receiver and on defense. They have plenty of salary cap room, but they’re without their first-round pick this year after last year’s trade up to draft quarterback Justin Fields.
Fields showed flashes during his rookie season, even as the Bears struggled, and his presence makes the job more desirable. Candidates who believe in his ability to become a high-level starter should be interested, and for that reason it seems likely that the team would want to find a strong offensive coach to aid in his development.
Houston Texans: At this point, it appears likely that the Texans will retain David Culley beyond his first season. But if this job does come open, it will be the least desirable.
The Deshaun Watson situation still doesn’t have a resolution, handcuffing the team on how to move forward at quarterback. The roster lacks talent. There has been turmoil in the organization over the past year, including at the ownership level. This team would be better off sticking with Culley for at least one more season, given how much else remains unresolved. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stephanie Hinds, a U.S. attorney, said in a statement on Jan. 3 that the guilty verdicts reflected Holmes’ "culpability in this large scale investor fraud." (AP)
Blood testing start-up founder Elizabeth Holmes’s guilty conviction on four of the 11 fraud charges leveled against her has given some resolution to one of the highest-profile white-collar crime cases to get public attention in years.
The more than three-month long trial, which centered on whether Holmes purposely misled investors and patients about how effective her company’s blood-testing machines were, was swamped by reporters and curious onlookers, in much the same way other big white-collar criminal trials had been in the past.
The U.S. has a history of building up its business leaders, and tearing them down just as quickly when they’re accused of wrongdoing. Here’s a look at some of the biggest white-collar scandals of the last few decades, including some that went to trial and others that didn’t. | null | null | null | null | null |
A mob loyal to President Donald Trump gathers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
“I hold Donald Trump 100 percent responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 and all of the people that have enabled him, enabled him that day, and continue to enable him now,” said Garza, who was Sicknick’s girlfriend for 11 years.
The effect on the U.S. Capitol Police remains chilling. The agency’s workforce declined and its morale plummeted in the aftermath of the riot, even as its workload continued to soar. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told The Post on Monday that roughly 9,600 threats were aimed at members of Congress or the Capitol itself in 2021. The Capitol Police force is now operating with 130 fewer officers than in 2020, thanks to mass retirements and resignations that followed the Jan. 6 attack.
“What I will say is, the medical examiner did say that all that transpired that day definitely played a role in kind of escalating or tipping the scales to escalate his death. And I agree with that,” she said. “So I think, definitely, that played a role in tipping the scales for him to pass away much faster.” | null | null | null | null | null |
In the days following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, lawmakers began to discuss the need for an investigation focused on what led to the attack, how the building was breached so easily and how any similar event can be prevented from happening again?
First, many Republicans said any investigation should also focus on violence and damage to public property during the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Then they argued Democrats would just use the investigation as a partisan political tool by focusing on former president Donald Trump’s behavior in an attempt to tar the GOP ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Hope for comity wasn’t dead yet early in the year and a bipartisan agreement was hammered out in May by the leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee to create an independent commission that was modeled on the panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
House Democrats then decided to create a special investigative committee and the House passed a resolution establishing one on a 220-to-190 vote on June 30 with two Republicans joining Democrats in voting in favor of the panel.
With midterm elections in November, this year looks to be contentious and demanding for the panel with public hearings and publicly released reports on the agenda. What follows is a guide to what the committee has done and where its investigation is headed.
-- One team, dubbed “Inside the Fence,’ is devoted to understanding the preparation and response to the event by federal and local law enforcement;
-- A second, called “follow the money,” is examining the funding for demonstrations against the election results;
-- A third is investigating online misinformation and extremist activity;
-- A fourth is looking at the pressure campaigns in Washington and in state capitols to overturn election results or delay certification of electors; and
-- A fifth team is focused on the organizers of the demonstrations on the National Mall and at the Capitol.
“We have had a remarkable number of people come in and want to talk with us or cooperate with subpoenas,” said a senior committee aide, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. “A lot who want to share the information that they have that’s relevant to our work, multiple hundreds of people and the individuals who have received the lion’s share of focus in the past few weeks are really the outliers in what we’re doing.”
The House has so far sent two contempt of Congress referrals to the Justice Department: one for Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and one for Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. Bannon has been indicted and the Justice Department has yet to say whether it will pursue charges against Meadows.
Meadows backed away from cooperating with the committee after producing thousands of documents for the panel, including text messages and emails related to the events of the day, including from people telling him to get Trump to call off his supporters.
The committee has also started to focus intently on Trump’s actions that day as it begins to discuss whether to recommend that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into the former president.
The panel continues to seek new information even as it begins to focus on two must-do tasks next year: a series of public hearings to tell the story of Jan. 6 from start to finish along with one or more written reports. The reports will not only detail the events of that day but make recommendations on how to avoid a similar situation from occurring again. This includes whether the laws overseeing how electoral votes are tallied, the Electoral Count Act, and that grant a president emergency powers need to be changed.
“After assembling a complete documentary record of what happened on Jan. 6 and what caused it — the main purpose of the Jan. 6 committee is to make recommendations as to policy changes that will prevent any further close calls with violent and lawless attacks on our government. So we have to look at fortifying our defenses against both inside political coup attempts and violent insurrectionary challenges to the government,” Raskin added.
The rough timeline being discussed among senior committee staffers includes a number of public hearings starting this winter and stretching into spring, followed by a possible interim report being released in the summer with a final report coming out before the midterm elections in November. The midterms are a key date for the committee because political prognosticators expect Republicans to win the House and then shut down the panel.
Committee members have expressed confidence they can overcome hurdles put up by reluctant witnesses and other legal challenges and complete an investigation that will affect how citizens view the attack even in this partisan moment for the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
Peter Navarro speaks, along with then-President Trump and members of the coronavirus task force, during a briefing in April 2020. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Something would emerge that was objectionable — say, expressing openness to Russia’s help in the 2016 election or attempting to leverage Ukraine for help in the 2020 election. Then would come the denials that it was what it looked like. Then would come the confirmation from those involved that it was pretty much what it looked like, whether that amounted to “collusion” (Russia probe) or a “quid pro quo” (Ukraine impeachment).
In a new interview with Rolling Stone and in his new book, Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro lays out the plot to overturn the election. According to him, the “Green Bay Sweep,” as he called it, involved getting Congress to debate the electoral results of six swing states that went for Joe Biden for four hours each — a 24-hour made-for-TV spectacle — after which the results of the election would be declared in-dispute and Congress would revert to the fallback in such situations: the House picking the new president with one vote per congressional delegation. Republicans would hold a majority of congressional delegations and thus would “likely” win in that scenario, Navarro deduced.
It’s been no secret that then-President Donald Trump tried to leverage then-Vice President Mike Pence’s historically ceremonial role overseeing the counting of electoral votes in his effort to overturn the election. But it wasn’t until September that we got a sense for the full scope of the plan. That’s when The Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa detailed Trump lawyer John Eastman’s memo laying out multiple scenarios for how the election might be overturned.
When the two-page memo was revealed, Eastman awkwardly sought distance from some of its, shall we say, bolder ideas — like having Pence unilaterally attempt to declare Trump the winner. Eastman tried to argue that he was merely providing lawyerly advice, even as the memo advocated for even the boldest of the steps laid out. Eastman later called the unilateral Pence strategy “crazy” even as his memo said Pence was the “ultimate arbiter” of the process. He pointed to a later six-page memo that was somewhat more circumspect in its prescriptions, but still included that “ultimate arbiter” language.
Eastman’s employer, the Claremont Institute, also sought to distance itself from the most brazen of the proposals, arguing that his memo had been distorted. Both he and it suggested this was merely about hearing objections to the electors and potentially giving Congress time to hear from state legislators about whether they might send alternate slates of Trump electors for Congress to consider.
“It started flawlessly when [Arizona Rep. Paul] Gosar and [Texas Sen.] Cruz promptly at 1 p.m. called on scrutiny of the Arizona vote. Arizona was one of six battlegrounds: They were Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. And it started flawlessly, but the violence overtook that event. The rest, as they, say is history.”
The reason Navarro is saying this is pretty evident: First, he’s got a book to sell, and second, it makes it look like the Capitol insurrection wasn’t actually part of the plan all along. His contention that it messed up the plan is certainly highly questionable, given that Trump declined to immediately call for a halt to the violence and seemed quite impressed by the show of support from his allies.
But more than anything, pay attention to the progression. We’ve gone from those involved pitching this as something of a Hail Mary, to the details of the plot being fleshed out but downplayed, to a top Trump adviser effectively saying (however implausibly) that the effort to overturn a democratic election based upon bogus claims of voter fraud was warranted and on the cusp of succeeding — and seeming to take pride in that.
And in doing so, Navarro invites a host of questions about just how much any number of people involved in the “Green Bay Sweep” had also preordained the outcome. These lawmakers, after all, weren’t generally speaking in terms of “the election must be overturned,” but rather merely raising questions about supposed irregularities. | null | null | null | null | null |
Snowstorm leaves hundreds of drivers stranded on highway in Virginia
I-95 near Fredericksburg shut down overnight in both directions after several trucks jackknifed on the ice.
Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg, Virginia, shut down Monday night due to icy, snowy roads. Hundreds of drivers were stuck overnight along the highway after trucks jackknifed, blocking traffic and emergency vehicles from getting through. (VDOT)
Road crews struggled to reach hundreds of motorists Tuesday after they were stranded all night in freezing temperatures along a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Virginia where tractor-trailers jackknifed in the ice and snow, state police said.
Both directions of traffic on I-95 came to a standstill Monday between Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and exit 152 in Dumfries, Prince William County, the Virginia Department of Transportation said. At around daybreak Tuesday, the agency tweeted that “crews will start taking people off at any available interchange to get them.”
Governor Ralph Northam said his team responded through the night, sending out emergency messages to connect stranded drivers with help, and working with local officials to set up warming shelters. He said the National Guard was “available,” but he hadn’t yet called upon members to help. He also couldn’t say when the situation would be resolved.
Crews were working to remove stopped trucks, plow snow, de-ice the roadway and guide stranded motorists to the nearest exits along the East Coast’s main north-south highway, the transportation agency said. By 9 a.m., a single lane of traffic was creeping forward between many stalled trucks and cars in one direction, while people could be seen walking down traffic lanes still covered with ice and snow.
The problem began when a tractor-trailer jackknifed in the ice and snow, causing a chain reaction of other vehicles losing control and becoming disabled in the traffic lanes, state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Tuesday. As hours passed and night fell, motorists posted desperate messages on social media about running out of fuel, food and water.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Emily Clementson, a truck driver, told NBC Washington. She urged stuck motorists to ask truck drivers if they have food or water to share, since many carry extra supplies.
U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, who lives in Richmond, said he remained stuck in his car 21 hours after starting his two-hour commute to the Capitol in Washington at 1 p.m. Monday.
Kaine described acts of kindness among folks who were stranded, including a Connecticut family returning from a Florida vacation who walked up and down lines of stopped cars sharing a bag of oranges they were bringing home.
Also stranded was NBC News correspondent Josh Lederman, who spoke on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday on a video feed from his car, with a dog in the back seat. He said he’d been stuck about 30 miles south of Washington since 8 p.m. Monday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Brazil has yearly influenza vaccine drives that target people above the age of 60, children, and other high-risk groups like health-care professionals. As a result, a relatively high rate of older Brazilians are vaccinated against the flu. The country has also give out enough coronavirus shots to inoculate some 78 percent of its population, according to Reuters. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several other local district attorneys have declined to bring charges against Cuomo related to incidents described in the report.
“To touch a woman’s breasts, who I hardly know, in the mansion with 10 staff around, with my family in the mansion, to say, ‘I don’t care who sees us,’” Cuomo said. “I would have to lose my mind to do such a thing.” | null | null | null | null | null |
U.K. to wipe past convictions for consensual same-sex activity from records
Anyone convicted of consensual same-sex sexual activity under abolished laws in England and Wales will soon be eligible to be pardoned and have their records wiped, the U.K. Home Office said in a news release Tuesday.
The amendment would apply to civilians in England and Wales and people convicted of military offenses anywhere in the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland and Scotland have separate disregard and pardon schemes.
The plan will also grant a posthumous pardon to anyone who has died before the amendment comes into force or up to 12 months afterward. The Home Office statement said the government would confirm the plan this week.
Sasha Misra, associate director of communications and campaigns for Stonewall, a U.K.-based LGBTQ rights organization, hailed the government’s plan in a statement Tuesday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Vials of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine in the Philippines. (Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg News)
“Is there any information on how protected a person is against omicron (or delta for that matter) who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the Moderna booster?”
— Karen
Unfortunately, like so much related to omicron, the data here is quite sparse. The new variant has been with us for about only a month, and the population of people who got this vaccine series is small. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 2.5 million Americans received a shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine followed by a booster dose of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, compared with more than 60 million who got three shots of the mRNA vaccines.
We know that Johnson & Johnson recipients who got boosted with an mRNA shot are well protected against the delta variant. But omicron is far more slippery. To get a real-world sense of how these patients’ immunity holds up against the new variant, “you’d need enough people with that vaccine pattern exposed to omicron . . . and that’s something we just don’t have at this point in time,” David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me.
For now, three mRNA shots appears to be the gold standard in keeping people safe from omicron. Health officials say the additional doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines seem to restore most people’s antibody levels enough to fight off the variant.
A combination of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and an mRNA booster doesn’t appear to have the same effect, early and not yet peer-reviewed research shows. But that doesn’t mean immunity disappears. Many people who got this series are expected to retain significant protection against serious covid-19, said Jesse Erasmus, a virologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
“I’d put them in the same category as individuals who had two mRNA vaccines, maybe slightly better,” Erasmus told me. “I’d say the majority are going to be protected from severe disease.”
Two Johnson & Johnson shots appear to raise protections against omicron, too. A recent study out of South Africa, the first country to detect the new variant, showed that Johnson & Johnson boosters dramatically reduced the risk of hospitalization among health-care workers during the height of the country’s omicron wave, slashing hospital admissions by about 85 percent.
So far, omicron appears to cause mild or moderate illness in many otherwise healthy people with two vaccine doses, although they may develop more intense and longer-lasting symptoms than fully boosted patients, as my colleague Yasmeen Abutaleb reported last week. Craig Spencer, an emergency room physician from Columbia University Medical Center, offered similar observations, saying in a widely circulated Twitter thread that patients he saw with two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines had relatively mild symptoms. Patients with a single dose of Johnson & Johnson, without a booster, were worse overall but didn’t have life-threatening illness, he said.
Erasmus said he hopes officials will soon extend a second mRNA booster shot to Johnson & Johnson patients to bring their protection all the way up to the level we’re seeing in people who’ve gotten a triple dose of the mRNA vaccines. Dowdy, too, said additional boosters for these patients would probably be a good idea at the six-month mark.
“I think they should be getting a third dose,” Erasmus said. “That’s the hard part — waiting for health officials to catch up on the data.”
For the time being, both experts recommended people in this group take precautions such as masking and distancing. | null | null | null | null | null |
The policy stems from a voluntary settlement agreement the short-term rental platform reached with three state residents in 2019
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky speaks during an event in San Francisco in 2018. Beginning Jan. 31, Oregon-based hosts on the short-term vacation rental app will see only the initials of a prospective guest until the booking is confirmed. (Eric Risberg/AP)
Airbnb requires users to agree to a set of community guidelines that prohibit discrimination and has changed the way profile pictures are displayed to make bookings more objective. It recently launched an effort called Project Lighthouse to measure discrimination on its platform.
The new policy also follows years of pressure from aggrieved guests and activists, who say Airbnb has unwittingly created a new forum for an age-old form of discrimination.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in so-called public accommodations, which is defined as “any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests.” But it exempts establishments in which the host is renting out a personal residence, as long as the property is located within a building containing no more than five rooms for rent.
“The effect of Airbnb’s booking policies is that Airbnb’s public accommodation — its service of offering to the public, among other things, lodgings — discriminates and violates [Oregon law], because Airbnb offers a different service to African-Americans than it does to whites,” according to a class action complaint filed in 2017.
When asked whether the company would consider broadening the policy to other states, an Airbnb spokeswoman said: “Given that the impact of this change is unknown, the implementation will be limited.”
The new policy applies only to guests from Oregon, an Airbnb spokeswoman said, which is consistent with the 2019 settlement agreement that came from the 2017 lawsuit. The company uses guests’ billing Zip codes and IP addresses at the time they initiate a booking request to determine whether they reside in Oregon.
That means a Portland resident renting an Airbnb in Manhattan would have their name hidden, for example, while a New Yorker renting a place in the Rose City would not. | null | null | null | null | null |
Omicron dominant Omicron not dominantOmicron detected (low samples) No data
The variant detected in November is showing the potential in some places to overtake delta as the dominant version of the coronavirus
Youjin Shin
Updated Jan. 4 at 10:42 a.m.Originally published Dec. 21, 2021
In the worldwide chart of coronavirus variants below, the red omicron appears at the top right corner in the last few weeks. The giant blue delta spread began a year ago and covered the world by summer. Omicron is likely to take over even faster. This chart represents countries where genomic sequences are publicly released, so some large countries are not included.
The charts below show the mix of coronavirus variants in a selection of countries that currently have high levels of omicron. To capture the latest trends, this map uses three-week periods with the most recent ending last Saturday. In any country, the genomic sequences may be concentrated within a particular outbreak, or may miss some outbreaks, so it is not necessarily representative of the country as a whole.
Countries where omicron is most prominent
Sequencing is a process that maps out the genetic code of a particular virus that infected someone so it can be compared to other strains. It is a crucial tool to catch significant changes. If mutations change the virus enough, it becomes a new variant. Variants may have different behaviors that affect the transmissibility of the virus and make it evade the human immune system.
Public and private laboratories submit their sequencing results to the worldwide GISAID database, a nonprofit partnership that broadcasts trends of viral diseases.
[Understanding omicron’s many mutations]
Only a very small sample of coronavirus cases are sequenced, and the process takes about a week. That makes the latest view always a bit out of date compared with daily covid case counts that have shown real-time shifts over the past two years.
Although the level of sequencing varies widely across the world and in the United States, many countries are generating sufficient public genome samples to reveal a trend.
Countries where omicron is also growing
Many countries have not provided sufficient timely samples to the public GISAID data to show the status of omicron’s spread. China and Russia have released virtually nothing. Finland, Bangladesh, Mexico, Botswana, the Philippines, Ireland, and Greece have released minimal samples. In some cases, there may not be technology or resources to do the genomic sequences. In other cases, it may be an issue of transparency.
The United States has released over 35,000 samples collected in December, second only to the United Kingdom. The U.S. has been adding thousands of samples a day, although they are from coronavirus cases detected usually at least a week earlier.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used the existing samples to project an estimate of more recent omicron cases. The CDC estimated on Dec. 21 that 73 percent of the coronavirus cases were omicron. That estimate has been updated to 58.6 percent for the week ending Dec. 25.
United States variant trend
Sequencing within the United States varies widely. Massachusetts, California, New York, Washington and Arizona have released thousands of sequencing samples collected in December. Many other states are in the low hundreds or less. The Post will publish state-by-state shares of omicron when the data is more complete.
The delta variant was first detected in India in late 2020 and then moved to Europe and the United Kingdom. It hit the United States in July just when cases, hospitalizations and deaths were dwindling. Delta spread faster than the previous variants and was more likely to cause breakthrough cases among vaccinated people. It quickly drove up a spike in cases that peaked in early September. Even as it waned, the low point in late October had six times as many cases as the low point before delta struck. In November, cases nationally began rising with another delta wave before omicron was spreading.
This project will be updated.
Leslie Shapiro and Leo Dominguez contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
The new drugs ‘can’t come soon enough,’ Florida physician says
A nurse who works in the coronavirus intensive care unit at Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille, France, takes a break during a shift on New Year’s Eve. (Daniel Cole/AP)
Schmidt said hospital admissions for covid-19 are mounting in Spectrum Health’s Blodgett and Butterworth hospitals, where she treats patients — with the unvaccinated accounting for most of the severe infections. Besides the pills’ scarcity, she said, another factor likely to limit their use is the narrow window for their use. Many people don’t seek treatment until they are experiencing severe symptoms, and by that time it is often too late to prescribe the antivirals, which must be taken within a few days of the first symptoms.
“We’re seeing our patients really gasping their last breaths of life,” Schmidt said. “These are healthy people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. We are in the room when they are on their FaceTime phone call with their spouse, telling them that they’re the love of their life and apologizing.”
Schmidt added that physicians are “always happy for any help we can get, but it’s very hard to get these early therapies into the regular population.”
In late December, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for the two antiviral drugs — Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’s molnupiravir — as omicron began to overtake delta as the most prominent variant of the novel coronavirus in many parts of the country. The antiviral pills, alongside the monoclonal antibody sotrovimab, are among the few outpatient treatments shown to be effective against the omicron variant.
Although the federal government purchased 10 million courses of Paxlovid and 3 million courses of molnupiravir — and has distributed 365,000 so far — the national supply of the antiviral pills will be low for several weeks as the drug companies ramp up production.
About 65,000 courses of Paxlovid, which reduced hospitalizations and death for high-risk people with covid-19 by nearly 90 percent in clinical trials, have been distributed to states on the basis of a population formula. Populous states such as California, Texas and Florida received thousands of courses, and many less-populous states, such as Wyoming and Vermont, received proportionally fewer, in some cases fewer than 150 units. Each treatment course contains 30 tablets to be taken over five days.
Distribution of molnupiravir has been similarly limited, with about 300,000 courses being split among states according to population. The FDA authorized molnupiravir as another at-home treatment option for high-risk patients if alternatives are unavailable. Molnupiravir works by causing mutations to the virus, sparking concerns the drug could trigger the creation of new variants or potentially cause mutations in the cells of people who take it. In addition, the results from a clinical trial fell short of expectations. Still, the drug reduced hospitalizations and deaths by about 30 percent when given within five days of symptom onset.
Rogers’s patients, many of whom have received organ transplants and take medications to suppress their immune systems, have a much higher risk of developing severe covid-19 that could result in hospitalization or death. He said he has prescribed Pfizer’s Paxlovid to several of them.
But the supply of the pills cannot keep up with demand. When Rogers tried to place an order for Paxlovid on Monday morning, the pharmacies that had been dispensing the drug last week were out of stock.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday urged the federal government to prioritize states that are experiencing sharp increases in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations rather than distributing the pills according to population formulas.
“Right now, New York will not have enough of these pills to meet the health demand,” Schumer said at a news conference. “The pills should go where the surges are.”
The federal government distributed the antiviral medications on a pro rata basis to “simplify distribution and provide baseline coverage nationwide,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an email. The agency also provided the drugs to 200 federally funded community health centers to ensure some supply reaches people in the most vulnerable communities in all 50 states. Officials will continue to evaluate those plans, she said.
Given the limited supply, Rogers said doctors must decide who stands to benefit the most from the pills, which must be given within five days of the onset of symptoms.
Patients over 65, those with underlying conditions such as obesity, and those who are immunocompromised are obvious candidates, he said. But some otherwise healthy people — especially those who are unvaccinated — also may develop severe infections.
“It’d be great if we could wait and see and if they get worse,” Rogers said, “but the treatment is really most effective when it’s given early.”
State health departments determine where to allocate their share of the pills — with most opting to make the drugs available through select pharmacies by prescription.
In Ohio, any physician can order the drugs for a high-risk patient and the medication will be dispensed through the same network of providers that handles monoclonal antibodies, a spokeswoman said in an email. New York will ship pills to community pharmacies, including a single location in New York City that will deliver the medication to patients’ homes in all five of the city’s boroughs.
But Maryland health officials said on Monday that because of shipping delays, they have received only a small portion of their allotment so far.
“Stretching out the supply is less of a problem than getting the products on the shelves of pharmacies,” said health department spokesman Andy Owen.
Pfizer spokesman Kit Longley said the company expected to produce more than 180,000 courses of Paxlovid by the end of last year and up to 120 million courses by the end of 2022. Pfizer must complete a multistep process of five to six months’ duration to produce the active pharmaceutical ingredient in its pills.
The first packs of Paxlovid were shipped from Pfizer’s distribution center in Memphis on Dec. 23, shortly after the FDA granted an emergency use authorization for the drug. Hundreds of thousands of packs will be shipped in early 2022, Longley said.
Merck provided hundreds of thousands of molnupiravir courses to the federal government in the last days of 2021, said company spokeswoman Melissa Moody. Production will ramp up to make 1 million courses over the next few weeks, she added.
Public health experts have continued to emphasize that coronavirus vaccines and booster shots remain the most effective way to prevent severe infection and death in most people.
“We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that covid vaccines are readily accessible and available,” said Alex Varkey, the director of pharmacy services at Houston Medical in Texas. “Vaccination is effective at preventing severe illness and death, and we are still seeing that, even with the omicron variant.”
The new antiviral pills are not the only prevention and early treatment options for people at a heightened risk of developing severe covid-19, but they are the only therapy that can be taken at home.
This week, the federal government also is providing about 50,000 courses of AstraZeneca’s monoclonal antibody Evusheld, which was authorized by the FDA last month for prevention of covid-19 in immunocompromised individuals who have had bad reactions to vaccines or cannot mount a response from vaccination. Nearly 50,000 units of GlaxoSmithKline’s monoclonal antibody sotrovimab will be made available to states this week.
In places where omicron has not fully overtaken delta, the federal government is still shipping Regeneron and Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibodies, which are effective against other virus variants. All of those monoclonal antibodies are given intravenously in a hospital setting.
Another option is Remdesivir, which has been used for inpatient treatment and recently has shown promise in preventing hospitalizations if given shortly after symptoms develop, but the drug must be administered in a clinical setting.
If those treatment options, including the antiviral pills, become more readily available in coming weeks, some places may be able to stave off the worst effects of the winter surge. Although omicron has caused up to 88 percent of cases in parts of the northeast, according to data tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the delta variant still accounts for more cases in other areas of the country
“For parts of the country that have not seen a surge yet, [the antiviral drugs] could really, really blunt the impact,” said Nicole Iovine, an infectious-disease physician and chief epidemiologist for University of Florida Health in Gainesville. “And that’s really important, because we want to keep people from getting into the hospital.”
She said that she and her colleagues could not yet prescribe the antiviral pills but that she expected doctors to get access to them within days.
“They can’t come soon enough,” Iovine said. “It’s just a matter of if we can get these drugs out and to people in time, before omicron really takes over the entire country.”
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Fox News network relies on a distinction between opinion and news programming that it uses to differentiate the programming that viewers are presumably meant to treat as subjective versus objective. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
Watters’s most infamous segment involved his heading to New York City’s Chinatown in late 2016, purportedly because China had been the focus of discussion during a presidential debate. This was the result.
“My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek,” Watters later sort of apologized, “and I regret if anyone found offense.” As you might expect, people had taken offense.
But Watters understood what he was at the network to do, and that’s what he did. He was a “political humorist,” he insisted back then. Just making jokes.
Now, his role is different. “Watters’ World” is a weekly show, airing on Saturdays, and Watters is a co-host of Fox News’s daily opinion show “The Five.” The network relies on a distinction between opinion and news programming that it uses to differentiate the programming that viewers are presumably meant to treat as subjective versus objective, but that’s less of a wall than a chain-link fence. It increasingly seems like Fox’s subtle news offerings are meant to serve the way a splash of strawberry extract might benefit some corn-syrup-based concoction you buy at the corner store: contains real juice!
But Watters and his colleagues understand what the network is actually doing, as he made clear during Monday afternoon’s program. Watters was riffing about what “the Squad” would want from President Biden, suggesting the group had a misleading litany of demands that he equated to an abusive relationship.
“Do I feel sorry for Joe Biden? No!” Watters then said. “I work at Fox! I want to see disarray on the left! It’s good for America! It’s good for our ratings!”
You are welcome to debate whether disarray on the political left is good for America. But it is clearly the case that such disarray keeps Fox News viewers engaged, helping ratings, and that as a Fox News employee, Watters is aware of and supporting that connection.
The admission reminded me most immediately of an interview the CEO of the further-right network Newsmax gave to the New Yorker shortly after the 2020 election. Chris Ruddy was asked why he allowed misinformation about voter fraud to be broadcast on his network without first vetting it for accuracy.
“Well, I think before we even make the claim, we should say, ‘Hey, look at this anomaly. Why is this the case?’ And we start asking about it,” Ruddy said. “But you know what? At the end of the day, it’s great for news. The news cycle is red-hot, and Newsmax is getting 1 million people per minute, according to Nielsen, tuning into Newsmax TV. I think it’s good.”
He works at Newsmax! He’s happy to air disinformation about the left! It’s good for his ratings!
Again, no one should be under any misconceptions about who Watters is and what he does. He is very much at Fox News to do what he suggests he’s doing, giving primacy to the political right as viewers demand. His co-hosts understood that, laughing along with his assertion or, in the case of co-host Greg Gutfeld, nodding along knowingly. The problem is that the line between subjective and objective that Fox News relies upon so heavily is not itself a distinction that many viewers draw.
Last year, Fox News’s attorneys famously defended opinion host Tucker Carlson by noting that the “tenor” of his show should make clear to viewers that he wasn’t “stating actual facts” but, instead, engaging in “nonliteral commentary.” This is the defense, manifested: This is opinion and viewers should know the difference.
But they don’t. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan asked a number of Trump supporters how they felt about the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year. Several told him that they didn’t think that the violence was a function of supporters of Donald Trump but, instead, of agitation by the left or encouragement by members of the FBI. Where’d that latter claim come from? Almost certainly from Fox, from Carlson, who promoted it loudly and repeatedly to his millions of viewers. They did not understand that Carlson’s direct, unfounded insistences that the FBI had pushed rioters to storm the building was “nonliteral commentary” that had been “exaggerated.”
There is a reason that Republicans who watch Fox News are more likely to believe false things about that riot and the 2020 election. There’s a reason that, even among Republicans, Fox News consumers are 19 points more likely to say that there’s solid evidence of voter fraud (which there isn’t) and 22 points more likely to say that Biden’s election was illegitimate. Either that’s because they choose to consume Fox News because they’re prone to those beliefs or because Fox News has done nothing to dissuade them from believing those things.
It’s important to remember that Fox News has a unique position within the media environment. It sits at a very lucrative nexus: enough of a legacy as a news organization to warrant comparison to CNN and MSNBC combined with a viewership that’s very focused on one side of the political spectrum. As I wrote last month, its ongoing ratings dominance is intertwined with both of those things: that older people, who tend to be more conservative, are more avid cable news watchers; and that, without robust competition from other right-wing networks, Fox News has a near-monopoly within that group.
Fox News does do good work. It does have objective reporters and reporting, and it has a top-tier polling shop. It’s also clear that what Watters articulated is the essence of the network’s success and the core of its strategy: amplify where the left is faltering to give viewers what they tuned in for.
But then there’s the next step that Watters and others on the network regularly take. Disarray, too, can be objective or subjective. And it’s often the case that the network’s hosts amplify situations with the intent of conveying a level of disarray and malfeasance that doesn’t exist — as Watters was in the middle of doing during his riff Monday.
That’s the line between influence and propaganda. | null | null | null | null | null |
Workers at Portland Pie Co. in Portland, Maine, walked out of the restaurant Sunday in protest of what they say are weak safety protocols against the coronavirus. (Screenshot via YouTube/WGME)
Workers who walked off the job Sunday in Portland, Maine, accuse the Portland Pie Co. of ignoring their pleas for months for improved health measures at the workplace, as well as severe understaffing. Ashley McAndrew, a bartender who ended up quitting Sunday over the protocols, wrote on Instagram that employees were not properly informed when at least five co-workers tested positive for coronavirus over the past month, with “many of us not even knowing we were exposed.”
The protest comes as some restaurants are shuttering again as a result of the surging omicron variant. Notices have popped up on social media in recent weeks as restaurants in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Minnesota, New York and Texas have notified their customers of closures related to positive tests and potential coronavirus exposures. In New York City — where restaurant workers and diners are required to provide proof of vaccination — many restaurants are closed because of the surge.
She noted on social media how she once asked management if the restaurant should put up a “masks recommended” sign on the door. She wrote she was told no “because it would scare people away.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The council also confirmed Ronnie T. Harris and Melissa Lee to the city’s beleaguered Housing Authority board, whose chairman, Neil Albert, resigned abruptly last year after it became known that he authorized contracts for a design firm owned by his companion.
Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) said she had some concerns that Lee might be influenced by her colleagues in the city’s real estate development community but heard testimony that when Lee served on other boards “she stepped up.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Pedro Almodóvar confronts Spain’s past, in the moving, masterful ‘Parallel Mothers’
Penélope Cruz, left, and Milena Smit in “Parallel Mothers.” (Iglesias Más/Sony Pictures Classics)
Named after the singer Janis Joplin (who, like Janis’s own mother, died of an overdose at 27), Janis was raised in a small rural village by her grandmother, Cecilia, after whom she names her own baby, in a story that is packed with mothers, the ghosts of mothers and mother figures. (Rossy de Palma, a familiar face to followers of Almodóvar since 1987’s “Law of Desire,” appears as a maternal fashion editor and Janis’s best friend. “Parallel Mothers” would make a fine double feature with another recent film about motherhood and its discontents: “The Lost Daughter.”)
Best movies of 2021: Almodóvar just gets better, family films make a comeback
All this backstory of lineage and class is dispensed with quickly, almost too quickly. The main plot revolves around Janis and Ana, their daughters and a mishap that — alone in a story that otherwise reveals the writer-director to be at the top of his storytelling game — seems easily avoidable. Several months after giving birth, Janis and Ana reconnect, with Ana moving into Janis’s apartment as an au pair. Their relationship isn’t easily categorized, and morphs from one thing to another over the course of the film: friends/peers; mentor/protege; rivals in motherhood; and even romantic partners.
But early on, Almodóvar also introduces a secondary, shadow narrative: one that does run parallel to the central story, but mostly in the background. As the film opens, Janis has been trying to get permission to exhume the unmarked mass grave in her hometown where her great-grandfather and several others were executed by Fascists in 1936, in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Janis enlists Arturo, whose expertise is in that field, to help navigate the bureaucracy, and if successful, oversee the disinterment and identification of bodies.
Could this be Almodóvar’s true theme: Spain’s ugly past, and its still-painful legacy? Political differences between Janis and Ana aren’t deeply addressed, until a moment late in the movie’s third act, when Janis explodes with righteous anger after Ana makes a dismissive offhand comment, parroting her estranged, presumably right-wing father’s views about how it’s better to leave some histories buried.
“Parallel Mothers” ends with another explicit on-screen message from Almodóvar, this time in an epigram courtesy of the Uruguayan journalist and author Eduardo Galeano, which neatly sums up this movie’s silent power: “No history is mute.”
R. At area theaters. Contains some sex scenes. In Spanish with subtitles. 123 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - This combination of images from a computer animation made available by NASA in December 2021 depicts the unfolding of the components of the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb is so big that it had to be folded origami-style to fit into the nose cone of the Ariane rocket. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab via AP) (Uncredited/NASA) | null | null | null | null | null |
Jim Pressler, Washington lawyer in negligence cases, dies at 73
Jim Pressler in 2019. (Margaret Webb Pressler)
Jim Pressler, a Washington lawyer who specialized in negligence and personal-injury cases, civil law and public-sector employment and was for 13 years general counsel to the Fraternal Order of Police in Washington, died Jan. 2 at a hospital in the District. He was 73.
The cause was complications from a brain aneurysm, said his wife, former Washington Post reporter Margaret Webb Pressler.
In 1981, Mr. Pressler established the law firm that became Pressler & Senftle, where he practiced for 40 years and served as president and managing partner. In an article for the firm’s website, his wife said he won “numerous multi-million-dollar verdicts and awards for clients in major motor vehicle, wrongful-death, product-liability and slip-and-fall cases.”
From 2006 to 2019 he was general counsel to D.C. police officers, representing officers in court and before law enforcement panels. His clients also included firefighters, Secret Service agents, U.S. Park Police officers and other law enforcement agency personnel.
Former D.C. police sergeant Joe Gentile, who retired in 2007 as a police spokesman, called Mr. Pressler “Clark Kent” for the “Superman” quality of his legal representation of police officers.
James William Pressler Jr., who lived in Washington, was born in Kingston, N.Y., on Aug. 8, 1948. His father was a mid-level executive with U.S. Rubber, now called Uniroyal, and his mother was a homemaker.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Villanova University, where he was captain of the hockey team, and he graduated in 1974 from Suffolk University Law School in Boston.
Before establishing his law firm, Mr. Pressler was a clerk for defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey in Boston and was general counsel to the National Association of Government Employees in Washington.
In addition to his wife of 30 years, Mr. Pressler is survived by three children, Eleanor, Phoebe and William Pressler, all of Washington; and a brother.
In 2012, Margaret Pressler, then a Post science writer, wrote a book, “Cheat the Clock: How New Science Can Help You Look and Feel Younger,” in which she marveled at how her husband, 17 years her senior, always managed to look far younger than he was. She said the secret was simply to maintain good habits: flossing, getting enough sleep, not stressing out, a good sex life, exercise without trying too hard, and getting home from work on time for dinner. | null | null | null | null | null |
In both cases, you get to the same point: You have learned that this is a bad idea. You have been immunized against sticking your head into fires in the future, if you will; your body will now be resistant to doing so. But you got to that point through two very, very different paths. Perhaps in one you simply got part of your hair scorched off. Isn’t it still the case that simply having someone explain the dangers to you would have been better than taking that risk at all?
He began by describing his own coronavirus infection: He had it, he said, but without symptoms. “How do you explain that?” he asked in a mocking tone, as though he’d single-handedly rebutted every medical expert with his unique anecdotal experience. As though Anthony S. Fauci scrambled to call together his team to evaluate this new evidence. The answer, of course, is that this can be explained by the fact that numerous infections have been asymptomatic in the past, so often, in fact, that I can spell “asymptomatic” without typos on the first try. Johnson isn’t a medical miracle. He’s just one of the lucky ones.
Let’s translate this into our campfire analogy. Ron Johnson stuck his head into a campfire but, through unusual good luck, emerged with no visible damage at all. And his response is to say that the best way for people to learn about what can happen when you stick your head in a campfire is to stick their heads in campfires — and that to instead warn them about doing so is an affront to God.
What’s completely bizarre about this argument, of course, is that the entire point is that we want people to have some protection against being infected. Immunity is sought because it means you won’t get sick. Johnson is saying that the way to not get sick is to ... get sick. Makes sense. Put another way, Johnson’s argument is the equivalent of saying that you don’t need to wear a bulletproof vest if you instead simply let your torso be perforated by a cannonball. No one’s going to shoot you in the stomach if your stomach has already been shot away! Checkmate, libs.
That, of course, was the unstated other negative outcome of my campfire analogy. Sometimes, you stick your head in a campfire and you don’t gain immunity against doing so in the future, because you are dead. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 825,000 people to date, all of whom were not as lucky with their infections as was Johnson. About 1-in-5 of whom died because they declined to get vaccinated against the virus, if KFF’s numbers are to be believed.
Ron Johnson has been banging this drum for a while. There’s no point in telling him why he’s wrong about this; if he cared about being accurate, he’d have already changed his rhetoric. But if there’s one person out there who finds his pitch compelling and, instead, reads this assessment, it’s worth parsing how truly ludicrous Johnson’s claims are. | null | null | null | null | null |
That there has been a broad discussion of the prospect of civil war in the United States in recent days is, by itself, telling. What drives public conversations is often nebulous, but, here, the proximate cause is obvious. One year ago Thursday, a violent mob surged into the Capitol in an effort to block the election of Joe Biden. So we’ve seen a multipronged discussion about the willingness of Americans to engage in acts of political violence and how far that willingness might extend.
For Vox, Zack Beauchamp spoke with a number of historians and political scientists about the possible trajectories on which the country might be headed. Titled “How does this end?,” Beauchamp at one point in the essay summarizes the predictions of those with whom he spoke: “hotly contested elections whose legitimacy is doubted by the losing side, massive street demonstrations, a paralyzed Congress, and even lethal violence among partisans.”
Again, that we’re having this conversation is significant. To use a loaded analogy, it strikes me as being akin to essays and ruminations in February 2020 that evaluated how the country might respond to a broad pandemic and the extent to which we were prepared to address it. This is loaded because it implies that, as with the pandemic, the subject of discussion inexorably followed. But it is also a flawed analogy: The current discussion is like wondering what a pandemic could look like after the pandemic was already underway.
Last month, I spoke with American University professor Thomas Zeitzoff on this subject. His focus is political violence and political psychology and he had publicly objected to a different Post column elevating the concerns expressed by Barbara F. Walter.
Walter is a professor at the University of California at San Diego who wrote a soon-to-be-published book titled, “How Civil Wars Start.” She was also one of the featured experts in Beauchamp’s essay.
What’s remarkable here is how much easier it is to visualize that sort of violence than to imagine the Confederated States of MAGA assembling troops near Tallahassee. While much of the rhetoric focused on the Second Amendment involves patriots keeping firearms to ward off an overbearing state, it’s useful to remember that even in the Civil War, the fighting was done on behalf of state entities. Even at the First Battle of Bull Run, the troops were organized into brigades; this was not a take-up-arms-and-head-to-Lexington-Green situation. Instead, Zeitzoff pointed to that violence 50 years ago (bombings by the Weather Underground, for example) and to the takeover of the state Capitol building by right-wing actors in Lansing, Mich., soon after the pandemic emerged in the spring of 2020. These were spaces that didn’t warrant the descriptor of “civil war,” but were real threats in which small groups of self-armed individuals engaged in political violence. Decentralized, to Walter’s point. And already present, if not to scale.
The second reason is that elected officials are actively promoting these ideas. Before she was banned from Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) touted an idea she called “national divorce,” in which some states, somehow, seceded from the United States to form separate entities. This is a more apt phrase than you might think, presuming an amicability that would almost certainly collapse into something far worse. In other words, it’s functionally indistinguishable from what happened in 1861, something Greene’s colleagues were quick to point out. | null | null | null | null | null |
Coronavirus: Vaccines & Variants with Kizzmekia S. Corbett, PhD
Kizzmekia S. Corbett, PhD led the National Institutes of Health team that developed the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Currently an assistant professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and recently named one of Time magazine’s 2021 Heroes of the Year, Corbett joins Washington Post senior writer Frances Stead Sellers to discuss the rise of the omicron variant and the development, current use and future possibilities of the groundbreaking mRNA vaccine technology.
Kizzmekia S. Corbett, PhD
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett was the scientific lead of the Vaccine Research Center’s coronavirus team at the U.S. National Institutes of Health where she studied coronavirus biology and vaccine development. Those 6 years of research led to the groundbreaking discovery that a stabilized version of a spike protein, which is found on the surface of all coronaviruses, would be a key target for vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her colleagues were central to the development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine and the Eli Lilly therapeutic monoclonal antibody, both of which were first to enter clinical trials in the world. As a result, her work is having a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years. Dr. Corbett is now an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work now extends beyond the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines to the outlook of this pandemic and future viral pandemics.
Perhaps just as important as her scientific accomplishments, Dr. Corbett has burst onto the public stage as the face of a diverse and rising generation of talented scientists who will transform the world. She is a stellar science communicator, explaining the vaccine and the virus in highly accessible ways to media outlets, two U.S. presidents, and audiences around the | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Roy Wood Jr.
MS. IZADI: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live for our first program in 2022. I’m Elahe Izadi, a staff writer covering media at The Washington Post. My guest today is Roy Wood Jr., comedian and correspondent for “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah. Roy, thanks for joining us today. It’s great to chat again.
MR. WOOD: Hello. How are you doing? And I want to know how far down into my Instagram feed did you find that clip of me doing student journalism at the wonderful Florida A&M University?
MS. IZADI: Well, we at The Post, we take our investigative journalism seriously, so we dug deep.
MR. WOOD: That was very deep and a lot of--that’s back when I used to ride a bike every day, by necessity. So, yeah, I was fit. Yeah, I was fit back then. I didn’t need a Peloton. That was--
MS. IZADI: Yeah, now you can just get a Peloton for two grand and do that. Yeah, well, thanks for joining us. Let’s start with your latest special which premiered on Comedy Central, "Imperfect Messenger." What was it like preparing and performing this special before live audiences during a pandemic?
MR. WOOD: That was weird. But the thing about the pandemic--and this is what they don't talk about--the people who showed up to the comedy shows during--I'm just talking '21. I didn't work a lot during 2020. Like during that first shutdown, I wasn't really out that much. All the comedy clubs were down anyway. But in '21, the people who showed up were people who really did want to laugh. So, you have this group of performers who really have a desire to perform, and a group of people who really needed to be entertained, and it was just a perfect--it was just a perfect situation.
I did not get to work this special as long as you traditionally would. But I think what is traditional is now just past tense, in my opinion, if we're talking about just how comedy is constructed, and how, you know, the average hour special of the comedian-made polished set material for a year and a half or up to four years in some cases. This special was pretty much about nine months, maybe 10 months. You know, there was maybe 10-15 minutes of material that I had pre-pandemic that I felt like this chunk still--this stuff about the police and firefighters, this still works. But everything else that I've been working on before 2020, I just threw out and just, you know, we have to focus on what is happening now. And to me, I think that's where standup comedy has to exist. So, this idea of polishing and nipping--I just don’t think you can do that anymore. I mean, if you’d have put it--I put that special out two months ago, and now omicron is all over the place closing things down again. Like I almost--for a while I thought I wasn't even going to get--I wasn't going to make it to the finish line to actually tape it.
MS. IZADI: Wow. Yeah, and you touch on a lot of themes in this special. You mentioned police, race, celebrity, prison reform. We actually have a clip from Imperfect Messenger where you talk about policing. Let's take a look
MS. IZADI: So, aside from like a pitch perfect impersonation of a police scanner, the setup to that--which I'm just wondering like how long it took you to get that down--the setup to that joke, it's interesting because you touch on a nuance within a bigger issue, policing and race. You as a comic, do you gravitate towards the gray areas in issues that can be talked about in very black and white terms in society?
MR. WOOD: Yeah, because I think that's where people don't normally exist. So, I think that's interesting. I think that's more interesting than just going police bad, police good. Or what about sometimes there's just lazy cops, and that's a good thing too. And like, we didn't--I didn’t get to talk about that in special but, you know, I know cops who drive their car home in their regular clothes. It's like this weird--and it just makes me laugh. And in a way, that's more endearing to the community than an ice cream cone or dancing with some kid at a basketball court. Just let me see you do your job lazily and wrong. That makes me think you might be okay.
So, it's like this idea of finding--and I have to kind of, you know, credit to "Daily Show" with helping me with this from a perspective standpoint, is if there's two sides to this issue, what is the side that no one has considered or has talked about? We don't have to decide today, not in my comedy show. We don't have to decide who's right or who's wrong. But let's look at this from a lot of different ways so we can at least leave this experience with a different perspective on the issue.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, and something you've said before about your comedy is, you said that, my comedy is for Black people to know they're not alone and feeling the way they feel, and also informing the people who are ignorant of the journey of a Black person in this country.
MR. WOOD: Yeah.
MS. IZADI: So, when you're performing and developing your material, is that something you're consciously trying to balance, speaking to those two audiences simultaneously?
MR. WOOD: For me, you know, my comedy is a conversation with Black people that other folks just get to be privy to. That's really--when I'm writing, you know, 9 times out of 10, it's about analyzing those shared experiences. You know, I went back and forth on this special about even leaving in the material. You know, I have a whole chunk in this new hour about the relationship between the Black diaspora as it relates to--the bigger issue I'm speaking to is like a lot of beef within the Black diaspora, but as told through the lens of Black British actors being cast in the--being cast to portray famous Black Americans, and the dialogue that's happening between those two Black communities about that issue. To me, that's not an issue that anyone else that--if you're not part of those two camps, you shouldn't even really be having an opinion on it. It's my personal opinion. But then it's like, all right, well, if I do this joke, am I putting family business out there? But damn, I feel like we need to hear this, we as Black people as a race as a whole. This is a good conversation to have. So, it shows something that I think a lot of people may not even know was happening within our community, but then also giving you perspective on the idea of togetherness as a whole as we the people as a whole like all races and all of that kumbaya stuff. But like it’s, let's focus on--to address a bigger thing, let's talk about this smaller thing. And then hopefully, if I do it right, it'll connect to a bigger conversation that's happening at large without me ever having to address the larger conversation.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, and if we take a step back and just look at where the country is right now, in May, that'll be two years since the murder of George Floyd, nationwide protests. You as a performer and artist, how has your work, how has your comedy evolved, changed since then?
MR. WOOD: I think I'd probably go back to what we were talking about at the top, that, you know, I believe comedy has to happen faster now. You know, I think that this idea of sitting on thoughts and opinions until they're in their most polished form to present in some [imitating trumpet fanfare] fashion is gone. I think the moment you have the thought, the quicker you can get it out, the better off you are, because I don't even think we're in a, you know, 12-Hour News--24-hour news cycle's dead. We might be in a 12-hour news cycle, but that might not even--the world is moving fast.
And so, I think what George Floyd and everything that happened in 2020 showed me was just how fed up a lot of people are. But I think if you can tap into emotion as well, within a joke, I think you're in the right place when you know--when you start--at least what I'm trying to put together what to talk about or what I want to focus on, on stage, okay, well, what are the things that people feel passionate about? Positive or negative? And this just isn't necessarily social issues. You'd be surprised. Like, some of the biggest arguments I get into on Twitter isn't about politics; it's about food. If you go on Twitter and say you hate a food, the minions will come over the hills and they will--there's an argument right now my Twitter feed from last week. I asked a question about Spider-Man. There's people arguing about who was the best Spider-Man. And I didn't even ask that question. So whatever people are passionate about, they're going to say something about it. So, if you have opinions about people's passions, I think you're going to be existing in a good space comedically, you know?
MS. IZADI: Yeah. And if we think about this moment in the country, the past year-and-a-half, two years, some people have called it a racial reckoning. Do you think we're reckoning with race as a country in the way that we should be? And if not, what--what's missing from the conversation?
MR. WOOD: It's just a bunch of lip service and a bunch of reversals that have happened since 2020. You've gotten a bunch of--like, America--I'd say since 2020, America is essentially--you know, I said this in my second special just about how America's like this restaurant and Black people just--we just want better service. The manager has come to the table. That's what 2020 was. 2020 was the manager finally coming to the table and going, what's wrong? Oh, well, I see you're upset about your service. That's unfortunate, and I'm sorry you feel that way, and they walked the hell off. You know, I do think that there's been some degree of political progress, but acknowledging that there is an issue and going I see you and I hear you and giving people a bunch of murals but not giving them legislation, did you really hear me if there's no legislation on the books? Were we really heard if you got a bunch of gerrymandering happening out the yin/yang that's going to set up like this midterm--this midterm about to be chaos, dog. And I--that will be the telltale of whether or not we were heard in 2020.
You know, I just don't--you know, maybe I'm a pessimist. But, you know, when you have--when you have legislators taking COVID money and using it instead to buy--to put money into prisons--Alabama, my home state--no, I don't feel like there's this overarching feeling of collective progress. I'm sure there's pockets. I'm sure you could show me a couple of places that’s got a referendum on the books and doing the right thing and cared about. But all of that, ask the nurses [audio distortion] today; ask the schoolteacher, like it's--it still feels very politicized. You know, this country is very, you know, capitalistic and politicized and in a way that I think stops a lot of progress from happening not just on Black issues, but just on a lot of issues across the board.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, and I mean, you've been a standup comedian performing for decades, traveling all over the country telling these jokes. What is something that you've learned about Americans’ attitudes on race, performing these kinds of jokes that might surprise people to hear?
MR. WOOD: I don't think most people care about what the big cities care about. I think that Twitter has tricked people into thinking that the whole country cares about the stuff you care about. I think social media has tricked a lot of people into thinking, well, I found that people think like me, so surely everybody else--people don't give a damn, dog. I was just an Idaho in November. You think Idaho care about half the stuff that y’all talking about? And some--you're not--there's a lot of people in this country, White and Black, that are hurting. They’re broke, they’re sick, they’re poor. Ain’t trying to hear nothing about no paper straws. They’re trying to survive. So, I think that there is a collective level of--there's a low collective level of "give a damn" that I think a lot of people are really, really underestimating when it comes to what the issues are. And, you know, when you look at ways to connect with people--that's why I just, you know, when they say politics is local, that's true. You have to change the local politicians, and really--and really have young people there.
And if there's a bright spot, because I feel like I’ve been very bleak the last like six, seven minutes.
MS. IZADI: Hey, reality.
MR. WOOD: The thing that I have noticed is that the young people care, and so they are far more opinionated than anything that I ever came up in. You know, I came out of high school in '96, and I would say the most we did for the earth--I remember one year for Earth Day, we all went outside and held hands, and it was like hands across America for Earth Day or some for hunger, I don't know. But it was not nearly that. My son is five, and he told me that we should have a Tesla because it’s safer for the environment. And he's learning how to read. So now when the city buses pass by, and it says hybrid bus, he goes, that's a good thing, Daddy. I don't know who taught him that. I didn't teach him that. I thought you still need to learn how to count. But now you know about clean energy? I didn't know about clean energy at age five.
So, when I meet the teenagers, when I'm out doing "Daily Show" gigs, and you know, the young 20-somethings, you know, that gives me a lot of hope for what this country, you know, can be, because, you know, as much as they want to take the education out of the books, they want to take the knowledge out the books, you can't take the knowledge off the street, and the truth will find people, and those people hopefully will take that. But for the people my age and older, they don't care about half the stuff that y’all want them to care about, and they're not going to, because they're broke and they're sick and they're just trying to get through the day.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, it's interesting. You touch on what kids are learning right now in schools, because there's this whole conversation, controversy right now about critical race theory and what should children be taught in schools. And I've noticed in your standup, you talk a lot about history. What do you make of this conversation around critical race theory and race being taught in schools? And why do you return to history as a theme in your work?
MR. WOOD: I would hope that when I'm dead and gone, that my comedy could exist as a lens through which to view things that were difficult to understand. So, for me, that's why I tried to, you know, make a little sense about, you know, history. And then I jokingly--it's very tongue in cheek when I said it in the special, but, you know, just in talking about how that's why I feel like, you know, a lot of civil rights movies are still important, and a lot of people have opinions about not wanting to see Black pain commoditized by Hollywood, but where else are you going to put our history if it ain't in the history book? So, people have to seek it out, and seek it out and read it, and okay, fine, but not everyone learns the same way. So there has to be multiple avenues for people to have access to the information and find out things that they normally wouldn't seek out on their own. So that's part of why I talk about history.
To the greater argument of critical race theory, you know, that goes back to the politics is local thing. If you got a school board and you got a bunch of parents that’s not with it, at the end of the day, a city--most cities are run like corporations, and the corporation's job is to keep the customers happy. So, if there are more customers that are more vocal about taking out Black history--ain’t going to be no Black history in that book; we're not going to be learning about Standing Rock in that book. We're going to ban any book that's talking about anything decent. So, yes, we need a voice. Yes, we need to vote, and those things all help. But I think as parents, you know, ultimately what you're going to have to do is supplement the American education system. In its current construct, it is not enough to truly prepare your child for the world--the real world.
MS. IZADI: In addition to being a standup comedian--
MR. WOOD: Unless you’re White. It’s perfect. But other than that.
MS. IZADI: I cut you off before you finished your point.
MR. WOOD: No, you’re fine. You're fine.
MS. IZADI: In addition to being a standup comic, you produced a documentary for PBS about Confederate monuments. Folks might be surprised to hear that, but what do you think should be done with the remaining Confederate monuments and symbols around this country, and also the ones that have been taken down?
MS. WOODS: I mean, the ones that have been taken down? Put them in a park? I mean, if that’s your dude, all right, here’s your corner of the country to go root for that dude. But to put these things in public places for everybody--you know, and I have to tip the hat to the other executive producer on this, CJ Hunt, who was the director of it. It’s called "The Neutral Ground." It's available on PBS and POV Doc. And in "The Neutral Ground," when--by the time CJ got me on board, he had already done two years of traveling, because it starts with just taking down one monument in New Orleans, and then that just barrel rolls into everything that started happening in 2015 and 2016. Then Trump happened, then Charlottesville happened. Like, I am not of the necessary belief that you can just throw all this stuff in the water. If a bunch of people want to cry over a statue and go that's their guy, that's fine. But put that over in the corner somewhere. Everybody don't need to see that, because he wasn’t everybody's guy, and he did a lot of horrible stuff. So, put that over in the cut. I mean, the bottom of the ocean would be nice, but it would be tough to get to. But if we’re talking capitalism, man, put all that stuff in a park and charge folks $20 to see it. You know, how long the line--you know how much money you'd make at a Confederate monument park on the January 6th anniversary? Come on, dog. I’m trying to get paid.
MS. IZADI: Did you just come up with a business idea for yourself? Well, yeah, in a few days will be the one-year anniversary of January 6. You mentioned it briefly in your special. Coming up on this anniversary, what do you want the conversation to be about?
MR. WOOD: I hate the word anniversary because it seems like something to be celebrated and commemorated and, never forget the people that will--like nah, man, remember that wildish that happened a year ago? That was wild, wasn’t it? Yeah. Okay. Moving on. I hope that we understand that there's a contingency of people in this country that are very adamant about what they believe. And if you are not as adamant as they are about what you believe, stuff that you believe may never come to be. So, I just think that there's a level of action that we have to all take, you know, as a people. But you know, there's a serious grift that has happened to the American voter, from American politicians. And, you know, a lot of those people that are out there, they bought the lie, man. They bought the lie. And you almost can’t be mad at some of them, because they was just broke and hungry and sick and tired. And a liar came along and said, I got you. And that was all they needed to hear, because they just needed something to hold onto. And they haven't been able to let that go since. So, you know, there's a serious sense of hopelessness that a lot of Americans are dealing with, on both sides. And I just think that, you know, one side dealt with it in a manner that was far less productive, you know, than the other side. But, you know, for me January 6th is not something to be remembered or whatever.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, and as we saw at the very top, you do have a background in journalism. How has that shaped your approach to comedy, and your work on "The Daily Show," as well?
MR. WOOD: Research. That's probably the--like, I can't speak for other comedians, but I sit and if it's something I want to talk about and do jokes about, then I have to do research. I have to learn as much as I can about this issue or this person or this thing, and then backtrack into figuring out how to approach it. So, for me, I'd say, journalistically, it's about what do I not know about this that I can add? And also, what's the conversation currently happening around this, so that I'm not repeating or stepping on something that's already been done within the space on this issue? I don't want to hit the same beats and the same notes as someone else. Like that means reading YouTube comments. That means going on Reddit boards. That means like just delving into not just the topic itself, but the opinions around the topic.
And once I have all of that laid out in front of me, then you can see where the information gaps are, based on what I know about this topic and based on what everyone has discussed about the topic, I know what spots you’ve missed. And so now those become the spots that I will then try to spin into something funny. If it's not funny, then I just have to throw it out and I've wasted a few weeks doing research on a topic that's never going to be on stage, and you wash, rinse, repeat.
MS. IZADI: You're also from Alabama. Maybe you can speak a little bit just to how being from Alabama has shaped your perspective on--and how--what you're bringing to comedy that maybe other comics aren't bringing.
MR. WOOD: Alabama, when you live in Alabama as a Black person, you're the underdog. And when you're from Alabama, in America, you're also an underdog. So, you're always operating from the back of the pack. And in terms of expectations, which I think makes it easier--like Alabama is one of the few places you can be from where people go, “I don't hear an accent.” What does that even mean? Like, I get it. But then you would never say that aloud, which I don't hear an accent in my brain just reconstitutes as you don't sound stupid. So, you know, you always have a chance to surprise and sneak people because it's a place that people write off as not mattering. That’s why Ossof and Warnock winning in Georgia and Georgia getting flipped blue was such a big deal, because nobody expected that. You know, when you are from a place filled with low expectations, it's very easy to raise the bar.
MS. IZADI: Yeah, you've spoken a little bit already about what's changed in comedy in the past just couple years, looking at the state of the country now, the uncertainties with the pandemic, the political discourse. Where do you see comedy headed? And is this like the most difficult time you've had as a comedian during your entire career, given the world?
MR. WOOD: The only thing that I've had an issue with, with standup, in the last two years is the turnaround time from a joke being ready to be seen versus a joke no longer being relevant and figuring out the right window of opportunity to let go of material and go, here it is. It's ready. I'm out of time. You know, I don't have a problem with the discourse. You know, I don't have a problem with people having opinions about my opinions. That's part of the game of comedy, and I think there's a lot of--a lot a lot of chirping from comedians. And it's not just Chappelle, but it's a lot of chirping from a lot of standups. And this was happening--I mean, even when you go all the way back to the Seinfeld and Chris Rock college comments about not wanting to perform on college campuses because they don't like them, okay, that's fine. And then Seinfeld and Chris just stopped doing colleges. So, I think, comedians, we are the ultimate adjusters to what's happening in the world. So, if someone doesn't want to hear that, then I'll go somewhere where someone does. Like no matter what you're doing, there's something someone wants to hear. There's an audience that's out there. You just have to find them. But I don't care about somebody who don't rock with me. There's a lot of White people who think I talk about race way too much. What am I supposed to do? Stop talking about race? So, and you just--you just-–you keep going.
And for me, I--you know, when they go it's a tough time for comedy. No, it's not. People just got phones and opinions. Back in the '80s, they had to write a letter to the editor, and now they can just tweet you and just go hey, I didn’t like that joke. What's with these people not like--some people ain’t going to like you. It’s all in the game, you know? And I think until comics are getting taken out of the comedy clubs in handcuffs, doesn't bother me as much. Just for now, doesn't bother me.
MS. IZADI: Yeah.
MR. WOOD: You know, it’s an ever-evolving situation.
MS. IZADI: Right, right. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. Roy, thanks so much for joining me.
MR. WOOD: Thank you. Thank you for having me, and I appreciate you all and all of the work y’all do at WaPo. And thank you for finding that ridiculously old-ass clip of me. I can't believe you found it.
MS. IZADI: Be sure to tweet that out later. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. To see what other programs we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com and register for our programs.
I'm Elahe Izadi. Thanks so much for joining us. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jan. 6: One Year Later with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) is one of only two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Join Washington Post Live on Thursday, Jan. 6 at 2:00 p.m. ET for a conversation with Kinzinger about where that investigation is headed, rising partisanship in Washington and why he’s decided to not seek reelection.
Adam D. Kinzinger is currently serving his sixth term in the United States House of Representatives and proudly represents Illinois’ Sixteenth Congressional District, which stretches across 14 counties in Northern Illinois.
Congressman Kinzinger serves as a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he served as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy and the Environment in the 116th Congress
His top priorities include strengthening U.S. energy policy and making our nation less reliant on foreign resources as well as bolstering the strength of our national security – both at home and abroad.
Prior to being elected to Congress, Kinzinger served in the Air Force in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Kinzinger continues to serve his country as a pilot in the Air National Guard, with the current rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and balances this service with his duties in Congress.
During his time in Congress, Kinzinger has worked tirelessly for IL-16, and for the security of our nation. From getting veterans back to work, to combatting the opioid epidemic, Congressman Kinzinger continues to fight for his constituents and stand up for America. | null | null | null | null | null |
The storm brought the first major snow — and opportunity for snow photography — to the region in years
A view of the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial soon after the snow ended early Monday afternoon. Sunlight filtered through the clouds and briefly glowed yellow on the surface of the water. This photo was taken at 12:55 p.m. (Kevin Ambrose for The Washington Post)
Wet, sticky snow fell heavily Monday morning, coating the trees and ground, creating winter wonderland scenes in the Washington area. I hiked around Rosslyn, the National Mall and the Tidal Basin shooting snow scenes of the kind that had been missing for three years.
The photo shoot was particularly challenging because of the strong wind and the heavy, wet snow. My umbrella was destroyed by a strong gust near the Washington Monument, and, for much of my shoot, I was coated with snow like the surrounding trees. Keeping my camera’s lens dry was almost impossible, and many of the photos were taken through a film of water.
My favorite moment of the shoot was when the snow abruptly stopped, and the sun appeared through the clouds, creating a pale-yellow glow in the sky that reflected on the water of the Tidal Basin. I was fortunate to be at the Tidal Basin to capture the scene because it lasted only a few moments before clouds filled in and the sky turned gray again.
I was outside photographing the snowstorm for more than four hours and probably hiked at least five miles. As I walked through the eight-inch snow across the National Mall and the Tidal Basin, snow fell into my short boots and penetrated my socks. By the time I finished, I was soaking wet from head to toe.
But I planned. My car was parked in a garage in Rosslyn, and I packed an extra set of clothes. I changed into dry clothes for the drive home to Oakton, Va. It was a challenging drive, with Interstate 66 reduced to one lane for much of the trip inside the Beltway.
I took hundreds of photos during the shoot, which show sledding, cross-country skiing and dogs chasing balls in the snow, but I chose postcard views for this entry taken by me and other local photographers who also braved the snow.
It was the perfect snowstorm to photograph. I hope we get a few more this winter. | null | null | null | null | null |
The council also confirmed Ronnie T. Harris and Melissa Lee to the city’s beleaguered Housing Authority board, whose chairman, Neil Albert, resigned abruptly last year after it became known that he had authorized contracts for a design firm owned by his companion.
Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) said she had some concerns that Lee might be influenced by her colleagues in the city’s real estate development community but heard testimony that when Lee served on other boards, “she stepped up.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Every January, as the holiday approaches, politicians of every stripe start posting quotes from the famed civil rights leader to social media. A lot of the time, it’s the quote about King’s children being judged by the content of their character, taken from the “I Have a Dream” speech.
The quote-a-thon has gotten to the point where King’s daughter Bernice King has told people to “enact policies that reflect your birthday sentiments,” and at least a dozen times, she has urged them to learn another quote and/or stop taking that one out of context. So has King’s son Martin Luther King III.
For decades, a coalition of Southern Democrats and some Republicans had successfully used the “talking filibuster,” cloture rules and other delay tactics to block civil rights legislation, including bills that would have ended poll taxes and literacy tests at the ballot box. In 1946, five senators spoke long enough to kill a bill that would have cracked down on workplace discrimination. The longest speech in Senate history — 24 hours and 18 minutes by South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1957 — was a failed attempt to stop another civil rights bill.
So, in 1963, everyone assumed that the greatest challenge Kennedy would face with his “omnibus” bill would be the dreaded filibuster.
The Supreme Court struck down key sections of that Voting Rights Act in 2013. Senate Democrats are trying to restore some of the protections it provided. Martin Luther King III announced in December that he would spend his father’s birthday campaigning in Arizona for voting rights and an end to the Senate filibuster.
In the late 1980s, Senate rules changed, making it easier for lawmakers to filibuster; an extended floor speech was no longer necessary. One of the last of the old “talking filibusters” went down in 1983, when Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) led an unsuccessful 16-day effort to block King’s birthday from being made a federal holiday. | null | null | null | null | null |
The D.C. and Maryland indoor track state championships were scheduled to take place at Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex in Landover next month. (Doug Kapustin/For The Washington Post)
Montgomery County Public Schools announced Sunday that all indoor track events scheduled to be held at Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex will be canceled as the facility is converted into a vaccination site.
Several major meets were scheduled to take place there this season, including the Maryland and D.C. state championships. With these events in jeopardy, programs are scrambling to develop contingency plans that can salvage the season and allow athletes to compete at the highest level.
“We are deeply hurt by this update,” Wootton Coach Harold Warren said. “So hopefully, you know, we have to find a way of still getting [the athletes] to stay uplifted and stay committed.”
The announcement comes as coronavirus case numbers continue to rise throughout the area and the state of Maryland works to make vaccines easily available to residents.
There’s no word on whether the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association and the D.C. State Athletic Association will be able to reschedule the championships at an alternate venue. Schools have already begun working on new structures for track meets in the near future.
Because facilities equipped for indoor track events are hard to come by, Montgomery County coaches are scheduling smaller, outdoor meets hosted by schools starting Jan. 12.
Warren said cold weather could pose problems for athletes competing outside during the winter. But the smaller meets, which are expected to include five schools each, will allow more athletes from each school to participate for the time being.
“We have something like 30 high schools, so it’s what facility is in the area that can host us,” Warren said of the Maryland state championships, which were scheduled for late February. “So it’s a wait-and-see thing now.”
Grace Zifcak is one of the top divers in the state. It wasn’t by choice.
“I was a gymnast until I was 15 years old. Then a tree fell on me and I broke my neck,” she said.
After the injury and subsequent surgery took gymnastics out of Zifcak’s view, she picked up the sport’s aquatic equivalent before her sophomore year at Churchill. Within a few weeks, she had broken the diving record at her neighborhood pool. By the end of the year, she was competing on a national dive team.
Now a senior, Zifcak hopes to place in the top five at Maryland’s state meet at the end of February before she heads to the University of Kansas in the fall.
“I’m looking forward to doing this further in college, and I hope we have the rest of our season with covid and everything,” Zifcak said. “That would be tragic if that was taken away from us our senior year.”
Long one of the top swimming programs in the area, Churchill has seen its diving stock climb in recent years, with recent commitments to Duke, Penn State and now Kansas. The school, however, isn’t solely responsible for producing gifted divers, as much of the team’s training comes at the club level. Zifcak said the diving practices at Churchill and other area schools are predominantly captain-led because most coaches specialize on the swimming side.
Bob Seidel took the helm at St. Mary’s Ryken this season, looking to guide the defending Washington Catholic Athletic Conference champions to the next level.
And through these first few weeks, the Knights have continued to establish themselves as a dominant program in the area. They took first place at both the South River and Louisa duals, powering them to a 15-0 record.
“We have a great group of talented wrestlers who are coming in with wrestling backgrounds and are really willing to put in the work,” Seidel said. “It’s starting to pay off.”
Seidel, a New Jersey native, came to Leonardtown after coaching at Colts Neck (N.J.) and Waialua (Hawaii) and wrestling at the University of Virginia. He inherited a young squad: Nine of his starters are freshmen or sophomores.
The youth has blended with the upperclassmen, including nationally acclaimed junior captains Clayton Gabrielson and Mason Buckler and senior T.J. McCauley, who have been instrumental to their coach’s transition.
“All three of those guys have helped me on and off the mat conveying the message we want as a program: ‘Do everything right — on the mat, in the classroom and in life,’ ” Seidel said.
On Jan. 7, Alexandria City/Wakefield will host Woodbridge in a battle of the top two teams in the Capital Scholastic Hockey League.
Alexandria City/Wakefield has been dominant all season, boasting a 6-0-0 record to top the CSHL’s North division. The team most recently defeated Lake Braddock/Fairfax, 7-5, on Dec. 17.
Although the club has been near the top of the CSHL for the past five seasons, its status also means other clubs come into games bringing their best efforts. “We haven’t lost, but nearly every game was competitive in the third period,” Alexandria City/Wakefield club president Mike Planey said.
In the South division, Woodbridge’s only loss came in its first game of the season, a 5-1 defeat to Bishop Ireton. Woodbridge then won four straight entering its holiday break. The club was scheduled to play one more game against Forest Park/Hylton, but that was postponed because of coronavirus concerns.
H.S. basketball notebook: Good Counsel girls bring lunch pail (literally); Patriot boys start 7-0
Preps notebook: Purple Puck hockey tournament scratched for second straight winter
Lacrosse has a diversity problem in Montgomery County. This after-school program is looking to change that. | null | null | null | null | null |
Protests over hike in fuel price turn violent
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said Tuesday that his government would not fall, as protests in some major cities over a sharp rise in the price of liquefied petroleum gas turned violent and a crowd tried to storm the mayor’s office in the Central Asian nation’s biggest city.
“Calls to attack government and military offices are absolutely illegal,” Tokayev said in a video address. “The government will not fall, but we want mutual trust and dialogue rather than conflict.”
As he spoke, police in Almaty used tear gas and stun grenades to stop hundreds of protesters from storming the mayor’s office.
After the rare protests reached Almaty, the government said late Tuesday that it was restoring some price caps on liquefied petroleum gas.
Many Kazakhs have converted their cars to run on LPG, long far cheaper than gasoline as a vehicle fuel in Kazakhstan because of price caps. But the government said the low price was unsustainable and lifted the caps on Saturday.
After the price of the fuel spiked, rallies involving thousands of people erupted in the town of Zhanaozen, an oil hub and the site of deadly clashes between protesters and police a decade ago. The demonstrations soon spread to other parts of surrounding Mangistau province and western Kazakhstan.
In Almaty, police cordoned off the main square on Monday and Tuesday, and local media reported that dozens of people were detained late Tuesday as protesters blocked a busy street.
On Tuesday evening, the government said it was restoring the price cap of 50 tenge ($0.11) per liter, or less than half the market price, in Mangistau.
2 drones targeting U.S. forces are destroyed
Two explosives-laden drones targeting an Iraqi military base housing U.S. troops in the western province of Anbar were destroyed Tuesday, according to an official with the U.S.-led international coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq.
According to the coalition official, the fixed-wing drones rigged with explosives in Tuesday’s attack attempt were engaged and destroyed by defensive capabilities at the Ain al-Asad air base.
In Monday’s attack, the drones were shot down by the C-RAM defense system, and there were no reports of damage or injuries. No group asserted responsibility, although one of the wings of the drones had the words “Soleimani’s revenge” painted on it, according to the coalition and Iraqi officials.
The 2020 U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s airport killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
The U.S.-led coalition formally ended its combat mission supporting Iraqi forces in the fight against the Islamic State last month. About 2,500 troops will remain as the coalition shifts to an advisory mission.
South Africa Parliament blaze contained: Authorities said they had finally contained a fire at South Africa's Parliament complex after a second-day flare-up that destroyed the lower house. A 49-year-old man accused of setting the fire appeared in court to face five charges, including arson and possession of an explosive device. An attorney for suspect Zandile Christmas Mafe said he would plead not guilty. The fire broke out Sunday. By Monday, authorities had withdrawn some firetrucks and said they were putting out embers, only for the flames to flare up again.
Israel set to lift restrictions on same-sex surrogacy: Israel's health minister said same-sex couples will be able to have children through surrogate mothers in Israel starting next week, following a Supreme Court decision last year. The court in July annulled parts of a surrogacy law that prevented gay couples from having children through a surrogate in Israel and said the change would take six months to come into effect to allow for the establishment of professional guidelines. Under the previous regulations, Israeli same-sex couples looking to become parents could not engage a surrogate and were often deterred by the costs of finding one abroad. | null | null | null | null | null |
Christian Eriksen has not played competitively since suffering cardiac arrest during a Euro 2020 match last June. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Seven months after collapsing on the field during Denmark’s European Football Championship match last summer, star midfielder Christian Eriksen said he hopes to play in the 2022 World Cup, which begins November in Qatar.
During the 43rd-minute of a pandemic-delayed Euro 2020 match between Denmark and Finland last June, Eriksen collapsed after he began to run up the field on a throw-in. Teammates shielded Eriksen’s motionless body from fans and cameras, and he received CPR before being sent to a hospital in Copenhagen, where he was said to be in stable condition.
Eriksen visited teammates at Inter Milan’s training facility in early August, but that same month, the Italian Football Federation said he would not be allowed to play in the country’s professional league unless the defibrillator was removed. Eriksen and the team mutually agreed to terminate his contract in December.
Denmark last year qualified for the 2022 World Cup, which will be held in November and December rather than the usual summer time frame because of concerns over Qatar’s scorching summer temperatures.
Eriksen said rejoining the national team would be an important step in his return to the pitch, and proving that last summer’s episode was “a one-timer and that it won’t happen again.” The deadline for setting World Cup rosters typically comes a few weeks before the tournament starts. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Capitals have adjusted on the fly throughout their coronavirus-ravaged season. Their lineup has changed frequently and, in moments when the team has looked close to 100 percent, more adversity has arrived.
Goaltender Ilya Samsonov also left the ice in apparent discomfort. He talked to a trainer on the bench before he departed for the dressing room at the end of Tuesday’s session. Practice was mostly over by the time Samsonov, who had a rocky 2020-21 season but has avoided injury and illness this year, left the ice.
Vitek Vanecek was the only other goaltender at Tuesday’s practice, but he remains in the NHL’s coronavirus protocols. Laviolette said he believed Vanecek would be ready to go for the Capitals’ next game Friday at St. Louis if needed.
If Fehervary is ready to play Friday and Orlov is available, Kempny is likely to be out of the lineup again. Kempny, who started the year with Hershey, made his season debut in late December, returning to Washington after a series of injuries and virus issues. He has one assist in three games. | null | null | null | null | null |
Joe Madison speaks to a coalition of students — some over eight days into a hunger strike — on Dec. 13 in D.C. Madison, as of Monday, is 57 days into his own hunger strike, which he plans to keep up until Congress passes laws protecting the voting rights of all Americans. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images/Un-PAC)
According to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice Voter Law Roundup, more than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access were introduced in 49 states during the 2021 legislative sessions. At least 19 states have already passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.
A group of college students from Arizona had come to D.C. in December, trying to follow Madison’s lead by staging a hunger strike for voting rights outside the White House. They lasted 14 days before becoming too weak to walk. One of them declared that the hunger pains felt like knives being poked in her stomach.
There was a photograph of Madison on his website, taken 30 days into his protest. He was shirtless, with sagging chest and gaunt face. He didn’t look like he could last till the next morning. He was subsisting on bone broth and juices, he told me. His weight had gone from 194 pounds to 171. He was using a walking stick to steady his gait, he said. Other side effects included insomnia, dizziness, nausea and chills.
But other conversations had begun. Several people were asking how far is the nation willing to go to save a democracy under attack by autocratic, if not fascist, sympathizers?
In July, a protest for voting rights led by Black women resulted in nine arrests — including the arrest of the Congressional Black Caucus’s chair Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). That caught Madison’s attention — he and Beatty had attended high school together in Dayton, Ohio.
In August, the Revs. Jesse L. Jackson and William J. Barber II were among about 200 people arrested outside the U.S. Capitol while protesting for Congress to protect voting rights. They were demanding lawmakers expand and protect the Voting Rights Act by the 56th anniversary of the legislation later that month.
But the date came and went without action
This was not his first time taking such action. In the mid-1980s, he fasted during a cross-country March for Dignity in South Africa. In the 1990s, he joined with civil rights activist Dick Gregory and fasted for more than 30 days to protest slavery in South Sudan. In 1994, he and then D.C. Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy held a 22-mile walk protesting the shooting death of Archie Elliott III by police in Prince George’s County.
“I have no idea if the Senate will or will not do anything by that date,” he said, sounding like a man who has had his hopes dashed one time too many already. “All I know is that I do not want my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to go through what our ancestors went through.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin nominates two for top veterans positions
Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R), who has been rolling out cabinet pick in the days leading up to taking office this month, on Tuesday announced his choice of Craig Crenshaw for secretary of veterans and defense affairs.
Youngkin, who takes office Jan. 15, also named Daniel Gade commissioner of the Department of Veterans Services.
An Army veteran who lost a leg in combat in Iraq, Gade waged a failed bid to unseat Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) in 2020. He taught at U.S. Military Academy for six years before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, going on to co-found The Independence Project, which benefits veterans and their families.
“Craig and Dan share my vision for making Virginia the best place for our military heroes to pursue the next chapter of their lives," Youngkin said in a written statement. "They are dedicated to caring for our veterans, championing their concerns, connecting them with resources, getting them the proper care, and reducing barriers on their capital and employment opportunities.” | null | null | null | null | null |
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A jury has ended the suspense surrounding the fraud trial of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes by finding her guilty on four of the 11 charges facing her, but some issues in the legal drama remain unresolved. Here’s a look at some of the most pressing questions. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The reality of the loss of the ‘Roe’ protections
A mobile Vasectomy clinic. (Courtesy of World Vasectomy Day)
I was appalled at Kathleen Parker’s Dec. 29 op-ed, “Men want to have vasectomies now? What took them so long?” Ms. Parker wrote that we are “likely to see the abortion industry destroyed in many states” if the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. This is a bizarre way to refer to the potential loss of women’s rights to end their pregnancies safely. Abortion clinics routinely offer clients contraception to avoid future unplanned pregnancies, hardly the actions of a greedy industry pushing its services. Abortions are performed by individual practitioners, often for little or no profit, and sometimes running a gantlet of protesters or punitive state rules.
Ms. Parker also suggested that Roe v. Wade “came along and made a hash of paternity,” but multiple studies have shown that American fathers have more than tripled the time they spend on child care since 1965, probably because of sociocultural factors other than access to safe abortions.
Ms. Parker’s criticism of men having vasectomies and of people who wait until they are ready to have children is disconnected from the realities of raising children.
Elisa Braver, Washington | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Coronavirus: Vaccines & Variants with Kizzmekia S. Corbett, PhD
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here at The Post. As someone who’s covered health and science for several years, it’s an enormous pleasure to welcome Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. She’s a viral immunologist, a key scientist behind the invention of the mRNA vaccines, and now an assistant professor at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Corbett, a very warm welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. CORBETT: Thank you so much for having me, and happy new year.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Happy new year to you, too. Let’s hope for a good 2022. Well, let me start with the news of the day, if I may. We have I think a record-breaking million cases out there. President Biden has called for increased testing and also doubling the number of antiviral pills available. And in Maryland we have a state of emergency now with this increasing number of hospitalizations. So maybe you can give me your take on omicron, the threat is poses, and also the possibility for new variants.
DR. CORBETT: You know, I actually call it the “oh, my God” variant rather than the omicron variant.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I’ve seen you tweet that.
DR. CORBETT: Yeah, you know, just to make a little bit fun of it even though it is not fun to be experiencing this at all. Variants are coming because we are allowing the virus to circulate around the globe continuously, and so as the virus circulates, the virus makes copies of itself, and it makes copies of itself that get better in whatever way is possible for that--for the virus to come back around and do a little bit more harm. In the case of omicron, obviously what you’re seeing is perhaps a little bit better at being transmittable between human to human. Obviously, there is some evasion of preexisting immunity, whether it be from prior infection of vaccine responses. And because of that, we’re seeing record numbers of cases. And these cases are coming in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The interesting thing, though--and the most important part of it--is that just like with many of the previous variants, that largely the vaccine is keeping people safe from severe illness. And as we are seeing people flooding the emergency rooms, being hospitalized, and unfortunately, some ending up in the ICU, it is important to remember to be vaccinated, be vigilant with your dose--with your booster doses as well, and to get your kids vaccinated, and to remain atop of the situation and try not to catch the virus as the hospitals are becoming a little bit overwhelmed.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: But Dr. Corbett, we're seeing this enormous divide. On one side, people who are resistant to vaccines, and on the other, we’re learning about people who are going out and get four, five, and six vaccines even in an effort to protect themselves. Is there any moment where we will need continual vaccination, do you think, to go back for renewed vaccines or variant-specific vaccines? Give us the broad picture of what's going on here with vaccination.
DR. CORBETT: The fun part of this, from a scientific point of view, is that I'm--we're all learning in the moment. And when you're--when you do science for such a long time, it's very interesting to wake up to new data that kind of points you in different directions. And that's exactly how the policy goes as well. And so I say that to say that time will tell whether or not we need additional booster doses, whether or not we're going to need to change the vaccine and to match any of the variants. But all of those studies are underway. Obviously, there's continuous monitoring of the vaccine responses, seeing how the immune responses wane over time, particularly now that I think it's about 20 percent of the adults that got two doses of the vaccine in the U.S. have now gotten their booster. So, we'll be following that situation very closely. Ideally, no. But the real way to really get that under control, and to be able to say, maybe we won't need to get additional doses, is to keep the circulation of the virus down to a point where the immune responses match the amount of circulation and so you have this what is called herd immunity, and were able to really control the virus in a way that we aren't seeing lots of people getting sick and lots of people going into the hospital.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So just getting back to those people who are--who are going off on their own and getting extra doses, can you ever over-vaccinate yourself and damage yourself that way? Or are they just useless at some point?
DR. CORBETT: I don't necessarily--I wouldn't necessarily say they would be useless. But what I would remind people to do is to follow the recommendations. These booster doses that have been called for, the recommendations by the CDC and the FDA, they give you this extra oomph of immune response that is good, actually awesome, I think with about 90 percent protection against severe disease even against Omicron. So, you don't want to overdo it with without any necessity. I would say to follow the guidelines that are set forth and to remember that we're all tracking the situation kind of in real time, and that the data will soon come, and the recommendations will come if and when you shall need a booster again.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Well, let me take you back into the lab a little bit. I know one of the goals is to create vaccines that will act more broadly and deal with all variants or potentially even all coronaviruses. How are we doing with that sort of process? Are we getting any closer?
DR. CORBETT: There are tons of vaccines that are in the pipeline that could potentially answer those kinds of questions. People are designing different types of protein vaccines and nanoparticle vaccines, or making the mRNA vaccines and cocktails and etc., and testing these. And what we call in vaccinology in the preclinical stage--so that is before going into a human--to assess really what their viability might be. I want to remind people that vaccine development, even in the front of what we are experiencing now with the mRNA vaccines and also with the J&J and AstraZeneca and etc. vaccines, those development processes took far longer than what you see in the media because the research for the preclinical stages was done largely prior to this moment.
So, to remain patient as we think about these so-called pan or universal coronavirus vaccines, I also want to remind everyone that although it seems like, you know, we are in this dire necessity to have vaccines that so-call target all of the variants, that the mRNA vaccines that are currently in use, are doing well against these variants, particularly where we want them, and that is keeping people from dying, keeping people out of the hospital, keeping people from very, very severe illnesses.
And aside from pan-corona vaccines, there are other mechanisms that vaccinologists and virologists could take to stifle transmission such as internasal delivery of vaccines, and etc., and all of these things are being investigated. The important thing though, is to remember that as the data continue to come out, the tide can shift in any one direction or another and to just remain atop of it, and then also to remain atop of your own personal health when it comes to being infected with COVID.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So, this last couple of years has been such a triumph, a biomedical triumph story for the vaccines. But there's this mantra in public health that, you know, vaccines don't save lives. Vaccinations do. And I'd love to ask you what needs to change, from your perspective? What are we not doing on that public health front?
DR. CORBETT: This moment actually has met even me with some level of just despair as we think about how well we did with getting these vaccines out and approved in a safe and effective manner, but not really getting the type of uptake that we would expect or hope for both here in the United States, but then also globally, as well. And a lot of that comes from the so-called vaccine hesitancy. And so, I would hope that we would have done better. I would have hoped that we would have started the conversations with people a little bit earlier. I would have hoped that we would have been able to communicate both the science of these particular vaccines as it was being developed, even prior to this pandemic, with people a little bit sooner. And I would hope that we would have been able to establish a little bit more trust both in the vaccines but more broadly in the system from which the vaccines come, which is, quite frankly, a lot from where the hesitancy stems, or as I like to call it, vaccine inquisitiveness stems.
So, there is some level of conversation to be continued to be had. And certainly, we are not to a place of where we can, you know, shout from the mountaintops of how great we've done at vaccinating. I think that at this point maybe up to only 65 percent of people have been fully vaccinated--adults, at least in this country--which is not good, especially when you can really walk into any drugstore and get a very free, safe, and effective medication that can prevent you from dying, or being severely ill from a virus. And we're doing even worse in many other countries.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So just take this moment, take the advantage of the moment and give us your pitch. This is groundbreaking technology. Tell us just very quickly how it works, why we should trust it, the elevator pitch.
DR. CORBETT: Vaccines work by training your body to fight against the virus by mounting an immune response that's able to act like soldiers and fend off when the virus comes your way. And, you know, it is important to get vaccinated rather than how people have liked to call it natural immunity, which I'm not even really a fan of that term, but to come in contact with the virus, and to supposedly build up this immune response in a very natural way. And it's important to do that, because vaccines are safe at mounting up these types of immune responses.
Whereas if we were to allow the virus that causes COVID-19 to circulate around this globe, and for every person to build up, quote-unquote “natural immunity,” 40 million people around the world would potentially die from this virus. And we can prevent that by getting everyone vaccinated, by staying atop of our vaccines, vaccinations and our boosters. And it is just a very safe way to train your immune response.
So go about this safely. It is certainly--you know, part of the elevator speech over the course of the last six months or even to a year has evolved to just basically say it's not if you're going to come in contact with this virus but when. When you come in contact with this virus, would you prefer for your body to have mounted the best immune response possible and that is be a safe and effective vaccine or not? And then on that not side, the potential of having long COVID, breathing problems, brain fog, all of these things, side effects that might come from being infected. And certainly, I would hope that most people's risk assessment would sway them to get vaccinated.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: And just very briefly, give me an outline of what sets Moderna apart from Pfizer, and then those two vaccines apart from J&J. I know those are huge questions, but if you could do it in a few words, we would love it.
DR. CORBETT: I can do it very simply. Moderna and Pfizer use similar technologies. They use messenger RNA to deliver one protein called the spike protein. This trains your body to see that spike protein very clearly and vividly. They use two different doses. Pfizer has been approved down to children even to five years old. Moderna has not just yet. Pfizer, the first initial doses come three weeks apart. Moderna’s comes four weeks apart. But largely these two vaccines run neck and neck when we think about efficacy. Despite the headlines that you see that Moderna might be quote-unquote “better,” I think that they really run broadly just neck and neck with efficacy and safety.
And with the J&J vaccine and similar vaccines, like, for example, the AstraZeneca vaccine, these are particles that have the spike protein on top of them. And so, it's a very different platform. But at the end of the day, they do the same thing by training your body to see the spike protein. And so therefore, when your body comes in contact with the virus, it has seen those proteins on the surface and is able to defend against those viruses.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So Dr. Corbett, this is not the first coronavirus we've seen. We've had SARS. We’ve had MERS. And now we have this one, and we have coronaviruses that cause common colds. But take us back to what must have been a very heady and frightening moment in early 2020 when you realized you had the goods and could create a vaccine. What was it like?
DR. CORBETT: You know, interestingly enough, it wasn't really frightening at all. The one thing about having faith in your science and your data is that in those kinds of moments, you really dial back what could be fear and really make it into motivation. And so the anxiety, so to speak, became very motivating in those moments. And that's what we did. We just motivated ourselves to use the knowledge that we had built up over so many years to maneuver and to collaborate with our collaborators and to work together as a large team back at the National Institutes of Health and to get the job done. It didn't really become scary, quite honestly, until the data started to look so good that you realize like, oh, my gosh, this probably is going to be in people's arms. That's when it becomes more realistic and a little bit more scary. But those first moments are really around proof of principle that, you know, we could potentially have this under control.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Are there any other vaccines, perhaps measles, that are as good as the coronavirus vaccines you have come up with?
DR. CORBETT: The one good thing about the measles vaccine--first of all, the measles vaccine is amazing. The efficacy is in the upper 90s, I believe, and it has a very long durability. So, vaccines in general tend to always just warm my heart with just how amazing they are. I mean, largely because the immune system has evolved to be such an amazing tool at helping us to defend ourselves against external pathogens, but vaccines in the way that they tell your body to do that always never cease to amaze me, whether it be the measles vaccine, the human papilloma virus, or so-called Gardasil or the--for cervical cancer, those vaccines are also really amazing. I could list many of them. And obviously--I obviously really love vaccinology.
But, you know, some vaccines are considered to be better than others, and a large reason why some vaccines are better than others is because of the types of immune cells that it seems to trigger or even how your body might react to the natural pathogen. We know that for respiratory viruses in particular, it's sometimes very hard to vaccinate against those because even as adults, we see a lot of respiratory pathogens every single season from September to February. And you know, even if you don't get necessarily really sick, you get exposed and get some sort of effect infection. So, it's very hard to vaccinate against respiratory pathogens. But I think that these messenger RNA vaccines--and also, quite frankly, the J&J vaccine, I think was very good, too--do a very good job for COVID-19.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I'm listening to you talking with such conviction about the importance of these vaccines. And I'm also thinking to another story of the past two years, which has been the huge health inequities, and Black and brown populations have suffered disproportionately during this pandemic. So, what does Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett do to address those issues in a country which is so divided in some of these areas?
DR. CORBETT: What I have done and what I continue to do actually has changed over the course of the last two years. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I'm saying two years right now. That's a little bit scary. But, you know, at first what I was doing was tapping into media outlets that were particularly tailored towards communities of color, to really get the word out--particularly not just the word but the knowledge out. It was very important for me in the beginning to make sure that people understood what mRNA was and how these vaccines work.
And then as we got to the point of where we were rolling out the vaccines in real time, I was really targeting on a very community level where I was talking to people in churches and youth groups and etc. And you know what? Today I think that because the people who are left vaccine inquisitive or really hardened on the fact that they will not get the vaccine, need a little bit more of one-on-one attention. And so, I tried to remain very open to having people ask me questions on a one-on-one basis. I will take questions at my local Dunkin’ Donuts, I--you know, I answer as many emails as I can from people, or social media messages. Because at this point, if you are not vaccinated and you have followed the vaccines for so long, there is probably one or two very specific things that you need cleared up, and you need that cleared up from someone that you deem to be, number one, trustworthy, but then also an expert.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: You know, I just noticed on your Twitter feed earlier today that you invited people to direct message you about exactly those questions. So, I hope we don't deluge you, and I hope you can answer as many of them as you can with us now.
DR. CORBETT: I--yeah, you know, I get a lot of the same questions, and I get a lot of the same framing of questions. You know, people are just scared of vaccines. And what that tells me is that we’re probably starting the conversation too late. Even at the start of this pandemic, the conversation around vaccines and how they work and, you know, the technology that was being developed to make mRNA vaccines possible, how that technology works, starting that conversation, only as of last year might be a little bit too late. So, I try to come back out of today and what is the COVID-19 vaccines, but framing in a very holistic way to just remind people that vaccines have been around for so long, the technology that goes into vaccines on a very basic level--training your immune system was, you know, explored back in the smallpox phase even--and so remind people of the historical relevance of vaccines, and how, you know, over time, vaccines have continued, over and over again, to save lives.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: You've chosen to join some very prominent people, including Jesse Jackson, to get their shots. Tell us about the impact you believe that can have, and tell us some of the stories around getting shots into arms that you've joined?
DR. CORBETT: I don't remember--I think it maybe it was only Reverend Jackson that I joined. Well, first, I was really busy. When the shots were being rolled out, I was--I was terribly busy. But you know, one of the reasons why it was important for me to join Reverend Jackson in that moment, well, you know, quite frankly, he was actually one of the only people who called very personally and was very concerned about a particular community around a community hospital that he worked with on a volunteer basis in Chicago. And so it felt like a duty of mine to make my presence known in that particular community at that time.
And I was, you know, present for Vice President Harris's second shot. I believe she got her second shot like the day after my birthday last year, or something like that. I don't remember any more stories. I tended to not be front and center when it came to people's vaccinations, largely because, you know, one of the things that I remain very true to, in this moment--and I will continue to be until I'm blue in the face and have to speak about vaccines forever and ever and ever--is that I do want it to remain people's choice. I want your choice to be vaccinated to be your own private decisions. And I don't want anything that I say to come off as me telling you to get vaccinated, but only from an educational perspective, reminding you that what I have learned over the course of the last, you know, seven, eight years in my scientific career is now your knowledge, and so just to give people kind of a way to ask questions and to be a beacon and kind of a liaison to the community in that way.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: And you have done that even on Sesame Street, I think, talking about a group of, you know, younger--talking to a group of younger people. And of course, they talk you're talking then not only to the children, but to their parents. Tell us about how you create a message that fits both of those two groups in a way that feels safe for parents to vaccinate their children.
DR. CORBETT: I don't ever know how to answer these types of questions because I don't create my message to do anything other than educate. And the beauty of knowledge--in its real truth, it's so simple that it can go from a 5-year-old to a 90-year-old and the message remains very clear. I will say that Sesame Street actually was probably a dream gig for me. I used to love Sesame Street, and so I would probably do that like every weekend if I were called to do that. And also, I really love kids. Kids are interesting in the way that they answer questions because they come with a level of truth in themselves. Kids oftentimes have done their own research, not in a way that you think about it from, you know, a social media perspective, but they not just--they're not just asking me, but they've asked their parents and their school nurses and their teachers the same questions that they're asking me. And so when they, when they come to me, it feels like I am really just, you know, telling them what they already know, and I'm just kind of stamping it for them in that moment. And that's how Sesame Street felt for me.
And, you know, one of the things that has been consistent throughout this vaccine development process is that there is, you know, the risk assessment that people have for themselves, right? I'm an adult. I'm, you know, you know, 25, 35 years old. Okay, sure. I'll get the vaccine. I'll--you know, I’ll get the vaccine. What if I do have, you know, chills for a day? That’s fine. But my child, the risk assessment for my child might be just a little bit different. There is some level of tenderness that comes with that decision, from a parent standpoint. And so having children speak up for themselves in the same way that my nieces and nephews did around they were just adamant about getting the vaccine helped. And I wanted the children that do go to their dinner table and ask for the vaccine to have the same type of knowledge that any one of us at 35 or 36 years old would have
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, I want to congratulate you on the opening of the new Corbett Lab, I believe it's going to be called, at Harvard. Tell us, what's the main target? What's your crusade as you open this lab? What's your main goal?
DR. CORBETT: We are interested in respiratory viruses, and particularly from the endemic standpoint. So, you spoke about coronavirus not really being new. But the important thing that is going to be of note here in this moment is that when the pandemic of the virus that causes COVID-19 is over, it's still more than likely going to be endemic. And what that means is you’re going to see steady seasonal ways in the same way that we see influenza or any other respiratory viruses that cause the common cold.
The thing that is important to note from a public health standpoint is that we already have a slew of viruses that cause the common cold. And if you talk to any internist in a hospital, they'll tell you that during the winter months, actually, you do see an increase in hospitalizations from things that you normally would just write off as a common cold because there's some people that unfortunately don't fare well with those kinds of viruses. By adding another one, particularly with the type of pathogenesis that SARS-CoV-2 or the virus that causes COVID-19, we're really probably going to start to see a little bit more overwhelming of our hospital systems. And so thinking about curing the common cold, if you could ever say that with a straight face, is going to be more important than ever. And so, my lab is going to be thinking about ways to really decrease the burden of common cold viruses, whether they be coronaviruses or other viruses that cause the common cold.
And then, you know, coronaviruses is a--is a large family of viruses. So, this particular virus is just one. But there are viruses that might look like the MERS virus that circulated back in 2013. Those kinds of viruses also have the potential to cause pandemic. And unfortunately, we will not have any level of immunity to them. And so, in order for us to not get into this type of situation again, we're going to have to reevaluate that family tree with some level of scrutiny from a viral immunology perspective, from a vaccinology perspective. And so my lab will be focusing broadly on the coronavirus family tree with the hopes of generating a universal coronavirus vaccine as well.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: We're getting close to the end of our time, but I would love to pose an audience question. We’ve been hearing from a number of our viewers. And this one comes from Rosalyn Jung in California who asks: Did you have a very early interest in medicine? And who or what influenced your career path?
DR. CORBETT: I did. I got exposed to science when I was 16 years old, and I could not stop thinking about experiments and questions that the world and the universe posed to me since then. And so I'd like to say that I've been a scientist since I was 16, since my first laboratory internship. And the influences of that are really mentors far and wide, who not just have allowed me to work in their--in their laboratories, but who have guided me kind of along my career trajectory and answered questions along the way. I think like many career paths, you see people that you wouldn’t mind being like, at some point, and to some degree, follow their footsteps, but then also ask them questions about how they got there so that you can get there in your own way.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: You're a pioneering scientist. You’ve also--you also go to your community health center for your own care. Tell us about the importance--and just quickly--the importance of community, which is a word you’ve brought up several times--in how you approach science and healthcare generally.
DR. CORBETT: I will say it was very interesting to walk into a community center to get my like, annual physical once I moved here to Boston, and to like see my face, you know, advertising the vaccine. But it’s important. It's important for me as a person who speaks a lot about health equity and what it means to have everyone have an equal playing field when it comes to their health and the resources around their health, to make sure that I understand exactly what that means in the community from which I live. And so I did that similarly when I lived in Maryland, actually, and I will do it probably forever, because it is important for me to understand from an inside out what it means to be someone who might not be like me with, you know, access to Harvard's best doctors, or some of the better health insurance anyone could ever want to go to a community center and say, you know, these are the issues that I might be having or, you know, making sure that I understand how that interface really plays out in my community.
And actually, I like having those types of experiences. I like being connected with the people that live around me. I like being--having the real local experiences, not just from a community health center perspective, but you know, going to local markets and things of that nature. Because the one thing about community is that when all else fails, the people around you are going to be those people that that continue to lift you up. And so it's important to remain friendly and in kinship with them.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, thank you so much for making those connections with us and all of our viewers. We appreciate having you on Washington Post Live.
DR. CORBETT: Thank you. And go get your vaccines and your boosters.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Thank you very much. Again, that was inspirational.
That’s all we have time for with Dr. Corbett. If you want to hear more from Washington Post Live, we have a great lineup in 2022. Go to WashingtonPostLive.com to check it out. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, and thank you so much for joining us today. | null | null | null | null | null |
DeSantis’s news conferences, in which he often blames the Biden administration for holding up monoclonal antibody treatment doses, are usually tightly controlled. But Tuesday’s event at the Duval County Public Health building went far off script when Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, refused to leave the room where a podium was set up for the governor and state surgeon general to speak. | null | null | null | null | null |
Fox News host Sean Hannity. (Frank Franklin II/AP/file)
Everything you need to know about the Jan. 6 committee
A Fox News Channel spokeswoman declined to comment. Jay Sekulow, Hannity’s attorney, said in an email: “The request raises serious constitutional issues. We are reviewing the Committees letter and will respond as appropriate.”
In a statement to Axios, Sekulow argued that the committee’s request would raise "First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic’s vaccine exemption for Australian Open met with skepticism
This was the bargain at the heart of Trump’s less-testing gambit back in 2020, when he made clear that he really didn’t like how the statistics made him look. (Birx later testified: “I had seen the dramatic decline in testing at a time when we needed a dramatic increase in testing to prevent us from having the depth and breadth of community spread that I knew was coming with the fall surge.”) | null | null | null | null | null |
That there has been a broad discussion in recent days of the prospect of civil war in the United States is, by itself, telling. What drives public conversations is often nebulous, but, here, the proximate cause is obvious. One year ago Thursday, a violent mob surged into the Capitol in an effort to block the election of Joe Biden. So we’ve seen a multipronged discussion about the willingness of Americans to engage in acts of political violence and how far that willingness might extend.
For Vox, Zack Beauchamp spoke with a number of historians and political scientists about the possible trajectories on which the country might be headed. Titled “How does this end?,” the essay summarizes the predictions of those with whom he spoke: “hotly contested elections whose legitimacy is doubted by the losing side, massive street demonstrations, a paralyzed Congress, and even lethal violence among partisans.”
Again, that we’re having this conversation is significant. To use a loaded analogy, it strikes me as being akin to essays and ruminations in February 2020 that evaluated how the country might respond to a broad pandemic and the extent to which we were prepared to address it. This is loaded, because it implies that, as with the pandemic, the subject of discussion inexorably followed. But it is also a flawed analogy: The current discussion is like wondering what a pandemic could look like after the pandemic was already underway.
Last month, I spoke with American University associate professor Thomas Zeitzoff on this subject. His focus is political violence and political psychology, and he had publicly objected to a different Post column elevating the concerns expressed by Barbara F. Walter.
Walter is a professor at the University of California at San Diego who wrote a soon-to-be-published book titled “How Civil Wars Start.” She was also one of the featured experts in Beauchamp’s essay.
What’s remarkable here is how much easier it is to visualize that sort of violence than to imagine the Confederated States of MAGA assembling troops near Tallahassee. While much of the rhetoric focused on the Second Amendment involves patriots keeping firearms to ward off an overbearing state, it’s useful to remember that even in the Civil War, the fighting was done on behalf of state entities. Even at the First Battle of Bull Run, the troops were organized into brigades; this was not a take-up-arms-and-head-to-Lexington-Green situation. Instead, Zeitzoff pointed to that violence 50 years ago (bombings by the Weather Underground, for example) and to the takeover of the state Capitol building by right-wing actors in Lansing, Mich., soon after the pandemic emerged in the spring of 2020. These were spaces that didn’t warrant the descriptor of “civil war” but were real threats in which small groups of self-armed individuals engaged in political violence. Decentralized, to Walter’s point. And already present, if not to scale.
The second reason is that elected officials are actively promoting these ideas. Before she was banned from Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) touted an idea she called “national divorce,” in which some states somehow seceded from the United States to form separate entities. This is a more apt phrase than you might think, presuming an amicability that would almost certainly collapse into something far worse. In other words, it’s functionally indistinguishable from what happened in 1861, something Greene’s colleagues were quick to point out. | null | null | null | null | null |
A Philadelphia man walked out of prison on Monday 37 years after he was convicted of murdering a woman, an accusation he has vehemently denied, and after a federal court found prosecutors suppressed evidence of false testimony given by a key witness, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said.
The court ordered Stokes to be retried within 120 days or released, and the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Office acknowledged that the suppressed evidence crumbled the legal basis of the prosecution and “fatally undermined confidence” in Stokes’s conviction.
On Monday, Pennsylvania District Attorney Larry Krasner acknowledged that Stokes’s “remarkable” case was part of police and prosecutorial malpractices that were pervasive “during the so-called tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and unfortunately persist in far too many jurisdictions today,” he said in a news release.
Nevertheless, on Aug. 21, 1984, a jury convicted Stokes of first-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime and sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole. Soon after, they also charged Lee for perjury for his false hearing testimony. But that information was never disclosed to Stokes — who could have used it for his defense and appeals litigation.
During the November hearing, Lee, 62 testified that his initial statement given to police and at the preliminary hearing implicating Stokes in Campbell’s murder was false. | null | null | null | null | null |
Judge grants vaccine relief to SEALs; judge orders city to allow mosque building
Judge grants vaccine relief to Navy SEALs
A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction Monday blocking the Defense Department from taking action against a group of 35 Navy sailors who had refused to get a coronavirus vaccine, raising questions on how it might shape the Pentagon’s requirement that all U.S. troops get vaccinated.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor found that the pandemic “provides the government with no license to abrogate” the freedoms that any American has, and that the service members had a right to avoid getting a vaccination on religious grounds.
“This Court does not make light of COVID-19’s impact on the military. Collectively, our armed forces have lost over 80 lives to COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic,” O’Connor wrote Monday in a 26-page order.
But the judge added that the “loss of religious liberties outweighs any forthcoming harm to the Navy” and that “even the direst circumstances cannot justify the loss of constitutional rights.”
The troops — a group that included Navy SEALs and other members of Naval Special Warfare Command — filed suit against President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and the Defense Department to challenge the Navy’s vaccination requirement in November. The troops cited Christian beliefs that they should not take a vaccine developed from aborted fetal cell lines and saw a modification of their bodies as an “affront to their Creator.” Many Christians have sought vaccination, with Pope Francis urging Catholics to do so on humanitarian grounds.
The suit was filed by First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit that specializes in defending religious liberty.
The injunction comes after nearly all of the more than 1 million active-duty U.S. service members received at least one coronavirus vaccination, and as the Defense Department has begun to end the military careers of those who do not. The Air Force and Marine Corps began administratively separating service members last month, while the Navy and Army were expected to begin doing so this month.
— Dan Lamothe
Judge orders city to allow mosque building
The lawsuit said Horn Lake officials were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice when the city rejected a zoning request for what would be the first mosque in DeSoto County, Miss., just south of Memphis.
Under the judge’s order, Horn Lake must approve a site-plan review application the city denied for the proposed mosque, Abraham House of God, early last year. The city also must act on all future construction and permitting applications for the mosque “without any unusual delay and free from any illegal discriminatory intent or effect.”
Man who threatened senators pleads guilty
He faces up to 10 years in jail on each charge and will be under a protective order for three years not to contact U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski or Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, or any of their family members or staff.
He also must forfeit two pistols, three revolvers, a shotgun and a rifle found at his home in the small community of Delta Junction. He’s not legally able to own handguns because he’s a felon for repeated drunken-driving convictions.
Johnson was charged after leaving 17 threatening voice-mail messages between April and September, as outlined in both Johnson’s indictment and in the plea agreement.
Couple left son, 11, home alone for weeks, sheriff says: An Arizona couple has been arrested after they left their 11-year-old son home alone for two weeks, authorities said. The Cochise County Sheriff's Office arrested the couple last week after they returned to their home in Elfrida, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson. The mother left the state before Thanksgiving, and the father left a few days after the holiday, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies visited the home Dec. 12 after a caller said the boy may have been left alone, according to the sheriff's office Facebook page. Deputies were unable to reach the parents, a 34-year-old mother and 40-year-old father, and the boy was placed in foster care. He told authorities he had frozen food in the refrigerator and did not go to school for at least two weeks. | null | null | null | null | null |
Safwan Aziz and John Hildenbrand, right, got stuck in the traffic on Interstate 95 on Jan. 4, 2022. The two men brewed coffee using a generator on their welding truck. (Safwan Aziz)
At about 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, Safwan Aziz and John Hildenbrand hit their breaking points.
By that point, the two men — welders driving from New York to South Carolina for work — had been stuck on Interstate 95 for almost 24 hours. At times, as they stared at the unchanging scene of snow and stalled vehicles, both men had considered driving onto the shoulder to reach Exit 140, which sat a tantalizing quarter-mile away.
The problem was that two massive trees had fallen during the snowstorm, blocking the welders’ way out. Each one easily weighed several hundred pounds, the men said. They were laden with heavy snow and frozen to the ground.
Now, Aziz and Hildenbrand decided, they would push the trees out of the way.
“It was kind of like a survival mode,” Hildenbrand said. “We just felt: ‘I need to get off this highway.’ ”
“I just wanted,” Aziz said, “to get the hell away from that road.”
The two men had first climbed into their welding truck early Monday morning. Hildenbrand left his house in Syracuse around 5 a.m., picking up Aziz from his home in Binghamton close to 6:30 a.m. The two men hit I-95 around 10 a.m. Monday, and their pace slowed to a crawl by the early afternoon. They would move forward 50 feet, start to feel excited that the traffic jam might be clearing — then stop again for hours on end.
Sen. Tim Kaine was stranded on I-95 for nearly 27 hours
As they inched along I-95, they watched the snow and slush accrue. They saw tractor trailers jackknifed across the road. They saw desperate people shiver in place as they turned off their cars to conserve gas. They saw other people abandon their cars, vans and trucks entirely.
By 8 p.m. Monday night, close to Exit 140, they stopped moving entirely. The two men passed the ensuing night without much sleep. Instead, they listened to the radio, chain-smoked cigarettes and hoped in vain for good news, they said. They watched the only thing there was to watch: the flashing lights pulsing from distressed vehicles nearby.
The next morning, the men used the generator on their welding truck to boil three pots of coffee. They started walking along the lines of nearby cars, offering their trapped neighbors water, caffeine and snacks. Aziz — who never leaves the house “without my boots laced up,” meaning he prefers to prepare for the unexpected — had packed Clif bars, party mix, 32 water bottles and his mother-in-law’s mother’s pecan pistachio bread.
Knocking on strangers’ car windows in the predawn darkness, Hildenbrand and Aziz felt the stirrings of an odd sense of community.
“We’re a bit rough around the edges. We’re welders. We don’t look like the type of people to necessarily be asking to help you out,” Hildenbrand said. “Some people didn’t roll their windows down, but others saw through that.”
One man darted into his car, produced several cans of Pepsi and cut off their tops to make impromptu mugs. He filled them with Aziz and Hildenbrand’s coffee and began handing them out.
“Before you know it, there were six to eight of us standing around the work truck,” Aziz said. “All of us basically admitting that it was this — right here — that had lifted our spirits in just a really” unfortunate situation, he said, using a more colorful description.
It was a little later, with the sun high in the sky, that the two men had the same crazy idea about the trees.
After much strenuous effort, the men managed to shove the trees — they didn’t know what kind — sufficiently far apart that their truck, which is sturdy and equipped with four-wheel-drive, could wend its way through despite needing to pass over at least a foot of snow and ice. Sweating despite the cold, they climbed back in and, finally, began trundling away from I-95. The terrain they’d left behind was still too treacherous for most drivers to follow.
As they took Exit 140, Aziz noticed a man sitting in a truck labeled VDOT, for Virginia Department of Transportation.
“He was just sitting there in his car all warm and cozy, didn’t look like he had a care or concern about all the miles of traffic he was looking at,” Aziz said.
“In my opinion, VDOT should have loaded that truck with food and water and that man should have driven along handing out food and water to people that needed it,” Hildenbrand said. “It shouldn’t have been a couple of welders from New York. The state of Virginia should have pulled its pants up, got out there and done more for the people of Virginia.”
Despite their lack of sleep, the two men decided to head straight for their original destination in South Carolina.
They spent about an hour and a half crawling along Route 1 in very poor driving conditions, sliding over piles of snow. Eventually, the road cleared, and the two men were able to increase to a normal speed. The instant they reached 70 miles per hour, Aziz and Hildenbrand began fist-pumping, cheering and high-fiving inside the car.
Close to 4 p.m. Tuesday, after about five hours of normal driving — and, in total, 36 hours after they’d left New York — they pulled into their hotel. As soon as they checked into their room, they cracked open two 12-packs of Corona, which Aziz had brought with him from New York. Hildenbrand ordered a cheesesteak pizza, with onions and green peppers.
Aziz felt grateful for the cold beer, the good food and the fact he wasn’t driving anymore. And for one extra thing, too.
“It’s a good thing John and I are such good friends, because it should be illegal to have to spend 36 hours” trapped in a car with another man, Aziz said. “A good looking-woman? Maybe. But a man? No way.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Joe Madison speaks to a coalition of students staging a hunger strike in support of voting rights on on Dec. 13 in D.C. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images/Un-PAC)
According to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Laws Roundup, more than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access were introduced in 49 states during the 2021 legislative sessions. At least 19 states have already passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.
A group of college students from Arizona had come to D.C. in December, trying to follow Madison’s lead by staging a hunger strike for voting rights outside the White House. They lasted 14 days before becoming too weak to walk. One of them declared that the hunger pains felt like knives being poked into her stomach.
There was a photograph of Madison on his website, taken 30 days into his protest. He was shirtless, with a sagging chest and gaunt face. He didn’t look like he could last till the next morning. He was subsisting on bone broth and juices, he told me. His weight had gone from 194 pounds to 171. He was using a walking stick to steady his gait, he said. Other side effects included insomnia, dizziness, nausea and chills.
But other conversations had begun. Several people were asking: How far is the nation willing to go to save a democracy under attack by autocratic, if not fascist, sympathizers?
In July, a protest for voting rights led by Black women resulted in nine arrests — including the arrest of the Congressional Black Caucus’s chair, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). That caught Madison’s attention — he and Beatty had attended high school together in Dayton, Ohio.
In August, the Revs. Jesse L. Jackson and William J. Barber II were among about 200 people arrested outside the U.S. Capitol while protesting on behalf of voting rights. They were demanding lawmakers expand and protect the Voting Rights Act by the 56th anniversary of the legislation later that month.
But the date came and went without action.
This was not his first time taking such action. In the mid-1980s, he fasted during a cross-country March for Dignity in South Africa. In the 1990s, he joined with civil rights activist Dick Gregory and fasted for more than 30 days to protest slavery in South Sudan. In 1994, he and then-D.C. Del. Walter E. Fauntroy held a 22-mile walk protesting the shooting death of Archie Elliott III by police in Prince George’s County.
“I have no idea if the Senate will or will not do anything by that date,” he said, sounding like a man who has had his hopes dashed one time too many already. “All I know is that I do not want my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to go through what our ancestors went through.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia Gov.-elect Youngkin names veterans, agriculture secretaries
Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R), who has been rolling out cabinet picks ahead of his Jan. 15 inauguration, on Tuesday announced his choices for veterans and agriculture secretaries.
Youngkin nominated Craig Crenshaw for secretary of veterans and defense affairs and Matt Lohr for secretary of agriculture and forestry.
Lohr, raised on a family farm in the Shenandoah Valley, served four years in the House of Delegates until then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) made him commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in 2010. Lohr served as chief of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service under President Donald Trump.
Youngkin also named two top officials who will work under those secretaries: Daniel Gade as commissioner of the Department of Veterans Services, and Joseph Guthrie as commissioner of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
An Army veteran who lost a leg in combat in Iraq, Gade waged a failed bid to unseat Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) in 2020. He taught at the U.S. Military Academy for six years before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, going on to co-found the Independence Project, which benefits veterans and their families.
Guthrie, who owns and has operated a beef cattle and hay farm in Pulaski County, is a senior instructor at Virginia Tech, his alma mater, where he has taught courses in business management, finance, communications and leadership in the agricultural technology program since 2007. He has a master’s degree in agricultural economics and international trade from Massey University in New Zealand, where he studied as a Fulbright scholar. | null | null | null | null | null |
Needless to say, Trump had for a time planned to insert himself into the anniversary. But earlier this week he canceled his Jan. 6 news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., and said he would instead hold a rally in Arizona on Jan 15. There, he will likely continue his pathological attachment to the absurd fiction that he won the 2020 election. He didn’t, as courts, counters and capable election officials have repeatedly confirmed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Christian Eriksen has not played competitively since suffering cardiac arrest during a Euro 2020 match in June. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Seven months after collapsing on the field during Denmark’s Euro 2020 match last summer, star midfielder Christian Eriksen said he hopes to play in the 2022 World Cup, which begins November in Qatar.
Denmark last year qualified for the 2022 World Cup, which will be held in November and December rather than the usual summer time frame because of concerns over Qatar’s scorching temperatures then. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stephanie Hinds, a U.S. attorney, said on Jan. 3 that the guilty verdicts reflected Elizabeth Holmes’s "culpability in this large scale investor fraud." (AP)
Blood-testing start-up founder Elizabeth Holmes’s guilty conviction on four of the 11 fraud charges leveled against her has given some resolution to one of the highest-profile white-collar crime cases to get public attention in years.
Her rapid rise and reputation as the future of Silicon Valley was boosted by the tech press and her roster of famous investors and advisers. Her fall from favor was just as swift, with her company eventually going bankrupt and most of her investors renouncing their ties to her when it became clear that Theranos’s machines couldn’t perform the number and quality of blood tests from finger pricks that the company had been striving to develop for several years.
The more than three-month-long trial, which centered on whether Holmes purposely misled investors and patients about how effective her company’s blood-testing machines were, was swamped by reporters and curious onlookers, in much the same way other big white-collar criminal trials had been in the past.
The United States has a history of building up its business leaders and tearing them down just as quickly when they’re accused of wrongdoing. Here’s are some of the biggest white-collar scandals of the last few decades, including some that went to trial and others that didn’t.
For much of the 1990s, Enron had been a Wall Street favorite, aggressively expanding beyond its core business into Internet services and electricity plants, and racking up larger and larger profits. Enron’s dizzyingly complicated financial structure included hundreds of shell companies and controversial accounting practices that were difficult for even top Wall Street analysts to comprehend.
Some journalists and investors had raised red flags about the company, but it wasn’t until its chief executive Jeffrey Skilling abruptly stepped down in August 2001 after cashing in millions in stock that the broader world really began to take notice. In a few short months, the company went from being worth more than $60 billion to filing for bankruptcy, wiping out the investments of thousands of employees and outside investors. By the time it went into bankruptcy, very few companies were willing to do business with Enron and its sprawling network of subsidiaries. It eventually sold all its assets.
A court also found Enron’s accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, then one of the largest in the world, guilty of being complicit in the company’s crimes. The Supreme Court later reversed the decision but not before Arthur Andersen had given up its accounting license and essentially ceased to exist. In the months and years after Enron collapsed, numerous other major accounting scandals came to light, including telecom company WorldCom, whose $100 billion bankruptcy in 2002 surpassed Enron’s in size.
Martha Stewart built a publishing and home products empire in the 1980s and 1990s, becoming a household name around the world and go-to tastemaker for millions of home cooks and decorators. When her company went public in 1999, she became a self-made billionaire, a title that Holmes would also attain before Theranos’s collapse.
In 2001, Stewart became embroiled in an insider trading scandal when the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that she sold shares in drug company ImClone on inside information obtained from her broker, just before the Food and Drug Administration withheld approval for one of the company’s products.
Stewart was indicted in 2003 for fraud and obstruction of justice. She maintained her innocence throughout her trial, but a jury found her guilty. She was sentenced to five months in prison. After her release, Stewart made a major comeback, eventually regaining her position as chair of her company in 2011.
Since then, she has starred in several shows, including one that ran for three years with rapper Snoop Dogg called “Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.” She became a special adviser to Canadian marijuana producer Canopy Growth in 2021.
Investigations in the mid-2010s showed that some of the biggest banks in the world had been conspiring to fix an important financial benchmark interest rate, the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor.
Libor was used by various industries to set other interest rates, meaning manipulated Libor rates resulted in a huge knock-on effect, potentially costing municipalities, student loan holders and mortgage payers billions of dollars. Banks allegedly manipulated the rate to benefit investments they had made and to give the impression that they were more optimistic about the state of financial markets than they were.
The scandal led to years of investigations in the United States and Europe, as well as parliamentary and congressional hearings in several countries. In the aftermath, banks including Deutsche Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS paid billions in fines, and the chief executive of Barclays stepped down.
Four traders were sent to prison in Britain, while in the United States, two bankers had their convictions overturned and two others had their sentences reduced to six and nine months, respectively, of home confinement. The presiding judge said U.S. prosecutors had tried to pin the wrongdoing of a larger system of actors on the individual men.
Canadian mining company Bre-X was trading as a penny stock when it announced it had found a massive gold deposit in Indonesia. As the firm announced increasingly optimistic projections for their future mine, investors, including pension funds representing thousands of Canadian public sector workers, jumped in and pushed up the company’s valuation to $4.4 billion by 1997, or about $7.1 billion in today’s dollars.
But just a year later, the company collapsed into bankruptcy when investigators found the mining samples Bre-X’s geologists had touted were full of gold shaved off of jewelry. One geologist allegedly died by jumping or falling out of a helicopter in the Indonesian jungle, though investigative journalists have suggested that the death was faked. Hundreds of thousands of investors lost money, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police closed its investigation in 1999 without charging anyone.
After the Great Recession, the world’s biggest banks paid massive multibillion-dollar fines for their role in pushing the risky investment products that helped create the financial crisis that led to worldwide economic pain for millions of people. But very few high-profile executives went to jail or were even tried.
Famously, just one banker in the United States went to jail: Kareem Serageldin, a former mid-level executive at Credit Suisse, who was convicted in 2012 for inflating the value of bonds that were structured out of subprime mortgage loans. Serageldin could not be reached for comment.
Other countries were more aggressive, with Spain, Iceland and Ireland sentencing a few dozen executives from local banks for their roles in the crisis, according to an analysis from the Financial Times. A U.S. Senate committee did recommend that the Justice Department investigate whether Goldman Sachs misled investors in the lead-up to the crisis, but the government closed its investigation soon after.
In 2013, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder told Congress that the sheer size of the banks involved made prosecutors hesitant to go after them, out of concern that investigations could disrupt the U.S. and global economies. “It has an inhibiting influence, impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate,” Holder said.
This Arizona start-up has been working on building hydrogen- and electricity-powered transport trucks since 2014, feeding off the same hype that has helped drive the valuation of Elon Musk’s electric car company. Both companies are named for legendary Croatian inventor Nikola Tesla. But the company Nikola became embroiled in accusations of fraud after an investment firm accused founder Trevor Milton of making public claims about his trucks that weren’t true. Milton had taken Nikola public and seen its share price soar to make it more valuable than Ford.
Just months later, short seller Hindenburg Research accused the company of faking a video showing their truck driving under its own power by rolling it down a hill. Hindenburg also said Nikola used parts purchased from other companies, rather than ones it designed on its own, echoing the charge against Theranos that it used more established blood-testing companies’ machines in place of its own.
Milton stepped down, and federal prosecutors began investigating, eventually charging him with defrauding investors by exaggerating and lying about his truck’s capabilities. Milton pleaded not guilty to the charges. The company itself has not been charged and is continuing its work to build electric trucks, the first of which it delivered to customers in December.
Milton is out on bail while he awaits his trial, scheduled for April. | null | null | null | null | null |
Video that surfaced Tuesday showed Titans linebacker Bud Dupree and others in a physical altercation. (Wade Payne/AP)
Tennessee Titans linebacker Bud Dupree was cited by Nashville police Tuesday for misdemeanor assault after an incident at a Walgreens location. The veteran pass-rusher, in his first season with the Titans, is accused of getting into a physical altercation on Sunday with a male employee at the store.
According to a statement released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, the incident occurred at approximately 8 p.m. Central time. That was several hours after Tennessee trounced the Miami Dolphins at home to win the AFC South and move into position to become the top seed in the conference playoffs.
After a group of unidentified people entered the store, per police, some of them got into an argument with the employee. They then left and returned with Dupree, who was said to have “grabbed” the employee and the employee’s phone as a fracas erupted.
“Due to the victim being assaulted,” Nashville police stated, “the defendant is being charged with assault-fear of bodily injury.”
A spokesman for the police told the Tennessean that the employee was using his phone to film the scene. He was treated for a cut on his forehead, the spokesman added, and a female employee was treated for a cut on her hand.
Video that surfaced on Tuesday, including what TMZ Sports described as surveillance footage from inside the store, showed Dupree and others in an altercation.
Dupree, 28, signed a five-year, $82.5 million free agent contract with the Titans in the offseason after spending his first six NFL seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Listed at 6 feet 4 and 269 pounds, he has three sacks — including two in the past three weeks — over 10 games played this season, with one pass defensed and one forced fumble.
Nashville police said that Dupree and his attorney met with detectives on Tuesday morning, after the attorney had an initial meeting the day before. The citation was issued in consultation with the district attorney’s office, police said.
Dupree is expected to report for booking in three weeks. If the 11-5 Titans finish the regular season Sunday with a win over the 4-12 Houston Texans, or results from certain other games fall in their favor, they will clinch a first-round postseason bye. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pyongyang fired a suspected ballistic missile off North Korea’s east coast at roughly 8:10 a.m., according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. The JCS said intelligence agencies in Seoul and Washington were cooperating on further analysis of the apparent weapons test. The Japanese military said that the missile appeared to have fallen into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.
Numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions ban North Korea from testing ballistic missiles, though Pyongyang has repeatedly violated them. North Korea last conducted a weapons test on Oct.19, when the nuclear-armed country fired a short-range ballistic missile from a submarine.
Earlier this week, Moon promised to use his two months left in the office to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough with Pyongyang. “If an opportunity arises, our government — until the end of my term — will seek the normalization of inter-Korean relations and a path to an irreversible peace,” Moon said in his New Year’s Address on Monday.
Moon has been pursuing an end-of-war-declaration between the United States and the two Koreas in a bid to revive stalled negotiations over nuclear weapons between North Korea and the United States. Pyongyang has called such a declaration “premature,” while Washington has expressed reservations about the details of any such resolution.
Meanwhile on New Year’s Eve, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to bolster the country’s military in a speech to the ruling Workers’ Party. Kim renewed his calls for Pyongyang to develop more powerful, high-tech weapons in 2022, but did not offer details.
Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo contributed reporting. | null | null | null | null | null |
A billboard depicting Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy units rushing toward an Iranian tanker held captive by a giant octopus in the colors of the American flag is displayed in Tehran on Nov. 5, 2021. (AFP/Getty Images)
DUBAI — The secret transfers usually take place at night to evade detection by regional coast guards. The ships anchor in the Persian Gulf just outside the territorial limits of the United Arab Emirates, and then, individually, small boats carrying smuggled Iranian diesel shift their loads to the waiting vessels, according to seafarers who have witnessed the trade.
“It is a big chain, with fishing boats sailing up to give diesel to a waiting tanker. It takes four to five days because boats come one by one,” said a 27-year-old Indian seafarer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said he had been employed by a Dubai-based shipping company that smuggled Iranian fuel to Somalia.
His description of these illicit operations, which accelerated when the United States reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil exports after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, is one of five eyewitness accounts provided by Indian nationals who say they worked on vessels involved in the clandestine commerce. While smuggling of Iranian petroleum products has been documented previously and drawn a U.S. rebuke, these seafarers offered a rare inside look at how these activities are carried out.
The tankers always anchor in the international waters that separate Iran and the UAE, recounted a 28-year-old Indian seafarer, who said he worked for two companies involved in smuggling Iranian diesel between 2016 and 2020.
“UAE territorial waters end after 12 miles, so Iranian ships come as close as 14 to 20 miles to the UAE,” he said. “They switch off their AIS [automatic identification system] so that they can’t be tracked. If they see the UAE coast guard, they stop the operation and run away.”
In addition to the nighttime transfers at sea, Iranian diesel bound for international markets is exported on tankers setting sail from Iran with the origin of the shipment forged to make it look as though it came from Iraq or the UAE, according to a third seafarer and three experts in security and energy affairs.
Because of the profit margins, this trade was highly lucrative even before the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal. Iran has some of the world’s cheapest fuel prices thanks to very low production costs, heavy government subsidies and a weak currency. But the reimposed economic sanctions have given this business a further boost as smugglers seek to evade restrictions on Iranian oil exports. Those sanctions are now a focus of discussions in Vienna, where Iran and world powers have resumed negotiations aimed at reviving the nuclear accord.
“The transport of sanctioned Iranian [petroleum] products happens on a weekly basis,” said Cormac Mc Garry, associate director of Control Risks, a consultancy. “There are financial drivers and the demand, so Iran will find a way around sanctions. And its policy is to keep that an absolute secret. They don’t reveal how they do it.”
The smuggling involves elements of the Iranian state, notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and private shipping companies based in Persian Gulf countries, according to analysts specializing in the energy industry and regional security. At times, they said, the IRGC seeks to interdict those who try to secure a piece of its action without the group’s permission.
The U.S. Treasury Department has accused the IRGC of making money from the smuggling of oil and petroleum products.
Iranian officials have previously said they oppose diesel smuggling. The Iranian Foreign Ministry did not reply to a request for comment.
“The maritime component of the IRGC has a very rigid control over the maritime border as well as the port facilities. A lot of people are being paid off. The IRGC is a highly corrupt institution,” said Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London. “If we look at the quantities that are being smuggled each year from Iran, we’re talking millions of barrels.”
A 'scary' shipboard raid
Deepak Verma’s hands were tied at gunpoint. He was ordered to stay still. Six armed men in uniforms had rushed onto his ship, the MV Asphalt Princess, he recalled, and they identified themselves as members of the Iranian military.
Their leader warned, ‘ “If anybody speaks or tries to do something, we will kill him.’ We sat on the floor with our hands behind our backs,” said Verma, 32, who held the position of second engineer on the ship. “He asked if diesel was onboard. But nobody said a word.”
A few hours earlier on that day in August, a small boat from Iran had sailed up to the Asphalt Princess and transferred diesel into its storage tank, Verma said, so the fuel could be sold on to other vessels for shipment abroad.
The assailants ordered the crew to sail the ship to Iran, but the crew — about a dozen men from India and Sri Lanka — stalled by claiming the engine was having problems and could catch fire. Then, in the early hours of the following morning, the attackers left suddenly for reasons that remain unclear.
“That time was so scary,” Verma said.
United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued a warning notice in the hours after the attack that the incident was a potential hijacking.
Suspicion quickly fell on Iranian forces, and specifically the IRGC. According to Krieg, the IRGC detains or hijacks vessels when shipping companies seek to smuggle petroleum products without its permission.
“When you have the IRGC seizing ships, this indicates they are without the approval from the higher echelons, who also want to make money out of it,” Krieg added. “It’s also good in terms of international reputation, because there are allegations that the Iranians are actively helping smugglers to circumvent the sanctions.”
Three seafarers other than Verma said that Prime Tankers, the Dubai-based company that owns the Asphalt Princess, is involved in shipping Iranian diesel on at least two other ships as well. In 2019, the IRGC detained the MT Riah, another ship in Prime Tankers’ fleet, on accusations of smuggling.
Cargo documents for the Asphalt Princess obtained by The Washington Post show that during 2021 the ship has also transported refined oil products, bitumen and rubber process oil — which are covered by U.S. sanctions — from Iran to Oman and China.
Prime Tankers did not respond to a request for comment.
Obfuscation and bribes
Vikash Thakur, an Indian seafarer with a decade of experience, said it can be dangerous to disclose what he’s seen in the Persian Gulf. “Seafarers don’t want to talk about these things. They are afraid,” he said.
But it’s hard to miss this shadow commerce. The sea lanes between the Strait of Hormuz and ports in Dubai and Saudi Arabia are busy with small boats carrying contraband diesel for transfer to larger vessels, Thakur said. At times, he said, the diesel is temporarily stored in the Emirati port of Sharjah, where documents are forged to make it seem as if the fuel came from Iraq. (The Sharjah Ports Authority did not respond to a request for comment.)
“It’s an open secret that illicit trade goes on, but nobody actually names it,” said Andy Bowman, regional director for the Middle East and South Asia at the Mission to Seafarers charity. “The waters from Ajman [in the UAE] to Iran, particularly at night, are busy with ships moving at unusual times and not coming into port, but discharging or connecting with other ships while they’re anchored.”
From there, cargoes of refined products, such as diesel, are transported onward to countries such as Yemen and Somalia, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, a consultancy that tracks shipments of crude oil.
“The classic way to obfuscate is to switch off your [AIS] transponder, then you go dark for a week, then you come back online, and everyone is wondering where you picked your cargo up from,” Madani said.
Mc Garry, of Control Risks, said turning off the AIS violates international maritime codes and is a red flag for illicit activity. “Because of these gaps in AIS, it is difficult to spot where those ships have met up. Then we start losing the track of where that cargo goes to because it gets transferred to another ship,” he said.
This lack of transparency poses a risk to potential purchasers, Mc Garry said, because they could be involved in the trade of diesel and crude oil that looks “perfectly legitimate” but falls under U.S. sanctions, leaving these businesses exposed to potential fines.
For the seafarers, this can be a perilous business. Both the IRGC and pirates pose a menace, and ships often carry large sums of money in case either one needs to be paid off. Indrajeet Rathod, 30, who worked on a ship smuggling diesel to Yemen from 2017 through 2020, said his vessel carried about $10,000 for bribes. Thakur said the captain of his ship usually had $50,000.
“The only way to get the Iranians to leave the ship is for the captain to give them cash,” Thakur said. He added, “Cash can save the seafarers from torture. Because they [the IRGC] never behave like humans. They start beating, always.”
Shortages, sanctions, protests and pandemic: Daunting challenges await Iran’s new president
U.S. warns it has ‘tools’ to deal with Iran if nuclear talks fail | null | null | null | null | null |
An earlier version of this report misidentified Larry Krasner's office. He is the Philadelphia district attorney, not the Pennsylvania district attorney. This story has been corrected.
A Philadelphia man walked out of prison on Monday, 37 years after he was convicted of murdering a woman, an accusation he has vehemently denied, and after a federal court found prosecutors suppressed evidence of false testimony given by a key witness, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said.
The court ordered Stokes to be retried within 120 days or released, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office acknowledged that the suppressed evidence crumbled the legal basis of the prosecution and “fatally undermined confidence” in Stokes’s conviction.
On Monday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner acknowledged that Stokes’s “remarkable” case was part of police and prosecutorial malpractices that were pervasive “during the so-called tough-on-crime 1980s and 1990s, and unfortunately persist in far too many jurisdictions today,” he said in a news release.
Nevertheless, on Aug. 21, 1984, a jury convicted Stokes of first-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Soon after, they also charged Lee for perjury for his false hearing testimony. But that information was never disclosed to Stokes — who could have used it for his defense and appeals litigation.
During the November hearing, Lee, 62, testified that his initial statement given to police and at the preliminary hearing implicating Stokes in Campbell’s murder was false. | null | null | null | null | null |
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