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Woman critically injured in crash in Southeast Washington
Three others suffered injuries that did not appear life-threatening, D.C. police say
A woman was critically injured in a single-car crash in the District on Tuesday night, D.C. police said.
The woman was unconscious and not breathing when taken to a hospital after the crash in the 3600 block of Southern Avenue SE, said Officer Sean Hickman, a police spokesman. The crash happened about 8:20 p.m., he said.
Three others suffered injuries that did not appear life-threatening, he said.
The cause of the crash could not be immediately determined.
The vehicle apparently struck a tree, the D.C. fire department tweeted. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man is fatally shot in Southeast Washington, police say
A man was fatally shot in the District on Tuesday, the D.C. police said. The death appeared to be the second homicide in the District in the new year.
The man was shot about 4:40 p.m. in the 3300 block of 12th Street SE, said Officer Sean Hickman, a police spokesman.
Details of the circumstances were not available late Tuesday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Critics also see a failure of accountability — both by America’s leaders and the populous — for the events of Jan. 6, making it harder for Washington to hold itself up as a global champion for the rule of law. Republicans — who have sought to downplay the assault on the Capitol in which five people died — are nevertheless early favorites in this year’s midterm elections, in part due to gerrymandering, potentially bringing more gridlock to Washington as well as the appearance of a vindication by the U.S. electorate. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Mallika Sen | AP
Williams has been the public’s eyes in courtrooms since 1980 and has drawn for The Associated Press since 2004, though the typical flurry of courthouse activity slowed during the coronavirus pandemic. Maxwell’s was the first full trial Williams covered from the courtroom itself in the pandemic era, coming right on the heels of R. Kelly's own sex-trafficking trial over in Brooklyn federal court.
Over the course of Maxwell’s monthlong trial, which ended with last week's conviction, Williams says she produced around 100 sketches of witness testimony, attorney arguments, jurors, the judge, spectators and, above all, the defendant herself. | null | null | null | null | null |
BRISBANE, Australia — Novak Djokovic will get a chance to defend his Australian Open title after receiving a medical exemption to travel to Melbourne.
BROOKVILLE, N.Y. — Long Island University has hired veteran coach Ron Cooper, who spent this season working for Alabama, to lead its football program.
INDIANAPOLIS — Kevin Kalkhoven, the team co-owner of Tony Kanaan’s Indianapolis 500-winning entry in 2013, died Tuesday. He was 77. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why have mass protests erupted in Kazakhstan?
MOSCOW — In an unprecedented challenge to Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime, mass protests over rising fuel prices in the Central Asian country have prompted the current government to resign and the president to declare a two-week state of emergency in two regions.
Then on Wednesday, despite the cabinet resignation and state of emergency, protesters stormed the city hall. There appeared to be a fire inside, according to images posted on social media. | null | null | null | null | null |
The far-right provocateur Éric Zemmour, who announced his bid for the presidency last month, has also taken a hard line against coronavirus containment measures. He held a campaign event in front of some 13,000 supporters in early December, before Paris announced new restrictions — a move his rivals called irresponsible. | null | null | null | null | null |
The demonstrations, very rare for the Central Asian country of about 19 million, prompted the current government to resign and the president to declare a two-week state of emergency in three regions.
In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city with a population of nearly 2 million, video footage posted to social media Tuesday night showed riot police firing stun grenades and tear gas at thousands of protesters moving toward the main square. | null | null | null | null | null |
For 20 years, the United States has had detainees at Guantánamo. The base’s problems are even older.
A flag flies at half-staff in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after a deadly terrorist attack in Afghanistan. (Alex Brandon/AP)
By Jana Lipman
Jana Lipman is associate professor at Tulane University and author of "Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution." She is currently writing a book on refugee camps after the Vietnam War.
But long before the United States held detainees on the base, Cuban workers recognized the base’s strained relationship with the law. Indeed, the base’s legal history is rooted in Cuban history. Cuban workers repeatedly petitioned the U.S. government to recognize their rights on the base. It was only after the United States stopped depending on Cuban workers that it could reimagine the base as a refugee camp in the 1990s, and then a detention center in the fight against terrorism. Yet, many of the problems with its use as a detention center echoed the problems exposed by Cuban workers. And these problems remain today.
As journalist Lino Lemes wrote, Cuban workers on the base were “not protected by American social laws or Cuban social laws.” In the 1940s, he was referring broadly to minimum wage, pensions and leave policies. Lemes wrote in a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the U.S. officials applied whichever law “happened to be more convenient.” In other words, did Cuban law or U.S. law govern Cuban workers and U.S. military personnel on the base?
This outraged Salomón’s fellow workers when they heard what had happened. One base worker protested that Salomón had “disappeared as if he had been swallowed by the earth.” On release, Salomón claimed that he had been forced to stand for 14 to 15 hours each day, received rotten potatoes and dirty water and was beaten regularly. He signed a confession that he had stolen the cigarettes, but he added that his confinement was so brutal, he would have confessed to killing Abraham Lincoln too.
The United States would double-down on its power to hold people on the base in the 1990s when it transformed the base into a Haitian refugee camp. The United States argued that Haitians on the base were not governed by the U.S. Constitution. By this point, there were no worker protests. However, human rights lawyers fought for Haitians’ due process rights in language that would have been familiar to Cuban base workers, emphasizing that people held on the base must have access to lawyers and can’t be abused or detained indefinitely.
The handling of detainees in the fight against terrorism brought these dangers to fruition. The Cuban workers’ 1950s protests against detention and allegations of abuse were shockingly prescient. The main reason the United States chose to create a prison camp in Guantánamo Bay was because it could simultaneously hold the detainees outside the United States and not be constrained by a host country. So long as this remains true, there is a risk of the United States using the base to hold others. | null | null | null | null | null |
Having never made my way through “The Plague” by Albert Camus, I, like a lot of others, decided to pick it up, and I thought it’d be fun if others read it with me. At the time, I was the print editor of the Stranger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly newspaper in Seattle. I announced the formation of a book club to read “The Plague”on the Stranger’s blog. Then I wrote a post once a week about the latest pages we’d read, and the club “met” in the comments to discuss. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dave Bateman speaks during StartFEST at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015. Bateman, a Utah tech company founder, stepped down as chairman after he sent an email screed to several fellow executives outlining false, antisemitic vaccination theories. (Stacie Scott/The Deseret News via AP)
A Utah tech executive acknowledged his email opining about the coronavirus vaccine to state lawmakers and business executives would “sound bonkers.” But he sent it anyway.
“I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people,” Dave Bateman, the founder of Entrata, a property management software company, wrote Tuesday, KTSU first reported.
The email, littered with baseless claims and antisemitic tropes about the vaccine, led to an immediate backlash from the Utah tech community, religious leaders and politicians. Bateman resigned as chairman on Tuesday.
Bateman did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment late Tuesday. In a text message to a reporter for KTSU, Bateman confirmed he sent the email and said he “had no intention of raising a big stir” and has “nothing but love for the Jewish people.”
Bateman is one of three co-founders of Entrata, which was formed in 2003. The software company has raised over $500 million in investor funding, according to Forbes, and is valued at more than $1 billion. Bateman stepped down as chief executive in 2020 and moved to Puerto Rico. Despite leaving his post as chairman Tuesday, he still is the largest stakeholder in the company, Forbes reported.
Bateman sent the email early Tuesday morning to more than 50 recipients, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), Utah Senate Minority Whip Luz Escamilla (D) and Ryan Smith, the owner of the Utah Jazz, KTSU reported. It included antisemitic and false claims that the Jewish people conspired to make a vaccine that would weaken immune systems to kill off billions of people and that for 300 years “Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top.”
“I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule,” Bateman wrote, according to KTSU.
Bateman’s statements echo antisemitic theories about the vaccine that are often spread on white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites and social media channels, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Blake McClary, a tech executive and president of the Salt Lake City chapter for Silicon Slopes, a nonprofit that supports Utah’s burgeoning start-up environment, tweeted that Bateman needed to step down and “not embarrass” the tech community. | null | null | null | null | null |
State trooper accidentally hit and killed his brother when responding to his call for backup: ‘A bad dream’
Lovelace told WSOC he ran out to the scene and found Horton’s younger brother, James “Nick” Horton, also a state trooper. James Horton had been trying to answer his brother’s request for backup at a traffic stop near Mooresboro, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said in a news release. Instead, he lost control of his cruiser and hit his brother’s patrol car, which slammed into John Horton and the man he’d detained on the side of the road.
John Horton, a 15-year veteran of the state police, was taken to a hospital where he died, according to the highway patrol. The motorcycle driver he’d pulled over, 26-year-old Dusty Beck, died at the scene, according to WSPA. James Horton was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released.
On Sunday, the day before the crash, Gov. Roy Cooper warned North Carolinians that severe winter storms could pound the state for the next 24 to 48 hours, potentially causing flooding on the coast and dumping up to nine inches of snow in the mountains. On Monday, temperatures in Rutherford County, where the Hortons patrolled, plummeted from the mid-50s in the early morning to freezing by 8:30 p.m. Snow and sleet pelted the area throughout the day.
“He loved his babies and he loved to just live,” Beck’s sister, Seledia Carver, wrote on a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses. “…He lived the way he wanted Free and just going a mile a [minute] leaving you laughing and remembering his beautiful smile.” | null | null | null | null | null |
5 BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU (FSG, $28). By Sally Rooney. Two friends struggle to define their romantic relationships in the context of today’s uncertain world.
7 HARLEM SHUFFLE (Doubleday, $28.95). By Colson Whitehead. A furniture store owner in Harlem struggles to balance his desire to remain law-abiding with his temptation to join neighborhood criminals.
8 WISH YOU WERE HERE (Ballantine, $28.99). By Jodi Picoult. A woman is stranded in the Galapagos Islands as the pandemic spreads.
9 CROSSROADS (FSG, $30). By Jonathan Franzen. Simmering resentment leads an assistant pastor and his dysfunctional family to a moral crisis.
10 OH WILLIAM! (Random House, $27). By Elizabeth Strout. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s final installment in a trilogy finds Lucy Barton struggling to understand her ex-husband.
8 A CARNIVAL OF SNACKERY (Little, Brown, $32). By David Sedaris. Diary entries from the past two decades are recounted by the popular humorist.
9 ALL ABOUT ME! (Ballantine, $29.99). By Mel Brooks. The renowned entertainer shares stories from his upbringing and his legendary career.
10 THE BOOK OF HOPE (Celadon Books, $28). By Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams and Gail Hudson. Reasons to be hopeful for humanity’s future from the iconic naturalist. | null | null | null | null | null |
What happens when political theorists are read by everyone else?
After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, political science subfields had different reactions to the worst-case scenarios. This Twitter thread summarizes some of them. (Jacob Levy/Jacob T. Levy)
One of the dirty secrets of political science is that very few scholars read much in the way of political theory. Sure, the political theorists do, but the rest of the discipline views them as the weird kids sitting together at lunch. Political scientists who specialize in American politics, comparative politics, or international relations likely read some Hobbes or Locke or Nietzsche or Arendt back in the day, but there are few requirements to read the classics in graduate school training. Political theory does not impinge on their day-to-day research.
This should not be read as an indictment of the field. Specialization is inevitable, and someone specializing in, say, the implications of artificial intelligence for international security or the effect of elite cues on public opinion does not need to be well-versed in Plato. And this specialization cuts both ways: political theorists do not necessarily dive deeply into empirical political science either.
What it does mean, however, is that on those rare moments when a scholarly controversy breaks through sub-disciplinary boundaries, there is an excellent chance of mutual misunderstandings.
This brings me to the recent controversy surrounding an American Political Science Review article and what it says about the perils of public engagement.
Last month the APSR — the flagship journal of the discipline in the United States — published a political theory article by Ross Mittiga titled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change.” Mittiga writes that he is “interested in determining under what conditions authoritarian climate governance may be considered legitimate and, more broadly, how governments’ responses to climate change influence normative assessments of their political legitimacy.”
If I understand Mittiga’s meaning correctly — and I am not a political theorist — “authoritarian” does not mean an authoritarian government (though it certainly includes that regime type), but rather instances in which leaders, even democratically elected ones, invoke states of emergency to give themselves enhanced executive power.
The article spells out two concepts of political legitimacy, foundational legitimacy (FL) — when “essential safety needs are met” — and contingent legitimacy (CL) — when “the power used by the government … [is] ‘acceptable’ to all those who are subjected to it.” As Mittiga puts it, “FL is about living, CL about living well.”
From this Maslow-like hierarchy of legitimacy needs, Mittiga’s argument is that unless democracies are able to surmount their political imperfections and take concerted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be a climate crisis. And in a crisis, “political legitimacy may not only be compatible with authoritarian governance but actually require it.” Possible authoritarian measures include, but are not limited to, “curbing meat-heavy diets,” “a censorship regime that prevents the proliferation of climate denialism or disinformation in public media,” and “imposing a climate litmus-test on those who seek public office.”
I will confess to not being crazy about a lot of the arguments contained in the article. The definitions are contestable. I’m not sure that CL, as defined, can ever exist. The definition of “authoritarian” is so expansive as to be of limited utility. Mittiga casually asserts that authoritarian governments like China are doing better at climate action than democracies with little empirical foundation. There is too much hand-waving at various points in the article, particularly on the downside risks of authoritarian actions. And there are too many ways that a short scene from “The Dark Knight” does a better job of wrestling with some of the trade-offs.
Still, the idea that there are multiple sources of legitimacy is undeniable. Mittiga is also explicitly not advocating for authoritarian rule. He writes: “the argument presented here should not be understood as an endorsement of authoritarianism but rather as a warning: should we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian politics, we must do all we can to prevent emergencies from arising that can only be solved with such means.”
What happened next is … well, Twitter is what happened next:
Read the whole thread, as well as Mittiga’s response thread. Their engagement is civil and constructive. The problem is that Alexander Wuttke’s initial tweet was sufficiently inaccurate to set off an entire social media debate in which many have behaved badly. Valid critiques of Mittiga’s argument have been crowded out. A lot of political scientists who do not read political theory are reading partial summaries of one political theory article and not quite comprehending what is going on. Others who proclaim their fidelity to methodological rigor have generalized wildly from a single data point. All of this is from folks with relevant doctorates: the response from non-academics to a partial and distorted summary of one article could best be defined as “not great.”
So what are the takeaways? First, as more crises come down the pike, debates like the one Mittiga is trying to provoke will also take place. It would therefore be great if everyone could get on the same page about what terms like “authoritarian” mean. Second, no one is going to get on the same page about terms because of trends in the marketplace of ideas that make such consensus about first principles incentive-incompatible.
Third, political theorists and other political scientists need to engage with one another a bit more when not on Twitter. And last, all the talk about how political scientists need to do more public engagement has omitted the possible downsides of misperceptions and recriminations. This entire kerfuffle, one in which everyone comes away looking worse, is an example. | null | null | null | null | null |
Contributions to members of Congress who supported overturning the 2020 election are down compared to four years ago. But it’s early.
People shelter in the House chamber as rioters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
By Florian Gawehns
Amy Meli
After the Capitol insurrection a year ago, 60 percent of the House Republican conference — 139 members — voted to overturn election results in Pennsylvania, Arizona, or both. In doing so, they endorsed the false idea that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Many corporations denounced the violence. Some announced they would withhold donations to those 139 members in particular.
We wanted to know whether companies followed through. Using publicly available Federal Election Commission data, we found Fortune 500 PAC donations to these 139 Republicans were down — from 60 percent to 20 percent — between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2021, compared to the same period in 2017. Not all corporations paused their donations — and as a recent Accountable.US report noted, some have resumed.
So which corporations paused their donations — and why? Here’s what we found.
Companies concerned about public image are more likely to “pause” donations
Major companies often slow down their PAC contributions to candidates for a time after each general election. After Jan. 6, a CNN survey found that 38 percent of Fortune 500 PACs were implementing a “pause.” While some stopped contributing to members who voted to decertify the elections, most of the pausing PACs stopped contributions to all candidates for the first three months of 2021.
But which companies did this? To see, we looked at the CPA-Zicklin Index (CZI), a scorecard compiled by the Center for Political Accountability, a shareholder activist group, which assesses companies’ transparency practices and political activity, such as involvement in trade associations and independent spending to support or oppose candidates for office.
Companies pay close attention to this index. Firms have changed behavior to bring up their scores, suggesting that CZI measures not only a company’s socially responsible behavior but also its desire to be perceived as a good corporate citizen.
We found that companies with the highest CZI scores were 12 percent more likely to have paused than companies with an average CZI score. Companies with the lowest CZI scores were 16 percent less likely to have paused PAC operations than those with average CZI scores.
Most corporate PACs scheduled their pauses to run for three months from January through March of 2021 — the first quarter of the 2021-2022 political cycle. This time happens to be a slow period in a PAC’s life. For the House of Representatives, election cycles last two years, with the final year being the year of the election. Most PACs fundraise throughout the two years and make most of their contributions in the final year of the cycle. In the first six months after an election, few people have yet declared their candidacies for the next congressional election; even fewer are holding fundraising events, which is how candidates usually solicit PAC contributions.
A pause that ends 18 months before the next election is therefore a cost-free way to express concern, since plenty of time remains to catch up on contributions.
In other words, through these PAC pauses, companies were signaling to employees and the world at large that they were concerned about the fate of U.S. democracy. These could be seen as the “thoughts and prayers” of corporate PACs — symbolic gestures with little meaning, revealing only concern about being perceived as good citizens.
Some say the U.S. is headed for civil war. History suggests something else.
What about corporations that withheld contributions to the Republicans who voted to overturn election results?
While a general pause in giving was largely symbolic, withholding contributions from the Republicans who supported overturning the election results was much riskier. Those 139 included members of the Republican leadership, most freshmen GOP lawmakers, and 59 percent of committee ranking members. Choosing not to contribute to influential lawmakers can make it harder for companies to lobby successfully.
During the period we studied, only 20 percent of Fortune 500 PACs made at least one contribution to one of the 139. This is a surprisingly low number compared to previous off-year donation patterns; while contributions typically slow in this period, they usually don’t stop completely. For instance, in the first six months of the year after the 2016 election, 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies gave to one of the 139 who were in office at the time.
One might expect companies that paused PAC donations after Jan. 6 would be less likely to give to legislators who voted against certification, but we find no relationship between a PAC pausing donations and its decision to give to one of the 139. Of the PACs that paused, 20 percent contributed to one of the 139 after their pauses lifted in March 2021.
So which companies withheld contributions from these 139? What appeared to matter most was the political environment in the state where the company was headquartered. We found that only 16 percent of companies headquartered in California, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island — the five bluest states with Fortune 500 companies, as measured by Biden’s vote share in the 2020 election — gave to at least one of the 139. The opposite is true in the five reddest states with Fortune 500 companies, which are Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Arkansas: 40 percent of companies based in these states gave to at least one of the 139. Similarly, Republican members of Congress from redder districts were more likely to vote against confirming Joe Biden’s victory. Apparently, how local residents — meaning legislators’ constituents and companies’ employees and customers — saw the election influenced the behavior of both legislators and corporations.
We don’t yet know whether corporate PACs will continue to change their contributions based on the Jan. 6 events. According to a study by the Public Affairs Council, since Jan. 6, 47 percent of corporate PACs reevaluated their candidate contribution criteria, making changes as a result.
We expect more Fortune 500 companies to resume contributing to the 139, especially those headquartered in states that voted for Trump in 2020. But how many? We will find out this year.
Florian Gawehns and Amy Meli are PhD students at the University of Maryland, College Park. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dave Bateman speaks during a start-up festival at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo, Utah, on Sept. 2, 2015. (Stacie Scott/Salt Lake City Deseret News/AP)
A Utah tech executive acknowledged his email opining about the coronavirus vaccines to state lawmakers and business executives would “sound bonkers.” But he sent it anyway.
“I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people,” Dave Bateman, co-founder of Entrata, a property management software company, wrote Tuesday, KSTU first reported.
The email, littered with baseless claims and antisemitic tropes about the vaccines, led to an immediate backlash from the Utah tech community, religious leaders and politicians. Bateman resigned as chairman on Tuesday.
Bateman did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment late Tuesday. In a text message to a reporter for KSTU, Bateman confirmed he sent the email and said he “had no intention of raising a big stir” and has “nothing but love for the Jewish people.”
Bateman is one of three co-founders of Entrata, which was formed in 2003. The software company has raised over $500 million in investor funding, according to Forbes, and is valued at more than $1 billion. Bateman stepped down as chief executive in 2020 and moved to Puerto Rico. Despite leaving his post as chairman Tuesday, he is still the largest stakeholder in the company, Forbes reported.
Bateman sent the email early Tuesday morning to more than 50 recipients, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), Utah Senate Minority Whip Luz Escamilla (D) and Ryan Smith, the owner of the Utah Jazz, KSTU reported. It included antisemitic and false claims that the Jewish people conspired to make a vaccine that would weaken immune systems to kill off billions of people and that for 300 years “Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top.”
“I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule,” Bateman wrote, according to KSTU.
Bateman’s statements echo antisemitic theories about the vaccine that are often spread on white-supremacist and neo-Nazi websites and social media channels, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Blake McClary, a tech executive and president of the Salt Lake City chapter of Silicon Slopes, a nonprofit that supports Utah’s burgeoning start-up environment, tweeted that Bateman needed to step down and “not embarrass” the tech community. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lovelace told WSOC he ran out to the scene and found Horton’s younger brother, James “Nick” Horton, also a state trooper. James Horton had been trying to answer his brother’s request for backup at a traffic stop near Mooresboro, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said in a news release. Instead, he lost control of his cruiser and hit his brother’s patrol car, which slammed into John Horton and the man he had detained on the side of the road.
John Horton, a 15-year veteran of the state police, was taken to a hospital, where he died, according to the highway patrol. The motorcycle driver he had pulled over, 26-year-old Dusty Beck, died at the scene, according to WSPA. James Horton was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released.
On Sunday, the day before the crash, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) warned North Carolinians that severe winter storms could pound the state for the next 24 to 48 hours, potentially causing flooding on the coast and dumping up to nine inches of snow in the mountains. On Monday, temperatures in Rutherford County, where the Hortons patrolled, plummeted from the mid-50s in the early morning to freezing by 8:30 p.m. Snow and sleet pelted the area throughout the day.
“He loved his babies and he loved to just live,” Beck’s sister Seledia Carver wrote on a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses. “He lived the way he wanted Free and just going a mile a minuet leaving you laughing and remembering his beautiful smile.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic’s announcement that he had been granted a medical exemption to play in the Australian Open drew a swift rebuke Wednesday from the country’s prime minister, who said the tennis champion must prove why he deserves an exemption from coronavirus vaccination or he will be “on the next plane home.”
Djokovic has not made known his reasons for seeking an exemption from getting vaccinated. Craig Tiley, the CEO of Tennis Australia, told reporters that reasons could include past reactions to vaccines, recent surgery, myocarditis or evidence of a covid-19 infection in the previous six months. Djokovic’s response to coronavirus protocols, and that of his team, has been alternately blithe, coy and hostile over the past 18 months. In June 2020, Djokovic, his wife, fellow player Grigor Dimitrov and a handful of coaches and trainers tested positive for the coronavirus after taking part in a short-lived exhibition he created in Serbia and Croatia, known as the Adria Tour, which was staged with minimal pandemic precautions. He recovered in time to compete in the U.S. Open two months later. | null | null | null | null | null |
LE PECQ, France — France is allowing health workers who are infected with the coronavirus but have few or no symptoms to keep treating patients rather than self-isolate, an extraordinary stop-gap measure aimed at alleviating staff shortages at hospitals and other medical facilities caused by an unprecedented explosion in infections. | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic’s announcement that he had been granted a medical exemption to play in the Australian Open drew a swift rebuke Wednesday from the country’s prime minister, who said the tennis champion must prove upon arrival why he deserves an exemption from coronavirus vaccination or he will be “on the next plane home.”
Scott Morrison said Jan. 5 that tennis star Novak Djokovic needs to prove he has a medical exemption from the covid-19 vaccination when he lands in Australia. (Reuters) | null | null | null | null | null |
GM sold 2.2 million cars in 2021, a 13 percent decline from the previous year that the Detroit-based auto giant attributed to supply chain struggles, namely the semiconductor chip shortage that is vexing the industry. It’s triggered shutdowns of factories and kept inventories at historically thin levels.
But the Japanese auto giant was better positioned to weather the storm: It took early steps to stockpile chips and other key parts, allowing it to maintain production levels while competitors could not. The company sold 2.3 million cars in 2021, up about 10 percent from the year before.
But the change nonetheless reflects the topsy-turvy nature of the auto market, which along with formidable challenges wrought by the coronavirus pandemic is also undergoing major transformation as the push toward electric vehicles rewrites the rules of engagement. Tesla’s more than $1 trillion market capitalization is currently worth more than that of GM, Toyota, Ford and Volkswagen combined. | null | null | null | null | null |
Boy Scouts’ bid to settle sexual abuse cases apparently fails to get enough support from alleged victims
A statue stands outside the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas. (LM Otero/AP)
By Annys Shin
The Boy Scouts of America’s latest effort to reach an agreement with tens of thousands of alleged victims of sexual abuse appears to have failed to garner enough support from abuse survivors.
The vote means that the parties to the proposed settlement, which include major faith groups, several insurance companies, and lawyers for the victims, will probably have to return to the negotiating table.
Voting on the proposal began last fall, and the victims had until Dec. 28 to turn in their ballots. In a statement, the Boy Scouts of America said a preliminary voting report showed approximately 73 percent of survivors voted in favor of the plan.
The proposal required 75 percent to proceed to a confirmation hearing in February.
“We are encouraged by these preliminary results and are actively engaging key parties in our case with the hope of reaching additional agreements, which could potentially garner further support for the Plan before confirmation,” the Boy Scouts’ statement read.
In August, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved an $850 million settlement proposed by the Boy Scouts to resolve claims from more than 84,000 alleged victims.
Boy Scouts of America settles for $850 million with more than 84,000 sexual abuse victims
The Boy Scouts’ proposal plan consists of settlements with three insurance companies, Hartford, Century, and Zurich, which were contributing approximately $1.75 billion to a global settlement fund, and the BSA’s local councils, which were contributing approximately $640 million, for a total global settlement fund of approximately $2.4 billion.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proposed to pay another $250 million, but those funds would have been earmarked for survivors with claims against the LDS church. The United Methodists agreed to join in December, creating a proposed settlement that could exceed $2.7 billion.
United Methodists join Boy Scouts settlement
Lawyers for the victims have criticized the proposal for the amount each victim would receive, saying the average payout would fall below those handed out in cases involving Roman Catholic Dioceses and the recently approved settlement involving USA Gymnastics. BSA survivors would have received an average of $31,000, compared to an average of over $700,000 for the USA Gymnastics survivors, according to victims’ attorneys.
Jason Amala, a sexual abuse attorney with Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala, which represents more than 1,000 men who allege they were sexually abused as children by Boy Scout leaders and volunteers, said in a statement: “The only beneficiaries of the plan were the [Boy Scouts], the insurance companies that engineered cheap settlements, the local councils that escaped their share of liability with a settlement that allowed them to retain hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, and the charter organizations, many of which would have escaped without paying so much as a dollar in exchange for a complete release of their liability.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The first thing former Trump aide Peter Navarro did during a contentious interview on MSNBC on Tuesday night was try to differentiate his efforts to keep Joe Biden from taking office from the putsch that overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol one year ago.
After all, he continued, their plan — the middle-aged-guys-who-like-action-movies-named “Green Bay Sweep” — was in place, with scores of Republicans ready to object to the results of the 2020 presidential vote in six states. “All this required was peace and calm on Capitol Hill,” he added, pointedly, as though the riot that unfolded on Capitol Hill was an unwelcome detriment to Trump’s otherwise sober effort to steal the presidency.
It’s admittedly hard for me not to make obvious my complete disdain for this line of argument. Just on its face, the distinction being drawn is next to useless, the equivalent of a guy opening fire on someone and then trying to absolve himself of blame by arguing that it was someone else’s bullet that actually dealt a fatal wound. Oh, your plan to overthrow Biden’s victory had the same intended outcome but would have resulted in 100 percent fewer broken windows? Well, our collective apologies for inconveniencing you with any questions.
But, more broadly, Navarro’s assertions about both cause and effect are complete nonsense. He trotted out a familiar rationale for the desire to object to the election results: long-debunked claims of voter fraud, frustration that the courts had rejected those claims as inconsequential, and the idea that the vote was tainted in six states that preferred Biden to Donald Trump demanding congressional intervention.
One of Navarro’s plays has long been that he’d been studious about his consideration of the fraud claims. The image he hopes to convey is that of a serious person, sitting down in objective consideration of whether he and his immediate boss were going to lose their jobs. And, lo, he determined that fraud had occurred! To Melber, he touted his “three-volume report” documenting the evidence he uncovered.
You may not have been familiar with the first part of that tweet but I suspect you’re familiar with the latter part. And that, of course, is the other important factor to consider when evaluating Navarro’s insistence that Trump bears no blame for the events of Jan. 6. He, with Navarro’s help, repeatedly hyped obviously false claims about the election and then actively encouraged as many people as possible to show up in Washington that day. If the “sweep” “didn’t even need any protestors,” as Navarro told the Daily Beast, Trump sure spent a lot of time making sure there were protesters there anyway. And then, enraged by his rhetoric and by Navarro’s, they took it upon themselves to try to undo the results of the election.
It’s obviously understandable why Navarro would like the world to believe that his plan was 1) legal and 2) not only peaceful but damaged by the violence that actually unfolded. But his plan 1) was rooted in obvious falsehoods, 2) provided foundational support to the violence that actually occurred, 3) depended on an interpretation of legality that most observers consider dubious at best and, most importantly, 4) led to the same outcome: a rejection of the will of the electorate to retain power. | null | null | null | null | null |
This photo released by Archeological Museum Antonino Salinas on Wednesday Jan. 5, 2022, shows a fragment exposed in the Museum in Palermo, Italy, belonging to a draped figure on the east side of the Parthenon frieze, the temple built between 449 and 438BC on the Acropolis of Athens. An Italian museum is sending a fragment of the Parthenon marbles back to Greece in what both sides hope will be a permanent return that will encourage others - the British Museums, in particular to return its Parthenon statues. (Archeological Museum Antonino Salinas via AP) (Uncredited/Museo Archeologico Antonino Salinas) | null | null | null | null | null |
Derrica Lane (Richard Louissaint/Courtesy Derrica Lane)
“As a true collaborative partner, our focus is on delivering new and exciting opportunities for our advertising partners centered around creativity and a deep understanding of our readership,” said Joy Robins, Chief Revenue Officer at The Washington Post. “Derrica brings extensive experience as both a creative storyteller and data-driven marketer, which will help further the success we’ve seen with our unique go-to-market strategies.”
Lane most recently served as Director, News Site Strategy at ViacomCBS. Previously, she held senior positions at companies including WarnerMedia, New York Media (now Vox) and NBCUniversal. Working cross-functionally with revenue and editorial teams, she has executed partnerships with leading brands including MasterCard, Invesco, Coca-Cola, Zelle, and Hulu. Derrica is a graduate of Fordham University Lincoln Center.
“The Washington Post has established itself as an indispensable partner to brands with a strong track record of driving real results. This is an exciting time of growth at The Washington Post, and I’m excited to join the team,” said Lane. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rep. Jamie Raskin reflects on the impact of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 5 (The Washington Post)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) was returning to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to help certify the 2020 presidential election results, just days after the tragic death of his only son. Join Washington Post Live on Wednesday, Jan. 5 at 11:00 a.m. ET for a conversation with Raskin about his experiences that day and his work on the Jan. 6 select committee.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
Congressman Jamie Raskin proudly represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland, where he also served as the Senate Majority Whip. He was also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years. He authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People and the highly-acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America’s Students. Congressman Raskin is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and he lives with his wife Sarah Bloom Raskin in Takoma Park, Maryland. They have two daughters, Tabitha and Hannah, and their son, Tommy, passed in December of 2020. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alex Ovechkin earlier this season. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
With an unassisted goal five minutes into the first period on Oct. 9, 1974, Jim Hrycuik gave the Washington Capitals a 1-0 lead in their inaugural game at Madison Square Garden. The ensuing 10 minutes and 37 seconds — before Rangers forward Greg Polis evened the score in New York’s eventual 6-3 win — mark the only point in the Capitals’ 47-season history when the franchise had a positive all-time goal differential. That could soon change.
The Capitals, who return to action Friday against the St. Louis Blues, have scored 11,565 goals and allowed 11,570 goals in 3,667 regular season games, a cumulative goal differential of minus-five. Passing the break-even point for the first time since the first period of its dreadful debut campaign would be a trivial but interesting accomplishment for a franchise that spent its first decade of existence on the wrong end of many a lopsided score.
Washington finished 8-67-5 in 1974-75, winning one game away from Capital Centre and posting a minus-265 goal differential that still ranks as the worst single-season mark in NHL history. Defenseman Bill Mikkelson’s individual plus-minus of minus-82 that season remains a league record for futility.
Things got worse before they got better for the Capitals, who posted a negative goal differential in each of their first eight seasons, including a minus-170 during the 1975-76 campaign that ranks as the fifth-worst total all-time. By the end of the 1981-82 season, the franchise had allowed 794 more goals than it had scored. It’s no surprise that the players with the worst career plus-minus in a Capitals uniform were members of those early teams, led by Rick Green’s minus-137 from 1976 to 1982 and Gord Smith’s minus-136 from 1974 to 1979.
The nadir arrived early in the 1982-83 season. On Oct. 30, 1982, Blues forward Brian Sutter gave St. Louis a 2-0 lead over Washington 14 seconds into the second period of a game at the Checkerdome, dropping the Capitals’ all-time goal differential to minus-810 in the process. Washington responded with five consecutive goals in a 6-5 win. The Capitals scored 23 more goals than they allowed that season and clinched their first playoff berth. It would be 15 years before Washington would allow more goals than it scored in a season again.
The Capitals posted a plus-17 goal differential during the 1997-98 season, which ended with their first Stanley Cup finals appearance, bringing their all-time total to minus-316. The count was minus-465 entering the 2007-08 season, which marked the first of 13 playoff appearances over the next 14 years and the start of the franchise’s latest sustained surge toward zero.
Since Alex Ovechkin entered the league in 2005, Washington’s regular season goal differential is plus-349. The Capitals have had a positive goal differential in 12 of Ovechkin’s 16 full seasons in D.C., including a plus-86 in 2009-10 that ranks just ahead of the plus-84 in 2016-17 as the best mark in franchise history.
By the end of the 2017-18 season, which culminated in the team’s first Stanley Cup title, the Capitals had allowed only 111 more regular season goals than they’d scored. They’ve chipped away at that number with three-plus seasons of positive goal differentials since, including a plus-29 through 34 games this season.
(Note: In NHL standings, a victory in a shootout counts as one goal for, while a shootout loss counts as one goal against. This season’s standings indicate the Capitals’ goals for and goals against are 119 and 89, respectively, but the team has actually scored 117 goals and allowed 88 goals in regulation or overtime. For the purposes of this extremely important story, which will in no way jinx the Capitals in their pursuit of an arbitrary mark most people didn’t even realize they were approaching, goals awarded for shootout wins and losses are not included.)
A few NHL teams are hovering around the all-time break-even point along with the Capitals, including a pair of Original Six franchises in the Toronto Maple Leafs (plus-1) and New York Rangers (plus-25). The Montreal Canadiens own the best all-time goal differential in the league, having scored almost 3,500 goals more than they’ve allowed in their 104 seasons. The Arizona Coyotes, including their years as the Winnipeg Jets, have the worst all-time goal differential at minus-1,109. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: One year after Jan. 6, truth hangs in the balance
Trump supporters scaled the walls on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol and gained access inside the building during on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
By Wes Moore
Wes Moore, a veteran of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, a best-selling author and former chief executive of the Robin Hood foundation, is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Maryland.
As with so many of my fellow Americans, I’ve been paying close attention to the efforts of select members of Congress, including Maryland’s own Rep. Jamie Raskin (D), to fully discern the motives and influences of last Jan. 6, when, for the first time in our nation’s history, the smooth, peaceful transfer of power seemed for one violent day altogether unlikely.
There are those who assert that we need to move on and “actually focus on things that matter” to everyday Americans and working families. It was, they claim, merely an instance of things getting out of hand, when a few well-meaning, though misguided “patriots,” went a bit too far in their constitutionally protected right to protest and demonstrate on democracy’s front porch.
We have, they claim, far more important issues to confront and resolve.
My answer to that, as a veteran who led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan, as a husband and father who cares deeply about the future of this nation, is, no, we don’t.
On this first anniversary of what was unquestionably a concerted assault on the very principles that have enabled the Great American Experiment during the course of these past 245 years, we must determine who was ultimately responsible, and how it came to be that our system of government and the processes that are supposed to safeguard its continuance nearly failed — and still might.
Democracy, it’s been said, is not so much a noun as it is a verb. It’s what we do each and every day to make representative government possible and truly reflective of the needs and aspirations of citizens. It depends on adhering to the laws that govern our society broadly and interactions individually. And it means holding accountable anyone who would flout those laws in ways that undermine public confidence in offices and officeholders for self-serving purposes. It’s about safeguarding the pursuit of the common good and the just application of consequences for those who choose not to.
This system of government that we revere has at times failed the very people it promises to protect and defend. As we know and must reckon with, it’s been slow in granting the full measure of rights and privileges to all it claims to represent. It is, as we have seen, also fragile and subject to the darker agendas of those who would subvert its founding principles for personal aims and partisan ends.
Our painful history of failing to live up to the principles of democracy is not, however, an indictment of the principles themselves.
The question we must confront is whether we will live up to those principles now. We cannot allow truth to be subject to personal and partisan aims and bias. We cannot allow right and wrong to become merely a matter of opinion or political allegiance. We must ensure long-accepted standards of conduct and discourse do not depend only on the moment and the calculated advantage. We cannot allow the stark, violent imagery that we witnessed last Jan. 6 and which has since been replayed over and over to be dismissed as merely relative to the eye of the beholder.
The House select committee’s success in untangling the extent to which duly-sworn public officials encouraged, enabled and continue to excuse the insurrection is as much our failure or success. It will ultimately determine the integrity of the checks and balances that undergird our democracy and its ability to function effectively on our behalf. As important as it is for the House committee dissecting this sordid episode of our American life to get it right, it’s equally important that we as citizens come to an honest understanding of what happened and what’s at stake if we don’t.
The consequences of getting it wrong will result in the United States’ weakened condition, in our inability to say that we will — or are able to — keep our promises and fulfill our obligations to our citizens. It will mean that majority rule, which has been the reward of our electoral system from the beginning, no longer maintains the legitimacy or prerogatives in determining policy and practice. It will mean that our claim to be the greatest enduring democracy is no longer valid.
Amid so much uncertainty, I have confidence that principled leadership and good intentions will prevail. As a nation, we’ve endured much. In each instance, we summoned those principles that were and are the basis for this nation of many united as one to overcome the threat and reassert their inherent, intuitive truths.
For our sake now and for the sake of all who come after us, we have no greater task than to do so again. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sean Hannity’s texts, and the duplicity they reinforce
Hannity did not share this with his viewers, mind you. And as has been revealed of other Fox News hosts, he provided those same viewers with a perspective markedly different than the one he was espousing privately.
The issue, as with Fox host Laura Ingraham, whose texts to Meadows also were revealed by the Jan. 6 committee after he turned them over, isn’t so much that Hannity’s private comments contradicted what he said publicly — though in both cases there is some of that. It’s that it bore almost no resemblance to the thrust of his coverage both before and after Jan. 6.
It’s not clear exactly what Hannity was “very worried” about — Trump’s plot blowing up, the prospect of violence, resignations, or anything else — but he certainly had a forum to discuss that and did not.
It all reinforces the extremely blurred lines between these hosts being journalists and being allies of the Trump administration. Not disclosing these concerns and important information publicly serves the latter’s purpose, but not the former. It’s possible Hannity understood these communications to be “off the record.” But even if he didn’t disclose them, he could have talked in general terms about the very weighty matters he was apparently quite concerned about. The purpose of “off the record” is to inform your coverage, not to assist your sources. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Former Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Ross Browner waves to the crowd during a halftime ceremony of an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. Browner, a two-time All-American at Notre Dame and one of four brothers who played in the NFL, has died. He was 67. Browner’s son, former NFL offensive lineman Max Starks, posted on Twitter early Wednesday morning, Jan. 5, 2022, that his father had died. (AP Photo/Gary Landers, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Toyota has dethroned General Motors as the nation’s top-selling automaker, marking the first time a foreign manufacturer has claimed the top slot. The shuffle takes place as the global market continues to be shaken up by supply chain headaches and the transition to electric vehicles.
GM’s U.S. sales hit 2.2 million in 2021, a 13 percent decline from the previous year that the Detroit-based auto giant attributed to supply chain struggles, namely the semiconductor chip shortage that is vexing the industry. It’s triggered shutdowns of factories and kept inventories at historically thin levels. The average gas-powered vehicle has roughly 1,000 chips, while electric vehicles can have twice as many.
Industry experts don’t expect the shift to be permanent, with many projecting GM will reclaim the top spot once it gets a handle on supply chain challenges. Even Toyota executives believe the ranking will be short-lived: On Tuesday, the company’s senior vice president of automotive operations in North America told reporters Tuesday that beating out GM is “not our goal, nor do we see it as sustainable.”
Ford Motor Co., another Big Three automaker, reported Wednesday that its U.S. sales declined 6.8 percent last year to about 1.9 million cars and trucks. But the company touted its best ever EV sales in 2021, putting it second to Tesla in the EV market. And it still claimed the nation’s most popular vehicle — the F-series trucks, including the F-150 — for the 40th consecutive year.
Gradual easing of supply chain bottlenecks is poised to lift sales this year, but pent-up consumer demand is likely to keep inventory levels near historic lows, Thomas King, J.D. Power’s president of data and analytics, said in the company’s most recent forecast. The average price for a new vehicle hit a record high of more than $45,700 in December, according to J.D. Power, up 20 percent from last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lara contended that many of those who’ve left were scooped up by deep-pocketed companies that are building podcasting businesses in direct competition with NPR. “It used to be that hosting a newsmagazine at NPR was the pinnacle” of radio journalism, she said. “Now there are so many opportunities” at Apple, Audible, Netflix, the New York Times and others creating audio-news and nonfiction programming divisions. “It’s a very competitive landscape.”
Referring to Cornish, the staffer said: “There’s a lot of confusion that again we’re seeing another talented host walking out the door . . . for unspecified opportunities. There’s concern that this is not treated or viewed by leadership as the crisis that it is.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. Via the Associated Press: On this day in 1925, Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross became America’s first female governor after a special election in Wyoming. She succeeded her late husband, William.
Correction: An earlier version of this bit of political trivia misidentified Ross's home state as Wisconsin. | null | null | null | null | null |
Widespread amounts of 1 to 3 inches are expected with a little more possible locally
A fast-moving storm system will sweep through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday night, probably laying down about one to three inches of snow in the Washington and Baltimore areas.
It’s not out of the question that a few areas will see a little more or a little less, but this event will not be nearly as heavy as Monday’s severe snowstorm.
The snow should start between 8 p.m. Thursday and midnight, and end before sunrise Friday. Because temperatures will fall as it snows, roads are likely to become quite icy, causing delays and cancellations Friday morning.
Computer models suggest this storm could produce as little as a dusting of snow and as much as six inches, but they generally show two or three inches falling in the region. The models vary as to what areas will see the most snow; some show the heaviest amounts north of the District, while others put them to the south.
Our snowfall map, showing widespread amounts of one to three inches, represents a blend of the model projections, as it’s too early to know what areas will be hardest hit or just fringed by this system.
There is a chance of a locally heavy corridor of snowfall that produces up to three to six inches, but it will beThursday before we have a better idea of where that might set up.
The National Weather Service’s snowfall map, pictured below, shows the potential for widespread amounts of two to four inches, which is a little higher than we’re comfortable predicting at this point.
One of the reasons our snowfall forecast is a bit conservative is because temperatures will be above freezing in some areas when the snow first arrives, probably in the mid-30s in the immediate area (although colder to the north and west) after highs in the low 40s Thursday afternoon. Thus, some accumulation may be lost to melting.
After midnight, however, temperatures should drop below freezing areawide, causing roads to ice over and become snow-covered.
8 p.m. Thursday to midnight: Light snow develops west to east, possibly starting briefly as rain in southern Maryland. Temperatures: 31-37 (northwest to southeast).
Midnight to 3 a.m. Friday: Snow, moderate to possibly heavy at times. Peak rates of one inch per hour possible. Temperatures: 28-33 (northwest to southeast).
Most areas will see only about four to six hours of snowfall, with the heaviest and steadiest coming around or just after midnight.
The consistency of the snow may start off as a bit heavy and wet, but it should turn more powdery overnight. The risk of power outages is low.
A high-altitude disturbance, sometimes known as a clipper, will dive far enough southeastward to induce the development of a low-pressure center along a front to our south. The system will be somewhat moisture-starved, as it won’t tap into the Gulf of Mexico.
These types of systems historically produce a zone of light to moderate snow accumulating between one to three and two to four inches, nothing like Monday’s storm. Still, the snow will be falling at night amid dropping temperatures, so roads are likely to become slick.
Wednesday morning’s NAM and high-resolution NAM models both suggest one to three inches of snow, with the heaviest amounts north and west of Washington.
The latest European model is a little heavier, predicting two to four inches of snow areawide.
The American (GFS) model also projects two to four inches for most of the area but suggests a narrow stripe of four to six inches south and east of the city, in the same zone walloped by Monday’s storm.
The UKMet and Canadian models forecast a general two to three inches across the region.
Both the European and American modeling systems, containing dozens of simulations, suggest that an inch of snow is almost a lock but that there is less than a 50 percent chance that the city and nearby suburbs exceed three inches. Therefore, at this juncture we are being conservative with our forecast. | null | null | null | null | null |
Francis Markley, scientist
Francis Markley, 82, a NASA scientist for 25 years who retired in 2010, died Dec. 5 at a retirement facility in South Hadley, Mass. The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, said a friend and colleague, Russell Carpenter.
Dr. Markley was born in Philadelphia. He was an assistant professor of physics at Williams College in Massachusetts before moving to the Washington area in 1974.
He worked at Computer Sciences Corp. in Silver Spring, Md., and at the Naval Research Laboratory before joining NASA in 1985. He contributed to more than 20 missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. He moved to Massachusetts from Columbia, Md., in 2013.
Lanelle Newell, artist
Lanelle Newell, 73, an artist and teacher of art who worked out of a studio in Northwest Washington during the 1980s, died Dec. 5 at her home in Rehoboth Beach, Del. She had cardiovascular and kidney ailments, said her husband, James Newell.
Mrs. Newell was born Lanelle Erkkila in Virginia, Minn. Her artistry included sculptures, which were displayed at galleries in the area. She taught at Northern Virginia Community College and at Parkmont School in Washington. In 2017, Mrs. Newell and her husband moved to Rehoboth Beach from McLean, Va.
Roye Lowry, federal official
Roye Lowry, 104, a former Foreign Service officer who worked for the Office of Management and Budget from 1966 until retiring as a budget examiner in 1979, died Dec. 4 at a residential care facility in Falls Church, Va. The cause was cardiovascular disease, said a son, Nicholas Lowry.
Mr. Lowry was born in Norwood, Ohio, and served as a Foreign Service officer in Poland, Britain and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1957. He was a lobbyist from 1957 to 1966 for organizations that used federal statistics. He was a member of the Arlington County Board from 1962 to 1966. | null | null | null | null | null |
Elizabeth Thom, GWU research scientist
Elizabeth Thom, 72, a research scientist, professor and director at George Washington University’s Biostatistics Center, died Dec. 8 at her home in Washington. The cause was cancer, said a son, Thomas Phillips.
Dr. Thom was born in Felixstowe, England, and came to the Washington area in 1979. She did research at Georgetown University Medical Center before she joined GWU in 1986. Her research focused on pregnancy and the clinical care of mothers and infants. She did a major study of in utero surgery for spina bifida that was called the study of the year by the Society for Clinical Trials. She received GWU’s Distinguished Researcher Award in 2020 and continued working until this year.
Scott Bruns, journalist
Scott Bruns, 88, a correspondent, editor and producer for NBC in Washington from 1969 to 1995, died Dec. 10 at a hospital in Paris, where he was visiting a daughter. The cause was congestive heart failure and pneumonia, said another daughter, Alice Chalmers.
Mr. Bruns was born in Charlottesville. He was a correspondent for United Press International in London, Paris and Moscow before joining NBC in Washington in 1969.
Charles Peterson III, mapping specialist
Charles Peterson III, 85, a mapping specialist who had worked in Washington for the CIA and the Library of Congress, died Dec. 7 at a residential community in Lancaster, Pa. The cause was cancer, said his executor, John Spear.
Dr. Peterson was born in Lancaster. He moved to Washington in 1962 and for 12 years was a geographic analyst for the CIA, specializing in interpreting satellite imagery.
From 1974 until 2019, he was a senior map cataloger in the geography and maps division of the Library of Congress. His work required translating hundreds of languages and dialects from maps from all over the world. Mr. Peterson moved to Lancaster in 2019. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Virginia politicians have already had a rough start to 2022
Drivers wait for the traffic to be cleared as cars and trucks are stranded on sections of Interstate 95 on Tuesday in Carmel Church, Va. About 48 miles of the interstate was closed because of ice and snow. (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
The new year has started off badly for a number of Virginia politicians. Whether it’s the bipartisan angst of redistricting, which, barring lawsuits, the Virginia Supreme Court made final in the waning days of 2021, or, more recent, the snowstorm that paralyzed Interstate 95 and exposed Gov. Ralph Northam (D), there’s plenty of bad mojo in the air.
Let’s begin with the I-95 debacle. The marathon shutdown of the major East Coast artery for 24 hours or so was a real-time crisis. Mercifully, there were no injuries or loss of life. That’s the good part. There’s plenty of bad to go around, though at least some state officials had the presence of mind to call the situation what it was: “completely unacceptable.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation has promised to look into the incident to see how things could have been handled differently. Where the real soul-searching should occur, though, is in the governor’s office and how the soon-to-be-former governor handled what was possibly his final opportunity to display coherent, effective leadership.
He didn’t. Instead, Northam hid behind the tired “perfect storm” trope and blandly said this was “an incredibly unusual event.”
Okay, I’ll grant him that. Weather can be very unusual, and it can snarl even the best-laid response plans.
But instead of accepting any blame for his administration’s response to what became a long-duration event — even the passive “mistakes were made” admission of fault — Northam decided to cast blame on “‘out-of-state’ drivers who missed the ‘clear and consistent messaging’ from state agencies ‘to stay off the roads during the winter storm.’”
Blaming nefarious out-of-staters for being unprepared, causing problems and generally being a nuisance is an ancient political dodge. And yes, here, they do deserve some criticism for not heeding travel warnings.
But the blame ends once the emergency begins. Then, the task is responding quickly and effectively, which the state flat-out bungled. As Rep. Lashrecse D. Aird (D-Petersburg), who was stuck in the interstate for more than 15 hours, said of the state’s efforts:
Don’t ask Northam. The last and possibly enduring image the nation will have of Northam is of him phoning in his response as he prepares to leave office — and blaming someone else for causing the mess in the first place.
Elsewhere, the new district lines for Virginia’s congressional delegation and the General Assembly are final. A number of incumbents have been lumped together in districts, and that will force changes — either members picking up and moving, as R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) is doing; retiring, as some may decide to do; or fighting it out in primaries, as more surely will.
On the congressional side, there’s the case of current 7th District Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D), who says she is running in the now-Northern Virginia-based 7th. Spanberger doesn’t live in the redrawn district. That’s not a legal barrier, but it is a political one. She is banking on an assertion of incumbency to avoid a primary and allow her to prepare for the general election.
I’ve written that Spanberger’s move opens her to the charge that she is running in a district in which she doesn’t live and can’t vote for herself. But if there’s no primary, and Spanberger’s only Republican challenger is Bryce E. Reeves (Spotsylvania) — who is determined to be a member of Congress, no matter which district he has to run in to do it — then her chances of winning are still pretty good.
Plenty of “ifs” surrounding this race. But one certainty: It will be one of the most closely watched contests in Virginia this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
CES is the first major trade show of 2022, and its organizer — the Consumer Technology Association — has insisted on holding the event in person despite the fast spread of the omicron variant. The World Economic Forum last month postponed its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, moving it from January to mid-2022, citing the omicron variant. And JPMorgan Chase said its annual health-care conference in San Francisco scheduled for later this month would be virtual instead of in-person.
Last month, major companies such as Google, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Panasonic, Amazon and many others, as well as media organizations pulled out of attending the event in person citing covid concerns and international travel restrictions. Jean Foster, the CTA’s senior vice president of marketing, said the organization expects between 50,000 and 75,000 attendees to flock to Las Vegas this week. That’s less than half the number of people who attended the last in-person CES in January 2020, which had an estimated economic impact of more than $250 million, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
At Samsung Electronics’s news conference on Tuesday, the show’s smaller in-person audience was noticeable. The company filled nearly all of the 700 available seats in the Venetian Expo’s Palazzo Ballroom, but it originally had planned to accommodate around 1,700 attendees for vice chairman Jong-Hee Han’s keynote address on making technology, like the company’s televisions, more customizable and sustainable. Row of seats were spaced out, and every other seat was kept empty for social distancing as a direct response to the omicron variant.
“Each year we look forward to connecting with the global community to share our vision for the future of technology. While last year’s CES gathering was hosted virtually, we are pleased to join CES in person once again to unveil our latest vision for innovation,” a Samsung spokeswoman said.
For the CTA, the biggest question to solve was how to keep its thousands of attendees safe. The CTA’s biggest requirement: all attendees must be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination at one of more than 20 badge pickups sites and customer service centers. After they receive their badges, attendees are entitled to pick up a single box of Abbott BinaxNOW coronavirus tests.
Jamie Kaplan, a spokesperson for the CTA, said the show organizers have “more than enough” tests for all attendees, but anyone who wants to test themselves more than twice are on their own. Staffers on the ground repeatedly said attendees would not be able to claim more than one box of tests and finding those same tests around Las Vegas is growing more difficult.
On Dec. 31, the week before the show was set to begin, the Southern Nevada Health District issued a chilling statement: it reported 3,363 new covid cases in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located. That’s the most in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic, bringing the total number of cases in the New Jersey-sized county to 369,414.
Since then, coronavirus tests have been even harder to come by in local pharmacies and testing facilities around Las Vegas have done their best to accommodate long lines of people anxious to learn if they have been infected.
Also of concern to some attendees is spotty compliance with mask regulations. The state of Nevada requires everyone in public indoor spaces to wear a mask unless actively eating or drinking and the CTA says it will have employees wandering the convention center floor keeping an eye out for violators. (If they find one, they’ll offer up a mask or two.) | null | null | null | null | null |
A server at a restaurant as proof of vaccination requirements are in effect in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. San Francisco has become the first major city in the United States to require proof of full vaccination against Covid-19 for a variety of high-risk indoor activities that involve eating, drinking or exercising. (Bloomberg)
By Erik Wasson | Bloomberg
Two senior senators are floating a new round of Covid-19 aid for U.S. restaurants and other service businesses hurt by the surge of infections caused by the omicron variant. | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet rising temperatures have intensified wildfire behavior and lengthened the season for when they can burn, scientists say. In most forest types, the proportion of fires that are “high severity” (killing the majority of vegetation) has at least doubled in recent decades. The weather necessary for fire — high temperatures, low humidity, rainless days and high winds — last more than a month longer than they did four decades ago.
Conversely, the relationship between air temperature and humidity means that warmer conditions make the atmosphere “thirstier.” Water quickly evaporates from vegetation and soil, intensifying drought and making forests more likely to burn. On the Klamath River, water shortages sickened fish and emptied wells. In California, the Dixie Fire burned an area larger than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas combined. More than 90 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Carl Bouchard, conservation engineer
Carl Bouchard, 80, an engineer with the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, died Nov. 17 at his home in Milford, Del. The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Janet Bouchard.
Mr. Bouchard was born in Fort Kent, Maine. He began his professional career as an agricultural engineer in Canada and joined USDA in 1965. He retired from federal service in 1999, then spent four years as director of the storm water program in Fairfax County, Va. He moved to Delaware from Fairfax County in 2010.
Virginia Keane, social worker
Virginia Keane, 101, a licensed clinical social worker in Washington from 1977 to 2003, died Dec. 4 at her home in Takoma Park, Md. The cause was dementia, said a grandson, Jonathan McCrory.
Mrs. Keane was born Virginia Hawkins in Cincinnati. She was the director of social services at Howard University Hospital from 1976 to 1986 and later taught in the university’s School of Social Work. She served on committees to assist homeless people.
Richard Lytle, Gallaudet professor
Richard Lytle, 74, a professor of education at Gallaudet University who also served on the faculty of Gallaudet’s K-12 program, died Nov. 26 at his home in Ocean View, Del. The cause was colon cancer, said Robert Weinstock, a university spokesman.
Dr. Lytle was born in Poole, England, and grew up in the Bronx. He was on the Gallaudet faculty from 1971 to 2012. In retirement, he helped Chinese deaf people get job training opportunities with U.S. businesses. He was a marathon runner and helped organize the 1993 Chesapeake Bay Bridge Run/Walk. He lived in University Park, Md., before moving to Delaware in 2019.
David Varner, architect
David Varner, 61, an architect who designed and remodeled office buildings in downtown Washington, died Nov. 13 at his home in Bellingham, Wash. The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Marjorie Varner.
Mr. Varner was born in Houston and practiced architecture in Washington from 1984 to 2020, when he retired and moved to the state of Washington from Arlington, Va.
In the national capital, he was affiliated with firms including Bowie Gridley; Shalom Baranes; and SmithGroup, where he led the D.C. studio and was a member of the board. He was best known for leading the $220 million renovation of the 1.4 million-square-foot Constitution Center at 400 Seventh Street SW, which was completed in 2010. | null | null | null | null | null |
Joseph Collins, car salesman
Joseph Collins, 75, who sold cars at O’Donnell Honda in Ellicott City, Md., for 29 years, died Dec. 3 at a hospice center in Columbia, Md. The cause was renal failure, said a daughter, Maya Collins.
Mr. Collins, a Columbia resident, was born in Washington. He worked for the D.C. Department of Transportation and for two other auto dealerships before joining O’Donnell Honda 29 years ago.
Charles Bisselle, environmental engineer
Charles Bisselle, 84, an environmental engineer with Mitre Corp. from 1970 until he retired in 2002, died Nov. 30 at a retirement community in Adamstown, Md. The cause was cancer, said a nephew, Christopher Toll.
Dr. Bisselle was born in Washington. Early in his career, he worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, and taught physics and math at the private St. Albans School in Washington.
Willis 'Bill' Hawley, college dean
Willis “Bill” Hawley, 82, an educator who served as dean of the University of Maryland’s education school from 1993 to 1998, died Nov. 17 at his home in Bethesda, Md. A daughter, Meagan Ulrich, said the cause was inanition, a medical condition with symptoms similar to starvation.
Dr. Hawley was born in San Francisco. He taught at Yale, served as dean of Vanderbilt University’s education school, and helped found the institute of policy studies and public affairs at Duke University.
At U.Md., he helped found and direct the Common Destiny Alliance, a coalition of scholars and national organizations committed to improving race relations and educational equity.
Barry Nance, D.C. lawyer
Barry Nance, 76, a Washington lawyer who specialized in plaintiff’s medical malpractice cases, died Nov. 22 at his home in Hilton Head, S.C. The cause was sepsis, said a son, Chris Nance.
Mr. Nance was born in York, Pa. He began his Washington law practice in 1969 and continued to practice with the firm he co-founded, Paulson & Nance, until shortly before his death. He served twice as president of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. He moved to Hilton Head from Chevy Chase, Md., in 2021. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump listens Fox News's Sean Hannity speak at a rally on Nov. 5, 2018, in Cape Girardeau, Mo. (Carolyn Kaster, AP File)
The House Jan. 6 committee asked this week that Fox News host Sean Hannity appear and answer investigators’ questions about his text messages to President Trump’s aides before, during and after the attack on the Capitol. The response from Hannity’s lawyer was every bit as predictable as it was laughable.
Everything about Hannity’s text messages, part of a trove of documents the House panel received from former chief of staff Mark Meadows after a subpoena, scream one thing: That the prime time host is not a journalist.
“Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in nine days,” Hannity wrote in a Jan. 10 text to Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), apparently referring to convincing Trump to end his presidency peacefully before Inauguration Day.
Hannity himself has said on more than one occasion that he doesn’t consider himself a member of the press. On other occasions, he’s said much worse.
And when Trump started calling the U.S. media an “enemy of the people” early in his administration, Hannity used his show to spread the smear. “The media is perfectly willing to continue to mislead and lie to you, the American people,” he told his viewers in February, 2017. “They are collectively, the news media, at war with the president.”
The committee’s letter suggested that its questions wouldn’t be about Hannity-the-broadcaster, but rather Hannity-the-insider. It called him “a fact witness in our investigation.”
Fox News and its prime time hosts have been in this dicey “what-are-we-anyway?” territory before. | null | null | null | null | null |
That said, amending the ECA is necessary to prevent several tactics the Trump coup plotters considered in 2020. First, the law must make crystal clear that the vice president has no power to stop or alter the electoral vote counting. Second, the number of lawmakers needed to consider challenges should be much higher, not just a single senator or House member, as is currently required. Third, the ECA should prevent state legislatures from submitting alternative slates of electors separate from those chosen by voters themselves. (And election challenges should receive an expedited review by the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit.) These measures are critical to prevent a successful “peaceful” coup, which is entirely possible if Republicans under the MAGA leader’s thumb win the House majority. | null | null | null | null | null |
A covid-19 patient lies intubated in the intensive care unit at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2022. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)
Yet there’s cause for optimism. Most American adults have been inoculated against the virus with at least one dose of a vaccine, reducing the risk they face from serious illness. Perhaps more importantly, the nature of the virus itself has changed, with the hypervirulent omicron variant increasingly replacing older forms of the virus. Given studies strongly suggesting that omicron is less dangerous, we may be on the brink of a new phase of the pandemic, one in which illness is common but the effects far more limited.
It’s understandable, given the strains and frustrations we’ve experienced since March 2020, that we would seize upon that possibility with alacrity. But before we do so, two things are worth bearing in mind.
In mid-December, with omicron just beginning to spread widely, I proposed remembering one of the early pandemic’s popular phrases: flattening the curve. You’ll recall that this was the recommendation in the spring of 2020, one aimed at reducing the likelihood of infection to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients. My point was not that we must necessarily deploy the same tactics aimed at reducing strain on hospitals; I wasn’t calling for broad lockdowns or robust deployment of Purell. Instead, it was intended as a lens through which to consider rising cases. Specifically, flattening the curve through vaccinations and better masking — both of which have been shown to reduce infection, no matter what some will insist — could ensure that hospitals and health-care staff aren’t overburdened.
In the weeks since, we’ve begun to see strains on the system. In some states, a third of ICU beds are occupied by covid-19 patients. While it’s true that some of the increase in new case figures for the virus stems from people testing positive after arriving at the hospital for other issues, it is also clearly the case that the numbers of people going to the hospital because of covid-19 are increasing.
So now let’s assume that the hospitalization rate of omicron (first detected in the United States in early December) is one-third as high. (To be clear, I’m simply making this figure up.) For 2.5 million new infections, that means only 108,000 new hospitalizations.
But, so far this month, the country is averaging 460,000 new cases per day. If that trend holds, even at a hospitalization rate that is only a third of what we have seen before omicron, the number of hospitalizations soars to 620,000, nearly double what would have been seen in November.
That’s the risk. Far more cases means more hospitalizations even at lower hospitalization rates.
Again, everyone — everyone — wants this to be over. As we pick our way through this wilderness, every glimmer of light seems like it might be the end of the woods or, at least, a clearing. The question we must answer in the interim is how many Americans might make it to that destination and what ancillary damage might be done as we get there. Perhaps this is the last grim thicket (to extend this metaphor) through which we will have to crash. It seems wise, though, to progress carefully rather than hurriedly either way. | null | null | null | null | null |
Two years after resigning amid the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s equal-pay fight, Carlos Cordeiro says he wants to return as president of the sport’s American governing body.
Cordeiro’s decision was not well-received by superstar Megan Rapinoe, leader of the women’s long-standing equality efforts. In a tweet reacting to an ESPN story about Cordeiro’s plans to run, the veteran winger questioned whether he had resigned under pressure or “embarrassed everything and everyone with caveman levels of misogyny?”
Since Cordeiro’s departure, the players and federation have settled issues involving working conditions but remain divided on the equal-pay issue. The players have appealed a 2020 ruling that denied their claim for more than $66 million in damages. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 7. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Jan. 6: One Year Later with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
MR. CAPEHART: Good morning. I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live and our look at January 6th one year later, co-produced with the “Capehart” Podcast. A year ago tomorrow, after a rally on the Ellipse that featured then President Donald Trump imploring his supporters to quote “stop the steal” by marching to the Capitol to convince then Vice President Mike Pence to ignore his constitutional duty that day, to simply count the certified electoral votes from the states in order to keep him in power, those supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Not since the British set fire to the iconic building in 1814 have the Capitol been breached.
Among the members of Congress trapped in the House Chamber that awful day was Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland, who was still mourning the suicide of his beloved son six days earlier. He recounts those two horrific events in his moving new book "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy." And joining me now is the author of that book, Congressman Jamie Raskin. Welcome, Congressman.
REP. RASKIN: Thank you for having me, Jonathan. I’m delighted to be with you.
MR. CAPEHART: So, Congressman, it’s been a year since you and your wife, Sarah Bloom, lost your son Tommy. How are the two of you and your two--your two daughters doing?
REP. RASKIN: Well, it’s a day-to-day struggle to, you know, recover some sense of equanimity in our lives. But we're not drowning in agony and grief so much that we can't talk about Tommy anymore. We are able to talk about him without crying, which is an important step forward. And we miss him sharply and intensely every single day. But we have a big family with lots of cousins and uncles and aunts, and we have tons of friends and a great community. And I've got the greatest constituents in the world. So, we're surrounded by a lot of love. But thank you for asking, Jonathan.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, part one of your book is all about Tommy. Your love for him is as palpable as your heartbreak over his death. And you write about his suicide with aching honesty. Why was it important for you to do that?
REP. RASKIN: Well, it's the story of his life. And I didn't want his whole life to be defined by it, but it was a part of it; it was the very end of it. And you know, if there's any way that it could help anybody else, then that would be all to the good. Tommy was, as his little sister Tabitha put it, above all utilitarian. He wanted to increase the maximum good for the maximum number of people and animals, all sentient beings. And so, if this helps one person--and we think it's already helped some people because we've been hearing from them--then it's all to the good that we've been public about it and we've been honest about it, and I don't think Tommy would have it any other way.
MR. CAPEHART: From reading the book--and I'm not quite done, I'm almost there--but in the big chunk that I've read already, it's clear Tommy was your best friend, your north star on a lot of things, particularly on doing what's right, wasn't he?
REP. RASKIN: Well, I describe him as my greatest student and also my greatest teacher eventually, because the pupil certainly surpassed the teacher in so many ways. I mean, Tommy was a moral and political and legal philosopher, and he had an extraordinary precociousness of understanding. I remember, we have a close friend who actually lived in our basement apartment named Ali Nathan, who's now a federal judge. And Ali was clerking for Justice Stevens, and she took Tommy down to Justice Stevens’ chambers to meet him. And they were on the way down, and Tommy was just six or seven years old. And she started talking about how much she loved Justice Stevens and what a great justice he was. And Tommy said, yeah, but what do you think about his dissenting opinion in Texas versus Johnson? Because Tommy said, even Justice Scalia got that right, that you can't put someone in jail for flag desecration, which is just a thought crime. And then Ali said, well, I think Justice Stevens said that allowing someone to desecrate a flag is like allowing someone to desecrate the Lincoln Memorial. And then Tommy said back to her, as Ali reported to us, well, we only have one Lincoln Memorial, but we all have our own flags, so people can do with their flags what they want. So, he was really brilliant.
But what was most exceptional about him was his heart. He just had a perfect heart. And he felt the pain and the suffering of the entire world, and of course, of the animal kingdom, too. He was a zealous vegan. But he was not a guilt tripping, politically correct vegan. He was just someone who said we can live without slaughtering animals for protein, especially in the age of impossible burgers and beyond sausage. And he converted more people to not eating meat, including people in our family, than anybody I've ever met.
MR. CAPEHART: Including you, as I--as I learned in the book. Tommy's funeral was on January 5th, actually a year ago today. And the power of his life and what he believed in is what helped guide you through a big assignment you had a year ago tomorrow. When Tommy took his life, you were putting the final touches on your strategy and what you were going to say during the proceedings to count the electoral votes and the expected objections on January 6th. And you write on page 112, "By the time January 6th arrived, we had been preparing for the counting of the electors for months. Our preparations had started as far back as May 2020." You were ready for everything, from the bullying of--bullying of state election officials to the possibility of Pence throwing the election into the House of Representatives. But you write, "We had prepared for everything, everything, that is, except everything that was actually about to happen." You addressed the House floor where you quoted President Abraham Lincoln. Then what happened?
REP. RASKIN: Well, the thing that we had not counted on was the eruption of mass street violence that would invade the Capitol and shut down the counting of electoral college votes, and for the very first time in American history interrupt the peaceful transfer of power through the counting of the Electoral College votes. So, I had, I think, like a lot of my colleagues, placed what was going on outside the building in one compartment, and then what was going on inside the building in a different compartment. And we were ready for every possible parliamentary maneuver and overture, but what we didn't see was the fascist street violence being unleashed against us, being coordinated with this attempt to perpetrate a political coup and deprive Joe Biden of his rightful majority in the Electoral College. He'd gotten 306 electors. And of course, the coup part of the operation was designed to try to lower his total by getting Pence to reject and singlehandedly nullify electors coming in from Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia.
MR. CAPEHART: How concerned were you during the insurrection? How concerned were you for your personal safety and your colleagues’ safety and also for your daughter and son-in-law’s safety who were also in the House Gallery at the time?
REP. RASKIN: Well, I was above all concerned for Tabitha and for Hank, who's married to our older daughter, Hannah. They had tried to convince me not to go in, and I said, look, it's a constitutional duty. It's a constitutional function. We have a very slender majority. People were dropping like flies because of COVID-19, and I said the speaker needs me. You know, I live closer to the Capitol than any member of Congress except for Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate for D.C. So, I said I've got to be there, but why don't you come? And they decided to come with me after asking me would everything be okay, because Trump's inviting his followers to come to Washington? And I said, yes, this is the Capitol. And I had a very specific image in mind of June 2nd, when Black Lives Matter assembled on June the 2nd the day after Trump and Barr had unleashed that police riot in Lafayette Square. And I had this image of this phalanx of National Guardsmen and women standing there armed on the steps of the Capitol. I thought to myself, of course we'll be safe. And of course, I was wrong about that.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, after the insurrection, Speaker Pelosi named you the lead impeachment manager in Trump's second impeachment. You are now a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which is the official name of the January 6th Select Committee, which has been more publicly active since Thanksgiving. And so I want to run through a bunch of things that have happened over the last few weeks, starting with what happened yesterday. The committee sent a letter to Fox News’ Sean Hannity asking him to voluntarily cooperate with the committee. You're a constitutional law professor. Do you have any qualms about sending a letter to a member of the press?
REP. RASKIN: None whatsoever? I mean, Jonathan, if you were witness to a car accident on your way to work at The Washington Post, you would be called as a fact witness. That doesn't mean that they can get into your correspondence with secret sources on political articles you're doing. But if you're a fact witness, you're a fact witness, whether or not you're a firefighter, a truck driver, or a reporter for The Washington Post or Fox News. And so he's a fact witness to an attempt to overthrow the presidential election and overthrow the constitutional processes of the United States. So, he's got an obligation to come and testify just like everybody else does.
MR. CAPEHART: And if he doesn't come in to testify, you would support a subpoena to compel him to testify.
REP. RASKIN: Well, I don't want to get into specific cases. And I'm going to assume that like the vast majority of people, I think more than 98 or 99 percent of the people who we've been interested in talking with, he will do the right thing, not just his legal duty, but he will enjoy the civic honor of being able to help his government learn how to defend itself against coups and insurrections in the future. And from what I can tell of the text conversations that he was involved in, he was very concerned and anxious about the direction that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and the gang were going on January 6th.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, one of the things that's come out in recent days is the number of people who have come forward voluntarily to the Select Committee, the numbers, the thousands of documents that you've received from people voluntarily. Have you been surprised not by the number of people who have come forward, but by who those people are who have come forward voluntarily?
REP. RASKIN: Well, most people in America are constitutional patriots, like Liz Cheney, who now is, you know, the textbook example of a constitutional patriot, someone who places their loyalty and allegiance to the Constitution and to the country above their own political party and their own narrow political ambitions. The shocking thing is that we have an entire political party now under the spell and sway of one guy, and we have a modern political party that's not acting like one. It's acting like an authoritarian religious cult of personality outside of the constitutional order. They don't accept basic precepts of our Constitution. They don't accept the outcomes of our elections, even when 62 different federal and state courts have upheld our elections and rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that they've tried to throw at us. So that's the disturbing thing. But most people are constitutional patriots, and will do the right thing. And that's whether they're Democrats or Republicans or independents. And I think that the GOP political leadership is now a minority, and a shrinking minority in the country in terms of their willingness to walk the plank with Donald Trump.
MR. CAPEHART: You mentioned Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She is the vice chair of the January 6th Select Committee. So, I’m going to jump ahead to the questions I had and talk about her and some of the things that she's doing. Before the end of the year, during one of the hearings, she read aloud text messages that had been sent in from Fox News personalities and from other people, members of Congress. And then she said that this was the key question before the committee: Did Donald Trump through action or inaction corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes?
You're a constitutional law professor, as I've mentioned before. Has that question been answered for you? Have you seen evidence that Trump engaged in criminal wrongdoing that day? Because what she was--what she was--that question is actually a specific felony statute she was reading.
REP. RASKIN: Well, let's start with this. I have no doubt as one of the impeachment managers and as someone who voted successfully to impeach Donald Trump, that he committed a constitutional crime when he incited violent insurrection against the union. And I have no doubt. I think the evidence was overwhelming, unrefuted and irrefutable that he intended to incite an insurrection and all of the violence that transpired on that day. That itself was an interference with the joint session of Congress meeting to count and receive Electoral College votes. And for the first time in American history, we were interrupted and broken up for a four- or five-hour period. And it is again a sign of people's constitutional patriotism that we insisted upon going back in and counting those Electoral College votes.
And Vice President Pence was a constitutional patriot on that day when he refused to leave the grounds and said I'm not getting in that car when the Secret Service was trying to get him to leave the Capitol campus. He said he would not leave until the Electoral College votes were counted.
In any event, you're asking the more specific statutory question of whether Donald Trump could be prosecuted under the federal statutory offense of interfering with this essential governmental proceeding. And I will reserve final judgment until we have all of our hearings and until we write our report. But Chairman Thompson has said we're not going to let anybody off the hook for anything. We want to get to the bottom of this. We want to determine to what extent there were individual actions that violated the law and to what extent there were conspiracies afoot to shut down the lawful processes of Congress, essentially to shut down the government and seize the presidency. And you know, if you're interested, I'll give you my general sense of what I think was taking place on that day.
MR. CAPEHART: We've got 10 minutes, and I know what you think was taking place, I think, because I've been--because I read it. I've read it in your book. But I want to push you one more time, because one of the things that the committee is doing is, in addition to investigating what happened, you're also looking at legislative fixes that that you discover.
REP. RASKIN: Yes.
MR. CAPEHART: And so is the committee looking at a law that makes it clear that obstructing the electoral vote count in Congress is a crime subject to stiff penalties?
REP. RASKIN: Well, I think that that it is clear today that that is against the law. I think that's already a crime. But, you know, certainly I'm willing to entertain arguments that now because of Donald Trump, we need a specific and explicit statute spelling it out. I'm skeptical of that argument, but I'm willing to entertain that argument, because I do think it's already a crime. But look, there might be a full panoply of different criminal penalties that needs to be established today for the rash of new violent offenses that were committed on January 6th. And I'm willing to look at just the full waterfront of both rules, changes in the House and the Senate, and legislative changes for criminal and civil offenses against the union.
MR. CAPEHART: You mentioned Chairman Bennie Thompson, Congressman Thompson from Mississippi. He has said that several versions exist of the video the White House finally released of Trump that day on January 6th to get his supporters to leave the Capitol. The committee has requested them from the National Archives. What do you believe those other videos may show?
REP. RASKIN: Well, look, I think that the original video was damning enough for what it showed was Donald Trump engaging in really extreme and outrageous incitement. You know, "We don't give up. We never give up. A different set of rules operates when they're engaged in fraud, when they're stealing it. You’ve got to fight and fight like hell, take the gloves off," et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you know, this is textbook incitement within the constitutional definitions offered by the Supreme Court.
But I think that we will see more of that. I would love to get a complete video recording of that insurrection tailgate party they threw over there with Mark Meadows, where everybody was drinking and eating sausages and hot dogs and having a grand old time as our police officers were getting the daylights beaten out of them, getting hit over the head with steel pipes and Confederate battle flags and Trump flags, and having fire extinguishers thrown at them. I mean, this was the most massive attack on law enforcement and police in our lifetimes right a few blocks away from the president and his entourage, and they did nothing about it. So they can spare me all of their phony fraudulent talk about how they--how they support the police. They certainly don't. The only time you hear about them supporting the police is when one bad cop goes out and beats up a Black suspect. That's when they suddenly began posing as big defenders of the police.
MR. CAPEHART: Not going to get an argument from me on that. Congressman, will the committee subpoena Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio and Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania if they do not voluntarily cooperate with the committee?
REP. RASKIN: I have no idea what we will do. We certainly have the authority to do that under Article One where we set the rules of our own chambers, where we gain the authority to discipline our own members all the way up to expulsion, as well as censure and admonishment.
But even more precisely, Jonathan, the Speech and Debate Clause says that members of Congress shall not be questioned about misconduct in their official capacity outside of Congress. So that's why the Speech and Debate Clause protects our speech from being subpoenaed in a federal court, for example, but it doesn't, by very implicit indication, protect us against being subpoenaed or called to task for our actions within Congress itself. And that, of course, is the basis for the Ethics Committee, which calls members of Congress all the time on pains of penalty to come and testify.
MR. CAPEHART: Right, the Ethics Committee, which is a nice segue to the next question I was going to ask you, and that is, will those two members of Congress or any other members of Congress who are asked to voluntarily cooperate don't do so, will they be held in contempt of Congress if they defy a subpoena that they might get?
REP. RASKIN: Well, again, that would be fully within our power, but I don't want to prejudge any particular case, especially when we're talking about something heavy like contempt of Congress. That's serious business. I know Donald Trump's friends would like to normalize that. They wish that hundreds more people would follow Steve Bannon and Roger Stone and these, you know, Batman villains that they've got in just giving the finger to Congress. But most people have respect for the people's representatives and the authority of Congress. The Supreme Court has said we have the exact same authority as Congress to enforce our orders in a judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding as a court does in its own proceedings.
MR. CAPEHART: Does the committee have evidence about current members of Congress aiding or abetting, or who were in touch with those who participated in the riot?
Well, there certainly have been a lot of allegations about that. But I hesitate to opine on it, Jonathan, just because I haven't studied each of those cases, but those are things that we definitely have to look at. I mean, you know, both Chairman Thompson and Vice President Cheney have been adamant that nobody gets a free pass here in terms of rendering their testimony to us. We are an investigative committee that's just trying to assemble the facts of what happened under House Resolution 503. That's our charge, assemble the facts of what happened and then make recommendations about what we need to do to fortify American democracy going forward so this nightmare never takes place again.
MR. CAPEHART: And you meant Vice Chair Cheney, but I understand the slip, saying vice president.
REP. RASKIN: What’d I say?
MR. CAPEHART: You said Vice President Cheney, but there was a Vice President Cheney, her dad.
REP. RASKIN: Ah, okay.
MR. CAPEHART: So totally understandable.
MR. CAPEHART: Congressman, does the committee have enough solid evidence to ask Donald Trump to voluntarily cooperate?
REP. RASKIN: Well, look, we have enough evidence for anybody who was in the vicinity, and Donald Trump was right at the heart of that. I mean, we already have robust, bicameral, bipartisan majorities that have established as a legislative and constitutional fact that Donald Trump incited the insurrection. He continues to try to whitewash it and sanitize it today when he goes out and says that his followers greeted the police with hugs and kisses, which is presumably how dozens and dozens of them ended up in the hospital that day.
But look, we invited him to come and testify in the impeachment trial. He was whining about due process. We said the heart of due process is the right to be heard. Come and be heard. You can testify for as long as you want. But being the snowflake that he is, he was willing to put his followers’ lives on the line, and several people died that day. But he wasn't even willing to come out and either speak for them or against them. He let his lawyers come and denounce the insurrection and saying, oh, that had nothing to do with Donald Trump. You're not going to hear anything positive about them from us. And then after the trial is over, when he beat the constitutional spread and narrowly escaped conviction, then he goes out and predictably embraces the insurrection and tries to turn these people into heroes.
MR. CAPEHART: We've got less than two minutes left. And I have to ask you this, because there’s lots of the questions about whether the committee will subpoena Donald Trump to testify. I want you to put your constitutional law professor hat on, leave aside--leave out the personality. Are there any constitutional qualms you might have about the committee subpoenaing a former president of the United States in this type of investigation?
REP. RASKIN: None whatsoever. First of all, we don't have an office in our constitution of former president of the United States. You're a former president, you're a former governor, you're a former legislator, you're a citizen like everybody else. We have no kings here, much less do we have former kings? So, if he's got evidence in a criminal or civil trial--and I think some of those are taking place in New York to offer--he's got to go and produce it like every other citizen. If he's got evidence related to what we're doing, then, if we call him, then he's got to come and offer it.
And you know what, Jonathan, we shouldn't even be talking this way about a president or former president. Can you imagine any other former president of the United States--I'm talking from George Washington to John Adams to Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Eisenhower, George W. Bush, Barack Obama--who wouldn't step forward to talk to a commission investigating a violent attack on the U.S. Congress in attempt to overthrow our election? If he had nothing to do with it, he's got nothing to hide. If he's got something to do with it, well, then come and tell us why you think what you did was justified. What a snowflake. What's he hiding from?
MR. CAPEHART: Congressman Jamie Raskin, member of the January 6th Select Committee, author of "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy." Thank you so much for coming to Capehart and Washington Post Live. And on this day of all days, condolences to you, Sarah, and your entire family.
REP. RASKIN: Thank you very much, Jonathan. That means a lot to me. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Early 202: Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.)
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) is one of Capitol Hill’s leading voices on taxes, spending and free trade. On Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 11:00 a.m. ET, Brady talks with Jacqueline Alemany, author of The Early 202 newsletter, about his opposition to President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan and why he believes massive government spending will only fuel inflation and lessen Americans’ spending power.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.)
Provided by the office of Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.).
Kevin Brady is a pro-family, pro-business conservative who proudly represents the Eighth Congressional District of Texas. Kevin is only the third Texan in history to lead the powerful House Ways & Means Committee – considered to be the most influential committee in Congress – with control over taxes, international trade, health care, Medicare, Social Security and welfare. He currently serves at the top Republican on the Committee.
While Chairman, Kevin led the effort to pass the historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the first comprehensive overhaul of America’s tax system in more than 30 years. As a recognized national leader on free trade, he has helped successfully secure passage of 13 of America’s 15 free trade agreements, including President Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). His successful achievements also include negotiating an end to the 40-year ban on selling U.S. crude oil overseas, the first reform of the IRS in two decades, sweeping reform of Americas’ retirement system, banning surprise medical bills, eliminating the ObamaCare individual mandate, and making the Research & Development tax credit permanent.
Prior to his election to Congress, Kevin worked as a chamber of commerce executive for 18 years and served six years in the Texas House of Representatives. To stay close to the people he represents, he never moved to Washington and lives in The Woodlands with his wife and two sons. Kevin has logged more than 2.5 million miles commuting from Texas to Congress, equivalent to five round trips to the moon. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Capehart” with Rev. Al Sharpton
Rev. Al Sharpton is a longtime civil rights activist, former presidential candidate and founder and president of the National Action Network. In his new book, “Righteous Troublemakers: Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America,” Sharpton chronicles the tumultuous year following the death of George Floyd and shines a light on the everyday heroes fighting to advance equal justice for all. Join Washington Post opinions writer Jonathan Capehart on Thursday, Jan. 13 at 9:30 a.m. ET.
Rev. Al Sharpton is the host of MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation” and the founder and President of the National Action Network (NAN), one of the leading civil rights organizations in the world. With over 40 years of experience as a community leader, politician, minister and advocate, the Rev. Al Sharpton is one of America’s most-renowned civil rights leaders. Sharpton also hosts the nationally syndicated radio show, “Keepin’ It Real”, which broadcasts in 40 markets, five days a week. He resides in New York. | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet rising temperatures have intensified wildfire behavior and lengthened the season for when they can burn, scientists say. In most forest types, the proportion of fires that are “high severity” (killing the majority of vegetation) has at least doubled in recent decades. The weather necessary for fire — high temperatures, low humidity, rainless days and high winds — lasts more than a month longer than it did four decades ago.
Conversely, the relationship between air temperature and humidity means that warmer conditions make the atmosphere “thirstier.” Water quickly evaporates from vegetation and soil, intensifying drought and making forests more likely to burn. On the Klamath River, water shortages sickened fish and emptied wells. In California, the Dixie Fire burned an area larger than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas combined. More than 90 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
The eight-foot-high black metal fence topped with razor wire that surrounded the U.S. Capitol following the Jan. 6 insurrection has been gone since July. The more than 30,000 heavily armed National Guard troops who arrived from all 50 states and the District to help secure the People’s House have returned home. The rumble of Humvees over neighborhood streets and the loud chop of helicopters overhead have long faded. | null | null | null | null | null |
James Binkley, architect
James Binkley, 79, a senior architect of the U.S. Postal Service who retired in 2009 after 24 years with the agency, died Nov. 27 at his home in Reston, Va. The cause was a pulmonary autoimmune disease, said his wife, Frances Bastress.
Mr. Binkley was born in Winston-Salem, N.C. He had lived in the Washington area since 1974. Before joining the Postal Service, he worked for the General Services Administration and the Energy Department. From 1982 to 2014, he was an adjunct professor of architecture at Catholic University.
James Stapula, Army officer
James Stapula, 99, an Army veteran of three wars who retired in the mid-1960s as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, died Dec. 4 at his home in Alexandria, Va. The cause was acute anemia, said a son, Danilo Stapula.
Col. Stapula was born in Milwaukee and had lived in the Washington area since 1964. He enlisted in the infantry during World War II, then after attending Officers Candidate School served as a Corps of Engineers officer in the Korean and Vietnam wars. For 20 years after his military retirement, he was a civilian employee of the Army’s readiness and development command.
William 'Pegram' Johnson III, Episcopal priest, headmaster
William “Pegram” Johnson III, 82, a former priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Accokeek, Md., and a former headmaster of its Canterbury School, died Nov. 25 at a hospital in Richmond. The cause was sepsis, said a son, Matthew Johnson.
Dr. Johnson was born in Petersburg, Va. From 1978 to 1986, he was headmaster at the Canterbury School. He then served for 12 yeas as priest at St. John’s. He also served on committees of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and helped advance the cause of women in the clergy.
Dr. Johnson was an interim priest in Charlotte Hall, Md., and Bowling Green, Va. He helped edit a book of Christmas stories and lived most recently in Richmond, where he was a volunteer reading tutor. | null | null | null | null | null |
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday will vow to hold all those responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol accountable, whether they were actually present or committed other crimes surrounding the day’s events.
“The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” Garland will say, according to an excerpt released by the department in advance of the mid-afternoon address. “We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
Garland has been under pressure to do and say more about the Jan. 6 riot, and to focus more acutely on former president Donald Trump and his associates for their actions leading up to and on that day. Debate has raged on Twitter, television and newspaper editorial pages over whether Trump could be charged with a crime, and, if not, what that might mean for future transfers of power.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said before Garland’s speech that the department was right to be quiet about the investigation as it unfolded, but added that the silence has fueled worries the probe might not be sufficiently aggressive and broad.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 riot. (The Washington Post)
“The problem with believing in opaque investigations, I think we’re all questioning a little bit, ‘what if DOJ is not doing it?’ ” Vance said.
Federal prosecutors in D.C. announced last week that they have charged more than 725 people with assault, resisting arrest and other crimes in connection with the events of Jan. 6. About 165 people have pleaded guilty, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Some legal analysts say criminal charges for Trump and others seem less likely, however, given that public evidence has not pointed to a grand conspiracy that involved the president or his top allies directing rioters to breach the Capitol. | null | null | null | null | null |
But recently, some Republicans are proposing getting Congress out of the role of elections entirely by reforming or getting rid of the Electoral Count Act.
The idea irks top Democrats, because they want to do much more to reform democracy than change this one, esoteric law governing how Congress certifies the winner of the presidential election. But ignoring it could make them look like they’re not working in good faith to strengthen democracy. So there’s a chance Congress makes changes to a centuries-old law to avoid another Jan. 6.
Right around the time Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) set up a date to vote to change the filibuster, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune (S.D.), said there’s “some interest” among Republicans in reforming the Electoral Count Act in response to the Jan. 6 attacks. On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he’s open to some changes. So did centrist Senate Democrats Joe Manchin III (W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Politico reports. | null | null | null | null | null |
GENEVA — The Swiss army has told its ranks to stop using foreign instant-messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram for official communications. Instead, it’s opting for a Swiss alternative —- in part over concerns about legislation in Washington that governs how U.S. authorities can access information held by tech companies. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - The marquee of the Egyptian Theatre appears during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Jan. 28, 2020. The Sundance Film Festival is cancelling its in-person festival and reverting to an entirely virtual edition due to the current coronavirus surge. Festival organizers announced Wednesday, Jan 5, 2022, that the festival will start as scheduled on Jan. 20, but will shift online. Last year’s Sundance was also held virtually because of the pandemic. (Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)
The cancellation of an in-person Sundance is a huge blow to an independent film industry that has struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic. Last year’s virtual Sundance, where films like “Summer of Soul (or The Revolution Will Not Be Televised)” and “CODA" made a splash, proved that a digital festival can still foster breakout hits. But filmmakers, executives, audiences and journalists had held out hope that Sundance — the premier American film festival and a launchpad for young filmmakers — could again kick off a new movie year with packed premieres in the Utah mountains. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Post unveils special coverage plans for January 6 anniversary
The expansive coverage includes on-the-ground reporting and live video coverage from Capitol Hill, dedicated Washington Post Live programming, a live blog and the redistribution of a special print section of the investigative series “The Attack” on Jan 6.
The Washington Post today announced expansive coverage plans for the one-year anniversary of the attack on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. In addition to live on-the-ground coverage, readers will have access to original reporting, live video coverage and Washington Post Live programming that will take them deeper into the origins of the attack, what was happening inside the Capitol building from journalists who were barricaded inside, new reporting on the Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack and where the investigation is ultimately headed, with accounts from lawmakers and Capitol Hill police officers on the scene.
“In the past year, The Post has uncovered extensive new details into what led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including a cascade of warnings that law enforcement officials received before the insurrection,” said Cameron Barr, senior managing editor at The Washington Post. “Our fact-based reporting will continue to hold those involved to account and shed light on where the nation is headed one year later.”
Three-part investigative series “The Attack” available across Post platforms and to be distributed on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6.
The Washington Post will feature its investigative series “The Attack: Before, During and After” on the homepage and across Post platforms, allowing readers to easily rediscover the complete three-part account detailing the forces that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and the growing distrust in America’s elections that has spread in its aftermath. More than 75 journalists in the Post newsroom contributed to The Attack, including more than 25 reporters. The 28-page special section will also be inserted into 2,700 copies of the print newspaper delivered to offices on Capitol Hill. The series originally published online Oct. 31 and in print Nov. 7.
Readers can access a live blog throughout the day with the latest developments from Capitol Hill.
The live blog will be updated throughout the day with updates on speeches given by President Biden and Vice President Harris, events planned in the House chamber and any rallies or dueling protests that take place in Washington, D.C.
The Post’s “Special Report with Libby Casey” will broadcast live from Capitol Hill.
Starting at 8:30am ET on Jan. 6, Post anchor Libby Casey will host a series of conversations from Capitol Hill with Post congressional reporter Rhonda Colvin, who was barricaded inside during the siege, video journalist Jorge Ribas, who reported from the riot outside the building, plus national security reporter Devlin Barrett, national video reporter Hannah Jewell and columnist James Hohmann. They will also react to and provide analysis on speeches given on the Hill and other developments from the day. Viewers can click here to watch.
Washington Post Live will host interviews with lawmakers and key voices on the front lines on Jan. 6 .
Post Live will host conversations with Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and former Chief of Homeland Security and Intelligence for D.C. Donell Harvin and U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell. Viewers can click here to watch.
“Post Reports” and Post Opinions’ “Please, Go On,” podcasts to air special Jan. 6 episodes.
“Post Reports” will host a roundtable conversation guest hosted by White House reporter Cleve Wootson and Post senior correspondent Dan Balz, political enterprise and investigations reporter Rosalind Helderman and national political reporter Amy Gardner about the state of our democracy one year later to publish on Jan. 5. “Post Reports” will air a second special episode on Jan. 7 featuring an interview with Post feature writer Caitlin Gibson and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) where the congressman recounts his year of grief and purpose following his son’s suicide and the Jan. 6 attacks. Click here to access “Post Reports” episodes. On Jan. 6, listeners can also tune in to “Please, Go On,” hosted by opinion columnist James Hohmann, for an interview with retired U.S. Army major general Paul Eaton. He will discuss his co-authored op-ed warning that the military must prepare for a 2024 insurrection. Click here to access “Please, Go On” episodes.
The Post will host a special Twitter Space conversation on Jan. 6 .
Starting at 2 p.m. ET on Jan. 6, Twitter users can follow @washingtonpost for a one-hour Twitter Space conversation on the anniversary with The Post’s Rhonda Colvin, Paul Kane, Post opinion columnist James Hohmann and video director and editor Lindsey Sitz, anchored by Libby Casey.
For the latest coverage, readers can follow Post reporters and Opinion columnists on the ground: Paul Kane, Rhonda Colvin, Marianna Sotomayor, Mike DeBonis and Dana Milbank. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pfizer and BioNTech partner again to develop shingles vaccine
Pfizer, BioNTech team
on a shingles vaccine
Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech will develop an mRNA-based vaccine for the prevention of viral infection shingles, collaborating for the third time after the success of their coronavirus vaccine based on the same technology.
Pfizer partnered with BioNTech in 2018 for an influenza vaccine and again in 2020 for the coronavirus shot that has been used across the world and has brought in billions in sales for the companies.
The companies said on Wednesday they expect to begin clinical trials of the shingles vaccine, which will combine Pfizer’s antigen technology and BioNTech’s mRNA platform technology, in the second half of 2022.
This type of vaccine prompts the body to make a protein that is part of the pathogen, triggering an immune response.
If successful, the vaccine will compete with GlaxoSmithKline’s two-dose vaccine Shingrix, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017. The vaccine brought in about 2 billion pounds in revenue in 2020.
Exxon reports finding
2 oil sites off Guyana
ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil producer, said on Wednesday it had made two discoveries in the Stabroek Block off Guyana, one of its top bets for production growth this decade.
Guyana has been the scene of the world’s biggest offshore discoveries for years, with 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas confirmed since it began production in 2019. An Exxon-led consortium is responsible for all output in the South American country.
Exxon said the discoveries, made at the Fangtooth-1 and Lau Lau-1 wells, will add to its previous resource estimates. It did not provide a volume update.
The Fangtooth-1 well encountered high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs 11 miles northwest of Exxon’s large Liza field. The Lau Lau-1 well has high-quality hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone reservoirs 42 miles southeast of Liza, the company said.
In September, Exxon announced a discovery at Pinktail in the Stabroek Block, also without specifying the size of the reserves.
Exxon operates with a 45 percent stake in the 6.6 million-acre Stabroek Block as part of a consortium that includes Hess, which has a 30 percent stake, and China’s CNOOC, which has 25 percent.
Exxon had previously said it sees potential for installing 10 floating production vessels in the Stabroek Block. The first six such vessels could pump more than 1 million barrels of oil and gas per day by 2027, Hess said in its most recent financial results.
Chrysler plans go all electric by 2028, the latest automaker to announce a shift away from gasoline-powered engines under rising pressure to act on climate change. The company said Wednesday that it will launch its first electric vehicle by 2025. Chrysler announced its electric plans along with a new AI-enabled vehicle system powered by a battery that it says can travel 350 to 400 miles per charge. Fiat Chrysler is part of Europe's Stellantis, the parent company that also owns Peugeot.
Walmart is betting big on its service to deliver groceries directly to customers' refrigerators. The retailer's InHome offering will be expanded to 30 million U.S. households by the end of the year, five times more than the current level, according to a company statement Wednesday. Walmart plans to hire more than 3,000 drivers and build out a fleet of electric delivery vans to support the program. Walmart has been testing the InHome service for more than two years with trials in Pittsburgh, northwest Arkansas and other areas.
U.S. private payrolls increased more than expected in December, pointing to underlying labor market strength, but skyrocketing coronavirus infections could slow momentum in the months ahead. Private payrolls surged by 807,000 jobs last month, the ADP National Employment Report showed on Wednesday. Data for November was revised lower to show 505,000 jobs added instead of the initially reported 534,000. The survey was conducted in mid-December just as coronavirus cases, driven by the omicron variant, were rising sharply across the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
NASA accomplishes trickiest task on newly launched space telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope’s huge sunshade protects its many scientific instruments
This combination of images from a computer animation shows 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. (AP)
NASA aced the most complicated, critical job for its newly launched space telescope Tuesday: unrolling and stretching a sunshade the size of a tennis court.
Ground controllers cheered and bumped fists once the fifth and final layer of the sun shield was tightly secured. It took 1½ days to tighten the ultrathin layers using motor-driven cables, half the expected time.
The seven-ton James Webb Space Telescope is so big that the sun shield and the primary gold-plated mirror had to be folded for launch. The sun shield, which is 70 feet by 46 feet, keeps all the infrared, heat-sensing science instruments in a constant subzero shadow.
The mirrors are next up for release, which is scheduled for this weekend.
KidsPost visited the Goddard Space Flight Center as scientists built the James Webb Space Telescope
The $10 billion telescope is more than halfway toward its destination 1 million miles away, after its Christmas Day send-off. It is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever launched — 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope — enabling it to peer back to almost the beginning of time.
“This is a really big moment,” project manager Bill Ochs told the control team in Baltimore. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but getting the sun shield out and deployed is really, really big.”
Engineers spent years redoing and tweaking the shade. At one point, dozens of fasteners fell off during a vibration test. That made Tuesday’s success all the sweeter, since nothing like this had been attempted before in space. | null | null | null | null | null |
“If we believe that United States history and teaching it, saving it, preserving it and sharing it can help continue the democratic experiment, which is still one of the longest running in the history of the world, then it is one of the most challenging times,” museum director Anthea Hartig said.
Curators are working with law enforcement and political partners to acquire other artifacts, including the official tally of the vote that certified the 2020 election and pieces of evidence being used in the investigations, Hartig said. The coronavirus pandemic, and the ongoing federal criminal investigation and the work of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol — have slowed their work, Hartig said. But they are confident that more will be acquired.
The vest illustrates the role of photography and the experiences of photographers, central themes of Jan. 6, Perish said. “When we collect for a story, we look for objects that have multiple perspectives,” she added. Kelly’s vest also contributes to stories about women in journalism, about the vital role of journalism in society and about its dangers. The fact that photographers needed military-grade protective gear is important to document, she said.
The museum is not planning an exhibition on the events of Jan. 6 in the near future, Hartig said, but it is digitizing the items to make them accessible online, a priority during the pandemic, when museum visits have decreased. In addition, she said curators are still working out how to frame the story. Initially, they thought they would feature some of the protest signs in the “Democracy in America” exhibition, which has a rotating roster of protest posters from various events. | null | null | null | null | null |
When the streets are cleared and we think back on this week’s snowstorm, the largest since 2019, many of us will remember images that showed adults throwing snowballs on the National Mall, children sledding on neighborhood hills and those stuck-in-place cars and trucks that lined Interstate 95 for more than a day.
“This morning when I arrived at the New Jersey & O St encampment site, there were a number of case workers, advocates and community members helping several residents who had not been housed pack up their belongings,” council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) tweeted that day. “There was confusion among encampment residents — some did not know if they were receiving a housing resource, hotel, or if they need to pack up and find a new location to sleep tonight. Some were feeling uncertain about their future, not knowing exactly how long the resources offered, if any, would last.”
She introduced an emergency bill that would have forced the city to halt encampment evictions during the coldest months. The ACLU of D.C. ran on its website a piece that described the vote on the bill as “a life-or-death matter for thousands of unhoused people across the District.” On Dec. 21, as my colleague Marissa J. Lang reported, the D.C. Council rejected that bill.
On Tuesday, she sent an email to the mayor, a DHS official and several council members. In it, she describes how “Ms. Lenia” was displaced from the encampment, how she sat at that bus stop “wet and distraught,” and how she still needs a housing voucher and wraparound services. | null | null | null | null | null |
Government troops make gains in south
The push in Shabwa province comes amid heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis elsewhere in Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. The rebels have also stepped up their cross-border attacks, using ballistic missiles and explosives-laden drones to target Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis in recent days have also seized an Emirati ship in the Red Sea off the contested city of Hodeida. The United Arab Emirates is a member of the coalition.
A Yemeni military spokesman said the troops’ advance in Shabwa aims to cut the supply lines of the Houthis, who have been attacking the city of Marib, the last government stronghold in the north, since last year.
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis took Sanaa and much of the northern part of the country, forcing the government to flee. The Saudi-led coalition entered the war months later to try to restore the government to power.
The conflict has since become a regional proxy war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters. It has also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
New U.S. sanctions target Serb official
The United States imposed fresh sanctions on Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite inter-ethnic presidency, and other current and former officials Wednesday, warning of further action against those tied to destabilization or corruption.
The U.S. Treasury Department accused Dodik, already subject to U.S. sanctions under a different authority, of corruption and threatening the stability and territorial integrity of Bosnia.
The Treasury also slapped sanctions on media outlet Alternativna Television (ATV), accusing Dodik of acquiring it to further his own agenda.
The Treasury designations freeze any of Dodik and ATV’s U.S. assets and bar Americans from dealing with them.
The State Department, meanwhile, barred some current and former Bosnian officials from entering the United States.
Bosnia is experiencing its gravest political crisis since the end of the 1990s war, reviving fears of a breakup after Bosnian Serbs blocked the work of the central government and Serb lawmakers voted to start pulling the autonomous Serb Republic out of state institutions.
Dodik, part of a presidency that also includes a Bosniak and a Croat member, wants to reverse all reforms made after the war.
Bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria come under attack: Military bases hosting U.S. troops in Iraq's western Anbar province and the capital, Baghdad, were hit by Katyusha rockets, while in Syria, eight rounds of indirect fire landed inside a base housing members of the U.S.-led coalition, the Iraqi and U.S. militaries said. No casualties were reported in the attacks, part of a series that began Monday, the anniversary of a U.S. airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
Israel issues first sentence in mob attack on Arab driver: An Israeli court sentenced a man to one year in prison for his role in a mob attack on an Arab motorist during a spasm of violence last year. Lahav Nagauker, who was 20 at the time, was convicted of incitement to violence and racism as part of a plea deal that resulted in lighter charges. His sentencing was the first in the May incident, in which a mob yanked Said Moussa from his car and beat him, seriously injuring him. The beating, in a Tel Aviv suburb, occurred while Israel was at war with Hamas militants in Gaza.
4 acquitted in toppling of British slave trader statue: Four anti-racism demonstrators were cleared of criminal damage in the toppling of a statue of a 17th-century slave trader during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 in southwestern England. Protesters pull down the statue of Edward Colston and dumped it in Bristol's harbor on June 7, 2020. All four had admitted their involvement but denied their actions were criminal, saying the statue itself was a hate crime against the people of Bristol. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: What motivates humans
A supporter of then-President Donald Trump places her hand in the face of a counterprotester during an argument outside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's mansion on Nov. 7, 2020 in St. Paul. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
I agree entirely with George F. Will’s Jan. 2 op-ed, “Acrimonious times call for a return to Socrates.” The problem, however, is that, if we assume that humans have three innate faculties of intellect, emotion and will, it is also the case that humans are motivated by, and respond to, emotion — and will do so far more than they respond to and are motivated by intellect. It is correct to say that anger is not an argument. But, alas, humans — usually anyway — respond to, and are motivated far more, by anger than they are by argument.
Lloyd Eby, Severn | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Who will replace these environmental giants?
Thomas E. Lovejoy III, a conservation biologist in Australia, in September 2016. (Family photo)
Anyone who knew Thomas E. Lovejoy III, who died on Christmas Day [“Ecologist was dedicated to preserving Amazon rainforest,” news, Dec. 28] knew him to be a big thinker, a scientist who could alert us over decades to the coming environmental crises based on both hard-earned scientific knowledge and deep personal concern.
I invited him to give the keynote address to a conservation group I was involved with in Britain, and he talked in troubling language of the coming global warming crisis, with melting icecaps and the like. That was in 1984, nearly 40 years ago. He developed investigational methods to give a deep look into ecology in general, and into rainforest deforestation, changing carbon dioxide levels and other issues among the many places where it could be applied.
The deaths of Lovejoy and E.O. Wilson within days of each other marked the lengthening and passing of time between early concern for the environment and the movement of the giants into the lexicon of brilliant and caring exemplars. The question is: Who will replace them?
Larry O’Reilly, Arlington | null | null | null | null | null |
Jan. 6: One Year Later with Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) chairs the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Thursday, Jan. 6 at 3:45 p.m. ET, Jonathan Capehart speaks with Thompson about what the committee has learned, the next phase of its work and how the attack impacted Congress and the country.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
Provided by the office of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).
Born in a state with a unique history of racial inequality, Congressman Bennie G. Thompson draws inspiration from the legacies of Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry and Henry Kirksey. The Bolton, Mississippi native considers it an honor to walk the path Mississippi civil rights icons paved decades ago.
Serving his 13th term in the United States House of Representatives, Thompson represents Mississippi’s Second Congressional District where he has spent his entire life fighting to improve the lives of all people.
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson is the longest-serving African-American elected official in the State of Mississippi and the lone Democrat in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation.
He began his grassroots political activism being a civil rights champion through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while a student at Tougaloo College – a private historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi. He organized voter registration drives for African-Americans throughout the Mississippi Delta on behalf of the organization before graduating and following in the footsteps of his mother by becoming a school teacher. During his tenure educating the youth of Mississippi, a fire inside of Thompson was ignited pushing him to be a voice to the voiceless through elected office.
From 1969 to 1972, Thompson served as alderman of his hometown, Bolton, before serving as the city’s mayor from 1973 to 1980. During his time as mayor, Thompson improved the city’s infrastructure by paving roads, fixing the water and sewer systems, repairing and renovating dilapidated houses; all while spearheading the construction of city hall and re-evaluating the town’s real estate.
Thompson was a founding member of the Mississippi Association of Black Mayors where he instituted policies and provided services benefiting Bolton’s underserved. The selfless service Thompson provided his hometown was increased when he was elected as a Hinds County supervisor, a position he held from 1980 until 1993. The then-supervisor’s record of being a pragmatic local servant was embraced by constituents in Mississippi’s most populous county.
His record of effective problem solving and coalition building served as the bedrock for his election to the Congress in 1993, representing Mississippi’s largest Congressional District composed of the state’s capital city, Jackson, and the Mississippi Delta.
Congressman Thompson has channeled his passion for public service into action. In 2000, he authored legislation creating the National Center for Minority Health and Health Care Disparities which subsequently became law. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the State of Mississippi, he aggressively advocated for disaster relief improvements within government agencies, and provided oversight to ensure that federal funds were properly allocated for Gulf Coast recovery.
The following year, Thompson’s Washington colleagues expressed their overwhelming confidence in his leadership abilities and selected him to serve as the first Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. As chairman, Thompson introduced and engineered passage of the most comprehensive homeland security package since September 11, 2001 – H.R. 1, the “9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007.”
The Congressman has also served on the Agriculture, Budget, and Small Business Committees while working to level the playing field. Thompson employs a progressive and realistic approach to overcome persistent disparities while being the unabashed champion for civil rights, equal education and healthcare delivery in Mississippi.
Representative Thompson is a lifelong member of the Asbury United Methodist Church in Bolton, Mississippi. He has been married his college sweetheart, London Johnson of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, since 1968. The couple has a daughter, BendaLonne; granddaughter, Jeanna; and grandson, Thomas Gordon. Thompson is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys gardening, reading, and listening to the blues. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the past few years, the United States has witnessed substantial growth in a domestic extremist movement committed to using violence to overturn our democracy. The warped ideas which motivated the insurrection — the demonization of our fellow Americans, the unwillingness to accept the results of an election unless your side wins and racially motivated conspiracy theories — are growing. Astonishingly, recent polling suggests as much as 34 percent of Americans would condone the use of violence against the government for political purposes.
The begins with a commitment to a new type of American patriotism, one rooted in a humility and honesty that recognizes our faults. We will only overcome our challenges as a nation by recognizing the problems of our past and how they shape our future. This requires an unrelenting commitment to the truth. | null | null | null | null | null |
Those who beat cops with American flags should serve long jail sentences. But the most important lesson from that tragic day may come from deconstructing how plutocrats and trust fund babies deployed propaganda campaigns to push that bloodthirsty mob up the Capitol steps.
Just as the Bakkers used the Gospel of Jesus Christ to prey on gullible viewers, these right-wing billionaires and their allies are trying to brainwash millions of Americans into believing the U.S. government is deploying Afghanistan War helicopters to launch domestic attacks against them, that the FBI is purging patriots from society, and that the “deep state” staged the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag” to strip citizens of their constitutional rights.
These hate-filled hysterics spewed against the United States have been punctuated by verbal assaults targeting military heroes, the slandering of the U.S. intelligence community, and a barrage of fire against the nation’s democratic voting system that would make Vladimir Putin blush with pride. These are the kind of anti-American screeds that fueled the Capitol riot, and they have been preached with increasing intensity since that tragic day.
The targets of their misinformation campaign now await trial or languish in jail while the authors of these phony crises sleep comfortably in their marbled mansions and beachside resorts. They are free travel the world on their super yachts or private jets while Jan. 6 defendants beg for their freedom in federal court.
Maybe that explains why every Republican presidential nominee this century has come from the United States’ most powerful families and graduated from the country’s most elite universities. Their fathers ran automobile companies, Midwest industrial states, the United States Navy, New York real estate empires, and the country itself. I can hear the voice of my grandmom saying, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” While we have not inherited the wealth and power of these American oligarchs, we have been given a republic. Let us spend the next year doing what we can to save it. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Capitol itself has long been a popular focal point for violence. In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the House gallery and wounded five congressman. In 1971, in opposition to the Vietnam War, the Weather Underground detonated a bomb in the men’s bathroom underneath the Senate chamber, saying the goal was to “freak out the warmongers.” In 1983, self-described communists exploded a bomb under a bench outside the Senate majority leader’s office, purportedly in retaliation for U.S. intervention in Grenada and Lebanon.
Political violence cooled a bit following the Civil War, but increased again as Northern voters lost the will to enforce civil rights for African Americans. After the contested 1876 election, President Ulysses S. Grant mobilized the military to defend the Capitol if it was besieged by supporters of Samuel J. Tilden.
The Justice Department estimates that as many as 2,500 people could ultimately be charged with federal crimes related to the attack on the Capitol; so far, only 704 have faced prosecution. Attorney General Merrick Garland asked Wednesday for the public’s help identifying hundreds of suspects who were photographed but haven’t been arrested, including about 250 who are believed to have assaulted police officers. Especially worrisome is that no one has been apprehended for placing pipe bombs with timers outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee. | null | null | null | null | null |
D.C. attorney general ends case over Sanford Capital property as Congress Heights apartments get new owner
Roland Carroll, right, an inspector with the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, inspects the kitchen in an apartment in Southeast Washington in 2017. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
The D.C. Attorney General’s Office is closing the book on a years-long fight against Sanford Capital, one of the District’s most notorious landlords, whose tenants in a Congress Heights apartment building had been forced to live in squalid conditions for years.
A settlement reached in the case dissolves the arrangement under which a court-appointed receiver had been overseeing repairs and restoration meant to make the Ward 8 building livable. It also transfers ownership of the property to Standard Real Estate Investments, a real estate investment firm that has committed to creating 179 affordable housing units throughout the two-acre site and adding retail space. The site includes the southern entrance to the Congress Heights Metro station.
Standard Real Estate Investments said it plans to partner with Trammell Crow Company, a developer that specializes in mixed-use projects, and NHT Communities, the development arm of the nonprofit National Housing Trust that focuses on the creation and preservation of affordable housing in the United States.
The sale was approved by the Attorney General’s Office and the handful of remaining Congress Heights tenants, who have been living in temporary housing off-site while issues of mold, pests, structural decay and broken amenities were addressed.
About 35 percent of the new apartments will be three- and four-bedroom units to accommodate larger families, according to a news release from the new development firm, and all will be affordable to renters who earn between 30 and 80 percent of the median income for the District — in the range of $38,700 to $82,300 for a family of four.
Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) said in an interview Wednesday that the resolution of this 2016 case — the first lawsuit his office filed against Sanford Capital — represents a core mission of his agency: to help maintain affordable housing by cracking down on landlords who through neglect try to force out low-income renters and make way for market-rate housing.
“You wonder why D.C. has the highest level of displacement of any city in the United States. … It’s because tactics like this are permitted to occur,” Racine said. “When well-connected and politically connected, well-heeled developers and landlords conspire in a way to essentially cause the eviction of long-standing tenants of the District of Columbia, I think that enforcement isn’t discretionary — it’s necessary.”
The apartment complex, at the corner of Alabama Avenue and 13th Street SE, was the first of Sanford Capital’s properties to garner the attention of the Office of the Attorney General, which went on to sue the Bethesda-based company over deplorable conditions at a number of buildings it owned throughout the District.
Low-income tenants fear being pushed out by planned Congress Heights complex
In December 2017, CityPartners and Geoffrey Griffis purchased the Congress Heights property from Sanford Capital in a sale that the Attorney General’s Office said violated tenants’ rights and the terms of a court order while doing nothing to remediate the many structural and health issues residents faced. According to court documents, Sanford Capital investors were granted a stake in the CityPartners development plan.
In 2018, Sanford Capital signed an agreement with Racine’s office that required it to sell off all of its remaining seven properties in the District and to refrain from any subsidized housing development until 2025. The following year, a judge ordered the company to pay former tenants across several buildings $1.1 million in back-rent for the time they spent living in unsafe and illegal conditions. Ten Congress Heights residents were granted $214,000 in that settlement.
Beginning in 2006, Sanford Capital built a sprawling network of more than 1,300 apartments across at least 20 apartment buildings in the District over the course of a decade. The company received millions in taxpayer dollars through housing voucher and affordable housing tax credits by renting to the city’s poorest residents — even after the firm was repeatedly sued by Racine’s office over poor housing conditions.
City officials allege that the company allowed its properties to deteriorate as part of a coordinated effort to push tenants out of its buildings — known in the legal world as a constructive eviction — thereby allowing Sanford Capital to sell empty buildings that had been stripped of affordable housing obligations at a premium.
Sanford Capital bought the four brick apartment buildings at 1309, 1331 and 1333 Alabama Ave. SE and 3210 13th St. SE for about $2.8 million and, according to court documents, had plans to develop the properties into market-rate apartments.
Why a law meant to protect the poor from displacement doesn't really work
Though 46 affordable units were occupied when Sanford Capital bought the Congress Heights Apartments in 2010, the attorney general’s office said, just about 10 tenants remained when Racine’s office sued the property owner in 2016.
Those tenants are guaranteed a spot in the new complex, which Standard Real Estate Investments said in a statement Wednesday is expected to break ground within the year. Retail units are expected to be open by the end of 2024, and residential apartments will be move-in ready in 2025.
The tenants who lived at the Congress Heights complex were largely poor, elderly renters who relied on fixed incomes. They suffered for years in slumlike conditions that included a lack of heat, burst pipes, defective smoke detectors, mold, infestations of rats and roaches, sewage leaks and safety concerns thanks to unsecured, abandoned units that lawyers said were frequently used as drug dens by people who did not live in the building.
One woman told The Washington Post in 2015 that she had not had heat in five years and relied on her oven for warmth. Another resident said it took nearly a week for the landlord to repair her toilet. While they waited, she and her family began using a bucket.
“I am not surprised at what people will do for money and how they’ll allow other individuals to live in the hopes that they’ll move out,” Racine said. “We know that the purpose of the business plan of Sanford Capital and CityPartners was absolutely to cause tenants who lived in an apartment complex for generations to be forced out, to self-evict.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Young Dolph performs at The Parking Lot Concert in Atlanta on Aug. 23, 2020. An arrest warrant has been issued for Justin Johnson, 23, in connection with the Nov. 17, 2021, fatal shooting of rapper Young Dolph, who was gunned down in a daylight ambush at a popular cookie shop in his hometown of Memphis, authorities said Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022. (Paul R. Giunta/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
The odds of this column jinxing my health are excellent
A person takes a coronavirus test on Broadway on Dec. 27, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Discerning readers might have noticed in recent days that an awful lot of Americans have contracted the coronavirus. Not just ordinary Americans: The list includes Broadway stars, two late-night talk show hosts and the defense secretary.
The numbers have gotten so high that on Wednesday, Garance Franke-Ruta tweeted out a contrarian request: “I’d love to read more about boosted people who have had known Covid exposures this past month and never developed a positive test or notable symptoms.”
As it turns out, I fall into that category. I have been boosted since late November. Late last month, I was notified by an app that I had been in contact with someone who had tested positive. Beyond that incident, I had stopped by a neighbor’s house to say hi and a day later they texted me that one of them had tested positive, as well.
Reading story after story about the contagious nature of the omicron variant, and learning that a lot of our close friends had tested positive, the inevitable seemed on our doorstep. My family and I bunkered down during the winter break half-expecting all of us to get covid-19 by the new year.
Here’s the thing, though: I never tested positive. It was not for lack of testing, either. Over the last 10 days of December, I tested at my place of work and performed rapid at-home tests at least five times. All negative!
It is possible that these were false negatives. Some studies suggest that rapid tests are less able to detect omicron. And I did have mild cold symptoms at various points during the break. That said, those symptoms were not new. It is winter in Boston, which means I have been stuffed up intermittently since the end of November. Furthermore, my wife and children also tested at least once during this time frame — all negative!
We were not exactly hermits during the break, either. My wife, daughter and I went to see “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in a pretty full theater on Christmas Eve. My wife and son went to an indoor concert featuring a pretty good Talking Heads tribute band a few days after that. My wife and I spent a night away from this kids at a lovely hotel in downtown Boston. We entertained friends and relatives in the house on multiple occasions in the last week of December.
How did we fail to contract covid?! I suspect multiple, overlapping causes:
To this I would only add that omicron did lead us to act in a slightly more risk-averse manner. We did not go out to eat in any restaurants but ordered take-in instead. We normally host a New Year’s Day open house and decided that was probably a bad idea this year. When we hosted people, one of my clan rapid-tested just to confirm we were not unintentionally spreading the coronavirus.
So how does this all feel? I will confess to some mildly contradictory reactions. On the one hand, there has been some fatalism about this past month. I expected to get covid, mostly because it was impossible not to read about the infectiousness of the omicron variant. Many people we knew who had been vaccinated and boosted had contracted it, as well. We have not been any better-behaved or more risk-averse than our friends — if anything, the opposite has been true.
On the other hand, a lot of the same research about omicron suggested that vaccinated and boosted folks had significant protections against covid. As fortune would have it, we appear to fall within that category for now.
I credit my family with getting vaccinated and boosted and masking where appropriate. Beyond that, I credit good luck. Maybe my family will get covid during the omicron surge. Maybe our lucky streak will continue to hold. With all the evidence suggesting that vaccinated and boosted individuals are not in grave danger from being infected with omicron, however, we are not reverting to March 2020 behavior.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to knock on every piece of wood in my house. | null | null | null | null | null |
CES is the first major trade show of 2022, and its organizer — the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) — has insisted on holding the event in person despite the fast spread of the omicron variant. The World Economic Forum last month postponed its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, moving it from January to mid-2022, citing the omicron variant. And JPMorgan Chase said its annual health-care conference in San Francisco scheduled for later this month would be virtual instead of in person.
At Samsung Electronics’ news conference Tuesday, the show’s smaller in-person audience was noticeable. The company filled nearly all of the 700 available seats in the Venetian Expo’s Palazzo Ballroom, but it originally had planned to accommodate about 1,700 attendees for Vice Chairman Jong-Hee Han’s keynote address on making technology, like the company’s televisions, more customizable and sustainable. Rows of seats were spaced out, and every other seat was kept empty for social distancing.
“Anytime anybody takes their mask off, that’s an issue,” said Sabrina McCormick, an associate professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “And with the omicron variant being as contagious as it is, you have to be so buttoned up about that.”
But CES extends well beyond the Las Vegas Convention Center. A day’s worth of big-name news conferences take place in a convention center at Mandalay Bay, and the Venetian Expo is hosting the hundreds of start-ups that make up Eureka Park. And at the popular casinos to which those venues are attached, unmasked faces aren’t an uncommon sight at blackjack tables and in corridors attendees must navigate to reach news conferences and meetings.
Fewer attendees mean the people at CES have an easier time keeping their distance, especially compared with earlier years, when braving crowds was the only way to nab lunch or make it to a meeting. And because some companies pulled out and the ones that remain dialed down the spectacle, the shape of the show has changed dramatically.
LG is best known for building massive walls and curving canyons made of its screens for CES; this year, it went with wood flooring and some simple structures. And not far from LG’s space in Central Hall were multiple bare patches of floor where companies had presumably planned to — but never did — present their work.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas’s service industry is also feeling the effects of a smaller-than-normal show. Cabdrivers such as Yoo Lee, who has been working in the city for eight years, said he could usually count on giving 30 to 40 rides in a single 12-hour shift. But in the days before CES 2022 — a period usually marked by hordes of reporters, YouTubers, tech company representatives and others flooding into the city’s Harry Reid International Airport, Lee had far more time on his hands.
“Right now when we go to the airport, it’s easy to spend an hour” waiting for a fare, he said. And on Monday, just hours before one of the show’s most notable preview events, the number of his CES-related trips was down to two. That slump has made life for the city’s professional cabbies difficult, said fellow driver Abe Girma.
“Limousine, taxi, even Uber drivers — everyone was talking about what we were going to make at CES,” he said. “But then we heard a lot of companies canceled. And after this CES, we don’t have nothing for maybe more than a month.”
And while CES typically leads to skyrocketing hotel rates on and around the Las Vegas Strip, many rooms available this year are considerably cheaper — some even below $100.
As of Wednesday, there were no confirmed reports of anyone being infected with the coronavirus at CES. But with a few days — and lots of time on the floor — still to come, we’ll soon see whether a show as big as CES can be made covid-proof. Because of the fast-spreading omicron variant, organizers have already cut the number of days to three from four. Even so, local business leaders remain bullish on the value of big, in-person conventions.
“While covid will no doubt create lasting change in how people connect and interact, nothing beats meeting in person,” said Mary Beth Sewald, president and CEO of the Vegas Chamber, the largest business association in Nevada. “People want to get together and make personal connections, as well as have a shared group experience. As our economy has reopened, we are seeing people coming back to Las Vegas for these shared experiences, whether special events, meetings and conventions or personal relaxation. It’s a good indication of what is ahead once the covid virus has waned.”
But a show such as CES can remain valuable only if the companies that flock to the show floor each year manage to get something out of it. And this year, as the show officially begins, some of the founders, engineers and creators who came to show off their work can only wait to see whether their attendance was worth it.
“I thought there was a chance it would get canceled altogether, which I don’t think would have been a bad move,” said Andrew Hourani, CEO of EveryDose, a Chicago company that built an app to help people remember to take their medications. “Since we had the booth, we felt like we needed to come even though it’s probably not the smartest move, just thinking about covid cases.”
Andrew Hourani is CEO of EveryDose. An earlier version of this article mispelled the name of the start-up. | null | null | null | null | null |
“If we believe that United States history and teaching it, saving it, preserving it and sharing it can help continue the democratic experiment, which is still one of the
longest-running in the history of the world, then it is one of the most challenging times,” museum director Anthea Hartig said.
Curators are working with law enforcement and political partners to acquire other artifacts, including the official tally of the vote that certified the 2020 election and pieces of evidence being used in the investigations, Hartig said. The coronavirus pandemic — and the ongoing federal criminal investigation and the work of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol — have slowed their work, Hartig said. But they are confident that more will be acquired.
The vest illustrates the role of photography and the experiences of photographers, central themes of Jan. 6, Perich said. “When we collect for a story, we look for objects that have multiple perspectives,” she added. Kelly’s vest also contributes to stories about women in journalism, about the vital role of journalism in society and about its dangers. The fact that photographers needed military-grade protective gear is important to document, she said.
The museum is not planning an exhibition on the events of Jan. 6 in the near future, Hartig said, but it is digitizing the items to make them accessible online, a priority during the pandemic, when museum visits have decreased. In addition, she said curators are still working out how to frame the story. Initially they thought they would feature some of the protest signs in the exhibition on American democracy, which has a rotating roster of protest posters from various events. | null | null | null | null | null |
A U.S. Capitol Police officer confronts supporters of President Donald Trump inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Reporter Jacqueline Alemany has been following the Jan. 6 commission for the past six months. As we come up on the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Alemany reports on what the commission has uncovered so far and what she’s watching out for next.
Plus: The far-right firebrands and conspiracy theorists of the pro-Trump Internet have a new enemy: each other. Without a figurehead, far-right influencers are fighting for money and followers. Reporter Drew Harwell explains the reality-television-style drama, and what it means for the future of online extremism. | null | null | null | null | null |
Though the county’s five-member Board of Supervisors includes four elected Republicans, the group unanimously voted to certify Biden’s victory in 2020. Supervisors, including then-Chairman Clint Hickman, refused to interfere with the process despite pressure from fellow Republicans.
During an annual ceremony to elect a new board chairman on Wednesday, Gates, the panel’s newest leader, reiterated those sentiments: “The attempt to undermine democratic elections puts at risk everything else we take for granted in a free country — speech, security, economic progress. And that’s why the county has not been silent — and will not be silent — in the face of lies,” he said.
The Maricopa County report indicated that after thoroughly investigating the Senate’s allegations, officials had discovered 38 instances in which a voter might have cast multiple ballots. County officials forwarded those cases to the state’s attorney general for further review. Officials also found 50 cases in which a ballot might have been double counted. None of the instances affected the outcome of any election race, and they were not related to any systemic issues, the report said. | null | null | null | null | null |
“While my commitment to making incarceration a matter of last resort is immutable, the path to get there through these policies will be dynamic, and, not static, and will be informed by our discussions and our work with trial lawyers, law enforcement and others in the weeks and months ahead," he said in a statement to The Washington Post. | null | null | null | null | null |
Taylor Heinicke remembers not too long ago when the prospect of playing for a nameless team seemed like the least appealing option — if he ever got another opportunity in the NFL. Now, after a season of starting for one, he could be an unofficial record-holder: the most prolific Washington Football Team quarterback.
“Well, I guess that’s a good record to hold,” Heinicke said with a smile Wednesday.
In July 2020, amid mounting pressure from team sponsors, local officials and Native American activists, the franchise retired its old name after 87 years and began a lengthy process to find a new identity. Washington Football Team was meant to be a placeholder, but the team never officially ruled it out as a long-term identity. The 18-month rebranding created a guessing game for many fans, but it also has elicited a mixed reaction, ranging from outright disapproval of the name change to optimism about a fresh start.
As the lead football decision-maker and primary voice of the franchise, Rivera has played a part in the rebranding process and was privy to the final candidates for the new name. The video published Tuesday included the moment when Rivera first saw the new helmets, which were blurred for viewers to conceal the design.
“When I wasn’t playing, it was like, ‘What team would you want to play for?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, you don’t want to play for the team with no name,’ ” Heinicke said. “You just want to be on a team and want to play football. It’s definitely an odd time. It’s also an exciting time. … Supposedly the uniforms are awesome. It’s an exciting time for the fan base for us. We’re excited to get that name and get going.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Homer Plessy, whose arrest led to ‘separate but equal’ ruling, is posthumously pardoned
Homer Plessy receives posthumous pardon
At a ceremony held near the spot where Plessy was arrested, Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said he was “beyond grateful” to help restore Plessy’s “legacy of the rightness of his cause . . . undefiled by the wrongness of his conviction.”
The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allowing racial segregation across American life stood as the law of the land until the Supreme Court unanimously overruled it in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education. Both cases argued that segregation laws violated the 14th Amendment’s right to equal protection.
Plessy, who was 30 at the time of his arrest, died in 1925 with the conviction on his record.
Police said the father, Adam Montgomery, 31, had legal custody of Harmony. He was arrested on a second-degree assault charge Tuesday, as well as charges of interfering with custody and child endangerment. Police accused him of “purposely violating a duty of care, protection or support” by failing to know where she has been since late 2019 — the last reported sighting of Harmony.
Child welfare worker killed on home visit
Thayer is 23 miles south of the capital city.
Authorities arrived just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and found what appeared to be blood near the door. They forced their way into the house and found the victim dead. Police obtained a search warrant and collected evidence that helped them find Reed at a Decatur hospital, authorities said. He was treated for a minor injury and taken to the county jail. | null | null | null | null | null |
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Long snapper Jacob Bobenmoyer cut a lonely figure at the Denver Broncos practice on Wednesday with both kicker Brandon McManus and punter Sam Martin on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
“I’ve learned a lot from Coach Fangio since I’ve been in this league,” Lock said. “... I mean, you become a way better player being able to go against his defense. And even when you get to talk to him off the football field just about certain tendencies he might see on a team that you’re playing this week, there’s been a lot of benefits to having him as a head coach.” | null | null | null | null | null |
When the streets are cleared and we think back on this week’s snowstorm, the largest since 2019, many of us will remember images that showed adults throwing snowballs on the National Mall, children sledding on neighborhood hills, and those stuck-in-place cars and trucks that lined Interstate 95 for more than a day.
“This morning when I arrived at the New Jersey & O St encampment site, there were a number of case workers, advocates and community members helping several residents who had not been housed pack up their belongings,” D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) tweeted that day. “There was confusion among encampment residents — some did not know if they were receiving a housing resource, hotel, or if they need to pack up and find a new location to sleep tonight. Some were feeling uncertain about their future, not knowing exactly how long the resources offered, if any, would last.”
She introduced an emergency bill that would have forced the city to halt encampment evictions during the coldest months. The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. ran on its website a piece that described the vote on the bill as “a life-or-death matter for thousands of unhoused people across the District.” On Dec. 21, as my colleague Marissa J. Lang reported, the D.C. Council rejected that bill.
On Tuesday, she sent an email to the mayor, a D.C. Department of Human Services official and several council members. In it, she describes how “Ms. Lenia” was displaced from the encampment, how she sat at that bus stop “wet and distraught,” and how she still needs a housing voucher and wraparound services. | null | null | null | null | null |
Classes canceled as Chicago teachers vote to defy in-person learning order
Union, responding to the covid surge, opted to stay home until Jan. 18
Students leave Darwin Elementary in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood on Monday, the first day back to school from winter break. (Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service)
Chicago Public Schools closed Wednesday after the teachers union defied the city’s order to report to classrooms, prompting flashbacks to the last year’s battles and leaving parents scrambling to find last-minute child care.
The city of Chicago called off school after the Chicago Teachers Union voted overwhelmingly Tuesday night to stay home, insisting on a return to remote learning during a winter surge in coronavirus infections.
"The only thing we can control is whether we go into the buildings,” Jesse Sharkey, the union president, said Wednesday. “Right now, going into schools puts us at risk, puts students and families at risk, of contracting the coronavirus.”
He said teachers would not to come back before Jan. 18 unless the surge in cases subsides or the union reaches an agreement with the city, chiefly on additional virus testing.
The union’s chief demand was for an effective coronavirus testing program for students, a process that has gone far more smoothly in other cities. In Chicago, the district encouraged students to take coronavirus tests near the end of the winter break but thousands of those tests were deemed invalid.
The union’s step marked a sharp clash with the White House, where President Biden has repeatedly said he wants schools to be open. “We know that our kids can be safe when in school,” he said Tuesday. His education secretary, Miguel Cardona, has repeatedly said the same, and press secretary Jen Psaki repeated the message Wednesday when asked about Chicago.
The Chicago group’s action also represented a departure from its own parent union, the American Federation of Teachers. AFT president Randi Weingarten has been delivering a message that schools need to be open for months, and a high-profile action by one of her biggest locals undercuts that message.
“We got it right for most of this current school year,” she said Wednesday in a neutral message. “Now the adults must work together and double down to get it right as we confront this surge.”
Politically, the showdown was perilous for Democrats, who are already blamed by many voters for school closings last year. In the run-up to this year’s elections, Republicans have been working to pin school chaos on the Democrats, and closing schools for what could be an extended period in the country’s third-largest district could feed that line of attack.
“What is happening in Chicago with all the school closures is devastating,” former president Donald Trump said in a statement. He said Democrats were sowing divisions “while our kids sit at home watching their futures vanish.”
Tracking by the data firm Burbio found 3,461 schools were not offering in-person school on Wednesday, including 653 in Chicago, a total that has risen over the past few days but still represents a fraction of nearly 100,000 K-12 schools in the country. The vast majority of school districts have remained open, even with the omicron surge.
School systems in Cleveland, Atlanta and Newark have switched to virtual learning. But the vast majority of schools opened Monday or plan to reopen this week. In most cases, where closures are needed, districts are moving individual schools to virtual education while keeping the rest of the district in person. Burbio tracking shows the closures are concentrated in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
The Center for Reinventing Public Education, which has been tracking 100 large urban school districts since the pandemic began, said 12 of those districts were disrupted on Tuesday for coronavirus-related reasons. It found four of them were closed entirely due to the pandemic, five were in remote learning and six closed at least one campus but were otherwise open. An additional three districts were closed due to weather.
Even when open, many districts were scrambling, often with teacher shortages that were already acute before the recent surge forced more teachers out of the classroom, either because they were sick or caring for sick children. In San Francisco on Wednesday, there were 693 requests for substitutes including 414 by classroom teachers. Just 164 were covered by substitutes. Administrators tried to fill the gaps, including Superintendent Vincent Matthews, who covered a middle school science class.
As with the Chicago union, the United Educators of San Francisco, which represents schoolteachers and paraprofessionals, was pushing for more coronavirus testing in schools. But unlike Chicago, union President Cassondra Curiel said there was no discussion of trying to force school to go virtual.
“We haven’t had that conversation in a very long time,” she said.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents about 120,000 employees in New York City schools, had pushed newly inaugurated Mayor Eric Adams to switch to remote learning but went along with a full return this week after assurances that the city would deal with any problems that came up.
Mulgrew said he was particularly concerned that staff shortages would lead to huge combined classes. But he said Wednesday that Adams had kept his word to quickly deploy administrators to fill gaps where they appeared.
“He proved me wrong in terms of the redeployment. I’ve never seen them move so fast,” he said. “Teachers are telling me, ‘I’m anxious, I’m fearful, I have my doubts, but it’s real simple if my kids are here I want to be here.’ ”
In Chicago, the relationship between the teachers union and the city political leadership has long been far more toxic. In 2019, teachers went on an acrimonious strike that lasted 11 days. Late Tuesday, close to 90 percent of the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates voted in favor of shifting to remote learning, along with more than 70 percent of its members, the union said in a statement.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded angrily.
“I have to tell you. It feels like Groundhog Day. That we are here again at this hour ... after everything that we’ve got through,” she said late Tuesday.
She added: “Nobody signs up for being a home-schooler at the last minute.”
In New York City, where cases rose more than 500 percent in the last 14 days, public schools reopened as planned on Jan. 3. (Reuters) | null | null | null | null | null |
A previous version of this story included the incorrect gender for René Nuñez, who is a man.
Vierk, a former chef who is taking a break from restaurants, had often visited Berkeley’s tool-lending library when she lived in the Bay Area. When she moved to Chicago in 2016, she wanted to start a community project of some kind and was amazed that nobody had opened a tool-lending library. | null | null | null | null | null |
“While my commitment to making incarceration a matter of last resort is immutable, the path to get there through these policies will be dynamic, and not static, and will be informed by our discussions and our work with trial lawyers, law enforcement and others in the weeks and months ahead," he said in a statement to The Washington Post. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the past few years, the United States has witnessed substantial growth in a domestic extremist movement committed to using violence to overturn our democracy. The warped ideas that motivated the insurrection — the demonization of our fellow Americans, the unwillingness to accept the results of an election unless your side wins and racially motivated conspiracy theories — are growing. Astonishingly, recent polling suggests as much as 34 percent of Americans would condone the use of violence against the government for political purposes.
This begins with a commitment to a new type of American patriotism, one rooted in a humility and honesty that recognizes our faults. We will overcome our challenges as a nation only by recognizing the problems of our past and how they shape our future. This requires an unrelenting commitment to the truth. | null | null | null | null | null |
Those who beat cops with American flags should serve long jail sentences. But the most important lesson from that tragic day may come from deconstructing how plutocrats and trust-fund babies deployed propaganda campaigns to push that bloodthirsty mob up the Capitol steps.
Just as the Bakkers used the Gospel of Jesus Christ to prey on gullible viewers, these right-wing billionaires and their allies are trying to brainwash millions of Americans into believing the U.S. government is deploying Afghanistan War helicopters to launch domestic attacks against them, that the FBI is purging patriots from society and that the “deep state” staged the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag” to strip citizens of their constitutional rights.
These hate-filled hysterics spewed against the United States have been punctuated by verbal assaults targeting military heroes, the slandering of the U.S. intelligence community and a barrage of fire against the nation’s democratic voting system that would make Vladimir Putin blush with pride. These are the kind of anti-American screeds that fueled the Capitol riot, and they have been preached with increasing intensity since that tragic day.
The targets of their misinformation campaign now await trial or languish in jail while the authors of these phony crises sleep comfortably in their marbled mansions and beachside resorts. They are free to travel the world on their super yachts or private jets while Jan. 6 defendants beg for their freedom in federal court.
Maybe that explains why every Republican presidential nominee this century has come from the United States’ most powerful families and graduated from the country’s most elite universities. Their fathers ran automobile companies, Midwest industrial states, the United States Navy, New York real estate empires and the country itself. I can hear the voice of my grandmom saying, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” While we have not inherited the wealth and power of these American oligarchs, we have been given a republic. Let us spend the next year doing what we can to save it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Taylor Heinicke remembers not too long ago when the prospect of playing for a nameless team seemed like the least appealing option — if he ever got another opportunity in the NFL. Now, after a season spent starting for one, he could be an unofficial record-holder: the most prolific Washington Football Team quarterback.
“Well, I guess that’s a good record to hold,” he said with a smile Wednesday.
In July 2020, amid mounting pressure from team sponsors, local officials and Native American activists, the franchise retired its old name after 87 years and began a lengthy process to find a new identity. Washington Football Team was meant to be a placeholder, but the team never officially ruled it out as a long-term identity. The 18-month rebranding created a guessing game for fans, but it also has elicited a mixed reaction, ranging from outright disapproval of the name change to optimism about a fresh start.
As the lead football decision-maker and primary voice of the franchise, Rivera has played a part in the rebranding process and was privy to the final candidates for the new name. Tuesday’s video included the moment when Rivera first saw the new helmets, which were blurred for viewers to conceal the design.
“When I wasn’t playing, it was like, ‘What team would you want to play for?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, you don’t want to play for the team with no name,’ ” Heinicke said. “You just want to be on a team and want to play football. It’s definitely an odd time. It’s also an exciting time. … Supposedly the uniforms are awesome. It’s an exciting time for the fan base and for us. We’re excited to get that name and get going.” | null | null | null | null | null |
North Korea says it tested a new hypersonic missile in its second launch since September
A view of what North Korea's state news agency KCNA reports is the test-firing of a hypersonic missile at an undisclosed location on Jan. 5. (Kcna/Via Reuters)
Pyongyang on Wednesday test-fired what its neighbors said was an apparent ballistic missile, in defiance of several United Nations Security Council resolutions banning such tests.
North Korean state media reported Thursday that the missile was a “hypersonic gliding warhead,” and included photos that confirmed it was one of the new models displayed at a defense exhibition in the fall. According to experts, Pyongyang is developing that model to eventually carry nuclear warheads.
Hypersonic weapons fly fast at low altitudes and are much easier to maneuver than traditional ballistic missiles, making them difficult to both track and intercept. They are some of the latest warfare technology being developed by major military powers such as China, Russia and the United States.
North Korea first test-fired a hypersonic missile in September after leader Kim Jong Un announced what he said was a wishlist of advanced weapons earlier in the year.
As nuclear talks with Washington have stalled, Kim has turned his focus on developing tactical nuclear weapons. The aim, experts say, is to be able to respond to attacks closer to home, evade missile defense systems and reach U.S. forces stationed in South Korea and Japan in case of war.
Pyongyang said that in Wednesday’s test, the glider successfully detached from its rocket booster, maneuvered 120 kilometers (75 miles) and hit a target 700 kilometers (435 miles) away. North Korea also announced that the new weapon can operate in winter weather — an apparent response to previous criticisms of their technological limitations in colder temperatures.
New photos released Thursday showed that the new model looked similar in design to weapons developed by the United States in the 1980s and more recently by South Korea, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
“It is a step forward [in the North’s weapons program]. It’s a step that the United States took in the 1980s and the South Koreans took several years ago," Lewis said. "So it’s not some wild new science fiction technology, but it does improve their ability to deliver nuclear weapons against targets in South Korea and evade missile defenses.”
South Korea’s presidential National Security Council held an emergency meeting on Wednesday and expressed concern about the latest test, and "stressed the need for resumption of talks with North Korea in order to resolve the tension in the inter-Korean stalemate,” according to a statement.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s outgoing President Moon Jae-in said he plans to continue pursuing peace talks with the regime in his final months in office. Hours after the missile launch, Moon attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a “peace” railway that he anticipates will reopen railroad connection to the North.
“If the inter-Korean railroad is reconnected, we will make strides on our path to peace,” Moon said at Jejin station in the northeast corner of South Korea. He said the train connection will serve as “a basis for economic cooperation between South and North Korea.”
The project to reconnect the inter-Korean rail was launched as a centerpiece of President Moon’s overture toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their first meeting in 2018. However, the project saw little progress amid stalled nuclear talks and ongoing international sanctions on North Korea. | null | null | null | null | null |
This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says a test launch of a hypersonic missile in North Korea Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS) | null | null | null | null | null |
Earthships have long been an offbeat curiosity for travelers, but through the lens of climate change, they suddenly look like a housing haven
Earthships were first built in the arid climate of Taos, N.M., maximizing abundant sunlight while using all they can from about eight inches of rainfall per year. (Ramsay de Give for The Washington Post)
At this Earthship community in New Mexico, renters can give sustainable living a try
A typical Earthship can produce 25 to 50 percent of the food its residents need, depending on a multitude of factors including diet, climate and how much time is spent on garden maintenance, said Phil Basehart, a construction team leader. If you follow a plant-based diet, you may never have to visit a grocery store again. This appeals not only to rugged survivalists, but to people suddenly worried about where their food will come from after the pandemic. “We got more business because of it,” Basehart said. “People were looking at this as their panic room, so to speak.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Alex Ovechkin has 24 goals this season. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
With an unassisted goal five minutes into the first period in Washington’s inaugural game Oct. 9, 1974, Jim Hrycuik gave the Washington Capitals a 1-0 lead at Madison Square Garden. The ensuing 10:37 — before New York Rangers forward Greg Polis evened the score in New York’s eventual 6-3 win — and another stretch of 3:06 in the second period were the only points in the Capitals’ 47-season history when the franchise had a positive all-time goal differential. That could change soon.
The Capitals, who return to action Friday against the St. Louis Blues, have scored 11,565 goals and allowed 11,570 in 3,667 regular season games, a cumulative goal differential of minus-five. Passing the break-even point for the first time since the second period of the first game of a dreadful debut campaign would be a trivial but interesting accomplishment for a franchise that spent its first decade of existence on the wrong end of many a lopsided score.
Washington finished 8-67-5 in 1974-75, winning one game away from Capital Centre and posting a minus-265 goal differential that still ranks as the worst in NHL history. Defenseman Bill Mikkelson’s plus-minus of minus-82 that season remains a league record for futility.
Things got worse before they got better for the Capitals, who posted a negative goal differential in each of their first eight seasons, including a minus-170 during the 1975-76 campaign that ranks as the fifth worst all-time. By the end of the 1981-82 season, the franchise had allowed 794 more goals than it had scored. It’s no surprise that the players with the worst career plus-minus in a Capitals uniform were members of those early teams, led by Rick Green’s minus-137 from 1976 to 1982 and Gord Smith’s minus-136 from 1974 to 1979.
The nadir arrived early in the 1982-83 season. On Oct. 30, 1982, Blues forward Brian Sutter gave St. Louis a 2-0 lead over Washington 14 seconds into the second period of a game at the Checkerdome, dropping the Capitals’ all-time goal differential to minus-810. Washington responded with five consecutive goals in a 6-5 win. The Capitals scored 23 more goals than they allowed that season and clinched their first playoff berth. It would be 15 years before Washington would allow more goals than it scored in a season again.
The Capitals posted a plus-17 goal differential during the 1997-98 season, which ended with their first Stanley Cup finals appearance, bringing their all-time total to minus-316. The count was minus-465 entering the 2007-08 season, which was the first of 13 playoff appearances over the next 14 seasons and the start of the franchise’s latest sustained surge toward zero.
Since Alex Ovechkin entered the league in 2005, Washington’s regular season goal differential is plus-349. The Capitals have had a positive goal differential in 12 of Ovechkin’s 16 full seasons, including a plus-86 in 2009-10 that ranks as the best mark in franchise history.
By the end of the 2017-18 season, which culminated in the team’s first Stanley Cup title, the Capitals had allowed only 111 more regular season goals than they had scored. They have chipped away at that number with three-plus seasons of positive goal differentials since, including a plus-29 through 34 games this season.
(Note: In NHL standings, a victory in a shootout counts as one goal for, while a shootout loss counts as one goal against. This season’s standings indicate the Capitals’ goals for and goals against are 119 and 89, respectively, but the team actually has scored 117 goals and allowed 88 goals in regulation or overtime. For the purposes of this extremely important story, which will in no way jinx the Capitals in their pursuit of an arbitrary mark most people didn’t even realize they were approaching, goals awarded for shootout wins and losses are not included.)
A few NHL teams are hovering around the all-time break-even point along with the Capitals, including a pair of Original Six franchises in the Toronto Maple Leafs (plus-1) and New York Rangers (plus-25). The Montreal Canadiens own the best all-time goal differential in the league, having scored almost 3,500 goals more than they have allowed in their 104 seasons. The Arizona Coyotes, including their years as the Winnipeg Jets, have the worst all-time goal differential at minus-1,109. | null | null | null | null | null |
Cordeiro’s decision was not well received by superstar Megan Rapinoe, leader of the women’s long-standing equality efforts. In a tweet reacting to an ESPN story about Cordeiro’s plans to run, the veteran winger questioned whether he had resigned under pressure or “embarrassed everything and everyone with caveman levels of misogyny?”
Since Cordeiro’s departure, the players and federation have settled issues involving working conditions but remain divided on the equal-pay issue. The players appealed a 2020 ruling that denied their claim for more than $66 million in damages. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 7. | null | null | null | null | null |
Antonio Brown says he had serious ankle injury against Jets: ‘I didn’t quit. I was cut’
Antonio Brown released a statement through his attorney Wednesday. (Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media via AP)
Antonio Brown said Wednesday that he was suffering from a serious ankle injury and was unable to reenter Sunday’s game for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the New York Jets in East Rutherford, N.J. Brown then discarded his jersey and pads on the sideline and left the field shirtless only after being told that he was done with the team, he said.
“I didn’t quit,” Brown said in a lengthy written statement issued through his attorney. “I was cut. I didn’t walk away from my brothers. I was thrown out. Being fired on the sideline for having a painful injury was bad enough. Then came their ‘spin.’ Coach denied on national television that he knew about my ankle. That’s 100 [percent] inaccurate. Not only did he know I missed several games with the injury, he and I exchanged texts days before the game where he clearly acknowledged my injury.”
Brown said that he will undergo surgery for his ankle injury. He did not refer to Bucs Coach Bruce Arians by name but appeared to chronicle a sideline verbal dispute with Arians during Sunday’s game that led to Brown’s exit.
The Buccaneers declined to immediately respond Wednesday night to Brown’s statement. Arians said after Sunday’s game that Brown was no longer a member of the team. The coach then said Monday that his interactions with Brown on the sideline during Sunday’s game did not include any discussions of Brown suffering from an ankle injury.
The Buccaneers have not released Brown. The team has been in discussions with the NFL this week about procedural steps and the designation that the Buccaneers will use for him, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. The NFL Players Association also has been involved, according to another person with knowledge of the discussions. Brown reportedly was not on hand for the Buccaneers’ practice Wednesday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Veteran tackle Charles Leno Jr. arrived in Washington last May and quickly emerged as a valuable piece of its offense. (Matt Rourke/AP)
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, the team agreed to a three-year, $37.5 million contract with veteran tackle Charles Leno Jr. on Wednesday, ensuring one of its key veterans and offensive leaders sticks around for a bit longer.
According to one person, the team had early discussions with Leno’s representatives earlier in the season, but it wasn’t until late December when it reached out again to get a deal done. Although talks were slow moving at first, an agreement came together quickly Wednesday.
The move comes just seven months after Leno, 30, was abruptly released by the Chicago Bears and swooped up by Washington on a one-year deal. His short-term contract was essentially a tryout to fill a significant hole on the line; Washington hoped it would lead to more, but it wasn’t guaranteed a long-term fix at the position.
But in 16 games, Leno has emerged as one of the team’s most consistent linemen. He leads Washington with 1,062 offensive snaps (99.4 percent of the offensive snaps) and ranks among the league’s most efficient pass-blocking tackles, according to Pro Football Focus.
He has also proved to be a valued leader for a team with many young players.
“I had Charles in Chicago as well,” fellow tackle Cornelius Lucas said last week. “He’s just an all-around pro. The same guy every day. … That’s someone you can look at and just clock your watch to each day, if that makes sense.”
After trading Trent Williams to the San Francisco 49ers in early 2020, Washington turned to Geron Christian (no longer on the team) and Lucas (a key reserve and impending free agent) to take over at left tackle. Although the latter impressed as a reserve in 2020, the team needed more consistency in protecting the quarterback’s blind side.
Rivera has noted how he often sees Leno talking to younger players from both offense and defense to help them along. Before games, Leno is often working alongside younger offensive linemen, working on technique or offering advice. | null | null | null | null | null |
Australian Open courtesy cars parked outside Melbourne Airport ahead of the Australian Open in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022. Serbia’s Novak Djokovic had received the medical exemption he needed to play at the Australian Open but the tennis champion had his visa cancelled and was prevented from entering the country. (AP Photo/Hamish Blair) | null | null | null | null | null |
Tackle Charles Leno Jr. joined Washington in May and quickly emerged as a valuable piece of its offense. (Matt Rourke/AP)
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, the team agreed to a three-year, $37.5 million contract with tackle Charles Leno Jr. on Wednesday, ensuring one of its key veterans and offensive leaders sticks around for a bit longer.
According to one person, the team had early discussions with Leno’s representatives earlier in the season, but it wasn’t until late December when it reached out again to get a deal done. Although talks were slow at first, an agreement came together quickly Wednesday.
The move comes just seven months after Leno, 30, was abruptly released by the Chicago Bears and scooped up by Washington on a one-year deal. His short-term contract was essentially a tryout to fill a significant hole on the line; Washington hoped it would lead to more, but it wasn’t guaranteed a long-term fix at the position.
But in 16 games, Leno has emerged as one of the team’s most consistent linemen. He leads Washington with 1,062 offensive snaps (99.4 percent) and ranks among the league’s most efficient pass-blocking tackles, according to Pro Football Focus.
He also has proved to be a valued leader for a team with many young players.
“I had Charles in Chicago as well,” fellow tackle Cornelius Lucas said last week. “He’s just an all-around pro, the same guy every day. … That’s someone you can look at and just clock your watch to each day, if that makes sense.”
After trading Trent Williams to the San Francisco 49ers in early 2020, Washington turned to Geron Christian (no longer with the team) and Lucas (a key reserve and impending free agent) to take over at left tackle. Although the latter impressed as a reserve in 2020, the team needed more consistency in protecting the quarterback’s blind side.
Rivera has noted how he often sees Leno talking to younger players from both the offense and defense to help them along. Before games, Leno is often working alongside younger offensive linemen, drilling on technique or offering advice. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kazakhstan’s Internet was blacked out Thursday, with national banking services reportedly suspended, as the country entered a fifth day of sweeping protests against its government. The country also braced for the entrance of peacekeepers from a Russian-led military alliance, hours after a regional leader answered beleaguered Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s appeal for support.
Demonstrations that started over the weekend in Kazakhstan’s oil-rich western region over high energy prices spilled over elsewhere, including into the country’s largest city, Almaty. Protesters stormed government buildings and briefly took over Almaty airport. Part of their anger appeared to be aimed at Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s authoritarian former president, who continues to exert significant power behind the scenes as “father of the nation.”
A near-complete Internet blackout that started midday Wednesday persisted into Thursday morning according to NetBlocks, the global Internet monitor. Access was partially restored during Tokayev’s televised speech, but the disruption returned shortly after.
Tass, the Russian government news agency, reported early Thursday that the stock exchange and almost all banks in the country would temporarily halt operations.
Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s wealthiest and No. 2 most populous country and the widespread unrest, along with the potential entrance of Russia-linked forces, stirred concerns in regional capitals and Washington.
About a fifth of Kazakhstan’s population are ethnic Russians, and Moscow has in the past deployed peacekeepers to countries that President Vladimir Putin fears are slipping out of his political orbit. Leaders in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine having previously complained that such troops prop up pro-Russian separatist forces.
The public anger against Kazakhstan’s leaders is also likely to be a headache for China, which shares a land border with the country. Beijing has ramped up investment in the Kazakh energy sector as part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. The American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, estimates that Chinese investment and construction projects in Kazakhstan between 2005 and 2021 totaled to more than $34 billion.
China and Kazakhstan celebrated 30 years of diplomatic ties Monday, with Chinese President Xi Jinping sending a congratulatory message to Nazarbayev and Tokayev. Xi called the former an “old friend,” according to Chinese state documents, and said he wanted to collaborate with the two Kazakh leaders to further strategic ties between their countries. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this image from Senate Television video, Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, of Tampa, Fla., front, stands in the well on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. Hodgkins’ attorney wrote in part, “This country has a long history of the public seeking to punish those who are perceived to have done wrong in ‘their’ eyes. .... A significant percentage of our population will ‘cancel’ Mr. Hodgkins because of 15-minutes of bad judgment, casting stones in his directions, all the while never fully realizing their own indiscretions and hypocrisy.” (Senate Television via AP) (Uncredited/Senate Television) | null | null | null | null | null |
Biden Must Hold Ethiopia’s Abiy Accountable
Could Joe Biden become the first American president to sanction a Nobel Peace Prize winner for war crimes and human-rights abuses? As the U.S. steps up efforts to end Ethiopia’s bloody civil war, it must reckon with credible reports that the government of the 2019 laureate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed instigated the conflict and covered up gross abuses.
Biden’s envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, arrives in Addis Ababa today to advocate peace talks between the Ethiopian government and rebels in the northern region of Tigray. Now in its second year, the war has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions. It is in a stalemate, with Abiy at a slight advantage: His federal forces have regained territory lost in early November but are unable to make headway into Tigray. The rebel leadership claims to have made a strategic retreat and has indicated a willingness to hold peace talks.
Abiy has ramped up air strikes, using drones acquired from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which have killed scores of Tigrayans. A land offensive would be much bloodier, for both sides. But the prime minister will likely want a thrust deep into Tigray before agreeing to any meaningful parleys. For one thing, this would give him the upper hand in any negotiations. For another, having portrayed himself as a military leader — in the time-honored fashion, he visited the frontlines dressed in fatigues — he needs something that at least looks like a victory.
Feltman’s first order of business should be to restrain Abiy. The prime minister has thus far been immune to persuasion and to punitive economic measures, such as the suspension of European aid and the blocking of duty-free access to the U.S. market. But these, in effect, punish all Ethiopians for the actions of their leaders.
More targeted measures are called for. Biden has threatened to use sanctions to end the fighting, but has only imposed them on the third party to the conflict — the government of neighboring Eritrea, which entered the civil war on Abiy’s side. It is time to call out and sanction Ethiopians, on both the Tigrayan and government sides, who have enabled or committed crimes and abuses.
Despite the hurdles put up by the government, human rights agencies and humanitarian groups have been tabulating offenses by all combatants. Even as officials in Addis Ababa talk up war crimes ascribed to the rebels, they have suppressed information of wrongdoing — including mass rape and the recruitment of child fighters — by government forces and allied militias. Fislan Abdi, the minister Abiy tasked to document abuses, told the Washington Post last week that she was told to sweep inconvenient facts under the carpet. She resigned.
That brings up the question of Abiy’s culpability. His government claims the rebels sparked the civil war when they attacked a military base, but it is now becoming clear that the prime minister had been preparing an assault on the northern region long before then. As the New York Times has reported, Abiy plotted with the Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki against the Tigrayans even as the two leaders negotiated an end to decades of enmity between their countries in 2018 — the deal that won Abiy his Nobel.
The prime minister was apparently counting on the Peace Prize to draw attention away from the preparations that he and Isais were making for war against their common enemy: the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Although the Tigrayans are a minority in multiethnic Ethiopia, the TPLF ran the government for the best part of three decades before Abiy’s accession to power. The Eritreans blame the TPLF for the war between the countries. Abiy is from the Oromo, the largest ethnic group, which was long denied a fair share of power by the Tigrayans.
Since he became prime minister, Abiy has systematically marginalized Tigrayans in the central government. The civil war has provided cover for crimes by government officials and forces. In the most recent example, says Human Rights Watch, thousands of Tigrayans repatriated from Saudi Arabia have been subjected to abuses ranging from arbitrary detention to forcible disappearance.
Abiy is hardly the first Nobel laureate to have brought dishonor to the prize. But, for obvious reasons, American presidents are leery about deploying sanctions against those who have been ennobled as peacemakers.
George W. Bush considered sanctioning Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, joint winner in 1994, but eventually thought better of it. For all his recklessness, Donald Trump could not bring himself to sanction Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, winner in 1991, for her government’s gruesome treatment of the Rohingya minority, and targeted only the country’s military commanders. (Ironically, those same commanders would go on to overthrow the civilian government and imprison Suu Kyi.)
Biden might do well to follow Trump’s example and target senior Ethiopian officials while giving Abiy a Nobel pass. Still, if the prime minister doesn’t take heed, he may well find himself in an ignoble category all of his own. | null | null | null | null | null |
BRISBANE, Australia — Novak Djokovic’s chance to play for a 10th Australian Open title was thrown into limbo when the country denied him entry and canceled his visa because he failed to meet the requirements for an exemption to COVID-19 vaccination rules.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Titans have made the easy move opening the 21-day window for Derrick Henry to practice.
PITTSBURGH — Sidney Crosby and Evan Rodrigues scored 12 seconds apart in the third period, and the Pittsburgh Penguins rallied to beat the St. Louis Blues 5-3 for their ninth straight win. | null | null | null | null | null |
The E.U. continues to sanction Belarus. Some Belarusians agree.
But our surveys reveal why that support may be waning.
A Polish soldier secures the Polish-Belarusian border near the village of Czeremcha in eastern Poland on Dec. 17. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have seen increased migratory pressure on their borders with Belarus, due to what they say is a destabilization policy orchestrated by the Belarusian government in retaliation for E.U. sanctions. (Wojtek Jargilo/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
By Felix Krawatzek
In December, the European Council adopted its fifth package of sanctions against Belarus, a move the E.U. took to protest the “continued human rights abuses and the instrumentalization of migrants.” The latest sanctions package imposes restrictions on 17 individuals, including judges — and 11 entities, including Belavia Airlines, tour operators and hotels that allegedly helped encourage and organize illegal border crossings at the borders to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Policy makers and analysts know that sanctions on their own are unlikely to topple the regime, or force Belarus’s president to behave better towards his citizens. These sanctions potentially signal to Belarusians that the E.U. is coordinating its foreign policy, taking an interest in Belarus, condemning human rights abuses and supporting democratic principles. But how do Belarusians interpret that signal?
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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko responded with a six-month ban on beef and other food imports from selected E.U. countries and the United States effective Jan. 1 — denouncing the joint Dec. 2 sanctions plan from the E.U., U.S., Canada and the U.K.
Since October 2020, the European Union has gradually extended its sanctions against Belarus, in response to the Lukashenko regime’s rigged presidential elections in August 2020 and violent repression of opposition candidates and protesters. The E.U. imposed further sanctions after Belarus forced down an aircraft transiting its airspace last May, and detained Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian dissident on board.
It’s hard to sample public opinion in authoritarian countries
So what do ordinary Belarusians think about E.U. sanctions? The Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin, where we both work, conducted a panel survey among 2,000 Belarusians in December 2020 and June 2021.
Ongoing government repression means that both face-to-face and telephone surveys would risk endangering respondents. Hence, we used an opt-in online survey and quota sampling to access the population aged between 16 and 64, living in towns and cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants, while also reflecting the gender breakdown of the overall population.
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What this all means is that the data fall short of a representative survey of the entire population. But given the current political situation in Belarus, it is likely as good as we can get. The data at the very least provides some insights into the development of attitudes among the target population, which represents roughly 5 million out of an overall adult population of about 7 million in Belarus.
Belarusians care about sanctions — but less than they used to
Panel surveys like this make it possible to ask the same person the same question at different points in time. This allowed us to uncover a significant shift in attitudes between the first wave of surveys in December 2020 and the second wave, conducted in June 2021.
In the June survey, 42 percent of respondents believed the E.U. sanctions to be “very” or “rather” important. This was a drop of 10 percentage points from the responses in December 2020. In June, the number of respondents who believed the sanctions are unimportant increased from 23 percent (in December 2020) to about 28 percent. People also seemed less certain about how to answer this question — the percentage of “unsure” responses went from 22 percent to about 27 percent.
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People in Belarus may be growing less convinced that sanctions are important, given that the Lukashenko regime has tightened control, effectively stifling the opposition. In both sampling periods, there was a clear relationship between people’s engagement with anti-regime politics and their assessment that sanctions were important. We observed a strong correlation between caring about sanctions, voting for opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and participating in anti-government protests.
Other correlations that held true in December 2020 (that men, older people and citizens who are better off were more likely to see sanctions as important) either don’t seem significant in June 2021, or have shifted into reverse. This suggests that people’s views on sanctions are fluid, except for a small and perhaps shrinking group of politically motivated people.
It’s also important to note that people who care about sanctions don’t necessarily think they’re a good idea. Out 2021 survey revealed a clear split on E.U. sanctions: about 40 percent were opposed to them, while 36 percent expressed their support. A further 20 percent did not know how to answer the question, and about 5 percent refused to respond.
These divisions likely reflect the political fragmentation of Belarus society. There are some indications that men are more likely to think that sanctions are important, as are younger people, and those living in Minsk, the capital. But the most important indicator that someone would approve of E.U. sanctions, our surveys found, is whether the respondent voted for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya — who ran against Lukashenko in the August 2020 election — and whether they participated in the protests that followed. With the latest sanctions likely to have more direct effects on the population at large, the core group of pro-sanctions supporters are clearly politically motivated.
Sanctions aim to change the calculations and dynamics within the ruling elite. But sanctions can also influence the opinions of the local population. Our research suggests that many in Belarus may see sanctions as less important, now that Belarus’s authoritarian regime appears to be have consolidated power.
Félix Krawatzek is a senior researcher at the Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin and author of Youth in Regime Crisis: Comparative Perspectives from Russia to Weimar Germany (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Gwendolyn Sasse is the director of the Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin and Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at the Department of Social Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. | null | null | null | null | null |
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