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Opinion: The West has enabled Putin long enough. It is time to stop.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Christmas Mass at the Church of the Image of the Savior Made Without Hands in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow, on Jan. 6. (Alexei Nikolsky/AP)
The Kremlin has an old habit of using the Christmas holidays to bury bad news. Moves that would normally get worldwide attention — such as arresting opposition leader Boris Nemtsov or sentencing prominent regime critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky — were purposefully pushed to the last days of December, when most Western parliamentarians, diplomats and media figures are offline and out of reach and public attention is focused elsewhere.
This past holiday season showcased that tradition once again, except that this time, Vladimir Putin’s regime broke its own record, squeezing months’ worth of repression into a single week.
Two of Russia’s most respected human rights groups — Memorial International, which documents atrocities committed by the Soviet regime, and the Memorial Human Rights Center, which chronicles present-day repression — were shut down at the request of Putin’s prosecutor general. One high-profile political prisoner, Yuri Dmitriev, had his sentence extended from 13 to 15 years; another, Andrei Pivovarov, was denied his appeal to move his hearing from a remote (and journalist-free) location. A prominent opposition lawmaker in Siberia associated with jailed Putin rival Alexei Navalny was indicted on an “extremism” charge that could get her 12 years in prison. The justice ministry issued its latest batch of “foreign agent” designations, slapping the label on a new group of pro-democracy figures, including Russia’s best-known satirical writer, Viktor Shenderovich. Meanwhile, a senior lawmaker from Putin’s party suggested that it is time to start stripping Kremlin opponents of Russian citizenship — as was done to dissidents in the Soviet Union.
And all this in just five days leading up to New Year’s Eve.
If the speed and intensity of Putin’s new wave of repression are surprising, the trajectory is not. As history shows, systems such as Putin’s will continue down the ever-accelerating spiral of internal repression and external aggression until — and unless — they encounter resistance.
That the Kremlin does not (for now) meet organized resistance from its own citizens is hardly surprising given Putin’s two-decade war on Russian society — a war that has included annihilation of independent media and competitive elections, state-driven murders and large-scale political imprisonment, and a brutal crackdown on civic activism and public demonstrations. One day, when the demand for change in Russian society reaches a critical point, none of these barriers will be able to stem the tide. Putin’s falling approval numbers and Russians’ growing fatigue with his geopolitical gambles show the trend clearly, but we are not there yet. As the unfolding events in Kazakhstan demonstrate, political upheavals can begin suddenly.
What is more surprising — indeed, shocking — is the willingness of Western democracies to act as accomplices to Putin, providing him not only with much-needed international acceptance but also with a lifeline in the form of access to Western financial systems — a lifeline the Kremlin uses to challenge the West’s own interests.
Unlike other dictatorships that are shunned by the free world — such as Nicolás Maduro’s in Venezuela or Alexander Lukashenko’s in Belarus — Putin’s kleptocracy is intimately integrated into the global system. His close confidants hold some of the most prized Western real estate, own top English football clubs and get passports from NATO countries. Private Russian assets stashed abroad are estimated to exceed $1 trillion, with much of this wealth likely linked to Putin himself. Inexplicably, the Biden administration has failed to make a single Russia-related designation under the Magnitsky Act, a law intended to seek accountability for human rights abuses by Putin’s officials.
A less-known but perhaps more poignant example was given by Dmitry Muratov, the crusading Russian newspaper editor and Nobel Peace laureate, at last month’s award ceremony in Oslo. Facing a room of Western dignitaries and diplomats, he reminded them that, formally speaking, Navalny was imprisoned by the Kremlin on the basis of a complaint by a French cosmetics company. Yet another small element of Western complicity in Putin’s crimes.
Now, as U.S. and NATO leaders prepare for next week’s talks with Kremlin officials over Putin’s proposed Yalta-style security arrangement in Europe, we hear familiar Western arguments for yet more appeasement. They range from outlandish suggestions to expel the Baltic countries from NATO to the much more troubling call by the German chancellor for a “new start” in relations with Putin.
We know how appeasement ends. The 20th century has provided ample illustration of that, and without exception. Thankfully, there are still voices in Western politics willing to stand on principle — as, for example, the authors of a recent congressional proposal to withdraw U.S. recognition of Putin if he illegally extends his rule beyond 2024. That initiative sent shockwaves through official Moscow.
Vladimir Bukovsky, the famed Russian dissident of the communist era, once noted that too many Western politicians put their desire to fry bacon on Soviet gas above their self-professed values. Fortunately for Bukovsky’s generation, not everyone did. One can only hope that there are still enough leaders in the free world today who are willing to put principle over bacon.
Biden wants to turn Ukraine into a porcupine | null | null | null | null | null |
Securing Cyberspace with Dmitri Alperovitch, Jeremy Sheridan & Tonya Ugoretz
Join Washington Post Live on Thursday, Jan. 13 at 11:00 a.m. ET for a three-part conversation about the growing cyber threat landscape. Hosted by the Washington Post’s national security reporter Ellen Nakashima, this program features assistant director for the Office of Investigations at the United States Secret Service Jeremy Sheridan, deputy assistant director for the Cyber Readiness, Outreach and Intelligence Branch at the Federal Bureau of Investigations Tonya Ugoretz and chair of the Silverado Policy Accelerator Dmitri Alperovitch.
Dmitri Alperovitch
Provided by Silverado Policy Accelerator.
Dmitri Alperovitch is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a non-profit focused on advancing American prosperity and global leadership in the 21st century and beyond. He is a Co-Founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike Inc., a leading cybersecurity company. A renowned cybersecurity visionary and business executive, Alperovitch is a thought-leader on cybersecurity strategy and state tradecraft and has served as special advisor to the Department of Defense. He is a frequent strategic advisor to CEOs and Boards of Directors of public and private companies. Alperovitch is also an active angel investor and board member of multiple high-growth technology companies. He has been named as one of Fortune Magazine’s “40 Under 40” most influential young people in business and Politico Magazine has featured Alperovitch as one of “Politico 50” influential thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics. In 2013, Alperovitch received the prestigious recognition of being selected as MIT Technology Review’s “Young Innovators under 35” (TR35).
Provided by the United States Secret Service.
Jeremy C. Sheridan currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Office of Investigations, where he leads the global investigative mission of the Secret Service, consisting of 161 offices and over 3,000 personnel. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Sheridan was the Assistant Director of the Office of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs, with oversight of the Liaison Division, Congressional Affairs Program, Homeland Security Program, Privacy Office, and Freedom of Information Act Office.
Mr. Sheridan has served in a wide range of supervisory assignments throughout the field, at headquarters and in protective divisions to include the Office of Human Resources, the Presidential Protective Division and the Los Angeles Field Office. While in Los Angeles, Mr. Sheridan was selected to the U.S. Secret Service Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program.
In 2015, Mr. Sheridan was selected as the Deputy Special Agent in Charge of the Vice-Presidential Protective Division (VPD) and in 2017 he was selected as the SES Special Agent in Charge of VPD. After VPD, Mr. Sheridan served as the Deputy Assistant Director in the Office of Training and then was selected as the Deputy Assistant Director in the Office of Investigations, with oversight of twenty domestic
Provided by the FBI.
Tonya Ugoretz is the Deputy Assistant Director in the FBI’s Cyber Division where she oversees national-level cyber policy, analysis of cyber-criminal and national security threats, and partner engagement.
Prior to this position, she spent three years at the Office of the Director for National Intelligence as the first director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), for which she received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
Ms. Ugoretz began government service in 2001 as a Presidential Management Fellow. In 2003, she became the first analyst to serve as the FBI Director’s daily briefer and thereafter served in various roles at FBI and other agencies, including assignments with CIA, Customs and Border Protection, and the National Intelligence Council.
Content from Google Cloud
Shifting from a legacy to a modern mindset on security in 2022
In a segment presented by Google Cloud, Chief Information Security Officer Phil Venables will discuss the state of cybersecurity after a tumultuous year for the industry and its impact across the public and private sectors. From the SolarWinds software supply chain attack fallout to an ongoing, industry-wide effort to patch a major open source software vulnerability last month, recent events have emphasized the need for a fundamental shift in how governments and enterprises address security risks. The cybersecurity situation as it persists today shows the answer is no longer a matter of good security vs. bad security but a matter of legacy vs. modern security practices. By moving to cloud-native technologies, organizations can take advantage of protections that provide security across the software stack and through the entire information processing lifecycle. This technology modernization is an imperative for moving the nation’s critical infrastructure and the businesses that support it forward in defending against the next wave of security threats.
Phil is the Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President of Google Cloud where he leads the risk, security, compliance, and privacy teams. Additionally he oversees a team of security industry experts and leaders in the Google Cybersecurity Action Team who partner with customers on their secure digital transformations.
Prior to joining Google Cloud, Phil was a Partner at Goldman Sachs where he held multiple roles over a long career, initially as their first Chief Information Security Officer, a role he held for 17 years. In subsequent roles he was Chief Risk Officer for the firm’s operational risks, an operating partner in their private equity business and a senior advisor to the firm’s clients and executive leadership on cybersecurity, technology risk, digital business risk, and operational resilience. In addition to this, Phil was a Board Director of Goldman Sachs Bank (USA).
Outside of Google, Phil is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and serves on the boards of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the NYU Stern Business School Volatility and Risk Institute. He also serves on the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board of NIST and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. | null | null | null | null | null |
First, let’s concede that the debate over the “terrorist” label is complicated. Experts note that under federal law, “domestic terrorism” applies to illegal life-threatening acts with the apparent goal of influencing government policy. That might or might not apply here. Still, defendants are not being tried for terrorism, and many haven’t yet been convicted of what they are charged for.
Pointing this out is not meant as whataboutism. This depiction of the left as an all-powerful monolithic enemy, as a full-scale civilizational threat, is absolutely central to the right-wing project as pursued by the likes of those great warriors.
As long as Cruz is calling the left “terrorists” in service of this broader ideological project, he’ll remain in Carlson’s good graces. But when Cruz starts applying this label to the alleged right-wing attackers of police officers on Jan. 6, he must be disciplined severely, because he’s undermining that project. | null | null | null | null | null |
A portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir of Irene Cahen d’Anvers, painted in 1880. It was looted by the Nazis in 1941. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
By Ori Z. Soltes
Ori Z. Soltes teaches at Georgetown University. He is a co-founding director of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and the author of “The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust,” among other books.
One might suppose that the last page has been turned on the narrative of the Holocaust — and certainly of the chapter dealing with Nazi-plundered cultural property — and then something appears that adds another substantial paragraph.
Two recent books do precisely that by way of two very different stories: James McAuley’s “The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France” and Pauline Baer de Perignon’s “The Vanished Collection.”
McAuley’s deeply researched and elegantly written volume plunges into the expansive efforts of a group of successful Jewish families in 19th-century France to shape their place within French cultural identity. These efforts played out against a backdrop of relentless antisemitism. Despite the 1789 revolution’s declarations of equality, some of the key mouthpieces for France’s sense of self refused to accept Jews as truly French, regardless of what they contributed to the national ethos.
McAuley, a Washington Post Global Opinions columnist, explores families — the Rothschilds, Ephrussis, Reinachs, Camondos, Cahen d’Anvers, et al — and the extraordinary art and artifact collections that they amassed, the opulent homes that they created as settings for those collections, and their eventual deeding of those structures and their contents to their beloved France. In counterpoint, he recounts the commentaries by vicious critics like the Goncourt brothers and, above all, the journalist Edouard Drumont — the “pope of antisemitism” — expressing contempt for these individuals, at whose homes they nonetheless frequently partied.
McAuley’s text is not simply focused on dueling sensibilities. He provides an astute and perceptive analysis of each Jewish family and its key figures, and reflects on how we ultimately know little about them beyond their possessions. His account resonates with an appreciation of the paradoxes defining their place in a multicolored if flawed tapestry — and the psychological issues that motivated them.
Above all, he delineates their struggle to present themselves as champions of France. They embraced the revolution’s position regarding universalism — and thus the unequivocal compatibility of being French and being Jewish, despite France’s failures to live up to those assertions. The narrative threads its way to the culminating catastrophe for these and virtually all Jewish families in France and across Europe: the Holocaust.
There is irony in the fact that in 1935, two of the major cultural donations to France — 18th-century-style villas filled with 18th-century objects, one left in his will by Moise Camondo and the other donated by his brother-in-law, Charles Cahen d’Anvers — were immediately met with ecstatic reviews, completely devoid of the antisemitic invective of the previous two generations. For that year, the Nuremberg Race Laws were tightening the Nazi noose around the necks of Jews in Germany, and Nazism was not far from imposing itself on a largely cooperative France.
Among the many quotable lines in McAuley’s volume, one stands out as a concise summary of one of the story’s endings: “By March 1944 . . . the mansion that had once hosted glittering banquets in the fin de siecle, with guests from Marcel Proust to the King of Serbia, now imprisoned sixty Jews,” who would shortly be sent to the French concentration camp Drancy and thence to Auschwitz. Nor is this the only terminus: The epilogue focuses on the moving portrait painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1880 of Irene Cahen d’Anvers as a beautiful little girl with exuberant light-brown hair and a wistful look in her eye — stolen by the Nazis in 1941.
The painting had belonged to Irene’s daughter, Beatrice, whom Irene had abandoned when she divorced her husband in 1902, also abandoning her Judaism for Catholicism. Beatrice perished at Auschwitz, and Irene — who survived the war hiding in Paris — was able to assert a claim and gain possession of the painting in 1946. But in 1949 she sold it to Emil Bührle, a notorious Swiss collector whose wealth derived largely from selling armaments to the Nazis.
McAuley’s nuanced narrative leaves the reader with a range of villains from which to choose, the handful of heroes mostly turned to ashes, like the unique world they shaped — except for the lush array of objects and museums left to be enjoyed by “la patrie,” the fatherland.
Pauline Baer de Perignon grew up in la patrie as a Catholic. Her engrossing “The Vanished Collection” began by happenstance: a passing comment from a cousin engaged in the art world, followed by a piece of paper on which he had written the names of a handful of works by great masters that had once belonged to her great-grandfather and that, her cousin noted, had probably been stolen from him.
The book reads like a detective story; two main issues shape its narrative. One is the story of that great-grandfather, Jules Strauss, well known for his generous contributions of exquisite frames for a number of the masterpieces in the Louvre. Strauss was dispossessed of his cultural property, a fact that was conveniently obliterated from the communal memory of the French cultural world after World War II.
The other is the process through which, gradually, the author came to understand what had happened to her great-grandfather’s collections and came to a deeper understanding of her family identity and heritage.
Strauss, we learn, while directing modest efforts toward building his own art collection, devoted enormous energy to the Louvre frames: He instituted the very idea of taking the framing of paintings seriously. Yet Strauss also possessed interesting and valuable works of art — such as a small drawing by Tiepolo that ended up in the collections of the Louvre, and an intriguing painting by Largilliere, “Portrait of a Lady as Pomona,” which ended up in the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, Germany.
Baer de Perignon’s narrative evolves toward a realization that these works did not make the journey from Strauss’s walls to the storage facilities of these museums along a legitimate path but as part of the typically unstraightforward process of cultural-artifact depredation in which the Nazis were so skilled. Among the ironic — or galling — aspects of the Strauss story was that his home, 60 Avenue Foch, also confiscated by the regime, was requisitioned by senior members of the SS who specialized in black-market operations and the seizure of Jewish property.
Baer de Perignon’s journey takes interesting turns and twists as she becomes a knowledgeable and comfortable denizen of the archives where she eventually uncovers proof that these works did not leave her great-grandfather’s possession — as the director of the Dresden museum would cynically suggest, during the first round of her attempts to regain her family patrimony — because “Herr Strauss was happy to have sold his painting for a decent price.”
In her quest to reclaim tangible connections to Strauss and her family’s past, she begins to wonder how and why her father and two of his first cousins converted, in 1940, to Catholicism. A whole other aspect of the world of Nazi confiscations emerges for her, regarding layered aspects of her family’s — and her own — religious identity.
She comes to recognize the peculiar and willful amnesia from which her family has been suffering during the two generations since the Holocaust. That amnesia set in after Strauss’s widow, Pauline de Baer Perignon’s great-grandmother, filed several claims with the French government for works of art that the French museum bureaucracy refused to acknowledge had been stolen.
The amnesia for the family involving its heritage, both cultural and spiritual, and the amnesia of the French government and museum world, are part of the larger amnesia from which the Western world has suffered since the Holocaust. Both of these books add important chapters to that narrative and its culture-centered story line. Their ultimate theme is about restoring memory — that most significant feature that makes humans human.
THE HOUSE OF FRAGILE THINGS
Jewish Art Collectors
and the Fall
of France
Yale University Press.
THE VANISHED COLLECTION
By Pauline Baer de Perignon
New Vessel Press.
256 pp. $17.95, paperback | null | null | null | null | null |
The Mexican states that include Cabo San Lucas, Cancún and Mexico City — three of the country’s major attractions for foreign visitors — are showing significant upticks in coronavirus cases after a busy holiday travel season.
Baja California Sur, on the western peninsula and home to tourist-heavy Los Cabos, reported a daily high of 615 cases on Dec. 27, the most since reporting 577 near the end of June. Daily cases there steadily increased and last peaked at 806 on Jan. 3.
According to tracking data The Post compiled through Thursday afternoon, Mexico reported 53 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week, compared with 1,121 new cases per 100,000 people in the United States. Over the course of the pandemic, the U.S. has had nearly 58.5 million cases, compared with 4 million in Mexico, which has a population about two and a half times smaller. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bulgarians dive into a lake to catch a wooden crucifix as part of Epiphany Day celebrations in Sofia, on Jan. 6, 2022. (Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s a trend echoed in other countries across southern and eastern Europe. North Macedonia has also shed around 10 percent of its population in the past 20 years, while in 2020, Greece began paying out $2,250 cash bonuses to new parents in an attempt to boost birthrates there.
Bulgaria’s population dropped by 844,000 people, or 11.5 percent to 6.5 million in 2021, according to the preliminary census data from Bulgaria’s National Statistics Institute. The country’s population peaked shortly before the fall of communism at nearly 9 million.
The numbers confirm the “deepening of negative demographic trends” of the past 30 years, the statistics office said. With the exception of the capital Sofia, the population of all districts in the country were in decline. The statistics office put the decline down to both low birthrates and migration.
Bulgaria has the lowest per capita income in the European Union. But since 2014, Bulgarians have been entitled to work and live anywhere in the 27-member border free Eurozone, with many leaving to seek better pay and career options.
While birthrates in Bulgaria are in decline, they are not more so than elsewhere in Europe, with the main demographic crisis being caused by the “constant emigration of educated and qualified people of an active age,” according to a 2018 report on demographics in the country by the German think tank Friedrich Erbert Stiftung. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sidney Poitier with his Oscar statuette in 1964 for “Lillies of the Field.” (AP)
Sidney Poitier was born on Feb. 20, 1927, in Miami, where his parents were selling tomatoes they had grown on their farm in the Bahamas. The family soon returned home, to the desperate poverty of Cat Island. His mother dressed the seven Poitier children in flour sacks.
At his audition, Mr. Poitier’s unintelligible, singsong island accent dismayed theater founder Frederick O’Neal. But O’Neal was in such dire need of male actors that Mr. Poitier was hired with the understanding that he would also moonlight as the theater’s janitor. (To polish his speaking, he bought a radio and studied the diction and intonation of the announcers.)
He had four daughters from his first marriage and two daughters from his second marriage, but a list of survivors was not immediately available. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bulgaria’s population dropped by 844,000 people, or 11.5 percent, to 6.5 million in 2021, according to the preliminary census data from Bulgaria’s National Statistics Institute. The country’s population peaked shortly before the fall of communism at nearly 9 million.
The numbers confirm the “deepening of negative demographic trends” in the past 30 years, the statistics office said. With the exception of the capital, Sofia, the populations of all districts in the country were in decline. The statistics office attributed the decrease to both low birthrates and migration.
Bulgaria has the lowest per-capita income in the European Union. But since 2014, Bulgarians have been entitled to work and live anywhere in the 27-member, border-free euro zone, with many leaving to seek better pay and career options.
Birthrates in Bulgaria are in decline but not more so than elsewhere in Europe, with the main demographic crisis being caused by the “constant emigration of educated and qualified people of an active age,” according to a 2018 report on demographics in Bulgaria by the German think tank Friedrich- Ebert-Stiftung. | null | null | null | null | null |
A truck plows snow early Friday at a rest stop along Interstate 95 outside Dale City, Va. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Unlike Monday’s cementlike pasting, which stranded hundreds of people on area roads and cut power to more than half a million customers, the light, fluffy snowfall Thursday night was rather well-behaved.
About one to six inches fell across the region, with the highest totals in northern Maryland and northwestern Virginia and the smallest amounts in southern Maryland and north-central Virginia. Two to four inches were most common in the immediate Washington area. The pattern of snowfall amounts, increasing from southeast to northwest, was essentially the reverse of Monday’s storm.
The powdery flakes mostly fell between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m., while most people were asleep. With few motorists on the roads, crews were able to keep main thoroughfares clear.
While enough snow fell amid plunging temperatures to leave neighborhood roads slick and give area students yet another day off from school, few other significant disruptions were noted in the region.
Snowfall totals generally ranged from two to three inches inside the Beltway and increased to three to six inches to the north and west. South of Prince William and Prince George’s counties, totals of one to two inches were most common.
In the mountains of eastern West Virginia, six to 12 inches of fresh powder was reported. Near Canaan Valley ski resort, 14.2 inches fell.
In the immediate Washington area, our forecast of one to three inches was right for many areas, with two to three inches most common. However, quite a few locations north and west of the Beltway were in the three-to-five-inch range, entering boom territory.
Our forecast of two to four inches in our far northern suburbs was too low, as four to six inches was most common; these areas also reached our boom scenario totals.
Our prediction of one to two inches was spot on for our southern and southeastern suburbs.
It was as if our northern and southern areas traded places between Thursday night’s and Monday’s snow events. Amounts exceeded forecasts to the north Thursday night, while they topped predictions to the south on Monday.
Our forecast accumulations were a little too low in our northern and western areas for this event, mainly because it was fluffier snow than we anticipated. For a typical snow event, the equivalent of an inch of rain produces about 10 inches of snow. But for this event, snow-to-liquid ratios north of Washington were around 15 to 1, or even 20 to 1, which we didn’t account for well enough. | null | null | null | null | null |
For a book that describes so much unthinkable loss, “By the Grace of the Game” manages to leave the reader smiling quite a bit. The chapter about Ernie losing his older brother, for instance, is followed by one of the more amusing and memorable anecdotes in the entire book, pertaining to a dinner Dan had with Indiana Pacers coach Larry Bird, one of his childhood heroes, while playing for the Pacers’ Summer League team in 2007. That’s no accident.
“Life is joy and pain,” said Dan, who is married with a son — named Solomon, after Dan’s late grandfather — and has another child on the way. “It’s tragedy and triumph. I had learned that from my grandmother and my dad, and I wanted to reflect that truth in the book. There are amazing moments and there are sad and painful moments, and my family certainly has experienced both. I made a lot of intentional decisions to tell a full, rich story that conveys the human experience.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Police: 7-year-old boy, sister, 14, killed in head-on crash
SEAFORD, Del. — A 7-year-old boy and his 14-year-old sister were killed in a head-on crash in Seaford on Thursday, Delaware State Police said.
A 14-year-old Seaford girl traveling in the Kia and her 7-year-old brother were properly restrained, but police said they were pronounced dead on the scene due to their injuries in the collision. Their mother, who was driving, was taken to an area hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Did Kurt Vonnegut have PTSD? And does ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ prove it?
Kurt Vonnegut, pictured in 1981, was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II and survived the bombing of Dresden. But he said he wasn’t traumatized by his experiences. (Photo by: John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine Corps officer, served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author, with Adm. James Stavridis, of “2034: A Novel of the Next World War."
“Listen: ‘Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”
These lines, which begin the second chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s iconic “Slaughterhouse-Five,” echo through Tom Roston’s new book, “The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five.” When I picked up Roston’s book, I expected one part literary biography and one part literary analysis. What I got was a book about time; or, put another way, a book about how Pilgrim (and Vonnegut) became unstuck in time and how this “unsticking” created “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
If you’re reading, you most likely know that “Slaughterhouse-Five” is a quasi-autobiographical novel about Vonnegut’s experiences in World War II. He had an eventful war. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in a cement slaughterhouse in Dresden, the eponymous Schlachthof Fünf (or slaughterhouse-five) of the novel’s title, where he survived the Allied firebombing of that German city, which killed 25,000. The novel closely hews to key episodes in Vonnegut’s experience but extravagantly plays with time, jumping from years before the war to decades after and back again in a single page. “Slaughterhouse-Five” also incorporates elements of science fiction and features aliens from the planet Tralfamadore who experience time differently than we do on Earth. Vonnegut’s book is often categorized as a war novel, but it is about much more than war and, at least to me, feels uncategorizable. Which is probably why it’s beloved and why it endures.
This defiance of categorization is probably why I found myself bristling early on when Roston asserts that his book will seek to answer “whether or not ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ can be used as evidence of its author’s undiagnosed PTSD.” This investigation, which animates much of Roston’s book, seems misguided. Roston himself acknowledges the reductivism he’s engaged in when he writes, “I imagine reducing his book to a clinical diagnosis or, perhaps worse, putting it in the self-help category, would make Vonnegut shudder.” Indeed, I think it would. Nevertheless, Roston soldiers on, casting himself as part literary scholar and part psychoanalytic sleuth. He deconstructs “Slaughterhouse-Five” and the history around the book in search of incontrovertible proof that Vonnegut had what we would today call post-traumatic stress disorder, even though Roston acknowledges Vonnegut’s consistent denials throughout his life that his wartime experiences left him traumatized.
Like Roston, you may think it’s a bit rich to believe that a man who survived the Battle of the Bulge, time as a Nazi prisoner of war and the firebombing of Dresden couldn’t have PTSD. But what is PTSD? Vonnegut, reflecting on his wartime experiences in an interview — in which he described witnessing his Army unit being “wiped out” and later in Dresden seeing “a mountain of dead people” — concluded that those experiences left him “thoughtful.” Could returning from war thoughtful be similar to returning with what we now call PTSD? The difference between the two might tell us about ourselves, and the hyper-sensitized time in which we live, as opposed to shedding new light on Vonnegut.
Contemporary understandings of PTSD seek to define the general through the specific. Can we pinpoint a specific event, a specific trauma (or series of traumas) in a person’s past and, in so doing, understand their struggles in the present? When Vonnegut says his experiences left him thoughtful, this seems a superior diagnosis than that of PTSD. Being thoughtful doesn’t negate the events or the profound way they affect a person; however, the word hints at the individual’s ability to assimilate their experiences into their life and so have agency over them. Ultimately, what differentiates PTSD is that failure of assimilation. But assimilation is a two-way street.
Just as you can’t have a novel without readers, you can’t have the specter of the PTSD-addled veteran without the society in which he or she fails to assimilate. The question then becomes, where does the assimilation failure occur? Is it the job of the individual to assimilate the trauma they might have witnessed into their postwar selves, or is it the job of the society that sent them to war to assimilate those who’ve been touched by the experience — or, made thoughtful — back into that society?
Later in his book, Roston expresses ambivalence about his efforts to saddle Vonnegut with a PTSD diagnosis. This layer of self-doubt enriches his study of “Slaughterhouse-Five” and makes his analysis of Vonnegut more interesting. Roston writes, “We err when we try to pin him down,” and goes on to quote Vonnegut’s daughter, Edith, who said of her father: “Maybe he had PTSD from just being alive. He saw too much. And he felt too much.”
In “Slaughterhouse-Five” Billy Pilgrim’s consciousness flashes forward and backward with abandon, making it difficult for him to hold onto the narrative strands of his life as the past interferes with the present and even the future. The idea of becoming “unstuck in time” is also often associated with PTSD. But it could just as easily be said that it’s a symptom of modern life, a connection that Roston explores at length in the book. Since industrialization — and World War II was the apotheosis of an industrial-age war — it would seem that technology has conspired to accelerate our lives and so unstick us in time. Whether we interpret that unsticking as synonymous with PTSD or grant it a meaning that is less literal seems beside the point. We’re all a little unstuck. And have been for some time.
Ultimately, Roston is happy to leave the question of Vonnegut’s PTSD unresolved, and this is one of the great strokes of the book, because he leaves open a trenchant bit of commentary not only on Vonnegut but on all of us. Roston wrote his book primarily in 2020, amid the pandemic, societal unrest and profound political dysfunction. Given PTSD’s broadening usage and definition, it could be said that it has become a diagnosis for everyone, and so Roston also shows us how — PTSD diagnosis or not — his hero Vonnegut succeeded in writing a book for everybody, one that remains unstuck in time.
The Writer’s Crusade
Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughter-house-Five
By Tom Roston
Abrams. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nine decades later, W.E.B. Du Bois’s work faces familiar criticisms
W.E.B. Du Bois at a conference in Paris in 1949. A new edition of his book “Black Reconstruction,” an influential work of history on the Reconstruction era, is generating the same kinds of critiques that greeted its initial publication in 1935. (AP Photo/Levy)
By Martha S. Jones
Martha S. Jones is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All.”
When he published “Black Reconstruction” in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois challenged Americans to see the years following the Civil War as a counterpoint to the Jim Crow era in the 20th century. During Reconstruction, the nation took steps to ensure that Black Americans, many of them formerly enslaved, could exercise rights once available to White Americans only. As Black men voted and Black Americans remade Southern society, opposition surged. Reconstruction was a brief experiment, lasting less than 15 years. Still, Du Bois explained how formerly enslaved people were pivotal actors during that first attempt to build an interracial democracy. Suppression of those efforts, he argued, foretold the lynchings, disenfranchisement and segregation that troubled the Jim Crow South.
“Black Reconstruction,” published against a backdrop of violence and segregation, met with a vitriolic reception. White writers leveled sharp-tongued critiques. Black journalists assessed the work favorably but with reservations. Despite the early criticism, over time “Black Reconstruction” came to be recognized as a towering analysis of American culture and an important work of history. Nonetheless, the book’s contribution to the understanding of American racism is, nearly 90 years after its publication, still subject to stale objections that echo those heard when it first hit bookstore shelves.
The 2021 release of the Library of America’s edition of “Black Reconstruction,” edited by Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates Jr., confirms the book’s place in the pantheon of great works of enduring influence. Historians today return to Du Bois’s study to understand how Reconstruction, its accomplishments and its disappointments grew out of the legacies of slavery and the divisions of the Civil War. Du Bois underscored the political agency of Black Americans, noting how, among other examples, enslaved people changed the course of the Civil War by stopping work on Southern plantations in what he called a “general strike.” Du Bois challenged historians to stop using history to justify the suppression of Black voting rights. The nation, he urged, needed historians “who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race.”
Today, “Black Reconstruction” is a must-read for scholars in the fields of history, literature, education, political theory, law and conflict studies. But it wasn’t always so. Immediately after its publication, the book was mostly disdained or simply ignored. In those years, Columbia University professor William Dunning and his followers dominated thinking on Reconstruction. This conservative school of thought turned out shoddy studies that labeled the Reconstruction era a “tragedy” that threatened white supremacy by elevating Black Americans to full citizenship. Echoing Dunning School sentiments, University of Chicago historian Avery Craven issued an unvarnished denouncement of Du Bois’s book in January 1936. Craven charged that Du Bois wrote “Black Reconstruction” out of a festering in his soul rather than from his graduate training at the University of Berlin and at Harvard, and his authorship of more than a dozen previous books. “It is, in large part,” Craven mocked, “only the expression of a Negro’s bitterness against the injustice of slavery and racial prejudice.”
Craven characterized “Black Reconstruction” as “history re-written,” not to laud the book’s contribution to the historiographic debates of the time but to malign it as an illegitimate analysis. Du Bois, he asserted, cherry-picked his evidence such that “source materials so essential to any rewriting of history have been completely ignored.” If Du Bois did not include the range of materials Craven expected, it was because, as a more sympathetic reviewer pointed out, he “had not the time, money, and opportunity requisite to permit him to go back to the original sources in all cases.” Du Bois himself openly conceded that he was a Black historian subjected to Jim Crow restrictions in the academy and in the archives.
When Du Bois did plumb the documentary record, he turned to evidence that Craven deemed out of bounds: “abolition propaganda and the biased statements of partisan politicians.” The result, Craven contended, was a “half-baked Marxian interpretation.” He concluded that the book presented a “badly distorted picture” and that Du Bois had overreached.
Black journalists were among the first to closely read “Black Reconstruction.” Henry Lee Moon, writing for Harlem’s Amsterdam News, explained that Du Bois showed how “there could be no serious study and consideration of the period immediately following the civil war which did not view the Negro as being a human being endowed with the same weaknesses and strengths that characterize other races.” But Moon broke with the near-consensus among Black reviewers who praised Du Bois’s scholarship and brilliant style. He found Du Bois’s evidence lacking in some places and warned presciently that “Black Reconstruction” should expect negative reviews from readers on the right and the left.
What Moon could not have imagined is that, today, much of the early criticism has resurfaced. A case in point is Helen Andrews’s recent review of the Library of America’s reissue of “Black Reconstruction.” At times, Andrews appears to borrow directly from Craven, mocking Du Bois, as she writes in the American Conservative, for his “bold attempt to apply a Marxist framework to the Civil War period.” Andrews virtually parrots Craven when she criticizes the book’s “limited sources” and lack of “original archival research,” which Du Bois himself lamented. A senior editor at the American Conservative, Andrews endorses the Dunning School view, as Craven did, when she concludes that “Reconstruction was bad, objectively bad.”
Between Craven in 1936 and Andrews in 2021, historians have produced a small library’s worth of works on Reconstruction. Many build upon Du Bois’s thinking, while some others depart from it. But among these studies, most rare is the historian who fails to reach back to Du Bois’s ideas to explain the genesis of their interpretation. With the rise of the modern civil rights movement, Reconstruction received serious reconsideration, and “Black Reconstruction” became a staple in scholarly debates. Du Bois’s work maintains an unshakable relevance to understanding what some have termed the second American revolution, a brief period when the nation worked toward a multiracial democracy.
Today, we read “Black Reconstruction” to further our thinking about racism and inequality in America, and to heed the book’s call to assess clear-eyed where this country has been and where it still might go.
Black Reconstruction
An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 & Other Writings
By W.E.B. Du Bois
Library of America. 1,085 pp. $45 | null | null | null | null | null |
One man, three wars and the creation of Germany
A statue of 19th-century statesman Otto von Bismarck stands in Berlin. He believed that only war against an external enemy could unify 39 disparate states into modern Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
By Gerard DeGroot
Gerard DeGroot is emeritus professor of history at the University of St. Andrews.
Germany became a nation — the Second Reich — on Jan. 17, 1871. The ceremony to mark unification took place not in Munich, Frankfurt or Berlin, but at the Palace of Versailles. That setting was an indication of the new nation’s fragility. Otto von Bismarck, the architect of unification, understood that to hold the ceremony in a German city would foment jealousy among the fractious states that had reluctantly agreed upon unity. Versailles instead symbolized something distinctly German: namely, victory in the war against France.
Bismarck insisted that unity could be forged only in war. A common struggle against an external enemy would turn Bavarians, Saxons and Prussians into Germans. He engineered three unifying wars: first against Denmark in 1864, then against Austria in 1866 and finally against France in 1870. Before those conflicts, “Germany” was a loose collection of 39 states unable to agree on much of anything. Distinctiveness was the stuff of pride. As Katja Hoyer writes in “Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire,” the new nation was “a mosaic, hastily glued together with the blood of its enemies.”
A nation forged in war, however, required perpetual conflict to preserve that tenuous unity. When Germans looked outward they felt genuinely German; when they looked inward, they perceived myriad points of conflict. Ancient chauvinisms were exacerbated by modern incongruities — between rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic, rural and urban, socialist and conservative. For disparate Germans to come together required a common sense of embattlement. “The system fell because it was flawed from the outset,” argues Hoyer, “built on foundations of war, not fraternity.”
Unification was a work of genius that required a genius to make it work. Bismarck was a cacophony of contradictions: an autocrat who fostered democracy, a fierce Prussian who promoted German nationalism, an ultraconservative who courted socialists, a warmonger who mastered diplomacy. His strength lay in his willingness to defy his own political instincts. Under his supposedly conservative guidance, Germany developed the most advanced social welfare system in the world. Contradictions were tolerated in the pragmatic interest of a strong nation. That was the essence of Bismarckian realpolitik.
Bismarck was fortunate to be left alone to craft his vision, free from monarchical meddling. Kaiser Wilhelm I was a die-hard Prussian who despised the notion of German unity. For him, that ceremony at Versailles was “the unhappiest day of my life” because it led to “the burial of the Prussian monarchy.” He was therefore content to let his chancellor shape the new nation in the manner he saw fit.
Bismarck’s autonomy lasted until 1888, when Wilhelm II assumed the throne. In stark contrast to his grandfather, the new kaiser believed fervently in German nationalism and demanded “our place in the sun.” For Bismarck, that promised disaster. Wilhelm, he argued, was a “hothead [who] could not hold his tongue, was susceptible to flatterers, and was capable of plunging Germany into a war without knowing what he was doing.”
Hoyer describes Wilhelm as “whimsical, outrageous and . . . foolish.” His antics seem delightfully bizarre until we remind ourselves that he was important and powerful. “The kaiser is like a balloon,” Bismarck reflected, “if you don’t keep fast hold of the string, you never know where he will be off to.” Wilhelm, however, did not want to be tethered. He was a neo-absolutist, a 20th-century monarch with 16th-century instincts. “The will of the King is the highest law,” he insisted. “One cannot help but observe similarities to certain modern politicians,” Hoyer reflects.
Wilhelm could not tolerate a strong chancellor. As Hoyer writes, he wanted instead a “sock puppet” to implement his every whim. That proved intolerable for Bismarck, who resigned in 1890. The genius gave way to the buffoon. Thereafter, Germany became the kaiser writ large, the nation’s aspirations an outgrowth of the kaiser’s insecurities. A supremely covetous man, he wanted an empire and a navy because Britain had both. His grandiose desires, writes Hoyer, were eventually achieved, but only “in exchange for diplomatic isolation and looming economic catastrophe.”
Wilhelm did not specifically want a world war, but that was the logical outcome of his erratic behavior. This story, Hoyer reflects, ends “where it had started: in blood and iron,” but “the First World War proved to be too much blood and iron for the young state.”
There’s nothing particularly new in this assessment. The most impressive feature of this book is not its thesis but its brevity. Until now, I didn’t realize that it was possible to write a short book about Germany. Succinctness is an impressive and sadly undervalued quality in an author. A strict word count is a cruel tyrant; difficult decisions about what goes in have to be made and creativity inevitably curtailed. Hoyer nevertheless manages to pepper her trim narrative with some lovely frills. The mark of a really good short book is its ability to inspire curiosity. “Blood and Iron” achieves just that.
Careless historians often draw a straight line from Bismarck to Hitler. That, Hoyer argues, is “simplistic.” There’s much to admire in what Bismarck created and Wilhelm ruined. Important elements of the Second Reich survive in today’s Germany, a nation widely respected as stable, mature and responsible. What this story reveals is how easily governmental institutions can be destroyed when people are led astray by intoxicating notions of a place in the sun. That, perhaps, is a lesson for us all.
Blood and Iron
The Rise and Fall of the German Empire
Pegasus.
253 pp. $27.95 | null | null | null | null | null |
As the world enters year three of the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington Post Live talks about what challenges and opportunities lay ahead the next six months, as vaccines and variants continue to change the landscape for public health security. On Monday, Jan. 10 at 10:30 a.m. ET, former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, and emergency physician and professor of health policy Leana S. Wen, MD, discuss the latest developments with the omicron variant and what this means for the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the storm wasn’t a blockbuster in terms of amounts, snowfall rates along the Interstate 95 corridor were expected to briefly approach or exceed two inches per hour. That surpassed the capacity of what road crews could handle, making for treacherous travel and, in some locales, grinding traffic to a halt.
The snow was winding down in eastern New England along the Boston to Providence corridor around 10 a.m., with bands of moderate to heavy snow still pivoting southeast over Cape Cod and the Islands. Some ocean-effect snow will linger over the Mid-Cape and Outer Cape through 2 or 3 p.m. before the system withdraws into the Gulf of Maine. Snow was also falling in Downeast Maine and Nova Scotia.
Winter storm warnings were to expire in eastern New England at 4 p.m. with predicted storm totals of four to eight inches from Providence to Portland.
Nashville picked up 6.3 inches, Music City’s greatest calendar-day snowfall since Jan. 22, 2016 and the 12th most on record to fall in a single day. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center even hoisted a “mesoscale discussion” Thursday to address the potential for “rates on the order of 1-2+ inches per hour.”
Lexington, Ky. received 9.9 inches, their seventh greatest single-day snowfall on record; bookkeeping there dates back to 1887.
West Virginia tallied double digit snowfalls, such as in East Birlington, where 10.7 inches was measured. Davis, Pa. also matched that reading. Charleston, W. Va. reported 8.3 inches, its snowiest day since 2016.
Ski areas in the central Appalachians were slammed. Fourteen inches fell near Canaan Valley, W. Va.
As of 7 a.m., La Guardia Airport in the Big Apple had 8.4 inches on the ground, while nearby Bridgeport, Conn. sat beneath 8.2 inches. Central Park in New York was closing in on a half foot, and Newark was up to five inches. Higganum, Conn., about 15 miles south of Hartford near Middletown, topped the charts with 11 inches as of 6:43 a.m.
The snow was tapering down southwest to northeast, but not before making the morning commute a nightmare for those unable to work from home in central and eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. Interstates 95, 495 and 128 were all moving slowly as late as 11 a.m. Friday; traffic was in rough shape all the way up to Bangor, Maine.
“Well, the snowfall has over performed, especially in the mesoscale snow band that developed early this morning,” wrote the National Weather Service in Boston in their morning technical forecast discussion. They had been predicting a maximum of four to eight inches, but Norwood and Mendon had eclipsed 10 inches by sunrise. Cool temperatures filtering into the region on the back side of the system contributed to a greater fluff factor with the snow, and liquid to snow ratios of 1 to 20. | null | null | null | null | null |
While filling in for Drew Gooden, the regular Wizards’ color commentator, Consor has tried to bring his eccentric personality to the television side. His role is to illuminate the game, but also entertain as the kooky sidekick to the strait-laced play-by-play man. The shtick has worked at times — with Consor and Chris Miller waxing poetic about fish grease — but not always. | null | null | null | null | null |
In theory, this seems to be the point, to test out that age-old question: What’s more important, love or money? In practice, the series is exactly like any other awkward dating show you might have seen in the past 20 years. There’s manipulation, fighting, questionable decisions, lots of champagne, a pool party where people strip off their clothes and a contestant being seriously overserved until they break down weeping in a bathroom. | null | null | null | null | null |
Briana Kirkland is demanding “accountability for Trump’s central role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington. The officer was forced to take a year off work after suffering a traumatic brain injury while fending off the pro-Trump mob that breached the Capitol, the complaint says. At one point, she was outnumbered 450 to 1 at one of the Capitol doors and armed with only a baton, the lawsuit alleges.
Kirkland, 29, who has five years’ service on the Capitol force and returned to work only this week, accuses Trump of multiple offenses, including directing assault and battery, as well as aiding and abetting assault and battery. She is seeking at least $75,000 in damages.
Patrick Malone, Kirkland’s attorney, told The Washington Post that Kirkland’s was one of several Jan. 6 lawsuits filed this week on behalf of officers of the Capitol Police and D.C. police. Capitol Police officer Marcus J. Moore and D.C. police officers Bobby Tabron and DeDivine K. Carter are also calling for accountability for Trump’s actions. The lawsuits assert that Trump violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which prohibits mob violence aimed at obstructing the operations of the federal government and its officers, Malone said.
Kirkland’s lawsuit came as President Biden forcefully denounced Trump for his role in the Capitol riot as well as for spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. In a speech from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, Biden unleashed a torrent of attacks against his immediate predecessor. Although he did not use Trump’s name, Biden made 16 references to the “former president,” whom he squarely accused of undermining U.S. democracy.
Other similar legal actions have been brought against Trump by other Capitol Police officers, who have argued that the former president and his confidants should be held responsible for the violent attacks on officers working on Jan. 6, 2021, and for the physical and emotional trauma they say they suffer. In August, seven Capitol Police officers sued Trump and more than a dozen alleged Jan. 6 participants, saying the defendants are responsible for the officers being “violently assaulted, spat on, tear-gassed, bear-sprayed, subjected to racial slurs and epithets, and put in fear for their lives.” This week, Moore sued Trump and accused him of inflicting “physical and emotional injuries” by inciting the riot.
Kirkland was assigned to the Senate side of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the complaint. Members of her unit was told that morning to “gear up” in their hard gear and helmets when they heard that members of the Proud Boys extremist group were headed toward to Capitol from the White House, the lawsuit says. She and about 20 other Capitol Police officers formed a line against what was an “increasingly hostile crowd” in the early afternoon.
That’s when rioters began to push and shove Kirkland, outnumbering her 450 to 1, the lawsuits says. They sprayed substances and threw items at her and her colleagues.
As rioters and the police battled for control of bike rack barriers that were being used as weapons by the mob, she recalled an interaction with one Trump supporter who had “a murderous look in his eyes.” When Kirkland thought the rioter was going to pull her to the ground, she feared she might die, the lawsuit alleges.
Later in the day, Kirkland helped emergency personnel in their efforts to get to Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was fatally shot by a police officer.
Hours later, she had a headache, “but didn’t recall being struck in the head,” according to the lawsuit. The next morning, her vision went “completely black.” She would later see fireworks whenever she opened her eyes, the complaint says. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Why we need a new approach for the omicron phase of the pandemic
More significant is the distinction between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. The U.K. analysis, which looked at the AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, estimated that people with two doses of the vaccine plus a booster shot are 88 percent less likely to be hospitalized than those without vaccinations.
Even if you get the virus, if you are double-vaccinated and boosted, you are still an estimated 81 percent less likely to be hospitalized than if you are unvaccinated. If you get the virus and have had two doses of the vaccine, no booster, you are estimated to be 65 percent less likely to need to be hospitalized. In the United States at least, hospitalization numbers are misleading. For instance, the New York Times reported this week that at two major New York hospitals, around 50 to 65 percent of “covid hospitalizations” were people coming to the hospital for other reasons and then, once there, testing positive for covid.
U.S. health officials have also noted the growing evidence that omicron is less severe than delta. In South Africa, which first reported omicron, even though relatively few have been vaccinated, people were less likely — 80 percent lower, according to one preprint study posted in December 2021 — to be hospitalized for omicron than for other variants. In addition, the Biden administration has ordered 20 million treatment courses of the Pfizer covid pill, though we need more.
The early data — and it is early — suggests two conclusions. First, omicron is far less lethal than the previous variants of the virus. Second, the vaccines, especially with a booster, are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death. That means we are in a fundamentally different situation than we were in March 2020, when the coronavirus was sweeping around the world. We do not need lockdowns, school closures or onerous travel restrictions. Instead, we need to make an even sharper distinction between the vaccinated and those who are not, coupled with sensible measures to slow the spread of the virus so that the health-care system is not overburdened.
Beyond vaccines, the key is mass testing and good masks. The epidemiologist Michael Mina has long argued that the focus on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests — as opposed to rapid tests — has been misguided, that from a public health standpoint, what matters is not whether you have the virus but whether you are spreading it to others. Rapid antigen tests determine that pretty effectively. But compared with Europe, tests in the United States cost more and are not as easily accessible. Similarly, we should make masks that are cheap, high-quality and widely available.
Germany’s leading virologist said omicron could become the first “post-pandemic” coronavirus variant, which would likely make this disease an endemic one, not so lethal, and one that we will live with like the flu. We can’t be sure of this because with so many unvaccinated people — about 26 percent of Americans still have not received one dose — the virus still has plenty of space to replicate and thus mutate. But it does appear that at least for now, for the vaccinated majority, the post-pandemic future has arrived — if we are willing to accept it. | null | null | null | null | null |
For a book that describes so much unthinkable loss, “By the Grace of the Game” manages to leave the reader smiling quite a bit. The chapter about Ernie losing his older brother, for instance, is followed by one of the more amusing and memorable anecdotes in the entire book, pertaining to a dinner Dan had with Indiana Pacers executive Larry Bird, one of his childhood heroes, while playing for the Pacers’ Summer League team in 2006. That’s no accident.
“Life is joy and pain,” said Dan, who is married with a son named Solomon, after Dan’s late great-grandfather. “It’s tragedy and triumph. I had learned that from my grandmother and my dad, and I wanted to reflect that truth in the book. There are amazing moments and there are sad and painful moments, and my family certainly has experienced both. I made a lot of intentional decisions to tell a full, rich story that conveys the human experience.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Trump’s efforts over the past year to build a social media presence that doesn’t depend on the big platforms have so far only underscored their dominance. In May, he launched a blog called “From the Desk of Donald Trump.” It failed to attract readers and he shut it down after just a month. In October, he announced to fanfare that he planned to launch his own social network, called Truth Social. A beta version of it was immediately defaced by pranksters, and its launch has been delayed amid questions from regulators. | null | null | null | null | null |
A truck plows snow early Jan. 7 at a rest stop along Interstate 95 outside Dale City, Va. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Unlike Monday’s cementlike pasting, which stranded hundreds of people on area roads and cut power to more than half a million customers, the light, fluffy snowfall before sunrise Friday was rather well-behaved.
About 1 to 6 inches fell across the region, with the highest totals in northern Maryland and northwestern Virginia and the smallest amounts in southern Maryland and north-central Virginia. Two to 4 inches were most common in the immediate Washington area. The pattern of snowfall amounts, increasing from southeast to northwest, was essentially the reverse of Monday’s storm.
The powdery flakes mostly fell between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. With few motorists on the roads, crews were able to keep main thoroughfares clear.
Although enough snow fell amid plunging temperatures to leave neighborhood roads slick and give area students another day off from school, few other significant disruptions were noted in the region.
Snowfall totals generally ranged from 2 to 3 inches inside the Beltway and increased to 3 to 6 inches to the north and west. South of Prince William and Prince George’s counties, totals of 1 to 2 inches were most common.
In the mountains of eastern West Virginia, 6 to 12 inches of fresh powder was reported. Near Canaan Valley ski resort, 14.2 inches fell.
In the immediate Washington area, our forecast of 1 to 3 inches was right for many areas, with 2 to 3 inches most common. However, quite a few locations north and west of the Beltway were in the 3-to-5-inch range, entering boom territory.
Our forecast of 2 to 4 inches in our far northern suburbs was too low, as 4 to 6 inches was most common; these areas also reached our boom scenario totals.
Our prediction of 1 to 2 inches was spot on for our southern and southeastern suburbs.
It was as if our northern and southern areas traded places between early Friday’s and Monday’s snow events. Amounts exceeded forecasts to the north early Friday, while they topped predictions to the south on Monday.
Our forecast accumulations were a little too low in our northern and western areas for this event, mainly because the snow was fluffier than we anticipated. For a typical snow event, the equivalent of an inch of rain produces about 10 inches of snow. But for this event, snow-to-liquid ratios north of Washington were around 15 to 1, or even 20 to 1, which we didn’t account for well enough. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the storm wasn’t a blockbuster in terms of amounts, snowfall rates along the Interstate 95 corridor were expected to briefly approach or exceed two inches per hour. That surpassed the capacity of what road crews could handle, making for treacherous travel and, in some locales, standstill traffic.
The snow was winding down in eastern New England along the Boston-to-Providence corridor around 10 a.m., with bands of moderate to heavy snow still pivoting southeast over Cape Cod and the Islands. Some ocean-effect snow will linger over the Mid-Cape and Outer Cape through 2 or 3 p.m. before the system withdraws into the Gulf of Maine. Snow was also falling in Downeast Maine and Nova Scotia.
Winter storm warnings were to expire in eastern New England at 4 p.m., with predicted storm totals of four to eight inches from Providence to Portland.
Nashville picked up 6.3 inches, Music City’s greatest calendar-day snowfall since Jan. 22, 2016, and the 12th most on record for a single day. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center even hoisted a “mesoscale discussion” Thursday to address the potential for “rates on the order of 1-2+ inches per hour.”
Lexington, Ky., received 9.9 inches, its seventh greatest single-day snowfall on record; bookkeeping there dates to 1887.
West Virginia tallied double digit snowfalls, such as in East Burlington, where 10.7 inches was measured. Davis, Pa., also matched that reading. Charleston, W.Va., reported 8.3 inches, its snowiest day since 2016.
Ski areas in the central Appalachians were slammed. Fourteen inches fell near Canaan Valley, W.Va.
As of 7 a.m., La Guardia Airport in the Big Apple had 8.4 inches on the ground, while nearby Bridgeport, Conn., sat beneath 8.2 inches. Central Park in New York was closing in on a half foot, and Newark was up to five inches. Higganum, Conn., about 15 miles south of Hartford near Middletown, topped the charts with 11 inches as of 6:43 a.m.
The snow was tapering southwest to northeast but not before making the morning commute a nightmare for those unable to work from home in central and eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. Interstates 95, 495 and 128 were all moving slowly as late as 11 a.m. Friday; traffic was in rough shape all the way to Bangor, Maine.
“Well, the snowfall has over performed, especially in the mesoscale snow band that developed early this morning,” wrote the National Weather Service in Boston in its morning technical forecast discussion. It had been predicting a maximum of four to eight inches, but Norwood and Mendon had eclipsed 10 inches by sunrise. Low temperatures filtering into the region on the back side of the system contributed to a greater fluff factor with the snow, and liquid to snow ratios of 1 to 20. | null | null | null | null | null |
Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple ways experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation’s old-growth forests.
“You can donate to an organization that’s buying up land and protecting it,” said Maloof. Or, for those with more funds, they could purchase and preserve land themselves. “You can also go the route of donating to organizations that are speaking out for the forests.”
In January, the regional tribal corporation Sealaska decided to stop its logging operations and instead sell credits for the carbon that its trees store to oil and gas company BP. Some of those funds — up to $10 million, along with another $7 million from The Nature Conservancy — are slated to go toward the Seacost Trust, which has the ultimate goal of raising $100 million. The money will help support the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, a network of individuals and organizations that work to strengthen cultural, economic and ecological resilience in Southeast Alaska.
“There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest too,” said Maloof. Nationally, she said there is a bit of a gap in organizations that are advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network. But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests.
“The major areas that people can get involved in are really policy areas,” said Kate Glover, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice. “We can encourage the Biden administration to protect old-growth forests.”
In 2001, the Clinton administration issued a landmark rule establishing prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forests — including on more than 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest. Forest Service data shows that the Trump administration auctioned off less timber on an annual basis in the Tongass than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush. | null | null | null | null | null |
Police: Woman, child killed, juvenile suspect in custody
CLINTON, Md. — A woman and child are dead and a juvenile suspect is in custody after a domestic-related shooting at a Maryland home Thursday, police said.
Prince George’s County Police said a man who was also shot at the home in Clinton had injuries that were not considered life-threatening, news outlets reported.
Officers were called to a home on Wendy Street about 5:50 p.m. and found the woman and child dead inside, police said.
Their identities have not been released. The injured man was taken to a hospital. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Don’t tell Republicans, but the American economy is a bipartisan success story
(Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)
When it comes to job creation, the American economy at the moment is a marvel, perhaps unparalleled in the entire world. And at a moment when the parties are so bitterly divided, we should celebrate it as a bipartisan achievement.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 199,000 new jobs were created in December. It also revised the previous two months’ numbers up by 141,000, for a total addition of 340,000 jobs. While we play a silly game about whether any month’s report meets “expectations,” here’s the simple fact: In the 11 full months Joe Biden has been president, the American economy added over six million jobs.
You know how many times the American economy created six million jobs in a calendar year going back to the 1930s, which is as far as BLS data go? Never. The only year for which over four million jobs were created was 1978.
And when Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. Now it’s 3.9 percent. A triumph!
I can already hear Republicans sputtering that Biden had nothing to do with all the good things that happened to the economy, but he’s completely responsible for everything bad, including higher gas prices, the shortage of computer chips, and the fact that you no longer fit into those jeans you bought ten years ago.
If you ask them to be specific about which Biden policies supposedly produced this inflation, the only thing they’ll be able to come up with is “spending!”
But the truth is that we made a collective decision at the beginning of the pandemic about our economic crisis — a bipartisan decision. It went like this: The pandemic is sending the economy into freefall, and the government has to take extraordinary measures to keep tens of millions of Americans’ lives from being destroyed.
So we poured huge amounts of money into the economy to forestall disaster, giving it to individual families, to businesses, and to state and local governments. To repeat, this was a bipartisan effort. There seems to be a misconception that Biden was the one who spent all that money, but that’s just false. Let’s review our history:
In March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, which spent $8.3 billion to begin responding to the pandemic. President Trump signed the bill.
Two weeks later, they passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, at a cost of $192 billion. President Trump signed it.
At the end of March, Congress passed the CARES Act; Trump signed that one as well. It spent over $2 trillion, though its final cost after loans were repaid was estimated at $1.7 trillion.
In March 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan, with an estimated cost of $1.8 trillion. This time, not a single Republican voted for it; President Biden signed it.
So we have five bipartisan covid relief bills totaling trillions of dollars, all of which passed with almost no opposition. The CARES Act, for instance, passed by 96-to-0 in the Senate and 419-to-6 in the House. Then we had one relief bill passed only by Democrats, along with an infrastructure bill passed last year — which was also bipartisan.
It’s true that when all those pandemic relief bills were passed under Trump, Republicans went along only reluctantly. Democrats pushed to spend more, and Republicans agreed mostly because they worried that if Washington weren’t riding to the rescue, Trump would lose the election, which he did anyway. The final relief bill in 2020 passed largely because they were trying to save the failing Georgia runoff campaigns of Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
But whatever their motivations, Republicans joined in the effort. And guess what: It worked. The American economy recovered with absolutely stunning speed. | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW YORK - AUGUST 8, 1957: Actors John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier in the film "Edge of the City: directed by Martin Ritt.
LOS ANGELES, CA - NOV. 17, 1958: Kneeling on his crippled legs, Porgy, played by Sidney Poitier, urges Bess (Dorothy Dandridge, center) to join Maria (Pearl Bailey) at the picnic which was to change their lives, in this scene from the movie version of "Porgy and Bess" in character in Los Angeles, California on Nov. 17, 1958.
AP/AP
Sidney Poitier is seen here in one of the scenes of the hit Broadway show, “A Raisin in the Sun,” with actress Ruby Dee, who plays his wife, March 26, 1959.
CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 13, 1961: Sidney Poitier appears at the Cannes Film Festival for the showing of his film "A Raisin in the Sun" in Cannes, France on May 13, 1961. At right is actress Jean Seberg.
Sidney Poitier, left, won the Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1963 American comedy drama "Lilies of the Field," produced and directed by Ralph Nelson.
Everett Collection/Everett Collection
SANTA MONICA, CA - APRIL 13, 1964: Sidney Poitier (third from left), who won an Oscar as best actor of the year, and French actress Annabella (second from left), who accepted the best actress award won by Patricia Neal, pose at the 36th annual Academy Awards in Santa Monica, California. Joining the winners on the sides are presenters are Gregory Peck (far left) and Anne Bancroft (right).
Edwin Reichert/AP
Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll at the dinner following the Academy Award TV cast at Santa Monica on April 5, 1965.
DFS/AP
Entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, second from right, and actor Sidney Poitier, right, are shown in court in New York after they volunteered to post bail for a group of civil rights protesters arrested for staging a sit-in at the office of the South African consul general in New York, March 21, 1966. Left to right: William Hall, Cleveland Sellers, Willie Ricks, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee executive scretary James Foreman and SNCC chairman John Lewis.
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in a scene from "In the Heat of the Night," 1967 (Everett Collection)
Sidney Poitier places his hands in wet cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on June 23, 1967.
Ss/AP
Marty Lederhandler/AP
LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 9, 1974: Sidney Poitier carries daughter Anika, 2, as Canadian born actress Joanna Shimkus wheels their younger daughter Sydney, 6 months at Heathrow Airport in London on May 9, 1974.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 11, 1980. A security guard shields actor Sidney Poitier from being mobbed by fans as he arrives at Brentano's independent bookstore in New York City to meet the public and sign copies of his new book "This Life" on June 11, 1980 in New York.
Sidney Poitier, left, with Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, while filming "Traces" in 1981.
Publisher Hugh Hefner, left, Harold Washington and Sidney Poitier, right, taken during Washingtons visit to the Playboy West Mansion, Saturday, March 20, 1983.
LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 14, 1988: Sidney Poitier during an interview.
Ira Mark Gostin/AP
Sidney Poitier poses for photographers with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award on Thursday, March 12, 1992 in Beverly Hills.
In this file photo taken on May 16, 1996, President Nelson Mandela and Sidney Poitier pose for cameras at Tuinhuis in Cape Town.
Anna Zieminski/AFP/Getty Images
Sidney Poitier in the role of Nelson Mandela in "One Man, One Vote" in 1997.
Sidney Poitier arrives with his wife Joanna Shimkus and daughters Sydney, left, and Anika, right, for the 74th annual Academy Awards Sunday, March 24, 2002, in Los Angeles.
Laura Rauch/AP
Sidney Poitier poses with his honorary Oscar during the 74th annual Academy Awards on March 24, 2002, in Los Angeles.
U.S. President Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House August 12, 2009 in Washington, DC.
Angelina Jolie and Sidney Poitier take the stage to present the Oscar for achievement in directing at the 86th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California March 2, 2014.
Sidney Poitier attends the Brigitte and Bobby Sherman Children's Foundation's 6th Annual Christmas Gala and Fundraiser at Montage Beverly Hills on December 19, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California.
LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 06: (L-R) Producer Walter Mirisch, director Norman Jewison, actor Sidney Poitier, actor Lee Grant and producer Quincy Jones attend the 50th anniversary screening of"In the Heat of the Night" during the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival on April 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. | null | null | null | null | null |
Protesters aren’t benefiting from Kazakhstan’s oil economy.
Riot police walk to block demonstrators gathering during a protest in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Vladimir Tretyakov/AP)
By Edward Schatz
Protesters across Kazakhstan, infuriated by rising prices and corrupt governance, took to the streets this week. While the overwhelming majority of protesters were peaceful, the country’s largest city, Almaty, saw rioting, looting and ongoing street battles. Caught off-guard, security forces cracked down hard, and deaths among protesters and police were reported.
Rather than repress further, many in the security forces switched to support the protesters in key cities across the country. In the span of a few hours on Jan. 5, the tides shifted decisively, with some protesters seizing government buildings. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a state of emergency, fired his cabinet and addressed the nation, promising major political reforms in an effort to placate the protesters.
What’s happening in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country roughly the size of Western Europe, offers a reminder that much remains in flux behind the apparent stability of authoritarian governments. The immediate spark in this case was a sharp rise in fuel prices, but to understand why Kazakhstan suddenly found itself aflame, my research suggests it’s important to understand three broad factors.
Authoritarian rulers often are overconfident
Like authoritarians elsewhere, the Kazakhstani leadership was frequently overconfident in its policymaking — and political and economic elites were often distracted by enriching themselves. The country’s long-serving first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, accomplished much after the country declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — from forging a balanced “multi-vector” foreign policy, to avoiding large-scale ethnic conflict, to engineering economic growth based on the country’s oil and mineral reserves.
But these successes in the 1990s and 2000s came at a significant cost. The government silenced journalists and allegedly murdered opposition politicians — and socioeconomic inequality rose sharply, even as officials claimed that the country was on a clear path to its own form of “democracy.” And the country’s elites benefited enormously from global capitalism in ways that became difficult to hide from public view.
Yet Kazakhstanis generally bought into a tacit social contract in the 2000s. As long as neighboring countries were worse off, and as long as their personal prospects looked reasonably bright, the trade-off seemed smart: security and material prosperity in exchange for curtailed freedom. It was the Kazakhstani version of what political scientists would call a typical “autocratic bargain.”
But tacit social contracts work only until they fail. Nazarbayev became progressively less adept at placating labor mobilizers, youth activists, pensioners and wage laborers, among other groups. He formally stepped down in 2019 but continued to guide policymaking behind the scenes. As commodity prices and sudden currency devaluations ratcheted up the cost of living, many young people started to ask what the “old man” had done for them lately. While the government promised reforms, few concrete achievements emerged.
Authoritarians rely heavily on myths
Second, authoritarians — when they aren’t simply entrenching themselves in power — rely on creating myths. These narratives, often of dubious veracity, help structure citizens’ sense of the world. In Kazakhstan, one such central myth promised citizens a comfortable middle-class life.
The promise was clear: Kazakhstan was unlike other oil-rich authoritarian nations. The government would use its immense wealth to bolster public education, generate broad-scale development and diversify the economy. Kazakhstan’s wealth would be managed by capable technocrats using global best practices. And this meant Kazakhstanis could expect to become comfortably middle class. Kazakhstan’s ruling Nur Otan party positioned itself as the champion of this vision.
The challenge was that those working in the oil sector — the very source of Kazakhstan’s immense economic growth — continually found themselves locked out of the economic gains. The gap between the promise of becoming middle class and the reality of living with barely enough became harder to bear over the past decade.
Oil workers in the Zhanaozen region erupted in protests over low wages and substandard working conditions in 2011, and the government responded not with concessions, but with violence. Since then, the regime strategy for workers has been a combination of ongoing harassment and efforts to undermine unions, coupled with some expressions of sympathy about working conditions and occasional concessions.
But even middle-class citizens became increasingly concerned about rising costs and economic precarity. Covid-19 accelerated these anxieties significantly, with global supply-chain disruptions and currency depreciation ratcheting up prices for basic goods. Whatever legitimacy the regime had enjoyed while the oil economy boomed quickly eroded, and Kazakhstanis were no longer forgiving of poor governance and in-plain-sight corruption.
What happens to Kazakhstan’s dictatorship now that its dictator has quit?
Nazarbayev’s successor miscalculated
Political scientists point out that authoritarians — when they aren’t willfully ignorant — need to develop an exit strategy. Nazarbayev surprised his country in 2019 by announcing that he was resigning from the presidency, while continuing to head the National Security Council and the pro-presidential Nur Otan political party.
Observers were flabbergasted. Why would Nazarbayev give up his formal powers willingly and therefore prematurely? This, too, was a form of hubris — an overconfidence that Nazarbayev’s governance represented an enlightened and transferrable model for his handpicked successor, as well as other autocrats. Some analysts soon speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be wise to consider a similar strategy: anoint a successor, manage affairs in the background and slowly exit the political stage.
In fact, Kazakhstan’s public was ready for the next chapter, and Tokayev, the handpicked successor, immediately misread the room. He directed that the capital, Astana, be renamed Nur-Sultan to honor his mentor and cement Nazarbayev’s cultlike status. Resentments percolated across society. The first post-Nazarbayev elections in 2019 were marked by significant street protests demanding fair elections. Young citizens, in particular, remained eager for systemic political change. Frustrated by their life prospects, they increasingly blamed a stagnant and corrupt authoritarian system.
In January, an opening came. The arrival of “peacekeeping forces” from a Russian-led military alliance deeply complicates the situation in Kazakhstan, but whatever changes now result will serve as an ample reminder that authoritarian regimes can be fragile.
Edward Schatz (@SchatzEd) is professor of political science at the University of Toronto and author of “Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia” (Stanford University Press, 2021). | null | null | null | null | null |
Abha Bhattarai named The Post’s Economics Correspondent
Abha Bhattarai (The Washington Post)
Announcement from Business Editor Lori Montgomery, Deputy Business Editor Zachary Goldfarb, Economics Editor Damian Paletta and Deputy Economics Editor Jennifer Liberto:
We are thrilled to announce that Abha Bhattarai will become The Post’s new economics correspondent, helping us make sense of what’s next for the confounding U.S. economy.
Since 2011, Abha has been a stalwart of The Post’s Business Desk, rising from web producer to her most recent job covering the fast-moving retail beat. Particularly during the pandemic, Abha’s work has been revelatory and deeply human. Starting with the first layoffs attributed to the crisis in March 2020, Abha broke major economic news week after week, illuminating the disruption among workers and employers in the hard-hit service sector. She also chronicled emerging issues of inequality as frontline workers lost their jobs or faced infection while many office workers benefited from the relative safety of remote work. Her work was featured in a team entry chronicling the plight of essential workers that was honored with a 2021 Gerald Loeb award for beat reporting.
Before the pandemic, Abha was a standout reporter on the retail beat and the business breaking-news team who once camped out overnight in a Kohl’s parking lot to write about retailers’ desperate efforts to lure holiday shoppers. She also wrote about the impact of the Trump administration on Washington businesses – including strip clubs tuning their televisions to CNN – and about the improbable comeback of Crocs.
Before coming to The Post, Abha wrote for Fast Company and Forbes and served as a James Reston Reporting Fellow at The New York Times, where she covered the Great Recession and white-collar crime. A native of Austin, Abha graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She lives in the District with her husband and two daughters.
Please join us in congratulating Abha on her new role. She starts immediately. | null | null | null | null | null |
Christian nationalism has deep roots in America, faith leaders say
Colleen Thomas, at the lectern, speaks in November as part of a panel discussion titled "Constructing a Moral Narrative: Dismantling Christian Nationalism" at First AME Church in Los Angeles. (Alejandra Molina/RNS)
By Alejandra Molina
Shannon Rivers believes that Indigenous people are the moral compass of this country.
A member of the Native American Akimel O’otham, or River People, of the southwestern United States, Rivers points to historical accounts of the northeastern Wampanoag, who in the 1600s taught the Pilgrims how to grow crops and weather harsh winters.
“We were the ones who had that initial moral understanding of how you take care of one another, and we still maintain that today, despite every wrong that has been done,” said Rivers, who is a spiritual counselor for incarcerated Native Americans. “Indigenous peoples still gather. They still pray for those who are settler societies.”
The Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol introduced many Americans to the phenomenon of Christian nationalism, with some of the rioters carrying crosses or invoking the name of Jesus. But for many non-Christian Americans, Christian nationalism is an unavoidable fact of life.
Rivers said the history of Christian nationalism began when the European settlers answered the Wampanoag's welcome with a belief that divine providence had ordained their domination of Indigenous land.
Rivers said that to confront Christian nationalism honestly, churches and other houses of worship need to focus on a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Alexander’s bull, which gave theological justification for colonization as the Americas were occupied by European powers, threaded its way into U.S. law, providing the basis for a key 1823 Supreme Court decision awarding the American West to the United States.
Any conversation about the United States as a Christian nation, Rivers argued, begins with the philosophical eradication of Native Americans’ right to their homes. “We must be part of the larger conversation, because you can’t just have talks about religion and spiritual beliefs without understanding the people that were here first,” Rivers said. “You’re just ignoring a long history of the wrongs that these Christians, unfortunately, committed.”
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels of Beth Shir Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Santa Monica, Calif., said the roots of Christian nationalism go back further, to the Christian belief that Jesus was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and made Judaism obsolete.
“Christianity came along and it assumed that it superseded Judaism and the Jewish covenant,” said Comess-Daniels, who also works as a rabbi-in-residence at a Lutheran church. (Comess-Daniels made national headlines in 2018 when he delivered a Rosh Hashanah sermon denouncing Stephen Miller, a former congregant who was serving as an adviser to President Donald Trump, for Miller’s role in family separations at the border.)
Jewish Americans, Comess-Daniels said, experience Christian nationalism through this antisemitic lens. In the United States, “there seems to be a Christian default,” he said.
Comess-Daniels and Rivers were among several faith leaders who spoke at a November panel discussion on Christian nationalism sponsored by several left-leaning faith groups and held at First AME Church in Los Angeles. Another speaker, the Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, said Christian nationalism is so wedded to American ideals that its influence “goes beyond those who identify with its ideology, even those who consider themselves religious.”
Theoharis told the audience that churches reinforce a message “that God loves White Christian America, favors small government and big business, and rewards individualism and entrepreneurship, but meanwhile the poor, people of color, immigrants, queer people, women — we’re blamed for society’s problems.”
Religious nationalism is not the sole province of Christianity, according to Tahil Sharma, an interfaith and social justice activist in Los Angeles. A Sikh and Hindu, Sharma said he has faced nationalism on two fronts: Christian nationalism in the United States and Hindu nationalism in India.
Christian nationalism, Sharma said, similarly plays on Americans’ emotions by stoking a “falsified idea of patriotism.” Hindus in India and Christians in the United States want to consider themselves as exceptional, he said. “You’re just talking about a different majority context.”
Sharma said White Christians need to work with other faith groups to fight religious nationalism. “Christian people have to do a better job in ... being accomplices to folks in the work of social and racial justice,” he said.
Comess-Daniels agreed that it is crucial for religious groups to defend one another but said they need to go beyond simply denouncing Christian nationalism.
He recalled how, during an outbreak of antisemitism in 1993 in Billings, Mont., people united after a brick went through the bedroom window of a Jewish boy who displayed a menorah for Hanukkah. Thousands of residents placed paper menorahs in their windows as an act of solidarity.
In 2017, after Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in St. Louis, Muslim activists Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi, the founding director of CelebrateMercy, helped raise thousands of dollars to repair vandalized headstones.
“Those kind of responses are real pure,” Comess-Daniels said. “That’s the potential of America.”
“We all need to stand up together," the rabbi said. "It’s much more powerful and much more effective in this country in particular because deep down, I think that most Americans understand that we are a pluralistic society and we’re all supposed to be here.”
For Tasneem Farah Noor, an interfaith minister-in-residence with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Jan. 6 is an opportunity for White Christian Americans to come to terms with their Christian nationalist past.
Noor, who came to the United States from Pakistan with her family as a 15-year-old, said she learned how to take ownership of her Muslim identity after the 9/11 attacks. It was a moment for her to advocate for a Muslim identity that was antithetical to terrorism, bombing and the taking of lives. “I wouldn’t be Muslim if that’s what it meant,” she said.
The Christian symbols at the Jan. 6 insurrection, Noor said, brought Americans face-to-face with the facts: “This is America. It’s our nation," she said. “It was very much like: ‘Okay. I’m American, and Americans look like this.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Protecting Public Safety with Los Angeles Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides
Cities across the country are grappling with a surge in violent crime. As part of our continuing Protecting Public Safety series, Emada Tingirides, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice Violent Crime Working Group, joins Washington Post Live on Wednesday, Jan. 12 at 4:00 p.m. ET to discuss new recommendations on how to respond and what is contributing to the spike including in her city.
Emada Tingirides
Provided by Council on Criminal Justice.
Emada E. Tingirides is a native of Los Angeles who decided to become a police officer following a wave of civil unrest in the city in 1992. After a variety of assignments, including serving as Senior Lead Officer for five years, Tingirides promoted to the rank of Sergeant in 2006, and later became Officer in Charge of the Community Relations Office at Southeast Area Community Police Station. While there, Tingirides focused on bridging the historical gap between law enforcement and the community it serves, and in 2011, she was selected by then Chief Charlie Beck to work on the creation and implementation of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) program. The relationship-based policing model that defines CSP grew out of the need to find new and innovative ways to address quality-of-life issues in some of Los Angeles’ most underserved communities. Incorporating a dedicated team of officers into several public housing communities, the initiative helped residents enter programs, advocate for themselves, and thrive without the fear of crime in their community. As relationships were forged and community trust increased, crime at each of the CSP sites dropped dramatically.
Following a series of promotions, Tingirides in August 2020 became Deputy Chief and Commanding Officer of a new Community Safety Partnership Bureau, where she oversees nine CSP teams. In 2015, she was named the Public Official of the Year by Governing Magazine and one of Los Angeles’ Most Influential Women by Los Angeles Magazine, and was a distinguished guest of First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union Address. Tingirides obtained a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from National University and a Master of Advanced Study in Criminology, Law, and Society from the University of California, Irvine. | null | null | null | null | null |
WP Subscriber Exclusive: Carl Bernstein, Author, “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom”
Carl Bernstein is a pioneer of investigative journalism, becoming a household name in the 1970s after he and Bob Woodward broke the Watergate scandal and co-authored the Pulitzer Prize-winning “All the President’s Men.” From self-taught teenage newspaper copyboy to award-winning reporter, Bernstein recounts his remarkable career in his new memoir, “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.”
In this subscriber-exclusive event, Bernstein will share his stories of building a career during a time of great social and cultural change and give his perspective on the current challenges to American democracy.
Bernstein will answer subscriber questions, and the first 200 subscribers to sign up for this virtual event will receive a free copy of “Chasing History.” Join Washington Post investigative reporter Carol Leonnig on Tuesday, Jan. 18 at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Carl Bernstein is the author or coauthor of five bestselling books, most notably All the President’s Men, written with Bob Woodward. He, Woodward, and the Washington Post were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for breaking and investigating the Watergate story, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and set the standard for modern investigative reporting. He is also author of the definitive biographies of Pope John Paul II and Hillary Clinton and a memoir of his family’s experiences during the McCarthy era. He is currently an on-air political analyst for CNN and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. He lives in New York City.
Moderated by Carol Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has worked at The Washington Post since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. She was part of a Post team that was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for revealing the U.S. government’s secret, broad surveillance of Americans through the disclosures of Edward Snowden. She is a three-time winner of the George Polk award for investigative reporting. She reports on Donald Trump’s presidency and investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Leonnig is also an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC. | null | null | null | null | null |
Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple of ways that experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation’s old-growth forests.
“You can donate to an organization that’s buying up land and protecting it,” Maloof said. Those with more money could purchase and preserve land themselves. “You can also go the route of donating to organizations that are speaking out for the forests.”
In January, the regional tribal corporation Sealaska decided to stop its logging operations and instead sell credits for the carbon that its trees store to oil and gas company BP. Some of those funds — as much as $10 million, along with $7 million from the Nature Conservancy — are slated to go toward the Seacoast Trust, which has the ultimate goal of raising $100 million. The money will help support the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, a network of individuals and organizations that work to strengthen cultural, economic and ecological resilience in Southeast Alaska.
“There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest, too,” Maloof said. Nationally, she said there is a gap in organizations that are advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network. But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests.
Kate Glover, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said: “The major areas that people can get involved in are really policy areas. We can encourage the Biden administration to protect old-growth forests.”
In 2001, a landmark rule established prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forests — including on more than 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest. Forest Service data shows that the Trump administration auctioned off less timber on an annual basis in the Tongass than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush. | null | null | null | null | null |
In 1973, just five years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ignited an explosion of rioting that left Shaw and other D.C. neighborhoods in ruins, New Bethel Baptist Church began renting brand new apartments to low-income tenants. Most of the building’s early residents were Black families who also attended Sunday services at the church.
These changing demographics have already contributed to the disappearance of historic Black churches in Shaw. Rev. Dexter Nutall, who has led New Bethel since 2009, said declining membership, rising costs and the battle with Foster House residents could push the church as well as the tenants out of the neighborhood.
Today the halls today are quiet. Just down the block from a row of million-dollar homes, Foster House is home to some of the District’s poorest residents. Many say they can’t remember the last time they saw church representatives in their midst.
As issues with the property have grown more severe, residents’ trust in and patience with the church has worn thin. A dozen tenants interviewed by The Post said they blame New Bethel for years of neglect, ineffectual property managers and conditions so bad that a number of families felt they had no choice but to leave.
Nutall has accused the District of trying to push the church to sell by draining its resources with a protracted legal battle. Racine defended his office’s motivations for getting involved, saying the conditions at Foster House are “horrid” and primarily affect the “overwhelmingly Black and brown tenants” who live there. | null | null | null | null | null |
While filling in for Drew Gooden, the regular Wizards’ color commentator, Consor has tried to bring his eccentric personality to the television side. His role is to illuminate the finer points of the game, but also entertain as the kooky sidekick to the strait-laced play-by-play man. The shtick has worked at times — with Consor and Chris Miller waxing poetic about fish grease — but not always. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Rainbow Six Extraction” is a game about planning. In Ubisoft’s latest installment to the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six franchise, due out Jan. 20, players squad up in groups of three to act as exterminators, clearing maps of alien infestations. This work can be broken up neatly into three phases. There’s the planning stage, mostly characterized by crouch-walking to and fro across the map, gathering information. There’s the execution phase, in which your trio swings into action to follow through on the previously devised plan. Then there’s the rest of the game — the bulk of the game — which is when things don’t go as anticipated.
Maybe your drone expired before it saw the alien nest around the next corner, and now you and your friends are stuck in the spawner’s black, gummy secretions. Or you blasted a gap in a wall, and now an alien is shooting acidic spitballs at you through the hole in the adjacent room. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.
In “Extraction,” most enemy types — ranging from tiny green burs that stick to you if you brush up against them to exploding quadrupedal aliens to hulking megabosses — can be defeated in some optimal way. On their own, these are relatively simple puzzles: Nests, for example, create “sprawl,” a goo that slows you down when they’re alerted to your presence, so you need to sneak up on them or destroy them from a distance. A big part of the aforementioned planning phase is quietly dispatching the more minor nuisances early on. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Mariah Bell is the front-runner, but drama lurks at the U.S. Figure Skating...
NASHVILLE — Alysa Liu, considered the United States’ top female figure skater and best hope to medal at the Beijing Olympics, has tested positive for the coronavirus and pulled out of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, U.S. Figure Skating announced Friday.
She is the second major competitor to drop out of the nationals because of a positive coronavirus test. The top pairs team of Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier pulled out on Wednesday night after Frazier’s test came back positive.
Despite her positive test, Liu still has an excellent chance to make the Olympic team; the three women who will get the chance to compete in Beijing will be announced Saturday afternoon. U.S. Figure Skating rules allow athletes who do not perform well in the nationals to submit a written petition to U.S. Figure Skating’s International Committee highlighting their body of work. Knierim and Frazier also can petition and likely will be selected for Beijing as well. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Afghan Refugee Crisis with Filippo Grandi
MS. RYAN: Good morning, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Missy Ryan, national security reporter for The Washington Post. It’s been five months since the United States withdrew its remaining forces from Afghanistan. Since then, the Taliban has consolidated its control of the country and Afghanistan’s future remains uncertain at best. I’m honored to be here today with the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency for a conversation about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. Commissioner Filippo Grandi, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. GRANDI: Thank you very much for having me on this important topic.
MS. RYAN: It's a pleasure to be with you. Commissioner Grandi, Afghanistan's economy is in shambles. Winter weather is setting in, and the nation is gripped by food insecurity. As UNHCR has reported, over 3.5 million people are displaced within Afghanistan, including at least 700,000 uprooted during 2021. How would you characterize the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan right now?
MR. GRANDI: You gave already some of the most important elements of a very, very serious humanitarian situation. Now, a little correction, if I may, to your initial presentation in the video. The 3.5 million people that are displaced, this is a symptom of humanitarian crisis. They actually were already displaced when the Taliban took over in August. They were displaced by years of conflict between the previous government and the Taliban. And it's--the question is that after the 15th of August, the situation has deteriorated further, in so many different ways--more than half of the population on the brink of famine, a very big percentage, I would say 80 percent of the health system paralyzed and unable to work, huge water problem, compounded by an endemic drought that climate change is making even worse. Seventy percent of the teachers are not being paid.
Now, the causes of this are very complex, and we can talk about that. But certainly, at the moment, the humanitarian response is extremely urgent, because winter has set in. It's snowing very heavily in vast parts of Afghanistan, and the needs are growing exponentially.
MS. RYAN: And as you note, this was already a very poor country, even prior to this crisis.
Commissioner Grandi, you were one of the first high-level foreign officials to hold talks with the Taliban after the group came to power in August of last year. Can you talk to us about those conversations and about more generally the United Nations' role in a situation like this, given that the majority of outside governments have been reluctant to engage fully with the new Taliban government?
MR. GRANDI: Yeah, we--some of my colleagues and I have been visiting Kabul quite regularly since the takeover of the Taliban. I was there in September, pretty early on a few weeks after the takeover. And I think this engagement is important. At the moment, it is, you know, very much on the humanitarian side. And on that front, I have to say engagement has been relatively positive, constructive. In fact, humanitarian organizations, UN, NGOs, Red Cross, and others, have more access to more areas of Afghanistan now than they have had for years, because that conflict that I spoke about that displaced so many people is actually--isn't happening right now, has ended with the takeover of the Taliban. That has opened up many areas that were previously very insecure.
It's interesting. There is a figure that is very seldom quoted. We estimate that 170,000 displaced people, especially among the most recently displaced have actually returned to their homes since August. Now this may sound counterintuitive, but it is because many areas are more secure now than they have been in a long time. And this, we need to take advantage of this. We need to bring as much as possible humanitarian assistance to those areas to offset the risks, the lifesaving risks that many Afghans are running at the moment.
And then of course, in that space, which humanitarian dialogue is opening up with the Taliban, we need to use that space also in many other ways. We need to continue to promote the notion that women must work, that minorities must be represented, that girls must attend schools. These are complex discussions with the Taliban. But that space allows us to have those discussions on behalf of the international community.
MS. RYAN: So in addition to the absence of civil conflict that you just described, has the Taliban government facilitated? Is it facilitating the humanitarian work that you and your UN partners and the aid agencies are doing?
MR. GRANDI: I would say yes, it has, at least I would say it has not put obstacles to the work that we do. And whenever we have encountered obstacles, remember, this is a very fluid situation. This is an insurgent movement that has taken over a country probably much faster than they even imagined. And therefore, they have huge problems of managing this authority that they have acquired. So there's many problems that emerge all the times in many parts of the countries, the pattern usually has been one of cooperation. If the UN, not just you in a chair, but the UN as a whole, the UN mission flags highlights that there is a problem in a certain area, generally, not always, generally, this problem is addressed. If we don't have access, if our women employees are not allowed, we flagged this issue, and it is generally addressed. So, so far, so good.
But of course, the challenges remain very big. There are many areas in which we do not agree with what the time, the policies, the Taliban's are enforcing. But like I said, there is a space for dialogue. And that space is vital, literally vital for millions of Afghans.
MS. RYAN: I know that one of the biggest questions that the international community would like an answer to is whether this new Taliban government, the Taliban 2.0, is the same Taliban that ruled Afghanistan very harshly during ts. 1990s. It may be too soon to answer that question. But what I would like to ask you is what does the Taliban's ideology and its outlook, as we can observe it to date on certain issues, including, as you mentioned before, the role of women and religious minorities mean for the work that UNHCR is doing with displaced Afghans? How does that affect the vital assistance that you all are providing?
MR. GRANDI: This is such an important question that you're asking, and I think it has many aspects, I try to be quick in responding. First of all, are they are Is this the same type of Taliban government that we saw in the '90s? You know, I've been involved in Afghanistan for decades. So I have some, even some personal comparisons that I can make. I don't know, it's difficult to say, certainly what has changed, and it has been said many times already, is Afghanistan itself. The Afghanistan, the Taliban to cover in 1996/1997 was profoundly different from the Afghanistan that they have taken over recently. And they have to live with that they have to cope with that they have to deal with that situation. And that, I think, is positive in the sense that many investments were made. Many people are saying all those investments are wasted. No, I think all the investments made in 20 years, between 2001 and 2021, have changed the country and have made it impossible for anybody to rule it in the way that was tried 25 years ago. So there's a difference there.
And what does it mean, for us? It means that, of course, we're still dealing with complex aspects of that ideology, and that mode of governance. But remember, and that was so obvious to me, even in the few days I spent there and it's certainly obvious to me, obvious to colleagues of mine that day in day out are dealing with the Taliban. They're not a homogeneous group. They're very diverse, there's different constituencies. They have also to cater to certain constituencies. But I think that there is certainly a vast substantive group among the Taliban, with whom we can talk also about the difficult issues that we had mentioned, especially the rights of women, the right of women and the right of minorities, which are still very open discussion.
So the dilemma here or the difficulty here, the challenge here, is to balance the need to deliver quickly humanitarian assistance to millions of Afghans in desperate need, and at the same time to keep open the discussion of the difficult issues. But without blocking humanitarian assistance. That would be a great mistake, but it is a difficult balancing act as you can certainly appreciate.
MS. RYAN: In August, you UNHCR released a non-return advisory for Afghanistan calling for a halt to forced returns can you tell us, describe the conditions for us that the displaced Afghans are living in right now? What sort of facilities are they living in? What sort of support are they getting from either the Taliban government or from the international community?
MR. GRANDI: Well, let me unpack a bit this important issue. The UN estimates that there is about 9 million displaced people in the country. They have been displaced over the years by so many factors--drought, natural disasters, and conflict. Three and a half million at least by conflict. So that’s a huge--one of the biggest, perhaps the biggest displacement situation inside the country of any country in the world.
Then you have refugees outside the country. There are at least 6 million Afghans in neighboring countries, in Iran and Pakistan in particular. Two and a half million about, a little less, are registered as refugees, and the others have other types of status. And then you have Afghans in many other countries--in Turkey, in Europe. The diaspora is very big. So what we said to everybody, to people--to countries hosting Afghans outside the country is don’t send anybody back at the moment. The situation is too fragile. And what we’re doing for displaced people inside the country, we’re giving them humanitarian assistance because many of them are homeless, for example. They need shelter. They need food. They need healthcare. And we are also helping those that opt for going back to their provinces of origin, and as I said, some of them are doing that. So it’s a very fluid situation.
One more point, if I may, which is very important, looking to the future. I am usually very prudent in my forecasts. But if the social and economic situation of the country is not tackled quickly, I foresee much bigger movements once the winter season ends and travel conditions become easier. It’s a very real risk.
And here, I have to add a very important point. Humanitarian assistance that I have spoken about can keep the country going for a while, can keep the people going for a while, but it’s not going to be enough. Remember, because of the Taliban takeover, development assistance have been--has been frozen. There's no cash resources circulating in the country. There's a lot of problems linked to sanctions and other political measures.
Now, this needs to be revisited. I understand why those measures are in place. But I think they need to be balanced against the fact that the country needs to function, needs to offer a minimum of basic services to its people. Otherwise, if that is not resolved, I foresee--I foresee, almost without any doubt that we will see larger internal displacement and also displacement across the borders to neighboring countries and maybe beyond.
MS. RYAN: I want to push you on that, the economic question in a moment. But first, let's go back to Iran and Pakistan, which you were just mentioning, in terms of receiving millions of Afghan refugees. Can you talk to us a little bit about your recent work with Iran regarding Afghan refugees?
MR. GRANDI: Yeah, I visited Iran in December, just before Christmas. And actually, I was in Pakistan also in September when I went to Afghanistan. This is because, of course, for my organization, work with Afghan refugees--and the vast majority are in these two countries--is a priority. This is our core mandate. And here, I want to flag an important point. There's a lot of focus on the current crisis in Afghanistan. But let's not forget that these two countries have hosted Afghan refugees for more than 40 years. And in recent years, it has become very difficult to mobilize the resources they need to fulfill this international responsibility of hosting Afghan refugees.
Now, my visits were--my recent visits were also to assess whether we see an increase in the number of Afghans crossing into the neighboring countries. And we have not seen a very big, massive outflow as we saw in different periods of recent Afghan history, although we have seen people moving into these two countries. In my--during my visit to Iran, the government is estimating actually a rather large movement into Iran. They estimate that this could be up to 500,000 people that have moved into the country since August. It's difficult for us to estimate because there is no statistics. There is no scientific count that has been carried out. But I went there to discuss with the government how we can do that, how we can have a better idea of the new arrivals, where they are, organize them, provide them with assistance.
Here, I want to make another point related to Iran. Iran has always had very forward-looking policies, very humanitarian policies in respect of Afghans. There are specific laws and provisions that allow all Afghan children to have access to education, for example. And certain sectors of Iran's economy, in particular the construction industry, have traditionally been an important source of livelihoods for millions of Afghans, be they refugees or people with other status.
Of course, Iran is under sanctions. Iran is going through a very difficult economic crisis of its own for many different reasons. So, at the moment, they’re struggling with supporting this additional Afghan population. And from the humanitarian point of view, this is not a political judgement. Of course, I went there--I went there also to appeal to the international community, for more help to be given to Iran, as it comes under renewed pressure because of the Afghan refugee situation.
MS. RYAN: And has there been a response from the international community in terms of providing the additional support that is needed in Iran, as you just mentioned, and potentially in Pakistan, which also is facing its own economic and social challenges?
MR. GRANDI: Yes, there has been. I think that one side effect, if you wish, of the August events, was to bring more visibility to the Afghan situation. And for the first time in years, we saw an increase in financial contributions. You know, the UN appeal--not just UNHR-- the UN appeal that--appeals, plural, that were put out in 2021 for Afghanistan were largely subscribed. The refugee appeal that we put out--an extraordinary one that we put out in September was 70 percent funded. You may think it's not much, but compared to previous much lower percentages, it was a better response.
Now, next Tuesday, the UN, including UNHCR, will put out another big humanitarian appeal, both for inside Afghanistan and for the neighboring countries. And I do hope--and I would like to use this opportunity to really reinforce this--I do hope that there will be a good response. It is vital to provide humanitarian assistance at the moment for all the reasons that we've been discussing today.
MS. RYAN: Mr. Commissioner, I'd like to go back to Afghanistan's economy, which as you mentioned, prior to the Taliban takeover was heavily dependent on foreign aid. Donor funds accounted for about three quarters of the country's revenue. And now with the Taliban in charge, much of that monetary flow has dried up. And in addition, the United States has frozen billions of dollars in Afghan reserves that are held in New York banks, exacerbating the economic crisis. Do you believe, as many U.S. lawmakers and diplomats have urged, that the United States and other nations need to be more flexible in providing financial assistance despite the sanctions that you referenced earlier? And how can they do that without running afoul of many of these laws that have been in place since 2001?
MR. GRANDI: Of course, I believe that flexibility is a must in a situation like that. We're talking about millions of human lives. We're also talking about, frankly, the stability of a region that is beset by many problems. Let's not forget that the Taliban themselves, after they took over, have had to face their own insurgency from other armed groups. And of course, further impoverishment of the country will constitute, will create fertile ground for new terrorism and new insurgencies, which have a terrible potential to destabilize the region. That's why Pakistan, Iran, Central Asian states are so worried about that.
So, I think it's important while the pressure is kept on the key issues that we all care for--right?--so women--right?--so minorities--I've mentioned this many times already--we need to keep that pressure. But we also need to make sure that services function, that Afghans that are sick can go to hospital, that the pitiful COVID vaccination rates--I think less than 10 percent at the moment--are increased. That--you know, there's a lot of talk about girls in schools. But if 70 percent of the teachers are not paid, nobody can go to school. So, I think all this needs to be looked at with a great deal of balance and flexibility.
The question will also be how to do that. I understand that--you know, I understand this is a political issue, but donor countries are reluctant to channel their funds through the Taliban authorities. They were channeled through the Afghan government before, and now they're reluctant to do that and--at least and until certain things are fulfilled by the Taliban. And we are exploring in the UN many alternative systems to make sure that services function, like paying salaries through UN agencies, for example.
Now, all of this is very technical, is far beyond my remit, but is important. But in the end, in the end, it is important to maintain that dialogue with the Taliban, because all these systems will be temporary in nature, and how to ensure that Afghanistan is viable, is a viable country able to support its people, I think will only be achieved through dialogue between the international community and the Taliban themselves.
The dialogue won't be easy. We can look at interim measures to make it function. But in the end, that dialogue is important. And the dialogue goes both ways. When I was in Kabul, and when my colleagues were there, we all told the Taliban the same message. If you want your resources to be unfrozen, if you want the country to enjoy again substantive development support by the international community, you also have to make steps in their direction. It's--it goes both ways, but it is a dialogue. It cannot be a wall-to-wall situation.
MS. RYAN: Mr. Commissioner, I think we have time for one more question. I'd like to ask you a related question. Do you believe that nations that have played a significant role in Afghanistan's recent history--particularly the United States and some of the NATO nations that had a military presence there for 20 years--do you believe these countries have a moral responsibility to accept more refugees and absorb some of this need or desire from Afghans to resettle outside of their country given the current conditions?
MR. GRANDI: Well, you know, I think that this--there's 26-27 million refugees around the world. I'm not talking about the internally displaced. I'm talking about the refugees. You know that less than 1 percent is resettled from countries’ neighboring conflicts or crisis to wealthier countries. So, this burden sharing between the countries that are near the crisis and the richer countries further afield is minimal. And I think that all countries hosting large numbers of refugees deserve more burden sharing, in that sense, deserve richer countries to take more of those refugees. This is a general point. And this point applies certainly also to Iran and Pakistan. So, I'm glad that some of the countries that have been involved in Afghanistan for many years, as you said, have put forward offers to take more of those refugees, as a consequence of what has recently happened.
The question is more complex about people that are inside Afghanistan, because this is what happened in August. There was a lot of direct evacuation out of the country, mostly of people who had links with those countries, mostly in a bilateral fashion. But that is much more complicated now, because now the country is under the control of the Taliban. So, I think that we need to focus on resettling refugees from neighboring countries. And then if there are particularly complex cases inside the country that deserve to be considered for, you know, traveling outside and being resettled to third countries, this will have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, but it's not going to be simple.
MS. RYAN: Mr. Commissioner, I think I can actually squeeze in one final question. I think our listeners and viewers would be interested to hear a little bit more about the challenges and opportunities potentially that your teams working on the ground across Afghanistan are facing at this moment. How are things different from the pre-August 15th environment until now?
MR. GRANDI: Like I said--and you know, I know that this may sound counterintuitive--but security has been easier, better. Security was the big challenge for us for years. You know, since I am in this job, I've been several times to Afghanistan. I remember 2016, 2018, 2019. And all--in all these visits, the main challenge, the main thing I discussed with my colleagues is how can we go to place X, to place Y with the fighting, with the risk of attacks, of unexploded ordnance, of, you know, terrorist threats to our operations. Now, all of that--I wouldn't say all of that--but a great deal of that is now better. We are in a phase in which access is possible. So, I think that we need to take advantage of this window.
And let me repeat it once more. This window allows us--because we are needed in Afghanistan. We are required. I think the Taliban understand that without our support, the humanitarian crisis will be even worse, and they cannot cope with it. So, we need to use that space, one, to deliver, and two, to have dialogue with them and to try to bring them to more reasonable positions on all the complicated issues of rights that we're discussing with them.
MS. RYAN: Now, we actually are out of time. I want to thank you, Commissioner Grandi, for joining us here today for this very important conversation.
MR. GRANDI: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
MS. RYAN: And thank you for joining us here at Washington Post Live. For more information about future programs, you can visit WashingtonPostLive.com. Thanks again and have a great day. | null | null | null | null | null |
The observation is true in the universe of “Rebelde” — a beloved Mexican telenovela adapted from Argentina’s “Rebelde Way” — and in real life. The Televisa series, which premiered in 2004, gave way to a chart-topping pop group that helped propel the show’s cast to superstardom. RBD released nine studio albums (including Portuguese and English-language efforts) and garnered Latin Grammy nods in the process, sold out huge venues and earned comparisons to Menudo, another legendary Latin pop outfit. The group disbanded in 2009 but maintains a loyal fan base that enthusiastically celebrates milestones such as last year’s arrival of RBD’s music on streaming services and a virtual concert reunion. | null | null | null | null | null |
Teen boy charged with murder in fatal shooting of female family member and her 8-year-old son, police say
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with murder in the fatal shootings of a female family member and her 8-year-old son on Thursday night in Clinton, Md., Prince George’s County police said.
The teenager also shot a male adult, who survived and is being treated for his injuries at a hospital, authorities said.
The 15-year-old, who police did not name because he is a minor, is in custody of the county department of corrections and has been charged as an adult with first and second degree murder, first and second degree attempted murder and other charges. The teenager admitted to the shootings, and his motive is under investigation, police said.
Authorities identified the victims as 44-year-old Taledia Oxley and her 8-year-old son, Asa Oxley. Police did not specify the family relation between the Oxleys and the teenage boy.
Family members of the victims could not be immediately reached for comment.
a news release from the police department, authorities said officers were called to investigate a reported shooting at about 5:50 p.m. Wednesday at a home in the 8500 block of Wendy Street in Clinton, police said. Once there, authorities found Oxley and her young son suffering from gunshot wounds. Both died at the scene.
Police also found the third victim with gunshot wounds that medics determined to be not life-threatening, officials said. Police only identified the man as a “family member of the suspect and victims.”
Police arrested the teenage boy after he was located in the neighborhood, the news release said.
These deaths are the second and third homicides in Prince George’s County so far in 2022, following recent spikes in violent crime amid the pandemic. After years of effort by county officials and a steady decline in homicides, the numbers jumped significantly in 2021 — resulting in more than 130 homicides in Prince George’s, the highest annual total since 2007. | null | null | null | null | null |
Many of those who remain on campus, however, are feeling the aftershocks of a presidential term that has been described as “tumultuous” and “rocky,” said Zach Schonfeld, the managing editor of the GW Hatchet, the university’s student-run newspaper, who covered LeBlanc’s tenure.
For some professors, the problems started about a year after LeBlanc’s arrival, when his administration invested in consulting services from the Disney Institute — the professional development arm of the Walt Disney Co. — to administer campus surveys. The move was criticized for its price tag and for being made without faculty input. More backlash came in 2019 after LeBlanc unveiled now-defunct plans to cut undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent over five years and increase the number of students studying science, technology, engineering and math — a plan that faculty members said was made without their being consulted and which they said could make the campus less racially and economically diverse.
LeBlanc also has been celebrated for his commitment to sustainability and financial aid. The faculty senate commended him for overseeing a “deeply meaningful” bicentennial celebration and developing additional academic tracks for students to take classes across disciplines. LeBlanc renegotiated the university’s relationship with George Washington University Hospital and Universal Health Systems, and helped to plan the hospital’s expansion into Southeast Washington.
A jolt of energy could come in the form of Wrighton, who will lead the university on an interim basis for up to 18 months. “The immediate priority will be to build momentum,” he said.
Wrighton left Wash U. after more than 20 years in 2019, and GW approached him about leading the institution in June, he said. He said he’s aware of the issues facing the university and is ready to confront them. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Mr. Williams went above and beyond during this very stressful situation, and we thank him for his thoughtful actions,” an Uber spokesperson told The Post in an email.
The biggest surprise came when the CEO of Alto, an upscale ride-sourcing service operating in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and D.C., offered Williams a part-time role supervising and training the company’s drivers.
Alto confirmed in an email to The Post that Williams has been extended a part-time offer with the luxury ride-share company.
“DaVante is exactly the type of customer and safety focused leader we are looking to help lead our DC presence,” Alex Halbardier, Alto’s chief customer officer, said in the email.
Williams, who left his house early Tuesday without checking the news or any weather alerts, said he picked up the teenager at Union Station a little past 2 a.m. The girl — the fourth customer of the morning — shared that her parents had ordered her an Uber home after her train ride was canceled because of a derailment.
But what should have been a 2½-hour ride under normal circumstances quickly became a day-long journey to the girl’s home, Williams said. About 20 miles after getting onto I-95, Williams came across “tons” of cars and trailers with their brake lights on.
First, his GPS indicated he would reach his destination about an hour and a half late. But as hours went by, Williams and the passenger realized they were likely to be stuck there for much longer.
Williams said he is scheduled to visit Alto’s D.C. office Friday to formally accept the job offer. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Don’t tell Republicans, but the U.S. economy is a bipartisan success story
President Biden delivers remarks at the White House on Aug. 22.(Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
And when Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. Now, it’s 3.9 percent. A triumph!
I can already hear Republicans sputtering that Biden had nothing to do with all the good things that happened to the economy, but he’s completely responsible for everything bad, including higher gas prices, the shortage of computer chips, and the fact that you no longer fit into those jeans you bought 10 years ago.
So we poured huge amounts of money into the economy to forestall disaster, giving relief to individual families, to businesses, and to state and local governments. To repeat, this was a bipartisan effort. There seems to be a misconception that Biden was the one who spent all that money, but that’s just false. Let’s review our history:
So we have five bipartisan pandemic-relief bills totaling trillions of dollars, all of which passed with almost no opposition. The Cares Act, for instance, passed 96 to 0 in the Senate and 419 to 6 in the House. Then, we had one relief bill passed only by Democrats, along with an infrastructure bill passed last year — which was also bipartisan.
But whatever their motivations, Republicans joined in the effort. And guess what: It worked. Though we haven’t gotten all the way back to pre-pandemic levels of employment, the U.S. economy is recovering toward that point with absolutely stunning speed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Members of Congress reflect on Capitol attack on one-year anniversary
Lawmakers talk about their own fear and the bravery of Capitol Police officers.
Representative Susan Wild, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, speaks Thursday during a discussion about the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Wild, who was in the building, said she phoned her children during the attack to reassure them. She said her son, who was watching media coverage, asked, "How can you say you're okay?" (Mandel Ngan/Bloomberg)
On the anniversary of last year’s January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, dozens of lawmakers gathered Thursday to share their stories of that day’s terror and resilience.
It was an insurrection aimed at stopping lawmakers from officially affirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over Trump. A few people died, dozens were injured, the Capitol was damaged and the House and Senate counting of ballots was delayed for hours but not deterred.
Representative Colin Allred, a Democrat representing Texas, recalled that he and colleagues on the House floor took off their jackets in expectation of fighting for their lives.
Representative Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan, recounted lying on the floor of the House gallery and calling his family “to tell them I was safe, even though I was not sure that I was.”
The five-term House veteran, 63, said his recovery from that day “has not been an easy one.” That was a reference to the trauma he’s suffered and the counseling he’s received, which he has discussed publicly before.
Kildee warned that January 6 “is not behind us. The threat, and the lie that fuels that threat, continues to rear its head in other forms.” That includes threats of violence against lawmakers and voting restrictions that Republicans have been enacting in states around the country, he said.
Representative Susan Wild, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said that as she sought cover in the House visitors’ gallery, she spoke to her family to reassure them she was all right.
“Which my son said, ‘Mom, we know what’s going on. We can hear breaking glass. How can you say you’re okay? And that was just like a dagger through my heart,” she said.
On Thursday, she recalled the moments after that call, which were captured in a widely used photograph of her being comforted by Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado who also a former Army Ranger and veteran of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last January 6 was the fourth day in office for freshman Representative Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat. Aides had to guide her to the House galleries because she didn’t know how to get there.
Thursday, she said she would never forget the attack and “the sound of the doors closing and being locked. Introducing myself to my colleagues as we were hiding under the chairs” and “fashioning weapons out of pens and my high heels.”
Representative Mike Quigley., an Illinois Democrat, recalled seeing a huge mob itching for a fight on the East Capitol steps with just three Capitol Police officers in ballcaps between them and the Capitol. | null | null | null | null | null |
(iStock) (Gobalstock/iStock)
In Rochester, N.Y., about 40 percent of students were absent from classrooms in the school district Monday. At a middle school on Long Island, the student absentee rate was 26 percent at the start of the week and had climbed to 35 percent by Wednesday. And an elementary school in Portland planned to close for the day Friday due to “excessive staff and student absences and not enough substitutes available,” administrators wrote on Twitter. | null | null | null | null | null |
Because of Tutu’s prominence and impact, the archbishop was “the most influential antisemite of our time,” Dershowitz said. “In reckoning with the careers of people with mixed legacies, whether it be Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and others,” Dershowitz said, “we have to include in a reckoning of Tutu, his evil, bigotry against Jews, which has existed for many, many, many years.”
Until the attack on Fox News, I was unaware of Dershowitz’s animus against Tutu. Subsequently, I came across an Oct. 1, 2014, New York Jewish Week story: “Dershowitz: Carter, Tutu Have Gaza ‘Blood On Their Hands.’” In the Jewish Week interview, Dershowitz charged that former president Jimmy Carter and Tutu “encouraged” Hamas’s alleged strategy of using Palestinian civilian deaths, including, children, to score public relations points against Israel. | null | null | null | null | null |
This do-your-own research mentality hurts athletes. Of course covid-19 is a relatively new and sometimes unpredictable malady. But trained experts are in a better position than sports stars to determine what is good for the human body, just as Mr. Djokovic is in a better position than his spectators to serve up aces and Mr. Rodgers is in a better position than his fans to throw touchdowns, even if sports watchers might at times erroneously imagine they could do a better job. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The first ‘Great Resignation’
A fast food restaurant stands empty in a Manhattan neighborhood on Feb. 5. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Regarding the Jan. 5 front-page article “Labor churn is highest on record”:
This mass resignation phenomenon is not entirely unprecedented. Consider the “Great Migration” of Black Americans from the South after the failure of Reconstruction and the imposition of Jim Crow and its attendant violence throughout the South. In the early 20th century, spurred by economic conditions that were little better than slavery, social violence, severe segregation and improving job opportunities in the North, in particular from the labor shortage that occurred during World War I, an estimated 5 million Black people abandoned their agricultural jobs (usually sharecropping) and moved north. Southern Whites tried to retain this cheap source of labor with onerous contracts and even through the arrest or detention of those who tried to leave. It did not seem to have occurred to these Southerners to offer higher wages or improved working and living conditions.
Unfortunately, the same approach appears to have been adopted by many of today’s employers, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality industries, that have become addicted to cheap labor and that cannot adjust to the new reality of an empowered workforce. After all, the federal tipped minimum wage still is only $2.13 per hour, and many states (including most in the South) still adhere to the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour for non-tipped wages.
Finally, it may just be that, in the words of the inimitable Bob Dylan, these workers have concluded that “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More.” Especially when there are alternatives.
Deborah Beers, Glen Echo | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The problems in policing
Scenes from the aftermath of a shooting in northwest Washington, D.C., on Sept. 5. (Michael Laris/TWP)
Regarding the Jan. 1 Metro article “Killings rocketed in Md. suburbs and D.C. in 2021”:
Two hundred homicides a year? I wish! I was the D.C. homicide commander in 1988, when we had 372, and 1989, when we had 434. When I would come into the homicide office each morning, I did not ask if we had a homicide but would ask how many.
One critical issue: investigative resources. In my era, the national average annual caseload for a homicide detective was four to six per year. The D.C. homicide detective caseload was 12 or 13 per year, with no signs of abating. Additional investigators were reassigned to the homicide branch but were too inexperienced to effectively tackle the influx of new cases. I requested federal assistance and subsequently joint task forces with the Drug Enforcement Administration (REDRUM), and the FBI (Safe Streets) augmented the D.C. homicide investigative resources.
The reduction by the D.C. Council of authorized police personnel is troubling. Community policing is not new. It was started in the late 1980s by then-Police Chief Ike Fulwood. Though bail reform was needed, the recidivism rate by some of those post-arrestees who were released pending adjudication is troubling.
Bill Ritchie, Clinton
The writer is a retired
D.C. police chief of detectives. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Women belong in history books
History books on a shelf at Clarion High School. (Jeff Swensen/Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post)
Bless Micaela Wells for her Jan. 2 op-ed, “My history textbook’s message: Women don’t matter.” Among today’s students are tomorrow’s world leaders and decision-makers. Their education should truthfully reflect women’s contributions to human achievement.
Maria Roberts, Gaithersburg
Women’s history is often overlooked or undermined in our current curriculums. Instead of being an immersed part of American and world history, women’s history is rarely even a sidebar to the conversation, causing students to have an underdeveloped understanding. Without understanding the depth of women’s history, students fall susceptible to the narrative that women are inferior or contributed less in history — which is not only untrue but also extremely harmful in the long run.
Furthermore, when we learn about women, it is often about their domestic roles in the house and not their righteous acts throughout history. For example, most students know about Paul Revere; however, few know about the 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, whom Ms. Wells mentioned as a woman Americans should know. Sybil rode horseback in the nighttime to deliver a similar message of the arrival of the British.
These integral stories in history are all too often overlooked as unimportant because they center women; however, it is invaluable to ensure students appreciate women’s history as a part of all history — and understand that women are not only equal but also have accomplished amazing things throughout history.
Prasidha Padmanabhan , Chantilly
Micaela Wells wrote a masterpiece that raised questions about how society is not educating itself about the importance of women. When the world-class Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology allows the use of an AP history textbook that provides only 100 words about women in a chapter on World War II, as Ms. Wells wrote, “women” are abandoned.
Everyone in this pandemic should know how fundamentally important and creative women such as Jennifer A. Doudna, Nobel laureate, and her co-laureate, Emmanuelle Charpentier, are in today’s science. Their discovery of gene editing via CRISPR enzymes has given the world lifesaving vaccine technologies. It would be good for TJHS to include Walter Isaacson’s book “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” on the students’ — and teachers’ — must-read lists.
William Westhoff, Woodbridge
Micaela Wells’s essay on the dearth of content on women of historical significance in today’s history textbooks was truly eye-opening. I graduated from high school in 1964, when inclusion of women in history textbooks was essentially nonexistent. That little, if any, appreciable progress has been achieved in the past 58 years should be a wake-up call to everyone. I recognized 13 of the 20 women Ms. Wells said should be mandatory to learn about. Because of her, I will learn as much as I can about the remaining seven.
Ms. Wells’s essay is a first step in acknowledging that changes and upgrades are needed in our schools’ curriculums.
Vera Reublinger, Cabin John
Micaela Wells rightly observes that erasing women in history from textbooks hurts children.
Here in the Pasadena Unified School District in California, we are making enormous headway to restore the empty spaces. Five years ago, a PUSD principal and I created a Women’s History Month assembly, with a specific focus on the history of the women’s liberation movement — a movement that changed the American landscape for all but has not been given its due. For instance, before the women’s liberation movement, a student applying to college could legally be denied admission simply because she was female. Feminists changed that.
Feminists have not been significantly noted in our textbooks as changemakers and leaders of our nation. I suspect things would be different now if we had all been taught the details of the women’s liberation movement.
Equal space in textbooks won’t be given to us. We must build a cultural memory of women in history and include it in our curriculums and teaching environments. The textbook authors will follow.
Jennifer Hall Lee, Altadena, Calif.
The writer is a Pasadena Unified School District trustee and
director of “Feminist: Stories
From Women’s Liberation.”
It was disappointing that Micaela Wells, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, did not mention a single female physicist, astronomer or astrophysicist. I can name quite a few: Margaret Burbidge, Maria Goeppert Mayer, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Henrietta Leavitt, Chien-Shiung Wu.
Rosemary Killen, Greenbelt
The writer is an astronomer.
It was ironic that Kathleen Parker’s Jan. 2 op-ed, “Where I went wrong in a year of writing,” appeared in print just below Micaela Wells’s “My history textbook’s message: Women don’t matter.” Ms. Parker wrote about “wokeness” and criticized herself for failing to call it out for “the foolishness it has become — a bludgeon used to stifle dissent and stymie discourse.” But wokeness is simply “a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Clearly, what she should be calling out are those who misuse “wokeness” to stifle dissent and stymie discourse.
Ms. Wells’s op-ed was an excellent example of “wokeness.” She carefully demonstrated how even today’s textbooks “cancel” women’s history and have led to an amazing ignorance of important women in American history. Ms. Wells went beyond wokeness by pointing out (correctly, I believe) that “as we work toward women’s equality, education is holding us back.” She was also correct to write that when women’s accomplishments are omitted from today’s U.S. history curriculum, “it becomes more difficult for students to see how gender-based inequities remain entrenched.”
Far from stifling dissent and stymieing discourse, Ms. Wells was expressing a dissenting opinion about the state of U.S. history education and making an important contribution to the discourse about the subject.
Steve Eckstrand, Rockville | null | null | null | null | null |
Snow-stranded drivers, a sheep and goat syringe and more of the week’s best photos
Drivers get stranded on Interstate 95 in Virginia during an ice and snowstorm; a tribute to soccer star Diego Maradona appears at the bottom of a pool in Argentina; the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection is remembered in Washington. Here are 12 of the week’s most interesting images from around the world, selected by Washington Post photo editors.
Jan. 3 | Washington, D.C.
A commuter exits a Metro station as the snow falls.
People take photos of the White House through a snow-covered fence.
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post
Jan. 3 | Silver Spring, Md.
Adam Halperin, right, and his family, Meredith, Clark, dog Horton and Thora, make their way along a snowy street.
Canada geese take off in the snow at the pond near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall.
Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post
Jan. 4 | Carmel Church, Va.
Cars and trucks are stranded on Interstate 95. Close to 48 miles of the highway were closed due to ice and snow.
Jan. 3 | Mar del Plata, Argentina
An image of the late Argentine soccer star Diego Armando Maradona appears at the bottom of a pool as a tribute at the Balneario 12 beach club.
Jan. 6 | Imperatriz, Brazil
A chameleon tries to stay out of the water during floods.
Jan. 3 | Schneverdingen, Germany
Sheep and goats form a large syringe shape to promote vaccinations against covid-19.
Philipp Schulze/DPA/AP
Jan. 6 | Almaty, Kazakhstan
A man takes a picture near a burned car in front of the mayor's office building, which was torched during protests triggered by a fuel price increase.
Jan. 5 | Philadelphia
A woman reacts at the scene of a deadly rowhouse fire in the city's Fairmount neighborhood.
Members of a military honor guard watch as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other representatives participate in a candlelight vigil outside the U.S. Capitol to commemorate the anniversary of the insurrection.
The U.S. Capitol at sunrise on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Photo editing by Stephen Cook, Dee Swann and Kenneth Dickerman | null | null | null | null | null |
Airports in New York, Boston and D.C. were among the hardest hit
Delays also were reported at the three airports in the Washington region, which are still trying to rebound from a Monday storm that dumped more than 10 inches of snow in some parts of the region. Reagan National Airport received nearly seven inches of snow Monday, prompting the cancellation of more than 85 percent of flights that day.
Among U.S. carriers, Southwest remains the most impacted with more than 500 cancellations, about 17 percent of Friday’s scheduled departures. Carriers with strong presences in Boston and New York City, including American Airlines, JetBlue and United Airlines, also were affected. JetBlue scrapped 17 percent of planned departures Friday, while American canceled more than 180. | null | null | null | null | null |
Reggie Brown, of Centralia, carries his daughter, Ocean, 4, on his shoulders as he walks through the floodwaters on Highway 507 with his wife, Jonell Brown, on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in Centralia, Wash. The highway had flooded after heavy rains caused the Skookumchuck River to rise about its northern banks.(Peter Caster/The News Tribune via AP) (Pete Caster/The News Tribune)
By Lisa Baumann | AP
BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Snow and rain continued to fall across the Pacific Northwest on Friday, forcing the closure of parts of Washington state’s two major highways — Interstate 90 and Interstate 5 — and causing flooding that swamped roads and closed schools in parts of Oregon. | null | null | null | null | null |
The intense jet of moisture has produced record-setting rainfall, high seas, and, in the mountains, copious snowfall.
In Seattle, 2 inches of rain fell Thursday, a record for Jan. 6.
The Bellingham Herald reported that at least a dozen homes were impacted by the coastal flooding.
Farther north, especially in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, the atmospheric rivers have led to multiple instances of flooding, the most extreme event occurring in November, when high water cutoff entire communities. | null | null | null | null | null |
NASHVILLE — Alysa Liu, considered the United States’ top female figure skater and best hope to medal at the Beijing Olympics, tested positive for the coronavirus and pulled out of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, U.S. Figure Skating announced Friday.
She was the second major competitor to drop out of the nationals because of a positive coronavirus test. The top pairs team of Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier pulled out Wednesday night after Frazier’s test came back positive.
All competitors at the championships had to show a negative coronavirus test upon arrival at the event this week to participate, but U.S. Figure Skating officials have required a second, rapid test, during the week. Liu’s positive result came on a test taken Friday.
“I’m fully vaccinated, have been wearing a N95 mask and got 2 negative test results before leaving to Nashville,” she wrote in a post on her Instagram account Friday afternoon. “Things happen unfortunately but it is what it is. I’m thankful to us figure skating for taking the extra precautions and having the necessary testing facilities to help keep everyone here as safe as possible. I’m feeling good physically and mentally and I’m wishing all the girls good luck for tonight! Thank you for the support.”
Despite her positive test, Liu still has an excellent chance to make the Olympic team; the three women who will get the chance to compete in Beijing will be announced Saturday afternoon. U.S. Figure Skating rules allow athletes who do not perform well in the nationals to submit a written petition to U.S. Figure Skating’s International Committee highlighting their body of work. Knierim and Frazier also can petition and probably will be selected for Beijing as well. | null | null | null | null | null |
Airports in New York, Boston and D.C. were among the hardest hit.
According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, more than 2,600 flights within, to and from the United States were canceled Friday. Southwest Airlines continued to be the hardest hit among major U.S. carriers, with more than 520 flights canceled, roughly 17 percent of scheduled departures.
Delays also were reported at three Washington-area airports, which are still trying to rebound from a Monday storm that dumped more than 10 inches of snow in some parts of the region. Reagan National Airport received nearly seven inches of snow Monday, prompting the cancellation of more than 85 percent of flights that day.
On Friday, there were more than 90 flight cancellations at National, about 21 percent of scheduled departures, according to FlightAware. At Baltimore-Washington Marshall International, a major hub for Southwest, more than 40 flights, roughly 16 percent of those scheduled, were scrubbed. Meanwhile, at Washington Dulles International, 12 percent of flights were canceled.
United, which also has struggled with staffing issues and weather impacts, warned customers whose itineraries included Denver and cities in the Northeast of potential issues via Twitter.
The Chicago-based carrier canceled 208, or 10 percent, of its scheduled departures Friday.
Airlines have blamed the cancellations on a combination of factors. Initially, staffing shortages due to rising numbers of coronavirus infections caused by the omicron variant forced airlines to reduce their schedules, but those shortages have been aggravated by bad weather in various parts of the country.
The Transportation Security Administration also has seen an uptick in infections. On Friday, it reported 3,503 cases, an increase of 894 since Monday. The rising numbers are beginning to affect the agency’s operations. On Friday, the agency temporarily closed two of the four checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor International’s busiest terminal, Terminal 4, which is home to Southwest and American airlines as well as several international carriers. News of the temporary closure was first reported by the Arizona Republic.
“We are monitoring this closely, and this situation only seems to affect Phoenix Sky Harbor,” said Carter Langston, a TSA spokesman.
During this most recent wave of disruptions, many travelers have complained about waiting for hours on hold to rebook flights or track lost baggage. Airlines have invested billions of dollars in tools to allow customers to rebook flights online or via their smartphones, but many travelers said those tools did not work for their situations. | null | null | null | null | null |
The intense jet of moisture has produced record-setting rainfall, high seas and, in the mountains, copious snowfall.
In Seattle, two inches of rain fell Thursday, a record for Jan. 6.
The Bellingham Herald reported that at least a dozen homes were affected by the coastal flooding.
Farther north, especially in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, the atmospheric rivers have led to multiple instances of flooding, the most extreme event occurring in November, when high water cut off entire communities. | null | null | null | null | null |
Calif. project blocked over wildfire concerns
The Lake County judge’s ruling on the Guenoc Valley Resort could have sweeping ramifications for housing and business developments across a state where fires are growing in severity and local officials are under intense pressure to approve new building projects during a housing crisis.
The ruling, under California’s powerful environmental law, also represents a major victory for environmentalists opposed to new housing and business projects in areas with extreme wildfire risks.
On Tuesday, Lake County Judge J. David Markham agreed with environmentalists and the state that Lake County planners signed off on the development’s environmental documents without accounting for what would happen if a fast-moving fire erupted and the resort’s workers and guests all tried to leave the area at once.
Officials with Lotusland Investment Holdings, the group building the Guenoc project, said they were reviewing the ruling.
— Sacramento Bee
Electricity prices surge in East with cold snap
Electricity prices are surging on power grids from Virginia to Maine as homeowners crank up heaters to combat freezing temperatures.
New York City’s spot price briefly spiked to $1,280.60 per megawatt-hour at 11 a.m. Friday before settling between $200 and $300, according to the grid operator’s website. New England prices tripled in the late morning from a day earlier, touching $286. Prices in New Jersey and Philadelphia topped $100. Prices in the region at this time of year typically range between $40 and $70 per megawatt-hour.
Demand came in above the grid operators’ forecasts as a nor’easter swept into the region after blanketing Washington with snow for a second time this week. New England is especially vulnerable to price spikes because it’s at the end of the natural gas pipeline and has to rely on costly imports. Natural gas is the main fuel for power plants.
Power prices across the Midwest popped to about $100 a megawatt-hour on the central U.S. grid run by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). That was three times more expensive than prices on the grid’s Gulf Coast region.
A U.S. judge on Friday allowed Purdue Pharma to immediately challenge her rejection of legal protections for Sackler family members who own the OxyContin maker, protections that were key to its bankruptcy reorganization plan. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon's ruling means Purdue will have another shot at keeping intact a $4.5 billion opioid litigation settlement at the heart of the company's plan. McMahon had reversed a bankruptcy judge's order approving the deal in December. The settlement provides "nondebtor releases" that shield the Sacklers against future opioid-related lawsuits.
Volkswagen is giving workers at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., a 10 percent pay raise as the omicron variant of the coronavirus stretches an already tight labor market, the head of its U.S. business said. The German automaker on Friday reported U.S. sales of 375,030 vehicles for 2021, a 15 percent jump from the prior year. The performance was led by the Atlas, its three-row SUV made in Chattanooga, and the Tiguan midsize SUV. VW delivered 16,742 units of its electric ID.4 SUV, which it plans to begin building in Chattanooga.
Walt Disney has been approved for a patent to project moving 3-D images on objects to interact with theme park visitors, making it easier to create interactive attractions throughout its parks. The U.S. Patent Office approved the patent for Disney Enterprises last month for a technology described as a "Virtual-World Simulator." Disney officials say they have no immediate plans to use the technology. | null | null | null | null | null |
10 bodies found near governor's office
Ten bodies — eight men and two women — were found Thursday in a parked van near the governor’s office in Zacatecas in north-central Mexico. The vehicle was parked under a Christmas tree in the state capital’s main plaza, according to the newspaper La Jornada.
Initial autopsies performed on seven of the 10 bodies showed that they ranged in age from 18 to 45 and that the cause of death was strangulation. Some of the victims showed signs of being tied by their hands and feet.
So far, police have partially identified four of the bodies. Also, a 20-year-old woman from Zacatecas has been positively identified by her family members as one of the victims.
Zacatecas Gov. David Monreal Ávila said in a video posted Thursday on his official Twitter account that the people thought to be responsible had been arrested, but declined to give further details because an investigation is ongoing.
— Maite Fernández Simon
Opposition leaders freed; talks planned
Ethiopia has freed several opposition leaders from prison, the state broadcaster reported Friday, as the government said it would begin talks with political opponents after 14 months of war during which thousands of people have been arrested.
The move to free leaders from several ethnic groups is the most significant breakthrough since war broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, threatening the unity of Africa’s second-most-populous country.
Some leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which is fighting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s central government, were said to be among the freed.
Tallest Galapagos volcano erupts: The tallest mountain in the Galapagos islands was erupting Friday, spewing lava down its flanks and clouds of ash over the Pacific Ocean, according to Ecuador's Geophysical Institute. A cloud of gas and ash from Wolf Volcano rose to 12,444 feet above sea level after the eruption, which began shortly before midnight Wednesday, the institute said. There was no immediate danger to populated areas, which are on the opposite side of Isabela island, the largest in the Galapagos chain.
Berlin teacher convicted in 'cannibalism fantasies' killing: A teacher in Berlin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of a man that the court said was carried out as part of "cannibalism fantasies." The 42-year-old, identified only as Stefan R. in keeping with German privacy rules, also was convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead. The Berlin state court found that the defendant killed a 43-year-old mechanic in September 2020 "to live out his cannibalism fantasies," Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported. The men met on a dating site and agreed to meet for sex at the teacher's apartment in Berlin, investigators said. The court found that the defendant killed the man there, cut up his body and then spread parts of it in various neighborhoods. | null | null | null | null | null |
The tendency to show up for those in mourning, a pattern of his years in public office, has caused some tension among staff, since the events disrupt his schedule and take considerable preparation time.
Biden ability to stretch his schedule to accommodate the events at times surpasses his wife’s. The president, speaking in November at a Milford, Del., funeral for former Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner explained in his address why he was there solo, saying, “The reason Jill is not with me today is she’s teaching today, full time as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.”
It’s a stark contrast particularly with former president Donald Trump, who has famously skipped significant commemoration services. Trump did not attend former Senator John McCain’s service, with whom he often tangled, at the insistence of McCain’s family. Biden, then out of office, went to Arizona to speak at it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sole criminal charge against Cuomo dismissed
Sole charge against Cuomo dismissed
The only criminal charge filed over the sexual harassment allegations that drove former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo from office was dismissed Friday at prosecutors’ request, clearing what had been seen as the most serious legal threat to the Democrat.
Cuomo resigned in August after a report released by state Attorney General Letitia James (D) that concluded Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. He said he never touched anyone inappropriately. He has called the report unfair.
Man sentenced for sex trafficking at game
Edward Walker, 48, of New Haven, was sentenced Thursday in Fort Lauderdale federal court, according to court records. A jury found him guilty in October of sex trafficking by force and coercion, sex trafficking of a minor by force and coercion and transporting a person for sexual activity.
Man who killed, buried his wife is sentenced
The sentence Judge Brouck Jacobs gave to 26-year-old Joseph Elledge was the one jurors recommended in November when they convicted Elledge of second-degree murder in the killing of his wife, Mengqi Ji. Ji, who was 28 when she died, met Elledge after she moved to the United States from China to study engineering at the University of Missouri. | null | null | null | null | null |
KEY INJURIES: Cowboys CB Trevon Diggs (illness) is out, robbing Dallas for a key playmaker. ... WR Michael Gallup is out for the playoffs after tearing the ACL in his left knee last week against the Cardinals. ... TE Blake Jarwin (hip) has been designated for return from injured reserve, which mostly likely means a return in the playoffs. Jarwin hasn’t played since Week 8. ... For the Eagles, top RB Miles Sanders is out with a broken hand but the team is hoping he can return for the playoffs. ... A total of 12 players went on the reserve/COVID-19 list this week. All are eligible to return by Saturday, but if the Eagles want to hold any of them out, they can bring in practice squad players without having to cut anyone from the roster.
STATS AND STUFF: The Cowboys are plus-13 in turnover margin, third in the NFL. They haven’t finished plus-13 or better since 1981. The 25 interceptions are the most for Dallas since the 1999 team had 33. ... The Cowboys are 5-0 against the NFC East. They can go undefeated in the division for the third time (1969, 1998). ... QB Dak Prescott is 24-6 against the NFC East. The only loss in his past 16 starts in the division was to the Eagles in 2019. ... Pollard needs 31 yards rushing to reach 750 for the season. It would make him and Elliott (915 yards) the first Dallas tandem with at least 750 yards apiece since Calvin Hill (1,036 yards) and Walt Garrison (784) in 1972. ... WR Amari Cooper has tied his career high with eight receiving TDs. ... Parsons, if he plays, needs two sacks to break Jevon Kearse’s rookie record of 14½ for Tennessee in 1999. Diggs is tied with Everson Walls for the club record with 11 interceptions. It’s the most in the NFL since Walls set the mark as a rookie in 1981. But Diggs won’t play. ... P Bryan Anger has a career-high 44.6-yard net average. The club record is 42.5 by Chris Jones in 2013. ... The Eagles haven’t beaten a team that currently has a winning record, but this is the first group in franchise history to make the playoffs after a 2-5 start … The Eagles are 41 yards away from the franchise rushing record of 2,607, set in 1949 (a 12-game season) … They are one of three NFC teams to make the playoffs four of the last five seasons … The Eagles’ four defensive touchdowns lead the NFL. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bulgaria’s vanishing act: Population dives by more than 11 percent over the past decade
BERLIN — Bulgaria’s population shrunk more than 11 percent over the past decade, according to its latest census, as the Eastern European country struggles to stem the tide of young people seeking more-lucrative work abroad amid low birthrates.
Between 2011 and 2021, Bulgaria’s population dropped by 844,000 people, or 11.5 percent, to 6.5 million, according to preliminary census data from Bulgaria’s National Statistics Institute. The country’s population peaked shortly before the fall of communism at nearly 9 million.
According to European Union estimates, the population will slip to 5.3 million by 2050.
The numbers confirm the “deepening of negative demographic trends” in the past 30 years, Bulgaria’s statistics office said. With the exception of the capital, Sofia, the populations of all districts in the country were in decline. The statistics office attributed the decrease to both low birthrates and migration.
Bulgaria has the lowest per-capita income in the 27-member European Union. But since 2014, Bulgarians have been entitled to work and live anywhere in the bloc, with many leaving to seek better pay and career options.
Birthrates in Bulgaria are in decline but not more so than elsewhere in Europe, with the main demographic crisis being the “constant emigration of educated and qualified people of an active age,” according to a 2018 report on demographics in Bulgaria by the German think tank Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. | null | null | null | null | null |
Because of Tutu’s prominence and impact, the archbishop was “the most influential antisemite of our time,” Dershowitz said. “In reckoning with the careers of people with mixed legacies, whether it be Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and others,” Dershowitz said, “we have to include in a reckoning of Tutu, his evil bigotry against Jews, which has existed for many, many, many years.”
Until the attack on Fox News, I was unaware of Dershowitz’s animus against Tutu. Subsequently, I came across an Oct. 1, 2014, New York Jewish Week story: “Dershowitz: Carter, Tutu Have Gaza ‘Blood On Their Hands.’” In the Jewish Week interview, Dershowitz charged that former president Jimmy Carter and Tutu “encouraged” Hamas’s alleged strategy of using Palestinian civilian deaths, including children, to score public relations points against Israel. | 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 |
Patrick Ewing was so furious Friday night he stood up in the midst of his postgame news conference and strode out of the room at Capital One Arena. Moments earlier, the final buzzer had sounded in Georgetown’s 92-64 loss to Marquette in the team’s Big East opener. His Hoyas had missed the past four games due to covid issues, but Ewing wasn’t offering excuses. He was offering something else.
“As a player who helped build this program, I am disappointed in my team’s performance,” Ewing said. “This is not what Georgetown basketball is about. Big John is rolling over in his grave for the performance that we showed tonight. This is not what I’m about. This is not what my team’s about.
“So everybody is on notice. If they want to play, they’re going to have to friggin play. That’s it. Have a good night.”
The 92 points allowed were a season high and the Golden Eagles shot nearly 60 percent from the floor.
Ewing was left with his anger. The Hoyas (6-6, 0-1 Big East) gave up huge runs in both halves, extinguishing any hopes of a rally. Georgetown went from trailing, 47-44, early in the second half to trailing by 32.
“We cut it to three points, but then we let go of the rope. Every effort thing that we needed to do, we didn’t do it,” Ewing said before abruptly leaving the postgame media session. “If we want to be successful in the Big East, we have to compete every night. And I do have to say, as a person who played 17 years, who’s coached 20 years, tonight I was disappointed in my team’s effort and my team’s performance.
One second-half sequence summed up the night for Georgetown. Ewing called a timeout after falling behind by 28 points and the Hoyas couldn’t inbound the ball, so Aminu Mohammed called another, the team’s last, with 11:29 remaining. Georgetown came out of the break and Mohammed immediately turned over the ball. Seconds later, Dante Harris simply lost the ball while dribbling and Marquette’s Olivier-Maxence, Prosper threw down a dunk on the ensuing fast break.
A pair of runs Marquette spelled doom for Georgetown, and both left the Hoyas defense looking completely lost. The first-half blitz came quick and left the Hoyas’ heads spinning. A one-point Marquette lead turned into an 18-point margin in just under five minutes of court time as the Golden Eagles (10-6, 2-3) attacked both inside and out. Prosper followed a three-pointer with an alley-oop dunk. Then it was Darryl Morsell’s turn. The former Maryland standout delivered his ownthundering alley-oop dunk that was followed by a steal and layup by Prosper. Greg Elliott capped the run with a triple of his own.
Things to know about Friday’s game: | null | null | null | null | null |
St. Louis Blues defenseman Colton Parayko (55) checks Washington Capitals defenseman Dmitry Orlov (9) during the first period of an NHL hockey game Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Joe Puetz)
ST. LOUIS — The Washington Capitals flew out of the gates Friday night in the opening minutes against St. Louis Blues. The visitors appeared to have pent-up energy after not playing in five days, generating pressure from the drop of the puck, creating opportunities and striking first for an early lead. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bradley Beal led with 26 points on 9-of-14 shooting and added six assists. Kyle Kuzma had 21 points and 11 rebounds — posting his fourth double-double in the past five games — but went 0 for 4 from three.
The offense ultimately mattered less to Unseld.
“I just didn’t think our effort and focus was there tonight on the defensive side of the ball,” he said. “I addressed it after the game: our care factor has to be better, it just has to. We’ve seen early in the year where we could be and how we could play when we guard. And we haven’t seen it since. That’s probably the most frustrating thing.”
Here’s what else there is to know about Friday’s game: | null | null | null | null | null |
An earlier version of this story included an incorrect photo caption that said Lydell Henry wrestled at Morgan State University. The program was dropped before Henry could wrestle for it.
Henry, 44, who recruits would-be wrestlers for an inner-city youth program he runs, knew what the sport did for him in high school. He grew up in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, where drug sales and violence were a daily experience. He got in fights often and, like many kids, was cut from the famed basketball team at Dunbar High School. But a wrestling coach there noticed the resilience and toughness within this student with an average build.
Henry excelled, placing second in the Maryland Scholastic Association tournament his junior year. He graduated in 1995 and hoped to wrestle at Baltimore’s Morgan State University, which had the premier wrestling program among the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities with four national champions and approximately 75 all-Americans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Patrick Ewing was so furious Friday night he stood up in the midst of his postgame news conference and strode out of the room at Capital One Arena. Moments earlier, the final buzzer had sounded in Georgetown’s 92-64 loss to Marquette in the team’s Big East opener. His Hoyas had missed the past four games due to coronavirus issues, but Ewing wasn’t offering excuses. He was offering something else.
“As a player who helped build this program, I am disappointed in my team’s performance,” Ewing said before referencing legendary Hoyas coach John Thompson Jr. “This is not what Georgetown basketball is about. Big John is rolling over in his grave for the performance that we showed tonight. This is not what I’m about. This is not what my team’s about.
“So everybody is on notice. If they want to play, they’re going to have to frigging play. That’s it. Have a good night.”
The 92 points allowed were a season high, and the Golden Eagles shot nearly 60 percent from the floor.
Ewing was left with his anger. The Hoyas (6-6) gave up huge runs in both halves, extinguishing any hopes of a rally. Georgetown went from trailing 47-44 early in the second half to trailing by 32.
“We cut it to three points, but then we let go of the rope. Every effort thing that we needed to do, we didn’t do it,” Ewing said. “If we want to be successful in the Big East, we have to compete every night. And I do have to say, as a person who played 17 years, who’s coached 20 years, tonight I was disappointed in my team’s effort and my team’s performance.
He abruptly left the postgame media session.
Here are things to know about Friday’s game: | null | null | null | null | null |
In an interview with The Washington Post, Niccol says technology will be instrumental in the future of the restaurant industry. Chipotle is using vision sensors to identify in real time how much guacamole is made and offer predictions for how much will be needed in the future. The company is also experimenting with streamlining job applications through text messages and automated scheduling. And Niccol invites tech companies seeking to pilot restaurant innovations to call Chipotle.
But the future model for the restaurant industry won’t be just about machines and technology with no human interaction, Niccol says, but will require a sensitive balance.
And Chipotle is in a financial position to do just that, Niccol says. It had $1.2 billion of cash and investments and no debt as of Sept. 30. It generated revenue of $5.6 billion for the first nine months of 2021, an increase of nearly 28 percent from 2020.
That doesn’t mean the past few years have been easy for Chipotle. Like others in the restaurant industry, it has been struggling to staff its more than 2,900 restaurants. It’s also investing $2 billion, which includes a 2021 wage increase to an average of $15 an hour, in nearly 100,000 employees. In 2020, the restaurant agreed to fork over a record $25 million for criminal charges over tainted food it served between 2015 and 2018 that sickened more than 1,100 U.S. customers. And it’s dealing with the growing cost of ingredients and supplies, keeping up with the demand of online and takeout orders, and adapting to the ever-changing coronavirus pandemic.
Changing the starting wage was something that we thought was the right thing to do and has proven to be very effective to get applicant flow. [Previously] we didn’t spend enough time explaining to folks that when you start with us, you have the ability to move from one of these crew member roles to a service manager role, a kitchen manager role, a general manager in not that long of a horizon. So the combination of getting the starting wage correct with the opportunity to grow from that wage has proven to be pretty darn effective.
A: We do these wellness checks before everybody is able to clock in and start their job for the day. We have a zero-tolerance policy for working sick. Before, it was a very manual exercise where we would ask the individual questions, and they would sign the book. Now, we’re digitizing a lot of those processes so that it happens like clockwork, and people can have the confidence that nothing slipped through the cracks.
Q: What is the answer to luring more workers to your industry, given the health concerns and burnout?
A: It definitely is going to have a much bigger off-[premises] opportunity [delivery and takeout]. I don’t think it’s totally at the expense of still having a dining-room experience. A lot of companies are not set up to be able to manage those two lines of business out of a single asset. So it’s creating a lot of bottlenecks. It takes investment, and it takes believing in the technology to pull it off. Some of it is physical [tech], and some of it is software. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) speaks to reporters on Jan. 4 outside his office on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Additionally, Manchin’s offer included a number of proposed tax hikes that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) had already ruled out, people familiar with the matter said. And while Manchin did support substantial new climate funds, the underlying policy details of his proposed climate provisions remain unclear and could have proved difficult for the White House to ultimately accept.
“The policies we’re fighting for — like letting Medicare negotiate prices — are incredibly popular in West Virginia, and Manchin is clearly not listening to people in his state,” said Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, a left-leaning group. “Biden has to bring the full weight of the presidency to bear on Joe Manchin III to get his vote to get Build Back Better across the finish line.”
“I know the grass roots are not in any way giving up on Joe Manchin III,” Lawson said, “and we’ll make it harder and harder for him to not listen to what the people in West Virginia are demanding he do.” | null | null | null | null | null |
D.C.-area forecast: Freezing temperatures today, and a chance of freezing rain Sunday morning
Winter weather advisory issued north of District Sunday morning for freezing rain and slick roads and walkways.
7:05 a.m. — Winter weather advisory issued north of District Sunday morning for freezing rain and slick roads and walkways
On Sunday morning, as light rain moves into the region with some areas below freezing, icy roads and walkways could develop. The highest risk for freezing rain is north of the District, where the National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory.
The advisory is in effect from 6 a.m. until noon and includes Loudoun, Montgomery and Howard counties and points north.
“The cold conditions leading up to this event may make it a dangerous situation for anyone travelling during this time,” the National Weather Service writes. “Anyone travelling, especially on interstates 270, 70, 95, 695, and 83 should pay close attention to the weather Sunday.”
The most likely period for freezing rain would be around midmorning before temperature rise above freezing toward midday.
Models do show the possibility of a light glaze north and northwest of the District. | null | null | null | null | null |
We found these two factors at work.
Security forces block a street in central Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 7 after violence that erupted following protests over hikes in fuel prices. (Abduaziz Madyarov/AFP via Getty Images)
By Pauline Jones
By Friday morning, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued a “shoot to kill without warning” order to security forces, doubling down on the government’s efforts to quell widespread protests that kicked off earlier in the week.
On Jan. 2, citizens in western Kazakhstan turned out to protest a steep jump in fuel prices, which reportedly doubled on the first day of the new year after ratcheting up in recent weeks. Within just four days, spontaneous protests in a remote part of the country spread to other cities, including the capital, Nur-Sultan.
Our research on protest and reform helps explain why a sharp increase in fuel prices broke public trust in government. Protests cascaded across the country as citizens realized the depth of popular discontent and shared frustrations that linked economic and political grievances.
Even after the government reversed course and capped fuel prices, the protests continued. Tokayev replaced his ministerial cabinet, expanded price controls to other consumer goods and declared a state of emergency. But protesters’ demands have now escalated to calls for the significant political reform Tokayev had promised when he took office in 2019.
The protests aren’t just about fuel prices
While the protests were sparked by outrage over a dramatic rise in fuel prices, they were energized by a shared grievance with much deeper roots — the failed promise of reforms dating back to 1991, when Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union. When Tokayev succeeded longtime President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019, he promised reform, and most Kazakhstanis believed him.
Surveys suggest Kazakhstan’s citizens have had high levels of trust in their political leaders since independence. Just before Nazarbayev named his successor, 70 percent of respondents said they had confidence in their national government and the president, according to the World Values Survey.
Phone surveys conducted in July 2021 by political scientist Pauline Jones as part of a University of Michigan research team on global covid-19 attitudes indicate that trust levels remained high under Tokayev, even during the peak of the pandemic. Over 75 percent of respondents in Kazakhstan answered that they had either a lot (41 percent) or some (34 percent) confidence in the president.
So what explains these seemingly pro-regime popular attitudes — and mass protests just months later? And what explains the escalation of political demands from protesters, within days of an uprising that might appear economic in nature?
Civic action, protest capacity and grievances
Relative to its neighbors, Kazakhstan is a high-capacity country that flourished in part thanks to its oil and mineral reserve. Many analysts consider Kazakhstan one of the most stable countries in the region, despite significant inequality and corruption within its long-standing authoritarian regime. While other post-Soviet neighbors have experienced mass uprisings — or color revolutions that unseated the ruling regime — Kazakhstan’s leaders had never faced widespread civic protests.
But research by political scientist Regina Smyth reveals that two dynamics associated with mass protest were present in Kazakhstan. First, years of local protest actions had improved citizens’ capacity to self-organize. And second, the population had increased its demands for meaningful reform when controlled elections failed to provide accountability. In the face of a suddenly imposed grievance, like uncapped energy prices, these developments can rupture government-society relations built on trust.
Data from the Central Asian Protest Tracker illustrates growing local grievances over issues such as environmental degradation, labor, food costs and land use. Political opposition also intensified in response to Kazakhstan’s January 2021 parliamentary elections. Both types of mobilization produced new leaders, activist and organizational networks, and political frames likely to influence future events. They also linked frustration over elections and representation to protest.
Another factor in the apparent success at drawing large numbers to the streets is that protesters have issued relatively moderate demands. Kazakhstani protesters have asked Tokayev to distance himself from former president Nazarbayev, who retained control from the sidelines. They’ve called for the election of regional governors. Notably, protesters have not called on the current president to resign — a demand made by protesters in neighboring Kyrgyzstan in October 2020.
What does this mean for the future of Kazakhstan?
To understand what’s happening in Kazakhstan — and what may lie ahead — it might be helpful to recap how similar events played out in Chile and Ecuador in 2019. While protest capacity is more robust in these Latin American countries than in Kazakhstan, the popular outrage was similar. In both cases, illiberal government policies increased fuel prices and mass transit fares, prompting violent mass protests, but only Chile launched a new round of significant political reform.
In Ecuador, where constitutional reforms preceded the demonstrations, protesters focused primarily on economic issues. The opposition won concessions and then remobilized in 2021 when the government failed to live up to its promises.
In Chile, by contrast, protesters’ demands moved quickly from economic issues to calls for political reform. Government violence evoked the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973-1990, and highlighted the persistence of the Pinochet-era constitution. Activists called for a break with the past to address long-standing frustrations about the lack of political representation. In elections held in May 2021, independent and opposition candidates won a resounding victory, paving the way for significant constitutional reform.
Kazakhstanis’ calls for political change suggest a similar desire to shed the Soviet legacy embodied in Nazarbayev’s rule and reform an illiberal political system that continued to preserve the nation’s oil wealth for the few, at the expense of the broader population.
Chile’s experience suggests that government violence can backfire and motivate more citizens to join protests — and that protests are likely to continue if the incumbent regime ignores calls for reform.
Of course, Chile and Ecuador were unlikely to call for foreign intervention to quell protests. Geopolitics strongly shape Tokayev’s decision to reconsolidate the authoritarian system he inherited, and choose repression over reform.
Tokayev has labeled the protests as “terrorism” and, bolstered by Russian troops, appears to have no plans to back down. Government personnel changes this week suggest instead that he is preparing to use Russian support to strengthen his military and security forces to regain control of the streets. Kazakhstan may now see big changes — but not as protesters intended.
Pauline Jones is a professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC) at the University of Michigan.
Regina Smyth is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University. Follow her on Twitter @ReginaSmyth. | null | null | null | null | null |
In 2021, Earth Networks counted more than 7,800 thunder days across the contiguous United States — a 4 percent increase from 2020. Similar to the Vaisala lightning data, Texas, Florida and Louisiana experienced the most thunder days. New Mexico, while not ranking in the top 10 for lightning counts, did have the ninth-highest number of thunder days in the nation last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
The New York Giants’ struggling offense ranks 31st in the NFL in yards per game. To paint a picture of how poorly the unit has been playing, the Giants have scored one touchdown in their last 35 offensive possessions.
Last week against the Chicago Bears, backup quarterback Mike Glennon — replacing starter Daniel Jones, who’s out for the season with a neck injury — finished with four turnovers and 24 yards passing. He had a total of minus-10 net passing yards, including yards lost on sacks, making the Giants the first team to finish a game with negative net passing yards since 2009.
Washington defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio said Thursday he was proud of his defense’s willingness to fight and compete despite a string of unforeseen circumstances. For a defense ranked 27th in yards-allowed per game that struggled to live up to its preseason expectations, Sunday could be a chance to end on a high note before heading into the offseason.
Jones was injured in Week 12 and the Giants have scored 10 points or less in four of their five contests since, gaining less than 200 yards in back-to-back outings. Fromm, a 23-year-old who made his first professional start two weeks ago, was 6-for-17 for 25 yards and an interception before getting benched for Glennon.
“For me, any opportunity to play in the NFL is a great opportunity,” Fromm said. “Obviously, I’m looking forward to having a good week of practice and going out and playing to the best of my abilities and how I think I can.”
Washington’s defense has struggled to get off the field for most of the season, ranking 31st in opponent third-down conversion percentage. But the problem has been especially glaring during its current four-game losing streak, illustrated by an average of 70.5 defensive snaps per game during four consecutive losses against NFC East opponents. The defense only averaged 49.3 snaps a game during Washington’s four-game winning streak from Week 10 to Week 13.
Taylor Heinicke is preparing to start his 15th game this season for Washington. After only playing in nine games, including the playoffs, since entering the league in 2015 and dealing with two stints on the injured list with Carolina and Minnesota, Heinicke only missed one start this year after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Heinicke credited his offseason workouts with his two trainers in Georgia for helping him stay healthy, as he put on 15 pounds of muscle and ate healthier.
Sammis Reyes heads into this offseason after his first full season on an NFL roster. The tight end from Chile, a former basketball player, said he’s progressed significantly from when he began the season and that the improvement is noticeable when he watches his film from months ago.
“I'm gonna go into training mode this offseason,” Reyes said. “Get with my people, get with my trainers and really sit down and analyze how we're going to get to where I need to be next year so I can really have an impact on this team.”
Injury report: Washington will be without four starters — defensive end Montez Sweat (personal), receiver Curtis Samuel (hamstring), offensive lineman Saahdiq Charles (knee) and tight end Ricky Seals-Jones (concussion) — in Sunday’s game. The lone questionable player is Reyes, who is dealing with a hamstring injury.
Glennon, as well as wideouts John Ross and Kadarius Toney, will be out for the Giants, leaving New York with an even more limited number of offensive options. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alabama linebacker Will Anderson Jr. leads the nation in sacks and ranks second in school history with 34.5 tackles for loss this season. (Vasha Hunt/AP)
A coach of 20 years, Fedd helped develop Alabama’s all-American linebacker Will Anderson Jr. into a menacing pass rusher at Dutchtown High in Hampton, Ga., just south of Atlanta. He witnessed an evolution that took work and time, but as Fedd reflects on Anderson’s early-career successes, the byproduct seems all but ordained given his tales of Anderson’s focus and drive.
Fedd has known Anderson as a genial, selfless student since they first met six years ago, but he has also seen the switch, when competition calls and Anderson refuses to recede. That relentlessness helped transform the Crimson Tide’s sophomore star into the most recent incarnation of an elite edge rusher, joining a line of prolific backfield intruders whose lineage includes a Watt, and a Miller, and one Derrick Thomas.
Thomas reset the bar as an outside linebacker at Alabama in the late 1980s, smashing school records and evolving into one of the best pass rushers in college football and NFL history. In 1988, he set the NCAA record for most sacks in a season (27), and he shares the record for most sacks in a career (52) with former Arizona defensive lineman Tedy Bruschi — although both marks are considered unofficial because the NCAA began officially tracking sacks as a statistic in 2000. Thomas also maintains a startling grip on Alabama records for tackles for loss (39) and quarterback hurries (44) in a season, among others.
Building on a freshman campaign that saw him compile all seven of his sacks during the final four games of the 2020 regular season, Anderson set a new standard from the first game of his sophomore year, recording the first of 17.5 sacks against Miami. He registered four sacks against Mississippi State and two in last month’s College Football Playoff semifinal against Cincinnati.
Although Anderson probably won’t break Thomas’s single-season sack record, or the official mark of 24 set by Terrell Suggs in 2002 at Arizona State — his nation-leading 34.5 tackles for loss are not far from Thomas’s standard.
That production, and the way he wreaks havoc on offenses, has understandably drawn comparisons to the former Alabama legend. During a November thriller between Alabama and Auburn, CBS juxtaposed highlights of Anderson and Thomas hunting and sacking quarterbacks. During the lead-up to Monday’s national championship game against Georgia, he was asked about Thomas.
“I didn’t grow up really an Alabama football fan, so I can’t really say anything that I knew of Derrick Thomas,” Anderson said during a news conference. “… I really don’t know too much about him, but just to be mentioned with his name and all the success he had here, and just to be even talked about with his name, is really a blessing.”
It’s a skill the 6-foot-4, 243-pound Anderson committed to his repertoire, and one Alabama defensive coordinator Pete Golding attributes to the all-American’s success.
“He’s one of the heavier-handed guys at his size for an outside linebacker that I’ve been able to be around, as far as striking blocks and recreating the line of scrimmage,” Golding said.
“Obviously, he’s an elite pass rusher, but I think one of his best traits is how physical he is at the point of attack, and knocking guys back and being able to play the run. Everybody from a draft standpoint is looking for guys that specialize in certain things, and I think he’s got all the tools that you’re looking for from an every-down standpoint. You throw that on top of who he is as a person, his character, his want-to, his leadership ability. He’s as special as I’ve been around.”
In just his second season, Anderson was named SEC defensive player of the year and won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, one of the awards honoring the nation’s top defensive player. His physicality earned him the nickname “Terminator” during his freshman season, a tag suitable for someone “just destroying people” during Crimson Tide practices, as former Alabama quarterback Mac Jones put it, although as he was with Thomas, Anderson was unfamiliar with the reference.
“I’m kind of ashamed because I’ve never even watched the movie ‘The Terminator,’” Anderson told reporters last year. “When I looked it up … I said, ‘Okay, it can stay.’”
Dominant defensive players have increasingly garnered more attention from Heisman Trophy voters in recent years. Former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o finished second to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel in 2012, and Michigan defensive end Aidan Hutchinson was a runner-up behind Anderson’s teammate, quarterback Bryce Young, this season. Anderson’s conspicuous absence from the top four — the group that is invited to attend the Heisman ceremony in New York — puzzled some and seemed to disappoint the star linebacker, who finished fifth despite having more sacks and tackles for loss than Hutchinson.
During a gathering at Anderson’s parents’ home in Stockbridge, Ga., to celebrate his postseason accolades, Fedd referenced another machine to encourage Anderson to look beyond his Heisman snub.
“He was telling me that … I’m a car, and the only thing you need to get going is that engine,” Anderson said. “Anything else that comes with it, any accolades, anything else, that’s just to make it look nice. So as long as your engine is going in your car, you’re fine. … Me getting that Nagurski Trophy, that was just a pair of rims on my car.”
The latter hardly matters to Anderson, although Fedd said he believes his former player could own some of Thomas’s records before his college career ends.
“I believe he’ll probably get those records, but that’s not going to be Will’s motivation,” he said. “Will’s motivation will be to win another SEC title, and get back to the national championship game for a third year in a row, and be the best Will that Will can be.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A new school privatization battle unfolding in Charleston
People in one of the horse-drawn carriages ride past the facade of the famous St. Philip's Episcopal Church, located in the French Quarter of Charleston, S.C. (iStock)
Charleston County School District, the second-largest district in South Carolina with about 50,000 students, has become a testing ground for the school privatization movement — and 2022 is bringing a new battle.
South Carolina’s schools have long been among the worst-performing in the country, “saddled with a legacy of apathy and low expectations” that leave students “unprepared for the world that awaits them,” according to a 2018 Post and Courier investigation.
School choice — including charter schools, private academics, specialized magnet schools and other options — has siphoned the best-performing students from struggling schools “while children with the fewest resources get marooned in failing institutions,” the newspaper said.
“North Charleston High loses more than half the students in its attendance zone to a host of magnet, charter and private schools, leaving behind a core of poor Black students,” said the investigation by a team of reporters including the award-winning Paul Bowers, who wrote the piece below.
Since desegregation efforts decades ago, the Charleston district has returned to de facto segregation at many of its schools, accelerated by a boom of magnet schools in the 1990s and early 2000s. It currently sponsors nine public charter schools and two public-private partnership schools, in addition to multiple schools within the county sponsored by statewide authorizers.
On Monday, the school board is scheduled to vote on a proposal that would allow the takeover of 23 lower-performing schools in low-income and majority-Black neighborhoods by an “innovation management organization,” which would be allowed under law to hire some of its teachers without a state teaching license.
In this post, Bowers looks at what Charleston’s public schools are up against. A parent of three public school children in North Charleston, he was the Post and Courier’s education reporter from 2016-2019 and was part of a team that won the 2018 Eddie Prize from the Education Writers Association. Find him on Twitter at @Paul_Bowers and read his work at brutalsouth.substack.com.
By Paul Bowers
Every few years, South Carolina becomes a battleground for school privatization. It looks like 2022 is going to be one of those years.
Back in the 2000s, the New York real estate investor Howard Rich backed a series of South Carolina candidates pushing school vouchers, which would funnel public education funds into private schools. More recently, we have seen efforts by Gov. Henry McMaster and the state legislature to create a Tennessee-style “turnaround district,” to deregulate for-profit online charter schools via authorizer shopping, and to divert federal covid-19 relief funds from public schools to private schools. Teachers and parents have had to fight these advances tooth and nail and have so far kept most of the damage at bay.
Lately it seems like the tip of the spear for privatization efforts in South Carolina is the Charleston County School District, a starkly segregated and unequal district anchored by a world-renowned tourist destination. The Charleston County School Board is scheduled to vote Jan. 10 on a proposal called “Reimagine Schools” that would allow a private third party to make decisions at 23 predominantly Black schools. I thought now would be a good moment to revisit the history of school board power struggles and dark-money campaigns in Charleston County.
Efforts to privatize the governance of public schools have been supported by, among others, two South Carolina billionaires — Anita Zucker, head of a chemical manufacturer, and Ben Navarro, chief of a debt collection agency. Sometimes working in tandem, sometimes independently, Zucker and Navarro tend to promote charter schools and private takeovers of public schools.
Zucker and her advocacy organization, the Tri-County Cradle to Career Collaborative, were involved in a 2015-2016 effort to create a “turnaround district” at the state level, modeled after failed efforts in Tennessee, Louisiana and Michigan. The proposal involved lumping the state’s lowest-performing schools into a new district and bringing in third-party operators to manage them. Similar bills were introduced in Georgia and North Carolina around the same time, but the idea never received serious discussion in the South Carolina Statehouse.
Navarro is known nationally for his failed 2018 bid to buy the Carolina Panthers team in the National Football League. In the financial world, he is known for his Sherman Financial Group, a privately owned firm that filed more lawsuits against defaulted credit-card debtors than others in the industry during covid-19 lockdowns, according to a recent Wall Street Journal investigation.
In the arena of education, Navarro is known for his private Meeting Street Schools, which are sometimes lauded as a model for improving the standardized test scores of low-income students from at-risk communities. Since 2014, Meeting Street Schools has entered unique public-private partnerships with South Carolina public school districts, starting with the takeover of two elementary schools in North Charleston.
With a boost of private funding, the schools invest in wraparound services for students and their families, offer additional psychological support, place two teachers in each classroom, and operate on an extended school day and academic calendar. Those practices have a proven track record of success, but most schools in South Carolina lack the funding to carry them out.
Meeting Street Schools also heavily recruit staff from Teach for America and the KIPP charter network, and they preach the trendy mid-2010s gospel of “grit” — in fact, the disciplinary model is so gritty that one Meeting Street-run elementary school suspended one-quarter of its students in a single school year. Before opening the schools under new management, Navarro sought and received a special exemption from the state’s employment protections for teachers. As a result, Meeting Street principals can hire and fire teachers at will.
Navarro is also closely associated with the Charleston Coalition for Kids, a dark-money group that emerged in 2018 and immediately outspent all other donors combined on advertising for a slate of school board candidates.
Much of the coalition’s funding and spending is hidden from public view thanks to state election law and the group’s nonprofit status, but FCC records reveal it spent at least $235,000 on TV commercials alone in the run-up to the 2018 school board election — four-and-a-half times what all of the candidates combined raised for their own campaigns. (Local activists estimated the coalition’s spending on Facebook ads, billboards, and other media might have cost additional hundreds of thousands of dollars.)
The coalition spent big on the school board election again in 2020, investing $306,000 on TV commercials, including attack ads against two Black incumbents, the records show. Today six of the nine sitting Charleston County School Board members have received backing from the coalition.
A number of national organizations have taken an interest in Charleston school politics as well, including 50CAN (formerly StudentsFirst) and the Broad Foundation. After failing to create a statewide turnaround district in 2016, the 50CAN affiliate SouthCarolinaCAN shifted its focus to the local level — specifically to Charleston County. When I interviewed then-executive director Bradford Swann in December 2016, he said his organization would be focused on “grass-roots organizing” via a five-month fellowship program for parents.
The result was Charleston RISE, a parent advocacy group that also operates a parent help hotline. Billboards advertising its services have appeared all over the county, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. Charleston RISE trainees were among the founding members of the Charleston Coalition for Kids when it launched in 2018. Some RISE members said they helped vet school board candidates for the coalition.
Currently the Charleston County School Board is deciding how to spend its share of the covid-19 recovery funds provided under the American Recovery Act’s ESSER III program. Multiple local nonprofits submitted proposals on how to spend the money, but only one has gotten a public hearing.
On Monday, Jan. 10, the school board will vote on a proposal called Reimagine Schools that would target 23 low-performing schools in low-income and majority-Black parts of the county. Leaning on a “Schools of Innovation” law recently expanded by the state legislature, the proposal would authorize a takeover of individual schools by an unidentified “innovation management organization.” The Schools of Innovation law also allows a school to hire up to 25 percent of its teachers in certain subject areas without a state teaching license.
The organization that proposed the Reimagine Schools plan is the Coastal Community Fund, a relative newcomer to school board lobbying. The fund and its CEO, Darrin Goss Sr., have promoted the Meeting Street Schools public-private partnership model, which exempts them from “bureaucratic” regulations. (Complicating matters further, the Coastal Community Fund also administers an investigative fund and Education Lab for the local daily newspaper, the Post and Courier.)
The nine-member school board gave the Reimagine Schools proposal initial approval by a 6-3 vote in December without holding any community input sessions. All six members who voted to approve for the proposal had been endorsed by the Charleston Coalition for Kids.
Whatever the Charleston County School Board decides, the privatization push will continue in parallel at the state level. The state superintendent of education post is up for grabs this fall, and the first candidate to announce her run was Ellen Weaver, a charter school advocate with the conservative Palmetto Promise Institute. A central proposal in her platform is the creation of education scholarship accounts, a modified private school voucher program.
Sound familiar? If at first they don’t succeed, they give it a new name and try again. | null | null | null | null | null |
But there are signs of difficulty. The Food and Drug Administration said Dec. 28, “Early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.” The FDA’s statement was based on laboratory tests, not clinical data. Experts have suggested one reason for the reduced sensitivity is that antigen tests are based on a nasal swab, but the omicron variant tends to replicate in the upper airways, not so much deep in the lungs as earlier variants. So saliva might be a better source of sampling. | null | null | null | null | null |
He then got the letter from Australia’s Department of Home Affairs on Jan. 1, the court documents said, and “Mr Djokovic understood that he was entitled to enter Australia and Victoria and to compete in the Australian Tennis Open.” A spokesperson for the Australian Border Force told The Washington Post by email on Saturday that the agency would not be commenting, as the matter was before the courts.
Djokovic, 34, the world’s top-ranked men’s tennis player who is hoping to compete this month for a record 21st Grand Slam singles title, has made several skeptical remarks about vaccines since the start of the coronavirus pandemic but had not explicitly disclosed his vaccination status publicly. However, according to the court documents, he told Australian officials he had not been vaccinated while citing the medical exemption from Tennis Australia based on the grounds that he had “recently recovered from COVID-19.”
As Djokovic prepares for his appeal of the visa cancellation, he is holed up at the Park Hotel in Melbourne, according to the court documents — a location normally used to house refugees and asylum seekers and for coronavirus quarantine.
Czech women’s doubles player Renata Voracova also had her visa canceled and was sent to the Park Hotel after entering the Australian tournament on a similar vaccine exemption, Reuters reported, citing a statement from the Czech Foreign Ministry. | null | null | null | null | null |
FedEx Field was built quickly, with the primary goal of being big. For a while, it was the largest stadium in the NFL, holding more than 91,000 people, and the Washington Football Team ranked in the top three of league attendance every season from 1999 to 2012.
But over the past decade, as fan support has declined, its size has become a liability. Seats have been removed or covered by tarps or penned behind chain-link fences. FedEx’s listed capacity is now 67,617, an enormous reduction from what it once was.
And yet this season, it still hadn’t shrank enough. FedEx averaged 52,751 spectators per game — 31st in the NFL, ahead of only Ford Field in Detroit (50,777) — and, according to crowd forecasts by Vivid Seats, it had one of the league’s highest rates of opposing fans. FedEx is a place where rival fans can feel comfortable, if not welcome, and game-losing plays by the home team are sometimes cheered.
In the wake of the NFL’s investigation into the team’s workplace culture, which led to an organizational overhaul and Snyder temporarily ceding day-to-day control to his wife Tanya, the team has trumpeted a new era, led by a leadership team of head coach Ron Rivera and team president Jason Wright.
Lewd cheerleader videos, sexist rules: Ex-employees decry Washington’s NFL team workplace
The attendance figures also help explain the decline of a number the NFL cares a lot about. In 2000, Forbes named Washington the most valuable sports franchise on the planet. In 2021, it ranked Washington eighth among NFL franchises.
In 1999, after a golden age that included three Super Bowl titles, Snyder bought the team. In the two decades since, fans have worn down as the team has limped to a 155-212-1 record, with just one playoff win.
“I get all my friends telling me, 'You guys still watching highlights of your Super Bowls on VHS tapes,’ ” said Ricky Williams. “I can’t do nothing but sit there and take it, because it’s the truth. We’ve just been the laughingstock of the NFL for years and years.”
Things might not be so bad, some fans argued, if not for the location and condition of FedEx Field. The stadium in suburban Maryland, 24 years old and difficult to reach, contrasts with its previous, beloved home of RFK Stadium in east Washington. FedEx has few defining characteristics, and this year has made news for a burst pipe, a faulty sprinkler, a collapsed railing and a rogue smoke machine that have forced fans and players to scurry for safety.
Despite the trying last two decades, some fans have been unable to walk away. You can hear the loudest outposts across the parking lot on game day — such as the die-hards in the Redzone lot, or the government retirees of Purple H20 — but even some of those who enjoy quieter fandoms, who don’t tailgate or even go to FedEx, still have had trouble.
Dick Rhodes, whose family has had season tickets since 1940, said the increase in opposing fans at FedEx Field has forced Washington’s fans to close ranks. He said that, in the last five years, several fans have moved into section 110, in part because they found themselves often sitting among the strong Philadelphia and Dallas fan contingents who invade FedEx. | null | null | null | null | null |
A tree with MS-13 graffiti seen in Langley Park, Md., in 2019. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The 12 defendants were all charged in Virginia state court in 2020, but those cases have not gone to trial. Instead, authorities have accused them of involvement in a multi-state conspiracy under federal law. Eight are accused of murder in aid of racketeering, a crime punishable by death.
All are described by authorities as members or associates of the Sitios Locos Salvatruchas, part of the loosely organized, El Salvador-based MS-13 gang. The accused were transporting cocaine from New York to the D.C. area for sale in restaurants and nightclubs, authorities said.
Two of the victims were badly beaten and fatally shot in a wooded area of Woodbridge in June 2019, authorities said. Two months later, another man was fatally shot nearby while going to meet an acquaintance. The fourth man was gunned down in Dumfries as he was walking down a street in September 2019. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, announced Saturday he will run for reelection in 2022, ending months of speculation about whether he would seek to remain in the Senate.
Thune, 60, is currently the Senate Minority Whip, making him No. 2 Republican in the chamber and a potential successor for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky).
A former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and former chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Thune first came to Capitol Hill in 1997 as a representative for South Dakota’s lone district, serving three terms before joining the Senate in 2004.
Thune’s decision has been closely watched because he is considered a candidate for Republican leader whenever McConnell steps aside and because has been on the receiving end of harsh criticism from former president Donald Trump, a situation that has caused other Republicans to leave Congress.
In December 2020, Thune drew the wrath of then President Trump when he criticized efforts by House Republicans to challenge the results of the election on Jan. 6, saying it would “go down like a shot dog.”
Trump labeled him “Mitch’s boy” and a Republican in name only while urging Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R-S.D.) to challenge Thune in a primary. Noem, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, indicated she had no interest in a Senate bid.
Thune is widely-favored to win reelection. He hasn’t faced a serious challenge in South Dakota since his election. Democrats haven’t yet announced a candidate for the seat.
Thune has, as of late, pushed against the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which was carried out by supporters of the former president. Thune has said investigating the attack could hurt Republican chances during the 2022 midterms. | null | null | null | null | null |
A view shows a bus that was burned during mass protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Jan. 8. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)
As protests spread in Kazakhstan, the focus shifted as well: beginning with outrage over price hikes for fuel and later taking aim at the country’s autocratic political system directed by Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the nation for three decades and now holds the official title of “leader of the nation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
In an auspicious event for mystery readers, Syndicate is reprinting all 12 of Joseph Hansen’s pioneering Dave Brandstetter novels over 12 months. “Fadeout,” the first in the series featuring the comfortably gay World War II vet and L.A. insurance investigator, was published in 1970. As Michael Nava points out in his insightful new introduction, that’s when gay sex was a criminal act in 49 of the 50 states. Through grit and sheer talent, Hansen found a wide audience. Nava writes, “It is his art, ultimately, and not simply his subject matter, that makes Joseph Hansen one of the great masters of California noir.” Crime fiction fans who don’t know Hansen’s work are in for a treat. (Syndicate/Soho Crime, Jan. 11) | null | null | null | null | null |
How tropical storms and hurricanes have hit U.S. shores with unparalleled frequency
In 2021, Earth Networks counted more than 7,800 thunder days across the United States — a 4 percent increase from 2020. Similar to the Vaisala lightning data, Texas, Florida and Louisiana experienced the most thunder days. New Mexico, while not ranking in the top 10 for lightning counts, did have the ninth-highest number of thunder days in the nation last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
During a plane flight near the border of Kenya and Ethiopia in 1967, Mr. Leakey looked down and saw that the geological formation surrounding Lake Turkana (then called Lake Rudolf) could be promising source of fossils. He did not tell his father about it until they were meeting officials of the National Geographic Society in Washington the next year. Mr. Leakey, then 23, asked for funding to begin exploring the site and received a generous grant. | null | null | null | null | null |
A bus is burned during mass protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 8. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)
As protests spread in Kazakhstan, the focus shifted as well: beginning with outrage over price increases for fuel and later taking aim at the country’s autocratic political system directed by Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the nation for three decades and now holds the official title of “leader of the nation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sotomayor’s false claim that ‘over 100,000’ children are in "serious condit...
Several readers questioned these remarks by Sotomayor, made during a hearing on whether the Biden administration’s nationwide rules ordering a vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers were constitutional. Her remarks came during an exchange with Ben Flowers, Ohio’s solicitor general, as he referred to a brief filed by the American Commitment Foundation, Inc., which argued that the rise of the omicron variant had made the vaccine rules less relevant because vaccines do not appear especially effective against it.
Flower, who said he had been twice vaccinated and received a booster, participated remotely after testing positive for covid. His symptoms were said the be “exceptionally mild.”
Nevertheless, the spike in cases has led to increased hospitalizations, Sotomayor noted during the exchange. Almost 30 percent of intensive-care beds are filled with covid patients as of January 8, according the Health and Human Services Department data.
That’s wildly incorrect, assuming she is referring to hospitalizations, given the reference to ventilators. According to HHS data, as of January 8 there are about 5,000 children hospitalized in a pediatric bed, either with suspected covid or a confirmed laboratory test. This figure includes patients in observation beds. So Sotomayor’s number is at least 20 times higher than reality, even before you determine how many are in “serious condition.”
Moreover, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been less than 100,000 — 82,843 to be exact — hospital admissions of children confirmed with covid since August 1.
Still, the current 7-day average (Dec. 30- Jan. 5) is 797, which is sharp increase from the week before (441) and represents the peak 7-day average for children. So Sotomayor is not wrong to suggest the rate of pediatric admissions is cause for concern. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ron Rivera during a December Washington Football Team practice. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Two seasons into whatever this is, Ron Rivera has been exactly who you should’ve expected him to be. He’s the dependable leader, full of character and decency, that the Washington Football Team sought to clean up its everlasting mess. His current team plays similar to his Carolina teams, right down to the slow starts and an identical 13-19 record through the first 32 games. He’s 60 now, but even after a cancer battle during his first season in Washington, he doesn’t look like he has aged much over the past decade.
He knows the deal. He has been coaching for 25 years, including the past 11 as a head coach. He knows that, no matter how extensive the project, the rebuilding grace period lasts only two seasons. As this disappointing 6-10 campaign has made clear, it will take Washington much longer to arrange all the pieces to create an ideal, balanced roster. Even so, the conversation now shifts from asking for patience during the teardown to needing to provide evidence that the construction is progressing.
The 2021 free agent class was a bigger disaster. Cornerback William Jackson III started slowly and improved, but he has not had the impact the team hoped for, and what’s worse, Washington defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio didn’t play to his strengths consistently. Bothered by a bad groin injury, wide receiver Curtis Samuel was able to participate in just five games. Ryan Fitzpatrick, brought in to be the team’s stopgap starting QB, injured his hip in Week 1 and couldn’t play the rest of the season.
Like most everyone, Rivera has hired coaches and executives who provide him with the kind of comfort, familiarity and chemistry that he prefers. There are a lot of longtime friends, co-workers and even family members. It’s no different than what any veteran coach, given the keys to an organization, would do. But to have sustained success and transcend Daniel Snyder’s lousy ownership track record, Rivera needs to make sure he has people to vibe with and challenge him. He needs to balance the tried and true with innovation. He needs to have the right feel for when to take chances. And here’s the most difficult part: Although he should be proud of many of the things he accomplished with the Panthers, he needs to abandon the idea of building Carolina 2.0.
Recent NFL history is full of head coaches who did their best work at their second jobs. Consider this batch of Super Bowl winners from the past quarter-century: Mike Shanahan, Dick Vermeil, Jon Gruden, Bill Belichick, Tony Dungy, Tom Coughlin, Gary Kubiak, Andy Reid, Bruce Arians. Several of them were chased out of their first jobs. All of them enjoyed career-defining success at NFL stop No. 2. | null | null | null | null | null |
Still, the current 7-day average (Dec. 30-Jan. 5) is 797, which is sharp increase from the week before (441) and represents the peak 7-day average for children, the CDC said. So Sotomayor is not wrong to suggest the rate of pediatric admissions is cause for concern. On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported a sharp rise in pediatric cases, with many of the children unvaccinated. (Some children are hospitalized for other reasons and then test positive for covid through screenings at the hospital.) | null | null | null | null | null |
(We will not address remarks made by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, which some readers also thought were wrong. The official court transcript suggested he had made an inflated statement about the annual flu: “Flu kills — I believe — hundreds of thousands of people every year.” The flu kills between 12,000 and 52,000 people in the United States a year, but the audio of the argument shows Gorsuch actually said that “flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.” So the transcript is incorrect.)
Its key argument, citing data from countries such as South Africa and Denmark, was that omicron cases were 80 percent less likely to get hospitalized (South Africa) and three times less likely to end up with hospital admissions than the delta variant (Denmark). Moreover, the brief argued, the case fatality rate in South Africa plunged dramatically when omicron became dominant.
Still, the current seven-day average (Dec. 30-Jan. 5) is 797, which is a sharp increase from the week before (441) and represents the peak seven-day average for children, the CDC said. So Sotomayor is not wrong to suggest the rate of pediatric admissions is cause for concern. On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported a sharp rise in pediatric cases, with many of the children unvaccinated. (Some children are hospitalized for other reasons and then test positive for covid through screenings at the hospital.) | null | null | null | null | null |
Gardner argues that, while it might not seem fair, New Hampshire has earned its position. “It’s a place where the little guy has a chance to come in and see a lot of people,” he said. “We saw that in 1968 and have seen it several times since. … It doesn’t happen every time, but it has happened. And it’s not the end of the [nominating] process, it’s the beginning of the process.”
New Hampshire’s primary dates to 1916, a product of the progressive era, when many other states were experimenting with the idea of giving more power to individual voters rather than party leaders. Many states later gave them up, and by 1968, Gardner recalled, there were only about a dozen states with a presidential primary.
“There’s a reason why it’s here,” he said of his state’s longevity in helping to pick presidents. “This wasn’t a sapling planted on the main street of a town. It happened here naturally and happened here without New Hampshire ever taking from anyone else. … The people were willing to pay for it when it was not a national event.”
“Why are we the longest surviving free democratic society?” he asked. “Because we’ve had stability. We’ve had people coming in and being part of the country. … We’re one country. We’re diverse, yes, but diversity has been our strength.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FedEx Field was built quickly, with the primary goal of being big. For a while, it was the largest stadium in the NFL, with a capacity of more than 91,000, and the Washington Football Team ranked in the top three of league attendance every season from 1999 to 2012.
But over the past decade, as fan support has declined, its size has become a liability. Seats have been removed or covered by tarps or penned behind chain-link fences. FedEx’s listed capacity is now 67,617, about 75 percent of what it once was.
And yet this season, it still hadn’t shrunk enough. FedEx averaged 52,751 spectators per game — 31st in the NFL, ahead of only Ford Field in Detroit (50,777) — and, according to crowd forecasts by Vivid Seats, it had one of the league’s highest rates of opposing fans. FedEx is a place where rival fans can feel comfortable, if not welcome, and game-losing plays by the home team are sometimes cheered.
In the wake of the NFL’s investigation into the team’s workplace culture, which led to an organizational overhaul and Snyder temporarily ceding day-to-day control to his wife Tanya, the team has trumpeted a new era, led by a leadership team of Coach Ron Rivera and team president Jason Wright.
The attendance figures also help explain the decline of a number the NFL cares a lot about. In 2000, Forbes named Washington the most valuable sports franchise on the planet. In 2021, it ranked Washington fifth among NFL franchises.
In 1999, after a golden age that included three Super Bowl titles, Snyder bought the team. In the two decades since, fans have been worn down as the team has limped to a 155-212-1 record, with just one playoff win.
“I get all my friends telling me, 'You guys still watching highlights of your Super Bowls on VHS tapes,’ ” said longtime fan Ricky Williams. “I can’t do nothing but sit there and take it, because it’s the truth. We’ve just been the laughingstock of the NFL for years and years.”
Things might not be so bad, some fans argued, if not for the location and condition of FedEx Field. The stadium in suburban Maryland, 24 years old and difficult to reach, contrasts with its previous, beloved home of RFK Stadium in Northeast Washington. FedEx has few defining characteristics, and this year has made news for a burst pipe, a faulty sprinkler, a collapsed railing and a rogue smoke machine that have forced fans and players to scurry for safety.
Despite the trying past two decades, some fans have been unable to walk away. You can hear the loudest outposts across the parking lot on game day — such as the die-hards in the Redzone lot, or the government retirees of Purple H20 — but even some of those who enjoy quieter fandoms, who don’t tailgate or even go to FedEx, still have had trouble.
Dick Rhodes, whose family has had season tickets since 1940, said the increase in opposing fans at FedEx Field has forced Washington’s fans to close ranks. He said that, in the past five years, several fans have moved into section 110, in part because they found themselves often sitting among the strong Philadelphia and Dallas fan contingents who invade FedEx. | null | null | null | null | null |
In 1973, just five years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ignited an explosion of rioting that left Shaw and other D.C. neighborhoods in ruins, New Bethel Baptist Church began renting brand new apartments to low-income tenants. Most of the building’s early residents were Black families who also attended Sunday services at the church.
These changing demographics have already contributed to the disappearance of historic Black churches in Shaw. The Rev. Dexter Nutall, who has led New Bethel since 2009, said declining membership, rising costs and the battle with Foster House residents could push the church as well as the tenants out of the neighborhood.
Today the halls are quiet. Just down the block from a row of million-dollar homes, Foster House is home to some of the District’s poorest residents. Many say they can’t remember the last time they saw church representatives in their midst.
As issues with the property have grown more severe, residents’ trust in and patience with the church has worn thin. A dozen tenants interviewed by The Washington Post said they blame New Bethel for years of neglect, ineffectual property managers and conditions so bad that a number of families felt they had no choice but to leave.
Nutall has accused the District of trying to push the church to sell by draining its resources with a protracted legal battle. Racine (D) defended his office’s motivations for getting involved, saying the conditions at Foster House are “horrid” and primarily affect the “overwhelmingly Black and brown tenants” who live there. | null | null | null | null | null |
The ball rattled around the rim and out, emblematic of a frustrating afternoon for the Cavaliers in a 74-58 loss to North Carolina on Saturday at the Smith Center that ended their seven-game winning streak in the series.
Nine of Bacot’s rebounds were offensive, helping North Carolina (11-4, 3-1) to a 14-2 advantage in second-chance points. No Cavaliers player had more than seven rebounds in a game they never led and trailed by as many as 25 points during the second half.
“He certainly had his way,” Cavaliers Coach Tony Bennett said of Bacot. “If you’re out of position or don’t get a quality body on him, or just try to keep him off the glass, he’s going to make you pay. Sometimes it was just because we were covering for a breakdown, trying to block a shot or out of position, but their frontcourt really took it to us.”
Beekman led Virginia with 13 points, four assists and three rebounds but ended with plus/minus of -25. Guard Armaan Franklin added 12 points, three rebounds and two assists for the Indiana transfer’s fifth consecutive game scoring in double figures.
Jayden Gardner added 10 points and seven rebounds, the only Cavaliers’ interior player to give any production of consequence. Starting center Kadin Shedrick and reserve forward Francisco Caffaro, the other regulars on the low block, combined for two points in 36-plus minutes.
“The whole first half I felt like were in it,” Beekman said. “The second half we just didn’t get the run we needed. We’ve got to just learn from this, learn from the mistakes and just keep moving forward.”
The 6-11 redshirt sophomore walked slowly to the bench and received treatment from the athletic training staff, but the bleeding continued throughout the remainder of the game, preventing Bennett from inserting Shedrick back into the lineup.
Despite the lopsided result against the Tar Heels, Virginia completed a season-long three-game road stretch with a 2-1 record and are in sixth place in the ACC, trailing fourth-place North Carolina by half a game. The Cavaliers, however, do not play North Carolina again in the regular season. | null | null | null | null | null |
Amourie Porter and Coach Samuel Porter, her father, have led Glen Burnie girls' basketball to its best start in recent history. (Shonda Porter)
Thirteen years ago, Amourie Porter joined her father, Samuel, and her older brother when they practiced basketball at a gym in Fort Rucker, Ala.
Trying to keep Amourie busy while he trained his son, Samuel told Amourie to dribble around the court 10 times. Amourie was still familiarizing herself with numbers as a 3-year-old, so she dribbled dozens of times until she became fatigued. After a few days of this routine, Amourie dribbled better than most children, which made Samuel believe she could develop into a standout player.
Samuel Porter became the coach of the Glen Burnie girls’ basketball team two years ago, and Amourie has become one of the Gophers’ stars. This winter, the pair has guided the Gophers (7-0) to their best start in recent history, which continued with Porter scoring 22 points in a 63-24 win at Crofton on Saturday afternoon.
“We’re not going to be the same team that we were freshman year, where if we were down, we would quit,” said Porter, a junior guard. “When people think of Glen Burnie freshman year, they’d be like, ‘Oh, easy game.’ But that’s changed.”
Porter’s name has traveled across Anne Arundel County as she has filled stat sheets. Entering Saturday, Porter averaged about 23 points, nine rebounds, five assists and four steals. She made her presence felt early against Crofton (3-2).
In the opening five seconds, she grabbed the ball off the tip near midcourt, drove through the middle of the lane and finished a floater. She scored 10 of Glen Burnie’s initial 11 points, and with her team leading comfortably, she rested the majority of the second half. While the Gophers used to sit on the wrong side of blowouts, their victories this season have come by an average of nearly 33 points.
When Porter joined Glen Burnie as a freshman in 2019, the Gophers were coming off a winless season. As a freshman, Amourie helped Glen Burnie post a winning record for the first time since the 2007-08 campaign.
Samuel Porter helped change that culture with the belief players would only trust his teachings if he led by example. When he asked players to run and lift weights at practice, the coach performed those tasks with them.
Last month, Glen Burnie defeated Meade, perennially one of the county’s top teams, for the first time in more than two decades. In the locker room afterward, Samuel Porter told his players to celebrate as much as they’d like for a few moments, so they could turn their attention to loftier goals.
“It won’t be a one-and-done thing,” Samuel said. “The group that had just one hit song — we don’t want to do that. We want to carry it on and on and on.”
Brewer: Thinking about home, after the storm
The secret settlements that helped a baseball star play on
As fans return to high school sports, officials say student behavior has never been worse | null | null | null | null | null |
People stand next to a burned car Jan. 7 in a neighborhood in Louisville, Colo., that was impacted by the recent wildfire. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Robert Sharpe avidly collected family memorabilia, stockpiling thousands of pages of documents in safes, file cabinets and boxes at his house. Now, relatives wonder if the 69-year-old Colorado resident died trying to save his life’s work as the devastating Marshall Fire tore through his Boulder County home.
“Dear brother, this is such a catastrophic, unbelievably sad end to your story!” his brother Milton Sharpe wrote in his eulogy he shared with The Washington Post and the Denver Post. “I still can’t wrap my head around it. You had many verses left to write, Robert.”
Milton Sharpe said his brother had other passions, including salsa dancing and participating in Native American traditions and ceremonies. He loved his home of four decades, his brother said.
“I knew as soon as I understood the fire had passed over his property he would not have fled,” he said in his eulogy. “I told one of my brothers, ‘They will find him dead in his driveway with a hose in his hand.’ ”
Seven years younger than Robert Sharpe, his brother recalled his patience avid reading and goal to be “a good steward of the environment, of his government and his community.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Mr. Leakey made his first fossil discovery at age 6 — the jawbone of an extinct giant pig — but throughout his youth he had no intention of following his parents’ profession. He quit school at 16, became a pilot and ran a safari business for a few years. But the lure of the fossil beds remained strong, and his discovery of a lower jaw from the genus Australopithecus, an early hominid, brought him back into the field. | null | null | null | null | null |
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