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Biden can reassure his base he’s fighting right up to the end. First, he can make clear that any change made to the filibuster must be on an up-or-down vote. If the Senate moves to a “talking” filibuster (i.e., those objecting to a bill must speak on the Senate floor with the support of at least 40 other senators to prevent cloture), there must still be a process to end debate and for a vote to take place. That might be a limit on hours for debate or a gradual ratcheting down of the votes needed for cloture. What is not acceptable is to make some small procedural change that does not result in a definitive vote on the reform packages. | null | null | null | null | null |
Cybersecurity labels for consumer products could be on the way
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Johnny Cash performed at Folsom Prison 54 years ago today.
Below: The White House is bringing in industry leaders to talk about log4j and other open-source software vulnerabilities, and at least 35 people in El Salvador were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
The government is imagining nutrition-like labels for internet-connected products
An obscure division of the Commerce Department is working on cracking one of the toughest problems in cybersecurity: Making consumers care whether their Internet-connected devices are hackable or not.
It's a big challenge because most consumers only have a foggy understanding about which products are most secure against hacking. Even if they understood better, experts fear security would still rank far lower in buying decisions than factors like price and features.
The big plan from Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a certificate program that verifies Internet-connected devices meet a set of basic cyber standards such as accepting software patches and allowing users to control what information the devices collect and share about them.
NIST isn’t creating the labels itself but put together a lengthy set of recommendations for what they should look like and is hoping an industry association or standards-setting body will take up the challenge.
The ultimate goal: A virtuous cycle in which consumers prize the certificates, so companies try to earn them, stores and e-commerce sites prefer to stock products with certifications, and insurers use the certificates to assess product companies' liability.
Consumer cybersecurity
The effort, which sprang from President Biden’s big cybersecurity executive order in May, marks one of the rare instances in which the government is trying to move beyond hiking cyber defenses in critical industries to actually changing how the broader nation thinks about cybersecurity.
NIST is also pushing a public education campaign that gets consumers to look for and value the certificates in the same way they value certifications that say a product is energy efficient or produced in the United States.
“Making security relatable to someone's daily life and how it can impact them is really critical for the success of this,” Julie Haney, an NIST computer scientist who’s working on the project, told me.
The effort comes as cyber and privacy risks to the average consumer are proliferating. Homes are increasingly stocked with Internet-connected devices such as smart speakers, thermostats and baby monitors — many of them built without security in mind. Hackers frequently compromise those devices to scoop up sensitive information or even harass their users. The computing power from those devices has also been stolen by hackers and harnessed for large-scale cyberattacks.
“People are bringing these things into their homes, into these very personal spaces, and they don't understand the potential security and privacy consequences and risks of that,” Haney said. “The bar really needs to be raised or a lot of people are going to suffer.”
Carbs, fat and protein
The project sprang from a longstanding idea to create cybersecurity labels for tech products similar to nutrition labels on food.
As NIST studied the idea, however, it became clear they needed something simpler. While most Americans can decode nutrition data like calories and sodium levels, their eyes would go bleary when confronted with their cyber equivalents.
They settled on a certificate, which products either earn or they don’t. But the certificates will be accompanied by a QR code that can lead consumers to far more detailed information if they want it.
To the extent possible, the certificates should be managed by one organization and they should look the same for all products
Mangers should regularly assess how effective the certificates are in guiding consumers’ buying decisions and change them accordingly
Certificates should be easy to find for both in-store and online products and easy to find and consult even after a purchase is made
NIST will release its final set of recommendations on the program next month then conduct a survey by May of existing efforts with similar goals that might take on the certificate effort.
While the program itself could get off the ground soon after that, officials cautioned that changing how Americans think about cybersecurity when they buy tech products will likely take much longer.
“Other consumer labeling programs that were successful, it's not a nine month or one year kind of a timeline,” Warren Merkel, NIST’s chief of standards services, told me. “It's a much longer time to get the consumer education right and to get the awareness right. So, hopefully, we'll be successful in providing a jumping in point for somebody to get on that multiyear path.”
Representatives from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are among the companies and organizations that will be attending the meeting, a senior official said. It comes in the wake of a vulnerability in the log4j software library that the U.S. government said was among the most serious in history and could take years to remediate. Nearly a dozen federal agencies and departments will send representatives to the summit, the official said.
The log4j bug has prompted a rush to shore up open-source software, which is vital to large portions of the Internet but typically maintained by volunteers. Other participants at the meeting include: IBM, Oracle and the Apache Software Foundation. It will be hosted by Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
At least 35 people in El Salvador were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware
The victims included at least 22 journalists from the independent El Faro news site, Mary Beth Sheridan and Craig Timberg report. Some of the journalists’ devices were infected a dozen or more times, which Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton called “jaw-droppingly aggressive and persistent.”
The news is already prompting a big response: In an open letter, researchers and nongovernmental organizations have demanded that El Salvador’s attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, open an investigation into the use of Pegasus in the country. The signatories of the letter — which include Access Now, Amnesty International, and the Committee to Protect Journalists — called for the United Nations to condemn human rights violations of NSO clients and “offer robust support for impartial and transparent inquiries into the abuse.”
A person familiar with the company's operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters said El Salvador doesn't have an “active system” from the NSO Group, and the company will investigate the allegations. NSO said it considers targeting journalists to be a misuse of Pegasus and it has zero tolerance for such misuse.
In other Pegasus news:
Polish lawmakers approved a committee to investigate Pegasus hacks in the country. Three Polish opposition figures say they were targeted by the spyware, leading a top opposition lawmaker to call the situation in the country a crisis of democracy. The committee was narrowly approved by Poland’s senate, where the opposition party has a small majority. However, the committee can’t require witnesses to testify and lawmakers from the ruling Law and Justice party are refusing to join the committee, the Associated Press’s Vanessa Gera reports.
Pressure is building for the European Union to investigate Pegasus. Renew Europe, the European Parliament’s third largest bloc, called for a committee to investigate spyware accusations, Gera reports. Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, called for the European Commission to follow the U.S. government’s lead and “quickly blacklist” NSO.
Check out the Post's full Pegasus Project investigation here.
Election administration races are seeing a fundraising surge after Trump’s phony claims
This year’s races for top state election officials could see record fundraising as the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen becomes a centerpiece of the races, the Brennan Center for Justice’s Ian Vandewalker and Lawrence Norden write.
In the Georgia secretary of state contest, four candidates have raised more than the 2018 winner had at this point. The top fundraiser is Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) who has falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) has raised $1.2 million, six times what the previous incumbent in the position raised. A Republican challenger, Kristina Karamo, who has promoted the idea that voting machines could have flipped votes to Biden, has raised more than $160,000.
“Increasingly, election denial is a highly visible issue in races for election administration positions,” Vandewalker and Norden write. “Indeed, as far as we are aware, this is the first time in the modern era that questions about the legitimacy of elections have played such a prominent role in contests for election officials.”
An encrypted phone company secretly run by the FBI shipped more phones to the United States than previously known
More than 100 Anom phones were shipped to the United States in 2020, raising questions about whether more of the phones were used in U.S. law enforcement investigations than previously known, Motherboard’s Joseph Cox reports. It had previously seemed that just about 15 of the phones were used in the United States.
The operation, which lasted three years, ensnared hundreds of alleged criminals who thought they were using phones custom-made for criminal activity but that were actually controlled by the FBI. Australian law enforcement monitored U.S. phones during the operation because of legal reasons, Cox reports.
The Senate passed cybersecurity legislation to bolster state and local governments
Lawmakers unanimously approved the legislation, which now goes to the House. It will give state and local governments access to upgraded cyber tools, the Record’s Martin Matishak writes.
Intelligence nominee urged to stabilize troubled Homeland unit (Bloomberg Law)
FCC wants to revamp data breach laws for telecom carriers (CyberScoop)
Trump abruptly ends NPR interview after he is pressed on baseless election fraud claims (John Wagner)
Are you one of the 1 in 11 Americans Mike Lindell doesn’t want to arrest? (Philip Bump)
Cyber Command ties hacking group to Iranian intelligence (The Record)
Philippines election body probes hacking report, says no breach (Reuters)
Cyberattack on Maryland’s health department was ransomware, officials say (Steve Thompson)
Chrome will limit access to private networks, citing security reasons (The Record)
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.), Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), the Department of Homeland Security’s Undersecretary for Policy Robert Silvers, and FBI Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran discuss 2022’s cybersecurity priorities at a Silverado Policy Accelerator event today at 9 a.m.
Silverado Policy Accelerator chairman and co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, U.S. Secret Service Assistant Director Jeremy Sheridan and FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz discuss cybersecurity threats at a Washington Post Live event today at 11 a.m.
“I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when.” Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Navy’s fuel leak in Hawaiʻi outraged local activists. That’s happened around the globe.
Military bases’ environmental harms disproportionally hurt ethnic minorities — and they have pushed back
A tunnel in the Red Hill underground fuel storage facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, in 2018. (Shannon Haney/Navy/AP)
By Andrea Malji
In November, a 14,000-gallon fuel leak at a Navy storage facility contaminated much of the drinking water on the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi, a leak that may cause irreparable damage to the island’s water supplies.
Since the 1940s, the Navy has stored 200 million gallons of fuel in tanks 100 feet above the Southern Oʻahu basal aquifer, the main drinking-water source for Hawaiʻi’s most populous island, which includes Honolulu. Community members have long worried about the storage facility known as Red Hill. For years, Board of Water Supply Manager Ernie Lau has warned that an accident at Red Hill could irreversibly contaminate Oʻahu’s largest aquifer. (We are using the original spellings of place names out of respect for Hawaiians and to normalize the usage of the Hawaiian language, which UNESCO considers a critically endangered language.)
The Navy initially denied reports of the leak, saying the water was safe to drink. Shortly after, military families and residents began reporting a strong smell of fuel in their water. More than 5,000 people reported illnesses, and many families reported that pets had fallen ill or died. Later tests showed contamination that was 350 times above safe drinking levels. The Navy later confirmed the leak, temporarily closed the facility and relocated affected service members to temporary housing — but not civilians affected. Oʻahu’s population is 42.9 percent Asian, 22.8 percent multiracial and 9.6 percent Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander — far higher than the 6 percent, 10.2 percent and 0.2 percent for the United States as a whole.
But the environmental contamination is not an isolated event. U.S. military deployments regularly harm the environment and anger local residents, in Hawaiʻi and around the globe.
Our research on the effects of global U.S. military deployments reveals that incidents such as the one on Oʻahu can exacerbate opposition and mobilize people in ways that can push out U.S. bases. On the one hand, communities are often glad to have the public good of national security, the economic benefits of a local base and community integration of service members. But communities can reject those positive effects when bases do something that causes harm.
A history of environmental harm
The November leak was not the first time the military has harmed Hawaiʻi’s environment. Similar leaks have been happening for decades, including a 1,600-gallon leak in May 2021 and a 27,000-gallon leak in January 2014. The Sierra Club estimates that Red Hill has leaked approximately 180,000 gallons of fuel since its construction in 1947.
Nor are fuel leaks the base’s only form of environmental contamination. For decades, the military conducted practice bombings on Kahoʻolawe, an island that Hawaiian Natives consider sacred, leading to unexploded or inert ordnance and scrap littering the land and ocean. The military has repeatedly dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic waste into the ocean off Hawaiʻi’s shores. For some native residents, such ongoing environmental destruction exacerbates an already deep frustration dating to at least 1893, when the United States overthrew and later illegally annexed the independent kingdom of Hawaiʻi.
Climate activists held the largest anti-airport protest in British history. Expect more worldwide.
Ethnic minorities often bear the burden of military bases
As with Red Hill, the military’s environmental contamination often harms ethnic minorities. That’s because the United States and host nations often place military facilities in areas that are disproportionately populated by ethnic minorities. Minority groups often have less political power than ethnic majorities, and bases in their midst may face limited pushback.
As part of our research on host communities’ perceptions of the U.S. military, from 2018 to 2020 we surveyed around 42,000 people in 14 countries hosting U.S. military forces, using online surveys that included a nationally representative sample in each area for adults across age, gender and income.
Our forthcoming research finds that those who self-identify as ethnic minorities are less likely than majority groups to view the U.S. military positively, by up to 10 or 12 percentage points in the most polarized areas. While Hawaiʻi is considered part of the United States, its demographics and history are unique compared with other states. While unclean water is bad for everyone, many of the affected civilians belong to racial and ethnic minorities. Hawaiʻi’s defense burden is also disproportionate. The Defense Department holds 21 percent of the land on Oʻahu, and active military members make up 11 percent of its population. By comparison, the department administers only about 1 percent of the land in the entire United States, and active service members make up 1 percent of the population.
Georgia's election law shows that when Black people gain local power, states strip that power away
From harm to mobilization
The Oʻahu Water Protectors, a local activist group advocating for clean water, has recently led several in-person protests and online campaigns related to the Red Hill leak. Some military families stationed in Oʻahu have also objected publicly to the unsafe water, since military families and local civilians have been affected by the same problem.
In Hawaiʻi, Native Hawaiians have been involved in organized opposition to the military presence since the 1970s. Activists have managed to end certain military operations, including the bombings on Kahoʻolawe.
Harmful events like the Red Hill leak have prompted anti-basing movements to restrict or remove the U.S. military in South Korea, Guam, Okinawa, the Isla de Vieques in Puerto Rico and Subic Bay in the Philippines.
In a recent hearing, a Hawaiʻi State Department of Health official called the Red Hill tanks a “humanitarian and environmental disaster” that puts the public at “imminent peril.” Following the hearing, the health department upheld its earlier order to “safely defuel” the site. Despite the Navy’s earlier objections, on Monday it agreed to develop a plan to “remediate and restore” the Red Hill shaft well. The Defense Department has increased its emphasis on environmental protection as a security priority.
However, this latest fuel leak will still widen the movement to permanently decommission the Red Hill fuel storage site and further challenge the long-term military presence in Hawaiʻi. That would make Red Hill consistent with what we find elsewhere: When communities mobilize against U.S. military bases, it’s because the base’s positive effects may affect many people but its acute harms intimately affect a small group. That’s when people band together to demand change.
Andrea Malji (@polisciprofhi) is an assistant professor of international studies at Hawaiʻi Pacific University.
Michael A. Allen (@michaelallen) is an associate professor of political science at Boise State University.
Carla Martinez Machain (@carlammm) is a professor of political science at Kansas State University. | null | null | null | null | null |
Best bets for the NFL’s first round: The Steelers are no match for the Chiefs
Chiefs wide receiver Byron Pringle scores during a December win over the Steelers. (Ed Zurga/AP)
The first round of the NFL playoffs includes six games, and five are rematches from the regular season. The most alluring one for bettors could be the Sunday night meeting between the two-time defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs, the AFC’s No. 2 seed, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who sneaked into the field in Week 18.
Pittsburgh Steelers at Kansas City Chiefs (-12½)
Pick: Kansas City Chiefs -12½
The Chiefs are back on track after a slow start and look every bit the Super Bowl contender, while the Steelers are the weakest team in the field.
Why so harsh on Pittsburgh? The Steelers ended the season ranked in the bottom third of the league for efficiency after adjusting for strength of schedule, and they have Ben Roethlisberger, one of the least-valuable passers of 2021 per ESPN’s Total Passer Rating. Kansas City, by contrast, was the seventh-best team in terms of adjusted efficiency and has Patrick Mahomes, the fifth-most-valuable passer this season, leading an offense that is more closely resembling its past form.
The most likely teams to reach Super Bowl LVI
To take it a step further, Pittsburgh is the only team in the postseason that allowed its opponents a higher success rate — plays that earn a first down or touchdown — than it recorded itself (a minus-5 percent net success rate). Kansas City, on the other hand, had one of the highest net success rates of 2021 (4 percent). In other words, this contest shouldn’t be close, and I would be comfortable backing the Chiefs up to a spread of 13½.
One other option to consider is Chiefs -7 in the first half. Over the past six weeks, Pittsburgh has been outscored 69-19 in the first half, while the Chiefs have outscored opponents 116-51. Kansas City also jumped to a 23-0 first-half lead when these teams met in Week 16, and it played that game without tight end Travis Kelce and with an “exhausted” Tyreek Hill, who was in his first game back after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The clash between the Bills and Patriots has the potential to be one of the highest-scoring games of the weekend despite having been given the lowest total by oddsmakers. Both teams averaged more than 2.5 points per drive in the regular season (the league average was 2.0), and both were among the top 10 offenses per Football Outsiders’ defense-adjusted value over average, which measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every play to a league average based on situation and opponent.
The first regular season meeting between the AFC East rivals finished with a weather-induced total of 24 points, but the rematch a few weeks later saw 54 points scored, comfortably above the closing over/under of 43½. If you want to be bold, you could take an alternate total for plus odds or wager that this will be one of the highest-scoring games of the weekend.
The plays above represent our best bets of the week because our analysis shows their value is the most lucrative compared with what we expect to happen once the teams take the field. Below, you will find against-the-spread picks for all of the games on this week’s schedule. However, trying to pick every single game is something of a fool’s errand. The house wins so often partly because bettors try to make too many plays when the odds aren’t in their favor. Keep that in mind when evaluating the remaining games from the weekend slate.
Picks are against the consensus point spreads as of Wednesday night.
Las Vegas Raiders at Cincinnati Bengals (-5½)
Pick: Cincinnati Bengals -5½
Pick: New England Patriots +4
Philadelphia Eagles at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-8½)
Pick: Tampa Bay Buccaneers -8½
Pick: San Francisco 49ers +3
Pick: Los Angeles Rams -4 | null | null | null | null | null |
The omicron surge may be slowing in some U.S. cities.
There are promising signs in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, although it’s too early to say there’s a rapid decline.
What this means: Parts of the country could be near a turning point in the latest coronavirus wave.
Coming today: President Biden will announce that he’s sending medical teams to six states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Michigan and New Mexico ― to help struggling hospitals.
2021 had the highest inflation in 40 years.
Why? Backed-up supply chains, combined with high demand from shoppers, raised prices.
How long will this last? There's no way to know, but officials expect prices will continue to go up this year.
What got more expensive: Every category of food, gas (up 50% in the past year), home prices and rent, as well as health care, to name a few.
College enrollment in the U.S. dropped again last fall.
The numbers: There were 465,300 fewer students compared with the year before, according to a new report.
The big picture: More than 1 million students have gone missing from higher education since the start of the pandemic.
What’s causing this? Some students may be questioning the value of college, especially with a record job market. But experts worry it could become a damaging economic trend.
The Jan. 6 committee wants to talk to the top House Republican.
Why? Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy apparently communicated with President Donald Trump during and after the attack on the Capitol last year.
Will he cooperate? No. Because he refused to do so voluntarily, the committee could choose to subpoena him.
Alzheimer’s groups plan to fight for broader coverage of a new drug.
What happened? Medicare proposed this week to cover a pricey, controversial treatment, but only for people in approved clinical trials, which sharply limits the number of eligible patients.
Why is the drug controversial? There’s debate about whether it actually works, even though the FDA approved it to treat early-stage Alzheimer’s.
What’s next: The proposal is open to public comment for 30 days. A final decision will come by April 11.
Another winter storm will hit the central and Eastern U.S.
Expect two phases: The first dumping nearly a foot of snow over parts of the Midwest tomorrow and Saturday; the second hitting the East Coast, possibly even bringing snowflakes to Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta, on Sunday.
What we don’t know: The exact path of the storm, which will affect who gets snow and who gets sleet, rain and ice.
Ida B. Wells is getting her own Barbie doll.
Who was Wells? A Black American journalist and activist, who was born into slavery in 1862. She fought for expanding the right to vote and is regarded as one of the most courageous women in U.S. history.
The doll will go on sale Monday, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
And now … for a hands-off, delicious weeknight dinner: Make this Instant Pot chana masala, which was so good, our recipe writer almost cried. | null | null | null | null | null |
49ers quarterback Steve Young went to great lengths to secure a breakthrough victory in the NFC championship game after the 1994 season. (John Mabanglo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
San Francisco held a 28-13 lead late in the game, but that only gave Roger Staubach an early chance to build his “Captain Comeback” credentials. Having entered the game in the fourth quarter as a replacement for Dallas quarterback Craig Morton, who held the starting job most of the season while Staubach dealt with a shoulder injury, the former Naval Academy star engineered 17 unanswered points in the final quarter for a stunning road win. Among the many other Cowboys deserving a share of the credit was kicker Toni Fritsch, the NFL’s first Austrian player who made all six of his field goal and extra point attempts (three each) and used his skills as a former national team soccer player to fool the 49ers with a rabona onside kick.
Dallas prevailed in a low-scoring slugfest that saw both sides fail to reach 250 yards. While the 49ers’ John Brodie labored through a miserable, three-interception passing performance, the Cowboys took much of the load off Staubach by running the ball 46 times for 172 yards and two touchdowns. San Francisco, by contrast, had 16 carries for just 61 yards and no scores against Dallas’s “Doomsday Defense.” The victory was the ninth in a 10-game winning streak with which the Cowboys closed the season once Coach Tom Landry finally made Staubach his starter.
The first postseason meeting between the Cowboys and 49ers was also the start of three straight seasons in which Dallas would knock San Francisco out of the playoffs. Playing in its final game at Golden Gate Park’s Kezar Stadium, San Francisco was enjoying its best season since moving to the NFL in 1950 from the All-America Football Conference. The Cowboys had a derisive label of “Next Year’s Champions” to shake off, and they did just that by becoming the first champions of the newly created, post-merger NFC. Dallas trampled its hosts with 229 rushing yards, 143 of which were gained by Duane Thomas. | null | null | null | null | null |
An image from a video of surgeon Simon Bramhall, who in 2017 was convicted of assault and fined after branding transplant organs with his initials. (PA Video/PA Wire/PA Images)
Bramhall was suspended from Queen Elizabeth Hospital by the end of 2013 and resigned the following May when he told the BBC he had made “a mistake.” In 2017, he pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and was later fined 10,000 pounds, or about $13,700. At his sentencing, the judge acknowledged that the physical harm the patients suffered was “no more than transient or trifling,” although he said the emotional and psychological impact was severe, the Daily Mail reported.
Before branding patients’ organs, Bramhall made the news in a positive light. In 2010, he successfully put a liver into one of the sickest people on the transplant list in the United Kingdom, even after the plane transporting the liver had crashed on its way from Belfast to Birmingham. At the time, Bramhall said he was surprised the organ had survived the crash intact. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nicholas Rossi, who used the last name Alahverdian, faked his death of late-stage cancer in 2020. Law enforcement found him in Scotland last month. (KSTU)
In fact, authorities allege, Alahverdian, whose actual last name is Rossi, made up the cancer diagnosis and dramatic death as a ruse to cover up his escape to Scotland. The 34-year-old was trying to evade arrest on fraud and sexual assault charges in at least two states, according to the Utah County Attorney’s Office.
In a macabre twist, law enforcement tracked down Rossi because he actually was near death. Rossi checked himself into a Glasgow hospital about a month ago with a severe case of covid-19 and was placed on a ventilator, Rhode Island State Police Maj. Robert A. Creamer told the Providence Journal.
Hospital staffers soon learned that Rossi, who was going by the name Arthur Knight, was wanted by Interpol, the Scotland Sun reported. He was arrested last month and is in the process of being extradited to Utah.
About a year after Rossi’s alleged death, the Journal reported that state police did not believe he was dead and were searching for him. They maintained he was on the run from the FBI, which had questioned him about a fraud complaint against him in Ohio. Soon after being questioned by the FBI, Rossi announced that he had been diagnosed with late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma, claiming he had just weeks to live.
He also was the subject of an arrest warrant in Rhode Island for not registering as a sex offender, according to the Journal. In 2008, Rossi was convicted of two sexual assaults in Ohio. In 2017, the DNA from that case was uploaded to a national database, according to the Utah County Attorney’s Office.
The county attorney noted that Rossi could have continued to evade law enforcement if various agencies had not worked together.
“You have a rape case in the state of Utah, and through quite ingenious and massive collaboration between law enforcement entities, we find a suspect in a hospital in Scotland,” Leavitt said. “There’s absolutely no way in the world that we’re going to be able to bring this case to justice without those efforts.” | null | null | null | null | null |
This image released by Matt Ross Public Relations shows Sutton Foster, foreground center, with the cast of the London production of “Anything Goes.” A filmed recording of the London cast of Cole Porter’s romp “Anything Goes” hits more than 700 cinema screens across the U.S. for two days — March 27 and March 30. (Matt Ross Public Relations via AP) (Uncredited/Matt Ross Public Relations)
NEW YORK — If you can’t make it to New York to see Sutton Foster on Broadway in the classic musical “The Music Man,” don’t worry. You can always catch her at your local movie theater in another classic musical. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Lionel Richie performs at KAABOO Texas in Arlington, Texas on May 10, 2019. The Library of Congress said Thursday that Richie will receive the national library’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. He will be bestowed the prize at an all-star tribute in Washington, D.C., on March 9. (Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Graham’s comments Wednesday night should certainly be understood in the same way, but that doesn’t make them any less significant. This tension has simmered more than it has boiled — at least when it comes to how fellow Republicans have dealt with it — but it has shown no sign of fading. And now Graham is pushing his party — and more specifically, McConnell — to deal with it before it truly threatens what he and McConnell hold so dear: their power. | null | null | null | null | null |
BRUSSELS — Afghanistan is facing a “tsunami of hunger” because of a shortage of funds that’s needed to keep the supply of food intact as country teeters on the edge of economic run with more than half of the population struggling to eat this winter, a senior official with the United Nations World Food Program said on Thursday. | null | null | null | null | null |
The court rejected Republicans’ argument that the citizens’ referendum passed with 71 percent of the vote was “aspirational” and therefore could be ignored. Take a moment and think about the arrogance of politicians rolling their eyes at a supermajority voters and attempting to carry on with business as normal.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which represented plaintiffs in another one of the cases, also praised the decision. “The General Assembly maps entrenched a GOP supermajority and flouted clear partisan fairness requirements in the Ohio constitution — abuses that especially impacted Ohio’s Black, Muslim and immigrant communities,” said Alicia Bannon, the Brennan Center’s judiciary program director, in a written statement. "The commission is now tasked with drawing replacement maps. We will be watching to ensure that all Ohioans get the fair representation they are due.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Police make arrest in December slaying of Alexandria woman
Melia Jones was killed in Alexandria, and police have charged a man in the case
A man has been arrested and charged in the slaying of an Alexandria woman.
Local police said Tuesday that they arrested David Cunningham, 40, of Alexandria, and charged him with second-degree murder. He is being held without bond. It was not known whether he has a lawyer.
Cunningham is charged in the Dec. 7 killing of Melia Jones, 23, of Alexandria. Police said Jones was found dead about 2:40 p.m. in her apartment on South Van Dorn Street. Her death was ruled a homicide the next day by the medical examiner; the cause and manner of her death are still pending. | null | null | null | null | null |
Biden can reassure his base he’s fighting right up to the end. First, he can make clear that any change made to the filibuster must eventually result in an up-or-down vote. If the Senate moves to a “talking” filibuster (i.e., those objecting to a bill must speak on the Senate floor with the support of at least 40 other senators to prevent cloture), there must still be a process to end debate and for a vote to take place. That might be a limit on hours for debate or a gradual ratcheting down of the votes needed for cloture. What is not acceptable is to make some small procedural change that does not result in a definitive vote on the reform packages. | null | null | null | null | null |
One of two bald eagles at its nest along the Dulles Greenway. The eagle is going to be named in a contest among kids at Loudoun County Public Schools. (Dulles Greenway)
Kids in Loudoun County Public schools will have a chance to name two bald eagles that are nesting along the Dulles Greenway in Virginia.
TRIP II, the owner and operator of the Dulles Greenway, is running the naming contest with the school system. Eagles have been nesting in the Leesburg area since 2005, and last fall officials put in live cameras on a tree overlooking their nest to watch them.
The winning names will be announced on Facebook on Feb. 11.
A new, younger ‘First Lady’ bald eagle moves in at the National Arboretum
Officials with the Dulles Greenway, a private toll road that connects the Dulles and Leesburg areas, said the pair of bald eagles started building their nest this year in the wetlands near the highway. Bald eagles typically lay eggs and incubate them between January and April, according to wildlife experts.
While there have been no sightings of eggs in the nest along the Dulles Greenway, officials said they’re “hoping the eagles will lay eggs by next month.”
According to Dan Rauch, a D.C. wildlife biologist, there are 15 to 20 active bald eagle nests in the immediate D.C. area. The nests are between Mount Vernon and the upper Anacostia River, Rauch said, and they’ve been found based on aerial and ground surveys.
“It is now a rare day when I’m in the field that I do not see a bald eagle, either during the breeding season or in the winter,” Rauch said.
In the last few years, bald eagles have made a comeback both nationally and in the D.C. region.
In the 1960s, Rauch said, there were only 400 breeding pairs left in the Lower 48 states. But bans on pesticides and the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s helped stop their decline, according to Rauch. Eagles were also helped in their population boost by efforts to improve habitat, cleaner air and water initiatives and protections on areas where eagles live. The birds themselves were also able to adopt to their changing environments, Rauch said.
“They are adapting to nesting and breeding in areas of high human activity. You can now find nests next to highways, on cell towers, and in some backyards,” Rauch said.
Bald eagles were removed from the endangered species list in 2007. The birds remain protected under several federal laws and are recognized as the national bird.
MORE COVERAGE ON ANIMALS
Five sick bald eagles found in Carroll County, Md., prompting investigation
American eel, marbled salamander among ‘critters in crisis’ in D.C. region, experts say | null | null | null | null | null |
The ethics of a second chance: Pig heart transplant pioneer stabbed a man seven times years ago
David Bennett, Sr., who received a heart implant from a genetically modified pig, with his University of Maryland Medical Center surgeon Bartley Griffith. (Photo by UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SCHOOL OF MEDICINE / AFP) (-/University Of Maryland School Of)
Leslie Shumaker Downey was at home babysitting her two grandchildren Monday when a message pinged on her cell phone.
Her daughter had sent a link to a news article about a 57-year-old man with terminal heart disease. Three days earlier at the University of Maryland Medical Center, he’d received a genetically-modified pig heart. The first-of-its-kind transplant was historic, saving the man’s life and offering the possibility of saving others.
Downey froze. The man being heralded as a medical pioneer, David Bennett Sr., was the same man who’d been convicted in 1988 of stabbing her younger brother seven times, leaving him paralyzed. Edward Shumaker had spent the next 19 years in a wheelchair, before he had a stroke in 2005 and died two years later — one week before his 41st birthday.
“Ed suffered,” said Downey, who lives in Frederick, Md. “The devastation and the trauma, for years and years, that my family had to deal with." After Bennett got out of prison, she said, he "went on and lived a good life. Now he gets a second chance with a new heart — but I wish, in my opinion, it had gone to a deserving recipient.”
“We have a legal system designed to determine just redress for crimes," he said. “And we have a health care system that aims to provide care without regard to people’s personal character or history.”
“This patient came to us in dire need," the officials added, "and a decision was made about his transplant eligibility based solely on his medical records.”
His son, David Bennett Jr., who works as a physical therapist in North Carolina, also said several hospitals had declined to accept his father onto the waiting list because he had failed in the past to follow doctors’ orders and attend follow-up visits. He also didn’t take his medication consistently.
Bennett started having symptoms of heart failure in October. On Nov. 10, he was taken to the University of Maryland. As Bennett confronted his mortality, his son said, he wondered about his ability to help others by possibly donating his organs or helping to advance medicine in some way.
“I want to live," he said. "I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.”
Bennett’s wife sat on Shumaker’s lap, according to an Oct. 6, 1989 article in The Daily Mail, a Hagerstown newspaper. After that, Bennett, then 23, attacked Shumaker as he was playing pool. According to court testimony, Shumaker had reached down to grab some coins when he felt a blow to his back, causing him to lose feeling in his legs. Bennett then stabbed him repeatedly in in the abdomen, chest and back.
After fleeing, Bennett was arrested in a high-speed chase and charged with intent to murder and openly carrying a concealed weapon with intent to injure, among other charges. Because the crime occurred more than three decades ago, court officials said that the case file had been destroyed, though The Post obtained remaining summary documents that confirmed his conviction.
At his sentencing, then-Washington County Circuit Judge Daniel Moylan called the stabbing a case of “extreme violence," The Daily Mail reported.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $29,824 in restitution to Shumaker. The state’s Department of Corrections could not say how many years of the sentence Shumaker served or when he was released because the case is so old. Downey said she thinks he served about five years.
“No disabled person likes to make a big deal of it, but life from a wheelchair is exhausting, mentally and physically,” Shumaker told The Hagerstown Journal in an Oct. 31, 1990 story.
The attack, Downey said, reverberated within her family for years, tearing them apart. Her youngest brother, who worked as an EMT, had been the one to drop Shumaker off at the bar that night, before reporting to his shift on an ambulance. He’d been the first to respond to the scene.
By that point, Shumaker had lost four pints of blood, Downey said, and suffered nicks to his stomach, spleen, and other organs.
“It was just pure hell until the day Ed died," Downey said.
Now, as Downey read about the man being lauded for his bravery, she thought about the untold pain he’d brought to her life. In one photo taken after the surgery, Bennett is seen in a hospital bed with medical tubing taped to his nose, his white hair ruffled. His doctor — wearing an aquamarine-colored mask, eyes crinkled at the corners — stands at his side.
“My dad has never ever in his entire life talked to me about that," he said. “I will not say anything about it."
Later, through the hospital, he issued this statement: “My intent here is not to speak about my father’s past. My intent is to focus on the ground-breaking surgery and my father’s wish to contribute to the science and potentially save patient lives in the future.”
He described his father as a private, selfless man. He’d thought deeply about the risks involved with the operation — and how it might help others.
Bennett Jr. told his father that he was praying for him. He responded: “I’m praying for you and your family, too.”
More than 6,000 people die every year waiting for a tragedy to strike others — a car accident or homicide that suddenly frees up a desperately-needed heart, lung or kidney. About 20 percent of those on the heart transplant wait list die or become too sick to receive one.
The ability to use animal organs — aided by advances in cloning and gene editing — would change that. The pig heart has been long been viewed as an ideal substitute because of its many similarities to the human heart, and pig heart valves are already used in humans procedures.
Bennett Jr. said his father had already received a pig valve in an operation more than ten years ago. In a conversation with his doctor, he’d said: “Doc, I already have part of a pig in me.” | null | null | null | null | null |
This police camera video provided by The Moab Police Department shows Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito talking to a police officer after police pulled over the van she was traveling in with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, near the entrance to Arches National Park on Aug. 12, 2021. An investigation has found that Utah police made “several unintentional mistakes” when they stopped Petito and her boyfriend before she was killed in what became a high-profile missing person case. The independent report released Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022 examines a stop by police in the tourist town of Moab on Aug. 12. (The Moab Police Department via AP) (Uncredited/The Moab Police Department) | null | null | null | null | null |
Tina Charles, who led the WNBA in scoring while playing for the Mystics last season, is one of several high-profile free agents. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
The names on the list are staggering at first glance — Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Angel McCoughtry, Sylvia Fowles, Tina Charles. That’s four MVPs and two longtime all-stars with multiple Olympic gold medals who were set to be unrestricted free agents when the WNBA opens its negotiation period Saturday. Free agency officially opens when teams can sign players on Feb. 1 and those six are just the beginning of the bevy of all-stars and veteran contributors set to hit the open market.
The list will ultimately look a bit different come Saturday as teams must make core qualifying offers by Friday afternoon. Jones, for example, received a core qualifying offer from the Connecticut Sun on Monday, which guarantees at least a one-year deal with a base salary equal of a supermax contract. That takes Jones off the market, but there are others who could receive the designation. A’ja Wilson, the 2020 MVP, is a restricted free agent who already received a qualifying offer from the Las Vegas Aces last week and Bird is considered a sure thing to return to the Seattle Storm.
The bottom line is that the most intriguing stretch of the WNBA’s offseason is set to begin with what could be a significant amount of movement involving some of the league’s most familiar names. Much of this was set in motion with the signing of the latest collective bargaining agreement in Jan. 2020 which provided opportunity for players to reach free agency earlier and limits the number of times a player can receive the core designation.
“Offseason movement, particularly for the W, it only continues to legitimize the product for the naysayers,” ESPN analyst Monica McNutt said. “I think it infuses energy. If your favorite big-name player, i.e. Chicago, Candace Parker goes and plays in Chicago [and] by default, Kahleah Copper is now elevated as a next up-and-coming [player] behind the opportunity to play alongside Candace Parker.”
Copper is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent after having a career year as a first-time all-star and being named Finals MVP after helping lead the Sky to a championship. She was a key piece in the trade that sent Elena Delle Donne from Chicago to Washington, which won the championship in 2019. The Mystics now have a chance to get back in contention with smart moves in free agency to go along with the No. 1 overall pick.
The team entered free agency with Delle Donne, Alysha Clark, Ariel Atkins, Natasha Cloud, Erica McCall and Sydney Wiese under contract. Megan Gustafson signed a training camp contract with the Mystics last week. Washington has the fifth-most cap space ($384,729), according to salary cap website Spotrac, and General Manager/Coach Mike Thibault expects to have 11 players under contract for the season, one fewer than the roster maximum. Carrying 11 players is not uncommon as teams manipulate the salary cap. Thibault has no plans to use the core designation this offseason.
The post is the No. 1 priority for the roster with Charles headed to free agency after leading the league in scoring with 23.4 points per game. The team also needs a backup point guard and an additional wing. Charles was supposed to put the Mystics in prime position for another title the last two seasons, but she opted out of 2020 and a string of injuries left the roster depleted in 2021. Having to carry the load wasn’t what Charles signed up for and the 33-year-old continues to look for a ring. She will explore all options.
“I just know I need to win a championship before I retire,” Charles told The Washington Post at the end of the season. “Obviously, some decisions are going to have to be made, and I have to look into everything. I’m thankful for my year here and just to see how they do things, and [that] will definitely help moving forward.
“You definitely sit back and see what happens. You just never know. This is a great organization and how they treat their people. We’ll see what happens.”
The organization is in a unique position with the No. 1 overall pick of the draft in April. That gives Thibault the opportunity to address one of those needs, but there is no clear-cut favorite for the top pick. That leaves plenty of options for how to approach free agency with the currency of the first pick in Thibault’s back pocket. The Mystics already have a strong corps when healthy and the flexibility to sign an all-star. Whoever becomes that No. 1 pick doesn’t have to come in and resurrect a downtrodden franchise.
Signing a high-priced all-star, though, affects that salary cap flexibility.
“We know we have clear things to address on our team,” Thibault said. “And if you know that you are leaning one way or another with your draft picks, it can affect what you do in free agency. But it's still a little bit of a gray area. It's also a bargaining chip if free agency leads to some sort of trade.
“If we end up spending money on a very high-priced player, it severely limits whatever else we can do. … The biggest thing is that anybody expects us to spend a lot of money on several players, that can't happen.”
Two of the biggest question marks are with the Mystics own players. Myisha Hines-Allen is a restricted free agent who has already received a qualifying offer from the team. The Mystics would love to keep her, but a business decision will have to be made after Hines-Allen developed into an all-WNBA player in 2020 while averaging 17 points and 8.9 rebounds. She is expected to draw significant attention from other teams.
The status of unrestricted free agent Emma Meesseman remains unknown after she sat out last season due to overseas commitments and the 2019 Finals MVP is expected have more of them this season. | null | null | null | null | null |
So the piano man is passing his time at home. He has applied for and received a Small Business Administration loan and a grant from Montgomery County, which has allowed him to write record his music; and he has started psychotherapy, which he hopes will help combat his new and pervasive feeling of being adrift in the world. | null | null | null | null | null |
A U.S. Park Police helicopter pulls two people from the wreckage of the remains of the Air Florida jetliner after it fell into the Potomac River. (AP/Charles Pereira)
The helicopter flew so low that, at points, its skids dipped into the water. A passenger on the plane, Arland D. Williams Jr., died after being pulled into the water while helping others out of the Potomac. And Lenny Skutnik, a federal employee who dove into the water to rescue a passenger, was heralded as a hero, invited by President Ronald Reagan to the State of the Union address.
“The pilot should say, ‘we should abort the take off,’” Marcus said. But the flight was already delayed, held up in a queue of departing planes, and aborting would have meant circling around for another round of de-icing.
So the jet took off, but only reached an altitude of 350 feet before hitting the bridge. The crash killed 74 crew members and passengers on the plane and four people on the ground.
The NTSB’s investigation revealed that the pilots hadn’t activated an engine anti-ice system that keeps sensors working correctly. So even though the pilots set the engines to the correct power, they actually didn’t have enough power to take off properly.
“It marked a period of probably of 20-25 years where the NTSB was investigating airliner accidents involving various aspects of icing,” he said.
The date was a doubly-tragic one in Washington’s transportation history because it marked the first fatal Metro derailment. A train came off the tracks near the Smithsonian station, killing three people and injuring 25 others. The twin disasters shared The Washington Post’s front page the following day. | null | null | null | null | null |
David Bennett, Sr., who received a heart implant from a genetically modified pig, with his University of Maryland Medical Center surgeon Bartley Griffith. (University of Maryland School of Medicine/AFP)
Downey froze. The man being heralded as a medical pioneer, David Bennett Sr., was the same man who had been convicted in 1988 of stabbing her younger brother seven times, leaving him paralyzed. Edward Shumaker had spent the next 19 years in a wheelchair, before he had a stroke in 2005 and died two years later — one week before his 41st birthday.
More than 106,000 Americans are on the national waiting list for an organ transplant, and 17 people die each day never receiving the organ they need. In the face of such a shortage, it can seem unconscionable to some families that those convicted of violent crimes would be given a lifesaving procedure so many desperately need.
“We have a legal system designed to determine just redress for crimes,” he said. “And we have a health care system that aims to provide care without regard to people’s personal character or history.”
His son David Bennett Jr., who works as a physical therapist in North Carolina, also said several hospitals had declined to accept his father onto the waiting list because he had failed in the past to follow doctors’ orders and attend follow-up visits. He also didn’t take his medication consistently.
Bennett Sr. started having symptoms of heart failure in October. On Nov. 10, he was taken to the University of Maryland. As Bennett confronted his mortality, his son said, he wondered about his ability to help others by possibly donating his organs or helping to advance medicine in some way.
But Bennett was also still enjoying his life. He lives in a duplex, next door to one of his three sisters. He liked working as a handyman, cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers and spending time with his five grandchildren and his dog, Lucky.
Bennett’s wife sat on Shumaker’s lap, according to an Oct. 6, 1989 article in the Daily Mail, a Hagerstown newspaper. After that, Bennett, then 23, attacked Shumaker as he was playing pool. According to court testimony, Shumaker had reached down to grab some coins when he felt a blow to his back, causing him to lose feeling in his legs. Bennett then stabbed him repeatedly in the abdomen, chest and back.
After fleeing, Bennett was arrested in a high-speed chase and charged with intent to murder and openly carrying a concealed weapon with intent to injure, among other charges. Because the crime occurred more than three decades ago, court officials said that the case file had been destroyed, though The Washington Post obtained remaining summary documents that confirmed his conviction.
At his sentencing, then-Washington County Circuit Judge Daniel Moylan called the stabbing a case of “extreme violence,” the Daily Mail reported.
Bennett was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $29,824 in restitution to Shumaker. The state’s Division of Corrections could not say how many years of the sentence Bennett served or when he was released because the case is so old. Downey said she thinks he served about five years.
“No disabled person likes to make a big deal of it, but life from a wheelchair is exhausting, mentally and physically,” Shumaker told the Hagerstown Journal in an Oct. 31, 1990, story.
The attack, Downey said, reverberated within her family for years, tearing them apart. Her youngest brother, who worked as an EMT, had been the one to drop Shumaker off at the bar that night, before reporting to his shift on an ambulance. He had been the first to respond to the scene.
By that point, Shumaker had lost four pints of blood, Downey said, and suffered nicks to his stomach, spleen and other organs.
“It was just pure hell until the day Ed died,” Downey said.
Now, as Downey read about the man being lauded for his bravery, she thought about the untold pain he had brought to her life. In one photo taken after the surgery, Bennett is seen in a hospital bed with medical tubing taped to his nose, his white hair ruffled. His doctor — wearing an aquamarine-colored mask, eyes crinkled at the corners — stands at his side.
“My dad has never, ever, in his entire life talked to me about that,” he said. “I will not say anything about it.”
Later, through the hospital, he issued this statement: “My intent here is not to speak about my father’s past. My intent is to focus on the groundbreaking surgery and my father’s wish to contribute to the science and potentially save patient lives in the future.”
He described his father as a private, selfless man. He had thought deeply about the risks involved with the operation — and how it might help others.
Bennett Jr. told his father that he was praying for him. He responded, “I’m praying for you and your family, too.”
More than 6,000 people die every year waiting for a tragedy to strike others — a car accident or homicide that suddenly frees up a desperately needed heart, lung or kidney. About 20 percent of those on the heart transplant wait list die or become too sick to receive one.
The ability to use animal organs — aided by advances in cloning and gene editing — would change that. The pig heart has long been viewed as an ideal substitute because of its many similarities to the human heart, and pig heart valves are already used in humans procedures.
Bennett Jr. said his father had already received a pig valve in an operation more than 10 years ago. In a conversation with his doctor, he had said, “Doc, I already have part of a pig in me.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Rep. Jody Hice (R) is running for secretary of state in Georgia. (Emil Lippe for The Washington Post)
There was a time when election administration in the United States was considered dull and outside the realm of partisan competition. While an ambitious politician might move from being secretary of state to becoming a legislator or a governor, few would dream of using the job running state elections to advance their party’s political goals. That would have been seen as grossly unethical.
No more. Thanks in large part to Donald Trump and the GOP’s war on democracy, secretary of state races may be some of the hottest contests in 2022 and for the foreseeable future.
As a new Brennan Center for Justice report shows, money is pouring into secretary of state campaigns at a pace far faster than just a few years ago, as one contest after another revolves around the question of whether the person running elections in the state will be a devotee of Trump’s conspiracy theories about 2020.
In the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, and Minnesota, the report concludes, “fundraising in secretary of state races is two and a half times higher than it was by this point in either of the last two election cycles.” In all six of the states it examined, “there is at least one candidate who has questioned the legitimacy of the last presidential election.”
NPR recently found at least 15 Republican candidates running for secretary of state who question the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory. This is essentially the only real issue in these Republican primaries: Will GOP voters support someone who pledges fair administration or someone who supports Trump’s false claims and offers an implicit promise to make sure future elections don’t go the wrong way?
A partisan secretary of state could make any number of decisions before an election to put a thumb on the scales, when it comes to shaping the details of voter registration, polling places, and processing of votes. But Norden also points to what might happen after the polls close — specifically, controversy around a secretary of state’s obligation to certify results.
But in the future, he said, “you can imagine a secretary of state saying, ‘I can’t certify these results,’ ” which could throw everything into chaos. This could get worse if a pro-Trump legislature is simultaneously trying to hand him its state’s votes in defiance of the electorate’s will.
Norden articulated the nightmare scenario: “It’s a very close election; it comes down to one state, and you have an election official who is refusing to certify.” Should one of those Trumpian candidates — say, Jody Hice, who is challenging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the Republican primary in Georgia — be in charge, it would be surprising if they didn’t do whatever is necessary to ensure that Trump wins.
Try to imagine a situation in which one of these Trumpists is secretary of state in 2024 in a state such as Georgia or Arizona, and once again Biden pulls out a narrow victory over Trump in their state. They got elected by saying such a thing was by definition evidence of a fraudulent election. They know Trump will brand them a traitor if that result stands. So what will they do?
It’s important to remember how ad hoc and buffoonish Trump’s 2020 efforts were; they failed not only because they were built on easily disproven lies but also because the people waging the effort on his behalf were (and remain) a collection of nincompoops. But even a nincompoop can do great damage if they have the apparatus of the government in their hands. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Glenn Youngkin’s charter school plan moves past ideology
Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) at a speech in Ashburn in June, when he was campaigning. (Michael Blackshire/The Washington Post)
By Nina Rees
Nina Rees is the president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and a resident of Virginia.
Arriving in Blacksburg, Va., from Iran in the 1980s brought the promise of a bright future for my family. At the time, better education opportunities played a key role in why my parents chose to immigrate to the United States. However, as a student from a foreign country relegated to the only high school in town, I faced quite a bit of hostility and have vivid memories of desperately wanting to attend a school that was more welcoming and understanding of how to serve students from diverse backgrounds.
It is that experience that has driven me to dedicate a career in expanding school choice for millions of families in this country. It is also why Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s (R) pledge to improve public education starting on Day One struck a chord with me. It is predicated in large part on listening to families who are saying they want more options in public education.
Though critics accuse Youngkin of pandering to right-wing parents incensed about discussions of race in schools, the reality is that parents across the political spectrum have been demanding more choices about how their children are educated. By following through on his pledge to open 20 new public charter schools in Virginia, Youngkin can empower parents from all backgrounds, regions and neighborhoods and move beyond the polarizing education debates of the past two years.
More than 3.5 million students across the country are attending charter schools, but only about 1,200 students in Virginia have that option. The reason is an antiquated charter school law that is more restrictive than those in nearby blue bastions like D.C. and red states like North Carolina, and that is because Virginia limits how charters are authorized.
Virginians have long embraced local control of schools, but recently they’ve begun to realize that local control empowers school boards more than it empowers parents. Many school districts oppose charter schools because they don’t want educators outside the district’s control to make decisions about curriculums, personnel and spending.
As a result, discussions about school choice, educational innovation and academic results have floundered in Virginia and most students continue to be shuffled through schools they didn’t choose and over which their parents have little input. Deference to school boards has left parents feeling unheard and disrespected.
That’s why Youngkin has a unique opportunity to have an impact on public education — not in the racially revanchist way critics fear, but as someone who can leverage parental dissatisfaction to expand public school choices and give all parents, from all backgrounds, more opportunities to direct their children’s education. By focusing on the creation of new options for public schools, which charter schools are, Youngkin can give conservatives, progressives, moderates and others something to unite around while giving students a chance at a world-class education that for too long has been reserved to those whose parents could afford to move to top-flight suburbs or access private schools.
However, to create these options, Youngkin must work with state legislators to overhaul Virginia’s weak charter school law. The law must be improved to allow charter school founding groups to apply to entities other than local school districts, to provide educators the flexibility to innovate and to provide equitable funding to charter school students. If Youngkin and state legislators don’t change the law, the new options that are necessary won’t be created.
Charter schools have a well-earned reputation for giving families from low-income urban areas access to high-quality options with the same academic standards as other public schools. They are run by educators with a particular mission or motivation for delivering education in different ways. Charter schools may emphasize multicultural teaching, arts, technology, agriculture and the environment, civic leadership or simply aim to deliver an excellent education in new and vibrant ways. And because parents choose charter schools, the schools have an incentive to be responsive to parents.
In New York City and D.C., charter schools have helped students from low-income neighborhoods achieve at levels more commonly seen among wealthy suburbanites. But charter schools would also be welcome in Virginia’s suburban, exurban and rural communities, where the coronavirus pandemic revealed troubling gaps in local school systems. Districts have capable, well-meaning leaders, but the bureaucratic maze of rules and regulations ultimately prohibited them from making good decisions quickly, and, most important, it kept them from having the flexibility to make decisions that respond to the unique needs of different communities.
Throughout the United States, charter schools — which are more entrepreneurial, adept at making quick course corrections and focused squarely on student success and parent satisfaction — reacted much more nimbly to pandemic challenges than many districts.
To be clear, Youngkin’s education platform goes beyond charter schools, including raising state standards and improving teacher salaries, but the most consequential action he can take is to follow through on his pledge to open more charter schools and give parents in Virginia the opportunity to send their children to schools that fit their unique needs. By doing so, he can usher in an era of public schooling in the commonwealth that helps all students find a learning environment in which they can excel and prepare for success in the 21st century. | null | null | null | null | null |
He was a lifelong Baltimore guy — a huge fan of all Baltimore teams and of the University of Maryland, (even though he graduated from Haverford College and Yale Law School) most notably in basketball. The Orioles were his first love, and he was extremely pleased when he represented Tom Clancy’s wife, Wanda, in their divorce and Ms. Clancy was awarded Clancy’s box at Camden Yards as part of the settlement. “Means I can go see the O’s anytime I want,” he would say with a laugh. The last time we had dinner, several weeks ago, he argued with great passion that the Orioles are on the right track. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ted Ku-DiPietro’s path to D.C. United was one of a kind
Oakton native Ted Ku-DiPietro was Loudoun United's leading scorer last season. (Courtesy Loudoun United)
What’s most unique about Ted Ku-DiPietro?
It could be his last name. (“I don’t think anyone else has it,” he said.)
Or that he is one of nine children. (Including the parents, he said, “We could build our own team.”)
From a soccer standpoint, it’s his pathway to a D.C. United homegrown contract, a deal the MLS club announced Thursday. He signed a two-year contract, with two club-held option years.
The Oakton, Va., native becomes the 17th local prospect since 2009 to join the MLS club but the first to follow a secondary path.
Like his predecessors, the midfielder began in United’s youth academy. In 2019, at age 17, he began playing as an amateur for Loudoun United, D.C.'s second-division pro team. A year later, when D.C. did not offer him an MLS deal, he settled for a USL Championship contract with the Loudoun squad.
All other D.C. homegrowns have signed their first pro contracts directly with the MLS team.
“The goal was always to play first-team soccer,” he said in an interview this week. “My outlook was always positive, even though you could say I took a slower route. It was perfect for me in the way I was developing the last couple years.”
After a 2020 season abbreviated by injury and the pandemic, Ku-DiPietro led Loudoun in scoring last year with seven goals and three assists in 30 appearances. He showed promise in both central midfield and the wings.
“He has made great strides as a player since joining Loudoun United and we’re excited to see him continue to develop with our first team,” D.C. General Manager Lucy Rushton said in a written statement.
In training camp, which will open this weekend at United Performance Center in Leesburg, D.C. Coach Hernán Losada and his staff will begin assessing whether Ku-DiPietro is ready for first-team duty or needs further experience with Loudoun.
Ku-DiPietro, who will turn 20 on Jan. 28, is the second Loudoun player in the past seven months to sign an MLS homegrown contract. Jeremy Garay, an 18-year-old midfielder from Woodbridge, played for Loudoun as an amateur last season. He had committed to North Carolina State but opted to accept D.C.'s offer last summer.
Ku-DiPietro said he didn’t even consider the college path, even though United had not offered him a contract right away.
“I never planned on it, never wanted to,” he said. “I just knew I wanted to be a pro player. How that was going to happen, I didn’t know yet.”
He had played in the Arlington Soccer Association and for Oakton High School for two years before committing full-time to United’s academy squad. He also entered an accelerated academic program to graduate in three years and turn pro in time for the 2020 season with Loudoun.
Seven homegrowns are expected to return to the D.C. roster this season: goalkeeper Bill Hamid; defenders Andy Najar, Donovan Pines and Jacob Greene; winger Kevin Paredes; midfielder Moses Nyeman; and attacker Griffin Yow. (Greene, 18, was assigned to Loudoun last season.)
Ku-DiPietro “gained valuable professional minutes over the last two years and we’re looking forward to his continued maturation as a player as he makes the jump up to the D.C. United first team,” Stewart Mairs, D.C.'s technical director and Loudoun’s general manager, said in a written statement.
When he was younger, Ku-DiPietro attended MLS matches at RFK Stadium and reported to the old venue in the District for academy workouts. His father has had season tickets for a few years.
And about that unique last name? His mother, Dorothea, has Chinese and German ancestry — that’s the Ku in their last name — and his father, Timothy, has Polish roots but was raised in part by an adoptive father with Italian lineage (DiPietro).
Ted is fourth-oldest among the nine children whose age range is about 20 years. An older brother played Division III soccer at Marymount University in Arlington and a younger sister is an elite youth player.
“It’s insane at home — super loud all the time, can’t get any peace,” he said, laughing. “But we have so much fun together.”
Notes: United announced it will open the preseason schedule Jan. 29 against Inter Miami in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It’s also slated to face the Los Angeles Galaxy on Feb. 19 in Carson, Calif. In between, the team will play at least two matches in Indio, Calif. The season opener is Feb. 26 against Charlotte FC in Washington. | null | null | null | null | null |
First Look with The Post’s Jonathan Capehart, Donna F. Edwards, Frances Stead Sellers & George F. Will
Donna F. Edwards
Donna F. Edwards, a Washington Post contributing columnist, writes across a broad range of topics. Edwards represented Maryland’s 4th District for five terms in Congress, where she served on the committees on Transportation and Infrastructure; Science, Space and Technology; and Ethics, and on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Prior to her time in office, she worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center with the Spacelab program, and also had a successful career in philanthropy and nonprofit advocacy. After leaving politics, she spent three months on a solo road trip around the country’s state and national parks in an RV; she is writing a book about the experience. She provides political commentary regularly on NBC, MSNBC and Fox. When she is not focused on politics and policy, Edwards spends her time hiking, biking, fishing and camping.
Frances Stead Sellers
Frances Stead Sellers joined the National staff in 2016 to cover the presidential campaign. Sellers became a senior writer based in the Sunday Magazine in 2014 and spent two years before that as the editor of Style, with a focus on profiles, personalities, arts and ideas. She ran the newsroom’s health, science and environmental coverage during the battle over health care and the Gulf oil spill, and she edited a series of stories about military medical care that was a Pulitzer finalist. She has also been deputy editor of Outlook. Sellers came to The Washington Post from Civilization, the bimonthly magazine of the Library of Congress, which she helped launch in 1994 and which won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1996.
George Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977. He is also a regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News. His latest book, "American Happiness and Discontents," was released in September 2021. His other works include: "The Conservative Sensibility" (2019), “One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation” (2008), “Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy” (1992), “Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball” (1989), “The New Season: A Spectator’s Guide to the 1988 Election” (1987) and “Statecraft as Soulcraft” (1983). Will grew up in Champaign, Ill., attended Trinity College and Oxford University, and received a PhD from Princeton University.
Honors and Awards: 1977 Pulitzer Prize for commentary; 1979 National Magazine Awards: Finalist in the essay and criticism category; 1978 National Headliners Award; 1980 Silurian Award for editorial writing; 1985 The Washington Journalism Review named Will best writer, any subject; 1997 Named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal | null | null | null | null | null |
Winter storm watches and warnings have been hoisted in the narrow zone of real estate likely to pick up a good thump of snow, with a widespread 6 to 10 inches and localized one foot totals slated to fall. Only watches were in effect over most of Iowa on Thursday morning, since warnings usually aren’t issued more than about 36 hours in advance of an event.
Unlike a number of other recent events, strong winds aren’t expected to coincide with the falling snow, leaving blizzard conditions out of the question. High-wind warnings are in effect, however, across western South Dakota from roughly the Missouri River to the Black Hills, where gusts topping 55 mph are possible as a frigid air mass builds in behind the system on Friday night.
In cities such as Memphis and Nashville, the potential exists for a couple inches of snow, with a low-end risk of a plowable snow. Northern parts of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau will probably see more appreciable totals, as will most of Kentucky.
Areas west of Interstate 81 in the Mid-Atlantic should stay mostly snow, as will the Appalachians, leading to potential double-digit snowfall in places like the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, West Virginia, central Pennsylvania and parts of New York state. Eastern Ohio may see some snowfall with the “wraparound” on the back side of the departing low into Monday, which could receive some lake-effect enhancement. That’s something to watch for Cleveland. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Biden is seen after paying his respects at the casket of former Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 12, 2022. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
Biden, a former six-term senator, is delivering his closed-door pitch two days after he made his most pointed public case yet for the modification or elimination of the filibuster to pass voting rights bills. He chose to come and make a final push even as Sinema and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) had shown no indication that they are prepared to move off their long-standing public opposition to weakening minority rights in the Senate. | null | null | null | null | null |
The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He and 10 others were charged with seditious conspiracy, these people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Eagles declined to comment through a spokesman and Raiche was not available. The Vikings did not respond to a request for comment. They are searching for a replacement for Rick Spielman. He was fired, along with Coach Mike Zimmer, following a season in which the Vikings missed the playoffs with a record of 8-9.
Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as their general manager in November 2020. The only time a woman has been a general manager for an NFL team was in the 1980s, when Susan Tose Spencer, an executive with the Eagles and the daughter of then-owner Leonard Tose, served in the role.
But the NFL has only two Black head coaches, Culley and Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, after the Miami Dolphins fired Brian Flores this week following a second straight winning season. Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said Tuesday “there is a double standard” in the league regarding teams retaining and hiring Black head coaches. Vincent also said that progress has been made in other areas and he’s hopeful of further gains. | null | null | null | null | null |
People sit on the steps of a shopping mall in Tehran in 2019. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
Over the years, Washington has issued exemptions for personal communications tools — such as applications for messaging, blogging and social networking — citing the U.S. interest in ensuring Iranians maintain access to the global Internet. Such exemptions do not include tools for business communications, which are wrapped up in Washington’s wide-reaching sanctions on Iran and its banking system.
That means that Iranians’ access to technology is limited, at a time when Iran’s hard-line government attempts to exercise even greater control over the Internet there. According to some analysts, U.S. policymakers have failed to keep up.
Some three-quarters of Iranians older than 18, out of a population of 84 million, use social media and messaging apps, according to a 2021 poll by the Iranian Students Polling Agency. But sanctions can mean limited access to some online services — and often affect most those without the financial means to afford VPNs and other temporary workarounds, said Dagres.
It is impossible, for example, to make purchases in the online Apple store with an Iranian address. Start-ups have popped up to sell Apple gift cards to Iranians with the financial means, said Mahsa Alimardani of Article 19, a London-based freedom of expression group. Slack, a mainstay of communication in many communities, remains unavailable, Alimardani said, while Iranians cannot create accounts on Amazon Web Services or use Google Cloud Platform, popular cloud hosting services.
What works one day may also not work the next, adding to daily uncertainties. With the country’s economy in shambles, Iranians seeking out information or educational opportunities in Web-based sectors such as gaming or coding can find themselves at a disadvantage.
For months, Iranians have been protesting water shortages, in person and online. Security forces have met the demonstrations with Internet clampdowns and violence, underscoring the challenges Iranians face in communicating with each other and the outside world.
Some had hoped that the Biden administration would ease or clarify tech-related sanctions — some of which have been in place for decades — as a goodwill gesture to Iran, after four years of the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign, said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
Instead, President Biden prioritized negotiating a return to the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which would grant Iranians relief from nuclear-related sanctions, leaving in place a host of other blacklists.
U.S. sanctions ban American citizens and companies from doing business with Iran, as well as non-U.S. citizens and firms that work in or with the United States. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, is charged with enforcing sanctions, as well as issuing licenses for exemptions, in consultation with other arms of the government.
It’s a balance of “ensuring the broadest possible information tools get to the people of Iran while at the same time guarding against tools, including software and hardware, that can be used by the Iranian government to target or otherwise censure the people of Iran,” said John E. Smith, who ran OFAC for 11 years, until 2018.
In 2009, after Iranian security forces violently suppressed massive pro-democracy demonstrations organized in part online, U.S. policymakers began considering how U.S. sanctions hindered Iranians’ access to Internet technology, Dagres said.
“US sanctions are not the reason for Internet censorship in Iran — that onus falls on the Islamic Republic,” said Dagres.
Still, Iranian activists and digital rights groups have called for further changes and clarifications as “something that the United States can do to have some positive impact,” said Alimardani. New technology such as cloud-sharing services have taken off, for example, but their regulatory status remains unclear, Dagres said.
Companies are often then left to interpret what could be a sanctions violation or what might be exempt.
“The issue arises when the sanctions architecture becomes simply too complex for companies to easily understand what is permitted,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of the London-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a think tank.
For example, some international tech companies rely on U.S.-based servers or the U.S. banking system for their operations, meaning their activities fall under Washington’s jurisdiction. Last year, OFAC fined a Swiss IT firm $7.8 million after it used U.S.-based servers to run part of a lost-baggage program it provided to blacklisted Iranian airliners.
A Treasury Department spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of sanctions, said in an email that the “Treasury authorizes the export of certain services, software, and hardware incident to personal communications to Iran, including through Iran General License D-1” and other regulations, as “part of our commitment to ensure the Iranian people have access to the tools of personal communications.”
“We really do fundamentally believe that software development, software collaboration, promotes the free flow of information and communication,” Lynn Hashimoto, GitHub’s head of product and regulatory legal, said of the company’s decision. The license application process “was labor and resource-intensive.”
But with a precedent now set, GitHub said it has since applied for OFAC licenses to operate in U.S.-sanctioned Syria and Crimea, too. | null | null | null | null | null |
Starting Feb. 28, the East Building, which houses the museum’s modern and contemporary collection, will be closed to expedite the atrium skylight restoration.
The National Gallery of Art East Building will close for renovations for at least three months, starting Feb. 28. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Those hoping to hang out with the blue rooster on the National Gallery of Art rooftop or explore the Alexander Calder room this winter will have to do so sooner rather than later. The NGA announced on Thursday that the East Building, home to the museum’s contemporary and modern art collections, will be closed from Feb. 28 until June for renovations. (The West Building, which mostly features collection items from before 1900 as well as special exhibitions, will remain open.)
The closure will expedite the restoration of the atrium skylight, an important element of architect I.M. Pei’s original design for the building, which first opened in 1978. When it reopens this summer, the East Building also will have new restrooms on the mezzanine, ground and concourse floors; a more-accessible entrance with new double doors; and an elevator lobby within the large auditorium on the concourse level. The renovations are part of ongoing work that began in 2019 with plans to update the galleries on the west side of the building and improve accessibility, in addition to restoring the skylight.
The East Building was closed for 15 months from March 2020 to June 2021 because of the pandemic and construction. When the building reopened last summer, the skylight was covered by a protective platform and visitors continue to enter the building through scaffolding while the main entrance remains closed. The skylight restoration, which was delayed during the early days of the pandemic, began in June 2020 with the removal of a massive Alexander Calder mobile that had hung from the ceiling. In total, the restoration will entail replacing 23,000 square feet of glass.
Originally, the NGA hoped to accommodate visitors during the process, but the prolonged pandemic closure showed how shuttering the building could significantly expedite the pace of renovations. They anticipate the closure will reduce the time it takes to complete the project by half.
During renovations, several works have gone off view. Ellsworth Kelly’s installation of paintings “Color Panels for a Large Wall” (1978) and Roy Lichtenstein’s 13-foot-long canvas “Painting with Statue of Liberty” (1983) have been removed, while works such as Richard Serra’s Five Plates, Two Poles (1971) remain in the building, but under protective enclosures.
“While the building is in the final phase of renovations to its public spaces, the visitor experience has been diminished by construction and displacement of key works of art,” NGA director Kaywin Feldman said in a statement. “Closing to the public temporarily allows us to bring the full splendor of the East Building to visitors much sooner than if we were to remain open during renovations.”
The announcement comes as museums around Washington have adjusted their hours because of covid-19 related staff shortages coinciding with the spread of the omicron variant. Most Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo have been operating on a reduced schedule, and the National Air and Space Museum and Anacostia Community Museum have closed temporarily through Jan. 17, when the Smithsonian plans to reassess the changes. Renovations also are putting other museum buildings out of commission, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which closed for two years in August, and the Air and Space Museum, which, covid-19 concerns aside, will close in March for at least six months of renovations.
The NGA’s East Building has had other closures in the past several years. From 2013 to 2016, multiple galleries were shuttered for a major renovation of the north part of the building that added 12,250 square feet of exhibition space and increased the number of collection items on view from 350 to 500. Featuring art from after 1900, the building has works by artists such as Edward Hopper, Alma Thomas, Piet Mondrian and Eva Hesse on view.
Subtle changes make a big impression at the National Gallery East Building
After the building reopens this summer, it will feature “The Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan and James McNeill Whistler,” an exhibition opening July 3 that will bring together Whistler’s three famous “Symphony in White” paintings of Hiffernan for the first time, and “The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900,” which opens July 10, and will look at how artists have used the double format to explore psychological themes. | null | null | null | null | null |
So the piano man is passing his time at home. He has applied for and received a Small Business Administration loan and a grant from Montgomery County, where he lives, which has allowed him to write and record his music; and he has started psychotherapy, which he hopes will help combat his new and pervasive feeling of being adrift in the world. | null | null | null | null | null |
The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He is charged with seditious conspiracy, along with 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates, said the people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe. | null | null | null | null | null |
The court rejected Republicans’ argument that the citizens’ referendum passed with 71 percent of the vote was “aspirational” and therefore could be ignored. Take a moment and think about the arrogance of politicians rolling their eyes at a supermajority of voters and attempting to carry on with business as normal.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which represented plaintiffs in another one of the cases, also praised the decision. “The General Assembly maps entrenched a GOP supermajority and flouted clear partisan fairness requirements in the Ohio constitution — abuses that especially impacted Ohio’s Black, Muslim and immigrant communities,” said Alicia Bannon, the Brennan Center’s judiciary program director, in a written statement. “The commission is now tasked with drawing replacement maps. We will be watching to ensure that all Ohioans get the fair representation they are due.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz) arrives for a Senate Democrat caucus luncheon with President Biden in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Jan. 13, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Biden, a former six-term senator, is delivering his closed-door pitch two days after he made his most pointed public case yet for the modification or elimination of the filibuster to pass voting rights bills. He chose to come and make a final push even as Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) had shown no indication that they are prepared to move off their long-standing public opposition to weakening minority rights in the Senate.
After Sinema spoke Wednesday, McConnell said he “couldn’t agree more with her decision,” while other Republicans marveled that Democrats brought the issue to a head knowing Sinema’s long-standing views on the filibuster.
“She’s just expressing a frustration that they don’t appear to be listening to her,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “She’s been clear. She’s been public from the beginning about this, and they seem to continue to think that somehow they’re going to switch her, and the more they do that, I think the more dug in she’s gotten.”
More than a half-dozen Republicans, including top leaders McConnell and Thune, watched Sinema’s speech inside the Senate chamber, while only two Democrats opted to attend in person.
Delivering the speech wearing purple, a symbol of Washington bipartisanship, Sinema said she wished there had been “a more serious effort on the part of Democratic Party leaders to sit down with the other party and genuinely discuss how to reforge common ground” on voting rights issues. But she also said Republicans “have a duty to meet their shared responsibility to protect access to voting and the integrity of our electoral process.”
“Eliminating the 60-vote threshold on a party line with the thinnest of possible majorities to pass these bills that I support will not guarantee that we prevent demagogues from winning office. Indeed, some who undermine the principles of democracy have already been elected,” she said. “Rather, eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Winter storm watches and warnings have been hoisted in the narrow zone of real estate likely to pick up a good thump of snow, with a widespread 6 to 10 inches and localized one-foot totals slated to fall. Only watches were in effect over most of Iowa on Thursday morning, since warnings usually aren’t issued more than about 36 hours before an event.
Unlike in a number of recent events, strong winds aren’t expected to coincide with the falling snow, leaving blizzard conditions out of the question. High-wind warnings are in effect, however, across western South Dakota from roughly the Missouri River to the Black Hills, where gusts topping 55 mph are possible as a frigid air mass builds in behind the system on Friday night.
In cities such as Memphis and Nashville, the potential exists for a couple of inches of snow, with a low-end risk of a plowable snow. Northern parts of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau will probably see more-appreciable totals, as will most of Kentucky.
Areas west of Interstate 81 in the Mid-Atlantic should stay mostly snow, as will the Appalachians, leading to potential double-digit snowfall in places like the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, West Virginia, central Pennsylvania and parts of New York state. Eastern Ohio may see some snowfall with the “wraparound” on the back side of the departing low into Monday, which could receive some lake-effect enhancement. That’s something to watch for, Cleveland. | null | null | null | null | null |
Last week, Simpson introduced his wife to Wordle, a popular daily puzzle where players have six tries to guess the 5-letter word of the day. She often finishes in fewer tries than Simpson, or answers correctly on days he’s stumped. Each defeat stings a little.
“She’s much more methodical about it,” Simpson says of his wife’s technique. “She’s writing things down on a piece of paper while I’m throwing letters at the squares haphazardly.” Dawn also pays close attention to the rules, so she knew she could use the same letter more than once. Meanwhile, Simpson didn’t grasp this Wordle quirk until the day he missed “banal.”
Some players think strategically, beginning each day with a word composed of commonly used letters, like “stear” or “ratio.” Others go with the first five-letter word that pops into their brain. If a letter is in the right place, the square turns green. If it’s in the word but not in the correct spot, the square turns yellow. A gray box means the letter isn’t in the word. And a row of green means you’ve got it right. Afterward, personalized stats appear, revealing how many games you’ve played, how often you solve correctly, plus a clock counting down the wait till the next day’s puzzle.
Obsession with wordplay is not new. Word nerds have been gathering at crossword tournaments and battling in competitive Scrabble leagues for decades. Every few years, an online game captures the Internet’s attention. In the 2010s, it was Words With Friends. Early on in the pandemic, the New York Times’s Spelling Bee anagram honeycombs were splashed all over on Twitter. Wordle started to take off once there was a way to brag — er, share — your grid on social media. Earlier this week, the game’s creator, Josh Wardle, said it has more than 2.7 million players.
Wardle told the New York Times he built the game for his partner Palak Shah as a simpler diversion than the New York Times’s Spelling Bee. In December, Wardle added a feature so that players could share their results without disclosing the answer: A grid with the gray, yellow and green squares showing how many tries it took to get the answer. One woman has taken to cross-stitching her results.
Benjamin Dreyer’s whole life is language. He’s written a book on how to use it (“Dreyer’s English”), has created a game testing players’ grammar knowledge, and serves as managing editor and copy chief for Random House. He’s also fallen for Wordle, and says that the game’s immediate gratification is making it “increasingly difficult” to play Spelling Bee. “It’s free. It’s 1/10th the investment of time," he says, "and you get the same rush out of it.”
Once you get the right answer, those green boxes are a little dopamine hit, says Drew Lightfoot, a licensed therapist in Philadelphia who studies gaming culture. And just the act of playing can pause everything else going on in your head. “Something small like this — a 2- to 5-min distraction — can ... break those ruminating thoughts that can cause anxiety and depression,” Lightfoot says. “There is research that shows if we intentionally play games for an hour a day, that is very healthy for our emotional well-being,” Lightfoot says, yielding a sense of accomplishment and feelings of autonomy, which are in short supply these days. | null | null | null | null | null |
Wes Moore, author and former CEO of the anti-poverty nonprofit Robin Hood, at Howard University on Tuesday, July 23, 2019. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Author and former non-profit chief Wes Moore raised nearly $5 million over the past seven months, his campaign for Maryland governor said Thursday — a sizable sum that offers a first peek at how the money game will shape the state’s wide-open Democratic primary.
Moore, a first-time candidate, raised $4.8 million and had $3.1 million on hand to spend in the 10-way race for the Democratic nomination, according to his campaign, which has not yet released his full campaign finance report ahead of next week’s deadline.
But the top-line numbers far exceed the $1.2 million that the eventual 2018 Democratic nominee, Ben Jealous, raised ahead of that primary race. Early reports from other candidates suggest Moore may be leading the sprawling field.
Wes Moore chooses former state lawmaker Aruna Miller as his running mate in Maryland governor’s race
Democrats are seeking to reclaim the governor’s mansion from Republicans, who have won three of the past five gubernatorial elections despite the Democrats’ 2-to-1 registration advantage. Independents comprise about 20 percent of Maryland’s electorate and have been growing in recent years.
Early voting in the primary will begin June 16. Full campaign reports for all candidates’ fundraising for 2021 through Jan. 10 are due by midnight Wednesday.
Tom Perez, a former Obama administration and Maryland labor secretary, said Thursday he had raised $2.7 million during that period. He launched his campaign six months ago and has $1.5 million on hand.
“In just over six months, we have built a strong coalition to win the primary and flip Maryland from red to blue in this critical race,” Perez, also a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
Nancy Pelosi endorses Tom Perez in Maryland governor’s race
The campaign of Jon Baron, a former nonprofit executive who refused to take money from lobbyists or corporations, said he would report a fundraising haul of more than $2 million, with $1.7 million on hand, raised from donors and “a personal investment from Jon Baron and his wife, Jessica.”
Maryland’s campaign landscape changed significantly after the 2014 election, when lawmakers closed the so-called “LLC loophole” that let a single donor give the maximum donation under multiple LLC’s.
“I am so humbled by the grassroots Army of supporters we have seen grow so quickly," Moore said in a statement. | null | null | null | null | null |
LONDON — Buckingham Palace announced Thursday that “with the Queen’s approval and agreement,” all of Prince Andrew’s military affiliations and remaining royal patronages have been returned — a devastating blow for Elizabeth II’s second son, who is facing a U.S. civil lawsuit that accuses him of having sex with a teenager trafficked by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew, who denies the allegations, has been mostly out of the public eye for the past year, and many organizations distanced themselves from him after he defended his relationship with Epstein in a disastrous 2019 BBC interview. But he had retained his honorary military roles with multiple British regiments. And the Buckingham Palace website had listed dozens and dozens of schools, hospitals and clubs with which he was still a royal patron — including the Army Officers’ Golfing Society, the Fly Navy Heritage Trust, the Foundation for Liver Research and the elite Westminster Academy.
But Thursday’s move means the former Navy pilot and divorced 61-year-old father of two adult daughters is now facing his accuser alone — without the shield of honors he has carried most of adult life.
The two-sentence statement from the palace continued, “The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”
Where the money will come from to defend himself is a hot topic in Britain.
Royal biographers have observed that Andrew has often been seen as a favorite of his mother. But the 95-year-old queen has also been insistent during her long reign that duty, service, honor, and the preservation of the monarchy are supreme.
Andrew will also stop using the honorific title “His Royal Highness,” though he remains a duke and a prince. His many patronages will be distributed among other members of the House of Windsor.
His precipitous fall follows other great family scandals, from the divorce and death of Princess Diana to the decision by Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to quit their roles as senior working royals and move to southern California, along the way accusing the family of casual racism.
The revoking of Andrew’s military titles comes after 150 British veterans signed an open letter calling for the queen to strip her son of his military titles, adding that “if necessary, that he be dishonourably discharged.”
In their letter, the veterans wrote, “We are particularly upset and angry that Prince Andrew remains a member of the armed forces and continues to hold military titles, positions and ranks, including that of Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy.”
The veterans complained that the prince had brought disrepute on Britain’s armed forces by “uncooperative and less than truthful” about his friendship with Epstein.
A judge in New York on Wednesday ruled that a lawsuit brought against Andrew by a woman who says she was trafficked to him by Epstein can go forward for now.
The judge concluded that a settlement agreement the woman signed in 2009 does not unequivocally free the royal from liability. | null | null | null | null | null |
The keeper of sacred documents like the Declaration of Independence to step down after 12 years.
David S. Ferriero, archivist of the United States, poses during a tour of the Remembering Vietnam exhibit at the National Archives on Nov. 6, 2017, in Washington. (Ricky Carioti)
“It has been the honor of a lifetime,” Ferriero, wrote in a note to the staff on Wednesday. “My time here has been filled with opportunities, challenges, and awesome responsibilities … I am humbled and awestruck and so deeply grateful — grateful to all of you.”
In addition to housing national treasures like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the National Archives holds 13 billion pages of text, 10 million maps, charts and drawings, along with tens of millions of photographs, film and other records.
Before coming to the agency, Ferriero was director of the New York Public Libraries, and served in top positions at the libraries of the Massachusetts Institution of Technology and Duke University. A native of Beverly, Mass., he served as a Navy hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War.
A self-confessed introvert, he is reserved and has a dry sense of humor. On his watch in 2014 the archives held its first sleepover.
He has pushed the digitization of the archives, and embraced social media. Last November, he noted in a blog post: “We know that not everyone can come to our facilities [for research] and providing these records online democratizes access.”
He has also promoted the role of “citizen archivists,” who volunteer to transcribe and review historic documents on line.
One of the items framed in Ferriero’s office is a copy of a letter written to President John F. Kennedy by Ferriero, when Ferriero was in high school. The letter had been found at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Later, the Eisenhower presidential library found two letters Ferriero had written to President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a youngster, and the Lyndon B. Johnson library found one he had written to President Johnson. Ferriero had them framed in his office too.
In 2020, the archives came in for harsh criticism when it posted in its headquarters building an exhibit with a picture that had been altered to blur out words suggesting criticism of President Trump.
The large color photograph, designed to celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage, showed a massive protest crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue during the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration.
But the original photo had been altered to obscure some words on signs held by marchers.
Less than 24 hours after Washington Post reporter Joe Heim pointed out the alterations, the archives apologized.
The archives is headquartered in a massive 84-year-old granite and limestone landmark on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington’s Federal Triangle. A “temple to American history,” Ferriero called it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stephen Sachs, Maryland prosecutor of anti-Vietnam War Catonsville Nine protesters, dies at 87
Stephen Sachs in 2008. (Brian Witte/AP)
By Jacques Kelly and Frederick N. Rasmussen
Stephen H. Sachs, who prosecuted the Catonsville Nine in the late 1960s as U.S. attorney for Maryland and later served two terms as Maryland’s attorney general, died Jan. 12 at his home in Baltimore. He was 87.
His daughter, Elisabeth A. Sachs, announced the death but did not provide a cause.
Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) said in a statement: “I consider him one of the greatest attorneys general of Maryland. ... Among his many groundbreaking accomplishments, he refused early in his first term to defend the state practice of warehousing developmentally-challenged and mentally ill individuals, leading to their release from state custody. He was a champion of civil rights and a leader of election reform.”
Mr. Sachs was a Baltimore law firm partner before President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him U.S. attorney for Maryland in 1967. He specialized in the prosecution of cases involving white-collar crime and public corruption but gained national attention in 1968 when he prosecuted the Catonsville Nine, Vietnam War protesters who had stormed the Selective Service office in Catonsville, Md., in an attempt to destroy draft records.
On May 17, 1968, two Roman Catholic priests, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, and his brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, led Catholic activists on a raid at Draft Board 33 in Catonsville, and six months later, a jury in federal court found them guilty of destroying government property.
“I believed then, and believe now, that the nine were brave men and women who acted out of a conviction that the war in Vietnam was profoundly evil,” Mr. Sachs wrote in a 50th-anniversary article in the Baltimore Sun. “But I believed then, and I believe now, that the conduct of the nine — particularly their insistence that their action at Catonsville should have been condoned because they were ‘right’ — offends both the rule of law and a fundamental tenet of the American democracy.”
Mr. Sachs was in private practice for eight years and then served as Maryland attorney general from 1979 to 1987, when he joined the Washington law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, from which he retired in 2000.
In 1986, he was an unsuccessful candidate in the state gubernatorial primary when he lost to the hugely popular Baltimore mayor, William Donald Schaefer.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) appointed Mr. Sachs in 2008 to head an independent review of the Maryland State Police, which had infiltrated activist groups that were acting lawfully but were opposed to the death penalty and the Iraq War.
“I believe that the surveillance undertaken here is inconsistent with an overarching value in our democratic society — the free and unfettered debate of important public questions,” Mr. Sachs stated in his 2008 report. “Such police conduct ought to be prohibited as a matter of public policy.”
A staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, David Rocah, told the Baltimore Sun that the Sachs report was “explosive” and depicted “a police force that completely lost its moorings.”
Stephen Howard Sachs was born in Baltimore on Jan. 31, 1934. His father was director of the Baltimore Jewish Council and a labor arbitrator, and his mother was a homemaker.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1954 from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and served in the Army from 1955 to 1957. He won a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Oxford in England and was a 1960 graduate of Yale Law School.
His wife of 58 years, the former Sheila Kleinman, a divorce lawyer and former Baltimore City school board member, died in 2019. In addition to his daughter, of Baltimore, survivors include a son, Leon Sachs of Lexington, Ky., and three grandchildren. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Why is Mexico’s president pushing a recall vote against himself? Winning might be easier than leading.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks virtually Tuesday during the 33rd Meeting of Ambassadors and Consuls. (Jose Mendez/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Mexico’s response to the pandemic continues to be dismal. Vaccination and access to adequate testing remain insufficient. Meanwhile, violence has not abated — on the contrary: Mexico has had one of its bloodiest years on record. Horrific scenes abound. The economy was stalling before the pandemic, and its prospects have not improved. A recent contraction and historic inflation warn of a possible crisis.
That sounds like a list of urgent priorities for any president — except for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In fact, over the past few months, he has been preoccupied with an almost surreal display of political theater: promoting a recall election against himself.
It’s clear that the president has no plan to tackle the real issues. Beyond his mishandling of the health crisis, he refuses to set a basic example, flouting mask requirements in public even when symptomatic (on Monday, he tested positive for the coronavirus for the second time). As violence escalates, he is doubling down on his “hugs, not bullets” strategy, while expanding the military’s role in the country’s public life.
As the economy deteriorates, López Obrador has been left to thank remittances from the United States as a lifesaver, a strange turn of events for a man who vowed Mexican migration north would end under his watch (it has, in fact, increased).
In theory, Mexico’s presidential recall, a law approved during López Obrador’s tenure, could be a game changer. In a country where presidents serve six-year terms, the possibility to recall a government could bring much needed accountability. Sadly, López Obrador and Morena, his governing party, have used the law as propaganda.
López Obrador’s consistent popularity means that no meaningful figure in the opposition has sought to collect the roughly 3 million signatures needed to initiate the recall process. This has left the president and his party in an absurd position: promoting a process they would then fight tooth and nail to defeat. Over the past few months, López Obrador sympathizers could be found actively seeking support for an election that could, in effect, end his presidency.
If successful, López Obrador’s attempt to initiate his own recall would trigger a massive national election organized by the country’s federal election commission, the INE. By law, the INE would have to install polling places similar to a presidential election. This, of course, takes money, and plenty of it: an estimated $200 million. The kicker? López Obrador’s Morena slashed INE’s budget, hindering its ability to organize the recall in the terms specified by law, leading the commission scrambling to establish a recall sought only by the president and his party and effectively hobbled by, well, the president and his party. Peak farce.
What is truly going on? A combination of political narcissism and something more sinister: the conscious dismantling of trust in Mexico’s independent institutions. After INE’s independent assembly complained and advised it might have to delay the recall for lack of adequate funds, López Obrador and Morena officials publicly berated the commission. Leading Morena congressman Sergio Gutiérrez Luna threatened legal action against INE’s counselors (he later backtracked). López Obrador decried salaries within INE as “immoral” (he had previously called the commission, one of the most respected independent institutions in Mexico, a “threat to democracy”).
The INE is a respected and popular institution built to prevent uncertainty in a country marred by a history of electoral chicanery. That López Obrador is now trying to undermine its support speaks more of his intolerance of independent watchdogs than of INE’s inexistent corruption. López Obrador has now vowed to seek an electoral reform that would further weaken the INE’s autonomy. If he proceeds with such folly, he will have crossed an authoritarian Rubicon.
Perhaps, once López Obrador survives the recall of his own invention, he will finally get to the business of governing. Submerged in a long list of very concrete challenges and problems, Mexico demands a government interested in the sensible exercise of power, not in its accumulation.
OPINIONS ABOUT THE AMERICAS
Why is Mexico’s president pushing a recall vote against himself? Winning might be easier than leading.
Chile’s election produces a victory for the left. Democracy was a winner, too. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Nicaragua throws in its lot with the world’s autocracies
Neighbors watch the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in Managua, Nicaragua, on Jan. 10. (AP Photo/Andres Nunez) (Andr�s Nunez/AP)
A Spanish proverb says: “Tell me your company and I’ll tell you who you are.” Applying that maxim to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s inauguration ceremony Monday night confirms that the 76-year-old is a corrupt autocrat. He took the oath for another five-year term surrounded by guests such as presidents Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras — the latter of whom has been named as a drug kingpin in sworn U.S. court testimony. Also on hand was Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s vice president for economic affairs, wanted by Argentina for his role in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people.
Otherwise, high-level Latin American participation was sparse; no U.S., Canadian or European representatives attended. The diplomatic shunning protested the fact that Nicaragua’s Nov. 7 election was, as the Organization of American States declared, not “free, fair or transparent.” Mr. Ortega’s most flagrant abuse was to jail or place under house arrest seven prominent opposition figures who had the temerity to consider running against him: Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga, Noel Vidaurre, Medardo Mairena, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Miguel Mora and Cristiana Chamorro.
All face trumped-up national-security or corruption-related charges. Mr. Ortega holds roughly 170 political prisoners, according to the State Department; their plight is part of the repressive wave that began when he forcibly crushed national protests in 2018 at the cost of more than 300 lives. Those in detention include several of his former Sandinista comrades in the revolution that first carried him to power in 1979.
Mr. Ortega lost the presidency in a 1990 election, regained it in 2006 and seems determined to remain in office until he dies. His wife, Rosario Murillo, is vice president, wields considerable power and stands ready to perpetuate a family dynasty along with the couple’s children. Some observers hoped that Mr. Ortega might offer an amnesty on the occasion of his inauguration, but hasn’t so far; he gave no hint of leniency in his address Monday. Instead, he rationalized his jailing of peaceful opponents as equivalent to the “more than 700 political prisoners” he alleged the United States took in response to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. (For the record, the Justice Department has charged 701 defendants, of whom 35 have been sentenced, in open proceedings, to jail or prison.)
Adopting ultra-right-wing American conspiracy theories is about par for the ostensibly leftist dictator’s erratic course, unfortunately. For the time being, his opponents — both in Nicaragua and elsewhere — lack effective options, aside from steadfast resistance, denunciations and selective sanctions. The United States and European Union imposed new ones on regime officials Monday.
Mr. Ortega had an answer for that, too: the presence, at his inauguration, of a special envoy from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mr. Ortega recently withdrew Nicaragua’s recognition of Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic, apparently to secure the latter’s aid in thwarting Western sanctions. Certainly, shunning the embattled island democracy in favor of the autocracy threatening it further clarified what kind of company he wishes to keep. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Why Kazakhstan will not be returning to Russia’s fold
Troops in Almaty march in a Thursday ceremony marking the beginning of Russian troops' withdrawal from Kazakhstan. (Str/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
By Nargis Kassenova
Nargis Kassenova is a senior fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
Kazakhstan, the key strategic partner of the United States in Central Asia, is in turmoil. Until the end of 2021, it was a confident (bordering on smug), upper-middle-income country; its leaders routinely boasted about success at fostering interethnic peace and stability.
Yet in the course of just a few days it has been rocked to the core by the double blow of unprecedented nationwide protests and a power struggle among members of the top political elite. On Jan. 11, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced a deadline for the departure of the roughly 2,500 foreign troops he had invited into the country to help control the unrest. Tokayev had asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led security alliance, for assistance in combating “an external terrorist attack.” The request was granted at lightning speed, making it the group’s first operation to help a member state deal with a security crisis.
Most CSTO troops in the country are Russian — awakening fears that their presence amounted to an invasion or even “occupation.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken caustically observed: "One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave” — prompting a predictably furious reaction from the Kremlin. But there are good reasons to believe that Kazakhstan will not be returning to its Soviet-era position of subservience to Moscow any time soon if ever.
Many observers have rightly viewed the CSTO troop deployment as a victory for Moscow. By dispatching these forces, Russia also signaled to Kazakhstan’s political elites, including the security apparatus, whom to side with. We do not know what the price tag for this assistance will be. We will soon see how this affects the Kazakh government’s approach to various Russia-linked issues, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The troop deployment is a signal to the region and other neighbors that Russia is willing and able to prop up faltering client states. Tokayev, for his part, will have to contend with the burden of his unwelcome new status as the man who invited Russia back into the country. (His government has already gone to some lengths to assuage popular concerns about the CSTO involvement — such as appointing a known nationalist as the minister of culture and information.)
Yet it would be wrong to presume that the past three decades of efforts to build Kazakh statehood are now on the verge of evaporating. During that time, the country has developed a wide variety of political, economic and cultural links to the rest of the world.
In December 1991, when Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union, the population of ethnic Kazakhs made up around 40 percent of the population. Today, they account for around 70 percent. That shift is the result of the gradual out-migration of the descendants of the millions of Russians and other Europeans who came to the region in Soviet days. It also owes much to efforts by the country’s founding leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to “repatriate” ethnic Kazakhs from China, Mongolia and other Central Asian countries. The number of Russian-speakers has steadily declined — while the Kazakh language has firmly entrenched itself as the official tongue of government and culture.
New generations of citizens have spent countless hours in school on lessons about Kazakh history and national identity. Citizens have developed emotional attachments to national symbols. Protesters in different parts of the country in recent days have sung the national anthem (adopted in 2006) and waved the flag of Kazakhstan.
The rise in national consciousness explains the strong negative reaction of many citizens to Tokayev’s decision to ask the CSTO for help, perceiving it as a betrayal of the country’s sovereignty. Some were struck by the symbolism of the protests on the central square of Almaty before the troops arrived. It was on this same square that Kazakh demonstrators first took to the streets in defiance of the status quo in December 1986, one of the earliest civic protests in the Gorbachev era and a formative episode in the development of Kazakh national consciousness that was brutally suppressed by Soviet troops.
This time — perhaps in awareness of nationalist concerns — the government has been using the Russian troops to guard infrastructure and official installations, while Kazakh forces are conducting military operations on the ground and Kazakh authorities deal with protesters. Reliable polls are hard to come by, but social media reactions clearly reveal heightened sensitivity to the Russian presence.
Over the past three decades, U.S. policy in Kazakhstan has consistently worked to reinforce the new nation’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, checking Russia’s neo-imperial tendencies. The events unfolding this month show that the story is a complicated one. The interaction between Russia and Kazakhstan undeniably features some aspects of a patron-client relationship.
Yet this reality is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Kazakhstan and its people, and there is a growing aspiration for more sovereignty. (In 2020, the Kazakh government notably rejected Russian efforts to deepen regional integration.) Whatever other policies they might pursue, the United States and its allies should persist in their efforts to support Kazakhstan in this journey. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several Republicans involved in the process acknowledged it for what it was — a pretty brazen attempt at holding on to power. That attempt has now failed. And GOP Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor punctuated it Wednesday with a remarkable call to action.
Ohio state Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor in Columbus, Ohio. (Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP)
Among the many political abuses in our system of government, few things rank as high on the brazenness scale as gerrymandering. That’s in large part because redistricting is extremely complex and invites all kinds of tactics that casual voters just can’t be convinced to evaluate, much less care about.
On Wednesday, though, a particularly brazen attempt by Ohio Republicans to skirt the will of voters was turned aside. It came both after an extraordinary acknowledgements of the scheme by Republicans themselves, and with an extraordinary prescription from the state’s Republican chief justice.
The whole thing is case-in-point when it comes to how this process is exploited and even abused — and often more successfully than in this one.
The Republican-majority state Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the maps for state House and Senate districts created by the GOP-controlled redistricting commission, sending the commission back to the drawing board.
That it got to this point isn’t hugely surprising. Back in September, we here at The Fix noted how cynical the Republican-controlled commission’s attempt to force through the maps was. And despite the GOP’s 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court — justices are partisan, elected officials in Ohio — Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor was a known critic of gerrymandering. On Wednesday, she joined with three Democratic justices in striking the maps down.
The crux of the matter was this: Voters in Ohio had passed constitutional amendments last decade requiring more fairness in the redistricting process. The maps needed to adhere to the relative statewide preferences of voters.
That was a problem for Republicans, though, who drew the maps overwhelmingly in their favor a decade ago and had the power to do so again (even through a supposedly less-political commission). So they tried.
But the new amendments posed a problem: How can you draw an overwhelmingly Republican-favoring map when the state constitution requires the districts to be drawn according to statewide vote preferences? Republicans win a lot more than Democrats in Ohio, but they generally get about 54 percent of the vote.
So they came up with a scheme. They argued that, yes, Republicans win about 54 percent of the statewide vote in Ohio, generally speaking, but they also win the vast majority of statewide elections — 81 percent of them over the last decade. Thus, they argued, it’s valid to draw anywhere between 54 percent and 81 percent of districts favoring Republicans.
And the thing is, even members of the commission itself didn’t try to put a good face on that. Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that the 81 percent figure wasn’t, in fact, “any kind of mark that would indicate statewide preferences.” Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) said he didn’t see the justification until a minute before voting on it and called it, in a text message to his chief of staff, “asinine.”
But with the deadline for the maps looming, both DeWine and LaRose voted for them, along with state Auditor Keith Faber, who also criticized the maps. The three of them provided the decisive votes on a commission that also featured one appointed member from each party in each chamber.
The state Supreme Court found that the commission “did not attempt to draw a district plan that meets the standard articulated in” the state constitution. It added flatly that, “This [81 percent] methodology ... does not tell us the ‘statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio.’ " It also echoed a point we raised back in September, which is that in states in which one party wins virtually every statewide election, the justification offered by the commission would seem to validate drawing as much as 100 percent of districts to favor one party.
It pointed to an expert from Harvard University, who ran a simulation creating 5,000 potential district maps; not one of them was as slanted toward Republicans as the map they drew.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of the case, though, is what the GOP chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, added to the overall decision. In a concurring opinion, she offered Ohio voters another course. She suggested they might go further in preventing partisan politicians from attempting something like this again, by instituting a more independent commission, which as she detailed, several other states have done:
Having now seen firsthand that the current Ohio Redistricting Commission — comprised of statewide elected officials and partisan legislators — is seemingly unwilling to put aside partisan concerns as directed by the people’s vote, Ohioans may opt to pursue further constitutional amendment to replace the current commission with a truly independent, nonpartisan commission that more effectively distances the redistricting process from partisan politics.
Judicial decisions don’t generally include prescriptions for what legislators or voters might do to remedy the situation the justices are adjudicating. But here was a Republican justice suggesting what Republican commission members did was egregious enough that voters might rise up against it and deprive those officials of the power to attempt it again. | null | null | null | null | null |
“He had his gear on, he went on and came back off so I think we are just trying to make sure everything is good for the weekend,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “Sure, he would have … liked to be out there today, but it was probably best just to try and make sure he is good for the weekend.” | null | null | null | null | null |
PARIS — With Paris Saint-Germain still holding a strong lead in the French title race, the fight for second place is heating up down south between Nice and Marseille.
That’s as many goals as PSG star Kylian Mbappe, who has eight assits and is carrying PSG's title charge. They have scored two penalties each, both been their team’s only scorer in a game seven times, and spent roughly the same amount of time on the field, too.
Marseille’s chances of overhauling Nice also depend on whether Poland striker can Arkadiusz Milik find his best form. He's scored freely in the French Cup, with four goals in two games against weaker opponents, but has only netted once in 10 league games compared to nine in 15 last season. | null | null | null | null | null |
Federal Reserve Board Gov. Lael Brainard testifies before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on her nomination to be vice-chair of the Federal Reserve on Jan. 13, 2022. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard probably faces a clear path to becoming the Federal Reserve’s second-in-command. But at her confirmation hearing Thursday, lawmakers used Brainard’s appearance to press her on a range of increasingly politicized issues, including inflation, climate change and the Fed’s own independence.
Pulling that off is a heady challenge. For much of last year, Fed leaders expected inflation would be a temporary feature of the pandemic economy, and they held off on reining in prices so that the labor market could have room to grow. But price increases have seeped into just about every corner of the economy, bolstered by global supply chain backlogs, high consumer demand, worker shortages and an ongoing list of complications triggered by the pandemic era. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: “Capehart” with Rev. Al Sharpton
MR. CAPEHART: Good morning. Welcome to the “Capehart” podcast and Washington Post Live. I am Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post.
Well, since I started covering him as a cub editorial writer at The New York Daily News, the Reverend Al Sharpton has been at the center of just about every political and national story I've written about. The civil rights and social justice leader is the consummate inside/outside player who brings the voice of the powerless to the corridors of power, which makes him the perfect person to talk to right now about the battle over voting rights. He is the author of five books, including his latest one, "Righteous Troublemakers: Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America." And joining me now is the Reverend Al Sharpton.
Welcome to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.
REV. SHARPTON: Good to be with you, Jonathan.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. Before we talk about your book, we have to talk about the current fight over voting rights. Last month, you were among a number of Black leaders who told the Biden administration it is past time for it to put its full weight behind voting rights legislation.
Why don't you think the administration did that?
REV. SHARPTON: Well, I mean, the rationale that we were given was that the president was having private discussions and was trying to get it done privately. And our position was this was not a private matter. We had also met with Senator Manchin, we met with other Senators, and they didn't--we did not think they were going to move and that he must be public.
He said, and I said and was quoted by you and others--he said on the night of his election--he being Joe Biden--that Black America had my back; I will have yours. And there's nothing more critical in having our back, Mr. President, than this voting rights protection. And that's what our position was very publicly. I said it to him. I said it to the vice president. I said it to those in the White House staff, and I think that it was a mistake for them not to come earlier. I was glad they did come. He made the speech that I felt was strong and I was glad he did it. I just wish we had done it earlier.
I remember, Jonathan, when the eight national civil rights group leaders met with the president in the summer, and we asked him to go out and be more strident in his support. It was on a Thursday I believe we met, maybe Friday. But the next Tuesday, he went to Philadelphia and made a voting rights--and he invited us. I went. Most of the group didn't go. I was there. I sat up front with the president's sister. And he made a great speech. And I remember he came over to the rope line after and he looked at me. He said, Reverend Al, what'd you think of the speech? I said it was a great speech. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my mother had me sit in the living room watching Lyndon Johnson speak to the State of the Union and a black-and-white television. And I remember Lyndon Johnson saying, "We shall overcome" in that speech. And my mother was moved. The President of the United States said "We shall overcome." I said this speech would have reached there, was almost there, other than one word you didn't mention. He said, what's that? I said, filibuster. He says, oh, you always going to be on me. I said, you got to do your job; I have to do mine.
So, I'm glad I was in Atlanta to hear him finally mention that one word, filibuster, and I wish he had done it in the summer, but I'm glad he did it now.
MR. CAPEHART: So, at that speech in Philadelphia, you actually got a shout-out from the president from the podium before he started that speech. As you just mentioned, you were in Atlanta for the president's barnburner of a speech, right? I want to talk to you about that in a second. And you met with both the president and the vice president, Vice President Kamala Harris, after that speech. And to put another, you know, finer point on it, just before this interview you were on the phone with the White House.
One, what was that conversation about?
REV. SHARPTON: Well, I wanted to have clarity on the fact the president is going over to Capitol Hill today, and I wanted to have clarity with this joint bill, and I was talking to someone in the staff--I won't give a name, but it was in the White House--that the president is going to push this in his meeting with the Democratic Caucus, as he has done with the whole infrastructure bill.
And they said that nothing has changed and that they are moving forward to tell them--for the president to tell them how important this is. And I told them that I just did not want to make--be in any way misinformed that because we're dealing with a new bill going through the House, which Schumer and them are doing for their reason that this would in any way not be the message that the president is giving, that we need these bills passed.
MR. CAPEHART: Let me get your reaction to what I thought was the critical line in the president's speech in Atlanta, and that was the one--and I'm paraphrasing, here--where he said to the Senate, to Congress, to the American people, you are either on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace; the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor.
What did you make of that line, that distinction he made?
REV. SHARPTON: I think it was an important distinction. Now, I think it's been distorted because he did not say, if you don't vote for this, you're Bull Connor, or that if you don't vote for this, you're George Wallace. He said the sides of Bull Connor, George Wallace, or Martin Luther King or John Lewis or Abe Lincoln.
Now, to say that, oh, he's calling them Bull Connor is to say he's calling himself Abe Lincoln, and that's not what he's saying. He's saying there are sides in this country and the side of those that would disenfranchise or impede people's right to vote is the side that George Wallace and Bull Connor and others were on, the side of giving everyone one person, one vote, is the side Martin Luther King and John Lewis and Abe Lincoln was on.
So, I think that people that want--that do not want to deal with the facts of the matter and the divide that has been in American history want to try and nitpick like he was name calling when he was identifying the divide in this country and those that have stood on the divide. And rather than say, I'm on this side of the divide, they want to say, well, you shouldn't call me a name. He didn't. He identified sides.
MR. CAPEHART: Right. And I thought that that was the most important line in the speech, because it clarified for the American people, and especially those who haven't been paying attention to this, like you and I have, what's at stake here.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the floor of the Senate and was, you know, highly offended by what the president said, even said that it was, quote, profoundly, profoundly unpresidential. Your reaction to Leader McConnell?
REV. SHARPTON: Well, I mean, after four years of Donald Trump, how do you define presidential? But I think if that was unpresidential, then Lyndon Johnson was unpresidential advocating the Voting Rights Act and talk about "We shall overcome." And on and on and on you could cite presidents that have taken firm stance. What I think it was--it reminds me, Jonathan--my mother was from Alabama. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. My mother said to me something I never forgot. She said that, you don't know anything about the South. I grew up farming. She says, I can tell you one thing about farming: If you throw a brick in a pile of hogs, the one that hollers is the one you hit. And I've always thought in my career that when people start howling, it's because you hit them.
McConnell sounded like somebody that was hit, because what was unpresidential about saying where the American divide is? What was unpresidential about challenging people to protect the right to vote. Let's understand what we're talking about, now. We're talking about protecting voter rights, something that Mitch McConnell and others have voted for. So, what is wrong with it now but it was right back then? Mitch McConnell made great, eloquent speeches about the need for voting rights. So, why was it right then and wrong now? What changed other than Donald Trump and his steal-the-election kind of big lie that he's running. And I think that that is what they do not want to answer, so they come with these kinds of, oh, I'm offended; oh, this is not presidential; oh, this is incoherent.
No, it was very coherent. Which side are you on? That's as coherent as you get. And I would only add, what changed since the last time you voted for the exact voting protections we're asking for now?
MR. CAPEHART: And as the president pointed out in his speech--well, in 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized unanimously by the United States Senate in 2006. Sixteen of those Republicans who voted for that reauthorization continue to serve in the Senate now and are blocking both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. One more question on this and then we'll turn to--
REV. SHARPTON: Sixteen of them who voted for it. Sixteen of them who voted for it.
MR. CAPEHART: Yup, that's what I--
REV. SHARPTON: Let me tell you this: In 2006, you can pull it up, I was in the Rose Garden when they signed the Voting Rights Act reauthorization, on the front row invited by President George Bush. Karl Rove called and invited me. That's how much it was bipartisan. 2006--I had run in 2004 to try to get the nomination and run against George Bush. George Bush invited me to the signing, a Republican president, and Karl Rove, this political guy, called and invited me. That's how much everybody agreed on voting rights.
So, what happened to those 16 Republicans? What happened to the Republican Party other than the race-tinged demagoguery of Donald Trump has made them something other than who they were let us know what the country was.
MR. CAPEHART: So, Rev., the conventional wisdom is both those voting rights bills aren't going to go anywhere, that then the move to change the rules and to carve out an exception in the filibuster for them to be approved for a simple majority vote, that's not going anywhere.
Assuming the conventional wisdom becomes reality, then what? What is the plan going forward?
REV. SHARPTON: Well, I think that there are several things that could happen. We're going to have to fight state by state in terms of these legislative laws. We have to challenge them in the courts. And we're going to have to keep fighting around the courts--around the Supreme Court and the Justice Department coming in. We're going to have to use a multifaceted kind of strategy, including whatever the president can do with executive order, but we shouldn't have to do that.
If they can do carve-outs around judicial nominations, if they can do ways to get around things for budgetary items, and get around things in terms of the filibuster, they're going to do that here. I think that it is important--and I've said to Senator Schumer that they proceed and get this vote. We need to have a roll call on who's on what side at this time in America, and I think that people need to be clear or their senator is saying that, I am not for voting rights, especially the 16 that was in 2006. We need to call a roll. We need to know where we are.
MR. CAPEHART: And more recently, last month the Senate carved out an exception to raise the debt ceiling. So, that rule isn't as sacrosanct as it has been discussed.
All right. Rev., let's talk about your book, Righteous Troublemakers. Why did you decide to write it?
REV. SHARPTON: You know, I have been--any number of occasions that I would sit there and marvel at the people that would come. I'm talking about marches that I've helped to call and organize for decades. And I open the book by talking about, in last year, when I was doing the eulogy for George Floyd, I just out of--spontaneously said, we need to march on Washington. Martin Luther King, III, was sitting on the front row and I said to Martin, in front of the whole audience during the eulogy, Martin, we need to go in Washington. I'm calling for a march in Washington.
And over which he looked at me and nodded, but he later said to me, Al, how you gonna call a march? We have not raised any funds. We have no structure. You have an organization to do it. How are going to do this in a certain amount of months. I said, we can pull it off. And we did. And even beyond my own expectations, we had over 200,000 people there in the middle of a pandemic, August 28, 2020. In the middle of pandemic, we had to have the people's temperature taken as they come in, and we was very concerned we were not dealing with super spreader, and that there be no violence.
As I was walking to the steps, because we speak from the steps where Martin's father spoke in '63, I noticed in the crowd--security was bringing me through and I think I had one of George Floyd's family members with me. And I saw an old man, looked like he had to be in his 80s, and he was jumping up and down, very, very spry, and he had something in his hand. And for whatever reason, I told security, see what this guy wants. He's an old guy. All these people around him. It was a huge crowd.
And they brought him to me and he had in his hand a button and he said, Reverend Al, I was here in '63 with Dr. King and I want to be here with you today. And he had a button saying, "Freedom Now, August 28, 1963." Little button and it was rusted. And he went back in the crowd. And that man haunted me. I said, you know, people that have been the ones that march and fight and they know they are not going to be on the news tonight. They won't be in The Washington Post or New York Times tomorrow. They won't get any recognition. They're the ones that make movements. And I want to write a book about people that never got the limelight, that fought anyhow. They were the righteous fighters. And while I have a certain amount of limelight, I want to put some on them.
So, I wanted to write about attorney Pauli Murray, who wrote a lot of the legal theories and arguments that Thurgood Marshall used in the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education fight that led to the desegregation of public schools. She wrote a lot of those basic things he used. Pauli Murray, they did not give her limelight, because in the '50s they weren't going to give it to a woman and certainly not to a gay. I wrote her story.
I write about Claudette Colvin, nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, because of the segregation laws. Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months before then, in the same Montgomery, Alabama, for not giving her seat in front of the bus, same segregation laws. They wouldn't rally around her. Black leadership in that town--because she was "dark-skinned" [indicating] and pregnant and wasn't married, she wasn't the right image. But she was one who helped inspire Rosa Parks. I write about her story.
I write about Amelia Boynton, who was the real impetus of the Selma movement where Martin Luther King and them used to stay in her house.
These unsung heroes, not only did I write it for their benefit, and certainly I think they ought to benefit, I wanted people to understand that this movement does not come from some kind of special people. This movement for social justice are ordinary people that did extraordinary things and got nothing for it, because sometimes we think that it takes people with special gifts to do this. No, it takes people that are committed and that risk it all. And I think those of us who have some limelight ought to give them credit. You know, if we call marches and rallies and voter drives and nobody showed up, nobody would pay any of us any attention.
It is those people like that man in the crowd that make these movements work and I wanted to tell their story so people would be inspired to be involved themselves, knowing that they can make a difference, because those are the people that really made the difference.
MR. CAPEHART: And you know, I'm glad you did this, because I do think a lot of people think that the folks who were part of the civil rights movement were these mythic figures who were sort of born into being heroes.
And three years ago, this past week, I and Clarence Jones and Bob Moses, Ambassador Andrew Young, and a bunch of other--some of the civil rights veterans were gathered at Sunnylands. And Minnijean Brown-Trickey who was one of the Little Rock Nine, one of the things she said at the table was--because young leaders were going to be coming in the next day. She said, the one thing we need to do is to demystify for them what all of this was.
We were just--as you said, ordinary people who were thrust into extraordinary circumstances and we did what we had to do. So, I am glad you wrote this book and put the spotlight on--I've heard, of course, of Amelia Boynton. I heard of course of Claudette Colvin, and there's a great house song by Monique Bingham called "Claudette," which you should look up, because it's got a great--great lyrics. But I didn't know about Pauli Murray at all, and I was thrilled to read about her.
Rev., in the little bit of time that we have left, you--as you--
REV. SHARPTON: That's one of the achievements of my life, because I've spent the last couple of decades reading Jonathan Capehart. Now, Jonathan Capehart is reading me. That's so touching to me.
MR. CAPEHART: [Laughing] It's not the first book of yours I've read. You've been on this podcast before when I had you on to talk about "Rise Up," which is a great--
REV. SHARPTON: Right.
MR. CAPEHART: -- manifesto and guide sheet for emerging activists. But you know, you, while writing about George Floyd and the murder of George Floyd, you tie his murder in with the civil rights protests of the 1960s, writing that the hardships and victories of all marginalized groups had merged into a single fight, and how the bravery of everyday people had been, quote, overlooked or cast aside.
How has the fight for social justice changed from the 1960s to today?
REV. SHARPTON: I think that the change is that now we see a lot of people because of social media that are getting the message. When we first started fighting police brutality, there was no ways of videoing; so, it's changed. The technology has changed it, but in many ways it stays the same.
You still see those that are so-called "grassroots" and those that are more establishing having their tensions that they work through, generational tensions. And I tell a lot of young people, even in National Action Network, this is nothing new. When I was younger, we fought the older guard. We fought John Lewis and Jesse Jackson and them were the older guard in our way. And now, we're the older guard. And then, Stokely Carmichael and them felt Dr. King was too nonviolent and too mild. All of these tensions are the same that we always see.
The only question is what we get done. At the end of the day, no one knows about the generational fights of the '60s. No one cares about the grassroots against the elite. What they care about is we had the Voting Rights Act of '65, the Civil Rights Act of '64, the Open Housing Act of '68. And at the end of the day, if we cannot get legislation like voting rights, like police reform, then all of our bickering and drama is for nothing. Let's score.
One thing an activist told me--and I know we're out of time--that I never got when I was a kid. I remember the first time the newspaper started criticizing me in New York, and I remember an old activist said to me, said, Reverend Al, do you watch football? I said, sometimes. He says, think of activism like playing football. I said, what do you mean? He said, half the stadium is cheering you; half the stadium is jeering you. Don't get intoxicated by the cheers and don't get depressed and react to the jeers. Your job is to get the ball across the goal line. And always remember that they're going to try to tackle you if you have the ball, and sometimes you might have to go across that goal line with a tackler on your back. But always remember when they try to tackle you, it's only because you must have the ball and to the goal line and ignore the noise of the crowd. And that's what I'm telling the people to do in this book.
MR. CAPEHART: I'm going to squeeze in one more question for you real fast. Ben Crump, every time you introduce him, every time you talk about him, you call him, quote, "The Attorney General of Black America." Talk about the impact he has had on the social justice movement since he emerged on the scene.
REV. SHARPTON: I think the impact is that he has brought a legal expertise that we need. We once had, of course, Thurgood Marshall, who then became a judge; and then we had Johnnie Cochran. In this era, we needed a Ben Crump, who could bring it in the courtroom, who could meet with prosecutors and talk their language, who could also work with those of us that are in the civil rights leadership to interpret to us the law.
So, when we get to Brunswick, Georgia at a trial, or Minneapolis with the George Floyd trial, it is Ben that deals with the prosecutors, talks their language, and explains it to us so we're not just protesting. If we can get it in the courtroom, we need the interpreter, and he's the one that interprets. That's why I call him "The Attorney General." He protects our legal rights, defends it, and interprets it to us.
And you notice, he doesn't try to lead a march. He doesn't do what we do, but he is "peerless" is the word I'm looking for, in terms of the legal defense and legal expertise. And as somebody who knew Johnnie Cochran and who met Thurgood Marshall many times, when I say it, I'm not just shooting from the hip.
MR. CAPEHART: Reverend Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, author of "Righteous Troublemakers: Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America," thank you very much for coming back to "Capehart."
REV. SHARPTON: Thank you for having me. | null | null | null | null | null |
Attorney General Mark Herring issued the sweeping order during his last week in office.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring in 2021. (Steve Helber/AP)
Outgoing Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring on Thursday announced that he had overturned 58 historic legal opinions that perpetuated racial discrimination, acknowledging that his office once served as “a key cog in the machinery of oppression.”
The move will probably be one the attorney general’s last in office as he closes out his two terms in signature Herring fashion. Over the past eight years, Herring became nationally known for his fierce progressive bent, calling himself the “people’s lawyer,” in part for his willingness to take on conservatives and powerful interests on high-profile issues such as gun control and same-sex marriage. During his term, he also came under fire for darkening his skin to dress as a rapper at a 1980 college party. He lost his November election to Republican Jason Miyares, who will be sworn in Saturday.
Cynthia Hudson, former chief deputy attorney general of Virginia, chairs the Commission to Examine Racial Inequity in Virginia’s Law. She characterized Herring’s move, which she helped launch during her time with the attorney general’s office, as “a perfect complement” to the commission’s work.
Virginia’s past attorneys general issued scores of opinions applying laws that imposed poll taxes, white-only primaries, segregated voter lists and literacy tests. Barnett called Herring’s ruling “an important step” in acknowledging those wrongs, but stressed that the state has more work to do. | null | null | null | null | null |
Police arrest teens in killing of man in Northeast Washington
D.C. police have arrested two teenagers and charged them with killing a 21-year-old man in a shooting last month near the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington.
The male suspects, aged 16 and 17, were charged as juveniles with first-degree murder while armed. Because of their ages, police did not release their names.
The shooting occurred about 11:25 p.m. on Dec. 6 in the 1200 block of Mount Olivet Road NE.
Police said the victim, Derico Justice Miles, 21, of Southeast Washington, had been shot in the neck and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities did not describe a possible motive.
Miles was killed about 150 feet away from where a 17-year-old high school senior had been shot the afternoon of Dec. 3 while walking home from a nearby high school. Larelle Washington died Dec. 6.
Police have said they know of no connection between the two shootings. No arrest has been made in the shooting of Washington. | null | null | null | null | null |
New movies to stream this week: ‘Brazen,’ ‘Sex Appeal’ and more
From left: Malachi Weir, Sam Page and Alyssa Milano in “Brazen.” (Sergei Bachlakov/Netflix)
Based on “Brazen Virtue,” a 1988 book by best-selling romance novelist Nora Roberts, “Brazen” tells the story of Grace Miller (Alyssa Milano), a successful mystery novelist who becomes involved in the investigation of her sister Kathleen’s murder — and romantically entangled with the hunky D.C. police detective assigned to the case (Sam Page, who comes across as a low-rent version of Dan Stevens). The story, which boasts a bunch of juicy suspects (a couple of whom are students of Kathleen, a high school teacher) and a scandalous secret about the victim’s hidden life as a Web-video dominatrix, is as pulpy as a tall glass of Tropicana. But Milano — whose casting created a tempest in a teapot after some “Brazen Virtue” fans objected to the actress’s prominent liberal activism — makes for an appealing and strong heroine, one whose expertise as a crime writer makes her a pretty good detective, even if the film feels, at times, like something you might find on the Lifetime channel. TV-14. Available on Netflix. Contains violence and some sensuality. 96 minutes.
“Sex Appeal” is a teen sex comedy about a sexually naive, MIT-bound high-schooler (Mika Abdalla) whose long-distance boyfriend (Mason Versaw) wants to take their relationship to the next level. According to Paste magazine, the film’s setup may be reminiscent of such earlier films as “American Pie,” “Superbad” and “Easy A,” but it’s redeemed by an appealing protagonist “who approaches losing her virginity like coding Java.” By the film’s third act, however, “it is so uncomfortably contorted in an effort to neatly package itself into a preestablished framework that it squanders that potential.”
TV-MA. Available on Hulu.
The erotic thriller “Shattered” stars Cameron Monaghan as a recently divorced tech millionaire who falls for a sexy former model (Lilly Krug), whom he meets in a grocery store — and who quickly becomes his nurse after he is injured. Flickering Myth calls the film, which also features appearances by John Malkovich and Frank Grillo, sometimes entertaining “schlock.” R. Available on demand. Contains violence, bloody images, sexuality, nudity and strong language throughout.
Base on a true story, the Virginia-set thriller “The Surprise Visit” centers on Juliette (Serah Henesey), a woman who shows up unannounced on her wealthy mother’s doorstep, only to learn from the gardener, Hugh (Eric Roberts), that Mom has left town — a fact that Hugh’s sketchy son (Rob Riordan) and daughter-in-law (Jacqi Vene), both junkies, decide to take advantage of by robbing the place. Film Threat cites the “spectacular” location cinematography, and straightforward plot, which culminates in a “climactic and deadly game of hide-and-seek.” Unrated. Available on demand. 86 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
Supreme Court blocks workplace vaccine requirements, allows requirement for...
Businesses and 27 Republican-led states asked the court to put on hold the workplace requirements proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which had been upheld by a lower court.
Federal law grants OSHA authority to issue emergency rules for up to six months to protect employees “exposed to grave danger” from “substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.” The administration contends that gives OSHA not only the authority but also the responsibility to act.
The temporary rule would give companies with 100 or more workers a choice: mandate all employees be vaccinated or require unvaccinated employees to provide weekly negative coronavirus test results and wear face coverings to work on-site.
The other challenged policy was a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services vaccination requirement for what the White House says is more than 17 million health-care workers at 76,000 facilities that receive federal money tied to those programs.
The administration points to federal law that gives the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services the ability to impose requirements necessary for the “health and safety” of patients. For decades, it says, the secretary has had authority to require participating health-care providers to establish programs for the prevention and control of infectious diseases within the facilities. | null | null | null | null | null |
A U.S. Park Police helicopter pulls two people from the wreckage of the remains of the Air Florida jetliner after it fell into the Potomac River. (Charles Pereira/AP)
The helicopter flew so low that, at points, its skids dipped into the water. A passenger on the plane, Arland D. Williams Jr., died after being pulled into the water while helping others out of the Potomac. And Lenny Skutnik, a federal employee who dived into the water to rescue a passenger, was heralded as a hero, invited by President Ronald Reagan to the State of the Union address.
“The pilot should say, ‘we should abort the takeoff,’ ” Marcus said. But the flight was already delayed, held up in a queue of departing planes, and aborting would have meant circling around for another round of de-icing.
So the jet took off but reached an altitude of only 350 feet before hitting the bridge. The crash killed 74 crew members and passengers on the plane and four people on the ground.
The NTSB’s investigation revealed that the pilots hadn’t activated an engine anti-ice system that keeps sensors working correctly. So even though the pilots set the engines to the correct power, they didn’t have enough power to take off properly.
“It marked a period of probably of 20 to 25 years where the NTSB was investigating airliner accidents involving various aspects of icing,” he said.
The date was a doubly-tragic one in Washington’s transportation history, because it marked the first fatal Metro derailment. A train came off the tracks near the Smithsonian station, killing three people and injuring 25 others. The twin disasters shared The Washington Post’s front page the following day. | null | null | null | null | null |
This image provided by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows an illustration of the outer coating of the Epstein-Barr virus, one of the world’s most common viruses. New research is showing stronger evidence that Epstein-Barr infection could set some people on the path to later developing multiple sclerosis. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via AP) (Uncredited/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) | null | null | null | null | null |
For almost a year, voting rights advocates have called on President Biden to make expanded voting rights legislation his top agenda item. Biden has said overhauling the country’s election laws is one his biggest priorities.
But, like other major parts of his agenda, the path forward has to go through the Senate, where Republicans have vowed to block changes to elections laws.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, don’t have enough votes to pass the legislation on their own. They could change Senate rules and pass it with their slim majority — in other words, they could get rid of the filibuster. But Democrats are still pretty divided on whether to do so.
This week, Biden, for the first time, took a strong stance on where Democrats should go from here.
“Today I’m making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights,” Biden said in a speech Tuesday in Atlanta.
He also criticized the institution where he’d spent most of his career. “Sadly, the United States Senate — designed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body — has been rendered a shell of its former self,” Biden said. “It gives me no satisfaction in saying that, as an institutionalist, as a man who was honored to serve in the Senate.”
The same president who once said the filibuster was an important part of the legislative process, is now urging the Senate to change rules to pass voting rights legislation. But how far will his words go in convincing Senate Democrats? And what does it mean for the fate of our country’s election laws?
On this episode of the “Can He Do That?” podcast, White House reporter Cleve Wootson explains what’s in the proposed voting rights bills, how advocates have reacted to Biden’s latest calls for action and what is likely to happen next.
Biden promised unity. Voters are still divided. | null | null | null | null | null |
CRANSTON, R.I. — The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island has opened an investigation into the North Kingstown School Department after student-athletes filed a complaint that the high school violated students’ civil rights by allowing a former boys’ basketball coach to disrobe athletes for “fat tests” for two decades. | null | null | null | null | null |
Coronavirus: A National Strategy with Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD & Céline Gounder, MD
As coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to rise, the Biden administration is aiming to make high-quality masks available to all Americans for free. On Wednesday, Jan. 19 at 1:30 p.m. E.T., Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD and Céline Gounder, MD, former health advisers to President Biden’s transition team, join Washington Post Live to lay out a new national strategy for living with COVID-19, rather than continuing efforts to eradicate the virus. They will also discuss the latest developments with the omicron variant, the national booster campaign, testing and mounting pressure on the U.S. health-care system as staff shortages and lack of ICU beds complicate care.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor, and Co-Director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the Special Advisory to the Director General of the World Health Organization. He is on leave for 2019-2020 from being the Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
From January 2009 to January 2011, Dr. Emanuel served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. Prior to that he was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health from 1997 to August of 2011. Dr. Emanuel received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. He has published over 300 articles mainly on health care reform, research ethics, and end of life care. He has also authored or edited 15 books. His most recent book, entitled Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care?, compares the health systems of eleven countries across different metrics. Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history.
Dr. Emanuel also serves as a Venture Partner at Oak HC/FT in addition to serving as a contributor for the New York Times and CNN. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Royal College of Medicine. He turned down a Fulbright Fellowship. He is a 2018 recipient of the Dan David Prize in the category of Bioethics, an honor recognizing innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms.
Céline Gounder, MD
Dr. Gounder is the CEO/President/Founder of Just Human Productions, a non-profit multimedia organization. She’s also the host and producer of American Diagnosis, a podcast on health and social justice, and Epidemic, a podcast about the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic.
From November 9, 2020 to January 20, 2021, Dr. Gounder served on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.
She is a CNN Medical Analyst, and prior to that, was a frequent expert guest on CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, HLN, BBC, Al Jazeera America, MTV, Dr. Oz, and Oprah Prime. She’s written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian US, The Washington Post, Reuters, Quartz, Sports Illustrated, and Bloomberg View. She’s best known for her coverage of the Ebola, Zika, COVID-19, opioid overdose, and gun violence epidemics.
Dr. Gounder is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. She cares for patients on the wards at Bellevue Hospital Center.
In early 2015, Dr. Gounder spent two months volunteering as an Ebola aid worker in Guinea. In her free time, she interviewed locals to understand how the crisis was affecting them. She is currently making Dying to Talk, a feature-length documentary about the Ebola epidemic in Guinea.
Between 1998 and 2012, she studied TB and HIV in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Brazil. While on faculty at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Gounder was the Director for Delivery for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic. She later served as Assistant Commissioner and Director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
She received her BA in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, her Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her MD from the University of Washington. Dr. Gounder was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, and a post-doctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. She was elected a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016 and featured in the IDSA’s 2017 Annual Report. In 2017, People Magazine named her one of 25 Women Changing the World. In 2021, InStyle Magazine named her one of 50 Women Making the World a Better Place.
Dr. Gounder lives with her husband Grant Wahl in New York City. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group known as the Oath Keepers speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Stewart Rhodes — founder and leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers, whose members are accused of being key players in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress — has been indicted and arrested in connection with the riot, officials said Thursday.
The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He is charged with seditious conspiracy, along with 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates, officials said.
Most of those individuals were previously arrested, but one, 63-year-old Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, is also facing charges as part of the case against the Oath Keepers for the first time. Officials said Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Tex., and Vallejo was taken into custody in Phoenix.
A federal grand jury in the District leveled the new charges focusing on what prosecutors say is a core group of Oath Keepers adherents who allegedly planned for and participated in obstructing Congress on the day lawmakers certified President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The indictments unsealed Thursday mark the first time anyone has faced charges of seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attacks, though prosecutors have long signaled they were considering using that rarely applied section of federal law.
He said he was communicating with members of his group on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to “keep them out of trouble,” and emphasized that Oath Keepers associates who did go into the Capitol “went totally off mission.”
An attorney for Rhodes, Jonathon A. Moseley, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An earlier indictment charged 19 of alleged Oath Keepers adherents with conspiracy and aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress. Two of those individuals have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators. The rest have pleaded not guilty and are preparing for trials later this year.
In court filings related to the original conspiracy case, prosecutors alleged that the group came to Washington at Rhodes’s urging. Rhodes began discussing plans to keep Trump in the White House by force as early as Nov. 9, the filings state.
Seven other alleged Oath Keepers members or associates were previously arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, but they were not charged in the large conspiracy case.
In interviews with The Post, Rhodes disputed previous government allegations regarding his encrypted posts to a group that included regional Oath Keepers leaders from several states at the scene.
Rhodes also said he has grown disillusioned with Trump, accusing the former president of not supporting members of the Oath Keepers charged in the Jan. 6 investigation.
“All of the people that are being unlawfully detained or denied bail, they’re being abandoned by Trump. He’s done nothing for them. You know, he could donate money, he hasn’t even done that. He didn’t pardon anybody while he was still in office, and then when he left, he hasn’t raised money,” Rhodes said. “... I think he has abandoned his base, because he has abandoned the people who were there to protect his other supporters. So, yes, I do feel abandoned by him.”
Days after the attack on Congress, the Justice Department announced that it was considering charging some of the rioters with seditious conspiracy — a rarely filed criminal charge for those who use violence to try to hinder the execution of federal law. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Biden accentuated the positive news regarding health-care workers, and said he was disappointed the court ruled against the administration on the workplace rules.
“The Court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure, but that does not stop me from using my voice as President to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy,” Biden said in a statement. | null | null | null | null | null |
In an interview, Fahrenkopf called the meetings with the RNC “cordial” but said the committee “wanted to control things we aren’t prepared to let them control.” He said the DNC had not made any similar demands.
In a separate letter sent to the RNC in December, the commission said it would consider an earlier scheduled debate because of early voting, but rejected RNC suggestions that it should have a representative at the organization’s board meetings and have more influence on picking moderators. The commission also said it did not control the personal political activities of its members but would attempt to continue to be nonpartisan.
She was referring to Steve Scully of C-SPAN, who was an intern for Biden for one month in 1978 when Biden was a senator from Delaware, according to a biography published by George Washington University. The debate Scully was scheduled to moderate wound up being canceled after Trump objected to holding it virtually because of coronavirus concerns.
Asked about the RNC’s plans, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “has participated in many debates over the course of his career and believes they play a role in allowing the American people to hear from candidates and where they stand. So I think it’s more … a question best posed to the RNC on what they’re so afraid of.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The woman was identified as Kery Lynn McAttee, 58, of Charlotte, Mi., southwest of Lansing. Police said they charged her with several criminal counts, including unlawful possession and transportation of a semiautomatic rifle.
McAttee’s 33-year-old son, Gregory M. McAttee, said his mother has suffered from mental illness and thought people who attacked the Capitol had also been harassing her.
He said he did not know she had come to the District and had been arrested. Gregory McAttee said his mother hunted with the muzzle loader. | null | null | null | null | null |
The keeper of documents such as the Declaration of Independence will step down after 12 years
David S. Ferriero in 2017. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
“It has been the honor of a lifetime,” Ferriero wrote in a note to his staff Wednesday. “My time here has been filled with opportunities, challenges, and awesome responsibilities. … I am humbled and awestruck and so deeply grateful — grateful to all of you.”
In addition to housing national treasures such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the National Archives holds 13 billion pages of text, 10 million maps, charts and drawings, as well as tens of millions of photographs, films and other records.
Before coming to the agency, Ferriero was director of the New York Public Libraries and served in top positions at the libraries of the Massachusetts Institution of Technology and Duke University. A native of Beverly, Mass., he served as a Navy hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War.
A self-described introvert, he is reserved and has a dry sense of humor. On his watch in 2014, the National Archives held its first sleepover.
He has pushed the digitization of the archives, and he embraced social media. In November, he noted in a blog post, “We know that not everyone can come to our facilities [for research] and providing these records online democratizes access.”
He has also promoted the role of “citizen archivists” who volunteer to transcribe and review historic documents online.
One of the items framed in Ferriero’s office is a copy of a letter he wrote to President John F. Kennedy when he was in high school. The letter had been found at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Later, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library found two letters Ferriero had written to President Eisenhower as a youngster, and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library found one he had written to President Johnson. Ferriero had them framed in his office, too.
In 2020, the National Archives faced criticism when it posted in its headquarters building an exhibit with a picture that had been altered to blur out words suggesting criticism of President Donald Trump.
The large color photograph, designed to celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage, showed a massive protest crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue during the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The original photo had been altered to obscure some words on signs held by marchers.
Less than 24 hours after Washington Post reporter Joe Heim pointed out the alterations, the National Archives apologized.
The National Archives is headquartered in a massive 84-year-old granite and limestone landmark on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington’s Federal Triangle. A “temple to American history,” Ferriero called it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Attorney General Mark R. Herring issued the sweeping order during his last week in office.
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring in 2021. (Steve Helber/AP)
Outgoing Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring on Thursday announced that he had overturned 58 historic legal opinions that perpetuated racial discrimination, acknowledging that his office once served as “a key cog in the machinery of oppression.”
The move will probably be one the attorney general’s last in office as he closes his two terms in signature Herring fashion. Over the past eight years, Herring became nationally known for his fierce progressive bent, calling himself the “people’s lawyer,” in part for his willingness to take on conservatives and powerful interests on high-profile issues such as gun control and same-sex marriage. During his term, he also came under fire for darkening his skin to dress as a rapper at a 1980 college party. He lost his November election to Republican Jason Miyares, who will be sworn in Saturday.
Cynthia Hudson, former chief deputy attorney general of Virginia, chairs the Commission to Examine Racial Inequity in Virginia Law. She characterized Herring’s move, which she helped launch during her time with the attorney general’s office, as “a perfect complement” to the commission’s work.
Herring overruled the 58 opinions with support from state Sen. Mamie Locke and Del. Lamont Bagby, who chairs the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus.
Virginia’s past attorneys general issued scores of opinions applying laws that imposed poll taxes, whites-only primaries, segregated voter lists and literacy tests. Barnett called Herring’s ruling “an important step” in acknowledging those wrongs, but stressed that the state has more work to do. | null | null | null | null | null |
Since then, disclosure of emails and texts — from former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, conservative media figures and protest leaders — support the need to explore these questions. Specifically, the committee wants to hear from Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who have claimed the inquiry is political and the requests to them unprecedented, and have said they will not voluntarily cooperate. On Wednesday, the committee formally requested an interview with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has also refused to cooperate. That leads to the question of whether the committee, as it has done for former administration officials and private persons, can compel testimony and document production from the members’ colleagues. Put another way, are members of Congress above the law? | null | null | null | null | null |
We now have the first seditious-conspiracy charges from Jan. 6. Here’s how historic that is.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes speaks during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, Calif., in 2017. Rhodes has been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
For the first time since Jan. 6, 2021, those allegedly involved in the Capitol insurrection have been charged with seditious conspiracy. Eleven members and associates of the extremist Oath Keepers group face that charge, including its founder and leader, Stewart Rhodes.
It’s a historic moment that there have long been questions about — namely, whether the hundreds of criminal cases brought after Jan. 6 might ever include such serious charges. Attorney General Merrick Garland said last week, amid some impatience, that bigger cases took longer to build and were indeed being investigated. Now one has arrived.
The severity of the charges also undercuts efforts to downplay the events of that day; critics have long pointed to the lack of sedition charges or charges against people such as Rhodes as supposed proof that the insurrection wasn’t that bad — or wasn’t an insurrection at all.
It’s also a pretty historic day that was previewed about 10 months ago.
Appearing on “60 Minutes” back then, the former top prosecutor who handled the Capitol riot, Michael Sherwin, indicated that sedition charges could indeed be on the way.
“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Sherwin said. He added: “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Sherwin said that about 10 percent of arrests involve “more complex conspiracy cases where we do have evidence — it’s in the public record — where individual militia groups from different facets … did have a plan.”
Sherwin didn’t connect that 10 percent of arrests specifically to the idea of sedition, but even the seditious conspiracy charges that were revealed Thursday are pretty historic for the modern era.
Sedition law has changed repeatedly throughout American history, with the idea occasionally being used overzealously to target communists, war critics and others whose alleged offenses, in retrospect, seem rather minor.
Here’s how “seditious conspiracy” is defined under federal law (key parts bolded):
People tend to think of sedition as an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government, and some would surely argue that storming the Capitol in an attempt to force Congress to reverse a democratic election would rise to that level. But one can also be charged if they conspire merely to use force to “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” Allegations of an attempted “coup” aside, the Capitol riot seemed at the very least like an effort — and a momentarily successful one — to delay Congress’s execution of electoral college law.
So how rare is this?
Tracking use of sedition charges in American history is difficult for a few reasons, according to Jenny Carroll at the University of Alabama law school. One is that people accused of it are often charged for apparently lesser crimes that might amount to sedition but aren’t technically recorded as such — for example, trespassing or resisting arrest, which are easier to prosecute. Another is that, when state charges are involved, the federal government often lets states handle the cases. And a third is that there is plenty of overlap between sedition, treason and subversion, with the word “sedition” or “seditious” not always used.
It has been more than a decade since the federal government brought sedition charges. The last time was in 2010, against members of a Christian militia in Michigan called Hutaree, who were accused of plotting to rise up against the government. The judge dismissed the charges in 2012, finding that the government failed to prove that the group had firm plans to actually launch attacks.
The last successful federal sedition prosecution came 26 years ago, when Omar Abdel Rahman (also known as the “Blind Sheikh”) and nine others were convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations, the FBI building, and bridges and tunnels between New Jersey and New York, as part of an effort to change U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Before that, more than a dozen Puerto Rican nationalists were convicted in the early 1980s of sedition for their role in the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a group that claimed credit for bombings across the United States. Fourteen of them were granted clemency in 1999 by President Bill Clinton when they agreed to renounce violence. One who declined that offer, Oscar Lopez Rivera, had his sentence commuted in 2017 by outgoing President Barack Obama.
In 1987, more than a dozen self-proclaimed white supremacists were indicted on sedition charges for an alleged campaign of violence perpetrated by the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and a group called The Order — a trial that became known as the Fort Smith sedition trial. They were acquitted in 1988.
Before this, sedition law underwent several notable changes, starting with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the late 1700s. Under them, John Adams and the Federalists effectively made it a crime to criticize Adams and other executive branch officials. Thomas Jefferson campaigned against the questionable law in 1800, allowed it to expire and pardoned everyone who had been convicted under it.
The 1918 Sedition Act made it a crime to interfere with the war effort during World War I and was used to target socialists, pacifists and other antiwar activists. Former Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs was later arrested and convicted for an antiwar speech he had delivered, but he had his sentence commuted in 1921, when the law was repealed by Congress.
Congress in 1940 passed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the “Smith Act,” which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government. This was later used against socialists, communists and Nazi supporters. The Supreme Court in 1957 overturned the convictions of Communist Party leaders, ruling that those convicted must advocate actual action rather than abstract doctrine. The law has been mostly dormant since then.
The bar for sedition is higher these days, which is a big reason prosecutions have been fewer and further between. And there will always be allegations that it’s being used in a politically motivated way — particularly given how some Republicans have downplayed or attempted to retcon the severity of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Even a few hours before the announcement Thursday, a prominent Fox News analyst pointed to the lack of such charges as undercutting the idea that this was an insurrection.
As Sherwin emphasized 10 months ago, bringing sedition charges isn’t to be undertaken lightly. And now that they are, we can have a proper — and relatively rare — legal case to determine specifically whether Jan. 6 amounted, at least in some cases, to sedition.
This post, from last year, has been updated with Thursday’s charges. | null | null | null | null | null |
Delta reported a net loss of $408 million in the final quarter of 2021, but closed the year profitable thanks, in part, to billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid. The carrier said it expects to lose money in the first quarter this year, but also expects “a healthy profit” for the remainder of 2022.
During the earnings call Thursday, Bastian said 2021 was “a year like no other” for the Atlanta-based carrier. He said the rapid rise in coronavirus infections fueled by omicron combined with “extreme weather” during the peak of the holiday travel period, “created some of the most difficult travel conditions that we ever remember experiencing.
Flight disruptions that began Dec. 24 and have stretched into the new year forced the airline to cancel more than 2,400 flights, adding up to a loss of roughly $80 million for the carrier. However, Bastian said Thursday that operations have stabilized in recent days with only one omicron-related cancellation Wednesday. The number of positive virus cases among Delta employees has also slowed after about 8,000 employees tested positive over the last four weeks, the carrier said.
“The new variant isn’t done, but it may be the worst is behind us,” Bastian said.
Bastian said he expected omicron would delay Delta’s recovery, slowing demand in January and February. But with case numbers expected to peak soon, he expressed confidence that demand for air travel would return in March and continue to grow for the rest of the year.
Analysts agreed, saying pent-up demand for travel will help to fuel the industry after omicron’s effects are diminished.
“Cost head winds are likely to persist for airlines, but the desire to travel is strong,” said Peter McNally, global sector lead at Third Bridge, a global research firm. “Delta is making the bet that omicron will delay the recovery by two months. Beyond that, the challenge will be meeting demand and managing the global operation until a full recovery is made.”
Bastian said Delta employees also will benefit from the carrier’s improved financial outlook, adding that employees will receive a one-time bonus of $1,250 next month.
Airlines were optimistic when entering the final quarter of 2021, having weathered the coronavirus’s delta variant, which slowed passenger demand in late summer and early fall. At least five U.S. carriers were profitable in the third quarter, and of those, at least two, Delta and Alaska Airlines, reached that milestone without the benefit of billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid that expired at the end of September.
Bastian said Thursday that Delta hired 9,000 workers in 2021 and plans to hire 3,000 to 5,000 this year. He said pilots remain a priority, adding that Delta has been hiring 100 to 200 pilots each month, a rate that could continue into 2023.
The hiring spree at Delta and other airlines comes after several carriers, including Spirit Airlines, Southwest and American, suffered high-profile meltdowns last year as bad weather exacerbated staff shortages, leaving passengers stranded and thousands of flights canceled. | null | null | null | null | null |
(Stefani Reynolds for The Washington Post)
At current rates, sometime in late April we will pass a grim milestone: one million Americans dead from covid-19. If we get lucky and the omicron wave abates, that one millionth death may not come until later in the spring, or the summer. But it will come, and soon.
Keep that in mind as you consider the latest news from the Supreme Court. On Thursday, by a 6 to 3 vote on party lines (and no, I won’t pretend the justices have no relevant party affiliations), they struck down the Biden administration’s mandate that large employers were supposed to require that their employees either be vaccinated or receive regular tests for covid-19.
And in a development that was in some ways even more alarming, the court upheld a vaccine mandate that applied only to health care workers in facilities that receive federal funds — but four justices voted against it.
Think about that for a moment. Four justices, one vote short of a majority, would have ruled that in the midst of a brutal pandemic that has killed millions around the world, the government can’t even require health care workers to be vaccinated.
Let’s begin with the rule the court struck down. The background here is that federal law gives the Occupational Safety and Health Administration the power to protect workers from “grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.”
This seems like it would clearly apply to an airborne pathogen that has produced so much disease and death. Yet the conservative majority said that because you can catch covid not only in your workplace but other locations too, that means OSHA is powerless to protect workers from it.
Contra the majority, [the law] is indifferent to whether a hazard in the workplace is also found elsewhere. The statute generally charges OSHA with “assur[ing] so far as possible . . . safe and healthful working conditions.” … The statute does not require that employees are exposed to those dangers only while on the workplace clock. And that should settle the matter.
Would the conservatives have voted the same way if a Republican administration had issued these mandates? Might they have said that this is a temporary measure, and well within the scope of the law as written and the longstanding authority of government to protect people during health emergencies? There’s no way to know for sure, but I have my suspicions.
But this may not be about the kind of partisan bias that would validate an action by a Republican administration and strike it down when a Democratic administration does it. The truth is that the conservatives on the court have a broad animus toward government’s power to regulate at all, which is playing out in multiple cases.
Some observers have warned that we’re headed for a new Lochner era, referring to the period in the early 20th century when the court struck down laws on everything from child labor to minimum wages to monopolistic business practices, on the grounds that government had no right to interfere in the smooth operation of commerce and private contracts, even if it meant children toiling in dangerous factories.
To most sane people it was a dark time in American history, characterized by brutal exploitation that the Supreme Court rendered the government powerless to stop. But to some, it was the good old days.
As to the health care worker mandate the court upheld, even there it’s hard to celebrate. The idea that anyone could oppose mandates on health care workers being vaccinated in the midst of a pandemic seems almost mind-boggling, like opposing a regulation saying that pilots shouldn’t fly within eight hours of drinking alcohol.
But four justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — said just that. Legislative language that authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to regulate the “health and safety” of medical facilities, they said, isn’t enough, since there is no specific language authorizing precisely this kind of mandate. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Justice Gorusch, the Pope and empathy for others and animals
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. (Erin Schaff/AP)
According to the Jan. 8 front-page article “Court majority has doubts on vaccine rules for businesses,” one of the lawyers opposed to the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirements argued by telephone because he tested positive for the coronavirus; Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes, participated remotely; and seven of the eight justices present in the courtroom wore masks. If this were not ironic enough, consider that the public is prohibited from attending Supreme Court sessions because of the court’s coronavirus protocol established out of “concern for the health and safety of the public and Supreme Court employees.” And the court ruled Thursday against the Biden administration’s requirements for businesses even as coronavirus cases are at an all-time high in the United States.
Abby Raphael, Arlington
In another first-rate column concerning the Supreme Court, Ruth Marcus explained why “wearing a mask is the decent thing to do” because it protects not only wearers but also those around them. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch “chose poorly” by not wearing a mask, ostensibly because, as a libertarian, “he doesn’t like being told what to do.”
Ms. Marcus quoted Justice Gorsuch asking, in connection with vaccine mandates for hospital and nursing staff, “Could [the government] also implement regulations about exercise regimes, sleep habits, medicines and supplements that must be ingested by hospital employees in the name of health and safety?”
It is astonishing that a Supreme Court justice would not recognize such a false analogy. Regulations involving exercise regimes, sleep habits, medicines or supplements would affect only those who follow them. They would be analogous to laws requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets, which protect only the wearers. A mask mandate involves a public good — protection from disease — that benefits all members of society, including, albeit to a lesser extent, those who disregard it. Well-educated libertarians should recognize that such a mandate is analogous to a law that prohibits texting while driving, which also protects other drivers and pedestrians.
As Mr. Gorsuch’s conduct makes clear, a public good cannot be adequately provided by simply asking individuals to do what is needed.
Stephen Silberman, Arlington
I was struck by the juxtaposition of columns by Sergio Peçanha [“Pope Francis, your comments on choosing pets over children don’t add up”] and Ruth Marcus [“Where was Gorsuch’s mask?”] and a letter from Robert E. Honig [“The value of social bonds”] in the Jan. 10 edition of The Post that all touched on the subject of freedom and community, because our nation and the world are being torn apart by these issues.
I take issue with Mr. Peçanha’s statement that “exercising free will is not equal to being selfish.” When your free-will choices impact other people or endanger other people, that is the definition of selfish. Not wearing a mask and not getting the vaccine endanger those around you. You’re free to make those choices in your own private space, but not in public. As Mr. Honig pointed out, our social bonds are what make us a united community, but if we think only of our “freedom” to make selfish choices, then our “community” will consist only of self-absorbed, immature individuals with no consideration for anything or anyone but themselves. That seems to me like a very cheap version of freedom.
Molly Sprouse, Henrico, Va.
Unlike Sergio Peçanha, I was not born a Catholic, but I am grateful that he spoke out against the comments made by Pope Francis regarding those of us who elect not to have children and the disturbing bridge of guilt that was then built to shame pet-parenting.
My wife and I were married later in life and made a difficult decision, largely based on our age, not to have children. Though I would have embraced being a father, I often consider the world today that we are leaving for future generations and the challenges that elderly parenting would have presented for my wife and me and for our children. I have no regrets. In our lifetimes, we have collectively raised 10 adorable canines, each with its own unique personality. All of these, save one, were rescued from abandonment, euthanasia or abuse. We have been fulfilled by their unconditional love and companionship. We regard them as part of our family.
This is an institution that has largely turned a blind eye to years of child abuse and molestation within its own ministry, so I’m not sure I understand what license it feels it has to pass judgment on those of us who rescue and raise pets, much less on those who weigh concerns about the dangers and potential consequences associated with raising children in today’s world.
Steven Graul, Reston | null | null | null | null | null |
As Alarcon got out of the vehicle, according to the suit, Duckett harassed Flores with “homophobic taunts,” asking whether Flores was “in the alley with his boyfriend.”
Leaving the vehicle, Duckett pinned Flores against a wall, the lawsuit alleges, and handcuffed him before searching his pockets without his consent, removing his wallet and identification, and examining his tattoos.
Flores was released after about 10 minutes and has not been charged with a crime related to the stop, according to the suit.
In 2019, D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said the department did not have “a program directing officers to conduct stop-and-frisk in the manner found unconstitutional” in a case in New York.
In a statement, Flores said he hopes that the lawsuit “helps stop other people from experiencing what I have.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Elvis Costello poses for a portrait at The Redbury New York hotel in New York on Sept. 17, 2018. Costello’s new album, the coronavirus-era disc “The Boy Named If” was made in solitary style — four musicians, five if you count a backup singer on one song — all worked from their own homes. He says that conjures the image of a laid-back sound, but the new disc is an up-tempo, guitar-based selection of crankin’ rock songs. (Matt Licari/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
‘Bring Them Home,’ a new documentary from Washington Post Opinions, to debut at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival this February
The documentary focuses on the family of Emad Shargi, one of a growing number of Americans being held hostage by foreign governments
Bring Them Home (The Washington Post)
The Washington Post today announced that ‘Bring Them Home,’ a new documentary from Washington Post Opinions, will premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival this February. The short documentary, supported by the Pulitzer Center, follows an American family fighting to free husband and father Emad Shargi from an Iranian prison, where he is serving a 10-year sentence after being convicted of baseless espionage charges without a trial.
“Dozens of U.S. nationals are currently being held hostage by foreign governments for leverage. ‘Bring Them Home’ sheds light on a crisis that is becoming a new geopolitical norm: hostage-taking as a foreign policy tool,” said Kate Woodsome, who leads Opinions Video at The Washington Post and is co-director of the short film with Ray Whitehouse. “The film is an intimate, timely portrayal of the latest chapter in the decades-long Iran hostage crisis, and more broadly, offers a window into the global problem of arbitrary detentions. We are grateful to be debuting it at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.”
Now entering its 19th year, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is the premier venue for nonfiction film in the American West, elevating non-fiction films that have the power to transform our world, our culture, our youth and ourselves. The festival will run from Feb. 18 to 27, 2022 in Missoula, Mont., as well as stream online.
The short documentary will also publish online this spring at wapo.st/BringThemHome, where you can now watch a trailer of the film. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Securing Cyberspace with Dmitri Alperovitch, Jeremy Sheridan & Tonya Ugoretz
MS. NAKASHIMA: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Ellen Nakashima, a national security reporter at The Washington Post. Thanks for joining us today for our three-part program on securing cyberspace.
My first guest today is Jeremy Sheridan. He's assistant director for the Office of Investigations at the United States Secret Service. Assistant Director Sheridan, thank you, and welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. SHERIDAN: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, Assistant Director, the Secret Service is over 150 years old. It’s older than the FBI, which is a mere youngster at about 113 years old. Tell me, in cyber, how does your investigative mission differ from that of the bureau's, briefly?
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah, well, we were founded on an investigative mission to combat counterfeit currency. As the threat to our nation's financial infrastructure has grown into the cyber realm, we have grown with it. We do have differences between us and the FBI. But I want to be clear that those differences aren't divisions. We have a phenomenal partnership with the FBI through our field offices across the globe, the multiple taskforces we are assigned with them on, primarily the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, where we run the criminal mission desk. And we are linked. We are the only two federal agencies named by statute to investigate crimes against the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
But the difference between us and the FBI really relates to mission and investigative focus. We have, you know, differences in structure and strategy. But our focus in the Secret Service is just on the investigations related to protecting the nation's financial infrastructure and financial payment systems. Their statutory authority is much broader in scope.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Right.
MR. SHERIDAN: And they have a more national security, counterterrorism, and terrorism type investigative focus.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Great. So in the area of ransomware, I'm sure the two of you team up quite a bit. Look, it's pretty clear the threat landscape is growing exponentially as more and more devices are connected to the internet. Briefly give us some insight as to how you're seeing cyber threats evolve.
MR. SHERIDAN: So, there are a host of evolutions that we are concerned about, and in areas where we see potential vulnerabilities moving forward. Some of those are long term as it relates to quantum computing or AI and ML. But in a more immediate sense, we're certainly focused on the application and advent of 5G technology. We think that implementation will introduce vulnerabilities into a host of networks, supply chains, and network security, particularly if the components manufactured there are from questionable entities or adversarial countries. The proliferation of 5G and infrastructure will provide a greater attack surface, certainly, and integrating 5G onto, you know, the backbone of existing vulnerabilities within 4g LTE could create additional problems.
I think more broadly the continued growth and expansion of transnational criminal organized groups, as you mentioned, as they become more complex and more advanced is certainly going to challenge us investigatively. They may move from profit motivated cybercrimes that we've seen recently to more kinetic attacks. Our secretary refers to these as killware, and we've seen some initial examples of this recently in Oldsmar, Florida, where the cyber actor held a network not for payment for ransom but had unauthorized access solely to introduce lye into the water system.
Also, increased anonymity is certainly a concern for us as we move forward. You know that we see the darknet market expanding. We see peer-to-peer networks, privacy coins, automated chatbots, encrypted communications, all of which will challenge us in our investigative mission.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Indeed. So, let's turn to ransomware for a moment, which was a big story of last year in cyber. What is the overall trend you're seeing now, Assistant Director? Are the attacks increasing, decreasing, holding steady?
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah, we're starting to see certainly increase in volume, I think most notably an increase in profitability of these attacks, which is one of the greatest contributors to why they're increasing in number. You know, all crime needs certain elements, and motive is at really the foundation of criminal activity. The motive for increased profit, increased revenue for these criminal actors continues to grow. It's contributed to by the proliferation and growth and value of digital money platforms that criminals use as a means to facilitate these crimes. So, we do see ransomware and other types of cybercrime malware to continue to grow for a variety of reasons.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, we haven't seen a major attack, ransomware attack like the one we saw on Colonial Pipeline or JBS last year, yet we are seeing a steady increase in overall ransomware attacks, right? What do you think's happening there, and why? I mean, do you think that the--go ahead.
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah--I'm sorry to interrupt. I do think that the cybercriminals have a risk calculus. I think the global and nationwide response that resulted from the Colonial event spoke to them, certainly. And great credit to our partners at the FBI for seizing the crypto assets involved in that case. Those types of consequences, I think, sent a very clear message. So, I don't think that those large-scale type of attacks will be necessarily on the same level of increased frequency as the intermediate or low-level attacks to individual networks, individual end users, individual systems, because those types of attacks don't generate the same notoriety, same exposure of the cybercriminal. And they are certainly very profitable. But I think it speaks to the benefit and the need for a collaborative international global law enforcement response to arrest and conduct asset forfeiture and seizure operations in order to combat this growing threat.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, let's talk a little bit about those seizures and recoveries. The FBI last year recovered millions of dollars in ransom paid, and Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran this morning actually said, on a Silverado press conference that more than has been publicly disclosed was actually seized. Are you, the Secret Service, part of those recoveries? Can you talk a little bit about what role you play in those?
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we--as I said, we partner with the FBI at the NCIJTF--National Cyber Investigations Joint Task Force. So, we contribute, along with a host of other law enforcement entities, substantive investigative information as part of those cases. We also have a variety of investigations within our organization that we are the lead agency on, notably a case recently of two Russian nationals where we identified them as creating fictitious web domains to mimic legitimate virtual currency platforms in which users would log on, provide login credentials and account information, wallet address information. And these individuals would use that data from the individual user to siphon off their accounts.
And as a result of our investigation, we were able to seize millions of dollars of cryptocurrency as well as fiat currency, work with regulators within the crypto exchangers, the legitimate exchangers to apply consequences and judicial action against those individuals. You know, we have over 727 or so network intrusion cases that we investigated last year. We conducted more than 1,200 seizures, returned $60 million to victims of cybercrime, and seized nearly 1.3 billion in total in terms of overall seizures.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, you mentioned the cryptocurrency exchanges that you work with to help identify the criminals. What about those cryptocurrency exchanges that traffic in illicit, you know, money laundering that--and that aren't--they’re offshore, they aren't following the know your customer money laundering rules that onshore American exchanges follow or others in Western Europe? Do you favor sanctions on such exchanges? Do you think those will--such sanctions might have an impact in deterring crime? Or will they drive the criminals to harder to track methods of moving money?
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah, that's a really important point, because I think the environment and ecosystem around cryptocurrencies is sometimes misunderstood. You know, these are the means to commit the crime for really the overwhelming majority of cyber criminals. They're global, instantaneous, pseudo-anonymous, and they've experienced massive growth.
It's important to note though, that less than one half of 1 percent of transactions related to crypto are in the illicit realm--in fact, the comparatively smaller to the amount of illicit transactions that occur in traditional financing institutions. And as you said, this is really a small group. This is not a deluge of individuals leveraging cryptocurrency platforms for criminal activity. You know, by means of data in 2020--and we’re still compiling 2021 information--but five funds received 55 percent of all crypto moved from illicit addresses, and just over 1,800 deposit addresses received 75 percent of all crypto sent from illicit addresses in that year. It's not lone actors flying under the radar. These are small groups that are leveraging, as you said, these illicit nested services in illegal crypto exchanges, and we've, you know, dismantled several of them in the Secret Service ourselves.
So, you know, our job is to enact consequence, to arrest and seize those funds and digital money that are being flowed through these illicit exchanges and also to partner with the legal and licit exchanges, if you will, that leverage regulation for the purpose of protecting customers and preventing illicit transactions.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Do you think that legislation or law is needed in the U.S. and in Europe to further crack down on these illicit exchanges? Or do you think the tools you all have right now are sufficient?
MR. SHERIDAN: No, we definitely can use additional authorities, especially related to investigating unlicensed money transmitters, structured payments, you know, money laundering, as a root crime and a precipitating crime. We certainly need more authorities on that front.
MS. NAKASHIMA: You mentioned earlier more secret payments. There are new forms of cryptocurrencies that are even harder to track with anonymous privacy protection mechanisms. And even the encrypted app Signal has just introduced a new cryptocurrency payment protocol. How concerned are you about the evolution of these tools to transfer money in anonymous ways? How will that complicate your job?
MR. SHERIDAN: Yeah, it certainly makes it more challenging. The adversary is an early adopter of technology. They move very quickly. They are becoming more technically complex at a very rapid pace. You know, within law enforcement, within government as a whole, just as a consequence of budget and procurement actions, we are challenged to maintain that pace. There is increased decentralization, as you said further anonymization through peer-to-peer networks, and privacy coins. There's automated chatbots, encrypted communications, and so forth. And that certainly does challenge our investigative mission.
But the Secret Services, as well as our federal law enforcement, state, local and territorial law enforcement partners, have demonstrated success. You know, we have a host of mechanisms in place in order to combat this through our Cyber Fraud Task Forces located across the globe. Our partnerships with other law enforcement, private sector, academia, our relationships with the legal exchanges, our National Computer Forensics Institute that is training and equipping state and local law enforcement, as well as our Global Investigations Operation Center that is standing up a crypto unit to be staffed with subject matter experts.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, some of these transnational criminal groups have gone dark, like REvil and DarkSide. At the same time, some say that the alpha black hat ransomware may be the work of say, DarkSide. Have you seen any signs of these groups’ reappearance? What do you think?
MR. SHERIDAN: So, I think, as I said, with these small groups working with illicit exchanges, there's an expression that a colleague of mine uses. It's the same 200 people chasing the same 200 people. There are certainly the influx of new actors in this space. But a lot of times what we see with a new variant or a new cyberattack, it's the same developers who have just changed, you know, their technology to some degree, but are still utilizing the same ransomware notes or the same techniques or the same access to vulnerable systems. It's not necessarily a new wave of cyber criminals. It's just a maturation, evolution, or adjustment by existing criminals based on, you know, targeted enforcement and consequences that that are occurring to them.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, do you think that that you there are signs that these groups, like in particular DarkSide or REvil, have reappeared?
MR. SHERIDAN: I don't want to comment on specific groups, because I think that limits, you know, the focus on a particular circumstance. You know, this crime continues to evolve. Those individuals, whether it's the developers of, you know, the particular strain that has hit recent affected organizations, or those that they recruit, have trained, have provided safe harbor to, provided resources to, utilized for money laundering purposes or affiliated crimes, those still exist and aren’t going away. We will continue to bring consequences regardless of where these actors are with our law enforcement partners. But this is a threat that is going to continue, and we will continue to evolve with it, to defend it, and bring justice to it.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Great. Okay. And I guess final question as we wrap up here is, looking ahead in 2022, are you--what do you forecast in terms of the threat landscape. You mentioned at the top killware and the, you know, move toward kinetic attacks. Do you expect to see more of those? What do you think?
MR. SHERIDAN: I certainly think those are a vulnerability moving forward. But what I would estimate as next wave, if you will, is attacks on extended digital money transactions. You know, we certainly have seen standard attacks on digital money, cryptocurrency as scams or, you know, spoofing that I mentioned earlier. But some of the smart contract fraud that we're starting to see emerge, wherein an individual user links their wallet to an exchange or a liquidity pool through staking or liquidity mining, we've seen cybercriminals be able to insert themselves in that bonding or that unbonding of that loan process in order to commit scams, commit fraud, or do takeovers of the crypto value and take it from the initial investor. So, the increasing technological capabilities of the cyber actor as the more advanced digital money transactions evolve certainly will be something I see more of in the future.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Assistant Director, we will have to leave it there. But thank you so much for joining us today.
MR. SHERIDAN: Thank you very much for having me.
MS. NAKASHIMA: I will be right back with my next guest, Tonya Ugoretz of the FBI. Stay with us.
MS. KELLY: Hi, there, I'm Suzanne Kelly. I'm the chief executive officer and publisher at The Cipher Brief, and we are here today to talk for just a couple of minutes about the state of cybersecurity. And I'm thrilled to be welcoming Google Cloud CISO Phil Venables. Phil, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this today.
MR. VENABLES: Yeah, great to be here. Thank you.
MS. KELLY: You know, 2021 was really a tumultuous year when it comes to cybersecurity in the industry. I'm sure you would agree with that. It's across both the private and the public sectors as well, from SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange in the early part of the year, to rounding out 2021 really with a discovery of this major vulnerability in the open source Apache Log4j utility. Can you kind of talk me through your view on where you think we are right now when it comes to cybersecurity and where do you think the industry needs to go from here?
MR. VENABLES: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, it's been interesting. I mean, it's about this time last year that security researchers uncovered one of the most significant breaches in recent memory. This is where a Russian based campaign against the servers of a relatively unknown but now widely known network management provider, SolarWinds, they exploited them in a range of Microsoft vulnerabilities. And you know, this was--this later would be confirmed that this was a significant breach of a large number of companies and a number of government agencies. And this was described as a moment of reckoning for the U.S. in terms of its approach to cyber. And shortly after the Biden administration in a--in a sequence of really good steps created an executive order for cyber and convened the CEOs of major tech companies, including us, at the White House, to really set a fresh direction.
But despite all of these necessary actions and progress in the last year, the unfortunate reality is there's still plenty of chances that another event could occur like SolarWinds. And this is in large part because many organizations, including public sector and critical infrastructure, rely on hard-to-defend outdated legacy systems and software.
MS. KELLY: I hear a lot of complaints, particularly from folks in government, about the issues surrounding legacy systems and just how difficult that can be. You know, I'm wondering what you can tell us about specific technologies or concepts that governments and organizations can adopt now in order to kind of modernize that IT so they're not so vulnerable?
MR. VENABLES: Yeah, I mean, I think all governments and businesses, they have got a really good opportunity to reshape their thinking on cyber. And you know, and the situation persists today, you know, because it's a matter of not good security versus bad security, but a matter of legacy versus modern security practices. And many organizations and governments today are trying to defend indefensible systems.
You know, and to pick an example, it's an example of the lack of defense in depth in the environment where one vulnerability can lead to a breach. A more modern defense in-depth architecture will realize a point where you don't have to rely on everything being perfect to being--to having that combination defense. And again, I think organizations can really accelerate their modernization by investing in the use of public cloud environments in particular that are designed with built-in, not bolted-on security protections.
MS. KELLY: Which is I think what everyone's looking for those answers right now. You know, if you were to forecast the next wave of major threats, what are they? And how can industry help mitigate those risks now before it's too late?
MR. VENABLES: Yeah, I mean, I think--I think a lot of stuff coming--and as we've seen in the recent past as well--is a lot of focus on opensource software security in relation to software supply chain and more broadly. And I think, again, future areas of focus for the industry is really about how do we mitigate those security risks in open source, how do we think about that broader impact, and really looking across the open source ecosystem.
And I think it's reasonable to assume that that many of the vendors and the open source projects are going to continue to increase our level of security in response to this security. And enhancing the state of open source security is going to continue be a focus for us. I mean, at Google, we've been at the forefront of contributing to and supporting open source software development. We've made commitments, for example, recently $100 million to this space as part of our overall $10 billion dollar investment in cyber. And so we're going to continue to focus on that as well--as well as software supply chain risk. And ultimately, it's going to be all about how do we help organizations modernize their IT onto a more defensible platform where security's designed in and not bolted on after the fact.
MS. KELLY: Yeah, so we really know what the problem is. Now it's time to get down to those solutions. Google Cloud Chief Information Security Officer Phil Venables, thank you so much for being here to chat about this today.
MR. VENABLES: Yeah, thank you, anytime.
MS. KELLY: And now back to you at The Washington Post.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Welcome back to Washington Post Live. For those joining, I'm Ellen Nakashima, a national security reporter at The Post. Joining me now to continue this conversation about the future of securing cyberspace is Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, which describes itself as a think tank devoted to turning policy ideas into action.
Deputy Assistant Director Ugoretz will be joining us after this. We were having a little bit of sound difficulties there with her.
But, Dmitri, welcome to Washington Post Live. Top of mind for this conversation is cyber and foreign policy. The big geopolitical crisis of the moment is Russia, which is massing close to 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders. And there's been reporting about stepped-up Russian cyber-probing of Ukrainian critical network recently. You've been publicly quoted saying you're seeing such increased activity. What does that signify to you, Dmitri?
MR. ALPEROVITCH: Well, first of all, I do think that unfortunately the situation is quite dire. The talks that we just had in Europe, the three rounds of talks in Geneva, and with NATO, and with the OSCE, have not gone exceptionally well. Russia keeps insisting on its maximalist position that it gets ironclad legally binding guarantees that NATO will not expand further to the east, in particular include Ukraine and Georgia, which has been rejected out of hand by the U.S. administration. So, we appear to be at an impasse, and the troops continue to mass on Ukraine's borders.
But as you rightly mentioned, Ellen, we're also seeing increased cyber intrusions that appear to be intelligence collection for potential execution of a kinetic operation by the Russians. So, all in all, I think it's very, very worrisome. I think a lot of people, myself included, expect that very likely an invasion of Ukraine to occur in the next month or so, possibly late January or early February. And cyber will play a supporting role in that conflict. I don't think it will play a main role in any shape or form, because kinetic capabilities will be used by Russia to suppress Ukraine defenses and to destroy any artillery units and other units that will be used to try to stop the Russian invasion.
But cyber can be very helpful in identifying population elements that could potentially be trying to organize an insurgency. It could also be helpful to identify people that have pro-Russian sympathies that the Russians can tap to run administrations in cities that they take over as part of their invasion plan.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So, it can play an enabling role in a leadup to an invasion and during an invasion, but it's not necessarily the knockout, you know, strategic blow. Some--there's been some reporting about potential disruption of Ukraine's power grid, for instance, which is what Russians did in, you know, 2015, winter of 2015 and in 2016 briefly in eastern Ukraine and Kiev. Do you think this stepped-up activity also indicates that Russia's preparing for a similar disruption of critical infrastructure in Ukraine, like their grid or some other critical sector?
MR. ALPEROVITCH: I think it's possible that they’ll do it. They certainly have plenty of experience in going after critical infrastructure. They've attacked on two occasions, as you mentioned, the electric grid in Ukraine. They've attacked an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. So, they do have a lot of capability there.
But you know, the challenge, Ellen, with cyberattacks of this nature is it's really hard in many cases to have a lasting effect. Sure, you can turn off the power through a cyberattack for a few hours. But ultimately, if the Ukrainians get to the substations and flip the circuits, they'll get it back on. So, from a military standpoint, if you want to shut down power generation to a city block, or perhaps potentially an artillery unit, you want to make sure that it's truly down and it's going to be down for a while. And the only way to assure that is through kinetic action. And I think that's going to be their preference, to the extent that they want to achieve those military objectives. And cyber really will be mostly a sideshow.
The U.S. government this week issued an alert to American critical infrastructure firms that they should be sort of on the alert for Russian cyber threats. They also pointed to these past Russian attacks in Ukraine. How likely do you think such an attack on American critical infrastructure by Russian will be--might be?
MR. ALPEROVITCH: So, I think it's always good to be--it's always good to be prepared. And I want to applaud the NSA and CISA and FBI and others that have been putting out this guidance.
But let's be realistic here. In the event of an invasion of Ukraine, Russia is going to have its hands full. The last thing you'll want to do is escalate by attacking the United States and risk severe retaliation having to fight on two fronts. So, I don't think it's very likely that they're going to take that escalation measure. It might be possible that you will have a NotPetya style attack. NotPetya famously was the attack on Ukraine in 2017 that had a worm-like functionality to spread into many networks, and as a result of that, spread into western networks, actually spread into Russian networks as well, and took down a number of companies around the world well beyond Ukraine. You might have something like this take place whereby accident you have an attack that becomes much broader than its tactical objective. But I don't think that that's particularly likely.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Silverado this morning, Dmitri, unveiled, you know, your legislative proposals for the year. Among them and primary--perhaps top-most priority is getting cyber incident--mandatory cyber incident reporting to the federal government to happen. Tell me--talk a little bit about your--the highlights of these proposals.
MR. ALPEROVITCH: Yeah, so we just issued six key proposals for Congress and the administration for 2022, the key issues that we think are really important to enact either through legislation or executive action to drive forward cybersecurity across the nation.
As you mentioned, the cyber incident reporting legislation, which almost passed last year--in fact, it is so disappointing that the last minute when the agreement was achieved on a bipartisan basis between the Senate and the House on this legislation, they just ran out of time to include it in the NDAA.
But this morning we had an event at Silverado, a virtual event with Representative John Katko from the House Republican side and Representative Yvette Clarke from the Democratic side, who both endorsed the legislation on a bipartisan basis and told us that they are very bullish, that they'll find a way to pass it by attaching it to some other piece of legislation, critical legislation that has to pass this year.
That legislation is broadly supported across industry, and most importantly the government. There is a bit of controversy about that legislation from the FBI/DOJ perspective. In fact, we had Bryan Vorndran on, who is the cyber assistant director of the FBI this morning. And he made it very clear that the FBI’s position is that the legislation should include clear language that while CISA will receive the reports from industry about breaches that are taking place, that information will be immediately shared with the FBI. The FBI would like that codified in law.
DHS--and we had Rob Silvers on, who’s undersecretary for policy at DHS--responded by saying that they're fully supportive sharing with the FBI. And regardless with what happens in legislation, they're going to ensure that as soon as CISA receives the reports, they'll immediately share that information with the FBI. So hopefully, we'll find a compromise on that issue, because it seems like everyone's supportive of the overarching goal to make sure that the information goes as broadly as possible to agencies within the government.
But we do need one central place to collect it. We don't we don't need industry to submit it to 50 different places. CISA is a natural ingest point. So, I think we'll see something like that pass.
And it's really critical because the federal government needs to know about what breaches are taking place. You look at something like SolarWinds, which happened a year ago, and if Kevin Mandia, the CEO of Mandiant, had had not come forward and announced this breach, we may not know even to this day about the implication of that attack. So, it's absolutely critical.
And then the other key priorities I would just briefly want to mention, one is on CISA itself. One of the things that I think is really important is to define--
MS. NAKASHIMA: CISA is the--
MR. ALPEROVITCH: Cybersecurity Information Security Agency that was created a few years ago by Congress within DHS--that, you know, from a name is the agency that you think is responsible for securing at least the government, if not the nation. And in reality, it just does not have the authorities it needs to fully execute on that mission. I think we need to define the vision for what does CISA look like 5-10 years from now.
And from Silverado’s perspective, it makes total sense for us to make CISA the "CISO," if you will--the chief information security office within the government that is responsible for securing most of the civilian government networks so that we don't have a hundred different executive branch agencies trying to do their own thing in cybersecurity with varying results. You have it centralized in one location with the best talent you can find in government, with the best technologies that they can procure, and they are responsible for that mission. Just like in companies today, you don't have cybersecurity teams that are within the marketing department and engineering department and sales department. You have one cybersecurity team that protects the company. We need to start taking that approach within the federal government.
MS. NAKASHIMA: That's interesting. So earlier in the hour, Assistant Director Sheridan and I talked about the Secret Service's work regarding crypto and the rise of ransomware attacks. You've said banning crypto isn't the answer. Why not?
MR. ALPEROVITCH: So, I think, you know, you're not going to ban crypto at this point; the horse has left the barn. And listen, there are potentially useful applications for crypto, or Web3 as it's now being called. The whole DeFi decentralized finance ecosystem is really, really interesting and could potentially create a lot of innovation in the finance sector. So, you don't want to ban a new technology just because it has some albeit be very significant downsides.
But you do want to regulate it, and we are regulating it. In fact, if you’re a cryptocurrency exchange in the United States today, you have to abide as a financial institution by KYC--know your customer-- regulations, and AML, anti-money laundering regulations.
But foreign exchanges do not have to do that, and many of them don't. In fact, the exchanges that are based in countries like Russia have been notorious about dealing with cyber criminals, not validating their identities, not caring about their identities, not doing any anti-money laundering checks. And one of the other priorities that we push at Silverado is broad sanction authority be granted to OFAC, the agency within the Treasury Department that is responsible for sanctions, to apply sanctions to any cryptocurrency exchange internationally that does not abide by those regulations so that you're, one, going after exchanges that are dealing with these criminals or looking the other way, but, two, you're also leveling the playing field and allowing the U.S. financial sector in the cryptocurrency ecosystem to be competitive because they have all these onerous regulations that they have to abide to and the foreign companies don't.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Well, thank you very much, Dmitri. I think we are just about out of time. But we have Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz coming up next. So, stay tuned, everyone.
And Dmitri, thank you so much for joining us here. Always great to talk with you.
MR. ALPEROVITCH: Thank you.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Hello, and welcome back to Washington Post Live. For those just joining, I'm Ellen Nakashima, a national security reporter here at The Post. My next guest is Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director for the FBI Cyber Policy Division. Deputy Assistant Director Ugoretz, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MS. UGORETZ: Thanks, Ellen. It's great to see you again.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Let's start with current events. This week, the FBI and two other U.S. agencies issued an alert to critical infrastructure companies on Russian cyber threats. Dmitri Alperovitch, just--our guest just prior to you, said he didn't think that there was anything--any specific threat there. But what--tell us a little bit about the thinking behind issuing this advisory now. Why now is this, say, strategic message--what’s behind this timing?
MS. UGORETZ: So it's not unusual for the FBI and especially our partners in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, to join forces to warn the public and the private sector about actions they can take to better protect their systems. In this case, this was a joint advisory that we issued to warn of the persistent threats from Russian cyber activity that we see and to offer some tangible steps that companies can take to not wait for something to happen, but to proactively [unclear] to reduce the risk to their networks now by looking at some common indicators, tactics, procedures that we see Russian cyber actors use, and act now, have a heightened sense of awareness.
As I mentioned, you know, when we factor in the broader geopolitical environment, it's not unusual to share indicators and share things that companies can do proactively in that environment. You might remember a few years ago, for example, similar advisories coming out from FBI and CISA around the time of the death of General Soleimani in Iran. More than anything, it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity for us to reengage with critical infrastructure owners and operators and other private sector partners, remind them of some of the persistent vulnerabilities that are out there that they can take action now to help mitigate, and then also just remind folks to keep aware of what's happening around them and be prepared.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Great. Last year was a busy year for malicious cyber activity at SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, Colonial Pipeline. Take a minute and tell us what you see as noteworthy about where we've been, and where you think we're headed.
MS. UGORETZ: Yeah, 2021 I think will really go down as a landmark year in cybersecurity. I think in a normal year, quote, unquote, normal, as recently as maybe four or five years ago we would see one major cyber incident that would capture the attention of the government at least, if not the public. We would marshal all our resources to respond to it. But then pretty quickly, especially when it comes to the public's attention to it, it would fade from view.
That certainly was not the case in 2021. And honestly, unfortunately, I don't think it will be the case going forward. As Dmitri mentioned, we started off the year responding to the SolarWinds intrusion. That was quickly followed by a very widespread vulnerability identified in a Microsoft Exchange server that we saw cyber actors affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security very quickly moved to exploit.
And then that was followed by similar high-profile wide-ranging vulnerabilities and incidents, and then ransomware, which really wasn't necessarily new in 2021, but certainly catapulted to the top of both the public and cybersecurity professionals’ attention due to some of the high-profile incidents, like the ransomware attack that disrupted Colonial Pipeline.
So, as we go forward, you know, I think a lot of times, even in the way I just mentioned, we all tend to look at these incident by incident. But the start of the year is always an opportunity for us to take a step back and look at those broader trends.
And I think for me, what concerns me as I look across that range of activity is the combination of both stealth and then really the audaciousness that we saw from some of these actors. And that certainly informs the way that we are marshaling our resources across not only U.S. government agencies but also with international partners to detect and disrupt these threats.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Let's talk a little bit about that. Last year, you know, from just what's been made public, you, the FBI, and DOJ, and I gather Secret Service, in some cases, were able to recover millions of dollars. The FBI at least 8 million in ransoms paid to Russian hackers, more than 2 million of that paid by Colonial Pipeline. And your assistant director, Vorndran, this morning said that actually a lot more was seized. It’s just not been made public. In a general sense, can you give us a sense of how much? Is it tens of millions that has been recovered? And does that suggest that ransom recovery is a tool that scales?
MS. UGORETZ: So, ransom recovery is really just one example of the benefit that comes from reporting suspicious cyber activity and incidents quickly to an agency like the FBI that has the authorities and the nationwide presence to act quickly. So, in the instances of the cryptocurrency seizures, those really were enabled by a unique set of circumstances in each case where the victim companies not only notified us quickly but worked with us.
And while quick notification is incredibly important--because if we don't know that something's happened, we can't act--it's that second piece, too, that willingness to work with us, to partner with us, and to explore what together we can do to mitigate the damage of the attack, help the company restore itself most quickly, but also, by virtue of our unique set of criminal and national security authorities, look at what are other things that either the FBI could do or that we could help enable some of our other partner agencies to do to take the fight back to these adversaries, and in this--the cases you mentioned, to help recover some of that ransom.
And it's not only confined to ransomware. You're probably familiar with our Internet Crime Complaint Center, IC3, which is the public-facing web portal where we encourage everyone, whether companies or members of the general public, to report cyber incidents. We have a team there that's dedicated to acting on cyber incidents in which both individuals and often small- to medium-sized companies in our communities are being defrauded from tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. And that team acts quickly with financial institutions to help those institutions freeze the funds, which then makes it possible in some but not all instances to recover those funds for the victims. And that occurred to the tune of $400 million in 2020. But that only happens when we've learned about the incident, and we learned about details of it in a very quick time window.
MS. NAKASHIMA: So that goes to the urgency of this cyber incident reporting law that almost passed last year and that you’re all hoping to get passed this year. I think one of the other things Director Vorndran mentioned was that it's not critical that the law say that the company must report to both CISA and the FBI, but rather can report primarily to CISA, as long as CISA shares this information in real time with the bureau. Is that correct? Is that your view?
MS. UGORETZ: Our view is that the legislation ideally would say that that information would be shared by CISA simultaneously and unfiltered with the FBI. And here's why. You know, there--as you know, there are a number of agencies in the U.S. government with various cybersecurity responsibilities. But there's only two agencies that are identified as responsible for responding to cyber incidents, and that’s CISA and the FBI.
And as I just mentioned, speed is of the essence when we're talking about response to these cyber incidents. So, while we have an incredibly good relationship with our counterparts at CISA, and we trust that they will share incident reporting information to us, it's the speed in which that is shared. We are stronger when we can respond together on the basis of the same information. That's how we try to operate in all cases now. And the speed of our being able to get that information makes a difference.
The other key point is providing clarity to the private sector. We already, because of the draft legislation that had been introduced previously last year, we had partner companies coming up to us saying but what does this mean? We're going to report to this new reporting entity, but if it doesn't say that FBI is also going to receive the information, we want you to receive the information. So, do we still have to report to you separately? How are we going to know that you're receiving this information, if it doesn't say that in the legislation?
And one of the goals of all of this is to reduce confusion for the private sector, to provide clarity so they know exactly what's going to happen with their information when they share it. So, we think just a few--literally just a few words in addition to the draft legislation will make that difference.
And I just want to close on this by applauding the members of Congress and all those advocating for this legislation. Because, you know, we often get asked questions about are attacks increasing, decreasing, what changes are you seeing. But we know we're only aware of a small fraction of the cyber incidents that are out there. And we won't be able to adequately answer that question or provide response and help identify and warn additional victims if we don't have that information.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Well, let me give you an opportunity now to make a really good case to the private sector for quick, immediate cyber reporting, cyber incident reporting. If you can talk--are you saying--I mean, can you assure them that the more--the more quickly they report, with the more information they give, and the most sort of cooperation they give you, the better you will be able to help maybe try and recover the ransom or even, you know, help prevent the situation where they're forced to pay a ransom? And is that something that you can say that?
MS. UGORETZ: Absolutely. You know, I think it's fairly straightforward that if we don't know about something, we can't help.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Yeah.
MS. UGORETZ: I think what really distinguishes the FBI in this space is that we have both the authority to take action, as well as the nationwide presence to immediately help. I mean, we have cyber-trained investigators, intelligence analysts, computer scientists, in every one of our 56 field offices scattered throughout the country. That decentralized model is not just for the FBI’s benefit. It's for the whole of governments benefit, as well as the community's benefit. When I say whole of government, I mean that a key part of our strategy is that as we're engaging with victims, we are able to not only support them, but also gain information that helps feed into kind of the broader U.S. government picture of who was responsible for activity, who might be hit next, what kind of tactics they’re using, and then that all ultimately feeds up into our policymakers’ decisions about how to respond and how we can hold them accountable. And that's in addition to the immediate support we provide to victims.
So, I'll give you an example. A major financial institution notified us when they were the victim of a breach in which the personally identifiable information of all of their clients was stolen and was threatened to be exposed, and it was only because they very quickly engaged us that we were able to not only identify and arrest the person responsible, but also identify the infrastructure, the sites where that stolen data was being housed so that we could seize it and prevent it from being exposed. So not only helping the company restore its operations but preventing I think either tens--tens of millions of customers’ information being publicly exposed.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Tonya, I just want to go back real quickly to a question I asked earlier and to see if you can give us a little more clarity about just the amount of ransom seized by the FBI last year, not, you know, in absolute terms, but just sort of a general sense of how much that was. Can you give us a sense?
MS. UGORETZ: Yeah, I don't have an exact number to give you. I will say that the types of ransomware seizures that you saw us undertake with the Department of Justice last year are certainly things we want to replicate, and like you mentioned, try to scale. As I noted, those do depend on very specific circumstances for which we work with victims, but also the information that we have available. I think the Department of Justice, through their Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force, and the amount of resources and focus they have put nationwide through their U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to help focus attention on this has been a great benefit, as well as kind of the work we're doing with other U.S. federal agencies to be able to spot information about these ransom activities, the associated wallets, the ransomware affiliates and developers, and then now that we've done this a few times, be able to kind of create a playbook for doing this quickly when we find the opportunity the next time.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Would it be fair to say, though, at least, you know, 100 million? More than 100 million? Tens of millions?
MS. UGORETZ: I don't have that number at the moment.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Okay. Well, you're--one more question on the on the ransomware--on the ransom payment issues. The FBI's position is that it doesn't support paying ransoms, as that just further encourages the criminals. Do you support legislation that would outlaw paying ransoms by victims?
MS. UGORETZ: So as you noted, our position on paying ransoms is exactly as you said. We don't advise it because it does encourage the criminal activity, and it doesn't come with any guarantee that a victim company is going to be able to recover their information or their networks. Outlawing that is not really the approach we'd recommend in terms of payment of ransom, because our entire way of doing things is working collaboratively with victims. And as I mentioned, the more of an open engagement and dialogue that we can have with them, the better chance that we're going to have of helping to support their recovery and remediation and identify the information we need to then hold the actors accountable.
We're not interested in any activity that's going to kind of drive this whole ecosystem further underground, which sometimes is the inadvertent consequence of criminalization. So, we are looking to create opportunities for companies and victims to feel positive about reaching out to their local FBI office. We encourage them to have relationships with their local cyber squad well before something happens. That helps us make sure that we are sharing information with them regularly and that they know who to call when they have that bad day.
MS. NAKASHIMA: Well, thank you very much, Deputy Assistant Director Ugoretz. That was very informative. Appreciate you taking the time. We'll have to leave it there for now. Thanks again for joining us at Washington Post Live.
MS. UGORETZ: Thanks, Ellen. | null | null | null | null | null |
Future of the Supreme Court with Thomas Griffith & Cristina Rodriguez
President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States recently issued a report that assessed proposals for reform, including term limits and whether Congress should expand the court beyond its current nine seats. Join Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes in conversation with former federal judge Thomas Griffith and Yale Law School professor Cristina Rodriguez as they discuss their work with the Commission, the future of the Supreme Court and how the current makeup of the Court might impact pending cases.
Thomas B. Griffith served on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005-2020. In 2021, President Biden appointed Judge Griffith to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is currently Special Counsel at the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School where he teaches a course on the role of the Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the general counsel of Brigham Young University. Before that he served as the non-partisan chief legal officer of the United States Senate and before that as a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the University of Virginia School of Law.
Cristina M. Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her fields of research and teaching include constitutional law and theory, immigration law and policy, and administrative law and process. In 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to co-chair the Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Her recent writings include the 2020 Foreword to the Harvard Law Review, Regime Change, and the book, The President and Immigration Law, coauthored with Adam Cox and published by Oxford University Press in September 2020. The book explores the long history of presidential control over immigration policy and its implications for the future of immigration law and the presidency itself. Rodríguez joined Yale Law School in 2013 after serving for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was on the faculty at the New York University School of Law from 2004–2012 and has been Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Law Schools. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, a non-resident fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and a past member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She earned her B.A. and J.D. degrees from Yale and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where she received a Master of Letters in Modern History. Following law school, Rodríguez clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court. | null | null | null | null | null |
As a kid growing up in Canada, Tom Wilson had two dreams. One was to win the Stanley Cup, the other was to win a gold medal. The Washington Capitals’ winger has already achieved the former, it’s the latter that still remains elusive.
Wilson, 27, was in the conversation for Team Canada before the 2022 Winter Olympics, though he was considered a long shot for Beijing. But that hope was dashed last month, when the NHL backed out of the Games amid the the coronavirus surge.
Wilson didn’t think his name would be in the mix to make the Team Canada roster so early in his NHL career. However, when the idea became a brief possibility — then was abruptly taken away — Wilson was left with disappointment.
“It sucks that in this moment and in this time there wasn’t an opportunity to kind of see the process through,” said Wilson, a Toronto native. “But my focus has been with the Capitals and it will remain with the Capitals. In a couple years time, if the conversation is still going, I will do my best to play at my highest level and be there [next time].”
Merely being mentioned in the Olympics conversation signaled the growth of Wilson’s game. Wilson has made steady improvements since he first broke into the league as a 19-year-old, and has nine goals and 15 assists in his ninth season in Washington.
“Sometimes guys that play certain roles, they get so focused on, ‘Oh I got to go out and fight,’ ” Wilson said. “I can’t do that. I’m expected to go out and score and make plays as well. I have to be able to flip that switch very quickly if need be and I’ve just sort of learned how to do it through trial and error.”
MacLellan said he’s happy with the on-ice balance Wilson has struck physically but he believes there is still room for Wilson to improve his offensive game.
Wilson had previous ties with Hockey Canada, competing in under-17 and under-18 tournaments in his youth. He also participated in tryouts for Team Canada’s World Junior Championship in 2012, but was cut.
“Playing for Hockey Canada at such a young age and being in that program was so good for my career because they demand the utmost excellence possible,” Wilson said. “There’s no room for error … you learn what it takes to be a pro.”
Ward tried to show him the ropes, and often tried to get Wilson to be more like “Shaquille O’Neal in the paint,” controlling his body like the former NBA great despite his size and strength.
“To me he will always be young Willy … he is a big, young, goofy kid,” Ward said. “I’m just happy for him, happy to see him succeed.”
Wilson did not get the chance to see the Olympic process through this year, but said he was honored to just be mentioned with some of the top players in the game.
He has vivid memories of watching the Olympics growing up, particularly the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, when he was about 10 years old at the time. He was playing in a youth hockey tournament at the same time of the gold medal game between Canada and the United States. At the rink, his team could see televisions above a bar. Even as they were out on the ice, players were trying to sneak peeks. | null | null | null | null | null |
That Mom’s-basement gathering has grown to become a powerhouse of charitable giving in the region.
Uyama, 38, wasn’t the typical, high-powered Northern Virginia child. He went to a special-education school when he was young because he still wasn’t talking at 4 years old. (But he could read.) Later he lived at home while unenthusiastically taking classes at George Mason University. He briefly was a data analyst in tech, then left to work at the local wine and beer store. He lost that job when the store closed.
He is well known and occupies an unusual space in the world of video games. Starting in 2009, he and his friends were streaming“speedruns.” It’s a hardcore niche of the gaming world in which players show off how fast they can finish a game.
“Yeah, we’re at about $30-, let me check, $35 million,” Uyama said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Omicron may have peaked in D.C. as Maryland offers 20 million free, high-grade masks
Rachel Chason
The winter surge of coronavirus cases may have peaked in the District, experts said Thursday, as Maryland’s governor announced 20 million free N95 and KN95 will be distributed to further blunt spread of the highly infectious omicron variant.
The volume of new coronavirus cases still far outpaces any other phase of the pandemic. But the seven-day average of new cases in both D.C. and Maryland are on the decline, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.
While new coronavirus cases have continued to increase this week in Virginia, the rate of growth has started to plunge.
“There’s hope, as a region, that we’re nearing the apex of this wave,” said University of Virginia professor Costi Sifri, who serves as U-Va.’s director of hospital epidemiology.
The omicron wave appears to have slowed in other East Coast cities that were also hit early by the variant, including New York and Boston.
Across the region, hospitalizations remain at record highs that strain medical facilities.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced six new testing sites to launch within the week to relieve the burden on emergency rooms that are fielding an unprecedented testing demand. One site will open outside at Holy Cross Germantown Hospital in Montgomery County, and a total of 16 sites should be operational by the end of next week, he said. Hogan also said that starting next week, all nursing home visitors must show a negative test for entry.
The 20 million high-grade masks will be distributed next week through local health departments and all of the state-run test sites. While the governor urged residents to get the more protective masks instead of cloth ones, he declined to reinstitute a statewide mandate.
“I don’t think we have any reason to change strategy,” Hogan said, adding it wasn’t necessary because Maryland residents were already voluntarily wearing masks at rates higher than most of the country. His staff pointed to a Carnegie Mellon University study that pegged Maryland’s mask usage at sixth-highest in the country. D.C., which has an indoor mask mandate, ranks first in the nation. Virginia, which also does not have a statewide rule, ranks 18th.
Virginia reported 18,942 new cases on Thursday, posting a record seven-day average of 18,782 new cases. Maryland reported 9,657 new cases and its seven-day average declined to 11,720, the fifth consecutive day the metric went down.
In the District, new numbers were not posted by 4 p.m., but the previous five days had showed a decline from a record 2,251 seven-day average new cases per day to 1,712.
The omicron variant spread throughout the District so fast that graphs of new coronavirus cases more closely resembled a wall — or a rocket launch — than a curve, said Lynn R. Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
But the city’s peak in new cases, she said, appears to have been last week, coming slightly earlier than most models anticipated.
Surveillance testing of George Washington’s 26,000 community members — including faculty, staff and students — offers a window in the rise and fall of the variant. Testing last week showed that about 10 percent of people were testing positive — a staggering rate that meant contact tracing was virtually impossible.
“It is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Goldman said. “The virus has been everywhere here.”
But this week, mirroring citywide declines reported by the health department, the positivity rate from the university’s testing was between 4 and 6 percent.
Goldman cautioned that hospitalizations, an indicator that tend to lag new cases by about two weeks, have likely yet to peak. And D.C.’s hospitals are vulnerable, she added, in part because of spillover from Maryland’s overburdened system — in which 1 in 4 hospitals are working under crisis standards of care.
How quickly D.C.’s cases will go down is unclear, Goldman said, in part because models some other countries, including Denmark, have populations that have received their booster shots at higher rates than in the District.
Goldman said she wished she could say that in a couple of weeks, things would be normal. “But the reality is that on our campus, we are going to continue to look for genetic variants. New ones could arise. We don’t know if each one is going to be more benign than the last one. The next one might be worse. We don’t really know.”
In Virginia, cases are likely to drop first in the densely populated counties in Northern Virginia, which border D.C., and have been the hardest hit by the omicron surge, said Sifri.
Other parts of Virginia, especially its rural southwest, may see case rates continue to climb for a few weeks even after the statewide numbers begin to dip.
Data from other countries like South Africa and the United Kingdom suggest that when cases do begin to drop, they might decline rapidly because of how widespread the omicron variant has been. In effect, Sifri explained, the virus could dry up rapidly after “burning through all the wood that was available.”
Even after infections plateau and decline, however, the region is likely to continue feeling the strain of the surge. Covid-19 hospitalizations often lag changes in cases and at the University of Virginia Medical Center’s intensive unit, there are no indications as yet that the pressures from omicron are starting to slow, said medical director Kyle Enfield.
“Even when new hospitalizations do start to go down, people who are critically ill for patients are going to be here for many, many weeks after,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
She complained that the press describes the Build Back Better bill as “social spending.” She instead made the case that the bill, which stalled in the Senate, is really “the only shot we’ve got of getting millions of women back to work” who have left the labor market. The former venture capitalist said she presses CEOs every day to recognize that they have obligations not just to shareholders but also employees. She tried to make a business case for them to support more paid leave, prekindergarten, job retraining and home care. “Marginal tax rates and corporate tax rates that are through the roof, that’s not good. But our president doesn’t support that,” Raimondo said. “It’s also not true that government can solve all problems. What you need are policies that enable workers to work.”
Raimondo gets less attention than populists on Capitol Hill and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, but she is confident that the infrastructure bill, which finally passed in November, will allow for universal broadband by 2030. If that happens, this will be Biden’s Hoover Dam — a vast public works project that brought water and power to the southwestern United States nearly 90 years ago. She worked with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) to balance Republican concerns about price controls with Democratic desires to make the Internet affordable. “We didn’t want to overregulate, but we also weren’t just going to give all the money to the Internet service providers and hope for the best,” said Raimondo. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Stefani Reynolds for The Washington Post)
At current pace, sometime in late April we will pass a grim milestone: 1 million Americans dead from covid-19. If we get lucky and the omicron wave abates, that millionth death may not come until later in the spring, or the summer. But it will come, and soon.
Keep that in mind as you consider the latest news from the Supreme Court. On Thursday, by a 6-to-3 vote along party lines (and no, I won’t pretend the justices have no relevant party affiliations), they struck down the Biden administration’s mandate that large employers were supposed to require that their employees either be vaccinated or receive regular tests for covid-19.
And in a development that was in some ways even more alarming, the court upheld a vaccine mandate that applied only to health-care workers in facilities that receive federal funds — but four of the justices voted against it.
Think about that for a moment. Four justices, one vote short of a majority, would have ruled that, in the midst of a brutal pandemic that has killed millions around the world, the government can’t even require health-care workers to be vaccinated.
Let’s begin with the rule the court struck down. The background here is that federal law gives the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) the power to protect workers from “grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.”
This seems like it would clearly apply to an airborne pathogen that has produced so much disease and death. Yet the conservative majority said that because you can catch covid-19 not only in your workplace but other locations, too, that means OSHA is powerless to protect workers from it.
Contra the majority, [the law] is indifferent to whether a hazard in the workplace is also found elsewhere. The statute generally charges OSHA with “assur[ing] so far as possible … safe and healthful working conditions.” … The statute does not require that employees are exposed to those dangers only while on the workplace clock. And that should settle the matter.
Would the conservatives have voted the same way if a Republican administration had issued these mandates? Might they have said that this is a temporary measure, and well within the scope of the law as written and the long-standing authority of government to protect people during health emergencies? There’s no way to know for sure, but I have my suspicions.
But this may not be about the kind of partisan bias that would validate an action by a Republican administration and strike it down when a Democratic administration does it. The truth is that the conservatives on the court have a broad animus toward the government’s power to regulate at all, which is playing out in multiple cases.
Some observers have warned that we’re headed for a new Lochner era, referring to the period in the early 20th century when the court struck down laws concerning everything from child labor to minimum wages to monopolistic business practices, on the grounds that government had no right to interfere in the smooth operation of commerce and private contracts, even if it meant children toiling in dangerous factories.
To most sane people, it was a dark time in U.S. history, characterized by brutal exploitation that the Supreme Court rendered the government powerless to stop. But to some, it was the good old days.
As to the health-care-worker mandate the court upheld, even there it’s hard to celebrate. The idea that anyone could oppose mandates on health-care workers being vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic seems almost mind-boggling, like opposing a regulation saying that pilots shouldn’t fly within eight hours of drinking alcohol.
But four justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — said just that. Legislative language that authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to regulate the “health and safety” of medical facilities, they said, isn’t enough, since there is no specific language authorizing precisely this kind of mandate. | null | null | null | null | null |
House Jan. 6 committee says tech firms not cooperating, issues subpoenas
Congressional investigators on Thursday issued subpoenas to the parent companies of Facebook, Google, as well as Twitter and Reddit, for failing to provide complete information on how their social media platforms spread falsehoods that fomented the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The move, a sharp escalation in a long-brewing standoff between investigators and the companies, came after months of seeking data from the companies that yielded “inadequate responses” to the House committee investigating the Capitol siege, said its chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), in a news release. Twitter and Reddit also were served with subpoenas by the committee on Thursday.
Thompson said that, despite requests for information sent in August, “we still not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions.”
Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Facebook’s parent company is Meta. Alphabet owns Google and YouTube.
Trump and his supporters used social media sites to spread falsehoods about the validity of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the November 2020 presidential election, with many posts calling for extraordinary action — including violence in some cases — to prevent Biden from ascending to the White House. On Jan. 6, Congress was meeting to certify the election’s results, a procedural formality, when hundreds of Trump supporters bashed their way into the building as part of clashes that left five people dead.
No social company has provided an exhaustive account of its role in spreading these ideas, and a request in August for evidence did not yield as much information as the committee wanted for its investigation.
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been sharpening their bipartisan criticism of technology companies for years, regularly demanding that executives appear for hearings and accusing them of a variety of misdeeds — antitrust, bias, spreading misinformation and more — at a time when polling consistently shows Americans disenchanted with the industry. At the same time, their stock prices have soared to record heights during the covid-19 pandemic.
Demands for answers about social media’s role in the Jan. 6 violence have come mainly from Democrats, and the companies have at once sought to play down their role while quietly resisting demands for evidence that might provide a fuller picture. An investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post recently found that more than 650,000 posts in Facebook groups attacked the integrity of the election — a pace averaging more than 10,000 a day — in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack. Many called for arrests, executions and other violence against those seeking to keep Trump from maintaining the presidency in the face of his electoral loss.
In a letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Thompson said the committee had specifically asked Facebook for information about reports that the company had disbanded a Civic Integrity Team that was focused on election misinformation after the election. “However, despite repeated and specific requests for documents related to these matters, the Select Committee still has not received these materials,” Thompson wrote.
A letter to Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, asked for specific information regarding YouTube, a platform it described as providing “significant communications by its users that were relevant to the planning and execution of January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.” The letter noted that former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon had live-streamed his podcast on YouTube in the days before and after Jan. 6, 2021, and that images of the Capitol insurrection were carried live on YouTube.
Twitter was similarly reprimanded in a letter accompanying the subpoena. Thompson wrote that “Twitter has failed to disclose critical information …For example, Twitter has not produced important documents relating to warnings it received regarding the use of the platform to plan or incite violence on January 6th.” | null | null | null | null | null |
People gather at a each in Sydney on Dec. 19 as a heat wave moved across Australia. (Bianca De Marchi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A massive heat dome was parked over Western Australia, with Onslow sitting directly underneath it. Temperatures were about 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) above normal at the hottest time of year.
“Considering the increasing temperature trends over the past decades, it is less surprising that we see extreme temperatures like the one in Western Australia at the moment,” wrote Nina Ridder, researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of New South Wales at Sydney.
Western Australia is currently coming off of its third-warmest December in 2021. Ridder said mean sea surface temperatures in northwest Western Australia have also been above average — about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) higher in December 2021 than average — and could have detrimental effects on marine ecosystems, such as inducing coral bleaching. | null | null | null | null | null |
Unemployment claims rose last week, but remained relatively low
Unemployment claims rise amid covid spike
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased to an eight-week high in the first week of January amid raging coronavirus infections, but remained at a level consistent with a rapidly tightening labor market.
“The rise in claims likely reflects an increase in layoffs due to the surge in COVID cases,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York. “Claims may remain elevated in the near term, but we expect they will gravitate back to the 200,000 level once the Omicron wave passes.”
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 230,000 for the week ended Jan. 8, the highest reading since mid-November.
Nigeria ends Twitter ban, sets new limits
Nigeria lifted a seven-month ban on Twitter in the West African country, after the social network agreed to various conditions.
Twitter will establish a legal entity in Nigeria and appoint a country representative to engage with the government when required, the National Information Technology Development Agency, or NITDA, said in a statement Wednesday announcing the imminent end of the suspension.
Nigeria’s government blocked access to Twitter on June 5, after the company deleted one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tweets for violating its rules. The platform was shut down because “unscrupulous elements” used it for “subversive purposes and criminal activities, propagating fake news, and polarizing Nigerians along tribal and religious lines,” NITDA said.
The resolution will also provide “economic and training opportunities” as the San Francisco-based social media giant “continues to consider expanding its presence in Nigeria,” NITDA said. Twitter decided in April to place its first product and engineering team on the African continent in Ghana, applauding the country as “a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet.”
Twitter is “deeply committed to Nigeria,” the company said in a statement welcoming the restoration of its services.
The local chapter of Amnesty International called the restrictions “illegal” and “an attack on the right to freedom of expression” on its Twitter account Thursday.
A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected a request from Tesla to quickly reinstate higher civil penalties for automakers who fail to meet U.S. fuel economy standards. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had rejected the electric vehicle maker's request in April for immediate action pending a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) review. Tesla again asked the court in August to take immediate action. The court on Thursday issued a brief order rejecting that request.
Facebook owner Meta said on Thursday it would "assess the feasibility" of commissioning an independent human rights assessment into its work in Ethiopia, after its oversight board recommended a review of how Facebook and Instagram have been used to spread content that heightens the risk of violence there. The board, set up by the company to address criticism over its handling of problematic material, makes binding decisions on a small number of challenging content moderation cases and provides nonbinding policy recommendations.
8:30 a.m.: Commerce Department releases retail sales data for December.
Earnings: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Merced County Sheriff’s Office investigate after three children were found dead inside a residence at an apartment complex in Le Grand, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. The mother of three children found dead inside a central California home has been charged with murder, officials said Thursday. (Andrew Kuhn/The Merced Sun-Star via AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Thousands protest outpost demolition
Thousands of Israeli nationalists staged a protest outside the parliament building in Jerusalem, urging the government not to demolish a West Bank settlement outpost.
The outpost, near the West Bank city of Nablus, is the site of a former settlement evacuated as part of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. But in recent years, settlers have reestablished an outpost at the site, one of dozens of outposts in the West Bank that are considered illegal but tolerated by the government.
The demonstration came a month after a Palestinian gunman fired on a car filled with seminary students at the outpost, killing 25-year-old Yehuda Dimentman and wounding two people.
Millions on 'verge of death,' U.N. chief says
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned that millions of Afghans are on the “verge of death,” urging the international community to fund the U.N.’s $5 billion humanitarian appeal, release Afghanistan’s frozen assets and jump-start its banking system to avert economic and social collapse.
Guterres told reporters that “freezing temperatures and frozen assets are a lethal combination for the people of Afghanistan,” and that “rules and conditions that prevent money from being used to save lives and the economy must be suspended in this emergency situation.”
Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already stumbling when the Taliban seized power in mid-August. The international community froze Afghanistan’s assets abroad and halted economic support, unwilling to work with the Taliban, given the group’s reputation for brutality during its rule in 1996 to 2001.
Sudanese military uses live rounds to break up protest: Sudanese security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse protesters in the capital of Khartoum as thousands took to the streets against a coup that has plunged the country into grinding deadlock, activists said. A senior police officer and a protester were killed, according to authorities and a medical group. The demonstrations in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan are the latest in relentless protests since the military on Oct. 25 ousted the civilian-led government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
Nobel committee implores Ethiopian leader to act: The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize has appealed to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the award in 2019, to halt the conflict unfolding in the country's northern region of Tigray. The Norwegian Nobel committee said Abiy bore special responsibility for bringing to an end the fighting that broke out in late 2020. The committee generally refrains from commenting on the actions of Nobel Prize winners after they have won the award. An exception has been Abiy, with the committee having previously expressed its "deep concern" about the conflict.
At least 5 die in train wreck in India's West Bengal: At least five people died and more than 45 were injured when a train derailed in India's West Bengal state, officials said. Twelve coaches of the train went off the rails and three capsized. Images from the scene showed passengers stuck in twisted metal and debris as rescuers rushed to pull them out.
Polish diocese apologizes for asking if abuse victim is gay: The Bielsko-Zywiec Catholic diocese in Poland has apologized for having asked a court to determine whether a man who was sexually abused as a child by a priest is gay, and whether the sexual contact may have consequently been pleasurable for him. The diocese dispatched the letter in response to a lawsuit by the victim.
Dutch king sidelines royal carriage with slavery ties: The Dutch king ruled out using, for now at least, the royal family's "Golden Carriage," one side of which bears a painting that critics say glorifies the Netherlands' colonial past, including its role in the global slave trade. The announcement was an acknowledgment of the heated debate about the carriage as the Netherlands reckons with the grim sides of its history as a 17th-century colonial superpower, including Dutch merchants making vast fortunes from enslaved people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: We can’t neglect North Korea for another year
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, speaks with military officials on Jan. 11 during an observation of what state media said was a hypersonic missile test-fire in North Korea. (AFP/KCNA via KNS) (Str)
Already this month, Pyongyang has conducted three tests of a new ballistic missile that it claims has hypersonic capability — which, if true, would severely undermine the protection of U.S. and allied regional missile defenses. The U.S. government has responded according to its usual pattern, by issuing a disapproving statement with allies at the United Nations and announcing new sanctions on North Korea’s weapons programs. What is still missing is a U.S. strategy aimed at solving the ever-worsening problem.
After some initial outreach, which Kim did not respond to, President Biden’s team says the door remains open. Privately, officials say they don’t see any good options for re-engaging with North Korea after former president Donald Trump’s highly publicized but ultimately failed policy of personal summits with Kim. Biden officials also note that North Korean officials have refused to meet, even informally, due to Kim’s draconian lockdown of the entire country during the covid-19 pandemic.
But Biden’s version of “strategic patience" is unsustainable. The North Korean missile and nuclear threat is growing apace, and North Korea has one of the largest unvaccinated populations in the world. For most of 2020, North Korea rejected offers of the Sinovac and AstroZeneca vaccines, citing concerns about their efficacy while insisting that there were zero cases of covid-19 in the country.
Kim’s lockdown forced all humanitarian organizations and most foreign diplomats to leave Pyongyang in 2020. But in late 2021, North Korea resumed accepting medical supplies from the World Health Organization and allowed the International Red Cross to conduct some anti-pandemic work inside the country. That presents a diplomatic opportunity, said several North Korea experts and former officials I spoke with this week.
“The one thing that is different right now is covid, and Kim Jong Un wakes up each day like every leader in the world and wants to know how to get his population vaccinated,” said Victor Cha, the National Security Council’s director for Asian affairs during the George W. Bush administration. “There might be a humanitarian opening here that didn’t exist in the past that could lead to broader negotiations on the security side.”
Kim’s recent actions indicate that he might be ready to accept a larger covid-19 humanitarian package that would include the best vaccines (which are made in the United States) and therapeutics. The United States should at least test that proposition — not by offering this aid directly, but by working through international organizations, said Stephen Biegun, who was the U.S. special representative to North Korea and deputy secretary of state in the Trump administration.
Kim may not be willing to negotiate on security issues regardless, Biegun said, because he could be waiting for a new South Korean president to take office in Seoul later this year. But even if humanitarian outreach doesn’t result in a diplomatic breakthrough, finding a way to get vaccines into North Korea is a public health imperative for the rest of us.
“North Korea is a country of 25 million people with severe health problems and the potential for being a petri dish for the development of variants,” Biegun said. “Every North Korean getting vaccinated is as important as every American, European, Chinese and African getting vaccinated.”
Henry Olsen: Boris Johnson may be a dead man walking
Biden has shown little inclination to devote energy to North Korea. The State Department’s special representative is also a full-time ambassador. The White House hasn’t even bothered to nominate anyone for the positions of North Korean human rights envoy or ambassador to South Korea. Even if the vaccine offer does kick-start diplomacy, the Biden team may not want to devote time and effort to another low-reward, high-risk set of negotiations with the Kim regime.
But it must return to the negotiating process, said former nuclear negotiator Joel Wit, who notes that what happens in Pyongyang doesn’t stay in Pyongyang. An arms race is heating up in Northeast Asia, and North Korea is winning, he said.
“It’s trench warfare, and it’s ugly and unglamorous and politically fraught, but the administration has to find a way to sit down with the North Koreans, and maybe the foot in the door is vaccinations,” said Wit, now a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center.
China uses vaccines to coerce and threaten other countries. The United States should use them to build bridges, starting in North Korea but then on a global scale. Right now, our neglect of North Korea and several other poor countries is harming our health security and our national security, which are intertwined more than ever. | null | null | null | null | null |
The leader of the far-right military group Oath Keepers has been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 attack. Here’s what that means.
In a critical step forward in the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Justice Department arrested and charged 11 members and associates of the far-right organization Oath Keepers — including its founder Stewart Rhodes — with seditious conspiracy.
The charges mark the first time prosecutors have filed sedition charges in connection with the attack. Members of the Oath Keepers were among the right-wing mob that entered the Capitol that day.
In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, many wondered why those who broke into the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election had not been charged with sedition. As scenes of the pro-Trump mob advancing into the building spread across the nation, figures — from then-President-elect Joe Biden to historians and legal experts — described their actions as bordering on sedition.
The charge is defined in the current federal criminal code, Section 2384, as an effort by two or more to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
Seditious conspiracy has been used successfully in a handful of cases, most notably against the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef. Most recently, it was used in 2010 against nine members of the far-right group Hutaree, a self-styled militia group that the FBI prosecuted in federal court for allegedly planning a violent anti-government revolt. In that case, a judge dismissed the seditious conspiracy charges, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove that the group planned to carry out specific attacks.
So far, in the investigation of Jan. 6, these seditious conspiracy charges are the most serious to have been brought forward. These charge is “arguably the most difficult one to amass proof beyond a reasonable doubt of,” explained Juliet S. Sorensen, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.
While today many may envision sedition as an act that involves violence against the government, sedition laws in the U.S. originally targeted anti-government speech.
By 1918, a new Sedition Act made it a crime to interfere with the war effort underway during World War I, and was used mainly to target antiwar activists. In 1940, the charge of sedition was sharpened under the Alien Registration Act, which made it a crime to advocate to overthrow the U.S. government.
Sorensen explained that the seditious conspiracy statute goes further than the First Amendment — which does criminalize certain types of speech if it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of targeted violence — because for someone to be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the defendant must have not just advocated for the use of force, but actually conspired to use force against the U.S. government.
That process takes time, and a rushed indictment could’ve likely made the prosecution’s case weaker, legal experts have argued. Still, it wasn’t very hard for some of these experts to imagine a scenario where sedition charges were plausible. In March 2021, Michael Sherwin, a former top prosecutor who’d initially handled the investigation into the riot, predicted that sedition charges could be on the way during a “60 Minutes” interview.
“By statute, [the charge] carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. If these defendants are ultimately convicted of seditious conspiracy, what their actual sentences might be with dependent, a lot of different factors including factors that are individual to them,” Sorensen said. | null | null | null | null | null |
MLB puts a new proposal on the table in labor talks. How the players respond will be telling.
No one involved expected an hour or so on a Zoom call to result in an agreement. Both sides entered hopeful, however, that Major League Baseball’s latest proposal for changes to the game’s economic structure could create some momentum.
But MLB’s proposal, made on behalf of the league’s 30 club owners, was met with disappointment from the players union, according to multiple people involved in the negotiations who declined to provide full details of the offer.
For months, MLB has maintained that it has made concessions to the players — things like removing draft pick compensation for teams that lose their own free agents (players believe that limits options in free agency), or adding a draft lottery to prevent teams from tanking. The league views these as major concessions; the union does not.
The players believe the league is nibbling at the edges of change with proposals like those, and are instead pursuing larger issues, such as reducing the time before players hit free agency or cutting revenue-sharing to prevent losing teams from earning money without spending it.
In a fitting representation of the size of the gap between the sides, the league offered to raise the luxury tax threshold from $210 million to $214 million, a shift MLB believes is commensurate with historical norms (the previous CBA included annual raises of about $2 million to $3 million). The union sees historical precedent as somewhat irrelevant and wants a threshold of $245 million, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The league’s proposal Thursday centered on three of the union’s long-stated goals for the next collective bargaining agreement: Paying younger players more, addressing recidivist losing, and eliminating service time manipulation. According to people familiar with the proposal, it included more money for players with two-plus years of service time, a modified draft lottery so teams cannot try to lose their way to the first overall pick, and a system by which teams that call up elite prospects for full seasons would be rewarded with draft picks. From the league’s perspective, those changes, on top of the ones already offered, are good-faith efforts to move toward a deal.
But to the union, those changes do not go far enough. According to people familiar with their thinking, the players see a three-team draft lottery as a minimal change, one that won’t necessarily motivate, say, the Orioles to win more simply because they won’t be guaranteed the No. 1 pick if they don’t. They would like a draft that rewards small-market teams for extra wins and a lottery that includes more teams to increase the risk that an annual loser would not only not get one of the first few picks, but could fall as far as seventh or eighth. Similarly, multiple people familiar with the union’s position are skeptical that draft pick compensation would be motivation enough to prevent teams from manipulating service time.
Another complicating factor — should a deal get done — would be getting the sides to agree on new covid-19 protocols ahead of spring training. The transaction window will have to be reopened, and teams will need at least a week or two to sign remaining free agents and craft rosters that were, at most, halfway complete when the lockout began. | null | null | null | null | null |
In less than a month, the United States brought in a new general manager and coaching staff. Instead of NHL stars, the Americans assembled a team of players competing in the NCAA, in European leagues or on minor league teams. The roster includes seven players with NHL experience, eight playing professionally in Europe and 15 competing in college hockey.
Vanbiesbrouck is the third general manager to handle roster preparations for Beijing. In December, Minnesota Wild General Manager Bill Guerin took over for former Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman, who resigned after an investigation determined Bowman failed to take sufficient action after being informed of a sexual assault allegation in 2010. Guerin stepped down from Team USA after the league withdrew from Beijing in December.
NHL players competed in five consecutive Winter Olympics from 1998 through 2014. The United States earned silver medals in 2002 and 2010 after gold medal game losses to Canada in both years. Team USA has not won a gold medal in the event since 1980. | null | null | null | null | null |
More upheaval in Montgomery County’s school amid coronavirus surge
Montgomery County’s public school system was hit with more upheaval Thursday, as teachers voted no confidence in its leadership and the union for administrators called for a pause to come up with an effective plan as the omicron variant of the coronavirus surges.
At the same time, one elementary school in Gaithersburg counted 21 of its 37 classes in quarantine, and several schools recorded rates of 11 to 20 percent of students and staff testing positive. Parents have been increasingly anxious and some have held their children out of school.
The school system has “never been in such a crisis state,” the Montgomery County Association for Administrators and Principals said a letter sent to school system officials Thursday, arguing for a chance to “pause and do more planning” related to operations, staffing shortages and contingency plans.
“We are not advocating to close schools and return to virtual instruction for the remainder of the year but the operational impact of the pandemic cannot be ignored,” the letter said. In bolded type, it warned: “Leaders are experiencing extreme physical and mental stress and are working under conditions that cannot be sustained.”
The letter coincided with the release of results of a no-confidence vote by the school district’s teachers union, directed at the leadership of Maryland’s largest public school system — the Board of Education and interim superintendent Monifa McKnight.
The no-confidence resolution passed by a margin of 94 percent to 6 percent, with roughly half of union members casting votes. It cited the lack of “a coherent plan” and a failure “to provide clear metrics and criteria” to guide decisions, along with failures in addressing testing needs, staffing shortages, student absences, communication and collaboration.
School system officials had no comment Thursday on the teachers union vote or the letter from the administrators union.
The stark actions follow more than a week of turmoil and uncertainty following winter break.
Now the school system has stopped posting percentages of student and staff positivity altogether, instead giving daily case counts.
But parents and educators, worried about the state of omicron infection in their schools, started doing calculations of their own.
Christina Lange, a mother of two with a son at Parkland Magnet Middle School for Aerospace Technology in Rockville, was among them. She said her eighth-grader has medical issues that make him more vulnerable to the virus and she has not sent him to school after winter break. Masks come off for breakfast and lunch — too risky, she said.
“In two days, 95 kids tested positive this week,” Lange said.
Becky Taylor, another parent, said her seventh-grade son is still showing up for his classes at Parkland, wearing a family-provided KN95 mask. “If classes are in session, he wants to be there,” she said. “We’re trying to make sure he’s mitigating everything as best as possible.”
But Taylor and her husband revisit the question of his attendance regularly, involving their son in the conversation, too. “We are growing increasingly nervous about these rising numbers,” she said.
According to school system officials, Parkland has 203 positive cases in a population of 1,277 students and staff members, nearly 16 percent.
Damascus Elementary School, said to have the highest rate in the county, has reported nearly 20 percent of students and staff testing positive, or 83 of its 417 students and staff members, officials said.
Christopher Cram, a spokesman for the school system, said Thursday the district moved away from releasing test positivity percentages because they were viewed as automatic triggers for remote learning in schools, when they are only one of multiple factors. The school system had previously red-coded schools with more than 5 percent of positive cases, though also said that benchmark was one of several factors.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, parents who want schools to remain open also spoke out, thanking McKnight for staying the course. On the other side, parents have urged a short switch to virtual school, additional testing or a virtual option for families worried about health or medical issues.
McKnight apologized for recent difficulties in a Sunday letter to the community, saying the system “should have done a better job communicating” about changing covid guidelines, disruptions from bus staffing shortages, and snow closures and delays.
McKnight also emphasized her commitment to keeping schools open, saying that shifting any school to virtual learning, even briefly, would be “a last resort.”
In neighboring Prince George’s County, which has been in virtual learning mode since before winter break, officials made clear this week that students would return in person Tuesday. Like Montgomery County, they have pledged to provide students and staff with KN95 masks to increase safety. | null | null | null | null | null |
No one involved expected an hour or so on a Zoom call to result in an agreement. Both sides entered hopeful, however, that MLB’s latest proposal for changes to the game’s economic structure could create some momentum.
But MLB’s proposal, made on behalf of its 30 club owners, was met with disappointment from the players’ union, according to multiple people involved in the negotiations who declined to provide full details of the offer.
For months, MLB has maintained that it has made concessions to the players — things like removing draft pick compensation for teams that lose their own free agents (players believe that limits options in free agency), or adding a draft lottery to prevent teams from tanking. MLB views these as major concessions; the union does not.
The players believe MLB is nibbling at the edges of change with proposals like those, and are instead pursuing larger issues, such as reducing the time before players hit free agency or cutting revenue-sharing to prevent losing teams from earning money without spending it.
In a fitting representation of the size of the gap between the sides, MLB offered to raise the luxury tax threshold from $210 million to $214 million, a shift it believes is commensurate with historical norms (the previous CBA included annual raises of about $2 million to $3 million). The union sees historical precedent as somewhat irrelevant and wants a threshold of $245 million, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
MLB’s proposal Thursday centered on three of the union’s long-stated goals for the next collective bargaining agreement: paying younger players more, addressing recidivist losing and eliminating service time manipulation. According to people familiar with the proposal, it included more money for players with two-plus years of service time, a modified draft lottery so teams cannot try to lose their way to the first overall pick, and a system by which teams that call up elite prospects for full seasons would be rewarded with draft picks. From MLB’s perspective, those changes, on top of the ones already offered, are good-faith efforts to move toward a deal.
But to the union, those changes do not go far enough. According to people familiar with their thinking, the players see a three-team draft lottery as a minimal change, one that won’t necessarily motivate, say, the Baltimore Orioles to win more simply because they won’t be guaranteed the No. 1 pick if they don’t. They would like a draft that rewards small-market teams for extra wins and a lottery that includes more teams to increase the risk that an annual loser would not only not get one of the first few picks, but also could fall as far as seventh or eighth. Similarly, multiple people familiar with the union’s position are skeptical that draft pick compensation would be motivation enough to prevent teams from manipulating service time. | null | null | null | null | null |
The leader of the far-right military group Oath Keepers has been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Here’s what that means.
In a critical step forward in the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Justice Department arrested and charged 11 members and associates of the far-right organization Oath Keepers — including its founder, Stewart Rhodes — with seditious conspiracy.
The charges mark the first time prosecutors have filed sedition charges in connection with the attack. Members of the Oath Keepers were among the rioters that entered the Capitol that day.
In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, many wondered why those who broke into the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election had not been charged with sedition. As scenes of the pro-Trump mob advancing into the building spread across the nation, figures — from then-President-elect Joe Biden to historians and legal experts — described their actions as bordering on sedition.
The charge is defined in the federal criminal code, Section 2384, as an effort by two or more to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
Seditious conspiracy has been used successfully in a handful of cases, most notably against the planner of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef. Most recently, it was used in 2010 against nine members of the far-right Hutaree, a self-styled militia group that the FBI prosecuted in federal court for allegedly planning a violent anti-government revolt. In that case, a judge dismissed the seditious conspiracy charges, saying that prosecutors failed to prove that the group planned to carry out specific attacks.
So far, in the investigation of Jan. 6, these seditious conspiracy charges are the most serious to have been brought forward. This charge is “arguably the most difficult one to amass proof beyond a reasonable doubt of,” explained Juliet Sorensen, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.
While today many may envision sedition as an act that involves violence against the government, sedition laws in the United States originally targeted anti-government speech.
By 1918, a new Sedition Act made it a crime to interfere with the war effort underway during World War I, and it was used mainly to target antiwar activists. In 1940, the charge of sedition was sharpened under the Alien Registration Act, which made it a crime to advocate to overthrow the U.S. government.
Sorensen explained that the seditious conspiracy statute goes further than the First Amendment — which does criminalize certain types of speech if it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of targeted violence — because for someone to be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the defendant must have not just advocated for the use of force, but conspired to use force against the U.S. government.
That process takes time, and a rushed indictment could have made the prosecution’s case weaker, legal experts have argued. Still, it wasn’t very hard for some of these experts to imagine a scenario where sedition charges were plausible. In March 2021, Michael Sherwin, a former top prosecutor who had initially handled the investigation into the riot, predicted that sedition charges could be on the way during a “60 Minutes” interview.
“By statute, [the charge] carries a maximum of 20 years in prison,” Sorensen said. “If these defendants are ultimately convicted of seditious conspiracy, their actual sentences might [depend on] a lot of different factors, including factors that are individual to them.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Politics is trumping economics. It might end badly.
Gas prices at a station in D.C. on Jan. 12. (Will Oliver/EPA-EFA/REX/Shutterstock)
We forget now, but as recently as the 1980s, inflation was rampant across much of the world. Countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Peru had inflation rates that were measured in the thousands of percent. The United States kicked off the decade with over 12 percent inflation. In some European countries, such as Italy, it surged above 20 percent. In most of these countries, the causes were some combination of large government deficits, lax central bank policies and external shocks such as the oil crises of the 1970s.
In large measure, it worked, and by the early 2000s, countries were congratulating themselves for having won the war. It all seemed part of a paradigm in which governments recognized the power of free markets and free trade. Thomas Friedman used the metaphor of the “golden straitjacket” to explain what happened. Governments placed themselves in a situation where their policy options were tightly constrained by markets, and as a result, their politics shrank but their economies grew.
Over the past few years, it has seemed as if the opposite is happening almost everywhere. Look at Turkey, which by the 2000s had become a model developing country, taming inflation and spurring growth. Its policymakers were lauded across the world. Today, Turkey’s president has abandoned even the pretense of rational economic policy, using policy to reward friends and punish foes and advocating monetary policy that is the opposite of what most experts believe would work. Chile, which was considered the most fiscally prudent country in Latin America, now appears to have taken a path toward a more familiar left-wing populism.
The Western world has followed suit. Driven by an understandable concern about middle-class wages and inequality, economic policy is no longer oriented toward growth. Tariffs, subsidies and relief packages all reflect the fact that politics has trumped economics. Central banks everywhere have rushed in over the past decade to take extreme measures in response to the two big shocks of the age — the financial crisis and the pandemic. As Ruchir Sharma notes, in the mid-1990s not one country in the world had a ratio of debt to gross domestic product above 300 percent. Today, 25 countries have exceeded this mark. | null | null | null | null | null |
Despite forecasts that the omicron surge would soon peak nationwide, the seven-day average of new cases in the United States hovered near 800,000 on Thursday as the variant continued its stampede across the nation. However, the pace of new cases is starting to slow in several states along the Eastern Seaboard that saw the biggest initial increases, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
Still, many experts said it was encouraging to see the White House preparing for possible successive variants even if the increased supply of tests arrived on the later end of this one. | null | null | null | null | null |
Judge Robert Adrian presides over court on Aug. 26, 2020, in Adams County, Ill. Adrian, who found an 18-year-old man guilty of sexual assaulting a 16-year-old girl, has come under fire after he later threw out the conviction this month, saying the 148 days the man spent in jail was punishment enough. (Jake Shane/Quincy Herald-Whig via AP) (Katelyn Metzger/Quincy Herald-Whig) | null | null | null | null | null |
Ashwani Jain announces LaTrece Hawkins Lytes as running mate in Maryland governor’s race
SLUG:me-statehouse DATE:January30, 2008 CREDIT: Mark Gail/ TWP LOCATION:Annapolis, Md. ASSIGNMENT#: 197630 EDITED BY: mg CAPTION:The Maryland State House in Annapolis Wednesday. StaffPhoto imported to Merlin on Wed Jan 30 16:29:09 2008 (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)
Gubernatorial candidate Ashwani Jain has named longtime Maryland resident LaTrece Hawkins Lytes as his running mate in the crowded race for the Democratic nomination.
Jain’s campaign describes Lytes as a longtime Maryland resident, wife, mother of four, juvenile Type 1 diabetes survivor, transplant recipient and a community activist.
“My family and I are really just your average, typical Maryland family. We work hard and try to make ends meet while taking care of each other,” Lytes said in an announcement. “We don’t have fancy titles or big political connections. But we do best by our God, our family and our community.”
Jain, 31, who previously ran for Montgomery County Council and worked for the Obama administration, does not have any previous experience in office. He threw his hat into the ring to be the first person of color to hold the state’s top position, and the youngest governor in the country.
“I wanted someone who comes from a community that is typically forgotten about and someone who understands what it means to struggle to fight and to persevere,” Jain said. “Because that’s the type of perspective and energy we need to transform our state.”
Lytes, who was born in Baltimore and raised in Prince George’s County, has worked in advocacy roles with the University of Maryland Medical Center, Maryland Endocrine, the First Baptist Church of Highland Park and the American Diabetes Association, according to a news release from Jain’s campaign.
Jain’s campaign said it’s focused on transparency, inclusion and equal access to state government, and finding a comprehensive approach to solving issues through a “Relief, Recovery and Reform agenda.”
Ashwani Jain enters race for Maryland governor
“Until recently we never thought about getting into politics. Often we see politicians give big speeches and false promises,” Lytes said. “But then I met Ashwani and I started to feel hopeful. His work making our politics more inclusive and accessible for regular people like you and me is so inspiring. And I’m honored to be his running mate.”
Jain is one of 10 candidates running in the Democratic primary. So far, former U.S. education secretary John B. King Jr. has selected Michelle Siri, an attorney and women’s rights advocate, to join his ticket; author and former nonprofit executive Wes Moore named former state delegate Aurna Miller as his running mate; Comptroller Peter Franchot (D) named Monique Anderson-Walker, who recently resigned from the Prince George’s County Council; and former county executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) chose longtime Montgomery County Council member Nancy Navarro.
Candidates must select their running mates before the Feb. 22 filing deadline. | null | null | null | null | null |
That gathering in Mom’s basement has grown to become a powerhouse of charitable giving in the region.
Uyama, 38, wasn’t the typical high-powered Northern Virginia child. He went to a special-education school when he was young because he still wasn’t talking at 4 years old. (But he could read.) Later he lived at home while unenthusiastically taking classes at George Mason University. He briefly was a data analyst in tech, then left to work at the local wine and beer store. He lost that job when the store closed.
He is well known and occupies an unusual space in the world of video games. Starting in 2009, he and his friends were streaming “speedruns.” It’s a hardcore niche of the gaming world in which players show off how fast they can finish a game.
“Yeah, we’re at about $30 — let me check — $35 million,” Uyama said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alex Ovechkin voted Metro captain for All-Star Game, misses Capitals practice with injury
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin missed practice Thursday with an upper-body injury. The Capitals said Ovechkin wasn’t practicing for precautionary reasons.
Ovechkin did not participate in practice Tuesday as he took a maintenance day to rest, according to the team. Washington had a day off Wednesday.
“He had his gear on, he went on and came back off, so I think we are just trying to make sure everything is good for the weekend,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “Sure, he would have … liked to be out there today, but it was probably best just to try and make sure he is good for the weekend.”
Ovechkin skated 19 minutes 5 seconds Monday in a 7-3 loss to Boston, recording an assist. He has not scored in his past four games but entered Thursday’s action tied for second in the NHL with 24 goals. Laviolette said Thursday he wasn’t sure if Ovechkin’s injury was tied to any specific play in Monday’s game.
Ovechkin got off to a record start this season and is seen as an early front-runner for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player. Ovechkin said at the start of the season he was in good shape physically and was not dealing with ailments of any severity. | null | null | null | null | null |
In a move that stunned the prosecution, Adams County Judge Robert Adrian overturned his decision that Drew Clinton was guilty of one count of criminal sexual assault to avoid sending the teenager to prison for the minimum sentence of four years at the sentencing hearing last week. Stirring criticism from victims’ advocates and shocking the 16-year-old and her parents, Adrian sided with Clinton’s attorneys, who argued the teenager should not be sent to prison because of his age, educational abilities and lack of criminal record. While the district attorney said the decision was a blow to the victim’s healing, the judge said the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the girl, Cameron Vaughan, had not given consent to Clinton. And he blamed parents for providing alcohol to the teenagers the night of the alleged attack.
On Oct. 15, Clinton was found guilty on one of three counts, of digitally penetrating Cameron without consent. Thus, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections — until the judge threw out the guilty verdict.
Adrian reversed himself following a pair of post-trial motions by Clinton’s attorney. In explaining his decision, Adrian said the only way to circumvent the mandatory sentence was to overturn his prior verdict — fueling both shock and a wave of ire against him.
At a time when rape and sexual assault are some of the least reported violent crimes, advocates fear such a decision could discourage victims from seeking justice. But for Cameron, it has become an opportunity to urge other women to speak up.
“She was just getting to the point where the wounds were slowly starting to heal,” her father said. “But the judge basically just ripped the scab right back off.”
Cameron said she and her friends went to a graduation party on May 30, where alcohol was involved and the teenagers jumped into the pool in their underwear. She said she passed out after drinking “way too much.” Around 5 a.m., she said she woke up to Clinton pushing a pillow down on her face and sexually assaulting her.
“I said, ‘stop’ and he either didn’t hear or didn’t want to listen,” she said. “And then after I put my pants up and started leaving the room, he jumped up and started playing video games as if he didn’t even do anything.”
Andrew Schnack, who represented the 18-year-old, said the girl had given consent to Clinton, which he told police and on the witness stand.
Adams County Assistant State’s Attorney Anita Rodriguez, who prosecutes sex crimes for the office, said the verdict was a setback for the teenager.
“When a guilty verdict or a plea of guilty to the sexual assault is entered, it is a step forward in the healing process because the guilty verdict tells the victim ‘I believe you,'” she wrote in an email. “When the guilty verdict is taken away, it places the victim ‘emotionally’ back in the same position they were in before.”
Thousands of people have signed an online petition demanding Adrian gets charged with abuse of judicial discretion and power.
Following the decision, Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse warned in a statement: “If you are raped, avoid Judge Adrian’s courtroom.”
Tensions reached a high the day after the statement when Adrian tossed out Josh Jones, lead trial attorney for the same office prosecuting Clinton, in a proceeding about a crash that killed four people. Adrian said he could not be “fair” to Jones because his wife saw Jones had liked a Facebook comment that attacked him, which Jones said was a post from the domestic violence center, the Herald-Whig reported.
“I can’t be fair with you,” Adrian said. “Get out.”
Schnack, however, said Adrian has garnered a reputation for “giving everyone a fair trial" since he was first elected to court in 2010.
Quincy Area Network executive director Megan Duesterhaus said victims’ advocates have felt Adrian has been fair in the past, despite disagreements, but his comments in the Clinton case went too far.
Adrians’ actions have drawn parallels to the infamous Brock Turner case — where a judge feared imprisonment would have a “severe” impact on the star Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault. Such cases underscore a trend where victims are denied justice at the expense of young, White men with seemingly promising careers, said Scott Berkowitz, founder and president of RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.
Rape and sexual assault are among the least reported violent crimes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Less than one-fourth of rape and sexual assault crimes were reported to police in 2020, down from about one-third the year before, according to a DOJ report.
The Vaughans have considered seeking justice in civil court but were skeptical about success given the reversal, Scott Vaughan said. The judge’s decision dealt a devastating blow to the family and Cameron, a once honor roll athlete who has spent months in therapy since an attempted suicide weeks after the alleged assault.
However, since the news of the judge’s reversal, Cameron has encountered an outpour of support, finding a new purpose for sharing her story.
“Even though I didn’t get the justice that I should have, I’ve had multiple girls text me saying that my story has helped them come out with theirs," she said. "That’s why I want my story out there.” | null | null | null | null | null |
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