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Dolphins coach Brian Flores was fired after an upset of the Patriots in Week 18. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
Another Black NFL coach with a solid record got fired — this time the Miami Dolphins’ Brian Flores — and the TV pundits and media apologists again lined up Monday morning with a litany of excuses.
Team owner Stephen Ross didn’t like the lack of “collaboration” between General Manager Chris Grier and Flores. That’s what Ross said at a news conference shortly after he fired Flores, who was 24-25 in three seasons but 19-14 over the past two — including eight wins in his last nine games after a 1-7 start this fall.
Ross has some cover because Grier is also Black and because the NFL media will spend a lot of time quoting unnamed sources, who will say Flores and Grier didn’t get along, that Flores and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had issues, that there was a good deal of turnover on the coaching staff — and that the firing had nothing to do with Ross being enamored of Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh.
Let’s assume all that is being whispered is true. The bottom line remains this: Flores was — and is — a damn good coach. He’s certainly a better coach than the New York Giants’ Joe Judge, who is 10-23 after two years and appears to be good at exactly one thing: making excuses by taking cheap shots at people. As I write this, Judge, whose team barely showed up at all in the last month of the season, is still employed.
There also have been rumblings that the Houston Texans’ David Culley may be fired this week. Culley took over a team this past winter that was a complete dumpster fire. Quarterback Deshaun Watson, his most important player, never took a snap this season. The Texans finished an ugly 4-13 but were still playing hard Sunday in a 28-25 loss to Tennessee, the AFC’s No. 1 seed. And yet, after one season, Culley’s job may be in jeopardy?
If he gets fired, the NFL would be left with one Black coach: Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin. All he has had to do to keep his job secure over 15 seasons is put together a Hall of Fame résumé: a Super Bowl victory, another Super Bowl trip, 10 playoff appearances and zero losing seasons.
In all, two of the past 20 head coaches hired by NFL teams — Flores and Culley — have been Black. “Whenever I bring that up, people say, ‘Why are you making race an issue?’ ” Tony Dungy said to me last year. “I’m not making race an issue. Race is an issue.”
Dungy was one of many NFL coaches, past and present, I interviewed for my recently published book, “Raise a Fist, Take a Knee: Racism and the Illusion of Progress in Professional Sports.” He was the first Black coach to win the Super Bowl when his Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears in February 2007.
The losing coach that day was Lovie Smith, who had become the first Black coach to make it to the Super Bowl two weeks earlier — ahead of Dungy, his mentor, by about three hours — with the immortal Rex Grossman quarterbacking his team. In 2012, Smith was fired by the Bears — after going 10-6. The Bears missed the postseason that year because of a tiebreaker.
Jim Caldwell had a similar experience in Detroit. He had a four-year record with the frequently awful Lions of 36-28, the team’s best four-season mark since Buddy Parker was the coach in the 1950s. He made the postseason twice — the Lions had been in the playoffs once in the 14 seasons before he arrived — and was fired after going 9-7 in 2017. With great fanfare, the Lions hired Matt Patricia off Bill Belichick’s staff. He went 13-29-1 before being fired during his third season. The Lions then hired Dan Campbell, who is being toasted for his “passion” after going 3-13-1 in his first season.
“I remember watching the news conference when [Detroit owner Martha Firestone Ford] announced Jim’s firing,” Dungy said. “She said the record was better, the team was better, the culture was better. Everything was better. Then she fired him.”
The NFL media, especially the TV pundits, always have reasons for why Black coaches aren’t hired or are fired more quickly than their White counterparts. Here’s the thing: It can’t always be coincidence.
This actually dates from the tenure of Art Shell, the first Black coach of the NFL’s modern era. (Fritz Pollard played and coached in the league in the 1920s before the league eschewed Black players in 1926.) Shell coached Al Davis’s Los Angeles Raiders for just under six seasons and made the postseason three times in his five full seasons, going 54-38. Davis fired him after a 9-7 record in 1994 and later admitted he had made a mistake. He actually brought Shell back to coach a very bad team (2-14) in 2006, then fired him again. No other NFL team hired him as a head coach despite his record with the Raiders.
Ozzie Newsome, who was the first Black general manager in the NFL — he was given the title two years after winning the Super Bowl as the player personnel director of the Baltimore Ravens — vividly remembered a Pop Warner football tryout he attended in 1970 at the age of 14. He went to join the quarterbacks, the position he had always played — but then left and joined the wide receivers when he realized all of the other kids in the quarterback circle were White.
Art Shell, Tony Dungy (fired by Tampa Bay after three straight playoff appearances), Lovie Smith, Jim Caldwell and now Brian Flores — all fired with records that, as Smith said, would normally have meant a new contract.
Eric Bieniemy (the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator who has had 11 interviews for head coaching jobs), Byron Leftwich (Tampa Bay’s offensive coordinator), Todd Bowles (Tampa Bay’s defensive coordinator and the former New York Jets coach) — all await phone calls. So does Lions assistant head coach Duce Staley, among others.
The only major sports commissioner who refused to speak to me for the book was the NFL’s Roger Goodell. Dungy and Tomlin said the same thing when I told them Goodell, through PR guy Brian McCarthy, refused my requests to talk.
He’s embarrassed, they both said. He knows this is not a good look for his league, but he can’t tell the owners what to do.
Those owners took another step backward Monday. | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON — With inflation surging, unemployment falling and wages rising, some economists are warning that the Federal Reserve may have waited too long to reverse its ultra-low-rate policies — a delay that could put the economy at heightened risk. On Wednesday, the government is expected to report that consumer prices jumped 7.1% the past 12 months, which would be the steepest such increase in decades. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is sure to be grilled on the issue during a Senate hearing Tuesday on his nomination for a second term. Inflation has become the most serious threat to the economy, a growing worry for the financial markets and a political problem for the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress.
NEW YORK — Stocks ended slightly lower on Wall Street Monday after recouping much of an early slide. Technology stocks bounced back after leading the market lower in the morning. Losses for industrial companies and banks were partly offset by gains in health care companies. The S&P 500 ended down 0.1%, erasing most of an earlier loss of just over 2%. The Nasdaq, which is heavily weighted with technology companies, closed up less than 0.1%. It was down 2.7% earlier. Bond yields mostly rose as investors anticipate moves by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Energy prices fell.
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida said he will step down on Friday, the third Fed official to resign in the wake of a trading scandal at the central bank. The announcement followed new revelations around Clarida’s trading in a stock fund in February 2020, when the coronavirus threatened to upend the global economy and the Fed was discussing extraordinary measures to counter its impact. The New York Times last week reported that Clarida amended his financial disclosures to show that he had sold and then repurchased shares in the stock fund in a matter of days that month. The repurchase came a day before Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed was prepared to support markets and the economy.
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic is beginning to recede as a top priority in the minds of Americans. It’s increasingly overshadowed by concerns about the economy and personal finances, particularly inflation. That potentially spells political trouble for Democrats heading into the midterm elections. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds just 37% of Americans say COVID-19 is a top priority for the government to work on in 2022, compared with 53% who said it was at the start of last year. Instead, 68% of Americans polled named the economy as government’s top concern, while 14% mentioned inflation — including 18% of Republicans and 10% of Democrats.
BERLIN — Damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in the U.S. state of Louisiana and the flash floods that hit Europe last summer have helped make 2021 one of the most expensive years for natural disasters. Reinsurance company Munich Re said Monday that overall economic losses from natural disasters worldwide last year reached $280 billion. That makes it the fourth-costliest year after 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. It said insured losses in 2021 amounted to $120 billion, the second-highest after 2017, when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hit the Americas. The company warned that studies showed a link between global warming and natural disasters.
NEW YORK — Take-Two Interactive, maker of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, is buying Zynga, maker of FarmVille and Words With Friends, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $12.7 billion. The acquisition announced Monday would wed a powerhouse in console gaming, Take-Two, with a mobile gaming company with an almost cult-like following. Zynga shareholders will receive $3.50 in cash and $6.36 in shares of Take-Two common stock for each share of Zynga outstanding stock at closing.
WASHINGTON — This year’s tax filing season will begin on Jan. 24, 17 days earlier than last year. The Internal Revenue Service warned Monday that a resurgence of COVID-19 infections on top of less funding from Congress than the Biden administration had requested could make this filing season particularly challenging. IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig urged Americans to file electronically this year to avoid delays, and to get their refunds by direct deposit.
WASHINGTON — The United States Mint says it has begun shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou. They’re the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program. Angelou was an American author, poet and Civil Rights activist who rose to prominence with the publication of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. She was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 by President Barack Obama and died i in 2014 at the age of 86. The quarter design depicts Angelou with outstretched arms. Behind her are a bird in flight and a rising sun, images inspired by her poetry.
NEW YORK — Millions of workers whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck as the omicron variant of COVID-19 rages across the nation. While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though the omicron variant has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick. Low-wage workers are especially vulnerable. Only 33% of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10% get paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. | null | null | null | null | null |
D.C. set to receive an additionl $17 million in rent relief funds
The U.S. Treasury redistributed emergency rental assistance money that other jurisdictions did not use
Signs that read “No Job No Rent” hang from the windows of an apartment building on May 20, 2020 in Northwest Washington. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Washington, D.C., will receive another $17.7 million in federal rental assistance money as part of a reallocation of cash that other jurisdictions failed to use.
The money from the Biden administration’s Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Program will flow into STAY DC, the District’s program to distribute the money. Since launching in April 2021, the program has disbursed $352 million in funding to more than 23,000 residents.
“That was something we showed in our application for the fundings, that we could administer these kinds of funds and the need is going to continue,” said John Falcicchio, D.C.’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
Washington was one of the top programs nationally in terms of distributing rent relief. That funding, however, was exhausted and applications closed by late October. City officials credit the federal rent relief money for helping stave off a crush of evictions as the city’s moratorium on evictions began to wind down last all. Beginning Jan. 1, landlords were allowed to resume filing eviction cases.
In the meantime, the Biden administration began a process of reallocating funding from the ERA Program that went unused by some cities, counties and states. The leftover amount of federal funding for reallocation was $209 million.
More than half a billion dollars went to keeping D.C.-area renters in their homes ahead of federal deadline
According to Falcicchio, the District applied for a portion of the reallocated funding in November.
“Pound for pound we did pretty well for reallocation,” Falcicchio said of the District’s share. According to a list of recipients, first reported by Politico, no jurisdiction in Maryland received money from the reallocation. Only Virginia’s Chesterfield County, near Richmond, received some, $737,866.
Compared to D.C.’s $17.7 million, the entire state of New York received $27 million.
The latest infusion of cash comes as D.C. families continue to struggle with rent and utilities payments due to the pandemic. Twelve percent of D.C. families sampled in the latest Pulse Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau reported they were not yet caught up on back rent.
“Our unmet need is still in the tens of millions of dollars,” Falcicchio said. “This will help us pay that down.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Ugandan students are back to school after longest pandemic shutdown
Schools in the East African nation have been fully or partially shut for more than 83 weeks.
Students wear masks as they attend class at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda. Uganda's schools reopened to students Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the covid-19 pandemic, according to the United Nations. (Hajarah Nalwadda/AP)
Uganda’s schools reopened to students Monday, ending the world’s longest school disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The reopening caused traffic congestion in some areas of the capital, Kampala, and students could be seen in the streets carrying mattresses to their boarding schools, something not witnessed there for nearly two years.
Uganda’s schools have been fully or partially shut for more than 83 weeks, the world’s longest disruption, according to figures from the United Nations cultural agency. The shutdown affected more than 10 million learners.
The East African country of 44 million people first shut its schools in March 2020, shortly after the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the African continent. Some classes were reopened to students in February 2021, but a total lockdown was imposed again in June as the country faced its first major virus surge.
The long school lockdown was controversial in a country where measures aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus were ignored by many. Vaccine skepticism, even among health workers, remains a problem. Reports of fake coronavirus vaccination cards sold in downtown Kampala have increased recently.
Many students returning to school are believed to have had no help during the lockdown. Most public schools, which serve the vast majority of children in Uganda, offered no virtual schooling.
Critics pointed out that the government of President Yoweri Museveni — who has held power for 36 years and whose wife is the education minister — did little to support home-based learning. Museveni justified the lockdown by insisting that infected students were a danger to their parents and others.
“There are many things which can’t be predicted right now. The turnout of students is unpredictable, the turnout of teachers is unpredictable,” said Fagil Mandy, a former government inspector of schools working as an independent consultant. “I am more worried that many children will not return to school for various reasons, including school fees.”
Welcoming the reopening of Uganda’s schools, the Save the Children organization warned that “lost learning may lead to high dropout rates in the coming weeks without urgent action,” including what it described as catch-up clubs.
It remains to be seen how long Uganda’s schools will stay open, with a sharp rise in virus cases in recent days. In the past week, health authorities have reported a daily positivity rate above 10 percent, up from virtually zero in December. Museveni has warned of a possible new lockdown if half the beds in hospital intensive care units are filled.
Hoping for a smooth return to school, authorities waived any coronavirus test requirements for students. A reduced curriculum also has been approved under an arrangement to automatically promote all students to the next grade. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NWSL, which is largely dominated by White, male owners, is struggling to recover from allegations of coaching abuse and sexual misconduct last season, which prompted an outcry from players. The league has given indications that it supports the sale of the team to Boehly, according to two people close to the situation.
In August, coach Richie Burke was accused of verbally and emotionally abusing players. Kang also repeatedly confronted Baldwin over the treatment of women at the club, The Post reported, including a top executive and close ally who used degrading nicknames for female employees and players. | null | null | null | null | null |
The morning after the Washington Football Team closed with a win at the New York Giants, players, one by one, cycled through Coach Ron Rivera’s office for debriefing. The 2021 season was a roller coaster and fell short of expectations by nearly every measure, most notably by the team finishing 7-10 and failing to return to the postseason after last year’s surprise NFC East title at 7-9. But Monday, the team formally flipped the page to Year 3 of Rivera’s rebuild.
Cornerback William Jackson III said he’s fully healthy from his calf injury and said his role began to click after Washington upset Tampa Bay. One skill he’ll be focused on in the offseason is his vision. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NWSL, which is largely dominated by White, male owners, is struggling to recover from allegations of coaching abuse and sexual misconduct that prompted an outcry from players last season. The league has given indications that it supports the sale of the team to Boehly, according to two people close to the situation.
In August, Coach Richie Burke was accused of verbally and emotionally abusing players. Kang also repeatedly confronted Baldwin over the treatment of women at the club, The Post reported, which included a top executive and close ally using degrading nicknames for female employees and players. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NCAA has started to make small changes to make the women's basketball tournament more equitable with the men's tournament. (Eric Gay/AP)
The glaring inequity in the NCAA’s investment in its Division I men’s and women’s basketball championships had hidden in plain sight for decades — until it exploded into the public consciousness via photos shared on social media of a single dumbbell rack and stack of yoga mats that passed for training equipment in the 2021 women’s tournament bubble.
NCAA President Mark Emmert apologized and promised to do better. But the deep-seated disparities highlighted by players and coaches in everything from marketing to athletes’ meals and amenities aren’t likely to be remedied overnight.
The NCAA took another incremental step in narrowing the gap last week by unveiling comparable social media handles and hashtags, @MFinalFour and @WFinalFour, to supplant the longstanding @FinalFour that was exclusive to men. They complement recently redesigned logos that underscore the fact that, starting with the 2022 championships, there won’t be just one NCAA Final Four but an NCAA Men’s Final Four and an NCAA Women’s Final Four.
By extension, the trademarked “March Madness” brand will no longer apply only to the men’s tournament. The women will stage “March Madness” as well.
“This is just the start when it comes to improving gender equity in the way the two Division I basketball championships are conducted,” said Campos, the athletic director at Texas San Antonio, when the decision was announced in September.
The latest step of aligning the social media handles is one of several recommendations included in a comprehensive external review of gender-equity issues related to NCAA championships that was spurred by last spring’s athlete-led reports of the substandard weight rooms and amenities for women competing in the 2021 basketball tournament. It was also recommended by a “championship brand review” that the NCAA had commissioned from an international firm before the outcry over last season’s tournament inequities, according to NCAA associate director of communications Meghan Durham.
The NCAA commissioned the gender-equity review with law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink last spring. It confirmed stark inequities in promotional spending, meals, coronavirus testing and staffing as well. And it culminated in a blistering 114-page report issued in August that concluded the NCAA defaulted on its commitment to gender equity by prioritizing its lucrative Division I men’s basketball tournament above all else.
The NCAA has been chipping away at the report’s to-do list since the fall, starting with the relatively low-hanging fruit of branding.
The NCAA took a more significant step in November by expanding the women’s tournament bracket from 64 to 68 teams starting with the 2022 event, bringing opportunities for women’s basketball players in line with those of the men’s.
Still to be addressed is the thornier question of whether the men’s and women’s Final Fours should be held at the same site. The Kaplan report said doing so would allow for better cross-promotion of the men’s and women’s games and make it easier for corporate sponsors to back both tournaments.
Not all women’s coaches are convinced that’s the best way to grow women’s basketball. Moreover, hosting rights for separate Final Fours have been awarded through 2026.
The Men’s Final Four will be held this year in New Orleans. After that, it will be staged in Houston (2023), Phoenix (2024), San Antonio (2025) and Indianapolis (2026).
This year’s Women’s Final Four will be held in Minneapolis, followed by Dallas (2023), Cleveland (2024), Tampa (2025) and Phoenix (2026).
Nonetheless, the NCAA can’t afford to slow-walk its efforts to address gender inequity in its championships. Doing so would risk legal action and potential federal intervention. In the wake of the Kaplan report, the law firm recommended the NCAA submit annual updates on its progress. | null | null | null | null | null |
The morning after the Washington Football Team closed its season with a win at the New York Giants, players, one by one, cycled through Coach Ron Rivera’s office for debriefing. The 2021 season was a roller coaster and fell short of expectations by nearly every measure, most notably by the team finishing 7-10 and failing to return to the postseason after last year’s surprise NFC East title at 7-9. But Monday, the team formally flipped the page to Year 3 of Rivera’s rebuild.
Cornerback William Jackson III said he’s fully healthy from his calf injury and said his role began to click after Washington upset the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. One skill he’ll be focused on in the offseason is his vision. | null | null | null | null | null |
Surgeons transplant pig heart into a man
While it’s too soon to know whether the operation will work, it marks a step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for lifesaving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.
The surgery on Friday took seven hours at the Baltimore hospital. It was performed by Bartley Griffith, who had transplanted pig hearts into about 50 baboons over five years before offering the option to Bennett.
There’s a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the United States, a record number, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system.
Past attempts at such transplants — or xenotransplantation — have failed, largely because patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. Notably, in 1984, Baby Fae, a dying infant, lived 21 days with a baboon heart.
The difference this time: The Maryland surgeons used a heart from a pig that had undergone gene-editing to remove a sugar in its cells that is responsible for that hyper-fast organ rejection. Several biotech companies are developing pig organs for human transplant. The one used for Friday’s operation came from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.
Man charged over threat to kill Trump
A New York man upset with what he perceived as Donald Trump’s threats to democracy was criminally charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president, whom he once referred to as Hitler.
Prosecutors said the defendant, Thomas Welnicki, 72, of Rockaway Beach threatened to do “everything I can” to ensure Trump’s death and once inquired about Secret Service protection for former presidents and their children.
The case was brought as Trump continues pressing false claims that widespread voting fraud caused him to lose the November 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon set bail at $50,000 and ordered Welnicki to undergo alcohol and mental health treatment and submit to GPS monitoring.
Prosecutors said Welnicki’s threats continued into the fall of 2021, when he likened Trump to Adolf Hitler and referred to Trump’s children.
He also allegedly told the Secret Service on Dec. 2 that “the new Civil War could break out and taking up arms against the government is justified when ballots don’t matter.”
Pilot rescued moments before train hits plane
Body-camera video showed the officers working furiously to disentangle the bloodied pilot from the cockpit of the crumpled Cessna 172.
The plane ended up on a rail crossing in an intersection adjacent to the airport and just blocks from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division station.
Officers arrived at the crash scene almost immediately.
The pilot was the only person onboard the plane and was taken to a hospital for treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
He was not identified and no other injuries were reported. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: As a civil war smolders, Myanmar’s military fans the flames
A protester in Yangon holds a poster featuring former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi at a rally in March. (AFP via Getty Images)
The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s reputation as a defender of human rights has suffered in recent years, ironically — and deservedly — because she apologized for the military’s abuses against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya. She did this while in a power-sharing arrangement with the generals prior to 2020 but seemed willing nonetheless. Yet no one deserves the patently lawless treatment she and her colleagues in the National League of Democracy party are receiving. And by neutralizing Aung San Suu Kyi, the military is eliminating the one person in Myanmar, also known as Burma, who could, even at this late date, help negotiate some sort of national reconciliation.
Reconciliation seems to be the last thing on the military’s mind. Security forces killed hundreds of people who surged into the streets to protest the February coup, a bloodbath that convinced many in the opposition that their only choice left was to take up arms. A low-level insurgency has spread throughout Myanmar, to which the junta’s response has been high-level violence.
The latest evidence of just how extensive and brutal the reprisals have been comes from an Associated Press investigation published on Dec. 30. The Associated Press documented what it called as a “strategy of massacres,” which have claimed dozens of lives and left villages wholly or partly in ruins. In the typical scenario, troops use a nearby insurgent attack as a pretext for collective punishment. Since September, they have burned more than 580 buildings in the northwestern town of Thantlang, according to satellite images. In a place called Done Taw, about 50 soldiers chased down and killed 10 villagers on Dec. 7, apparently in retaliation for an earlier roadside bomb explosion.
No effective sanctions have been forthcoming from the United States, though the Biden administration has at least condemned the regime. As for regional diplomacy, Hun Sen, the prime minister of Cambodia — chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year — recently visited Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, ostensibly to promote ASEAN’s mediation plan.
Having ruled his country for 37 iron-fisted years, Hun Sen is no democrat, and hundreds of people braved the crackdown to protest the legitimacy his visit — the first visit by an outside leader since the coup — conferred on the junta. Whereas Myanmar had been barred from a previous ASEAN conference for denying an ASEAN special envoy access to Aung San Suu Kyi, Hun Sen came and went without even insisting on such a meeting. For the time being, the junta has the advantage over the opposition — and every intention of pressing it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Melissa Epstein, a parent of 8-year-old twin boys Luke, left, and Evan, picks up coronavirus rapid tests at Lafayette Elementary School on Jan. 4. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
D.C. Public Schools is expanding its coronavirus policies by requiring testing after scheduled school breaks, providing weekly rapid tests to some of its youngest students and implementing “test-to-stay” provisions.
For the remainder of the school year, students and staff will be tested for the coronavirus before coming back to school after breaks.
The additional testing, announced during a news conference Monday, follows the district’s “test-to-return” program enacted after winter break. A negative coronavirus test was required last week for all staff and students enrolled in D.C. Public Schools before returning for in-person instruction; public charter schools had the option to require it.
The expanded testing program will operate similarly to how it did last time. D.C. Public Schools will require a negative test; public charter schools have the option.
Tests will be distributed to students before they leave for breaks that are at least a full week of school, said State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant. The test-to-return program will be enacted after a Feb. 21-25 break and again after spring break.
In the coming weeks, D.C. schools will also issue guidance on a test-to-stay program, which allows an unvaccinated student who is identified as having had close contact with an infected classmate to take rapid tests while in quarantine at school. If the tests are negative, they can remain in school. Other districts, including Montgomery and Fairfax counties, are also using test-to-stay programs.
The program will launch in early-childhood education programs and elementary schools, with smaller pilots in some middle and high schools. It’s “highly likely” that more test-to-stay guidance will be shared this month, Grant said.
“I want to be critically clear that it’s important for families who have access to the vaccine to take the vaccine — that is the critical way to ensure students can learn in school,” Grant said.
Also, all prekindergarten and kindergarten students will be supplied with rapid antigen test kits on Fridays so they can test over the weekend before they return to school on Mondays. Officials did not comment on whether a negative test result will be required for these students to return to classes on Monday, but more guidance will be announced, they said.
All D.C. public and public charter schools staff will also receive a test kit each week. The program is expected to continue through the latest surge in cases.
“Our pre-K kids are unvaccinated in our schools; they’re not eligible for vaccination,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said Monday as to why officials are testing that grade level.
The district will also continue its asymptomatic testing program. Currently, D.C. schools are testing 20 percent of their student population each week, but they now have the capability to test up to 30 percent of the student population, Grant said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Navy complies with order to fix facility that leaked jet fuel into tap water
Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One performs inspection and sampling of a water well near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 11, 2021. Navy divers were trying to remove fuel from a water shaft at Red Hill near Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. The water supply serves about 93,000 people. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aja Bleu Jackson via AP)
The Navy suspended operations at the facility and began treating water but went to court to contest the order. But the Navy’s resistance ended Friday, following a decision from the state deputy attorney general to uphold the emergency order that was later affirmed by Hawaii health officials last week.
“U. S. Pacific Fleet is complying with the Department of Health’s Emergency Order for Red Hill,” said Capt. Bill Clinton, a spokesperson for the command, in a decision that has not been publicly announced. The pause in operations at Red Hill has been in effect since Dec. 7, Clinton said, and there have not been any impact on operations at this time.
It is unclear if the Navy will appeal the decision, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. The Navy is in talks with the Justice Department on options and long-term solutions for the facility with national security implications in mind, the official said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dwayne Hickman, who starred as Dobie Gillis in popular sitcom, dies at 87
From left, actors Dwayne Hickman, Danielle De Metz and Bob Denver in 1960 in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” (AP)
Dwayne Hickman, an actor who portrayed the lovesick teenager Dobie Gillis in a popular sitcom of the 1950s and 1960s, creating an enduring and memorable TV character who remains alive in syndicated reruns, died Jan. 9 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.
The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, his publicist, Harlan Boll, said in a statement.
Mr. Hickman had been a child actor in the 1940s who had tagged along beside his then-better-known older brother, actor Darryl Hickman. He had small roles in several films before landing a part in “The Bob Cummings Show” (also called “Love That Bob”) in 1955. He said he learned almost everything he knew about acting from the affable, ever-smiling Cummings, who had been a movie star since the 1930s.
Although he was already in his 20s at the time, Mr. Hickman seemed to personify a generation of teenagers then coming of age in Middle America. When “The Bob Cummings Show” left the air in 1959, Mr. Hickman stepped into his new starring role as Dobie Gillis.
“When they wanted someone to star in ‘Dobie Gillis,’” Mr. Hickman said in 1959, “I was the only guy around who could play teenage comedy. The rest of the young performers are too busy copying Marlon Brando and wearing sideburns.”
Drawn from a series of short stories by author Max Shulman, who was a producer and writer on the show, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” was among the first network sitcoms to make teenagers the central characters, rather than their parents. The show’s title was an inside joke because Dobie was hapless in romance, forever facing rejection while ignoring the one girl who sought his attention, the irrepressible and overachieving Zelda Gilroy (played by Sheila James).
“What made Dobie so famous for so long,” Mr. Hickman told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1995, “is that he was the original spokesman for teens, and he represented so much of that angst of the teen years. The series was the first where the main character was a teen speaking for teens.”
Dobie’s father (played by Frank Faylen) always seemed to be in a sour mood, cajoling his son to help out around his grocery store. But Dobie was constantly dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes and pining for girls (not necessarily in that order) with his beatnik buddy, Maynard G. Krebs, played by Bob Denver, who later starred in “Gilligan’s Island.”
The lazy, disheveled Maynard, who wore a goatee and a bedraggled sweatshirt, routinely responded to the suggestion that he find a job by saying, with a combination of contempt and fright, “Work?!” Speaking in a blend of jazz lingo and goofy malapropisms, he got many of the best lines:
Dobie: “I’ll never chase another girl again.”
Maynard: “Oh, you’re going to live in a cave and become a helmet!”
Dobie: “Maynard, that’s ‘hermit,’ and you don’t understand.”
Maynard: “You’re not chasing chicks? No, I don’t understand, clue me.”
During the show’s first season, Mr. Hickman bleached his hair blond, which caused a rash to break out on his scalp. For the remaining three years of the show, his hair was its natural brown, as Dobie progressed from Central High School to a junior college. The major characters followed along, including Maynard, Zelda, Dobie’s rich-kid nemesis Chatsworth Osborne Jr. (Steve Franken) and even his biology teacher, played by William Schallert.
“Dobie Gillis” helped launch the acting careers of Tuesday Weld, who played the unattainable Thalia Menninger in parts of the first two seasons, Marlo Thomas, Ryan O’Neal, Bill Bixby and Warren Beatty.
“Warren Beatty, I believe, never mentions that he was on the show,” Mr. Hickman said in 2003. “Beatty played Milton Armitage, a spoiled rich kid who was Dobie’s main competition for girls. Maybe he knew he was going to become a superstar, because he was always very standoffish with the rest of us.”
Beatty left the show in its first season. In one of Beatty’s final episodes, Dobie defeated his character in a race for junior class president.
The sitcom, which ran until 1963 and was also called “Max Shulman’s Dobie Gillis” and just “Dobie Gillis,” had snappy dialogue, a youthful point of view and an undercurrent of philosophical anxiety. In the opening and closing segments, Dobie often sat under a copy of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” striking a chin-on-fist pose as he mused directly to the audience about his problems.
“We were doing a kind of sketch comedy,” Mr. Hickman later said. “‘Dobie Gillis’ made no attempt to be reality. It was fun. Reality was the last thing we cared about.”
Dwayne Bernard Hickman was born May 18, 1934, in Los Angeles. His father sold insurance, and his mother had been an actress. Dwayne accompanied her to movie studios when his older brother was acting in films.
Dwayne Hickman was an extra in “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), in which his brother had a part, then had more than a dozen juvenile roles in movies through the early 1950s. He left college for “The Bob Cummings Show,” then later completed a bachelor’s degree in economics at what is now Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
After “Dobie Gillis,” Mr. Hickman appeared in such tame but suggestive fare as “Ski Party” and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” and had a supporting role in the Oscar-winning comic western “Cat Ballou” (1965).
By the 1970s, Mr. Hickman had largely abandoned acting. He worked as a publicist in Las Vegas, then became a CBS studio executive, supervising such hit sitcoms as “M.A.S.H.,” “Maude,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Designing Women.” He also directed many episodes of TV shows.
He reprised the Dobie Gillis role in reunion shows in 1977 and 1988, and took up a second career as a painter. His landscapes and architecturally precise paintings of houses were shown at galleries around the country. In 1994, he published an autobiography, “Forever Dobie: The Many Lives of Dwayne Hickman,” written with his wife, Joan Roberts.
His earlier marriages to Carol Christensen and Joanne Papile ended in divorce. In addition to his wife of 38 years, survivors include a son from his first marriage; a son from his third marriage; and his brother.
Mr. Hickman said he was surprised that “Dobie Gillis” retained its popularity long after it aired and had become something of a cultural touchstone for a generation.
“People loved that Dobie guy, and they just kind of refused to see me as anything but him,” he said in 1995. “It’s still going on today.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Capitals had an early two-goal lead Monday night, and approval from the home crowd came in the form of rambunctious applause as the fans anticipated a little payback for the team that knocked their squad of last year’s playoffs. But scattered boos took over when Washington collapsed again in a dismal 7-3 loss to the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena, the Capitals’ fourth straight defeat (0-2-2).
After the Capitals grabbed a 2-0 lead less than 13 minutes in on a pair of Conor Sheary goals, the Bruins outscored Washington 7-1 the rest of the way. Boston scored six straight before forward T.J. Oshie got one back with a goal off his skate at 14:06 of the second period to make it 6-3, but that was all Washington could manage. The Bruins’ Brad Marchand scored his second goal of the night with 9:01 left to produce the final score.
Zach Fucale, who had a storybook beginning to his NHL career, was lit up in his third career start, allowing four goals on 16 shots. Coach Peter Laviolette said Fucale had earned the start after a strong 21-save performance Saturday in Washington’s 3-2 shootout loss at Minnesota.
Vitek Vanecek replaced Fucale at 7:53 of the second period and allowed three goals on 15 shots. Washington has given up 18 goals in its past four games — not counting the shootout decider at Minnesota — and has struggled to hold on to leads all season. Monday’s loss was just the latest and most frustrating example.
Sheary scored the first two goals off turnovers in the slot to give Washington a 2-0 advantage. But a flurry of Washington penalties to close the first period opened the door for Boston.
David Pastrnak scored Boston’s first goal on a two-man advantage with 1:26 left. Marchand, who was still bleeding after a high-sticking double minor penalty assessed to Nic Dowd a few minutes earlier, tied it at 2 with 45.4 seconds to go.
Then came the deluge. Matt Grzelcyk, who added four assists, sniped the puck past Fucale at 2:51 of the second to give the Bruins the lead. Craig Smith scored from the right side at 7:53 to end Fucale’s night. Pastrnak got his second at 8:54 on an odd-man rush — and the first shot Vanecek faced. Erik Haula tacked on the sixth goal for Boston with 6:51 left.
Before Monday’s relief appearance, Vanecek had not played since Dec. 19. He entered the NHL’s coronavirus protocols five days later, during the NHL’s brief pause over its holiday break. He practiced with the team last week but then was unavailable for the previous two games — losses at St. Louis and Minnesota — because of a non-covid illness. He was back at practice Monday.
Laviolette said Monday that he wanted Vanecek to dress behind Fucale because he wanted him to get “back on the ice” after being out for so long. Fellow goalie Ilya Samsonov is healthy, Laviolette added.
Samsonov was pulled from his most recent start Friday at St. Louis. Samsonov has struggled since posting back-to-back shutouts at Los Angeles and San Jose in late November. In his past 12 starts, he has a 3.15 goals against average and an .891 save percentage.
Under the NHL’s revised protocols following new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, if a player produces a negative test and is asymptomatic, he can be cleared to play after five days in isolation.
Oshie and center Nicklas Backstrom played for the first time since Dec. 31. Both were out with non-covid-19 illnesses and had missed three games.
“It’s great to have them back,” Laviolette said Monday morning. “Their years have not unfolded probably the way that they want. No fault of their own — it’s just the way it’s gone.”
Oshie and Backstrom have been limited by injuries, stints on the covid list and the flu. Monday was Backstrom’s fourth game; it was Oshie’s 17th. Oshie’s goal was his fifth of the year.
Oshie played on the top line with Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Backstrom centered the second line between Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson. | null | null | null | null | null |
Navy complies with order to fix Pearl Harbor facility that leaked fuel into tap water
Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One performs inspection and sampling of a water well near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 11. Navy divers were trying to remove fuel from a water shaft at Red Hill near Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. The water supply serves about 93,000 people. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aja Bleu Jackson/AP)
The Navy suspended operations at the facility and began treating the water but went to court to contest the order. But the Navy’s resistance ended Friday, following a decision from the state deputy attorney general to uphold the emergency order that was later affirmed by Hawaii health officials last week.
“U.S. Pacific Fleet is complying with the Department of Health’s Emergency Order for Red Hill,” said Capt. Bill Clinton, a spokesperson for the command, in a decision that has not been publicly announced. The pause in operations at Red Hill has been in effect since Dec. 7, Clinton said, and there has not been any impact on military operations in the region at this time.
It is unclear whether the Navy will appeal the decision, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The Navy is in talks with the Justice Department on options and long-term solutions for the facility with national security implications in mind, the official said. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Capitals had an early two-goal lead Monday night, and approval from the home crowd came in the form of rambunctious applause as the fans anticipated a little payback for the team that knocked their squad out of last year’s playoffs. But scattered boos took over when Washington collapsed again in a dismal 7-3 loss to the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena, the Capitals’ fourth straight defeat (0-2-2).
After the Capitals (20-8-9) grabbed a 2-0 lead less than 13 minutes in on a pair of Conor Sheary goals, the Bruins outscored Washington 7-1 the rest of the way. Boston (19-11-2) scored six straight before forward T.J. Oshie got one back with a goal off his skate at 14:06 of the second period to make it 6-3, but that was all Washington could manage. The Bruins’ Brad Marchand scored his second goal of the night with 9:01 left to produce the final score.
“The start was good,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “I thought we came out and did the right things. ... The odd-man rushes and the turnovers in the second period didn’t help us play a tight game. Can’t do that against that team.”
Goalie Zach Fucale, who had a storybook beginning to his NHL career, was lit up in his third career start, allowing four goals on 16 shots. Laviolette said Fucale had earned the start after a strong 21-save performance Saturday in Washington’s 3-2 shootout loss at Minnesota. Washington led that game 2-0 before a bizarre own goal gave Minnesota life.
Vitek Vanecek replaced Fucale at 7:53 of the second period Monday and allowed three goals on 15 shots. Washington has given up 18 goals in its past four games, not counting the shootout decider at Minnesota, and has struggled to hold on to leads all season. Monday’s loss was just the latest and perhaps most frustrating example.
“We’re at the point of the season where that has to get fixed, right?” center Nic Dowd said. “We’re a veteran team. It’s not like we’re a group of guys that do not know how to hold on to the lead.”
Sheary scored the first two goals off turnovers in the slot. But a flurry of Washington penalties to close the first period opened the door for Boston.
David Pastrnak scored Boston’s first goal on a two-man advantage with 1:26 left. Marchand, who was still bleeding after a high-sticking double minor penalty assessed to Dowd a few minutes earlier, tied it at 2 with 45.4 seconds to go.
Then came the deluge. Matt Grzelcyk, who finished with four assists, sniped the puck past Fucale at 2:51 of the second to give the Bruins the lead. Craig Smith scored from the right side at 7:53 to end Fucale’s night. Pastrnak got his second at 8:54 on an odd-man rush — and the first shot Vanecek faced. Erik Haula tacked on the sixth goal for Boston with 6:51 left.
Washington has a four-day break before visiting the New York Islanders on Saturday afternoon.
“We have to get back to our game, our game plan. We have a lot of good players that have been in and out of the lineup — maybe get them back in and get some reps,” Dowd said. “We’re not going to hit the panic button. We’re just going to keep grinding away.”
Before Monday’s relief appearance, Vanecek had not played since Dec. 19. He entered the NHL’s coronavirus protocols five days later, during the league’s brief stoppage over its holiday break. He practiced with the team last week but then was unavailable for the previous two games — losses at St. Louis and Minnesota — because of a non-covid-19 illness.
Laviolette said he wanted Vanecek to serve as Fucale’s backup Monday because he wanted him to get “back on the ice” after being out for so long. Fellow goalie Ilya Samsonov is healthy, Laviolette added.
Samsonov was pulled from his most recent start at St. Louis on Friday, when Washington scored the first goal but ended up with a 5-1 loss. Samsonov has struggled since posting back-to-back shutouts at Los Angeles and San Jose in late November. In his past 12 starts, he has a 3.15 goals against average and an .891 save percentage.
Under the NHL’s revised protocols following updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if a player produces a negative test and is asymptomatic, he can be cleared to play after five days in isolation.
Oshie and center Nicklas Backstrom played for the first time since Dec. 31. Both were out with non-covid illnesses and had missed the previous three games.
“It’s great to have them back,” Laviolette said. “Their years have not unfolded probably the way that they want. No fault of their own — it’s just the way it’s gone.”
Oshie and Backstrom have been limited by injuries, stints on the covid list and the flu. Monday was Backstrom’s fourth game; it was Oshie’s 17th.
Oshie played on the top line with Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Backstrom centered the second line between Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson. Oshie’s goal was his fifth of the year and his first since he had a hat trick Oct. 25 at Ottawa. | null | null | null | null | null |
(The Washington Post illustration; iStock; Zynga)
Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive announced Monday it will acquire mobile game maker Zynga for an estimated $12.7 billion, the highest sum ever paid to buy another video game company. The deal continues an industry trend of game publishers coveting and courting mobile game makers.
Zynga makes the popular mobile titles “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends.” Take-Two is known for publishing blockbuster hits like “BioShock,” “Red Dead Redemption 2” and “Grand Theft Auto V.” Take-Two estimated in a news release that the Zynga acquisition will net the company over $500 million in annual sales “over time” from making new mobile versions of its console and PC titles once it moves over Zynga’s nearly 3,000 employees.
“We very much think there’s an opportunity to bring numerous IPs from Take-Two to mobile. And we’re highly ambitious about doing it. We haven’t talked about any particular titles, of course,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told The Washington Post when asked about the possibility of an original “Grand Theft Auto” mobile game down the line. “This opportunity wasn’t available to us years ago, it only became available to us relatively recently. And we’re very selective.”
The purchase will be made using both cash and shares of stock, according to Take-Two. Both companies were already publicly traded on the Nasdaq. Zynga’s stock is up over 40 percent Monday at over $8 per share, while Take-Two is down roughly 15 percent at around $140 per share.
“The stock actually went down meaningfully today, and there have been other times when our stocks have declined on a one- or two-day basis, in a way that didn’t make much sense to us. I never argue with the market,” Zelnick said. “While we’re not cavalier about any one day’s trading, not in the least, we’re very focused on the long term and always have been. And over the course of many years of managing this business, of course, we’ve — generally speaking — outperformed the market and outperformed our peers.”
Take-Two is financing $2.7 billion of the deal from J.P. Morgan. It will fund the cash portion partially through its own assets and by taking on additional debt to the tune of about $1.2 billion, which Zelnick said the company expects to pay off within a few years. The transaction is set to be completed by June 30 this year, pending approval of regulators and stockholders of both companies.
Take-Two also anticipates saving $100 million by combining the two companies and cutting general expenses. Zelnick emphasized that layoffs are “not a starting point” when Take-Two thinks about cutting costs, and that there are other areas where third-party costs will decline instead.
“This is far and away the largest acquisition that we’ve done,” he said. “Our focus is, primarily here going forward, more organic growth. … As long as we remain highly disciplined, it should work out. Post closing, we will still have a fortresslike balance sheet. So certainly, we’ll be in a position to do more acquisitions.”
“It’s a shrewd decision by Zelnick to reposition Take-Two as a game publisher that can cater to the full breadth of the market,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at the New York University Stern School of Business.
Craig Chapple, mobile insights strategist at Sensor Tower, noted that mobile gaming is more profitable than console or PC gaming alone. The acquisition also brings with it Zynga’s substantial foothold in the international mobile gaming market; its consumers spent more than $2 billion on its properties last year — six times that of Take-Two’s roughly $330 million in mobile in-game revenue, according to data from Sensor Tower.
Zelnick said that “to the extent that [Take-Two’s] competitors have issues, that’ll be something they have to focus on,” and that he had “great respect for [his] peers in the industry.” He said that Take-Two was very focused on its own challenges and exploiting opportunities that it sees. | null | null | null | null | null |
INDIANAPOLIS — Stetson Bennett delivered the biggest throws of his storybook career and Georgia’s defense sealed the sweetest victory in program history, vanquishing rival Alabama 33-18 for its first national title in 41 years.
INDIANAPOLIS — College Football Playoff expansion talks remain stalled and the possibility of implementing a new format by the 2024 season dimmed after three days of meetings failed to produce an agreement.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic returned to the tennis court for training, having won a legal battle to stay in Australia to play in the Australian Open after his exemption from strict coronavirus vaccine rules was questioned. But the government is still threatening to cancel his visa and deport him. | null | null | null | null | null |
Residents wait at a rest area after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mobile station set up for elderly residents in Hong Kong on Jan. 9. (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Hong Kong had a year to protect its elderly, who have free access to Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinovac doses. But staggeringly low take-up among over-80s — fewer than one in five have had two shots, and almost none have had three — has left this most vulnerable group starkly exposed as the omicron variant spreads.
After the surge in recent days, about 70 percent of Hong Kong’s total population is doubly dosed. But just 19 percent of those aged 80 or above have had two shots, and 47 percent of those aged 70 to 79 — far behind counterparts in Japan, Singapore, South Korea and other wealthy nations. People aged 60 or above accounted for 93 percent of the city’s 213 total deaths and nearly three-quarters of critical cases, official data shows.
Fear of side-effects, allergic reactions and death are the main reasons for the reluctance among the elderly, said Stephanie Jean Tsang, assistant professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University and author of a 2021 study on understanding vaccine hesitancy in the city. News headlines with keywords such as “death," “myocarditis” or “face paralysis," that focus on the most serious reactions also caused fear, as most people just read the headlines, she said.
“To many people, if side effects are so drastic, while Hong Kong was with zero covid cases, maybe this factored into why they chose not to get vaccinated earlier,” Tsang said.
With the elderly largely unprotected, a surge in cases could bring the health-care system to collapse, which “will lead to a lot of deaths,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
A woman saw 3 children fall into an icy pond. She ran out and saved them, police say: ‘What she did was amazing’
Dusti Talavera, 23, saved three children who fell into a frozen pond near her apartment. (KMGH) (KMGH)
“The fact that we had her witness these kids fall in there and her quick reaction … in putting her life at risk for the kids to make sure that they could make it another day, is amazing,” Deputy Blaine Moulton said.
It was around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday when Talavera saw the children fall into the water. Talavera threw on her shoes and ran out into the cold air and onto the frozen pond, she said. She then pulled out a 4-year-old girl and 11-year old boy before falling in the water as she attempted to save the 6-year-old. | null | null | null | null | null |
For now, national governments control the rules — and much of the funding
Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket after the ringing of the Nasdaq opening bell in New York on Jan. 7. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
In November, Elon Musk announced that his company’s Starship project may launch as early as this month. Developed by SpaceX, the Starship system is seen by many as a game-changer for space travel and exploration. When operational, the fully reusable transport system will be capable of carrying up to 100 people to Mars, marking the next step in the commercialization of outer space.
Will commercial ventures replace national governments in space travel and exploration? My research suggests it is not very likely. While private companies have made considerable strides in popularizing space, national governments dictate the rules and provide much of the funding, securing their central role in space endeavors.
Russia proved it can shoot down a satellite. Does this make space less secure?
How important is the commercial space sector?
Over the last 15 years, commercial activity in space more than tripled, growing from $110 billion in 2005 to nearly $357 billion in 2020. Commercial activity in 2020 accounted for about 80 percent of the estimated $447 billion global space economy that year. Morgan Stanley projects that the sector will rocket to more than $1 trillion by 2040, with growth concentrated in the commercial space sector.
The modern idea of space travel is rooted in private aspirations, dating back to scientists and engineers such as Robert Goddard, Herman Oberth, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Esnault-Pelterie, all considered among the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. When space exploration proved possible, governments monopolized space activities throughout the 1950s to 1970s.
Commercial space operations kicked off in 1962 with the launch of the first transatlantic communication satellite, Telstar 1. In the United States, the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 affirmed the right of private companies to own and operate commercial satellites. Other major milestones include the Commercial Space Launch Act in 1984, a more independent U.S. Office of Commercial Space Transportation and the 2015 US SPACE Act aimed at encouraging the commercial exploration and exploitation of space.
This gradual deregulation in the United States resulted in tremendous growth of commercial space initiatives. The first privately funded rocket, the Conestoga, was launched in 1982 by Space Services. In 2004, the first private, suborbital human spaceflight took place on board SpaceShipOne. In 2012, SpaceX, a private company, began transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station. And in 2020, SpaceX flew American astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time since 2011, when NASA’s space shuttle missions ended.
Commercial space ventures picked up in 2021
Commercial ventures in space made global headlines last year when SpaceX flew two additional space station missions: Crew-2 and Crew-3, and launched Inspiration4, the first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth. Virgin Galactic launched two suborbital human spaceflights from Spaceport America, and Blue Origin conducted two spaceflights close to the 62-mile Kármán line, demarcating the beginning of outer space (Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, owns The Washington Post).
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin announced additional spaceflights, while SpaceX is preparing to go to the moon, Mars and beyond. NASA partnered with Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman to develop commercial destinations in low-earth orbit. Bigelow, Nanoracks and Axiom Space are designing human habitats in space; Maxar and Northrop Grumman are working on the future Gateway lunar space station, Orbital Assembly plans to open the first space hotel in 2027, and Japan’s Obayashi Corp. aims to create a space elevator by 2050.
Why the commercial space sector won’t replace governments’ role
Three factors help explain why the role of national space initiatives will continue. First, countries dictate the rules in space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which provides the basic legal framework of international space law, gives countries full responsibility (Article 6), liability (Article 7) and ownership (Article 8) of any commercial entity and object in space. Governments have written and signed into effect current space laws, and this means governments will continue to have primacy in space affairs. While companies may operate in space, the current system remains centered around national governments.
What did China test in space, exactly, and why?
Second, national governments continue to play a major role in commercial space activities, often by providing substantial funding. Under NASA’s 2008 Commercial Resupply Services, for example, the U.S. agency awarded $5.9 billion in the first round of commercial resupply contracts, and up to $14 billion in the second. And under its 2011 Commercial Crew Program, NASA invested billions of dollars in a number of companies, with the goal of developing a safe and reliable U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability.
NASA also funds a wide range of other commercial space initiatives, but there is little public information detailing exactly how much commercial partners invest in these joint ventures. In 2012, NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier acknowledged that “80-90 percent of the funding for ‘commercial’ crew is from the government, not the companies.” More recent reports suggest that the government’s investment share in commercial launches has changed little, at 77.6 percent.
A third factor is federal deregulation, which helped U.S. commercial space activities to flourish and to dominate. For instance, in 2020, out of 114 total launch attempts, 38 were purely commercial; U.S. companies conducted 23 of these launch attempts, or 61 percent. In addition to launch services, the U.S. commercial space sector similarly leads in other areas, including satellite and spacecraft manufacturing, on-orbit servicing missions and human spaceflight.
In the absence of deregulation in other countries, commercial space ventures are unlikely to develop along similar lines. While commercial space sectors in countries like Russia and China have expanded, growth has been limited and often contingent upon substantial government investments.
Space will remain a national prerogative
Commercial space companies appear well-positioned to continue to make groundbreaking contributions to space travel and exploration. However, despite the impressive growth of the commercial space sector, governments will continue to play a large role in commercial space enterprises, and in space travel and exploration — unless their ability to shape the dynamics of relations in space declines radically.
Svetla Ben-Itzhak (@SvetlaBI) is assistant professor of space and international relations at the U.S. Air and Space Forces’ Air University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense, or of any organization the author is affiliated with, including the Air University, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force. | null | null | null | null | null |
A man was killed in Prince George's County, Md. (iStock) (iStock)
Local police said Eugene Kelly Gray, 24, of Bowie was fatally shot Sunday. The incident happened around 7:50 p.m. in the 15400 block of Empress Way in the city of Bowie, officials said.
Police responded for a report of a shooting, and when they arrived they found Gray outside with several gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. | null | null | null | null | null |
“The Lost Daughter” filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, pictured at the Lumiere Film Festival in October, describes her transition from acting to directing as “just a total joy.” (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)
While starring on HBO’s “The Deuce,” Maggie Gyllenhaal used to write “long essays” about why she believed certain scenes shouldn’t be cut. She had always been fascinated by the editing process in film and television, something she was rarely involved in as an actress. She sought more creative control.
That is exactly what she achieved with her directorial feature debut, “The Lost Daughter,” an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel now streaming on Netflix. Gyllenhaal, who also wrote and produced the thriller, tweaked certain elements with the pseudonymous author’s blessing; the story pulled from a Neapolitan novel now takes place in Greece, where a middle-aged, divorced professor, Leda (Olivia Colman), encounters Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother from Queens, while on vacation. Nina’s daughter loses her doll at the beach, and the emotional fallout lasts days, exhausting Nina and reminding Leda of her own struggles early on in motherhood.
Spliced throughout the film are Leda’s memories from roughly 20 years ago, in which the character is played by Jessie Buckley. Viewers witness both young Leda’s tenderness and her frustration, sometimes driven by ambivalence toward motherhood. She begins an affair with another professor (Peter Sarsgaard) after he praises her work as an English-Italian translator. Slowly, an uneasiness builds both in Leda’s present day and in her recollections, adding a layer of suspense to her otherwise innocuous interactions with the other vacationers.
Review: Maggie Gyllenhaal makes an astonishing directorial debut in ‘The Lost Daughter’
The delicate tone and layered themes of “The Lost Daughter” make for a tricky adaptation. But Gyllenhaal pulled it off, as her film premiered to critical acclaim. In conversation with The Washington Post in January, Gyllenhaal, 44, spoke enthusiastically about why she adapted the novel, how she navigated the transition to directing and what she makes of audience reactions to the film.
“I was like a kid in a candy shop,” she says. “Like, what? I can just explore here and do whatever I want?”
Q: Why tell this story for your directorial debut?
A: It’s a movie about trying to embrace and normalize the huge spectrum of feelings that are inherently a part of being a parent. We’ve been told that only a few things are really acceptable in terms of our feelings about parenting, and yet parenting is, I think, the most complicated, incredible and also the biggest challenge that there is. It only follows that you would have a massive spectrum of feelings about it.
Leda, of course, is really extreme, and she does something that’s really aberrant and that isn’t in the realm of possibility for me. But if we’re talking about the world of the mind — which, I think the movie lives in … [and] is part of what compels me about it and what compels me about the book — as a fantasy, as an idea, as a possibility, it’s an interesting thing to think about.
Q: How much more did you feel you were able to accomplish as an artist with this level of control?
A: I’ve never been an actress who wanted to be told, “Stand here, and this is what this scene is about and this is what I want you to articulate.” I’ve been much more interested as an actress in real collaboration.
But I did find as an actress — often, not always — that only a percentage of what it was I wanted to express actually found its way into the movie. And I got used to that. That’s part of the gig. But I think I was rarely really satisfied, and that was definitely one of the things that pushed me into wanting to write and to direct.
Q: Did you ever find yourself in a position in which you were working with actors and realized that you were on the flip side of things, and able to work with them in a different way?
A: I was very aware of that always because that’s where my expertise is. I spent so much time as an actress and I often remember being in situations with directors where I thought — well, it’s almost like the feeling of being a child when there’s an injustice. You’re like, “When I grow up, I will never, ever do it like this.” I was very conscious and aware of that. But I also work with actors all the time as an actress, and so I know how to interact, how to help someone feel free. I know what helps me feel free. Of course, with every actor it’s different.
Q: How did you approach the pacing of a movie that is more an exploration of someone’s interior than it is, like, an A-B-C plot?
A: As a writer, and then also in the editing room, I don’t know — I could just sort of feel the pace. We got some notes early on that the beginning felt slow, and we experimented with taking a whole day at the beach out. It really didn’t work. And the reason it didn’t work is because the movement through this thriller is in this woman’s mind — you need to give a little space for the audience to understand that, and to get inside her. You can’t push them in. You can’t kick them in.
I can feel pretty clearly when sometimes something goes on a little too long and it turns from being very truthful to sentimental.
Q: It’s great when scenes cut at the point where it’s clear what the characters are saying or what their words represent, but there’s space left for the viewer to interpret them as well.
A: I so agree with you, and that’s the kind of filmmaking that I respond to. Ideally, what you’re doing is you’re engaging people and you’re asking them, “How do you feel about this? Who do you think that is in a relationship?” I remember someone saying to me about Callie early on — the pregnant sister-in-law — someone saying, “You might need to work on her a little bit because it wasn’t clear whether or not she was ominous or friendly.” I was like, “No, that’s great.” That’s so many people you meet in your life, where you’re like, “I’m not sure if that person is ominous or friendly.” And then you’re engaged. Is she a friend or foe, you know?
Q: I found the dynamic between Callie, Leda and Nina fascinating; Callie is almost a foil for the other two. How did you approach collaborating with the actresses?
A: If the idea is to get to a place where you’re exploring things you’ve never explored before, where you’re in an unknown, exciting territory, how you help someone get to a place where they feel free is going to depend greatly on the person. For Dakota, she and I worked very specifically through the scenes, almost in a very classic Actors Studio type way. “What’s the event of the scene?” “What is it that you need, and what is the obstacle to get it?”
And with Olivia, it’s funny because I was kind of misquoted as saying we barely talked to each other recently, which kind of pissed me off. We were really working in the most intimate way for a very long time. What I meant by whatever it was I said was that Olivia did not want to talk specifically about the scenes, about the characters. And I completely understand that. She’s not someone who communicates in that way. Most of the communication I had with Olivia was talking about something up here [gestures up high] and really, underneath it, we were having a secret conversation about the scene.
Q: There had to be somewhat of a tie here between Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, given that they’re playing the same woman at different points in her life. What was it about Buckley that you were drawn to?
A: I cast Olivia first, obviously, and then I saw [Buckley] in “Wild Rose” and she felt like a kindred artistic spirit. Dakota and Olivia — who I think are just brilliant, I just love that triumvirate of actresses — are very different than me. Jessie, I feel like we kind of speak the same language.
In terms of Olivia and Jessie, the biggest risk in taking on this adaptation was the 20-year age gap. Certainly in a novel it’s fine, because you’re imagining everything. But cinematically, how do you do that and not have it be goofy? You could age an actress, but it’s so rare that that doesn’t feel so disingenuous. And here, in a movie where we’re asking people to look at really painful, truthful things, we can’t offer them anything that’s fake.
If you’re not 4 years old, you’re going to know that these are two different actresses — two fully formed, formidable, brilliant actresses. Olivia Colman is not Jessie Buckley. And so we can just forget about trying to trick you and just agree as adults to make the poetic agreement between us that for the purposes of telling this story, these two women are going to portray the same person. Then, you’re totally free. You don’t have to worry about having an eye twitch or a neck tattoo or something.
Q: You also worked on this project with your husband, Peter Sarsgaard, whom you’ve acted opposite before. What was it like to direct someone you know so well?
A: In some ways, it’s the same. I wanted Peter to feel respected and seen and loved and free, which is the same thing I wanted for all my actors. I had worked with him twice as an actress. What that did — doing these two Chekhov plays over and over again — was, it really solidified a mutual respect, artistically, between us. I think you can love someone and not like their work. I do. I think if Peter were a terrible actor, I would still love him. But it happens that I think he’s a brilliant actor, and he knows that I do.
“The movie is asking a difficult thing of people, of men and women, which is to be able to hold in your mind a mother who is many many many complicated things… who is good and bad at the same time.” (Washington Post Live)
Warning: The rest of this interview contains spoilers for the ending of “The Lost Daughter.”
Q: Going back to not going too far in a scene, and allowing viewers to make up their minds for themselves: What attracted you to the ambiguous ending, as a storyteller?
A: What do you think is ambiguous about it?
Q: Whether Leda lives or dies. I find her fate to be ambiguous. [Note: Toward the end of the film, Nina finds out Leda betrayed her trust and stabs her with a hat pin. With a bleeding wound, Leda gets in her car and crashes it, staggering to the beach right after.]
A: Why do you think — I don’t know …
Q: Do you not see it as ambiguous?
A: I love that people do. I just think it mostly lives in the fantasy world of the audience. If she dies, we’re punishing her. It’s not a punitive movie. It’s really not what we’re doing. To me, this is a woman who is a hero, even though she is someone who has caused probably irreparable damage to both herself and her children. Whatever that means. We cause tiny bits of damage to ourselves and our children all the time. But she really is almost destroyed by it, and I imagine her children, too. But she is a hero to me because she is brave enough to go down into the darkest, most painful, shameful parts of herself and take a look. And that is where the life is.
Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Here’s how filmmakers have tried to make sense of it all.
‘Passing’ questions race and identity. Writer-director Rebecca Hall is still figuring out the answers.
Kenneth Branagh is known for blockbusters and Shakespeare adaptations. ‘Belfast’ hits closer to home. | null | null | null | null | null |
Web3 Just Had Its Emperor’s New Clothes Moment
Web3 or Web 3.0 has become the latest craze for investors who fear missing out. Hotter than bitcoin, harder to understand than artificial intelligence and also painfully abstract, Web3 points to a more transparent, decentralized and equitable web, which in principle is better than an Internet controlled by a handful of mega corporations.
This idea for the next iteration of the web is a terrific concept, but one which, like communism, can’t really work in its current form.
The problem is Web3 is not all that distributed nor is it particularly equitable or transparent. It is highly centralized, despite being touted as a decentralized alternative to the web. That was the indictment from Moxie Marlinspike, a highly respected cryptographer and founder of encrypted messaging app Signal, who published a damning blog post about Web3 over the weekend. On Monday, Marlinspike also announced he was stepping down from Signal after a decade of running the company.
A quick view on the mechanics and why this is so: Blockchain technology works by creating trust-distributing connections between servers, a.k.a. powerful computers, not between people with mobile phones like us. “People don’t want to run their own servers,” Marlinspike wrote. That is why companies have begun selling access to servers connected to the blockchain, becoming not unlike the companies that built the infrastructure of Web2. Ozone Networks Inc., the owner of OpenSea, is one company doing this, as are Infura Inc. and Alchemy Insights Inc. Many so-called distributed apps, or dApps, link to these firms to access the blockchain.
These companies are not bad. They are simply seizing a business opportunity that exists within the limits of blockchain. While it’s technically possible to restructure the rules of blockchain to make it less reliant on a few firms, that would require getting the consensus of thousands of developers over the course of years. That is a big, human problem, not a technical one, which makes solving it look all the more unfeasible in the near future. The difficulty of tinkering with software and getting many other people to agree to changes is why one of the world’s most popular protocols, underpinning e-mail, looks no different to how it did a decade ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today
Abortion opponents kneel in prayer in 2019 outside Reproductive Health Services, an abortion clinic in Montgomery, Ala. (Blake Paterson/AP)
By Carole Joffe
Carole Joffe is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-author of "Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America."
Even before the expected June announcement by the Supreme Court of its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — a decision many believe will overturn Roe v. Wade — abortion care in America is in trouble, marginalized from the rest of medicine.
Nearly 50 years after legalization nationwide, the majority of obstetrician gynecologists and primary-care doctors do not provide abortions — even though 1 out of 4 American women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Women in the “abortion deserts” of the South and Midwest are forced to travel many hours to reach a clinic. Only 4 percent of abortions take place in a hospital and only 1 percent of abortions take place in private doctors’ offices. The remaining 95 percent occur in free-standing clinics, which offer excellent care, but are largely isolated from other medical institutions. Over 1,000 restrictions, such as mandatory waiting periods, have been passed by state legislatures that make abortion care considerably more difficult for patients and providers alike.
The embattled status of abortion care, and its failure to become accepted as a routine part of reproductive health services, is in part an outcome of the unprecedented amount of violence this field has experienced. Eleven individuals associated with abortion care have been murdered and countless others have been subject to vandalism, stalking and threats. Abortion has also become deeply politicized and a key battle in America’s culture wars. But another, less discussed factor explaining abortion’s marginality was the behavior of the medical establishment itself at the pivotal time of the Roe decision in 1973.
Before 1973, people needed and accessed abortion despite it being illegal in most of the country. Some estimate that as many as 1.2 million abortions were performed in the United States annually in the years leading up to Roe.
Some abortion providers in that era were those that I have termed “doctors of conscience,” individuals who were well-trained and embarked on successful mainstream medical careers. Compassion for women in desperate situations and concern about the harms that less capable practitioners would do motivated them to provide illegal abortions. Some provided this service free, while others charged substantially lower fees than other illegal practitioners of that era, including those who lacked formal medical training. Some doctors worked with the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS), a group of ministers and rabbis, organized in 1967, which made referrals to vetted safe providers. Those working with the CCS provided a large volume of abortions, taking all who came, while others performed fewer cases. All of these doctors of conscience, like other providers offering care illegally, risked losing their medical licenses and possible imprisonment.
Another subset of pre-Roe providers were also trained physicians or other health-care professionals who performed a much smaller number of abortions. They were not especially political, but they provided competent care for a fee.
Then there were the infamous “back-alley butchers” — some trained as physicians, some not — who were noted both for their inept medical skills and their egregious ethics, including sexual assault. The doctors within this group were often those who had failed at establishing an aboveboard career. Along with the many women who died inducing their own abortions through dangerous means, these “butchers” accounted for most deaths of abortion patients before Roe.
Though this last group made up only one segment of providers, they left an indelible mark on medical colleagues at the time of nationwide legalization. One third-generation OB/GYN told me, “In my family, the worst thing that could be said about anybody was that he was an abortionist.” His relatives did not object morally to abortion, but rather they held the assumption that illegal abortion doctors were “losers.” Even after Roe, a physician who supported freedom of choice, commenting on the small number of doctors doing abortions in New York City, remarked: “The rest of the staff regards these doctors with esteem not markedly higher than that previously reserved for the back street abortionist.”
By the time of Roe, a majority of the medical community supported legal abortion — but not necessarily those who provided it, who remained stigmatized and thought to be more closely associated with a back-alley quack than a respected medical professional. Beyond their discomfort with abortion providers, the largely White, male and conservative medical profession of that era was ambivalent about incorporating abortion care for other reasons.
The threat that abortion posed to conventional medical authority was one. As a doctor complained at an American Medical Association (AMA) meeting in 1970, where legalization was under discussion, “Legal abortion makes the patient truly the physician: she makes the diagnosis and establishes the therapy.” That this scenario would typically involve a female patient dictating a course of treatment to a male doctor only compounded the discomfort in an era when medical authority was almost entirely reserved for men and motherhood was considered normative for women.
Moreover, the evident association of abortion with social movements — both for and against legal abortion — was disturbing to many in a conflict-averse profession. On one hand, many in medicine were less than sympathetic to the feminist activists demanding “abortion on demand” in the years leading up to Roe. On the other hand, four days after the Roe decision was announced, the church amendment, which offered “conscience protections” for health-care workers who refused to participate in abortion, was reintroduced in Congress (and passed several months later). This quick action sent a signal that this procedure would be more scrutinized than the rest of medicine.
What is striking about the years after Roe affirmed a constitutional right to abortion were the measures that were not taken.
Very few medical organizations took the steps that would normally be expected after a major policy change. Most medical groups issued no guidelines, standards or even statements of support. Leaders within OB/GYN did not make any effort at education, for legislators or the general public, about the health benefits of legal abortion. Most significantly, the organizations charged with establishing residency requirements in OB/GYN did not mandate routine training in abortion for another 20 years. Even then, Congress immediately weakened the mandate. In short, at a crucial time, medical leaders passed on the opportunity to fully integrate abortion care into mainstream medicine.
The significant violence and harassment that is now central to abortion politics in America did not begin in earnest until 1988, some 15 years after Roe, when a new organization, Operation Rescue, began blockades and clinic invasions. Days before the first abortion doctor was assassinated in 1993, Randall Terry, the organization’s founder, told a crowd, “We’ve found the weak link is the doctor. … We’re going to expose them, we’re going to humiliate them.”
To be sure, in recent years as abortion has become increasingly restricted and vulnerable, leading medical organizations have begun to speak out strongly in support of abortion. Training has finally increased, primarily due to the efforts of private philanthropic funding. A new generation of abortion providers — disproportionately female, many of them people of color — has entered the field, driven by social justice commitments.
Encouraging as these more recent developments are, they have occurred too late to secure abortion’s place as part of routine reproductive health care in all parts of the country. The likely future of abortion in America will include an intensification of a phenomenon already underway — the massive movement of abortion patients from red states to blue states, with some simply unable to arrange this travel. In the future, this failure to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine will mean even greater geographic and wealth disparities in terms of who may obtain care.
Some women will “self-manage” by obtaining, mainly over the Internet, the drugs necessary for a medication abortion, a solution that will work well for many, but not for all. Some will attempt their own abortions by resorting to risky methods. Some will be forced into a pregnancy that will result in a child they are unable to care for. It is painful to imagine how different these scenarios might be had the medical establishment acted more forcefully at the time of Roe. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Biden administration is wrong. N95 masks are comfortable — and they work.
The masks are easy to breathe in, and they’re easy to find now, too.
A teacher joins a protest for stricter covid-19 safety protocols in Oakland, Calif., on Friday. (Noah Berger/AP)
By Abraar Karan
Devabhaktuni Srikrishna
Ranu Dhillon
But the administration has been reluctant to endorse or facilitate the distribution of such masks to the general public as we proposed when President Biden took office last year. In 2020, federal authorities trying to explain why they weren’t urging Americans to wear these masks cited their constrained supply and a need to prioritize the supply for health-care workers. Supplies are no longer limited, though, and they haven’t been for months. Last year and again in the past few weeks, when asked on PBS about whether N95 masks should be worn regularly instead of typical surgical masks, Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, instead recommended well-fitting, two-layer cotton masks.
These only filter out, at best, 40 to 60 percent of particles, unlike N95 masks, which block more than 95 percent. She suggested that, despite their efficiency, N95 masks are too uncomfortable for general use, and that if she suggested or required them to be used, people won’t wear masks all the time. Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, has expressed similar views. The reality, though, is that in most places, people already don’t wear masks all the time. Many mask mandates were lifted and never reinstated; in other places, while mandates were reinstated for indoor use, officials still defer responsibility to the public to figure out what to wear. Many people who are still wearing masks, regardless of mandates, are stuck with those of poor quality.
Walensky’s comments may reflect her beliefs from when she was a practicing infectious-disease doctor, as expressed in her editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association from August 2020: “N95 masks are suffocating, uncomfortable, and difficult to tolerate for long durations.” It is possible that her views are based on older, hardshell-cup N95 models, such as the 3M 1860, which are often used in health-care settings. For years before the pandemic, the need for N95s was rare, and workers only wore them for minutes at a time rather than entire hours-long shifts — which may be why the question of comfort was never addressed in the past.
We’ve been researching masks since the pandemic began, though, and we’ve found that there are many National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)-approved N95 designs that can be worn comfortably for extended periods of time. Many are even more breathable than many two-layer cloth masks, and they’re readily available online and in some stores. Some of these models feature a soft shell or duckbill design that have more surface area for airflow and can mold to a wide array of face shapes to form the seal that prevents infectious particles from escaping around the edges. One example is the Kimberly Clark “pouch” N95 that Walensky herself recently appears to have worn when meeting with the president.
Breathability is largely determined by the “pressure drop” or the resistance the air meets as it passes through the filter material of the mask. A lower pressure drop translates into better breathability. While there is a maximum pressure drop that all N95 masks must meet to be NIOSH-certified, certain designs, especially those with larger surface areas, have smaller pressure drops — and, hence, they’re more breathable — than others. These more comfortable N95s have much smaller pressure drops than cloth and surgical masks, in part because they are not as closely pressed against the nose. In independent testing, a wide range in breathability can be seen among several currently available N95s, with some models twice as breathable as others. For example, the 3M 9205+ has a pressure drop of 119 Pa, whereas the Kimberly Clark Pouch measures 71 Pa, and a similarly-shaped model from Gerson only 55 Pa.
Ultimately, most people will only need to wear high-filtration masks for short periods of time and certain situations. Wearing masks outdoors, for instance, is unnecessary unless you’re in a crowd. But wearing just a cloth mask or unfitted surgical mask in a tightly packed train with poor ventilation is likely to be insufficient and can put people at high risk of breathing in infectious aerosols. At certain times, masks are more needed than others, especially when community transmission is high, such as during the surge we are in right now. This is true even for people who are fully vaccinated, largely because our vaccines do not stop infection nearly as well as they stop severe disease and hospitalizations.
Improving the masks that the general public are using can be a critical way to reduce viral spread. The masks function as two-way stops — they stop infectious people from spreading the virus, and they stop healthy people from getting infected. Unlike vaccines, they protect the same no matter what variant we face. And they can be made available at scale immediately, even amid the current omicron surge. For example, Milwaukee is giving out free N95s to its residents, specifically one bag of 20 masks per household; NYC is giving out 1 million N95 masks through community-based organizations and clinics; Salt Lake City has mandated respirators for one month and is giving N95 and KN95 masks out free; and Connecticut is mobilizing 6 million N95 respirators. These can also be reused without large drops in filtration efficacy. A bag like this could help a family get through the whole surge.
The government can — and should — send high-quality masks to every American
But we’d all be better off if the federal government, including the CDC, would come out and clearly promote these masks — as well as facilitating their free access either through vouchers or mass direct distribution as officials plan to do for rapid tests. While sufficient supply was a barrier earlier in the pandemic, that is no longer the case. Lack of breathability was then offered as an excuse not to better protect Americans, but that argument may have been based on generalizations about all N95s from a limited number of designs.
The American public deserves better. As we face this unprecedented surge, there are numerous reasons to promote and provide N95-caliber masks — and no reason not to anymore. | null | null | null | null | null |
Texas’ new attempt to circumvent the Constitution resurrects an old tactic
Texas’ abortion law embraces a mechanism used to defend Jim Crow.
Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate gather outside the Supreme Court on Nov. 1 as arguments begin about the Texas abortion law. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Orville Vernon Burton
Armand Derfner
States offered tenuous excuses for Jim Crow because the 14th Amendment, which protects constitutional rights, generally covers only conduct of state and local governments; therefore, those looking for an end run around the Constitution often tried to dress up their bad conduct as “private,” rather than “official.”
The most spectacular failure of the “no state enforcement” gambit came in Texas’s repeated effort to keep its Democratic Party primary all White, an effort rejected by the Supreme Court four times. The saga began in the 1920s, with a new Texas law that said, “in no event shall a negro be eligible to participate in a Democratic primary.” Dr. L.A. Nixon, an El Paso dentist, was turned away from the primary, and he sued. A unanimous Supreme Court opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1927 made short work of the Texas statute, saying it violated the 14th Amendment.
That decision rested on the fact that the “no-Negro” rule was in the state law itself, so Texas immediately went back to the drawing board to “privatize” the racial ban. Texas removed the “no-Negro” rule from the statute, but the new statute still specified how a political party was to make its own rules. The Democratic Party promptly adopted its own rule keeping its primary all-White. But now the all-White provision would be enforced by the political party, not the state.
Once again Nixon tried to vote and was turned away, once again he challenged the all-White rule and in 1932 the Supreme Court struck it down once again. Even though he was excluded by the party, not the state, the court said the new state statute still maintained state involvement and “the result for him is no different.” It added that there might be “diversity of method,” but there was still “identity of result.”
The state tried a third time, this time stripping the state law of all provisions about the Democratic Party’s organization and rules. All to no avail; in 1944, in the first Supreme Court case argued by Thurgood Marshall, the court ruled against the White primary again. The court said that because state law authorized political parties to hold primary elections to choose candidates for public office, that meant the state had entrusted to the Democratic Party the role of determining voter qualifications in the primary. As a result, the state thereby “endorses, adopts and enforces the discrimination against Negroes.”
This last decision, Smith v. Allwright, sent seismic shock waves throughout the South. The “White primary” had been a bedrock institution in every state of the segregationist South, because the Democratic primary was the most important election in Southern states given the party’s thorough dominance of the region. Yet, every state except Texas had kept the White-only rule out of the state statutes. The progression that began in 1927 when the court struck down the Texas White primary statute opened ballot boxes for African American voters all across the former Confederacy.
Yet, even Smith v. Allwright was not the end of Texas efforts. Democrats in Fort Bend County tried to maintain their all-White “Jaybird Primary.” This was a holdover of the 1880s Jaybird-Woodpecker War, a violent clash between rival factions of the Democratic Party. The surviving faction, the Jaybird Democratic Association, for many years conducted a “pre-primary” selection process that chose candidates for the county Democratic primary. The Jaybirds kept their process all-White even after the Supreme Court struck down the state Democratic Party’s White-only rule in 1944. They claimed they could do so because they were simply an informal “slating” group with no state involvement. In 1953, the Supreme Court rejected this all-White variant, calling it a “flagrant abuse” of the Constitution.
Texas was not alone in attempts to maintain Jim Crow by saying that unconstitutional practices could persist if they were enforced by private individuals rather than the state. In the early 1900s, when former slave states were determined to keep Black farm laborers shackled to their employment on plantations or farms, the states knew they could not directly force workers to remain on the land because that would amount to “involuntary servitude” in violation of the 13th Amendment that had banned slavery. Instead, Alabama, like other former slave states, put enforcement into the hands of landowners by creating the “offense” of leaving employment without justification, to be enforced by the landowner. The result was a pervasive system called “debt peonage,” in which the laborer’s debt kept increasing and kept them tied to the land.
In 1911, a case against debt peonage, secretly financed by Booker T. Washington, reached the Supreme Court. In its defense, Alabama claimed that this law was not the same as state-imposed involuntary servitude. Yet, Alabama’s pretense of private enforcement fared no better than Texas’s would. The Supreme Court held the Alabama law unconstitutional with the words: “What the state may not do directly, it may not do indirectly.”
Later, during the civil rights era, the Supreme Court again gave Alabama the same lesson, this time examining a state law that was used to limit freedom of the press. Knowing the First Amendment would stop a state from directly shutting out the national news media from covering civil rights, Alabama facilitated private libel suits to achieve the same end of silencing the press. State courts upheld huge libel verdicts for Alabamians who claimed they had been libeled by newspaper descriptions of civil rights demonstrations, including a half-million-dollar verdict against the New York Times. When the newspaper appealed, the Supreme Court responded in the famous case of New York Times v. Sullivan. Reversing the verdict, the court declared, “What a state may not constitutionally bring about by means of a criminal statute is likewise beyond the reach of its civil law of libel.”
All these cases, stretching back over many decades and a half-dozen chief justices, show a Supreme Court vigilant to protect the Constitution from state exercises in tyranny. Today’s Supreme Court has the same opportunity and obligation.
The court’s initial failure to block the Texas law, based on procedural grounds, should not give Texas state officials much comfort because it is temporary. If the court follows the Constitution and precedent, the decision will be clear, and the Texas abortion law will be no more. | null | null | null | null | null |
Can Democrats appeal to both professionals and blue-collar workers? Yes, but only on these issues.
Blue-collar workers’ greater economic insecurity is making them more conservative on many subjects
A sign directs people at a polling place during early voting in Las Vegas on Oct. 30, 2020. (John Locher/AP)
By Steven Brint
As the 2022 midterm elections approach, Democrats are fretting about nearly all of the groups in their voting base. Will frustrated young people sit out the election? Will suburbanites defect because of school closures? Will Hispanics continue to shift toward the GOP?
Some also worry that Democrats have nearly given up on White blue-collar workers. Blue-collar workers’ economic circumstances have been faltering, given global competition, computer-based productivity gains, big finance and union decline. If citizens vote their wallets, the Democratic Party’s platform of strengthening the social safety net and increasing taxes on the wealthy should appeal to this group. Why isn’t it?
In a new paper, Michaela Curran, Matthew C. Mahutga and I examined blue-collar workers’ long-term shift away from the Democrats. We compared the opinion trends of professionals and managers — people who work in jobs like engineering and law — with those of blue-collar workers — people who work in jobs like welding and truck driving.
We find that blue-collar workers’ greater economic insecurity is encouraging conservatism rather than liberalism, while professionals and managers are heading in the other direction. But they do agree on a few issues. Emphasizing those might help Democrats succeed.
Professionals and managers are trending left. Blue-collar workers are not.
We analyzed trends on 15 political attitudes over a 44-year period from 1974 to 2018 using General Social Survey data. These attitudes range from morality and civil liberties to crime control and economic redistribution. They also include whether people identify with a political party or a particular ideological view.
We found that professionals and managers were trending in a left or liberal direction on 10 of the 15 attitudes. By comparison, blue-collar workers were trending left or liberal on only five and conservative on 10. In cases in which members of both groups were trending liberal, professionals and managers were, with few exceptions, trending liberal more quickly. Moreover, professionals and managers are now as or more liberal than blue-collar workers on 13 of the 15 attitudes.
Most notable are the growing differences between the two groups on values related to authoritarianism, a term that social scientists use to mean a tendency to submit to leaders. We measured it using questions on child-rearing values, as social scientists usually do. If individuals thought it important for children to obey their parents, we categorized them as authoritarian. We found that when someone ranked high on authoritarianism — as increasing numbers of blue-collar workers did over time — they shifted further toward conservatism on the other questions. When they ranked low on authoritarianism, believing instead that other qualities are more important in children — as increasing proportions of professionals and managers did over time — they trended toward being liberal.
Higher education was the next most important influence. Having a graduate degree was associated with greater liberalism. And belonging to a non-fundamentalist religion, which is true of more professionals and managers, also was associated with greater liberalism on a number of attitudes we examined.
People whose incomes were in the top 25 percent of U.S. scale tended to hold more liberal attitudes about morality, civil liberties and women’s rights. But having high incomes was associated with being more conservative on several other issues, such as whether the government should do something about wealth inequality, try to ameliorate poverty or institute mandatory minimum sentences for crimes.
However, the higher incomes aren’t as influential as all the other factors put together: the fact that blue-collar workers’ greater economic insecurity is pushing them toward more authoritarian outlooks; the fact that people with graduate degrees are more liberal; and the fact that professionals and managers continue to identify more often with non-fundamentalist religions. Thus, professionals and managers are trending in a liberal direction despite the growing income gaps between themselves and blue-collar workers.
What about race?
Surprisingly, race mattered less than we expected. Whites and racial minorities had different attitudes on only two of the 15 subjects: support for organized labor, where minorities were more conservative than Whites, and Democratic Party identification, where they were more liberal. This was true among both professionals and blue-collar workers.
Although Republicans have leaned on White racial anxieties to win campaigns, when there’s no race-baiting to divide voters, Whites and minorities actually agree on many issues. We can see that, for instance, in the fact that blue-collar Blacks and Whites both voted in significant numbers for Democrat Eric Adams in New York’s mayoral race.
Trump didn’t bring White working-class voters to the Republican Party. The data suggests he kept them away.
These two trends are narrowing the grounds on which Democrats can appeal to all voters
Since two economic groups’ opinions are growing further apart, Democrats have fewer issues on which they can appeal to both professionals and blue-collar workers. The issues where those groups overlap include government spending on health, education and the environment. They might also include other investments that would help families, such as child-care tax credits, or help them to feel more secure, such as gun regulations.
By contrast, these two groups have grown further apart on larger questions of how to structure or restructure the economy and society. On such issues as redistributing wealth, reducing poverty or economic inequality, tackling crime and policing, or limiting corporations’ social and economic influence, professionals and managers have become more liberal while blue-collar workers have become more conservative.
So how might Democrats appeal to — or drive away — blue-collar workers, without losing professionals and managers?
Democrats who wish to appeal to both may want to emphasize improving health care, education and the environment. They may, like Adams, want to vocally support business development and public safety, where Americans’ views are generally more conservative. And they may wish to downplay or sidestep issues on which their liberal base and others disagree.
Of course, many highly mobilized groups within the Democratic Party want to emphasize precisely those issues that are likely to erode blue-collar support further — issues such as regulating business, resolving racial rather than class inequities and reducing police budgets.
Steven Brint (@BrintSteven) is distinguished professor of sociology and public policy at the University of California at Riverside and author, most recently, of “Two Cheers for Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever — and How to Meet the Challenges They Face” (Princeton University Press, 2018). | null | null | null | null | null |
The October coup is faltering — here’s why
Demonstrators in Khartoum, Sudan, during a Jan. 9 rally against military rule. (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)
By Gerrit Kurtz
Hamdok’s resignation leaves only Sudan’s military leaders in control, complicating U.S. and international efforts to facilitate the return to a civil-military power-sharing agreement. His return had failed to persuade a highly mobilized grass-roots movement that Sudan is back on track toward full civilian rule. Sudan’s coup leaders have yet to come to terms with the widespread protests, which have continued despite dozens of demonstrators killed and hundreds injured.
What just happened — and what’s ahead for Sudan? The country at the Horn of Africa is in a pivotal phase.
Sudan’s military seized control. Will pro-democracy protests continue?
Why did the military seize power in the first place?
In the early hours of Oct. 25, military and security forces arrested Hamdok, along with several cabinet ministers and other government officials. By noon, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces, dissolved the cabinet and the Sovereign Council, the joint military and civilian leadership body created in 2019 to oversee key reforms during a transition toward democratic elections. He said he aimed to “rectify the revolution’s course” and pledged to hold elections by 2023.
Hamdok had led a transitional government since August 2019. That government was based on a carefully negotiated constitutional declaration that military and civilian political forces had agreed on after deposing longtime ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir earlier that year, amid large-scale demonstrations against the regime.
The military takeover in 2021 did not come as a complete surprise. Had the transitional government’s program succeeded, military and security forces would have had to cede their control of large sections of the economy to enable inclusive growth. And the military leaders could have faced accountability for their involvement in past human rights violations.
Are coups really contagious?
The coup faced early roadblocks
But Sudan’s military appeared poorly prepared to rule, despite having reportedly considered such a coup several times.
Burhan first promised the creation of a “technocratic” government without representatives of political parties by the end of the following week. By mid-November, he had appointed new members to the Sovereign Council, keeping himself as head of this collective leadership body, which he endowed with executive powers. The military authorities also appointed officials from the former Bashir regime to sub-cabinet positions as arrests continued.
The search for nonpartisan cabinet members has remained elusive, however. Only two former rebel movements that had joined the government — together with other armed movements involved in the implementation of the October 2020 Juba peace agreement — have remained allied to the coup plotters. No other notable civilian leaders joined the coup.
Burhan has also failed to attract international support, even from governments that tend to maintain close relations with Sudan’s military and security forces. Under U.S. and British pressure, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia co-signed a statement calling “for the full and immediate restoration of [Sudan’s] civilian-led transitional government and institutions.” Only Egypt, itself ruled by a military leader, and Russia, which has expressed interest in building a naval base along Sudan’s Red Sea coast, were more supportive of the coup. The African Union suspended Sudan from regional activities.
When Africans speak out, are their governments listening?
Coup leaders hoped to co-opt civilian stakeholders
Sudan’s generals have been trying to produce a government that at least appears to be civilian-led and that can prepare elections at the end of the transition period. It’s likely the coup leaders are well aware that a government with military officers in top leadership roles would never be acceptable to the public or to Sudan’s international partners.
On Nov. 21, after international and Sudanese mediation, the generals released Hamdok from his house arrest. Hamdok then signed an agreement with Burhan, reinstating himself as prime minister and tasking him with forming a technocratic government.
Hamdok justified his decision, for which there was no legal basis, by citing his desire to avoid further bloodshed and salvage the economic and international gains of the transitional government. He said he planned to negotiate a new political agreement between all Sudanese stakeholders to put the transition on a more stable footing.
Sudan’s military maintains a tight hold
Hamdok’s hopes did not pan out. The military and security forces have reportedly continued to shoot, tear-gas, rape and detain peaceful demonstrators who have thronged to Sudan’s cities in the hundreds of thousands at frequent intervals since the October coup. In the western region of Darfur, security forces have failed to protect hundreds from being killed in a fresh wave of mass violence.
In Khartoum, Hamdok was unable to get political parties to settle on a new power-sharing agreement. The Nov. 21 agreement appears to have effectively destroyed Hamdok’s popularity among the activists who had demanded his release — many see his deal with Burhan as a betrayal.
With Hamdok out of the political picture, Sudan has no other civilian leader who could command similar legitimacy. This void may redirect attention to the neighborhood “resistance committees” at the heart of the protest movement. Protest organizers have mobilized despite Internet and phone shutdowns, and have adopted innovative tactics against military repression. They reportedly are preparing a political manifesto of their own, reaching out to established political parties to gain broad acceptance.
With the military in sole control of Sudan’s government, international efforts to help resolve the political crisis and salvage the democratic transition process have received a renewed sense of urgency.
Gerrit Kurtz is a nonresident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank in Berlin. Follow him @gerritkurtz. | null | null | null | null | null |
The U.S. is about to break covid hospitalization records.
More than 141,000 people were in the hospital yesterday, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic.
What this means: Hospitals in Colorado, New York and elsewhere have made changes like stopping elective surgeries, cutting back on the number of nurses caring for patients and more.
In other news: The CDC is likely to start recommending N95 or KN95 masks, which are more protective, over other options because of the omicron variant’s spread.
Private insurers will start paying for rapid coronavirus tests.
The new coverage begins Saturday, the Biden administration announced yesterday.
How it works: Health plans must cover up to eight at-home tests per person per month.
Insurers could partner with stores (like CVS or Walgreens) to provide free tests. Otherwise, people will be able to get the cost of tests reimbursed.
Your tax refund could be delayed this year.
Why? Pandemic-related issues, years of IRS budget cuts and federal stimulus programs that have added to the tax agency’s workload.
Treasury officials warned of a “frustrating season” and said the IRS is facing a backlog “several times” larger than normal.
When does tax season start? You can begin filing on Jan. 24. The deadline is April 18.
Georgia won its first college football championship since 1980.
The game came down to the last quarter: The Bulldogs beat rival Alabama, 33-18, scoring three touchdowns in the last eight-plus minutes.
In other football news: Five NFL head coaches — including one of the league’s three Black leaders — lost their jobs.
A man got a new heart from a genetically modified pig.
The surgery last week on the 57-year-old from Maryland was the first of its kind, and the patient is recovering well, doctors said.
What this means: It’s a breakthrough that’s sparking hope for thousands waiting for transplants.
Why genetic modification? The pig had genes both removed and added to give the transplanted heart a better chance of being accepted.
Robert Durst, a multimillionaire convicted of murder, has died.
The 78-year-old heir to a New York real estate fortune and subject of the HBO documentary “The Jinx” was serving a life sentence in prison.
What he’s known for: Durst was long suspected in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, and he was found guilty in September of killing his best friend.
Who were they? Lawmakers representing 37 states, not just in the South, during the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries.
How we know this: The Post examined thousands of pages of historical documents and created this searchable database.
Why it matters: It shows slavery’s influence on America, as the interests of slaveholding congressmen shaped the laws they made.
And now … if spam has started to overwhelm your inbox: Here’s what you can do to stop it. | null | null | null | null | null |
President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, arrives at Lido Beach for the 76th annual Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, 31 August 2019. (Ettore Ferrari/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Sassoli’s two-and-a-half-year tenure as president was defined by the pandemic and he spent much of it working virtually. He was instrumental in passing the European Union’s ambitious $2.1 trillion pandemic relief fund and the bloc’s seven-year budget. The budget was ultimately one aimed at rescuing the economies of coronavirus hard-hit countries and its passage required overcoming deep seated divisions on the extent to which rich European Union nations should commit to helping poorer ones.
The European Union flew the flags outside its Brussels headquarters at half-mast Tuesday in honor of Sassoli. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sassoli’s 2½-year tenure as president was defined by the pandemic and he spent much of it working virtually. He was instrumental in passing the European Union’s ambitious $2.1 trillion pandemic relief fund and the bloc’s seven-year budget. The budget was ultimately one aimed at rescuing the economies of countries hit hard by the coronavirus, and its passage required overcoming deep-seated divisions on the extent to which rich European Union nations should commit to helping poorer ones. | null | null | null | null | null |
A man was killed in Prince George's County, Md. (iStock)
Eugene Kelly Gray, 24, of Bowie was fatally shot Sunday, local police said. The shooting happened around 7:50 p.m. in the 15400 block of Empress Way in the city of Bowie, officials said.
Police responded to a report of a shooting, and when they arrived they found Gray outside with several gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. | null | null | null | null | null |
The European Parliament is one of the three main bodies of the European Union and represents nearly 450 million European citizens. The parliament comprises more than 700 elected members from the 27 countries in the bloc, and one of its major responsibilities is to shape the European Union’s budget.
Sassoli’s 2½-year tenure as president was defined by the pandemic, and he spent much of it working virtually. He was instrumental in passing the European Union’s ambitious $2.1 trillion pandemic relief fund and the bloc’s seven-year budget. The budget was ultimately one aimed at rescuing the economies of countries hit hard by the coronavirus, and its passage required overcoming deep-seated divisions on the extent to which rich European Union nations should commit to helping poorer ones. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why House Democrats Are Retiring, and What It Means
U.S. Representative Ed Perlmutter of California announced on Monday that he would not run for another term, making him the 18th House Democrat retiring after this Congress. That’s not a huge number, especially for an election year immediately after a census and redistricting, although there’s still time for more. The first 2022 primary election is coming up on March 1 in Texas, but filing deadlines in several states for the November midterm elections are still weeks and, in a few cases, months away. Some states haven’t even finished drawing new district lines. Meanwhile, only four Republicans have announced their retirement.
That’s what things typically look like when both parties expect the current minority party to win control of the chamber. Those who expect to find themselves in the minority often retire. But I’m not sure how much of a signal these Democratic retirements are sending.
Until recently, I would have argued that expectations alone tend to be important because they can become self-fulfilling, with retirements a big part of the equation. Parties expecting to do poorly wind up with fewer resources to contest an election, and incumbent members of the House used to be among the most important resources. However, the evidence shows that the advantage of being the incumbent has vanished as partisan polarization increases. It’s not clear yet whether other resources — money, enthusiasm, quality candidates — will favor Republicans this year or not.
Most of the Democratic retirements so far appear to be in either somewhat or very safe districts, so it’s not likely that they will cost the Democrats seats. Note that while some members of the House retire because redistricting erects new barriers to re-election — that’s the case for Florida’s Stephanie Murphy — new district lines can be discouraging even if there’s no chance of November defeat. Representation is a relationship, and as we know from the 1978 political science classic “Home Style,” by Richard Fenno, when district lines change, politicians can find the new parts of their district confusing and even alienating.
What’s most noteworthy about the Democrats who are leaving the House without other electoral plans, however, is that they are as a group extremely old. Murphy is the exception; she will be 44 when the next Congress gavels in on Jan. 3, 2023. But four of the others are in their 80s, with Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas already 86, and all but four would turn at least 70 during their next terms if they stuck around. Even with Murphy, the group will average about 71 years old by January 2023. And the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who is 81, is expected to step down after the election, although she has committed to running for another term.
Even in a body as old as the U.S. Congress, this is unusual. The four Republicans who are leaving without running for higher office will be 67, 51, 44, and 38 when the next Congress begins.
Democrats may expect to lose their majority, and that could be a factor in the retirements. But the age data suggest something else may be going on as well. After losing the House in the 1994 elections, Democrats regained it in 2006 for only four years, and they only had unified control for two of those years. For those who decided after 2010 to stick around, it’s now been another 12 years — and they have now had the opportunity once again to serve in key positions during a period of unified government. Moreover, it seems likely that by the end of this Congress they will have passed many of their priorities (some of which already were achieved in 2021). In other words, for those in their 70s and 80s, the question isn’t really why they are leaving soon but why they stuck around this long.
There’s a bit more evidence available about what Democrats think about this election cycle. Eight House Democrats and seven House Republicans are leaving to run for other offices. That does not suggest a party scared of November. There’s also the other side of the Capitol; only one Senate Democrat, Vermont’s Pat Leahy, is retiring, while five Republican senators are leaving. Back on the House side, two Republicans have resigned during this Congress to take jobs outside of electoral politics; there were several Democrats who resigned as well, but those were all to take positions in the administration of President Joe Biden early in 2021, well before expectations for November 2022 were set. All of this suggests that the startling partisan difference in House retirements — 18 to 4 — may overstate the political significance of what’s happening.
It’s still early. Perhaps we’ll see a further wave of retirements, including some from younger Democrats. And whatever Democrats are thinking, the small number of Republican retirements in a year ending with “2” is unusual, and a sign of Republican confidence.
But overall, it appears that the Democratic retirements to date probably do not signal a collapse of Democratic resources for the fall elections. Nor will it cause one. That won’t save them if Biden can’t recover from his current low approval ratings, but it would mean that if Biden does recover, the Democrats’ difficult fall and winter in 2021 probably won’t hurt them in 2022.
Beyond that, the importance of the Democratic retirements depends on one’s perspective. The party will lose a lot of legislative experience. At the same time, there’s a general consensus that House Democrats badly need an infusion of new blood into committee and party leadership, and it looks like they’re going to get it. And after all, whatever they think, there’s still a good chance that they aren’t going to have the majority again for a while after these elections. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Sidwell Friends starters huddle before taking on Paul VI in Chantilly on Jan. 9. (Scott Taetsch/For The Washington Post)
The Sidwell Friends girls’ basketball team showed up at Paul VI’s sparkling new gymnasium on Sunday afternoon having not played a basketball game since Dec. 11. The Quakers, a local and national sensation in the early part of this season, are widely ranked as the No. 1 team in the country. But in recent weeks, coronavirus cancellations and caution have meant the program has carried that label around without a chance to back it up.
This is a foreign perch for the Quakers, who were not much of a contender in the D.C. area until 2019. Their last conference title came four years before that, won in the lower of two divisions in the Independent School League. They have yet to win a D.C. state title, putting them in the curious position of national juggernaut still looking to prove something in its own backyard.
“As far as proving ourselves, we’ve held our own against national competition,” Coach Tamika Dudley said. “But in order to feel like we’ve achieved our goals this season, we want to win the conference and the state. Only then will we feel like we’ve accomplished what we should accomplish.”
Sunday’s game against the No. 3 Panthers, a consistent power in the mighty Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, marked the start of a transition from the national to the local for Sidwell. The team spent much of December taking on far-flung opponents in nationally relevant showcase games. But following a 29-day layoff, it is suddenly early January and time for local games to take over. Outside of a few nonconference challenges left on the schedule, Sidwell will focus on winning the ISL and D.C. State Athletic Association championships.
“We’re not going to overlook anybody,” junior guard Jadyn Donavan said. “It’s all about keeping the same mind-set at all times. Our main goal is to win every single tournament we’re in.”
The game against Paul VI had been scheduled recently, the product of two strong programs looking for good competition to fill a void created by pandemic cancellations. With such talent on the roster, Dudley’s program has consistently sought out competitive games wherever they might be found this season while the Panthers are always game for a challenge before the grind of the WCAC schedule takes over.
The teams appeared evenly matched in the first quarter, although they came about their points by different means. The Panthers (8-3) ran a crisp offense, executing their sets to perfection and getting easy looks. The Quakers (6-0) looked disjointed and a bit sluggish, but often bailed themselves out with pure skill: a contested three-pointer, an acrobatic layup and so on.
It’s an issue Dudley has had to deal with all season, this idea of talent versus execution. She knows that many of her players are good enough to create something out of nothing, but straying from the game plan too much is a road to nowhere.
“It’s definitely a balance, because they’re all the best players on their club teams and are used to putting the ball in the bucket all the time,” Dudley said. “But this team has been pretty good about buying into running sets and sharing the ball. … One-on-one basketball is the worst thing we can do to ourselves.”
The Quakers looked more organized and confident in the second quarter, and they started to build a lead. By the second half they were in full control on both ends of the floor. Their offensive attack was balanced and smart, while their defense made Paul VI earn every basket until the final whistle. The final score was 69-40, with sophomore guard Leah Harmon leading the way with 19 points and senior Kiki Rice adding 18.
It was a complete performance and a notable result against one of the better programs in the D.C. area. Many of the teams Sidwell will face in the remainder of the regular season don’t compare to the Panthers, raising the question of how this team might handle a few weeks of noncompetitive games.
“It doesn’t change much,” Donavan said. “Even if we’re beating a team by 20-plus, we’re going to be out there playing hard defense, running our sets. It’s an all-out effort from us, from start to finish.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Web3 Just Had Its Emperor’s-New-Clothes Moment
Web3, or Web 3.0, has become the latest craze for investors who fear missing out. Hotter than Bitcoin, harder to understand than artificial intelligence and also painfully abstract, Web3 points to a more transparent, decentralized and equitable web, which in principle is better than an internet controlled by a handful of mega corporations.
This idea for the next iteration of the web is a terrific concept, but one that, like communism, can’t really work in its current form.
The problem is Web3 is not all that distributed, nor is it particularly equitable or transparent. It is highly centralized, despite being touted as a decentralized alternative to the web. That was the indictment from Moxie Marlinspike, a highly respected cryptographer and founder of encrypted-messaging app Signal, who published a damning blog post about Web3 over the weekend. On Monday, Marlinspike also announced he was stepping down from Signal after a decade of running the company.
A quick view on the mechanics and why this is so: Blockchain technology works by creating trust-distributing connections between servers, aka powerful computers, not between people with mobile phones like us. “People don’t want to run their own servers,” Marlinspike wrote. That is why companies have begun selling access to servers connected to the blockchain, becoming not unlike the companies that built the infrastructure of Web2. Ozone Networks Inc., the owner of OpenSea, is one company doing this, as are Infura Inc. and Alchemy Insights Inc. Many so-called distributed apps, or dApps, link to these firms to access the blockchain.
These companies are not bad. They are simply seizing a business opportunity that exists within the limits of blockchain. While it’s technically possible to restructure the rules of blockchain to make it less reliant on a few firms, that would require getting the consensus of thousands of developers over the course of years. That is a big, human problem, not a technical one, which makes solving it look all the more unfeasible in the near future. The difficulty of tinkering with software and getting many other people to agree to changes is why one of the world’s most popular protocols, underpinning email, looks no different to how it did a decade ago.
That could become a bigger problem if Web3 companies reach the scale of Big Tech today. Given the strangeness of their mechanics, though, it is hard to see that growth happening anytime soon, if ever. | null | null | null | null | null |
“As they left, they opened the door, and the door stayed open,” Nigro said at a news conference. “The stairwell was very dangerous as the door was left open and some of the floors — certainly on 15 — the door was open from the stairs to the hall and the 15th floor became quite untenable.”
The Twin Parks North West complex, the site of the fire, was issued at least two violation notices for faulty self-closing doors from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in 2017 and 2019, the department told The Washington Post. There were at least six violations for safety doors that failed to close between 2013 and 2019, according to the New York Post. In an email, an unidentified spokesperson for the department told The Washington Post that the door violations at the building were corrected by August 2020, adding that no self-closing door infractions had since been issued to the high-rise.
Kelly Magee, a spokeswoman for the building’s owner, Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday. Magee told the Associated Press that in July 2021, maintenance staff had fixed the lock on the front door of the apartment in which the fire started. During that repair, the staff checked to make sure the apartment’s self-closing door was working, Magee told the AP, and no additional issues were reported with the door.
Closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings like the one in the Bronx that do not have automatic sprinkler systems, Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College in New York City, told the AP.
Residents at the high-rise have started to speak out about the safety doors in the building. Though the building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, some residents at 333 East 181st Street said they initially ignored the alarms over the weekend because they have been so common. | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic is far from the only elite athlete with an extreme view of training and diet
By Matt Bonesteel | Jan 11, 2022
Novak Djokovic’s extreme workout and diet regimen have helped propel him to 20 Grand Slam championships, tied for the most all-time among men’s tennis players. But Djokovic has yet to receive a coronavirus vaccination, explaining over the years that he is against forced vaccination and hopes to always have “an option to choose what’s best for my body.”
Djokovic may be something of an outlier when it comes to vaccination, but he is one of several elite athletes who have an extreme view of training and diet. Here are a few other examples.
Tom Brady, football
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is so strident about his diet and exercise regime that he has written a handbook, “The TB12 Method: How to Do What You Love, Better and for Longer,” and a limited-edition cookbook filled with recipes that are mostly free of processed foods, sugar, refined carbohydrates, gluten, dairy, fungus, tomatoes, salt, caffeine and alcohol. His personal chef once claimed Brady didn’t eat nightshades or tomatoes because they cause inflammation — though nutritionists have challenged that claim — and also said Brady does not eat any fruit except for the occasional banana in his smoothies.
Tiger Woods, golf
Woods’s training regimen as a young golfer was a change of pace in a sport not known for its athleticism: He would wake up and run four miles, then lift weights, hit golf balls for two to three hours, take the course for practice rounds, practice his short game, run another four miles and then finish with some basketball or tennis. But after the death of his father, a Vietnam War veteran, Woods began to strenuously train with U.S. Navy SEALs in 2006 and 2007, to his eventual detriment: According to Hank Haney, his former coach, Woods tore his ACL in the summer of 2007 because of the training. (Woods claims he suffered the injury while jogging near his home.)
Chris Paul, basketball
Already an established NBA veteran, Paul adopted a vegan diet in the summer of 2019 after a season in which he set a career low in points per game. He credits the diet with helping him recover faster from workouts and with helping him keep up with players who can be 15 years younger than he is. In his first season under the new diet, he increased his scoring average by two points per game.
LeBron James, basketball
The four-time NBA champion, now 37, reportedly spends $1.5 million on his body each year, paying for trainers, home gyms, chefs and massage therapists in an attempt to prolong his career and keep up with the game’s younger players. James also has talked about sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, which can be used to get more air into a person’s lungs and therefore more oxygen into the bloodstream.
Russell Wilson, football
Like LeBron James, the Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback also uses a hyperbaric chamber to increase his oxygen supply, only he told media personality Bill Simmons that he has two of them and spends around $1 million per year on “recovery.” Wilson also has said he works out 363 to 365 days per year, with Thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas his only days off.
Novak Djokovic, tennis
Djokovic, whose 20 Grand Slam titles are tied for the all-time men’s record, is famous for his fanatical adherence to a strict gluten-free diet and a program of stretching and exercise, and it has helped someone who doesn’t necessarily have the greatest physique become one of the world’s greatest tennis players. But Djokovic’s training regimen also apparently does not allow for certain vaccines, such as the ones given to combat coronavirus infection: His decision set off a furor in Australia, which requires foreign visitors to be vaccinated.
Michael Phelps, swimming
Phelps underwent a strenuous workout and diet routine on his way to 23 Olympic gold medals, the most won by any one athlete. Ahead of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, he had 55 practices across 23 days, plus daily strength workouts outside the pool, all done in the thin air of Colorado Springs. Phelps also ate 12,000 calories per day, describing in his autobiography breakfasts consisting of “three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions and mayonnaise, add one omelet, a bowl of grits, and three slices of French toast with powdered sugar, then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes.”
Bill Ingraham/AP
Martina Navratilova, tennis
The tennis icon developed an exacting diet regimen during her playing days in the 1980s, also finding that nightshades — red peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes — “affect me in negative ways,” she told the New York Times in 1987. She also limited her intake of red meat and refined sugar while consuming large quantities of complex carbohydrates. (Pasta was a favorite.)
Stephen Curry, basketball
While Curry’s workouts are not the most physically demanding, he has incorporated data on shot accuracy into his preparation. For instance, scientists have found that three-pointers can be as much as three inches off center and still be accurate, so Curry tries to keep his shots within that margin. He also sometimes practices his shooting with an elevated heart rate to mimic game conditions.
Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys | null | null | null | null | null |
Tucker Carlson is seen in an image from his Jan. 10 show. (Fox News)
“Additional cases in the United States are likely, but healthy individuals should be able to fully recover,” he continued. “ … Healthy people, if you’re healthy, you will probably go through a process and you’ll be fine.”
The challenge here is not that misinformation spreads readily on social media. That’s known. The challenge is similarly not that “Good Morning America’s” original edit was itself misleading, contributing to the problem. The challenge is that institutions that Americans should be able to rely on as purveyors of accurate information are, instead, serving the opposite role. The problem is that the RNC’s misleading tweet is still up. The problem is that Carlson’s producers pulled the clip from ABC News — but somehow missed that ABC News had already released a fuller version of the interview specifically because it was being misrepresented.
You know who recognized that the clip was misleading? Fox News, which ran an article Monday afternoon in which the context for Walensky’s comments was made clear. Granted, even that article tried to play up some uncertainty in what Walensky had said; her comments, the article’s headline states, “spark[ed] confusion.” But the article included an on-record response from the CDC itself making clear the context — well before Carlson’s show aired. | null | null | null | null | null |
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
Senators are close to completing a bill to revise the Electoral Count Act of 1887, I’m told. The new measure would fix ambiguities in the ECA that Trump directly exploited with his wide-ranging 2020 plot.
In coming weeks, it will be introduced by King and others, including Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). This will be well after the voting rights debate, so it doesn’t defuse energy toward that paramount goal.
“It’s very important to emphasize that this is not a solution to the voting rights issues being raised across the country,” King said of the new bill.
Second, Trump got dozens of congressional Republicans to try to invalidate electors legitimately appointed by swing states. Third, Trump pressed his vice president to abuse his Jan. 6 role to declare legitimate electors invalid.
So if, say, Republicans in Congress simply refused to count a slate of legitimate electors for the Democratic candidate, they would need large GOP supermajorities to pull it off.
So the bill creates new backstops. First, it seeks to create a new procedure for judicial review when a state government has failed to follow its own lawful, pre-existing procedures in appointing electors (in all states, this process is tied to the popular vote).
Second, the bill directs Congress to count the electors validated by the courts, and not the phony ones appointed by a state legislature and/or governor in that situation.
“The key point is that the state can’t change the rules after the election,” King told me. All this reduces Congress’ role to largely ceremonial counting of electors.
This would help “Trump-proof” future presidential elections, making it harder to pull off precisely the scheme Trump attempted in 2020 and 2021.
Will 10 Republican senators support these reforms? They are not liable to typical GOP objections to democracy protections, such as the (phony) arguments that they aren’t needed or constitute the federal government trampling on states.
This would merely revise existing statute to make it even less likely that Trump (or an imitator) would successfully pressure Republicans to carry out the same scheme again. Which would make it less likely to be attempted at all.
But this may be a bait-and-switch, designed to make it easier for Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to refuse to suspend the filibuster to protect voting rights by invoking the promise of bipartisan reform later. Once voting rights crashes, Republicans might suddenly lose interest in ECA reform.
But King says he’s determined to try to win Republicans. “I can’t count 10 Republicans right now, but I don’t think it’s unlikely,” King told me. “I see this as more of a bipartisan issue.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“As they left, they opened the door, and the door stayed open,” Nigro said at a news conference. “The stairwell was very dangerous as the door was left open and some of the floors — certainly on 15 — the door was open from the stairs to the hall, and the 15th floor became quite untenable.”
The Twin Parks North West complex, the site of the fire, was issued at least two violation notices for faulty self-closing doors from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, or HPD, in 2017 and 2019, the department told The Washington Post. There were at least six violations for safety doors that failed to close between 2013 and 2019, according to the New York Post. In an email, an unidentified spokesperson for the department told The Washington Post that the door violations at the building were corrected by August 2020, adding that no self-closing door infractions had since been issued to the high-rise.
Kelly Magee, a spokeswoman for the building’s owner, Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday. Magee told the Associated Press that in July maintenance staff had fixed the lock on the front door of the apartment in which the fire started. During that repair, the staff checked to make sure the apartment’s self-closing door was working, Magee told the AP, and no additional issues were reported with the door.
Closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings like the one in the Bronx that do not have automatic sprinkler systems, Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, told the AP.
Residents at the high-rise have started to speak out about the safety doors in the building. Though the building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, some residents at 333 E. 181st St. said they initially ignored the alarms over the weekend because they have been so common. | null | null | null | null | null |
Damian Collins MP & Will Hurd join Washington post Live on Tuesday, Jan. 11 (The Washington Post)
Rose Jackson
Provided by Atlantic Council.
Rose Jackson is an entrepreneur and former diplomat with 15+ years of experience strengthening democracy and defending human rights, leveraging technology for social impact, and building institutions to support democratic activists around the world. Jackson is currently the director of the Democracy & Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. She previously founded and served as CEO of Beacon, a platform leveraging data and marketing technology to make it easier for people to take meaningful civic and political action.
Prior to founding her company, Jackson served as a senior policy adviser at the Open Society Foundations (OSF) where she led a presidential transition initiative focused on reforming U.S. support to foreign military and police. During the Obama Administration, Jackson served as the chief of staff to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department, and before that as an advisor to Senator Chris Coons on foreign policy and national security issues as a Galloway Fellow.
Jackson has consulted and worked for a wide range of campaigns, governments and party organizations both in the United States and abroad. Internationally, with the National Democratic Institute, she advised parties, parliaments, and civil society organizations in East and Southern Africa. Jackson also served as a Benghazi-based adviser and political analyst to the International Organization for Migration during the Libyan uprising in 2011.
Jackson completed her Masters in International Relations as a Rotary Scholar in Kenya and earned her Bachelors in International Relations and Economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is a Truman National Security Project fellow, term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, research fellow at the Stanford Handa Center for Human Rights, and a prior Center for New American Security NextGen fellow. | null | null | null | null | null |
Permafrost covers about 5 million to 7 million square miles in the Arctic and stores about “1,700 billion metric tons” (nearly 1.9 trillion U.S. short tons) of frozen and thawing carbon, one of the studies noted. As it warms and become more unstable, it not only threatens the man-made structures, but the melting releases carbon into the atmosphere that has been locked in ice for millennia, further exacerbating climate change.
Streletskiy said the impact on infrastructure in particularly serious in Russia, which has more cities and towns situated on permafrost than other countries. His and his colleagues’ paper noted that nearly 90 percent of the population in Arctic permafrost areas is located in Russia. In one city cited in the paper, Vorkuta, an estimated 80 percent of buildings had some deformations because of the changing permafrost. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Morgan Wallen arrives at the 53rd annual CMA Awards on Nov. 13, 2019, in Nashville, Tenn. The Grand Ole Opry, country music’s most historic and storied stage, is getting heavy criticism for an appearance by the country star. Wallen’s surprise performance has given many the impression that the institution has given the star its blessing and a path to reconciliation after he was caught on camera last year using a racial slur. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
From there, it’s a question of what level of efficacy you demand for vaccine mandates (or vaccine-or-testing mandates, which is most of the Biden administration’s policy). It’s also about how you define vaccinated: either two doses or three doses, the latter which studies show are significantly better at preventing infection.
As for the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” debate, that’s surely less the case than it was before; vaccinated people are increasingly prolonging the pandemic, despite their inoculation. But it’s also true that studies show that the un-boosted in particular account for a markedly larger share of infections, and an even-larger relative share of the most serious cases. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several St. John's wrestlers earned medals at the East Coast Catholic Classic in Richmond last weekend. (Michael Sprague/Courtesy photo)
At the East Coast Catholic Classic in Richmond on Saturday, St. John’s junior Ruben Karapetyan took down his opponent, hit a cradle and pinned him. While this victory over a Notre Dame-West Haven (Conn.) wrestler wasn’t enough to earn the 182-pounder a title, it gave him a third-place finish at a prominent meet.
“It was good competition,” Karapetyan said. “I would have hoped to do better … but I’ll take what I can get.”
Delbarton (N.J.) dominated the meet, posting 311 points as a team, and St. Mary’s Ryken finished second — still almost 100 points behind the Green Wave.
“Seeing the different weight classes on the podium, a lot of Delbarton wrestlers came in first,” Cadets’ 170-pounder Nick Banks said. “It was definitely eye-opening.”
Banks, a junior, ended up taking third place as well on Saturday after taking down a Roanoke Catholic (Va.) wrestler in a 7-5 decision.
“We got to see that we’re close to those guys, for the most part, but not quite there yet,” St. John’s Coach Michael Sprague said. “There’s time between now and the end of the season to close the gap there.”
The VA Showcase 2022 is coming up this weekend, and schools across the region and beyond will vie for indoor track records at one of the biggest high school meets in the nation.
The showcase, which will be held at the Virginia Beach Sports Center, will be many teams’ first major meet of the winter season. For Archbishop Carroll, it’s a chance to test itself against top-tier competition.
“Carroll is looking to bring the heat for this meet,” senior David Warmington Jr. said. “We’re looking to bring everything we’ve got to every single event that we are in. And I’m looking to open up on my hurdles and do big things as well.”
Warmington Jr. is a two-time D.C. state champion hurdler, and after Carroll placed third at the 2020 D.C. State Athletic Association championship, he’s expecting a major improvement this year.
“I would say this is probably the best team that I’ve been with during my four years at Carroll,” Warmington said. “We have a lot of new people who came to our team who are going to contribute to us winning a lot of things this year. This is the year where we can win it all.”
The VA Showcase begins on Friday and will continue through Sunday. It will feature more than 250 teams from throughout the East Coast, including top local talent.
Alexandria City/Wakefield has won seven straight games to rise to the top of the Capital Scholastic Hockey League, and a big reason why has been its play in net.
Junior Hayden Martsching, in just his second year as fulltime goalie, saved 37 shots on Friday to secure a 3-2 victory over Woodbridge.
Martsching’s interest in hockey was piqued at a young age, when his father took him to watch the Washington Capitals. He started playing as a goalie at age 10 and has committed to it more fully recently — taking pride in having teammates rely on him.
“Playing goalie allows you to have a massive impact on the game, and that was and still is very important to me,” Martsching said.
In the first period of Friday’s game, Martsching stopped 17 out of 18 shots, allowing only a goal in a 5-on-3 power play for Woodbridge.
“Our job is to test the goalie early,” Woodbridge Coach Hugo Cordova said. “Our kids have gotten really good at moving the puck side to side on good goalies like that, and they still moved it side to side, but man, he was still there for every shot.”
Unlike a workout regimen or a season’s expectations, the job of a high school sports captain doesn’t change much based on a team’s talent. Generally, captains build bonds between their teammates — a task that has increased in importance and difficulty during the pandemic.
Now in his second “covid year” as the swim captain at Lake Braddock, James Luetkenhaus has been something of a blueprint for the role. He has revived traditions, such as the slippery “sock tag” game on the cafeteria floors, and welcomed new faces, such Ole Hellmold, a swimmer from Germany who is now beloved.
“He didn’t know anybody … we went on to talk about my own German background, like my last name is Luetkenhaus, and that’s a very German sounding last name, so we bonded over that,” he said. “Now everybody loves him. Those are the kind of experiences you get when you talk to everybody.”
Luetkenhaus, who didn’t pick up the sport until he was 13, said he’s been able to empathize and relate to new swimmers because he understands what it is like to be new to a new community. | null | null | null | null | null |
Atmospheric river bringing renewed flood concerns to Washington state
Parts of the Washington state, Oregon and British Columbia are once again in the crosshairs of an atmospheric river, leading to flooding and landslide concerns after an autumn that was extremely active in the Pacific Northwest. An additional 10 inches or more of rain could be on the way in the higher elevations of the Cascades, with several inches possible in the lowlands and the threat of rivers becoming overwhelmed.
Flood watches are in effect for most of northwest Washington, including downtown Seattle, where the National Weather Service warns that “rivers flowing off the Olympics could begin flooding [Tuesday].”
Seattle is already running about half a foot above average with regard to rainfall that’s been measured since Sept. 1. The season most favorable for repeated atmospheric rivers usually tapers down as the holidays approach, but 2022 appears to have other plans.
The city also recorded its wettest autumn on record, punctuated by an atmospheric river in mid-November that knocked out power to 170,000 people and left much of Whatcom County, including the city of Bellingham, underwater. Bellingham is under a flood watch once again Tuesday.
The core of the atmospheric river stretched from near Seattle to the northern fringes of the Willamette Valley in Oregon as of early Tuesday. An inch of rain had been measured in northwest Pierce County near Gig Harbor around 6 a.m., with a pair of observers reporting 1.13 inches. Those values will continue to climb into Thursday morning.
The atmospheric river is the result of a squeeze play of sorts between weak low pressure passing between Vancouver Island and Graham Island and general high pressure to the southeast, like two meshing gears that entrain a filament of moisture in between. Some of that juiced-up atmosphere originates from as far away as Hawaii, contributing to the heavy downpours.
The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes utilizes a 1 through 5 scale to rank atmospheric river events based on their integrated vapor transport (how much water they carry) and duration. They’re anticipating the ongoing episode to peak at a level 3 out of 5.
By their estimates, nearly 1,200 pounds of water could pass over every one-meter cross section of the atmospheric river each second, illustrating a flow rate comparable to that of some of the world’s largest rivers.
Seattle picked up 2 inches of rain last Wednesday and had tallied 4.48 inches for the month through Monday evening. They’d logged more than half an inch of rain by 5 a.m. Tuesday, and will likely blow past the average monthly rain total of 5.78 inches by the time the event concludes Wednesday.
Low pressure will eventually slide ashore and flip winds around more out of the northwest Thursday, spelling an end to the deluges. Until then, rain will expand across western Washington into the overnight hours, remaining moderate Wednesday before lifting north as a “dry slot” works through. A swirl of surface low pressure will buffet the coastline of southwest Washington and northwest Oregon during the morning hours Thursday with 50 mph gusts before the rain comes to an end.
The greatest precipitation totals will be found in the coastal range of southwest Washington as well as the Cascades, where up to 10 inches could fall in the highest elevations. That’s because atmospheric rives carry the bulk of their moisture several thousand feet above the ground; that moisture is forced up the mountains, where it is cooled to the point of condensation and precipitation. A broad 1 to 3 inches is likely in the lowlands and the interior valleys.
Snow levels are forecast to rise to 6,500 to 7,500 feet in the Cascades through Wednesday, above that amounts may be measured in feet. At lower elevations, the Weather Service forecasts heavy rain with “5 to 10 inches in the Olympics, 3 to 5 inches for the North Cascades and 2 to 4 inches in the Central and Southern Cascades.”
The same set of ingredients that gave rise to the atmospheric river will contribute to strong winds over the Northern Tier and northern Rockies on Tuesday, with gusts approaching 75 mph in the mountain passes of northwest Montana. | null | null | null | null | null |
The rare finds announced on Tuesday include more than 300 coins, jewelry and a giant Roman road and has been described as “a significant archaeological site” by HS2 Ltd, the publicly funded government company developing HS2, a national high-speed railway project.
For the last 12 months, some 80 archaeologists from MOLA Headland Infrastructure, a consortium of British archaeological companies working on the rail project, have been excavating the Iron Age village that developed into a wealthy Roman trading town.
“This is certainly one of the most impressive sites MOLA Headland Infrastructure has discovered,” James West, MOLA site manager said in a statement. “Uncovering such a well-preserved and large Roman road, as well as so many high quality finds has been extraordinary and tells us so much about the people who lived here.”
Archaeologists say the original use of the Blackgrounds site may have begun in the Iron Age when it was a village formed of over 30 rudimentary dwellings. Evidence from the recent dig suggests the settlement expanded over time and became more prosperous during the Roman period, with new stone buildings and roads emerging. Experts say inhabitants may have taken on Roman customs, products and building techniques and adapted to new ways of life.
The 10-meter-wide (33-foot) Roman road, “which is exceptional in its size,” indicates that the settlement would have been busy with the traffic of carts loading and unloading goods, the experts say. The wealth of the settlement is likely to have been based on trade, both from the nearby River Cherwell and via the Roman road. The discovery of more than 300 Roman coins is also an indication of a “significant volume of commerce” passing through the area, the team added.
The artifacts are now being cleaned and analyzed by specialists, and the details of the buildings and layout of the settlement will be carefully mapped. Blackgrounds is one of over 100 archaeological sites that HS2 has examined since 2018 between London and Birmingham, and it provides a further insight into Britain’s rich Roman history. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions are located in areas that could have near-surface thaw by 2050, researchers project
In coming decades, the shifting terrain that accompanies the warming of the permafrost caused by climate change will put more of the human-made structures at risk. Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions — including at least 120,000 buildings and nearly 25,000 miles of roads — are located in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost by 2050, according to new research in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Smith and her colleagues’ results, which she said were also included in the latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that in warmer permafrost areas, the rates of warming were lower, typically less than 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade.
Turetsky, the University of Colorado at Boulder professor, focuses her research on places in Canada and Alaska where the boreal forest meets the sub-Arctic, at the southern reaches of that region’s permafrost. In these places, she has witnessed permafrost disappear because of human-driven climate change during her 30-year career. | null | null | null | null | null |
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP)
Senators are close to completing a bill to revise the Electoral Count Act of 1887, I’m told. The measure would fix ambiguities in the ECA that Trump directly exploited with his wide-ranging 2020 plot.
In coming weeks, it will be introduced by King and others, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). This will be well after the voting rights debate, so it doesn’t defuse energy toward that paramount goal.
“It’s very important to emphasize that this is not a solution to the voting rights issues being raised across the country,” King said of the bill.
Op-ed: How to fix the Electoral Count Act
So if, say, Republicans in Congress simply refused to count a slate of legitimate electors for the Democratic candidate, they would need supermajorities to pull it off.
So the bill creates backstops. First, it seeks to create a procedure for judicial review when a state government fails to follow its own lawful, preexisting procedures in appointing electors (in all states, this process is tied to the popular vote).
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin: Fixing the Electoral Count Act is no substitute for voting reform
“The key point is that the state can’t change the rules after the election,” King told me. All of this reduces Congress’s role to the largely ceremonial counting of electors.
This would help “Trump-proof” future presidential elections, making it harder to pull off precisely the scheme Trump attempted after the 2020 vote.
Will 10 Republican senators support these reforms? They are not liable to typical GOP objections to democratic protections, such as the (phony) arguments that they aren’t needed or constitute the federal government trampling on states.
This would merely revise an existing statute to make it even less likely that Trump (or an imitator) would successfully pressure Republicans to carry out the same scheme again. Which would make it less likely to be attempted at all.
But this may be a bait and switch, designed to make it easier for Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to refuse to suspend the filibuster to protect voting rights by invoking the promise of bipartisan reform later. Once voting rights crashes, Republicans might suddenly lose interest in ECA reform.
But King said he’s determined to try to win Republicans. “I can’t count 10 Republicans right now, but I don’t think it’s unlikely,” King told me. “I see this as more of a bipartisan issue.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Lindsey Vonn, Author, “Rise: My Story”
Lindsey Vonn shares stories from her memoir, “Rise: My Story” on Tuesday, Jan. 11 (The Washington Post)
Lindsey Vonn is a world champion athlete, three-time Olympic medalist and the most decorated female skier in history. In her first memoir, “Rise: My Story,” Vonn shares stories of her record-breaking skiing career, her struggle with depression and the bold decisions that helped her break down barriers on and off the slopes. Join Washington Post opinions writer Jonathan Capehart on Tuesday, Jan. 11 at 1:00 p.m. ET.
LINDSEY VONN is an Olympic gold medal–winning alpine ski racer who competed for the U.S. Ski Team. The most decorated female skier of all time, she holds four overall World Cup titles and is one of only six women to have won World Cup races in all five disciplines of alpine skiing. She was also an NBC news correspondent during the 2014 Winter Olympics and is the founder of the Lindsey Vonn Foundation, which works to empower and enrich the lives of girls and young women. She lives in Park City, Utah. | null | null | null | null | null |
From there, it’s a question of what level of efficacy you demand for vaccine mandates (or vaccine-or-testing mandates, which is most of the Biden administration’s policy). It’s also about how you define vaccinated: either two doses or three doses, the latter of which studies show is significantly better at preventing infection.
As for the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” debate, that’s surely less the case than it was before; vaccinated people are increasingly prolonging the pandemic, despite their inoculation. But it’s also true that studies show that the un-boosted in particular account for a markedly larger share of infections, and an even larger relative share of the most serious cases. | null | null | null | null | null |
Michael Lang in 2009. (Jeff Christensen/AP)
Michael Lang, a co-creator and promoter of the 1969 Woodstock music festival that served as a touchstone for generations of music fans, died Jan. 8 at a hospital in New York City. He was 77.
Michael Pagnotta, a family spokesman, said Mr. Lang had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Along with partners Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, Mr. Lang put together the festival billed as “three days of peace and music” in the summer of 1969 as the Vietnam War raged and led increasing numbers of disaffected young Americans to turn away from traditional mores and embrace a lifestyle that celebrated freedom of expression.
Roughly 400,000 people descended on the hamlet of Bethel, N.Y., northwest of New York City, and endured miles-long traffic jams, torrential rains, food shortages and overwhelmed sanitary facilities. More than 30 acts performed on the concert’s main stage at the base of a hill on land owned by farmer Max Yasgur, and concertgoers heard historic performances from artists including Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, the Who and Jefferson Airplane.
Mr. Lang, sporting a head of bushy brown hair, is seen throughout Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary movie that chronicled the festival.
“From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing,” Mr. Lang wrote in a 2009 memoir, “The Road to Woodstock,” written with Holly George-Warren.
Mr. Lang and others sought to mount a concert in 2019 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the original Woodstock, but the endeavor ultimately was scrapped because of financial issues and difficulty securing a venue. In an interview with the Associated Press at the time, Mr. Lang called the experience “a really bizarre trip” and said he still hoped to hold the concert in the future.
Although Woodstock often is viewed as creating the template for large-scale music festivals, it wasn’t the first to take place in the United States. Two years earlier, the Monterey Pop Festival drew about 200,000 people to California, and the Miami Pop Festival, which Mr. Lang also organized, followed in 1968. But Woodstock nonetheless holds an indelible place in history.
“A lot of them are modeled after Woodstock — Bonnaroo and Coachella, in particular,” Mr. Lang said of other festivals in a 2009 interview. “There was a ritual that was created that keeps getting replicated.”
A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. | null | null | null | null | null |
It’s the latest big bank to shift gears on the controversial penalties, which regulators and consumer advocates call “exploitative."
A Bank of America customer uses an ATM in San Francisco. The bank announced Tuesday that it will drop its non-sufficient funds fees and reduce its overdraft fee from $25 to $10. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
“Over the last decade, we have made significant changes to our overdraft services and solutions, reducing clients’ reliance on overdraft, and providing resources to help clients manage their deposit accounts and overall finances responsibly,” Holly O’Neill, president of retail banking at Bank of America said in a statement.
Several banks are limiting the fees voluntarily. Last year, PNC Bank announced a service called “no-cash mode,” which includes a 24-hour grace period to cure overdraft penalties and see them waived. Capital One’s announced change takes effect this year.
Bank of America says the changes are part of a years-long effort that brings its overdraft fee revenue 97 percent below 2009 levels. In 2010, the bank stopped charging overdraft fees tied to debit cards. In 2014 it launched a no-fee account option called SafeBalance. It also has built in services and alerts designed to help customers track their balances and avoid running out of money. | null | null | null | null | null |
NYC’s new mayor calls 911 on a brawl, slides down a fire pole and faces big challenges
In his first 10 days, Eric Adams veers between “swagger” and tragedy, praise and criticism, as he begins leading the nation’s largest city
Eric Adams, holding a picture of his late mother, is sworn in as New York mayor during the New Year's celebration in Times Square. (Hannah Beier/Reuters)
The moderate Democrat and former Brooklyn borough president, whose 2021 campaign focused on improving public safety and helping the city recover economically, had to deal with what he called the “unspeakable tragedy” of a Bronx high-rise fire that killed 17 adults and children, the shooting of an off-duty police officer in Manhattan, a snowstorm and skyrocketing coronavirus infection rates that are again crippling emergency services, public transportation and schools as workers call in sick.
He also announced plans to provide $111 million to help support public hospitals, signed an executive order requiring city agencies to reduce fines for the struggling small business community and joined Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to present plans to address subway crime and homelessness.
Yet the mayor’s debut included sharp criticism from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressive Democrats, who took issue with him saying dish washers and Dunkin’ Donuts employees are “low-skill workers.”
“The suggestion that any job is 'low skill’ is a myth perpetuated by wealthy interests to justify inhumane working conditions, little/no healthcare, and low wages,” tweeted the New York congresswoman, who worked as a waitress and bartender before running for office in 2018.
Surging covid numbers meant postponing a much larger ceremony planned at the historic Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. Indeed, the pandemic is perhaps the greatest challenge Adams will face during his early months as mayor.
Some teacher-union factions have demanded public schools temporarily return to remote learning, but Adams vowed during a Jan. 3 news conference to keep students in class. “We’re staying open,” he said.
His words were more brash than reassuring. New York has “wallowed” over covid far too long and needs his kind of “swagger” to get over it, he said. “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” Adams said.
Adams survived a tough Democratic primary last year largely because many undecided voters felt the retired police captain — with 22 years in law enforcement — was best equipped to address spikes in shootings, homicides and other violent crimes. He promised to weed out rogue, abusive cops, but he also vowed to give the city’s force the tools it needs to lower crime.
Progressive Democrats, including some City Council members, have repeatedly criticized him for his policing platforms, especially plans to reinstate a plainclothes anti-crime unit that came under fire for aggressive tactics and was disbanded in 2020.
Following his primary victory in the summer, Adams declared himself the “future of the Democratic Party” and went on to easily win the general election in November.
Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic political consultant in New York, predicted Adams’s term will become a litmus test that national party leaders will watch closely while preparing for this fall’s high-stakes midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.
If Adams’s platforms go over well locally, he said, it could drive more centrist party politics nationally.
At the same time, he was blasted late last week for choosing Philip Banks III as deputy mayor for public safety given that the former New York Police Department chief was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal bribery probe. The optics of picking his brother, former NYPD sergeant Bernard Adams, to serve as a deputy police commissioner in charge of his security also drew disapproval.
The mayor’s task will be far greater than any he faced during his seven years in the state Senate and eight years as Brooklyn’s first Black borough president. The latter is a mostly ceremonial post that Adams used to help promote platforms important to him, such as healthy eating and increasing public-school funding.
He will be under immense pressure to tackle racial inequalities within the city and to address racial issues involving police. While an officer, Adams routinely led marches and spoke out about cases in which he said racial profiling or police brutality had occurred. In 1995, he co-founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care; the advocacy group continues to focus on relations between the NYPD and the city’s African American community. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Biden’s big speech on voting rights will reveal his own limitations — and ours
President Biden will be speaking in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon, giving his most unequivocal statement yet urging the Senate to pass voting rights legislation — and circumvent the filibuster to do it. If you’re already preparing yourself for disappointment, no one could blame you.
This moment encapsulates so much of our current political dilemma. The president is doing the right thing, using one of his most important tools. But in doing so, he only highlights the limitations of his power, the pernicious effects of minority rule and the maddening stubbornness of a few members of his party who refuse to act on what they claim they believe in.
In the long run, we may see this as an important step on the road to a more secure democracy. In the short run, it will probably give us little but frustration.
Biden is urging action on two voting rights bills: the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. The former would restore to the Justice Department many powers to police discriminatory voting practices that the Supreme Court has gutted. The latter would create a set of national voting standards to protect access to the ballot and make voting easier.
According to a text of the speech circulated by the White House early Tuesday, Biden will say this:
Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of the United States Senate stand?
But that’s just the problem: Or rather, it isn’t so much “the institution” of the Senate as it is two things: The Republican filibuster of both these bills, and the two Democratic senators who so far refuse to consider even a carve-out of the filibuster for voting rights that would allow passage with a majority vote.
On Monday, one of those Democratic senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, told reporters that “we need to be very cautious” about altering the filibuster. He added: “That’s what we’ve always had for 232 years.”
As a factual matter, this is spectacularly wrong. The filibuster was not designed by the Framers, and it did not exist in the early days of the republic. In its current form — a supermajority requirement that can be wielded to kill legislation — it dates back only to 1917.
What’s important here is that Manchin — the senator who has spent more time answering questions about his support for the filibuster than any other — is either ignorant of this basic fact or just decides to lie about it. Both possibilities are equally disconcerting, suggesting he is committed to maintaining it beyond all reason or fact, and despite the need to pass vital bills he himself supports.
So what will Biden’s speech change, even if it is more forceful than what he has said up until now? For those who offer advice on how to solve some thorny political problem that begins with “the president should give a powerful speech,” here’s the chance to see if your strategy works.
It won’t, because the power of presidential rhetoric to change minds and transform events, especially in the short run, is extremely limited. You can read a book-length analysis that proves the point, or just think about it for a moment: When was the last time a president gave a speech that altered the trajectory of a political battle? Not a speech that made his supporters cheer, but that changed the outcome of a conflict?
There’s a naive theory of presidential politics often referred to as Green Lanternism, the idea that like the comic book character, the president can do almost anything with a sufficient application of will power; wherever he fails, it’s only because he didn’t try hard enough. Every presidency offers new demonstrations of how wrong it is.
If Biden is trying to convince people that he really wants voting rights legislation to pass — the White House says he will “elevate this issue and continue to fight for it” — that’s all well and good. But it doesn’t get us any closer to a change in law.
The president does have agenda-setting power: He can put an issue on the front page and get people focused on it. In the right circumstances, that can create pressure that eventually convinces some members of Congress to reassess the costs and benefits of the position they’re taking.
So if Biden’s speech brings some more attention to the need to secure voting rights, that’s not a bad thing. But there’s a reason many voting rights advocates are less than overwhelmed by the prospect of his speech, and many in Georgia won’t bother to attend: They doubt that in the short run it’s going to accomplish much.
We don’t want to fall into the opposite of Green Lanternism, the belief that the president has no ability at all to overcome the obstacles in his path. But the fight over voting rights is one Republicans have been winning, through their ruthless manipulation of power and procedures at all levels of government. For Democrats to change the course of that fight, it’s going to take more than a speech. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The federal judiciary should stop resisting: It needs an inspector general
The sun sets at the Supreme Court on Dec. 14. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Glenn Fine
Glenn Fine, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, was formerly inspector general for the Department of Justice and acting inspector general for the Department of Defense.
It is time for the federal judiciary to have an inspector general.
Even the judiciary, with its focus on ethics and the rule of law, inevitably faces problems. The Wall Street Journal has reported that since 2010, 131 judges failed to recuse themselves when they had financial interests related to cases before them. Sexual harassment allegations have been raised against federal judges. And the judiciary is responsible for a large budget and many administrative functions — including technology systems, court security and court support — that can be susceptible to inefficiency or waste.
An inspector general — tasked with handling misconduct complaints and conducting audits of processes, procedures and expenditures — could improve operations and increase public confidence in the judicial branch. Yet the judiciary has long resisted an inspector general.
The main arguments against an inspector general are that the courts must maintain institutional and decision-making independence, and that adequate mechanisms already exist to handle problems — within the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the Judicial Conference of judges, Circuit Judicial Councils, working groups of judges and the Office of Judicial Integrity. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s year-end report recently highlighted these arguments. He also noted that the percentage of cases of financial conflicts for judges was small compared with the total number of cases before the courts.
The judiciary’s concerns about interference with its independence are legitimate. So let me be clear: An inspector general should not have any authority over judicial decision-making. However, the judiciary is an enormous institution, with numerous judges and support staff. For 2022, it has requested a budget of more than $8 billion. In any organization as large as this, some misconduct, waste and abuse will occur. A dedicated, internal inspector general could help detect, deter and properly investigate these problems — and ensure greater public confidence when complaints are not substantiated or dismissed.
No one likes having a watchdog, as I well know. I was an inspector general for more than 15 years. When the role was established, many agencies viewed inspectors general as a headache they didn’t need. But now there is an inspector general in most federal agencies — for good reason.
For example, when the IG Act was enacted in 1978, the Justice Department claimed it did not need an inspector general in an agency of lawyers and that an IG would compromise its independence. Similarly, when I was inspector general at the Justice Department, the FBI argued that the inspector general should not have investigative authority over the FBI because we did not have the expertise to understand FBI investigations and would second-guess decisions.
None of that proved true. After Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an order in 2001 giving the Justice Department inspector general full oversight authority of the FBI, we credibly investigated allegations of misconduct and uncovered problems with FBI computer upgrades, misuse of national security letters, inadequate internal security procedures in the case of Robert Hanssen (“the most damaging spy in FBI history”) and other problems within the FBI that its own inspections had not identified.
As in the judiciary, misconduct and other problems were not pervasive throughout the FBI or the Justice Department. But they existed. And the benefit of — and need for — a dedicated inspector general has become clear over time.
The inspector general role within the judiciary could and should be structured to address concerns about institutional independence. In certain federal agencies, inspectors general are appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. In others, the agency head appoints the inspector general. For the judiciary, the chief justice could appoint the inspector general. The inspector general could report to the chief justice or the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, rather than to both the agency and Congress. This single-reporting requirement would advance the interests of separation of powers.
In addition, while inspector general audit and investigative reports are normally released publicly, there could be exceptions in the judiciary, as in other federal agencies, to prevent the release of reports in specific circumstances. And like other inspectors general, a judiciary inspector general would not have management responsibilities for the judiciary. Inspectors general have the authority only to make recommendations; they cannot impose changes.
It is important to select the right person for the position. There is an expression in the inspector general community: “If you’ve seen one IG, you’ve seen one IG.” The judiciary inspector general would need to be someone who understands the judiciary and the courts, and who has the discretion, independence and backbone to handle the sensitive responsibilities effectively.
Of course, an inspector general doesn’t prevent all an agency’s problems. But an inspector general within the federal judiciary could help improve processes, deter waste, identify problems before they arise, and ensure that any allegations of misconduct are investigated effectively and with credibility. This could be accomplished without compromising the judiciary’s necessary independence — and, in the process, enhance public trust in the institution. | null | null | null | null | null |
“We're not a great defensive team,” Virginia men's basketball coach Tony Bennett said. (Ryan M. Kelly/Getty Images)
Virginia’s Tony Bennett was participating in the weekly ACC men’s basketball coaches call with the media Monday when he overheard North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, who was speaking immediately before him, offer effusive praise for the Cavaliers’ defense.
Bennett chuckled several minutes later when asked about where his defense stands one game after the Tar Heels rolled to a 74-58 win Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill, N.C., by overwhelming Virginia inside behind Armando Bacot’s 29 points and 22 rebounds.
The Cavaliers next face another one of the ACC’s top big men Wednesday night at John Paul Jones Arena in Virginia Tech forward Keve Aluma, who scored 29 points with 10 rebounds to spark the Hokies to a 65-51 victory last season in Blacksburg, Va.
“With all due respect, Carolina played really well, and I heard Hubert say, he was being nice, ‘against a great Virginia defensive team,’“ Bennett said. “We’re not a great defensive team. We try to be great. We try to first be good, but we’ve been inconsistent. It’s just something you keep working, you keep going, and you keep making little adjustments.”
The Cavaliers (9-6, 3-2 ACC) permitted their second most points in a game this season after North Carolina shot 47.5 percent, including 11 for 25 (44 percent) on three-pointers, in part because Bacot forced Virginia’s pack-line defense to devote so much attention to him that shooters were wide open behind the arc.
The only other opponent to score more points against the Cavaliers this season was Iowa during Virginia’s 75-74 loss in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge Nov. 29 in Charlottesville. The Hawkeyes shot 53.6 percent, the highest Virginia has surrendered this season.
Two of three opponents immediately before North Carolina shot at least 46 percent against Virginia, which ranks seventh in conference-only games in field goal percentage defense (43.4) and last out of 15 schools in three-point shooting defense (41.1).
The Cavaliers also are 15th nationally in scoring defense (58.8) after finishing in the top two in eight of the past 10 seasons. Last year they ranked sixth nationally in scoring defense (60.5), which was Virginia’s lowest finish since 35th in Bennett’s second season with the Cavaliers in 2010-11.
“It’s just an ongoing process,” Bennett said. “To give ourselves a letter grade, I don’t have one. I just say we prepare as well as we can. We had a little trouble in practice leading up to [North Carolina]. Our scout team did a good job and exposed some things. It takes all your might to be as good as you can, and you’ve got to embrace that.”
The additional hurdle in getting the defense to reach peak levels has been a rotation of mostly newcomers or inexperienced players. Forward Jayden Gardner and guard Armaan Franklin, for instance, are transfers who have been in the starting lineup all season.
Bennett’s most sound defensive teams have been those with seasoned players able to execute the principles of the pack line instinctually through years of film study and repetitions in practice. This season the Cavaliers have not had that luxury because of graduation and transfers.
The only player on the current roster who has started more than one full season for the Cavaliers is Kihei Clark. The senior point guard and respected leader in the locker room has been a starter since his freshman year when Virginia won the national championship.
Guard Reece Beekman started most of last season and leads the Cavaliers in steals this season (32). Kadin Shedrick, the starting center, played 11 games last season with no starts. The redshirt sophomore went scoreless against North Carolina, marking the first time this season he has done so.
Defensive connectivity also has been a work in progress given Bennett continues to tinker with his substitution patterns.
Backup center Francisco Caffaro leads all reserves in minutes (14.8) but averages 3.2 points and 2.9 rebounds. His 40 personal fouls are the second most on the Cavaliers.
The backcourt rotation off the bench includes Kody Stattmann, Taine Murray, Malachi Poindexter and Carson McCorkle, but none has done enough to warrant extensive playing time.
Despite defensive travails and a roster that continues to forge chemistry, the Cavaliers are tied for sixth in the ACC, a half-game behind third-place teams North Carolina and Notre Dame, following a season-long three-game road swing that included wins against Syracuse and Clemson.
“When you recruit character that’s the telltale sign of that, that you can go through adversity,” Bennett said. “The other side of that is will we not keep repeating history and making the same mistakes? That’s where we’ve been a little on a wavy line, and that’s just reality, and you keep addressing it, but the character is strong, and they’re enjoyable to work with.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Employees who do not comply with the mandate generally are first to be counseled, and then suspended without pay, and then potentially fired unless they get the vaccines. Those who have been granted an exemption on medical or religious grounds, or whose application for an exemption is still under consideration, will be subject to regular testing and other restrictions when working in person. | null | null | null | null | null |
Michael Parks, former top editor of the Los Angeles Times, dies at 78
Michael Parks, the former top editor of the Los Angeles Times who spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, died Jan. 8 at a hospital in Pasadena, Calif. He was 78.
His son Christopher Parks told the Los Angeles Times that Mr. Parks died of kidney failure and a heart attack after suddenly falling ill at home earlier in the day.
Mr. Parks was a foreign correspondent for the Times and the Baltimore Sun and covered some of the 20th century’s most momentous events, including the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Parks won the 1987 Pulitzer for international reporting. The prize jury commended him for “balanced and comprehensive coverage of South Africa.”
“Michael was an extraordinarily gifted foreign correspondent, one of the finest of his generation,” said Scott Kraft, who succeeded Mr. Parks as the Times’ Johannesburg bureau chief and is now the newspaper’s managing editor.
From 1980 to 1995, Mr. Parks was the Times’ bureau chief in Beijing, Johannesburg, Moscow and Jerusalem. After stints as deputy foreign editor and managing editor, he was named the newspaper’s editor in 1997.
Mr. Parks’ tenure came to a dramatic end after a newsroom uproar over a profit-sharing arrangement the Times struck with the Staples Center on revenue from ads in an October 1999 issue of the Times Magazine that was devoted to the opening of the downtown arena.
Mr. Parks said he had not known about the profit-sharing until after the magazine was written and edited, but he did learn about it in time to have stopped it from being published, which he did not do. He later expressed “profound regret,” saying he had underestimated the impact on the Times’ credibility.
Born in Detroit in 1943, Mr. Parks grew up there and worked as a reporter at the Detroit News while earning his bachelor’s degree in classical languages and English literature at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.
Mr. Parks’s survivors, according to the Times, include his wife, Linda Parks; two sons, Christopher Parks of Bloomington, Ind., and Matthew Parks of Cape Town, South Africa; two sisters; two brothers; and four grandchildren. His daughter, Danielle Parks, died in 2007. | null | null | null | null | null |
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson attends a European Union Summit at the European Council building in Brussels on Dec. 16, 2021. (Pool photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/Reuters)
Andersson, a Social Democrat who has called for stricter policies on undocumented immigration, said she was duped by an unscrupulous company. “Even those of us who want to do the right thing can fall foul of dodgy operators,” she told Sweden’s Expressen newspaper over the weekend. The incident occurred last month but was only reported by Swedish media.
Police arrived at the PM’s home near Stockholm after a burglar alarm went off by accident, where they encountered a 25-year-old Nicaraguan woman, who was undocumented and had an order of deportation under her name, the BBC reported.
Andersson made history in November when she become the country’s first female prime minister. Hours after her appointment, she quit following the resignation of a member of the ruling coalition. Less than a week later she returned, after presenting a plan for a minority government.
She laid out three priorities for her tenure: fighting climate change, social welfare and combating a rise in violence, particularly on the part of organized crime.
She said in a speech that everyone in Sweden should take personal responsibility to combat organized crime, and mentioned undocumented immigrants. | null | null | null | null | null |
Atmospheric river bringing new flood concerns to Washington state
Parts of Washington state, Oregon and British Columbia are again in the crosshairs of an atmospheric river, leading to concerns about flooding and landslides after an autumn that was extremely active in the Pacific Northwest. Ten 10 inches or more of rain could be on the way in the higher elevations of the Cascades, with several inches possible in the lowlands, along with the threat of rivers becoming overwhelmed.
Flood watches are in effect for most of northwest Washington, including downtown Seattle, where the National Weather Service warns that “rivers flowing off the Olympics could begin flooding” on Tuesday.
Seattle is already running about half a foot above average in rainfall measured since Sept. 1. The season most favorable for repeated atmospheric rivers usually tapers off as the holidays approach, but 2022 appears to have other plans.
The city also had its wettest autumn on record, a period punctuated by an atmospheric river in mid-November that knocked out power to 170,000 customers and left much of Whatcom County, including the city of Bellingham, underwater. Bellingham is under a flood watch again Tuesday.
The core of the atmospheric river stretched from near Seattle to the northern fringes of the Willamette Valley in Oregon as of early Tuesday. An inch of rain had been measured in northwest Pierce County near Gig Harbor, Wash., around 6 a.m., with a pair of observers reporting 1.13 inches. Those values will continue to climb into Thursday morning.
The atmospheric river is the result of a squeeze play of sorts between weak low pressure passing between Vancouver Island and Graham Island and general high pressure to the southeast, like two meshing gears that entrain a filament of moisture between. Some of that juiced-up atmosphere originates from as far away as Hawaii, contributing to the heavy downpours.
The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes uses a 1 through 5 scale to rank atmospheric river events on the basis of their integrated vapor transport (how much water they carry) and duration. The center’s experts expect the ongoing episode to peak at level 3.
By their estimates, nearly 1,200 pounds of water could pass through every one-meter cross section of the atmospheric river each second, a flow rate comparable to that of some of the world’s largest rivers.
Seattle picked up 2 inches of rain last Wednesday and had tallied 4.48 inches for the month through Monday evening. The city had logged more than half an inch of rain by 5 a.m. Tuesday and is likely to blow past the average monthly rain total of 5.78 inches by the time the event ends Wednesday.
Low pressure eventually will slide ashore and flip winds around more out of the northwest Thursday, spelling an end to the deluges. Until then, rain will expand across western Washington into the overnight hours, remaining moderate Wednesday before lifting north as a “dry slot” works through. A swirl of surface low pressure will buffet the coastline of southwest Washington and northwest Oregon during the morning hours Thursday with 50 mph gusts before the rain comes to an end.
The greatest precipitation totals will be found in the coastal range of southwest Washington as well as the Cascades, where up to 10 inches could fall in the highest elevations. That’s because atmospheric rivers carry the bulk of their moisture several thousand feet above the ground; that moisture is forced up the mountains, where it is cooled to the point of condensation and precipitation. A broad 1 to 3 inches is likely in the lowlands and the interior valleys.
Snowfall is forecast for elevations beginning at 6,500 to 7,500 feet in the Cascades through Wednesday. Above that elevation, amounts may be measured in feet. At lower elevations, the Weather Service forecasts heavy rain with “5 to 10 inches in the Olympics, 3 to 5 inches for the North Cascades and 2 to 4 inches in the Central and Southern Cascades.”
The same ingredients that gave rise to the atmospheric river will contribute to strong winds over the Northern Tier and northern Rockies on Tuesday, with gusts approaching 75 mph in the mountain passes of northwest Montana. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sheriff under investigation for seizing cash from undocumented immigrants during traffic stops
She referred all other questions about the case to the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Representatives with the state attorney general’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Police in Texas can take cash and other property believed to be related to some kind of criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime, Arif Panju, the managing attorney for the Texas branch of the Institute for Justice, a legal organization against civil-asset forfeiture, told The Post. Panju said Johnson’s case reflects the state’s lenient civil-asset forfeiture law, which forces prosecutors to file civil lawsuits against the property for police to keep possession of the asset.
“It appears they have seized on the fact that sheriff in Real County was taking cash from folks who are undocumented — and that’s a problem,” Panju said. “Having cash is not a crime.”
Though Real County is not on the border, it is about 100 miles away from Del Rio, Tex., where nearly 15,000 border crossers, many Haitians living in Chile and other South American nations, arrived last year. The city was a focus for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in his efforts to increase security along the southern border.
Several incidents involving Johnson are highlighted in the Texas Rangers’ report. Guajardo cited a May 2021 incident captured on body-cam footage showing Johnson directing deputies to seize money and a 2008 Toyota Tundra truck from undocumented immigrants during a traffic stop, according to the search warrants. Guajardo noted that the seized money was to be filed as abandoned cash and deposited into the Real County general fund, reported the Tribune. While Johnson said he would attempt to locate the registered owners of the truck, the vehicle would be considered abandoned after 30 days “and sold at the next auction,” records show.
In October, more than $2,700 in cash was taken from three immigrants’ wallets during another traffic stop. The money was reported as evidence to authorities while they waited to see whether human-smuggling charges against the driver would be handed down, the search warrants say. When the two other men asked Border Patrol what happened to their money, the seizing deputy could only tell them that Johnson told him to take it, and could not give an answer as to under what authority the money was taken, the Tribune reported. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ballots will be mailed Feb. 4, and the counting of votes will begin on March 28, the National Labor Relations Board announced Tuesday.
The NLRB cited Amazon’s mailbox as one of the reasons to order a revote, and also noted that Amazon was pressuring workers to display anti-union paraphenelia. That “could reasonably cause an employee to perceive that the Employer was trying to discern their support for, or against, the Union,” an official wrote in the decision. | null | null | null | null | null |
At the behest of his mother, who lived in Washington and had become a Russian language specialist with Voice of America, Mr. Tolstoy emigrated to the United States. She disapproved of his dissolute lifestyle, he said, and forced him to marry. The woman’s name was Natasha, and she was another Russian emigre, but he was hard to domesticate. The marriage lasted seven weeks, he told the Sun, because she only enjoying cooking and fixing her hair. “That’s all,” he said. “I didn’t pay too much attention.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Ginger Zee, ABC News Chief Meteorologist & Author, “A Little Closer to Home: How I Found the Calm After the Storm”
MS. ELLISON: Good morning and welcome. I’m Sarah Ellison, a reporter at The Post. This morning we’re going to be talking to Ginger Zee. She is the chief meteorologist for ABC News, and she has been bringing us the weather for almost 10 years. She’s now covering climate change. But this morning we want to talk to her about something a little more personal. She has a new book out called “A Little Closer to Home,” and it is a follow-up on a book she wrote a few years ago called “Natural Disaster.”
That was a wonderful book, and we’re happy to have you. Welcome, Ginger.
MS. ZEE: Thank you so much, Sarah. It’s great to be with everybody.
MS. ELLISON: So you have talked about your first book in which you revealed your battle with depression as Ginger-lite. What do you mean by that?
MS. ZEE: So, you know, that first book I did not intend to write at all. I went to the publisher thinking I could write a baby book about weather because I was pregnant with my first son, and I was looking for weather books. Never considered myself a writer because I had told myself years and years before that I was just a math and science, and that’s what I got into, becoming a scientist. But when I went to that publisher, I told them about the character I thought would be great for this baby book, that I thought I could handle like 60 words and a bunch of pictures. And then the publisher, Wendy [phonetic], said, you know, I think that's a chapter book for maybe middle grade, and so write that. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm actually not a writer. And then I went and wrote it, came back, and they were like, we want you to write a trilogy. Okay. And so the whole process of getting to "Natural Disaster" was not to write a memoir. It was to write this baby book turned middle grade book. Then I start talking about what adventures I will base the character’s, you know, story on within my own life. And I'm just talking, spit balling with Wendy. And then she's like, that story from your personal life, that is a book.
And that whole book, it was written at 35,000 feet. I was traveling for "Dancing with the Stars." And it really feels like 35,000-foot look at my life. And then this next book, with full intention of writing tools for people to take away in their mental health journey was written from my couch, here in my basement, in a pandemic, and I think it feels like that. So that first one being at 35,000 feet was certainly light.
MS. ELLISON: Yeah. So, in this book you very early on reveal that you had an abortion. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about that time with us and what led you to that decision.
MS. ZEE: So the whole book is about healing, and you have to heal from trauma. Everybody has different traumas. Your trauma is not going to be the same as my trauma. But if I didn't share more about my trauma, then I don't know that the book would mean as much, because people wouldn't be able to connect to some sort of trauma in the story. So, mine, I use both date rape and abortion as traumas. And I have learned, through a decade of really intense focus therapy, that no matter your trauma, you can't delete it from your life, which is what I tried to do for the longest time with many events and traumas. Instead of deleting it, you have to process it, and move through it.
Now, I had to go back, uncover the wound that I had kind of covered up with dirt and run away from for so long, so that I could learn how to treat traumas going forward. And that's what this book is about. No matter what the trauma is in your life, it's about digging in and maintaining the healing, because it's not like--you know, it's like the gym. You don't--it's like your physical health. You don't just get a personal trainer, you start working out so hardcore, and you get in there and get deep and you eat right for six months, and you look great, and then you stop, and everything stays. That's not how mental health or recovering from trauma, like abortion or date rape for me was. It's something that will be a forever journey. But I think that this book will bring a realistic twist to people that are on this journey, no matter what their trauma is, to help them realize that they can find healing. It just takes hard work.
MS. ELLISON: And what kind of work do you bring to that healing? I'm sure people will be very interested to hear what you did in order to come back from those traumas.
MS. ZEE: Yeah. And I think identifying them first, being transparent about them. No, I don't think everybody needs to be running around and telling our deepest, darkest secrets necessarily. But could and should you write it down so that you can tell your narrative and be clear on your narrative? Absolutely. Now could--from that point, once you've written it down, to share it with someone else, a professional, someone within your team, as I call it, someone within your trusted, you know, circle, judgment-free, and most of the time they will be far less judging than you imagine them to be. That gives you great power and healing.
And then from that point, it's taking those and learning from them as to how to develop this tool bag to deal with how we react to trauma in future. And that--you know, control is a tricky word because I use it a lot in the book for--it with a negative connotation. But when you can control your mental health, meaning that you can really take charge and prioritize your mental health, that is what I would encourage people to take from this book and from these moments of trauma.
So, to do that, for me, I go to my personal trainer of my brain every week. It's number one for me. I cannot miss it. That is my therapist. I have the privilege, the financial support or financial ability, the support from my family to do this. But I want everybody to be able to have that. Wouldn't it be great if everybody had the ability to have true, focused for their diagnosis, personal training for the brain?
And then for those that even can't get there yet, the writing, I do that as much as I can every day. People might call it journaling. But I always think even in the middle of the day, if I just have a thought, writing it out and putting words to your feelings or emotions is so easy and so therapeutic. And then I call this, the meditation that I’ve gotten very into, sit-ups for the brain. For some people, it can be prayer. For others, it could be guided meditation. It can be active meditation, like yoga. There are so many types. But it's just prioritizing.
And I always--I actually drew it out. Hold. Let me have it up here. This is kind of ridiculous. I made my own prop. But if we made a food pyramid of health--right?--I put mental health at the base, with the sleep and the nutrition, movement, and your spirituality, and then physical health and everything else on top. And that is how I've kind of been running my life to get through, past a trauma, and to get ready for any storms that come in the future.
MS. ELLISON: Just back to your personal experience, when you talk about your abortion in the book, you reveal that it led you to a second suicide attempt. I'm wondering if you can put our audience sort of in that moment and talk about what you were grappling with at the time that led you to that point.
MS. ZEE: So my story in the book about abortion is my story. And it's--you know, won't be like anyone else's, and I only use it to share how to heal from trauma. But in that moment, in the moment that I found out I was pregnant, and the moments that led up to me not knowing a lot about how I got there, it was--the first emotion was joy. And this is the hardest part to talk about. I was so excited because I had always wanted to be a mother. Here I am, taking this pregnancy test in a dirty, you know, Flint, Michigan, TV bathroom, TV station bathroom, and then that joy was so quickly replaced with absolute, terrifying fear that overwhelmed me with the I don’t know, the I have no idea how I got here, I cannot believe this is the position I’m in, and the fear of what would happen either way. I didn’t see a future in--even to the point as I describe in the book in my experience--I don’t think I was ever ready to make that choice. I--as soon as I woke up from the anesthetic, I couldn’t believe it. I still was kind of in--I think for years was in disbelief and really used shock kind of to divert my attention away. But that next day is when the epitome of shame and the hormonal drop-off started coming together, and my inability to share with others--because I told no one. I mean, I had one person in my life that knew what had gone on, and I was telling nobody else. That isolation is what led me to, I think, in part, the darkest days of my life. And they just kept getting darker. And I do think that hormones were part of it, but I think that the guilt and shame were what overtook me. And all I can remember that morning that I woke up that morning was blackness.
And I’ve spoken--I’ve had the opportunity to speak to groups where, you know, you’ll have 800 parents in a room. All of them have lost their children dying by suicide, and I’m there to speak to them--and I think a lot of them still want the answer what could I have done. What if we had done this. And I don’t know if there’s a right answer in that moment, but at least in my story I could not see tomorrow. I couldn’t see that I could or should live on. And so that intense feeling of the shades not just coming down but covering--I mean full-on blackness--I just wanted to die. I had nothing else. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people have gotten there. And I go back to the parents and what I would tell them and what I would tell myself on that day is this level of shame and guilt, while it’s real--and it will matter years from now--for your whole life. You can’t delete this moment. This is not going anywhere. But it is part of your story. It’s something that you have to move through. And now I feel the great responsibility of hopefully changing some of the conversation into education, prevention, and making sure that people don’t have to get to that point.
MS. ELLISON: What do you think people don’t understand about that decision? I think people are often mystified about that choice, to try to take one own’s life. What would you say to people who are trying to understand why someone would get to that point, or how someone gets to that point?
MS. ZEE: There’s so many different types, and I can only really speak from my experiences, and I had two. There’s no way out in that moment, to you. There is no other answer. For some people it’s more impulsive. Mine certainly was a--I felt like it was on its way down. I could have felt the spiral in both cases. There is--there’s no--there’s no light at all. Black is all I can explain it as. And the only thing I can really tell other people is that the worst part was as dark as I got in those places--and especially that day--I was shining my brightest on the outside. That's where I used, I guess, my acting ability to be able to show people something that I didn't want them to know. This was my decision. This was the only thing I could control, and that was the ending of my life.
And I think, you know, in the book I talk about how that day I went and I took all of the pills in a park and I expected it to just happen like this, and it didn't. And I was mystified, speaking of mystified. And I went back to my then boyfriend's house and just was like waiting. It was the strangest experience, because I really didn't thankfully know enough about what I was doing, even though I knew more than the first time. And then my mom called, and she said, you know the last couple days, I've noticed your energy and your mood. And this is obviously just only a couple years after I had had a different suicide attempt. She said I just don't want you to be alone right now. And I agreed to go shopping with her the morning after I had taken a family size bottle of pills that can kill you. They just take a long time. And I went shopping with her, and I smiled through it all. And even with my mother, the person who knows me best, I was able to put on a show great enough that I was--and the strangest way I liked it. I liked that I could--I didn't want it to happen in front of her. I didn't want any of those things. But I just--I was done. I was really, really done. And thankfully in the book you'll read more about what happens after, but when I get to the point of being very ill, my then boyfriend takes me to the hospital and they're able to save my life.
And I think it was shocking in so many ways, but especially to my mom who had spent a couple of hours with me during the day to see her daughter that night nearly lose her life. And I think about that a lot as a parent now. I don't know what else to--you know, I don't even know what it would feel like for my own child except for that I have allowed myself to release the guilt that I felt for a long time for putting my parents and my then boyfriend and all these people in that place because I was sick.
MS. ELLISON: It's fascinating. And I'm so sorry you had to go through that. When you made the decision to write this book and talk about the suicide attempt, and also your abortion, abortion is a topic that is very much in the news. And I'm wondering if you thought about the repercussions of revealing the choice to have an abortion, what kind of blowback you might face? And were you nervous about that and the way that it might be received?
MS. ZEE: Yeah, I think it would be, you know--you would be wildly out of touch if you didn't have some sort of reaction to what you might anticipate people saying or thinking about you. But what my first book taught me is that when I revealed that I went all the way to the lengths of going to a mental health hospital to finally take charge of my mental health, people still raised their eyebrows about that. They're like, oh, you know, we're not yet to the place societally, where we can accept that part of the stigma. A lot of people will say, oh, I have depression or I have anxiety. I go to a therapist. And all of those kind of getting the--okay, we're all comfy. But as soon as I say hospital, you're like, oh, what's going on with her?
That realization that I was going to tell the world that was probably even harder, because it was the first time an executive-level people pleaser, somebody who just wanted to be perfect her whole life, was finally saying, here's my story and I guess I don't care what you think. I really want to tell my story, because I know--and "Natural Disaster" proved this to me--that it is going to help someone else and impact someone else. You hear that all the time. It's like, oh, talking, you're so brave. You're so this. No, really, it helps people. I still get comments, emails today that say you saved my life.
So, if someone's not going to like me because of something I did, or chose in my past, first of all, they don't know me, right? They don't know the levels of identity that become who I really am. That's up to me. And I have been so grateful--grateful for social media and for all these other things, because they've actually helped me to find the core of who I am. Pretty much at this point, you could say anything to me. I'm a little more tender with my family, because I don't like people coming at them. But I feel like the--I just read Will Smith's book, and he had a great way to say it. I approve of me, and I approve of what I'm doing with my message and with my choices and my past. So, I'm gonna leave it there.
MS. ELLISON: You talk a lot about--you mentioned stigma--and you talk a lot about the stigma around mental health challenges. I want to ask you two things about that. Why do you think that stigma persists? And how can we as a society get rid of it? You're doing your part by revealing this about someone who seems very sunny and people might not have suspected was, you know, somebody who was dealing with all this. But how do we do something to rectify the stigma that still surrounds mental health challenges?
MS. ZEE: The first part is realizing that because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not real. It's so hard. Even my son who's now six but was five this summer when I had what I like to call a gray day--and thankfully, I don't have those as often. But it was a big kind of realization for me as to how I think we can treat it from day one for kids, for teens, for adults. I was crying. I was on the deck, and I was kind of just having that gray day. And I didn't realize how close he was, and he came up and I was crying pretty heavily. And he said, Mommy, what's wrong? And in that moment, I just said what was wrong. Mommy doesn't feel well today. I'm sick. And he accepted that. Okay. And are you going to be better tomorrow? I could be. I couldn't be, but I'm gonna do my best to go get help and make myself as well as I possibly can be. And all we can ask of people is to do the work to get to that wellness.
You know, it's--and then the same way, if we could just treat it--and this is the other hard part--is when I went to the hospital, when I needed that inpatient therapy, the one that really changed my life and allowed me to get the help that I needed, the diagnosis I needed and the type of therapy I needed, we have to get to a place where we can say like drug and alcohol rehabilitation--when somebody goes to drug or alcohol rehab, we say, well, good for them. I [unclear] saying it's sexy, right? Like, it's so good. Let's get there for mental health. Let's make it good for them. Because I admire the most out of people when they're doing hard work and they're maintaining their mental health. Not easy. It doesn't just evaporate. Depression, anxiety, a lot of these diseases or disorders can't go away. Some of them require medication, but they all require work. And that's the part that I think that we really should find respectful, not, you know, turnoff when we hear or have a stigma surrounding.
MS. ELLISON: We've heard a lot from some high-profile athletes this year about their own struggles. The tennis star Naomi Osaka, Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. I’m wondering what you think, or how important it is, for people like that to come forward and talk about their own mental health.
MS. ZEE: I love Simone. I mean, huge props to anyone that can take the stage and say, I'm ready to say this is who I am and I don't care what you think, because I saw backlash. And it's hard. You know, I can take it for me. It's hard when I see it to someone like Simone who I've--I don't know well, but I know well enough that--and I know she's a young girl and watching the response to some of the people questioning her decision, calling her all these things. I had to take a beat because it was hard to watch someone get attacked like that.
And at the end of it, I realized she's just 20 years ahead of me. She's in the place where she knows herself, and she knows what this means. And too bad if that's what people think or want to say because they think they need to be running harder and people need to run through and avoid all of the traumas or any of the mental health issues. That will only get them to a worse place. You know, I saw people reacting already to my book and some of the negativity--mostly has been so positive. And I'm grateful for that. But when that negativity comes up, I immediately am able to put a mirror right up and realize that they're reflecting on their own lives. And I pray for them. I have great empathy for them. And I hope that they can find peace. But that's what I hope this can do, too, is maybe--maybe when I hold that mirror up, maybe it can help turn it around and realize that we can all take a moment and live the Betty White saying of stick to your own business. We'd all be in a better place. Unless it can help somebody else.
MS. ELLISON: I want to ask you about the people who are surrounding you in your own life. We have an audience question about your parents. This is from Patricia in Kansas. And she asks, how did your parents help or not help you through mental health problems?
MS. ZEE: The 1980s, or any time before, I think was quite different, right? We didn't have--I say it in the book. But even in their divorce, like, show me some hands of anybody who did divorce right in the 80s. Like it wasn't until Gwyneth Paltrow really gave us what uncoupling is supposed to look like. I look at my friends that are divorced now, and I'm like, that's divorce? You guys are fantastic. So, I think that the same with mental health, I don't know that they had the tools, education, or societal anything to help me in the way I probably needed help.
That said, my mom, as much as I talk about her in the book, and she did approve of the stories, and how chaotic a lot of my young life was because of her own mental health challenges that couldn't get help, this is a woman who taught me how to be vulnerable, how to be transparent, and how to constantly work on myself to be the best version of me. That work ethic, I wrote her this morning and I said on this day when I when I'm about to tell the world everything, I can't thank anybody but you, because she is a woman who was there and unconditionally loved me. And I think without that base, I don't know what I would have done.
Now, if I could go today and say--of course I could go back and do some scorecards with my parents and be like, this could have been a lot better. But for where we were and what we had, I think they did a pretty great job. And I always give props to my stepdad. My mom always thinks this is funny. She's like, I was there the whole time. But my stepdad is a social worker, and his energy coming in was safe. And there cannot be more weight put into what that means for a child--safety, consistency, and, and having the education he did to help, and to help us find help. That will forever be deep in my heart of gratitude.
MS. ELLISON: Before you released this book, you were public about a previous suicide attempt. And it was just before you started at ABC News. I think a lot of people are fearful about what these kinds of revelations will do to their professional life. I'm wondering if you can talk about that juxtaposition of going public with something as private as a suicide attempt and then starting at ABC.
MS. ZEE: I think it's the same as--and I'm grateful that my workplace and the managers I've had have been very open to understanding and learning about what mental health crises mean. It's just like had I had some other disease and been very sick right before I started, they shouldn't and wouldn't have judged it differently. The fact that I'm putting the hard work in, I am healthier and farther away from the black and gray days than I've ever been. And I think as long as I keep doing that, I think I'm the best--I’m a way better employee than I was even at the start. I mean, 20 years ago, when I started, I was a terrible employee because of how wrecked and spiraling I was in my personal life. So, I think that--I hope that that's why they see it. And I would be totally not open and transparent if I didn't tell you, when I first released that first book, I thought, oh, boy, I am never going to get hired after this. They're going to have to hold on to me and everybody else being like I don't want to be like, I don't want that girl. That's not the case. We're not there. I'm going to put it out in the universe. We are well beyond that. And I'm really grateful to hopefully be a part of that shift.
MS. ELLISON: And you write about your husband. You've been married since 2014. I'm wondering how has he helped you battle depression and be public about all of this.
MS. ZEE: My mother-in-law's on here, by the way. So thank you, for my husband. He's a special case. He has had his own mental health issues through his childhood after his traumas. And he had a completely different way of reacting. But one thing that--when I met him, I had started the hard work. I had been in the hospital about a year before. I had been in two times a week therapy. I had finally gotten into my diagnosis and gotten the right type of therapy. But when I first met him, I wasn't quite there yet. I was just finally getting over the hump of I'm allowed to let someone love me and love myself. And he patiently--he'll tell you that I broke up with him twice. And I'll tell you that you can't break up with someone after you've gone on two dates. He was a little intense. But he was so patient through the six months of processing, that it was okay to be loved. And had he not had that patience and still didn't have the patience that he does today--and the open understanding. That's the thing is people are like, oh, what's your husband think when he read this book? Well, he knew everything. He's known everything. And he's accepted every single part of me, no matter how bad. In fact, sometimes he finds like he loves ex-boyfriend stories. He's a strange one, because he thinks they're entertaining and they're part of me, and he loves all of me. That's love. And that's what I wanted to find within myself. I need to love all of those parts, even the parts that filled me with shame and guilt for so long. And he's been that guiding light.
MS. ELLISON: I want to--we don't have a lot of time left, but I don't want to let you go without asking you a question about the important issues that you do cover at work. We're in the middle of a moment of severe weather, and climate change is something that you know so much about. I'm wondering if you can talk to us about what you're focusing on in 2022 as it relates to climate change and climate disasters.
MS. ZEE: So the pandemic--I think, what the pandemic has meant to the science of medicine has been really enlightening for a lot of people in many different sciences. Climate science has had similar division. And I really hope that we can provide the clearest, most concise reporting on both misinformation and the evidence right in front of us, so that we can get motivated to make change. And people don't like change, it's really uncomfortable. But that's the thing. Just like mental health, if we don't put our priorities straight and if we don't start caring for the atmosphere and the surface of the planet around us, and actually make intentional decisions, then we're just going to be running just like somebody who hasn't attended to their mental health, hurting people all along the way.
And hopefully, societally, in both places, we can get rid of stigmas, and just get down to what is real, and what we can really share. And that's what I hope to do. There are a lot of ways to do that. I have big plans for the climate unit. I've been really working to get this started, and we are well on our way, so I'm looking forward to it.
MS. ELLISON: Well, thank you so much. I am afraid we have to leave it there. I have more questions, but thank you for the time you've given us this morning, Ginger.
MS. ZEE: Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thanks, everybody.
MS. ELLISON: Wonderful. I’m Sarah Ellison. Again, thank you for joining us. Please go to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and see what we have coming up in our upcoming programs. Thank you for joining us and have a great day. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several models show the possibility of a storm Sunday into Monday.
The first 10 days of January produced nearly 10 inches of snow in Washington and the weather pattern for the next two weeks may be promising for more. The next chance of snow forecasters are watching is Sunday into Monday.
Computer models show the possibility of another storm coming up from the south. The big question is whether the storm, as it tracks toward the Carolinas, comes up the East Coast and socks us with heavy precipitation or turns out to sea leaving us mostly dry.
If the storm comes up the coast, it could be a substantial snow producer although there’s also some chance it draws in enough warm air for a wintry mix or even cold rain.
It will take at least a couple of more days to have a good idea what scenario is most likely.
The primary American (GFS) model simulation shows a major storm that produces heavy snowfall in the region; however, the storm becomes so intense it draws in some milder air off the Atlantic Ocean and precipitation flips to rain for a time along and east of Interstate 95 before it changes back to snow. The modeling system has 29 alternative simulations, about half of which show significant snow, while the other half suggest the storm would mostly miss to the south and east. It gives the District about a 50 percent chance of at least one inch, 40 to 50 percent chance of at least 3 inches and 30 percent chance of at least 6 inches. It even shows a 10 to 15 percent chance of a foot.
The Canadian modeling system also suggests that a significant storm system could take a track favorable for snow in the region. Its group of simulations indicates about a 60 percent chance of at least an inch, 55 percent chance of at least three inches, and 33 percent chance of 6 inches or more. Like the American modeling system, it also gives 10 to 15 probability of at least 12 inches.
The European model is on board with the idea of a major storm as well and, like the American, it suggests that it could draw in enough mild air for snow to change to a cold rain or wintry mix, especially from Fairfax and Montgomery counties eastward. Its solution would plaster the Interstate 81 corridor with heavy snow. Its group of 50 simulations indicate about a 40 percent chance of at least one inch of snow, 25 percent chance of three inches and 15 percent chance of 6 inches.
The forecast is complicated for several reasons. The models need to resolve three different features to lock into the correct forecast: 1) the low-pressure system tracking through the Southeast toward the Carolinas that could be our snowmaker; 2) a zone of low pressure in northeast Canada; and, 3) a third zone of low pressure over north central Canada that will be digging southeastward. The strength and position of any one of these three systems could change the forecast.
The jet stream will be displaced well to the north over western North America, poking into Alaska, before diving southeast over the eastern U.S. This jet stream configuration suggests that storm systems will generally track to our south instead of passing to the north like they typically do during La Niña winters. The models even suggest cross-polar flow will develop, which would tend to aid in the development of high-pressure systems over Canada which can supply cold air when storms approach our region. However, sometimes the high-pressure zones can push the storm track too far south, keeping us dry.
High temperatures on most days in the next two weeks are projected to be around 35 to 40. | null | null | null | null | null |
She referred all other questions about the case to the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Representatives with the attorney general’s office did not return a request for comment.
Police in Texas can take cash and other property believed to be related to some kind of criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime, said Arif Panju, the managing attorney for the Texas branch of the Institute for Justice, a legal organization against civil-asset forfeiture. Under Texas’s civil-asset forfeiture law, prosecutors must file civil lawsuits for police to keep possession of seized assets.
“It appears they have seized on the fact that the sheriff in Real County was taking cash from folks who are undocumented — and that’s a problem,” Panju said. “Having cash is not a crime.”
Though Real County is not on the border, it is about 100 miles away from Del Rio, Tex., where nearly 15,000 border-crossers, many of them Haitians living in Chile and other South American nations, arrived last year. The city was a focus for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in his efforts to increase security along the southern border.
Several incidents involving Johnson are highlighted in the Texas Rangers’ report. Guajardo cited a May 2021 incident captured on body-cam footage showing Johnson directing deputies to seize money and a 2008 Toyota Tundra truck from undocumented immigrants during a traffic stop, according to the search warrants. Guajardo noted that the seized money was to be filed as abandoned cash and deposited into the Real County general fund, the Tribune reported. While Johnson said he would attempt to locate the registered owners of the truck, the vehicle would be considered abandoned after 30 days “and sold at the next auction,” records show.
In October, more than $2,700 in cash was taken from three immigrants’ wallets during another traffic stop. The money was reported as evidence to authorities while they waited to see whether human-smuggling charges against the driver would be handed down, the search warrants say. When the two other men asked Border Patrol what happened to their money, the seizing deputy could tell them only that Johnson told him to take it, and could not give an answer as to under what authority the money was taken, the Tribune reported. | null | null | null | null | null |
At the behest of his mother, who lived in Washington and had become a Russian language specialist with Voice of America, Mr. Tolstoy emigrated to the United States. She disapproved of his dissolute lifestyle, he said, and forced him to marry. The woman’s name was Natasha, and she was another Russian emigre, but he was hard to domesticate. The marriage lasted seven weeks, he told the Sun, because she only enjoyed cooking and fixing her hair. “That’s all,” he said. “I didn’t pay too much attention.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Allahpundit’s article was published about 4 p.m. Monday and began making the rounds on social media. The full interview was published by ABC on YouTube about 6 p.m. And then, at 8 p.m., Carlson aired the original excerpt from Friday morning to the same end as that tweet from the RNC.
Of course, even if Walensky had been talking broadly about the role of comorbidities, that’s not a “lie.” The CDC has tracked data on the extent of confounding illnesses since at least May 2020, as you can see in this archived version of their website. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it was understood that older, less healthy people faced a higher risk from the virus.
Over and over, it was recognized that covid-19 was more dangerous for those who were sick and, over and over, that those who were sick or otherwise unhealthy were dying at higher rates. That’s the data the CDC has been collecting. (You can see the current numbers here.) | null | null | null | null | null |
Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Tuesday. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
“It’s not a question of if this will happen, but when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses,” Nancy Messonnier said. The comment caused a blowup at the White House and among top administration officials, who had to account for then-President Donald Trump’s consistent desire to downplay the threat during his reelection campaign. Then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar would later acknowledge that Messonnier had been “right.”
Woodcock’s projection might not be terribly surprising, given the number of daily positive tests rising to record levels. On Monday, the seven-day average reached more than 760,000, meaning about 1 in every 60 Americans has tested positive in the last week alone. (And that’s likely a significant undercount, given the mildness of many omicron cases and the availability of at-home tests.) A study released about four months ago — before the rise of the unprecedentedly infectious omicron variant — estimated that 31 percent had already been infected even by that point.
Her comment also came shortly after a World Health Organization official warned the same day that Europe could see more than 50 percent of its population infected over the next six to eight weeks.
But as with Messonnier’s comment, the acknowledgment is a momentous one in the fight against the virus. There has been some hope that omicron could spike and fade relatively quickly — as it appears to have in South Africa. But the ranking member of the Senate health committee which hosted Woodcock and other health officials, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), noted Israeli scientists were less bullish that their country would be following the same trajectory.
Woodcock also repeatedly seemed to argue for a new footing in the fight against the virus: One that acknowledges what lay ahead in the near term and deals with institutional changes later on.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) later in the hearing cited a Washington Post editorial arguing for a change in approach to the pandemic from the administration. Braun compared the situation to a business where high-ranking officials might be fired and things would be decentralized. | null | null | null | null | null |
Once here, they travel from state to state carrying out scores of burglaries, jewelry heists and other crimes, pilfering tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods each year, the FBI estimates. by one estimate. Experts said the groups often operate with impunity because they have found a kind of criminal sweet spot. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hundreds of police officers attended the burial service at Holy Cross Cemetery for Cleveland police officer Shane Bartek, who was fatally shot during a carjacking New Year’s Eve, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. Cleveland Police Chief Wayne Drummond says Bartek was a “true public servant” and the template for what Cleveland police officers should be. (Joshua Gunter/Cleveland.com via AP)
CLEVELAND — The twin sister of slain Cleveland police officer Shane Bartek said at his funeral Tuesday she knew as children her brother wanted to be a cop as they played with their first set of walkie talkies using call signs “Peanut Butter” and “Jelly.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - This combination of undated photos provided by the Gwinnett County Police Department shows Master Police Officer Robert McDonald, left, and Sgt. Michael Bongiovanni in their official portraits. A man who was punched and kicked in the head by the two Atlanta-area police officers during a traffic stop nearly five years ago has reached a settlement with the county that employed them, his lawyers said Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. Demetrius Hollins filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that the stop was unjustified and that the Gwinnett County officers used excessive force. (Gwinnett County Police Department via AP) (Uncredited/Gwinnett County Police Department) | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Who was Carl Bernstein before Watergate? A natural newshound, learning the trade.
Bob Woodward (left) and Carl Bernstein in the Post's newsroom in April 1973. (Ken Feil/The Washington Post)
And yet, as Bernstein’s wonderful new memoir of his early days makes clear, this remarkable figure ran into a major roadblock as he hustled and legged his way into the trade. The young Bernstein was a natural newshound, but he was allergic to classrooms. And he ran up against a managing editor who wouldn’t hire a reporter without a college degree.
He would have no better luck today. Over more than four decades in this business, I’ve rarely seen a journalist hired without a diploma. There have been lots of colleagues with master’s degrees and even a few with doctorates.
Yet, as “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom” makes clear, good journalism is not an academic exercise. It’s more a trade than a science, more like plumbing than physics. Faulty stories, like unsound pipes, are prone to burst under pressure. To say this is not demeaning — as any adult likely knows, people are far more likely to need a plumber in an emergency than a physicist.
While still a high school student in Silver Spring, Md., Bernstein talked his way into a part-time job at his favorite hometown newspaper, the Washington Evening Star. From there, he learned by watching, by imitating, by asking questions, by trial and — inevitably — by error. Bernstein’s book shows, as well as any I’ve read, what a journalist’s education should look like: an apprenticeship, not a seminar. There is scant theory in good journalism, just a lot of practice.
We see Bernstein sharpening his tools one by one. He learns to conduct interviews by listening to good questioners. He learns to take notes and cultivate sources by diving in. He studies the work of the writers he admires and tries to imitate their moves. Along the way, he learns to trust his inner sense of a good story and develops his nose for baloney.
Bernstein’s story of his coming-of-age at the Star ends about seven years before the Watergate break-in, the dazzling vindication of his talents and the star-making machinery that soon overtook him. He became half of “Woodward and Bernstein,” the most famous reporting partnership in journalism history. Wealthy and celebrated, he dated models and married the writer Nora Ephron, whose thinly veiled account of their doomed marriage became the book — and later the movie — “Heartburn.” His biographies include treatments of Pope John Paul II and would-be president Hillary Clinton.
This book foreshadows none of that. It’s a self-contained, beautifully written, powerfully remembered, charmingly honest account of the lower rungs of an already-changing business.
Some fine college journalism programs strive to replicate this apprenticeship in a campus setting, and I’m in favor of college for everyone who wants to attend. With the death of local newspaper cultures such as the one Bernstein lovingly paints, such schools may be the best alternative for teaching most young reporters. Why, I liked college so much that I have two degrees — though I learned my trade the same way Bernstein did, by working nights and weekends at my hometown paper.
Yet it’s one thing to say that journalists may choose college and quite another to say that they must. In 1960, the year Bernstein started as a copyboy, fewer than 1 in 10 Americans over 25 had a college degree. Today, it’s roughly 1 in 3 — still very much a minority. Newsrooms exclusively staffed by members of the college-credentialed minority will inevitably misperceive, misunderstand and misconstrue the world as it is experienced by the non-college-educated majority.
Selfishly, I am indebted to Bernstein for evoking so vividly my memories of pre-computer newsrooms: the noise, the smoke, the pots of paste and heaps of paper, the office romances, the martini lunches, the ergonomically incorrect furniture and politically incorrect characters, the soft fat pencils, the mad approach of deadline, the electric shock of a big story and the unbridled joy of having any piece of it, no matter how minor. I, too, was hazed by gruff pressmen and mentored by menschen; got a little dizzy looking at my first front-page byline; and did my teenage drinking in the company of wise old news hands in their mid-20s — and even more ancient than that.
Though the atmospherics are gone, the enterprise remains, more vital than ever. It’s the work of finding truths about a place and the people who live there — a neighborhood, a city, a nation, a planet — and sharing those discoveries with transparency and accountability. Simple as that. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - China’s Eileen Gu waves to the camera after competing in the women’s halfpipe skiing qualifiers of the U.S. Grand Prix and World Cup on Friday, March 19, 2021, at Buttermilk Ski Area in Aspen, Colo. David Wise is back at the Olympics looking for a third gold medal in men’s freestyle halfpipe. Eileen Gu, born San Francisco and competing for China, has an even bigger ambition: winning three freestyle medals in a single Games. (Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times via AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
James F. Ports Jr. replaces former transportation secretary Gregory Slater, who left Maryland to run a Florida tolling authority.
Maryland's new transportation secretary, James F. Ports Jr., left, and former secretary Gregory Slater in 2019, when Slater was state highway administrator, at a Board of Public Works meeting. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Ports, a longtime state transportation official, assumes the top job as the Maryland Department of Transportation works to revive the stalled Purple Line’s light-rail construction and pursue private firms to build express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270.
As executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority since 2019, Ports has overseen the state’s toll facilities and E-ZPass system. He also has served as deputy state transportation secretary, deputy administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and chief executive of Harford County’s transit system, according MDOT.
From 1991 to 2003, he served as a Republican representative to the state House of Delegates from the Baltimore area, according to his state resume.
Slater, who was previously Maryland’s state highway administrator, was known for his calm demeanor, placating state lawmakers and local officials, even making project opponents feel heard. He often responded to testy questions on controversial projects with, “We’ll look into that and get right back to you.”
An MDOT spokeswoman said Slater declined an interview request. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Information Disorder with Damian Collins MP & Will Hurd
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Cat Zakrzewski, a tech policy reporter here at The Post, and I’m looking forward to our discussion today on the disinformation crisis. My first guest today is Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman. He is also a member of the Aspen Institute Commission on the Information Disorder. Congressman, welcome back to Washington Post Live. Thanks so much for being here.
MR. HURD: Cat, it’s a pleasure to be on, and please call me Will.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Thank you so much, Will. And just to get this discussion going and really highlight what the stakes are, could you tell us a little bit about what disinformation is?
MR. HURD: Look, one of the ways that I like to describe it is this increasing disagreement on facts. It’s a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction. It’s an increasing volume of influence. And there is--there’s also a complete degradation of trust in institutions that have been, you know, important for--since the founding of our country, and that’s institutions at the government level, at the federal, all the way down to the local level to academia, to the media. And all of these things--the RAND Corporation calls it truth decay. You know, all of these things combine to create an environment where a falsehood can travel faster than the truth, right? And this is not a new phenomenon. There was a--there was a British sociologist back in like the 1700s that basically said, you know, facts--a falsehood can travel faster before the truth can put its pants on, right? And so this is the environment we’re in.
Oh, and by the way, our adversaries, nation states, are using this discord, these frictions, these fractures within our society and our communities in order to propagate their own message and to erode trust in America with our allies not just in Europe and Eastern Europe but all over--all over the world.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I want to get to those national security implications. But first, do you think it’s possible, given the environment we’re in today, to contain the disinformation crisis?
MR. HURD: It’s going to be--it’s incredibly difficult--right?--especially with platforms and tools that are able to propagate these messages. When we look at, you know, the--how information disorder has evolved from 2016 to the 2020 elections, the 2016 election and 2020 election, it was--it was pretty intense. And what we’re seeing is, you know, oftentimes people with a blue check--right?--that are--that are verified are the ones that are propagating some of these--some of these stories. And we’re also seeing a picture or an image that kind of at the grassroots level that gets magnified, and oftentimes that picture may be, you know, wrong, or it’s old. And there was a number of those kinds of examples in--from the 2020 election. And there’s a work that the election integrity partnership did called “The Long Fuse.” It’s a great analysis structurally of how some of these--how some of these messages were propagated.
And what you’re seeing in the political debate in Washington right now, the far left and the far right sometimes have the same opinions on what should be done about this. A lot of it stems around Section 230, and they want the action for complete opposite reasons. But I don’t know, especially the closer we get to midterm elections, whether you’re going to see some level of cooperation. If it were to happen, it’ll probably start in the Senate, and I think it’ll be in a very narrow--it could be in a very narrow way.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to ask you, you brought up the disinformation that we saw in 2016 and 2020 around the elections. We’re heading into a midterm election year, and 2024 isn’t far away. What is your biggest concern for how disinformation could evolve heading into these next election cycles?
MR. HURD: Look, I think the scary part is where the technology tools that can make deep fakes even harder to detect, right? And so now imagine--you know, a lot of times where you catch deep fakes now is--there--it’s an original image that’s doctored in some way, and then you can create an original image. And how are you going to be able to detect against that? I think the technology is still a little too in its infancy to be weaponized in this upcoming 2022 election. But the reality is, 2020 was the most secure election in our history, okay? I think CISA, the department in Homeland Security that helped provide federal support to the states, the states recognized the need to make sure that they’re protecting the vote counting machines. And so the fact that a lot of these entities are focused on this is what has allowed--what allowed 2020 to be the safest and most secure election. So I feel confident that the folks on the ground have the tools to protect that. But the information piece and the weaponization of information is not just going to be--you know, a lot of the platforms trying to say it outlaws political advertising. Well, that’s not going to be enough to stop this issue. And to be honest, this has been going on for--since the--since the beginning of time. And so this is a difficult--this is a difficult task.
And ultimately, you know, if--who should be the arbiter of truth, right? And it’s difficult for the federal government to play that role in saying this is right or this is wrong. And so that’s why we have to have media organizations, academics to make sure that they’re building trust with communities so that when people look--there’s a place they can look to be like, hey, is this fact or fiction.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: You just mentioned that you don’t think political advertising bans will be enough to stem the tide of disinformation online. Are there specific steps that you think the platforms could take before the midterms that would make a difference?
MR. HURD: I think this is a broader conversation, I think, with the tech policy in general. Oftentimes when there’s some new kind of technology, we always--oh, this is so different. This is so unique. This doesn’t fall under the same rules and regulations. But usually it’s like, hey, you know, how do you adapt the current rules and regulations to this thing? The example I always use is artificial intelligence. I spent a lot of time on that in my current positions. And guess what? We have rules on civil liberties, and you can’t discriminate against people for the color of their skin. So the algorithm shouldn’t be able to do that. It should be able to follow the law. And I think having a conversation around whether these platforms are indeed publishers and do they have to follow the same rules and regulations that y’all at Washington Post have to follow, that cable networks have to follow, I think that kind of conversation--and guess what, if they were having to hold to those same standards, you would see some behaviors ultimately change.
And I think this is a broader conversation about how creators ultimately get paid as well, too. I think there’s some great examples of companies like Patreon and their model and how they’re doing it is a potential way. But we have to get this right, because there’s--you know, when we start talking about virtual reality and the interactions within virtual realities, we can start having those conversations now as those technologies are in its infancy before it really blows up. And so, yes, I think, that’s a conversation and debate that should be--that we should have, and make sure everybody has the same playing field.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that point of just how quickly this issue is moving, you mentioned before how on both the far right and far left there’s momentum to reform Section 230, the shield that protects tech companies from lawsuits for content that people post on their platforms. I wanted to ask you, do you personally think that Section 230 should be amended?
MR. HURD: Look, I think one of the ways that we can--we can make this work is if you are open to the public--right?--if your account, anybody can see it, then your--you should be--you should have to follow the same rules and regulations that other journalists and publishers have to follow.
Now, if you’re closed and the only people that can see you are the people that have subscribed to your account, then I think you can say that that’s not--they’re not considered a publisher because they’re just talking to their friends. I think that’s a model that would allow the continued growth and use of these tools and use them as a platform for folks to get a message out but also ensure that people are--that they’re behaving in a way that’s not eroding society.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And sorry, so just to say yes or no, do you think Section 230 should be amended?
MR. HURD: I think there’s definitely some changes that can be made to Section 230, and I just--those are the things I think should be--how they should be outlined.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And do you think currently that there is the bipartisan will in Congress to do that, to make those changes?
MR. HURD: Look, this is not a new topic. I don’t think you’re going to see this happen two months before primaries start or less--yeah, two months before, a month and a half before primaries start. And so I think, you know, there’s always been some of these conversations. But I don’t see a lot of bipartisanship happening, and I also don’t see, looking in the House, House leadership is not interested in working on bipartisan solutions. You know, they rammed a number of things down folks’ throat, and I think the Senate is going to be consumed over the next couple of months with a number of other issues before they would ever be able to get to something like this.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: On the topic of tech regulation in Congress, do you think that the bipartisan antitrust bills have a chance of passing this year?
MR. HURD: I’m not familiar with the nuance and the details. I think there’s some things like when it comes to knowing what software and, you know, understanding each line of code, I think those are some--those are some opportunities where things can get passed. But major changes--and again, this specific legislation that you’re talking about, I don’t know of it, and that’s maybe an indication that it’s because it’s probably unlikely to--unlikely to pass because you’re not hearing a lot of folks talk about it.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And so in the absence of action in Congress, do you think that there should be a White House-led federal strategy to address disinformation?
MR. HURD: So I think the example of how a federal government responds to disinformation is probably what’s called CVE, countering violent extremism. And we saw this in the height of 2014, where ISIS was inspiring, you know, young men, teenage boys, you know, 6,000 miles away and inspiring them to join their efforts and to try to kill innocent people. And we knew how that we was working. We knew the people that they were--that ISIS was targeting, we knew some of the messages, and we were able to leverage some of the counter messaging to in essence inoculate a community from some of those messages. And so I think that’s a type of model that I think, you know, governments can use, because it starts with education and it starts with making sure people are able to differentiate fact from fiction on their devices when they read something, and that they’re able to tell that something is an opinion versus something that has, you know, a background, right? When we were all in school and we were doing--you know, writing papers--this is before Google and the internet--you know, you knew which sources you can use to reference and which ones you couldn’t because they were less authoritative. And so I think that’s an area where, you know, educating. And I think the federal government and executive branch can do more.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Do you think that’s an area they can do more even when it’s related to domestic issues, like elections or the pandemic response, when it’s not international disinformation?
MR. HURD: Look, I think--I think not only the federal government but states can do more to educate on the actual voting process, right? Like how are those vote counting machines taken--you know, taken care of when they’re not being used? Why does it take, you know, hours to tabulate those votes if you’re doing it on a machine? You know, understanding what the process is and that, you know, yes, you may be sending in mail-in ballots, but if you send a mail-in ballot on the last day, the election agency may not receive that for a couple of days, right? And so I think making people, improving people’s general awareness of the voting process--right?--is one way to say, oh, if this--you know, somebody says something crazy on social media, that more people like that’s just--that’s not how the actual process works. And I think--I think that’s a role that, you know, is important, especially now as we’re leading up to election and have those conversations before you're in the middle of early voting.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you talked a little bit before about the role of blue checkmark accounts in spreading disinformation. We’ve seen some prominent social media accounts, including former President Trump, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, we’ve seen those suspended in the past year or so. Do you agree with the company’s decisions to suspend those accounts?
MR. HURD: Look, these companies should outline what their terms of use are, and enforce it, right? And so President Trump and these others have been violating those terms. So, yes, the company should have the ability to do that. And I think--what’s I think is frustrating on some of these other areas, we oftentimes propagate--it’s not--we focus on some of the blue checks, but let’s look at something that’s happening today with the Biden administration getting ready to negotiate with the Russians around Ukraine. Well, we continue to talk about how the Russians are saying that they feel threatened on their border. No, this can be deescalated if the Russians would stop trying to invade Ukraine. So there are some of those kinds of conversations and I think--and propagating that is less clear as the bold-faced lies the former president and other members of Congress have been propagating. But in the end, I think these platforms have the ability and should regulate on their platforms.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: What do you say to Republicans who view those moves from the companies as silencing conservative voices?
MR. HURD: Well, I think the data, when you look at some of the conversative outlets on Facebook at least, they have way more following than a lot of the mainstream media even when you combine them. So this notion--I don’t think the facts definitely, you know, play out that way. But ultimately, I think as elected officials, part of our responsibility is to--you know, to provide facts on what’s really happening, and it’s unfortunate that’s not always the case.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Are these accusations of censorship making it harder to address the disinformation crisis?
MR. HURD: Well, it contributes to that erosion of trust that we--that we’re seeing, right? And so, you know, the--this erosion of trust in institutions to include media, to include the scientific community, this didn’t just start, you know, recently. This has been going on for decades. And so by continuing to stoke up those flames--right?--we further erose those efforts. And then when it comes time to actually try to--where we have to work together and do something like, you know, come together to deal with a global pandemic that we're--that's going on two years, it's difficult. How are we going to be--even some of the conversations around what's happening in Ukraine, I keep going back to that, because it's shocking how some in the United States are kind of supportive of the Russian position when that's just absolutely insane.
Now, I also hope that the Biden administration stays tough on this issue. But when you have some of these conversations that impact our security, it's difficult to have when that erosion--now look, we should also--it's okay to be critical as well--and when you see something--but that makes it harder when you're fomenting misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have today, and we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Congressman Will Hurd for joining us. It was a fascinating discussion.
MR. HURD: Thanks, Cat.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I'll be back with our next guest, Damian Collins, in just a few minutes. Please stay with us.
MS. LABOTT: Hello, I'm Elise Labott of American University, and today we're talking about the promise and the peril of private messaging platforms to communicate. Now in response to the rise in digital surveillance and cybersecurity threats, private messaging platforms have really taken the world by storm, and today, two out of five people are using these real time chat apps to connect, sending hundreds of billions of private messages daily around the world.
But while these platforms have really changed the face of human connection, research shows that they're also being used to spread disinformation and hate-filled ideology. So to further explore the use of these real-time chat apps, I'm joined by Wafa Ben-Hassine. She's a human rights lawyer and principal at the Omidyar Network. And Rose Jackson, the director of Democracy and Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. Ladies, thanks for joining us.
MS. JACKSON: Thanks so much.
MS. BEN-HASSINE: Thank you.
MS. LABOTT: Rose, let's start with you. Now, the beauty of these apps is that they're encrypted. So we can't see what's happening and what people are saying. But talk to me about how these private messaging platforms are being used and what you think are some of the vulnerabilities we need to be aware of.
MS. JACKSON: I mean, the most important thing to start with is that they're not always that private. A lot of these apps have features where you can broadcast messages to thousands of people in a group. And so even though we have encrypted messaging, it's not always private messaging.
But when we're talking about the encrypted nature of point to point messaging platforms, it's really important to know that for human rights activists around the world, particularly in authoritarian countries, these tools are essential to their survival. It's the same story for journalists doing important work to safeguard our democracies.
But the platforms are also used widely by families around the world trying to stay in touch in different countries. And of course, what people are thinking about today, and part of why we're having this conversation, the anniversary of January 6th has brought to mind that there are also some pretty bad actors that take advantage of these private messaging spaces to organize. And whether that's domestic extremist groups in the United States who organized on some of these platforms to have an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, or terrorist organizations around the world, it's important that we understand that these messaging platforms are part of the internet and digital ecosystem. And that means that everyone's on them, and they're on them for a number of different reasons, some of those good, some of those very bad. And so it's not all a bad story. It's not all a good story.
MS. LABOTT: So, Wafa, I know you like to say that encryption doesn't create these problems. It just hides them from us. So what is it about the technology that makes these private messaging platforms hospitable to all of this hate, lies, and propensity perhaps for violence?
MS. BEN-HASSINE: That's right, Elise. It is the platforms’ other features where we have to focus our attention. These platforms are optimized for scale, virality, and monetization. And the very same features that support these objectives also help facilitate the rapid and large-scale spread of dangerous, distorted and deceitful content. In fact, modern propaganda campaigns today are specifically engineered for this type of technology. In addition, the ease with which users can now forward messages without verifying their accuracy means mis- and disinformation because spread quickly, secretly, and at significant scale.
Now from the onset, the differentiator between open social media and private messaging platforms has always been that the former serves as a public town square, and the latter as a private living room. Some messaging platforms, however, offer users the ability to broadcast and exchange ideas with extremely large groups, and we're talking anywhere from 1,000 to 200,000 people. Now the question becomes, if we're truly optimizing for privacy, why are we sharing content with enough people to fill three Olympic-sized stadiums? Look, problems online hardly ever start there, and they rarely end there, but it's our imperative to make sure that the design of private messaging platforms are not enabling their spread.
MS. LABOTT: So, Wafa, given that, talk to us about some of the changes that can make these private chat apps more trustworthy and resilient against all of this disinformation?
MS. BEN-HASSINE: Sure. What we need are targeted tools and thoughtful policy responses. As a free and open society, we cannot resort to polarize and absolutist positions such as attacks on encryption via backdoors, or by weakening privacy and security via malware, spyware, or ill-conceived traceability requirements. Studies have shown that such solutions are rarely effective, and in fact, they make us collectively less safe, and make private messaging platforms less trustworthy.
Instead, what we're pushing for here is a new set of conditions. For instance, more disclosure and transparency from companies, a system of distributed governance and accountability, and finally, more collaborative research and innovation between researchers, technologists, policymakers, and of course nonprofit advocates. We'd like to see more consumer pressure and government rulemaking that motivates and rewards tech companies that actually demonstrate operational transparency and invest in product design changes that create friction.
Now to support this vision, Omidyar Network has already committed over $10 million to better understand these platforms and how they work, and where their design contributes to these problems. We have supported preserving privacy respecting features, as well as advocating for necessary design, policy and rule changes so that private messaging platforms are trustworthy.
MS. LABOTT: So, Rose, obviously, these changes and fixes that Wafa is talking about, these are roles for tech and government. But what are some of the things we can all do to make these private messaging platforms safer?
MS. BEN-HASSINE: Thanks, Elise. That's a great question, because when it comes to the internet, no single problem can be solved by a single actor. This isn't something that companies can address on their own or governments on its own. It involves organizations like my own that are doing independent research. It involves advocacy organizations, lifting up the voices and perspectives of the most vulnerable in society affected by these issues, and working with companies and government to make sure that the rules and standards that governments begin to set to make sure we have access to information and transparency and guidelines for how these platforms should responsibly operate in the world, and the ways that companies address innovation and the problems that arise on their platforms, are all referential and working together.
And that’s something that I think of as a positive point for us to really consider, is that we do have agency also in conversations with our families and our own communities to address the issues moving forward.
MS. LABOTT: Well, as you say, obviously with some of these key changes and tools, but also personally responsibility, we can find a way to trust the technology companies and each other more not just in the town square, as you guys say, but in the living room as well and protect our privacy at the same time. Wafa Ben-Hassine of Omidyar Network and Rose Jackson of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, thank you so much for joining us.
MS. JACKSON: Thank you.
MS. BEN-HASSINE: Thank you, Elise.
MS. LABOTT: And now I’ll send it back to The Washington Post.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Welcome back. And if you’re just joining us, I’m Cat Zakrzewski. My next guest is Damian Collins, a member of the British Parliament and the co-founder of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation. Welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. COLLINS: Thank you. It’s great to be with you.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Thanks so much. And just before we get started, we have a quick disclosure. A peer organization associated with the Omidyar Group provides some support for the logistics and convening of the IGC. The Omidyar Network, which is sponsoring this program, and the Omidyar Group, are founded by the same individuals.
And now to jump in, we just heard a little bit from Congressman Hurd about the risks of disinformation in the United States. How do you view the issue of disinformation comparing in the United Kingdom and Europe more broadly?
MR. COLLINS: Actually, before I'd answer that, if I could just come in on the International Grand Committee, because you're quite right that the network have supported some of the recent meetings. But the first meetings came about from a discussion I had with some Canadian members of Parliament at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington. And the first conversation about the idea of creating an International Grand Committee of parliamentarians to cooperate on these issues actually took place at The Post Pub in Washington. So, I think it seems particularly appropriate that we're discussing that on this Washington Post Live session today.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: That’s wonderful. That's one of our favorite spots as Post reporters. And of course, looking to get back there once cases go down a bit here in D.C. And so on that point of international cooperation, I mean, certainly, we've seen in the U.S. how destructive disinformation can be. What can countries do to better partner to address this issue?
MR. COLLINS: Partnership is really important, because I think what we're seeing in terms of tech regulation around the world is in a way a leveling up process. Relations between different parliaments to understand the different approaches being taken in legislation is very helpful in terms of understanding what we can do. The UK with the Online Safety Bill will probably be the first country to establish a very broad-based regulatory structure to ensure that what's illegal offline is regulated online and by an independent body.
But there are similar approaches being taken in Australia, in the European Union. And I've been very interested to follow closely issues being raised by different members of Congress in America, looking at how Section 230 could be reformed. I discussed with Senator Warner his SAFE TECH bill, which has got lots of very interesting ideas of how you create exemptions from Section 230 for some of the most problematic areas.
But on disinformation and election interference, it's particularly important because we know there are some common bad actors, state-sponsored organizations that are seeking to interfere in elections around the world and interfere in democracy that are not even necessarily looking to persuade the world of a counter narrative but leave people in a position where they don't know what to believe. And I think if you'd had this debate a couple of years ago, it's inevitably seen as quite political, depending on your point of view or the arguments being raised. But I think what the COVID pandemic has demonstrated is just how dangerous disinformation can be in the context of public health, where, you know, treatments--bogus treatments and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are being promoted, and they can have a real impact on public health. So, it's increasingly important that we address these issues.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Are there specific steps that have been taken in the United Kingdom to address health disinformation that U.S. policymakers or the White House might be able to learn from?
MS. COLLINS: Well, we've been having this debate in the context of the proposed Online Safety Bill. And the report my joint committee produced in December, we feel that disinformation has a clear adverse impact on public health, should be something that the social media companies are held responsible for, that if they then see extensive networks of accounts that are disseminating content that, you know, would suggest a direct impact on--negative impact on public health, be that, say, you know, drinking bleach to cure--to cure COVID where someone could cause themselves severe harm, then we shouldn't say, well, this is a matter of free speech. This would clearly be a matter of considerable harm being inflicted on an individual, and therefore we should step in.
I think there are also concerns around the breadth of opinions that people are exposed to. If the algorithms of social media have noticed that someone has taken an interest in conspiracy theories online, and therefore if they seek public health information, they're increasingly likely to see mostly conspiracy theories rather than public health information. I think, you know, regulators should question the companies about that, the way they design their systems and the harm that could cause.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that point about algorithms, this has been a topic that's gotten more attention, both in the U.S. and in Europe, following the revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Have her revelations, the documents she brought forward about the inner workings of the social network influenced the work that you're doing, particularly on the Online Safety Bill?
MR. COLLINS: They're incredibly--the work she's done was incredibly helpful to the work the joint committee did on the Online Safety Bill. In fact, her first public appearance in Europe was giving evidence to the joint committee in Westminster. What she's demonstrated, I think, are two or three really important things. Firstly, that the companies do--or companies like Facebook do a huge amount of internal research on the impact of those services. But those research documents are not publicly available. So, Facebook researched the impact of Instagram on the--on the mental health and the levels of anxiety and depression amongst teenage girls who used the service, that highlighted amongst the research group, I think between 20 and 30 percent, depending on UK and U.S., were suffering heightened levels of anxiety and depression. Well, shouldn't we get to know that too? Shouldn't independent regulators get to understand these are the impacts that the service could have? And who gets to decide, then, what action is taken as a consequence? At the moment, these are only internal conversations that happen within a company like Facebook, and I think they should be challenged on the decisions they make. But we can only do that if we have access to the information that they have access to. That's why in the Online Safety Bill the idea of empowering an independent regulator, with the right to have access to data and information documents from within companies, means we can see what they can see and we can understand the impact some of their services are having. So, I think Frances Haugen’s evidence really brought that home.
The second thing I think she really emphasized when she gave evidence to the committee, and in her public remarks elsewhere, is the fact that, you know, we talk about the algorithm of a company like Facebook, and sometimes, you know, it's extraordinary to hear, you know, people like Nick Clegg say, well, you can have the algorithm or you can have no algorithm and just lot a spam, as if it's one thing or the other. Whereas when we talk about the algorithms, we're talking about thousands of data points. They can be changed. The data drawn into the decision-making process can be changed.
And what's more, Frances Haugen discussed, you know, the company does that all the time. It changes the settings. It experiments. And I thought was very interesting in looking at how Facebook sought to act against disinformation during the U.S. presidential election. But that that had a negative impact on engagement with the platform, and so they changed it. They changed the settings for commercial reasons to make sure engagement stayed high and that mitigating harmful disinformation was allowed, because it was good for engagement on the platform.
These sorts of decisions that the companies make, you know, can have a big consequence, on not just people's experience on those platforms, but in people's real world behaviors. And therefore, they need to be challenged and held to account on the decisions they make. But to do that, we need to understand that.
At the moment, be it through the work Frances Haugen has done, or a few years ago on things like Cambridge Analytica, we are reliant on whistleblowers coming forward. We are reliant on evidence given to congressional and parliamentary hearings, to give us insights--and indeed the work of investigative journalists--to give us insights into what's going on. These companies’ platforms affect our daily lives. And I think there needs to be far more scrutiny and accountability for the decisions they make.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: You talked about the need for an independent regulator to have access to the research that Facebook is doing internally, to be able to see these issues without, you know, necessarily having a whistleblower come forward. How do you envision that independent regulator working with other regulators abroad as countries from the United States to India are increasingly grappling with these problems?
MR. COLLINS: Well, I think the regulators sharing information insights together will be really important. It's important as well that we're not relying on self-declared transparency reports from the tech companies, which often even they themselves can't really explain what they need. When they talk about, you know, they take down 90 percent of--I think this is Facebook who say, and YouTube similarly, they remove around--90 percent of the content they remove that’s harmful content or hate speech, their own systems find rather than being reported to them. But that doesn't tell you how much hate speech there is. It just tells you that--of the quantity of hate speech, they removed 90 percent they find. It doesn't tell you whether that 90 percent is only a few percent.
The Frances Haugen documents showed that engineers at Facebook thought they were--that AI was only removing 4 or 5 percent of hate speech. So, if Facebook are removing 90 percent of 5 percent, it's not very impressive. But the companies can't discuss these things in public hearings. We questioned Antigone Davis, for example, from Facebook, about this in front of the joint committee. And she wasn't in a position where she could answer these questions. And given the role she plays as global head of safety for the company, that's somewhat distressing. And that's why it's important independent regulators can have access to this. They can share that information with other regulators around the world to improve policymaking, to improve maybe the--standardizing the powers regulatory bodies have. Indeed in data investigations, this is already starting to happen with the information commissioner in the UK, working with other information commissioner bodies or similar bodies elsewhere in the world. I think there's--I think our best hope to this is that actually with better regulation, better bodies enforcing it, better international cooperation, we will understand the challenges better and the enforcement that needs to be taken.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you mentioned the recent hearing you had with Antigone Davis. I just wanted to ask you, you know, we've seen here in the U.S. just a series of these CEO hearings, most recently with the CEO of--with the head, excuse me, of Instagram prior to the holidays. Do you think that these repeated hearings with tech company executives are moving the needle at all?
MR. COLLINS: Well, I think the hearings do two things. Firstly, there's the kind of hearing--the day of the hearing itself, and the question that it has some great revelation being borne out, has some new facts or information come forward. And hearings don't always do that. They sometimes do, but they don't always do that. But they are a process of holding tech execs to account and making them put on the record public statements for which they can be held to account in the future. And I think it's very interesting, looking again, going back to Washington, looking at the District of Columbia's Attorney General's case against Facebook, where he's probing for information around whether--about what Mark Zuckerberg knew when about Cambridge Analytical, how involved was he in the discussions, because when he gave evidence to the Congress, he suggested he knew very little about this until the allegations were public and reported in The Guardian and The New York Times. So, the companies are committing on the record information for which they will be held to account in the future, and that is very helpful.
And I think also it creates an environment where the companies can be challenged directly and repeatedly about what they know about certain issues, what steps they've taken to address certain issues. It's often staggering what they can't talk about. I mean, I--there was a report that we asked Antigone Davis about, which was a leaked report within Facebook that was reported very widely over, I think, a year or so ago that said--or 18 months ago actually--said that, of extremist content groups in Germany, actually, that I think Facebook did a study on--and they showed that 60 percent of people that joined Facebook groups that were showing extremist content did so at Facebook's recommendation. When I asked her about that, she said she wasn't cited on that report. So, I think it's important they are challenged in this way and then held to account for the answers that they give.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And what advice do you have for U.S. policymakers who have been holding hearings, debating these issues of tech policy increasingly? What advice do you have for them to actually move into the phase of legislating, of regulating these businesses?
MR. COLLINS: Well, I mean, there's some great work being done in Congress. I mentioned the work Senator Warner has been doing. I've spoken on numerous occasions with Congressman Cicilline about the--his antitrust committee report, which was, I think, one of the best pieces of work that's been done analyzing not just some of the safety issues around big tech, but some of the competition issues as well. As always in parliaments, unless you've got an overwhelming majority, you've got to build consensus around reform as well. One of the things I was most pleased about with our joint committee report and the Online Safety Bill was that it was unanimous. We had the entire committee signed up for all the findings and recommendations. And I think that makes it much easier to take measures forward, firstly, because there's a broad basis for support. But you're also showing to the tech companies that there is--you know, there is strong political support across the divide to get certain things done. I think that makes them take the process of legislation and the concept of regulation more seriously because they can see there's a--there's a political will to achieve it.
But--and I think--I think certainly in the UK what is what has driven that process, I think is--I think in parliament we’ve seen, I feel, like a swing away from the tech companies in terms of the sympathy people have towards them, and that's because increasingly politicians are themselves victims of abuse online. They've taken up cases on behalf of people they represent and been frustrated at how little tech companies will do to engage with those issues.
And they look at big events that happen, be it the role of social media in the buildup to 6th of January insurrection last year, or indeed in the UK, the huge amount of abuse received by Black players in the England football team after the European Championships final. And they said, well, why weren't the companies anticipating this? Why weren't they doing more? Why were they even actively promoting awareness of this abuse taking place? I think it's that--people's actually direct experience of trying to engage with the tech companies on this issue which is leading them to a place where they think the companies will never do this on their own satisfactorily. We need to create proper structures now to get this done and to regulate the companies effectively
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to ask you, too, one of the areas where we're seeing growing bipartisan consensus in the U.S. is on child safety. And I know the UK recently implemented the age-appropriate design code to protect children online. Now that you're a couple months into enforcement of that code, could you tell me, you know, what the biggest changes have been for children online and what U.S. policymakers can learn from it?
MR. COLLINS: Well, the interesting thing is the companies have changed their policies to comply with the code. And I think this is this is a really important point, because often people say, well, you know, can you make the companies change? Or is it even possible that they could change their systems to create a different experience for younger users? So, kind of the way you see, you know, for example, recommendation tools, things like auto-play being set as off by default, or you know, not gathering data around likes on Instagram for children. And there are a whole host of things that the company has been required to do to comply with the code, and they've done it. And then they started off from a position of saying it couldn't be done. And then it turned out it could be done. So, when we look at other safety measures that will be important for not just children, but all users, I think, if the companies are required to do it, they will--they will change. They will put measures in place.
The other question I get asked a lot, which is that these are big international businesses headquartered in the United States, you know, how will legislation being passed in the UK affect them. Well, the answer is they have to comply with domestic laws for people that are accessing their services and content on the services from that country, and they then do have to move to comply. And I think on the whole, when the law is changed, the companies do try and comply with it. But we need the regulators to make sure that we know they are actually doing it.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to shift back to disinformation. We've talked a little bit about some of the issues around elections, around the pandemic. But there's also been increasing media coverage of climate misinformation recently. Do you think policymakers need to do more to put pressure on the companies to address climate misinformation?
MR. COLLINS: I think we--I think we--I think it's right that this has been raised now, because we've seen with the very fast emergence of conspiracy networks like QAnon, and we've seen with the anti-vaccine conspiracy networks, that these can get up and running really fast. And because of the filter bubble experience of social media, it might be that in general, people see a mix of opinions, but quite large segments see a very narrow field of content, and that once you start engaging with disinformation around climate change, you know, you will only see more of it. So, I think that's why having an independent regulator means you can--you can challenge the companies on that, you can ask for data and reports based on the experience of people in different audience segments on the company and within company services and what are they seeing, are they seeing a preponderance of climate change disinformation, and expose that and seek to expose information about that, challenge the companies and what their policies are in that area.
Of course, there is legitimate public debates around policy questions, and it's not simply the role of regulators or all platforms to turn off elements of that debate or cancel elements of that debate. But I think the company should be challenged on it. And certainly, if there were incidents of, you know, that, those disinformation campaigns likely to lead to credible threats of harm to citizens, then that would be a very serious matter where you'd expect the regulators to intervene. But I think--I think what the regulators can do is expose whether people are being given a plurality of opinions, people are being given information that will help them challenge climate change disinformation, particularly people for whom that is the majority of their experience on that issue.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And just looking broadly at disinformation online, talking about climate disinformation, health misinformation, political information--political disinformation, what are the stakes if as a global society we can't contain this disinformation threat?
MR. COLLINS: Well, [unclear] elections in particular, because one of the--one of the failures here is a failure to translate existing laws and safeguards that we put in place to protect society, to protect democracy into the online world. So, you know, if you take the Russians buying ads to target Americans in a presidential election, that's already an offense in American election law, to use foreign money to buy ads to target Americans. The issue here was that there was no enforcement of it. And Facebook was under no obligation to identify that threat or report that it was happening.
Now, if that had been another media, and then that would have been the case. If that was a bank looking at suspicious financial transactions, it would be required to report that, or it could lose its banking license. So, there's a failure of regulation to keep up with technology and a failure to require standards of the tech companies that we required elsewhere. I think we need to look at--when we look at sort of disinformation around elections, particularly foreign interference, look at how we translate existing offenses in law into the online environment. And that's why I think the Online Safety Bill is trying to do that in the UK.
And I think, you know, as an outsider looking into the what's happened, the debate in America, I would think things like that would be--would represent a strong case for reform of Section 230 to say where we've got clear--we've already determined that these are offenses, and we've got those offenses in place for good reason, to protect the integrity of our elections from foreign interference. What do we do to make sure that those can be enforced against the tech companies if they are failing to check whether someone's buying an ad in rubles?
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for the discussion today, and we'll have to leave things there. Damian Collins, thank you so much for joining us today at Post Live. It was a fascinating discussion.
MR. COLLINS: Thank you so much.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And thank you for tuning in. And to check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and find out more about all of our upcoming programs. I’m Cat Zakrzewski, and thank you for joining us at Washington Post Live. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Lindsey Vonn, Author, “Rise: My Story”
MR. CAPEHART: Good afternoon. I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live. Lindsey Vonn is the most decorated female skier in history. And we’ve been there for it all--for Olympic victories, her injuries, and the challenges they posed for her, all while enduring the pressure of being a public person. Now the Minnesota native writes about it all in her new book, “Rise: My Story,” in which she also reveals her battle with depression. Joining me now is legendary skier, three-time Olympic medalist, and now author, Lindsey Vonn. Welcome to Washington Post Live.
MS. VONN: Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
MR. CAPEHART: Sure. So why was now the right time to tell your story?
MS. VONN: Well, I mean, I think it made sense, you know, after my skiing career, you know, to just kind of reflect on my life thus far, my journey, you know, all the ups and downs that I’ve faced. I think that, you know, my injuries and my adversities taught me a lot about my life, and I wanted to share those stories. And also, I think, hopefully, you know, down the road when I have kids, have created something that they can look back on and read about as well.
MR. CAPEHART: So, you write about how you were just two and a half years old when your father put you on skis, and you've loved it ever since. But what led to the drive you developed to become an Olympian, to become the best in the world?
MS. VONN: I've always been very driven. I mean, I don't know really what was in me that made me believe so strongly that I was going to be an Olympic champion. But I mean, when I was nine years old, I met Picabo Street at an autograph signing in a ski shop in Minnesota, and ever since then, I told my dad I want to be an Olympic champion. And we created a 10-year plan. He didn't bat an eye. He just hunkered down, and we found a way to get there.
MR. CAPEHART: Wait, because I'm glad you brought--you brought up Picabo Street, because that was the next question I was going to ask you, about your meeting her when you were nine years old. What was it about that encounter that lit the fire under you?
MS. VONN: It was her personality and--the combination of her personality and the fact that I've never actually seen a champion like her in person. You know, skiing wasn't very prevalent on television, then. I mean, it kind of is now but it definitely wasn't then. And so I didn't really have anyone to look up to in that way. And when I met her and I saw, you know, her Olympic medal, I thought this is--this is exactly what I want to be. You know, I never thought that skiing could be a career. And she really opened my eyes to that and really drove me to my ultimate goal, which is being an Olympic champion.
MR. CAPEHART: I think I saw an interview that she was giving where she said--she talked about the meeting that you had, and I believe she said she didn't think she played any real role in lighting the fire under you, if only to sort of reveal to you what was already inside you. Do you buy that?
MS. VONN: I mean, I kind of do. You know, I think a lot of people have a lot of aspirations. They have, you know, talent and drive. But unless they see someone in front of them that's doing something similar, they don't really realize their potential. So, to a degree, I think she just opened my eyes to make me realize what was already in front of me. But at the same token, had I not met her, I don't know if the drive would have been as strong at that--at that age, at such a young age.
MR. CAPEHART: No, you're absolutely right. When you are at that young age, seeing someone who looks like you or taps into something that you share at that age can be--can mean everything.
So, Lindsey, you are the most successful female skier--ski racer of all time with 80--I'm going to just read to make sure I get the numbers right--82 career World Cup victories. You also won three Olympic medals, including the downhill at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. Of all those victories, which of your victories means the most to you?
MS. VONN: I think winning the Olympics in Vancouver was the most meaningful simply because, you know, as you've just talked about, you know, I had dreamed about it since I was a kid. You know, my family had given up so much. You know, we moved from Minnesota to Colorado for my skiing career. I'm, I'm the oldest of five siblings, and so it was no small feat for us to get to that point. And so I felt like when I won the Olympics, it was really a culmination of all of those sacrifices coming together, and it was a relief. It was a joy. I cried. I laughed. It was really one of the best moments in my career, I'd say for sure.
MR. CAPEHART: I want to go back to something you said earlier on when you were talking about your dad putting you on the skis at two and a half years old and then after meeting Picabo Street, that your dad put together a 10-year plan. Was the Olympics part of that 10--part of that 10-year plan?
MS. VONN: Yeah, that was the goal. You know, we wanted to make a plan that would--that would get us to the Salt Lake Olympics. And, you know, him being a racer himself, he knew exactly what we had to do. You know, I had to start racing internationally. I had to start training more GS, super-G, downhill. You know, I had to really expand my repertoire. I had to, again, travel abroad and be around other racers that were dominating at my age. So, he really was the orchestrator behind, you know, the tactics and getting to where we wanted to go. And I really have to credit him for that. And I mean, for someone to believe in a 9-year-old with a dream like that is pretty, pretty amazing.
MR. CAPEHART: Right. And you know, you also mentioned sacrifices. It does take a lot of sacrifice to get to where you are. And I'm just wondering, as a teenager, you dedicated your life to become an Olympian, giving up all the things that regular teenagers prize--social life with other teens, friends going out, all these things that teens take for granted. If you had to do it again, would you do it again?
MS. VONN: Absolutely, without question. I mean, did I give up a lot? Yes. And I think at the time, it was--it was often difficult, you know, to see my friends going and doing other things that were--seemed a lot more appealing. But, you know, I learned so many lessons, being able to travel. I started traveling internationally by myself when I was nine years old. And while that seems, you know, weird to think about now, it seemed perfectly normal at the time and taught me so many lessons about life that I just would never have learned otherwise. And, you know, I think it was absolutely worth it.
MR. CAPEHART: So, despite the challenges you faced, you proved your critics wrong. You did make the 2002 Olympic team. But you write about how coaches continued to underestimate your abilities. Does the hurt and frustration ever go away over those who doubted you?
MS. VONN: I remember very specifically every time someone said I couldn't do something. So, you know, I think I've mitigated the pain by proving them wrong and succeeding, despite what they said. But especially, you know, when I was--when I was 16-17 years old, you know, overhearing my coaches saying that, you know, I wasn't going to make the team and, you know, they should put all of their eggs in the other athletes’ basket, and you know, we'll see if I ever make anything of myself, that was really hard to hear. But, you know, as I said, I definitely remember those words. They fueled me, and many critics over the course of my career fueled me as well. So, I think it worked out in the end.
MR. CAPEHART: When you're talking about the favoring other people over you, are you talking about Julia Mancuso being one of those people?
MS. VONN: Yeah, they specifically, you know, really thought that she was the next golden child. And she was--she's exceptionally talented. I mean, she's won many Olympic medals. So, you know, to their credit, they were absolutely right. But they also completely wrote me off. And you know, that was--that was--that was hard. You know, as a teenager, you really want your coaches to believe as much in you as you believe in your path. And I just didn't feel like I had that, and especially after overhearing, I knew I didn't have that.
MR. CAPEHART: So then what was that the trigger that led to the start of your battle with depression?
MS. VONN: No, I didn't deal with depression till later in my career. After the Olympics, I was--I had moved out to Park City, Utah, and I was, you know, living with roommates and away from my family, and there was a lot going on in my family life. And it just was a very isolating time. And I think that, you know, it may be a combination of the fact that the coaches didn't believe in me, but also because they demoted me. I went from having the best Olympic result on the women's side to going back down to lower-level races in Europe and, you know, just really not feeling like all of the sacrifices I had made were worth anything. So yeah, I guess potentially that had something to do with it. But I think mainly the isolation and not having anyone to lean on kind of triggered that at that moment.
MR. CAPEHART: When did you--when did you come to understand that that you were dealing with depression? Were you 16? Were your older than 16? And then what did you do? What did you do about it once you realized it?
MS. VONN: I was about 17-18. And I was living with my roommates. And honestly, I wouldn't have really understood what it was if my roommate hadn't been going through a similar situation, and he actually went to a doctor and was put on medication for the same thing. And he noticed what I was going through. You know, I became very reclusive. I didn't want to go see any of my friends. I wasn't getting out of bed. And I knew that something was wrong when I stopped wanting to go to the gym. You know, I've always been--I've always prided myself on my work ethic, and I just had no desire whatsoever to go.
And so I talked to him, and I actually went to the doctor more to rule out depression than anything else. But when I got there, you know, that was definitely not the case. And thankfully, I got, you know, some guidance. I learned a lot about depression in that moment. And I was given medication, and it definitely helped get me through those moments and helped me through the rest of my career, to be honest.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, you also suffered significant--a significant list of major injuries, including multiple knee surgeries, a concussion, season-ending ACL sprain. You’ve spoken about barely being able to get out of bed some days during your ski career. Talk about those dark days.
MS. VONN: Yeah, I mean, I kind of stopped counting my injuries after my major surgeries. But you know, I think it was during my--during my second ACL surgery, I was out back-to-back seasons. I had, you know, two ACLs, and within an eight-month span. I was watching the Olympics at home from my couch on crutches, and I just really lost motivation. You know, I was questioning what I was doing and why I was doing it. You know, I'd worked so hard to get back to the Olympics, and then I blew my knee out within the first few months of training, right before the Games. And it was a really difficult time for me. But I was very lucky that I had a good support system, my sisters, my physical therapist, Lindsay Winninger. You know, she ripped the covers off me in bed, oftentimes, and dragged me out and got me in the gym. And you know, once I kind of got past a certain point of the rehab, I felt like I was making progress, and that was the positivity that I that I needed to kind of really get things going. But it was--it was a very challenging time.
MR. CAPEHART: So how did you overcome depression? Is it something that you actually can--you can overcome?
MS. VONN: I don't know if the word “overcome” really fits into the--into depression. I think it's something that, you know, there's obviously situational depression, and then I think, you know, there's obviously more clinical depression. But, you know, for me, it's just something--it's more about taking care of my mental health as a whole. I don't really look at it, as, you know, oh, I have depression. I think about it as I need to take care of myself every day. And so I journal and I have a therapist, Dr. Mondo, and you know, I make an effort to make sure that I'm in a good place, you know, that I'm not going down any dark holes that I'm not--that I that I shouldn't be. But I feel really great right now, you know? I've really taken some time to reflect after my career and, you know, really, really focused on my mental health in this time, and I feel like I'm in a great place. So, I'm lucky.
MR. CAPEHART: In fact, you set up a system. You talked to--you mentioned one of the things in there, and that was journaling, but--and tell me if I'm wrong, but you also have building a support system around you, finding little joys every day, your self-described unconventional style of preparation--and I'm going to come back to that in a second--naps, which I'm fully 100 percent behind naps, and then a love of your sport. But let's go back to this self--your unconventional style of preparation. What is that?
MS. VONN: Like for mental health and for skiing?
MR. CAPEHART: Yeah, I just have the shorthand there. So, talk about both
MS. VONN: Well, I mean, I definitely when I was preparing for my ski races was a bit odd. You know, I always was like, very, maybe you call OCD, but I was--I had my--everything color coordinated. I laid everything out on the sofa beforehand. I was, like, very meticulous. I also, you know, took meticulous notes. And there's certain things that I'm, I don't know, a little bit odd about but I felt like over the course of my life that served me very well. And you know, I kind of bring that into my journaling, too. You know, I feel like it's really important to write about the good times. You know, I think often we focus on the bad times. And so when you look back in your journal, you don't want to only have bad times written down. You know, I like to go back and reflect on things that really made me happy. And I think, you know, that in turn, you know, brings back those memories which brightens my day.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, you retired from skiing in 2019. And you write the primary factor that led you to your retirement was the fact that your body simply gave out. And prior to your retirement, you write, I had reached a point where it was like I was skiing on one leg. How hard was it mentally and physically to grind through those injuries before you realized you needed to retire?
MS. VONN: That last season was really tough. I mean, I had three surgeries within a six- or seven-month span during the summer. And you know, by the end, I was seeing with two knee braces. I had no LCL. I had a bone bruise in my other knee, you know, because I was--I have no cartilage on my right knee and bone on bone. So it was--I was a mess. And, you know, I felt the weight of my last race really heavily on my shoulders, because I wanted so badly to finish my career on a high. But my second to last race, I actually crashed, and I got a black eye, and it derailed me a bit. So, I felt very lucky that I was able to pull through mentally and physically for that last and final race. And, you know, to come away with Bronze Medal was definitely more than I could have hoped for. You know, it was--that last season was definitely the opposite of what I had hoped for, but I made something of it nonetheless.
MR. CAPEHART: You weren't--after you retired, you weren't able to watch skiing on television at all, could you?
MS. VONN: No, the first year was really hard. You know, I really--I watched a couple just because I really wanted to support my teammates, but it was very hard. You know, I had a bit of resentment because I was envious. You know, I wanted--I wanted to still be there. You know, I didn't want to physically be in the position that I was in. And you know, it just--I was in a bad spot. So, after a while and after about a year and kind of through the pandemic, I really was able to reflect and accept the position that I was in. You know, I think when you change careers, especially when, you know, there's no option to go back, it's a very tough transition. So, I took that time during COVID to really reflect, and now I'm in a great place. I can watch--I can watch races as much as I want and not feel as bad. I mean, of course I'm definitely still a little bit jealous. I think I always will be. But I can watch my teammates and be exceptionally happy for them.
MR. CAPEHART: Right. You know, during your skiing career you were also in the spotlight for three years when you dated golf superstar Tiger Woods. Did being in a high-profile relationship have any impact in your--in your battle with your mental health?
MS. VONN: No, you know, that was--that was a totally separate thing. And, you know, I felt like, you know, as I talked about my book, I didn't talk about my relationships because I--you know, I wanted to share my--the lessons that I've learned and what I've learned about myself. It's all about, you know, my perspective and my story. And you know, I don't think that had any factor in my mental health at all.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, in 2021, last year, several high-profile athletes spoke out about their struggles with mental health. Two of them include, of course, tennis star Naomi Osaka, and Olympic Gold Medalist Simone Biles. Do you consider these women trailblazers when it comes to helping others deal with their own mental health struggles?
MS. VONN: I definitely think that, you know, what they did in their respective sports was incredible, and I have to thank them so much because they really brought the conversation to a global scale that we haven't seen before. But there have been many other athletes that have spoken about it in the past--you know, Michael Phelps especially, Kevin Love. But, you know, the fact that Simone talked about it and pulled out of her competition in the Olympics really shed light on it in a way that hasn't been done before. So, I really applaud her for the courage to do that.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, you write about how you want to be a mentor off the slopes for the next generation of skiers. And in fact, you have mentored skiers Breezy Johnson, Bella Wright, other members of the U.S. Women's Team, and also Italian skier Sofia Goggia. What is the best advice you've been able to give them?
MS. VONN: It's interesting. I mean, everyone kind of asked me different questions. I think it depends on the athlete. But, you know, I really enjoy encouraging them, you know. And you know, Breezy’s always watching my videos from my past races, and I love just talking to her about it and, you know, kind of sharing my experience and trying to help her as much as I can in her experience. So, I don't know. For me, it's a very--it's just very humbling, and it really makes me feel like I'm still a part of the sport in some small way. And I really, really want to see all of them succeed.
MR. CAPEHART: You know what, I totally forgot we had audience questions, Lindsey. So, I'm going to--my bad. Sylvia from Virginia has this question. "How did the enormous commitment to your sport from an early age impact your life in other areas, such as friendships, academics, non-athletic passions?"
MS. VONN: Great question. I mean, it definitely took a toll on other areas of my life. You know, I think, to achieve success in anything, you have to make sacrifices. And so I didn't have many friends. I had maybe two or three, and I still have those two or three today. You know, we're very close. But I didn't really have much of a social life. I was a pretty big nerd. I had braces and a perm, and you know, bangs all at the same time. So that didn't help my cause. And you know--you know, studying while I was racing was difficult as well. I mean, I was in my first Olympics when I was 17, and there wasn't a lot of time for studying because I was always traveling. So, it was hard to manage. But I figured it out. You know, I definitely figured it out. And, again, I think all of those sacrifices were well worth it.
MR. CAPEHART: Let's talk about another skier, American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin. She won a Gold Medal in 2014 and 2018. Next month, the Olympics, how do you think she's going to do?
MS. VONN: I think she's going to amazingly well. I mean, she’s had such a great season so far. I think she's--they just set up the first run of the night race in Schladming, and she's in fifth place. So, you know, I really think she's going to medal in multiple disciplines. I know she's going to try to race in all five. So, I'm excited to watch her. I think that would be--you know, if she could medal in all five, that would be an incredible feat for alpine skiing.
MR. CAPEHART: We're running out of time, but I got to squeeze in two more--two more questions for you. You represent Under Armour, Rolex, Land Rover. You have a new makeup line that you're designing. What do you enjoy the most during your post-skiing career?
MS. VONN: I mean, I love all of it. I mean, definitely I think I enjoy driving my Range Rover fast, because I don't have as much adrenaline in my life anymore. But I love working with all of my sponsors and my businesses, and I'm in venture capital now and investing. And I just--I love the challenge of learning and going through new experiences. So, there's been so many great opportunities. I feel very lucky to be in this spot, and the future is very exciting.
MR. CAPEHART: You're also--you announced a partnership with Tempo, which is an at-home personal training company. You're going to be doing training programs as well?
MS. VONN: Yeah, I am. I already did a couple of programs, and you can--you can get it already on the Tempo app and on the Move and on the Studio. But I love it. I mean, I've really searched through COVID trying to find a way to work out at home in a way that I enjoy it, and Tempo was really the best thing I've found. And I really thoroughly enjoy it, which is saying a lot for me because I really don't like classes. I'm not one of those people. But I'm really excited to be with Tempo and to share with the world fitness because it's been such a huge part of my life.
MR. CAPEHART: You say you don't like classes meaning you don't like going into somebody's gym or studio with a bunch of other people and being yelled at by somebody?
MS. VONN: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s just not for me. It’s not for me. Nope.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, with exercise it’s just me, myself--me, myself, and I. We've got--Lindsey, we've got 90 seconds left. And I know I got into a little bit of your business when I asked about Tiger Woods, but I'm going to end by asking a little bit more about some of your business because at one point you were engaged to NHL hockey star P. K. Subban, but then you broke that engagement off. And at last check, you were dating the actor Diego Osorio. You two still together?
MS. VONN: I mean, I think that, you know, for me, the reason why I didn't talk about it in my book is because I just don't feel like it's a relevant conversation. You know, I--my personal life has been very public in the past. And I think, for me moving forward, it's important to keep that line of separation and then try you know, to keep things like that as private as I can.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, I got to respect that answer. You know, that is--that is the perfect answer. And on that note, we're going to end it there. Skiing great and now author Lindsey Vonn, thank you very, very much for coming to Washington Post Live.
MS. VONN: Thank you.
MR. CAPEHART: And as always, thank you for tuning in. To check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com to see all the information and register. Once again, I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Thank you for watching Washington Post Live. | null | null | null | null | null |
A local politician, Jon Reyes from Manitoba, was met with a barrage of criticism over the weekend after sharing a photo on social media of his wife, Cynthia, a registered nurse shoveling snow in their driveway after a work shift.
Cynthia Reyes’s statement appears to have resonated with some social media users, with one apologizing and thanking her for her work as an essential worker, and another acknowledging: “It’s hard to resist when a meme is whipping around twitter, so that’s what I’ll take from this: retweet less when I don’t know the facts.”
The couple, who have two children and a dog, are not giving media interviews but in an emailed statement to The Washington Post, politician Reyes said he was happy that his wife was “getting the worldwide recognition she deserves.”
“My wife is amazing, both at home and at work. I’m eternally grateful for her and everything she does. I love her very much,” he said. “It serves as a reminder to everyone — especially me today — that we can never do enough to show our gratitude to healthcare workers.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Congress should stop second-guessing states
The Capitol dome as snow falls on Jan. 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
I agree with the Jan. 6 editorial “A way to protect democracy” that the Electoral Count Act needs modifying. But not altogether the way the editorial envisioned.
Congress should get out of the business of second-guessing state-cast votes, yes. But wouldn’t it be much more difficult to undermine an electoral vote system predicated on proportionality rather than winner-take-all? In a proportional distribution of electoral votes, no candidate would win all of the electoral votes in a state. In 2016, then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would have had to split Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and Ms. Clinton wouldn’t have walked away with all of California and New York.
Not only would this allow for an electoral vote that hewed more closely to the popular vote, but it would also inspire candidates to stump in all 50 states to maximize their take. It would benefit states such as Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the Dakotas, because they would no longer be overlooked or ignored by candidates. Such a proportional system would make the math of winning an election less certain and demand true national campaigns, not just those targeted toward traditional red or blue strongholds.
Rochelle S. Dornatt, Toms Brook, Va. | null | null | null | null | null |
Once here, they travel from state to state carrying out scores of burglaries, jewelry heists and other crimes, pilfering tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods each year, the FBI estimates. Experts said the groups often operate with impunity because they have found a kind of criminal sweet spot. | null | null | null | null | null |
A deputy sheriff in North Carolina is accused of fatally shooting a men he says jumped on his truck. A witness says the man was crossing the street. The truck and the body show no signs of impact, investigators said.
Pandora Harrington, right, cries as she holds a sign with an image of Jason Walker during a demonstration in front of the Fayetteville Police Department on Sunday. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP)
“He jumped on the car and started scraping,” Hash said, adding that he had some of his family in the vehicle with him.
There are no witnesses to confirm whether Walker was struck by Hash’s car, she said.
Hawkins said no shots went through the windshield and that there were no vehicle marks on Walker’s body. The gun Hash used was not his service weapon, she said.
At the request of Cumberland County District Attorney William West, the case has been assigned to the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, an independent prosecutorial agency with statewide jurisdiction, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, he said at a Sunday news conference.
Hawkins said that she decided early on that it would be best for the agency to get involved.
“The documentation of the black box is crucial,” she said. “They review of the vehicle is crucial to say, ‘Did this happen?’ So not depending on solely a statement is crucial.”
“We have reason to believe that this was a case of ‘shoot first, ask later,’ a philosophy seen all too often within law enforcement,” Crump said in a Tuesday statement. “We look to the NC SBI for a swift and transparent investigation so that we can get justice for Jason and his loved ones.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Penn's Lia Thomas competes during a swim meet against Dartmouth and Yale at Sheerr Pool in Philadelphia on Saturday. (Kylie Cooper)
The 22-year-old zipped past her competitors from Yale and Dartmouth and was again first to the wall. It looked effortless, providing more proof that she’s among the best female college swimmers in the country — and more evidence that her detractors will use to say she doesn’t belong in the pool.
Thomas has shattered school records and has posted the fastest times of any female college swimmer in two events this season. She’ll probably be a favorite at the NCAA championships in March, even as people inside and outside the sport debate her place on the pool deck.
Classifying transgender athletes has amounted to a delicate balancing act for officials in several sports, a tug-of-war of sorts between inclusivity and fairness. The NCAA’s transgender athlete policy allows transgender women to compete in women’s events after completing a full year of testosterone suppression treatment. Thomas has been undergoing treatment for the past 2½ years and says it has depleted her of the strength and speed she had when competing for the men’s team.
Since she obliterated two school records and posted nation-leading times at a meet last month, Thomas has garnered attention from across the swimming community and right-wing media. Credentialed media at Saturday’s meet included Fox News, Newsweek, the Daily Mail and ESPN. Tennis icons Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert have publicly said Thomas has no business competing in women’s swimming, as has Olympian Erika Brown, who said last month it’s “time to start standing up for women’s sports.”
“A few years of testosterone blockers and estrogen doesn’t change the fact that she will have more powerful muscles, a larger heart and greater lung capacity [than] a biological woman,” Brown, who won two relay medals at the Tokyo Games last summer, wrote in an Instagram story post.
“It was a very awkward experience of basically being a woman competing in a men’s meet,” she said.
Her fastest 200-yard freestyle time before this year was 1 minute 39.31 seconds. This season, she posted a 1:41.93, a 2.6 percent drop. That’s the fastest time by any female college swimmer this year, 0.64 seconds faster than Olympian Torri Huske. Thomas also has posted the nation’s best 500-yard freestyle time this season at 4:34.06, nearly three seconds faster than Olympian Brooke Forde.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Duke University and Marquette University recently studied Thomas’s times from before and after she transitioned. They found her recent times were about 5 percent slower across all distances, according to an article they published. The gender gap between elite college and international swimmers is 10 to 15 percent for shorter distances and 7 to 10 percent for longer ones, they wrote.
The NCAA did not respond to a request for comment last week, but in a video posted in April, LaGwyn Durden, the organization’s director of sports medicine, said this is a complex issue and noted the science is far from definitive.
Others dismiss the idea that Thomas unfairly benefits from biological advantages. Before transitioning, she consulted with Schuyler Bailar, a former Harvard athlete and the first openly trans swimmer to compete in Division I. Bailar says biodiversity is an innate part of sports and many great athletes benefit from certain biological or genetic gifts.
Parents say several Penn swimmers have shared their concerns with the coaches but the school has continuously voiced its support for Thomas.
No coaches or swimmers were made available to reporters at Saturday’s meet. Thomas said on the podcast last month that her team has been nothing but supportive this season and she tries to avoid any chatter from outside the Penn program.
“I don’t engage with it,” she says. “It’s not healthy for me to read it or engage with it at all.”
Inside the building, the bleachers were only half-full as coronavirus restrictions closed the meet to all but select family members and supporters. The swimmers themselves provided the energy, circling the pool and cheering on teammates.
Though Thomas’s times Saturday were well off her season-best marks, they probably won’t quiet any dissent.
While she says transgender women who’ve never experienced male puberty should be permitted to compete against women, Hogshead-Maker says it’s possible there are enough transgender athletes in some sports to merit a wholly new competitive category.
Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, noted that sports organizations have always grappled with complicated classifications, from disabled athletes to competitors switching nationalities. He noted that international soccer players are “cap-tied” and at the elite level cannot compete for one country and then change nationalities and compete for another.
“This would make sense for gender as well,” he said. “If an athlete competes in men/women categories, [he or she] would no longer be eligible to change categories.
“Just like in Paralympic classification, science does not make these decisions for us, but science can certainly help to inform our decisions,” Pielke added. “Ultimately, classification decisions reflect our values, who we are and what we want sport and the society of which it is a part to be.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“If we look at the Miami Dolphins ... there are several coaches that had a two- to three-year tenure when they were there,” Beane said. “So there were a lot of coaches prior to Coach Flores that were not there longer than three years. So I guess with each club, each club is different. Each owner is different. Each culture is different. And each philosophy of how a club should be run and what the future holds and how long you have to deliver is different. | null | null | null | null | null |
In a colorful order, United States District Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that an amended complaint the agency filed in August offered “more robust and detailed” evidence to suggest Facebook has an alleged monopoly. In the filing, the FTC argued that Facebook is in a class of its own and shouldn’t be compared to other social apps such as TikTok.
First filed under a Republican-led FTC in 2020, the Facebook antitrust suit is widely viewed as a bellwether of Washington’s ability to rein in Silicon Valley, following years of a hands-off approach to tech regulation.
The suit is symbolic of a broader political movement aimed at increasing antitrust enforcement against tech giants. But competition suits against tech giants face major hurdles in the U.S. court system, which for years has held a relatively narrow view of harm, largely focusing on whether consumers face higher prices because of corporate behavior.
Facebook and Instagram are free of charge to consumers and monetized through advertising revenue. However the FTC argues that Facebook’s dominance has led to a lack of innovation, decreased privacy protections and general decline in choice for services that has harmed consumers.
While the judge’s decision acknowledges the agency has overcome some of the initial shortcomings of the initial suit, Boasberg signaled it may be challenging for the FTC to ultimately prove Facebook is a monopoly. It’s “anyone’s guess” whether the agency would prevail, he wrote.
The revised complaint included enough facts to “plausibly establish” that Facebook has a monopoly in personal social networking, referring to services that allow people to maintain relationships with family and friends online, Boasberg said. Boasberg said the “Achilles’ heel” of the FTC’s first complaint was that it was devoid of data supporting its claim that “no other social network of comprable scale exists in the United States.” But the revised complaint included data from the analytics firm ComScore, and argued that Facebook’s share of daily active users of apps providing personal social networking in the United States has exceeded 70 percent since 2016.
It also overcame the deficiencies of the first complaint by “adequately” alleging that barriers to entry protected that dominance, and by demonstrating that Facebook maintained its monopoly power through “anticompetitive conduct — specifically, the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp,” Boasberg wrote.
However in one bright spot for Facebook, Boasberg rejected the agency’s argument that Facebook illegally cut off companies it viewed as growing rivals from accessing data from its platform. Boasberg said that those arguments would not proceed because Facebook changed its interoperability policies in 2018.
The decision is a blow to Facebook, which sought a repeat of its early court victory by appealing the FTC’s new complaint. The company argued in October that the suit had “no valid factual basis.”
“We’re confident the evidence will reveal the fundamental weakness of the claims,” said Chris Sgro, a spokesman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company. "Our investments in Instagram and WhatsApp transformed them into what they are today. They have been good for competition, and good for the people and businesses that choose to use our products.”
Boasberg also rejected the company’s argument that Lina Khan, the Democratic FTC chair who voted along party lines to refile the complaint against the social network, should be recused due to her past work and academic writing. The analysis could have implications beyond the Facebook case, as Amazon has also sought Khan’s recusal from antitrust matters. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
He also noted that Khan “was presumably chosen to lead the FTC in no small part because of her published views.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Former transportation secretary Gregory Slater left the state to run a Florida tolling authority
Ports, 63, a longtime state transportation official, assumes the top job as the Maryland Department of Transportation works to revive the stalled Purple Line’s light-rail construction and pursue private firms to build express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270.
As executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority since 2019, Ports has overseen the state’s toll facilities and E-ZPass system. He also has served as deputy state transportation secretary, deputy administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and chief executive of Harford County’s transit system, according to MDOT.
From 1991 to 2003, he served as a Republican representative to the state House of Delegates from the Baltimore area, according to his state résumé.
Slater, who joined MDOT in 1999 and also served as state highway administrator, was known for his calm demeanor and ability to placate state lawmakers and local officials, even making project opponents feel heard. He often responded to testy questions on controversial projects with, “We’ll look into that and get right back to you.”
An MDOT spokeswoman said Slater declined an interview request. In a news release from the Tampa-area tolling authority, Slater cited the authority’s financial strength, “community involvement” and what he called its international reputation for pursuing technology to support electric and autonomous vehicles. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several models show the possibility of a storm Sunday into Monday
The first 10 days of January produced nearly 10 inches of snow in Washington, and the weather pattern for the next two weeks may be promising for more. The next chance of snow forecasters are watching is Sunday into Monday.
Computer models show the possibility of another storm coming up from the south. The big question is whether the storm, as it tracks toward the Carolinas, comes up the East Coast and socks us with heavy precipitation or turns out to sea, leaving us mostly dry.
If the storm comes up the coast, it could be a substantial snow producer, although there’s also some chance it draws in enough warm air for a wintry mix or even cold rain.
It will take at least a couple more days to have a good idea what scenario is most likely.
The primary American (GFS) model simulation shows a major storm that produces heavy snowfall in the region; however, the storm becomes so intense it draws in some milder air off the Atlantic Ocean and precipitation flips to rain for a time along and east of Interstate 95 before it changes back to snow. The modeling system has 29 alternative simulations, about half of which show significant snow, while the other half suggest the storm would mostly miss to the south and east. It gives the District about a 50 percent chance of at least one inch, 40 to 50 percent chance of at least three inches and 30 percent chance of at least six inches. It even shows a 10 to 15 percent chance of a foot.
The Canadian modeling system also suggests that a significant storm system could take a track favorable for snow in the region. Its group of simulations indicates about a 60 percent chance of at least an inch, 55 percent chance of at least three inches, and 33 percent chance of six inches or more. Like the American modeling system, it also gives a 10 to 15 percent probability of at least 12 inches.
The European model is on board with the idea of a major storm as well and, like the American, it suggests that it could draw in enough mild air for snow to change to a cold rain or wintry mix, especially from Fairfax and Montgomery counties eastward. Its solution would plaster the Interstate 81 corridor with heavy snow. Its group of 50 simulations indicate about a 40 percent chance of at least one inch of snow, 25 percent chance of three inches and 15 percent chance of six inches.
The forecast is complicated for several reasons. The models need to resolve three different features to lock into the correct forecast: (1) the low-pressure system tracking through the Southeast toward the Carolinas that could be our snowmaker; (2) a zone of low pressure in northeast Canada; and, (3) a third zone of low pressure over north-central Canada that will be digging southeastward. The strength and position of any one of these three systems could change the forecast.
The jet stream will be displaced well to the north over western North America, poking into Alaska, before diving southeast over the eastern United States. This jet stream configuration suggests that storm systems will generally track to our south instead of passing to the north like they typically do during La Niña winters. The models even suggest cross-polar flow will develop, which would tend to aid in the development of high-pressure systems over Canada that can supply cold air when storms approach our region. But sometimes the high-pressure zones can push the storm track too far south, keeping us dry.
High temperatures on most days in the next two weeks are projected to be about 35 to 40.
A winter storm dumped several inches of snow across the D.C. region on Jan. 3. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post) | null | null | null | null | null |
Aymara Indigenous women hold a sign that reads in Spanish “We demand respect for our rights and life,” during a protest against a government decree requiring proof of vaccination amid the COVID-19 pandemic in La Paz, Bolivia, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. The measure, which goes into effect on Jan. 26, will affect people’s ability to enter establishments and use public transportation. (AP Photo/Juan Karita) | null | null | null | null | null |
“If we look at the Miami Dolphins … there are several coaches that had a two- to three-year tenure when they were there,” Beane said. “So there were a lot of coaches prior to Coach Flores that were not there longer than three years. So I guess with each club, each club is different. Each owner is different. Each culture is different. And each philosophy of how a club should be run and what the future holds and how long you have to deliver is different. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine, members of the surgical team perform the transplant of a pig heart into patient David Bennett in Baltimore on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. On Monday, Jan. 10, 2022 the hospital said that he’s doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery. (Mark Teske/University of Maryland School of Medicine via AP) (Uncredited/University of Maryland School of Medicine) | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. Mint sends out first quarters honoring poet Maya Angelou
New quarters honoring other women, including Sally Ride and Wilma Mankiller, will appear later this year.
Poet Maya Angelou, pictured in 2008, is honored on the face of a new quarter, which the U.S. Mint began shipping Monday. The coin is the first of 20 American Women Quarters. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
The United States Mint said Monday that it has begun shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou, the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program.
Angelou, an author, poet and civil rights activist, rose to prominence with the publication of her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86, was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 by President Barack Obama.
The mint’s program will issue 20 quarters during the next four years honoring women and their achievements in shaping the nation’s history.
Additional honorees in 2022 include physicist and first woman astronaut Sally Ride and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Also honored this year will be Nina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools, and Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat representing Nevada, was a sponsor of legislation directing the mint to issue the quarters honoring women. Masto applauded the Mint’s selection of Angelou for the first coin.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the nation’s first female treasury secretary, said, “Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country. ... I’m very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America’s most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou.”
The administration of President Joe Biden announced after taking office a year ago that it would go ahead with a 2016 plan to replace Andrew Jackson’s portrait on the $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman, a leader in the Underground Railroad. However, since that announcement, the administration has provided no further details. | null | null | null | null | null |
A deputy sheriff in North Carolina is accused of fatally shooting a man he says jumped on his truck. A witness says the man was crossing the street. The truck and the body show no signs of impact, investigators said.
Pandora Harrington, right, cries as she holds a sign with an image of Jason Walker during a demonstration in front of the Fayetteville Police Department on Jan. 9. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer/AP)
“He jumped on the car and started scraping,” Hash said, adding that his children were in the vehicle.
Hawkins said that no shots went through the windshield and that there were no vehicle marks on Walker’s body. The gun Hash used was not his service weapon, she said.
At the request of Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West, the case has been assigned to the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, an independent prosecutorial agency with statewide jurisdiction, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, he said at a Sunday news conference.
Hawkins said she decided early on it would be best for the agency to get involved.
“The documentation of the black box is crucial,” she said. “The review of the vehicle is crucial to say, ‘Did this happen?’ So not depending on solely a statement is crucial.”
“We have reason to believe that this was a case of ‘shoot first, ask later,’ a philosophy seen all too often within law enforcement,” Crump said in a Tuesday statement. “We look to the North Carolina SBI for a swift and transparent investigation so that we can get justice for Jason and his loved ones.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Quebec considers unvaccinated penalty
Quebec Premier François Legault is considering a novel way to boost vaccination numbers in the province and hopefully slow a growth in hospitalizations that has severely strained the health-care system: a “health contribution” — or fee — imposed on unvaccinated adults.
He provided few details about how the proposal would work or when it could take effect. The premier did not say how much the fee would be, except that it would be “significant.” Residents who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons would be exempt under the plan.
Officials have said that while the unvaccinated make up a small percentage of the population, they are overrepresented in hospitalizations.
“Right now, these people put a very important burden on our health-care network,” Legault said at a news conference. “I think it’s normal that a majority of the population is asking that there be a consequence.”
No other Canadian province or territory has announced similar measures, but some nations have fines for being unvaccinated.
— Amanda Coletta
Airstrike reportedly kills 17 in Tigray
An airstrike in the town of Mai Tsebri in Ethiopia’s northern of Tigray region Monday killed at least 17 people, mostly women, and wounded dozens, two aid workers said, citing local authorities and eyewitnesses.
The United Nations said it had been unable to confirm the casualties due to a lack of communications in the area. It called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and full humanitarian access.
Last Friday, an airstrike killed 56 people and injured 30, including children, in a camp for displaced people in a different location in Tigray.
Ethiopian government spokesman Legesse Tulu did not respond to a request for comment on the Mai Tsebri strike. The government has previously denied targeting civilians in the 14-month conflict.
Taliban to expand 'food for work' program nationwide: The Taliban administration says it is expanding its "food for work" program, in which it uses donated wheat to pay thousands of public-sector employees instead of cash as a financial crisis intensifies. Wheat, largely donated by India to the previous U.S.-backed Kabul government, is being used to pay 40,000 workers about 22 pounds of wheat per day for working five hours a day, agriculture officials told a news conference. The scheme, which has largely paid laborers on public works programs in Kabul, will be expanded around the country, they said.
Lebanese judge bans travel for central bank governor: A Lebanese judge issued a travel ban for the country's central bank governor, Riad Salameh, the state-run National News Agency and a lawyer said. The decision was the first judicial action taken by authorities in Lebanon against Salameh, 71, who is being investigated in several countries abroad for potential money laundering.
Yemen government forces retake control in province: Forces of Yemen's internationally recognized government have reclaimed the entire southern province of Shabwa from Iran-backed Houthi rebels, officials said Tuesday. The development is a blow to the rebels after government forces this month made significant advances in the country's south. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ray Epps testified that he was not, as accused, a federal provocateur
A mob of Trump supporters stormed and breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in D.C. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
“The Select Committee is aware of unsupported claims that Ray Epps was an FBI informant based on the fact that he was on the FBI Wanted list and then was removed from that list without being charged,” it said in a statement provided to The Washington Post. “The Select Committee has interviewed Mr. Epps. Mr. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.”
Carlson deserves special mention here. He’s regularly amplified claims about Epps, with Epps being mentioned on his show on Oct. 25, Nov. 1, Dec. 14, Dec. 28, Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. Epps played a central role in Carlson’s fringey “documentary” that attempted to blame federal agents for the Capitol riot, elevating claims by Darren Beattie, a far-right conservative media figure fired from the Trump administration for having attended a white nationalist conference. As Carlson’s former colleague Jon Ward wrote in his evisceration of Carlson’s documentary, a similarly accused individual identified by Beattie was later arrested. Beattie also at one point appeared on Carlson’s show to accuse other unnamed individuals of being federal agents; one was quickly revealed as an arrestee’s wife. | null | null | null | null | null |
An American Postal Workers Union official said more than 250 postal employees in D.C. were let go near the end of the year. Though the union is trying to get more information about the layoffs, officials say similar layoffs have occurred across the country.
The Postal Service did not immediately respond to queries from The Post on Tuesday about the layoffs. In an email on Monday, Postal Service spokesman Mark Wahl said the employment periods of approximately 40 “seasonal” workers — hired for the peak period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day — expired Dec. 31. He also noted that some D.C. postal stations closed on Jan. 4 due to the weather but are now open.
NBC Washington also reported Tuesday that more than 500 postal employees in Maryland and Virginia were out of work due to covid-19.
Emily Yen, an organizer with Democratic Socialists of America who helped plan the rally, said DeJoy’s plans will slow the mail, disenfranchising the 46 percent of Americans who voted by mail in the last election. The board will probably elect conservative leadership, she said, making it more difficult to replace the postmaster. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks during a news conference, Oct. 25, 2021, in Annapolis, Md. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans are stepping up a personal campaign to persuade Hogan to run for the Senate and help the party's chances of regaining control of the chamber. (AP Photo/Brian Witte, File)
Speculation loomed over Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s political future Tuesday as he pitched what might be his last and best hope for big, lasting tax cuts in office.
“We need to take bolder steps,” Hogan (R) said as he proposed sending much of a historic state surplus into the pockets of retirees, the working poor, corporations, retail developers and manufacturers.
The governor’s effort to deliver on long-promised tax cuts accompanies fresh reports of overtures from party leaders eager to parlay his popularity as a Republican in a deep blue state into a run for Senate this fall. He continues to entertain running for president in 2024.
Hogan, 65, downplayed the recruitment efforts of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others, saying Tuesday: “As I’ve said a million times, I don’t have a burning desire to serve in the U.S. Senate and I do have a burning desire to continue to focus on this job completely, every day.”
When it comes to running for president, the governor was less direct: “There’s plenty of time to worry about that. We just started 2022. We certainly don’t have to start talking about 2024.”
Enacting his tax-cut plan — a critical piece of his legacy — depends on the Democratic supermajority in the General Assembly, whose leaders have cast a skeptical eye on the lasting price tag of Hogan’s ideas.
“We need to be very cautious about deep tax cuts or extraordinary spending,” state House Appropriations Chair Maggie McIntosh (D-Baltimore City) said.
The governor’s unexpected ascent eight years ago and subsequent reelection were fueled largely by his hewing to pocketbook issues and avoiding debate on divisive social matters. His pointed criticism of President Donald Trump, willingness to work the national TV circuit as he handled the pandemic and association with moderate groups such as No Labels further sculpted his reputation as a pragmatist.
And while he has lowered tolls and fees in his purview — and argues he cut other taxes alongside the legislature — a sweeping tax-cut plan of his own design has been elusive.
Leading Republicans have in recent months aggressively courted him to take on U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) this fall and help the GOP tip the balance of power in Washington.
An array of high-powered Republicans have personally appealed to Hogan, noting polling that shows it could be a competitive race, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Hogan has not directly told them no, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The Associated Press first reported the coordinated recruiting campaign.
Nevertheless, McConnell and the lieutenant who runs his super PAC, Steven Law, each have had multiple conversations with the governor about running. Elaine Chao, Trump’s former labor secretary and McConnell’s wife, discussed the matter with Hogan and first lady Yumi Hogan over lunch at the governor’s mansion. Hogan has also been encouraged by U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R), who previously served as Florida’s governor and currently leads the Senate’s election campaign arm.
The deadline to file for Senate is Feb. 22, but Hogan said Tuesday he wants to “run through the tape” at the end of his term as governor.
“We’re in the middle of a couple of crises, which we’re trying to handle the best we can,” he said. “We’ve got a little more than year left. We’re going to land the plane.”
The governor released limited details on his five tax proposals but said the biggest piece would eliminate “state retirement taxes” on retirees amounting to $4 billion over the next five years.
A second proposal would make permanent a temporary expansion of the state’s earned income tax credit, a cash payment to the working poor that’s the most generous in the nation. A third would eliminate electronic filing fees for corporations, limited liability corporations and family farms, saving those entities between $100 and $300 per year.
A fourth piece would funnel more money into a program called the More Jobs for Marylanders Act, which would give incentives to manufacturers that open or expand inside designated zones. And the final piece would make permanent a pandemic-era relief program that gives money to companies revitalizing vacant retail or commercial space. | null | null | null | null | null |
Exhausting Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy
President Biden walks away after a wreath laying at the tomb of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
The president traveled Tuesday to Atlanta to deliver a speech on the sanctity of voting rights — a geographic choice that speaks to the reality that nothing about this democracy is assured. Nothing is certain. Georgia gave Democrats the edge in the Senate and it was critical in helping Joe Biden win the presidency. It is also the state where election officials have been under extended duress as Republicans demanded recounts, alleged fraud and passed new laws that made voting more of an obstacle course than a walk in the park.
But then, there is always a lot of MLK whenever the subject turns to racial justice, equal opportunity and the dream of a colorblind society. Everyone lays claim to King’s legacy with such certitude that if as many people marched alongside him in the 1960s as have said they did, then there would have been virtually no one standing on the sidelines wielding batons and casting aspersions. The dream of which King spoke would be a reality. And the January holiday in his honor would be a celebration of the American experiment’s completion rather than a remembrance of a promise yet to be fulfilled. But we like our history pretty.
The president arrived in Atlanta with Vice President Harris and a group of Democratic lawmakers — none of whom were Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who seems to be the only Democratic senator who matters, never seems to want what his colleagues want or always seems to have issues with what they want or the speed with which they want it. Biden was also accompanied by activists seeking the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, legislation aimed at ensuring unencumbered access to the polls and minimum federal standards for the way in which elections are conducted. Opponents argue that election security needs to be ramped up to prevent fraud; and, they don’t want Washington setting rules about how local elections are run. Those differing points of view are muddied and tortured by no small number of conservatives who see ballot stuffing and other subterfuge even when there is no evidence it exists. It’s all stalled because of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes in the Senate for legislation to pass.
In the midst of this, MLK is inspiration, retort, rallying cry and protective cover. The civil rights leader’s name is the conservative rebuttal to concerns about systemic racism. King’s name is a love song for bootstrapping individualists. It’s akin to a glide path to a safe landing for anyone accused of trying to elevate themselves by diminishing others.
During his speech, the president remarked that King’s family had offered a kind of reprimand to those who use his name in vain: “It’s not enough to praise their father. They even said on this holiday, don’t celebrate his birthday unless you’re willing to support what he lived for and what he died for.”
The conservative attachment to MLK is often more romantic than that of his more direct heirs, who are the voting rights activists who have taken to the streets, who agitate for change, who do the hard work of organizing — some of whom decided not to attend Biden’s speech to underscore their exasperation, impatience and disillusionment with the president’s sense of urgency in seeing voting rights legislation passed.
As the memory of King has aged, it’s taken on a smooth-edged, golden hue. Quotations from his speeches have been memorialized in stone but they’ve also been repeated so often and with such disregard for context that they’ve taken on the depth and specificity of a daily horoscope. The words mean whatever you want them to mean.
King was only 39 years old when he died, and while he was more liberal than radical, it’s hard to imagine that he would be so revered if he were a 30-something activist today — a Black man marching in the streets and advocating for fair wages, voting rights, racial justice and a more equitable form of capitalism. He and his fellow protesters would likely be blamed for stirring the pot and creating upheaval in places where everything was just fine before they showed up spouting their un-American ideas — which is precisely what happened in his day.
Over time, King has been recast as a warmhearted preacher who just wanted everyone to get along and only the most base among us disagreed with him. Biden called out some of those wretched names as he was making his plea to lawmakers to stand on the right side of history.
“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? The consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” Biden said. “Do you want to be on … the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy.”
But everyone sees themselves on the side of King. Everyone basks in the glow of his legacy. Few people see themselves as the moral equivalent of Connor, the segregationist head of Alabama public safety who loosed the dogs and opened fire hoses on civil rights activists. They see themselves under the heading of populists protecting the jobs, homesteads and rights of working-class America. They are not Davis, the leader of the Confederacy. They are proud Southerners protecting their history and heritage. They are not Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama as Black students tried to enter. They are concerned parents worried about critical race theory and fretting that their children will be made to feel bad for being White.
As Biden stood in the late afternoon sun, the background populated with young people, he argued for democracy’s future by appealing to the country’s sense of history. He made plain his desire to get rid of the filibuster so the stagnating legislation could pass. “I’ve been having these quiet conversations with members of Congress for the last two months,” he said. “I’m tired of being quiet.”
He pounded the lectern. He said “damn” and then backpedaled to “darn.” He warned of democracy’s fragility. And he invoked King’s name, forever hopeful that its glow isn’t so blinding that it can still enlighten. | null | null | null | null | null |
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