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After fast start in Beijing, U.S. women’s curling suffers second straight defeat
Tabitha Peterson and the United States women's curling team have dropped two straight and winning their first three matches in Beijing. (Eloisa Lopez / Reuters)
BEIJING — It was a small needle to thread, but the chance was there. Level after a promising start against defending Olympic champion Sweden (3-2), the aspirant United States women’s curling team appeared poised to take the lead and positioned to earn a place among the best in this Olympics competition. Instead, it became the victim of a Swedish rebound in a 10-4 loss that saw the session slip away before the Americans conceded after the ninth end.
“This one really was a good match,” U.S. third Nina Roth said. “We really had control of the first half of the game, and just kind of missed out on some opportunities in the second half. But overall, it was a grind. We knew it was gonna be a grind against Sweden, and we’re looking forward to a rematch in the final.”
The U.S. (3-2) held the hammer — the last-shot advantage — in the sixth of 10 scheduled ends when Roth slipped a shot through a narrow lane between two stones to clear the button — the center of the concentric circles on the ice that resemble a bull’s eye.
On the United States’ following shot, skip Tabitha Peterson tried to navigate the same route, aiming to blast a Swedish stone and mount the Americans’ go-ahead attack. But Peterson, who has risen to lead the U.S. team since its 2018 eighth-place finish in PyeongChang, clipped one of their own as the stone sailed through the narrow channel.
“My two shots were two very, very tough shots,” Peterson said. “I had tough shots, and I just didn’t" make them.
Despite the loss, the U.S. entered the 2022 Winter Games with aurous dreams and remains hopeful after a strong start in Beijing. The team was one of last two undefeated following wins over China, Denmark, and the Russian Olympic Committee, before losing Saturday to Britain. Switzerland’s record remains unblemished after a Sunday victory over Canada.
Following a fourth-place finish in Salt Lake City in 2002, the women’s curling team placed last in each of the next three Games. USA curling revamped its development program in 2014, expanding its staff and providing better resources. It finished eighth in 2018, but beat Sweden, the world’s top-ranked team, to win bronze at the last world championships.
Peterson, Roth, and Becca Hamilton — whose brother, Matt, helped the U.S. men’s team to gold in 2018 — returned from the squad that competed in PyeongChang. They added Peterson’s younger sister, Tara, and in 2019, reshuffled their lineup when Roth left on maternity leave. U.S. women have never won an Olympic curling medal, but the medal last May was their first at worlds in 15 years.
“We put in a lot of work in the last four years,” Roth said, pointing to the team’s continued use of a sports psychologist and its prior Olympic experience as reasons for its confidence in Beijing. “[PyeongChang] was kind of an eye-opener on what we needed to work on and we made some adjustments moving forward.”
Sunday’s win could help reigning gold medalist Sweden reset after upset losses to Britain and China last week. The result came after the U.S. men lost the third of their past four fixtures on the ice. The American women will return to round-robin play Monday at the National Aquatics Center to face South Korea, then Switzerland the following day. | null | null | null | null | null |
Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron had the best score in the first phase of ice dancing. (David J. Phillip/AP)
The waacking was impressive on its own, but it was matched with the transfixing speed and ease that Papadakis and Cizeron bring to the discipline. Every team in the first segment of the competition had to showcase a deceptively simple looking pattern of steps, a dance known as the Midnight Blues. Most teams had serious problems having their blades maintain the curves needed to complete the sequence successfully. For most of the event, attempts to navigate the pattern were deliberate and slow. Papadakis and Cizeron’s blues pattern, however, was slinky and assured. Judges assessed their short program as the best the world has ever seen.
That world record put the four-time world champions two points ahead of their nearest competitors, Russian’s Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, The difference may not seem like much, but it is a gap that will almost certainly widen when the competition moves to the final phrase on Monday morning (Sunday night Eastern), because the French are characteristically strong in the free skate.
Papadakis and Cizeron plan on skating to an impassioned tango, which plays to their art house sensibilities. They will try to further distance themselves from the field through a series of complicated steps, difficult dance holds — that’s when competitors skate while holding hands, which is generally more difficult than when they are apart — and seamless transitions into the hardest elements. The two did make a mistake the last time this dance was competed at the French national championships, when Papadakis fell in the second of three traveling turns known as twizzles.
Sinitsina and Katsalapov’s best hope is for the French to make a similar mistake in the final phase of the competition. The Russians skated with more confidence and precision on Saturday than they did in the earlier team competition, with a rhythm dance that was appropriately funky without being too cheeky.
Their planned free dance to pieces by Rachmaninoff is designed to highlight how well the two relate to each other and their playful, romantic style. But the piano music also requires a delicacy that contrasts with their powerful, somewhat haphazard, style of skating. If they achieve that delicate, softer touch, they should be able to create a memorable moment.
The United States’ Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue will try to overtake the Russians for the silver medal — the gold is likely out of reach. Traditionally too ragged in the restrictive short dance, Hubbell and Donohue found the secret sauce on Saturday, matching their unbridled power and speed with the amount of detail needed to master that tricky blues pattern. Hubbell, in particular, exploded with magnetic energy throughout their program to an industrial pop medley of songs from Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation. There was a bit of sloppiness in this sugar rush of a program — Hubbell went off-balance during those treacherous twizzles — that prevented a higher placement.
Still, they find themselves in a decent position to challenge the Russians for the silver. Like the other top pairs, Hubbell and Donohue will take the musical excitement down a notch in Monday’s final, skating to a folksy, piano heavy pop song by Anne Sila.
Hubbell and Donohue have long been known for their step sequences as they strike deep edges while galloping down the ice. But this free skate improves on their biggest weakness, their lifts; the two will attempt one lift that comes perilously close to violating a rule prohibiting skaters raising their partner up with their arms fully extended. The couple will likely need to find the best performance of their lives to move into second, but they have come into this competition looking unusually strong and ready to shake things up.
Taken together, the musical choices of the top three duos might feel a little plodding — especially compared with the energy in the first phase of competition. But the couples in fourth, fifth and sixth place are separated by less than a point, and all of them have somewhat peppier approaches to the final. Each has the ability to rise.
Despite having all the tools to make the podium, U.S. champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates had an uncharacteristically sluggish and cautious performance Saturday to songs by Billie Eilish and find themselves in a distant fourth place. A bronze medal is a distant star for them, a somewhat befitting situation because their performance will portray an astronaut venturing out to space and being seduced by an extraterrestrial. This cinematic story line is set to the music of Daft Punk.
And although the previous two sentences might sound like they were influenced by mind-altering drugs, the concept has been an effective way of showing of the best parts of their skating — their incredibly strong lifts, the alluring style of Chock and the confident ease in which they shift from one side of the blade to another. Judges have seemed to gravitate toward this vehicle — and a perfect performance could make the competition even more complicated.
Behind them are the Russian Olympic Committee’s Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, who will be skating to a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet. This steady Russian duo has have the most consistent twizzles of all the top teams. They are a perfectly fine combination, but offer little that is extraordinary compared with their competitors. A top five finish would be an accomplishment.
The teams to watch: Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, as well as Spain’s Olivia Smart and Adrian Diaz. Gilles and Poirier have a more avant-garde, innovative style that always puts them at a disadvantage in the first phase of the competition but can be heavily rewarded in the second. In particular, watch the many distinct positions that Poirier strikes, creating lasting images as he leads Gilles in their dance to a version of the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” The unusual, difficult ways they transition from one element — spins, lifts and twizzles — to another often garners enough points to make them competitive with the top teams, who skate faster and more powerfully. They are the reigning world bronze medalists.
Smart and Diaz aren’t medal favorites, but their performance to music from “The Mask of Zorro” will offer one of the highlights of the competition: a footwork sequence in the model of a swordfight that ends in a beheading. This smashing conclusion pushes the boundaries of ice dance, which in the old days had so many death scenes that judges had to ban the practice. Strange sport indeed. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Not long after her 20th birthday, Mariah Bell wanted to make a change in her figure skating career. She graduated high school a couple years before, so by this point, she felt ready — and had the time — to commit fully to her sport. She called Rafael Arutyunyan, an elite coach based in California, ready to jump into a new training environment that would help her reach heights far greater than what she had accomplished.
“There is no reason,” he remembers thinking. Because he assumed Bell probably wouldn’t have more than a couple years left in her skating career, he didn’t think he could help much in that short window. But she called again, then asked to meet in person when she was in town for a competition — persistence that he compared to a monk sitting through the wind and snow outside a chosen monastery.
“They can sit for months and months and months,” Arutyunyan said. “They say, ‘No, we want [to be] here. We want this one. We don’t want the other one.’ That’s [how] she convinced me to take her.”
Bell remembers “kind of feeling like I wasn’t going to take no for an answer,” because she wholeheartedly believed she could go further in this sport. After starting to work with Arutyunyan, she won the bronze medal at U.S. nationals the following year and made the world championships team for the first time. She gradually climbed closer to the top of women’s figure skating in the United States, but entering her ninth season as a senior skater, Bell had no national titles, world championship medals or Olympic berths.
Bell trains with Nathan Chen, and she knew entering the Games how their Olympic outlooks differed. For Chen, the gold medal favorite who rose to the occasion last week, the pressure of the season centered around that moment, when two performances secured the Olympic title. For Bell, the beginning part of the season involved the most stress, and being at the Games “is like the celebration,” she said.
She had no idea what to expect in Beijing, and that has made each piece of the experience more enjoyable. While packing, she realized she had never needed to plan for a trip this long. Bell felt competition-like excitement for the Opening Ceremonies, which she says was “the most amazing moment of my life probably.” She waved and screamed to the camera, and her family members back home sent a similar picture of her eyes-closed-with-joy appearance on the television broadcast.
Through the years leading into the Beijing Games, Bell seemed poised to have a strong chance of earning a spot on the U.S. team. She competed at world championships in 2017, 2018 and 2019, then had a standout free skate at nationals in 2020 that left her in tears and offered reassurance that she was on the path toward the Olympics.
“I had a tough time for a little bit,” Bell said. “And then I was like, ‘Nope. Time to turn the page.’”
So a couple weeks later, she got a puppy named Nala, who lately has posed with an American flag for pictures sent to Bell on the other side of the world. Bell’s apartment wouldn’t allow a German shepherd, but she relished the chance to move to a new place, adding to the fresh start she needed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Since November, Aleena, a seventh-grader in the District, has moderated a weekly Sunday online book club — around author Annie Barrows’s popular Ivy and Bean children’s book series — for a growing number of Afghan kids, who log in from Rwanda, Virginia, California and other areas touched by the massive airlift out of Kabul that began when the Taliban gained control in August.
The group helped train dozens of Afghan professionals who went on to play key roles in their U.S.-backed government and Afghanistan’s civil society.
Among the first families to benefit from the NASEM effort was that of Naeem Salarzai, Hina’s father, who oversaw water management affairs in Afghanistan under former president Ashraf Ghani.
“I just felt so upset that she wasn’t able to have the same privilege of education that I am able to have,” said Aleena, whose extracurricular schedule includes fencing, track and field and French lessons. “So, we decided to do a book club together to read and to help her with her English.”
Some of the members who don’t know much English are content to let the others read. One boy who knows English whispers the words into his younger brother’s ear, who then repeats them out loud.
Hamid Asady — a former engineer for the Afghan National Army whose daughter Maliha, 7, participates in the group from their home in Rwanda — described leading his family of five through a canal flooded with human waste that ran parallel to the Kabul airport grounds to reach U.S. service members stationed at the entrance gate. | null | null | null | null | null |
Heather Morgan, 31, is half of a husband-and-wife duo charged last week with conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin, a cache worth about $4.5 billion, prompting the streaming service to enlist a “Tiger King” executive producer to direct an upcoming series about them. Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, are accused of trying to launder the cryptocurrency stolen after a hacker breached the exchange Bitfinex in 2016 and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Prosecutors said the bitcoin was sent to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein.
After graduating with honors, she moved to Cairo — where she worked at the World Bank, according to her LinkedIn profile — and later Hong Kong.
She was a “very motivated, very bright and very ambitious” economics student, said Travis Lybbert, an economics professor at the University of California at Davis who hired Morgan as an unpaid research assistant in 2011, after she had graduated. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Distinguished pol of the week: A major civil rights win
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), left, and former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson embrace at a news conference after the passage of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act on Capitol Hill on Feb. 10. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
As an employment lawyer for more than 20 years, I can say with certainty that mandatory arbitration clauses are an employer’s best friend. By requiring employees to use arbitration rather than take cases through the court system, employers avoid public disclosure of embarrassing facts, the wrath of juries and much higher settlements.
When the Supreme Court held in 2018 that “companies may require workers to settle employment disputes through individual arbitration rather than joining to press their complaints, a decision affecting as many as 25 million workers,” employers breathed a sigh of relief. That respite ended last week when the Senate — by a voice vote no less — passed legislation championed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) prohibiting mandatory arbitration in sexual harassment and assault cases. The bill now goes to the president’s desk.
Gillibrand first introduced the bill in 2017. Since then, the #MeToo movement swept through Congress and American workplaces, changing hearts and minds on the right of victims to seek legal recourse. Last year, Gillibrand reintroduced the bill alongside Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C..).
At a news conference on Thursday, Gillibrand stood alongside former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who raised sexual harassment allegations against her former employer and boss Roger Ailes and became a forceful advocate against mandatory arbitration. Carlson had been instrumental in lobbying lawmakers and ensuring passage of the bill. (Disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor.)
Gillibrand declared: “The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act will void existing forced arbitration agreements for sexual harassment and sexual assault and end their use. It will give survivors their day in court, allow them to discuss their cases publicly and end the days of institutional protection for harassers.”
Gillibrand also celebrated in a tweet:
She is right about the significance of the bill. Although some states have moved to curb mandatory arbitration, most have not. A number of progressive groups advocating for the ban last year wrote a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “According to the Economic Policy Institute, over 60 million workers, more than half of non-union, private-sector employees, have surrendered their right to go to court if harmed by their employer,” the letter stated. “It allows corporate employers to quash serious claims of systemic misconduct.”
Carlson also celebrated the hard-fought win. “This is a historic day,” she said in acknowledging the massive bipartisan support for a measure that was a nonstarter just a few years ago. She expressed hope that employers will get on the “right side of history,” redoubling efforts to eradicate sexual harassment, and that abusive bosses and co-workers will clean up their act.
Perhaps. What is clear is that there has been a sea change in public attitudes toward sexual harassment and assault — no thanks to the defeated former president, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women and who has painted accused abusers as victims. (Donald Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.) The subject is now one of the few topics that can command overwhelming congressional agreement.
In a dismal time for American rights (e.g., on voting, reproductive choices, etc.), this was a rare bit of good news in the fight for a more just society. To Gillibrand, who led the fight on this and other issues concerning sexual assault and harassment for years, as well as her co-sponsors and the many victims of harassment — including Carlson — who came forward to share their stories, we can say, well done. | null | null | null | null | null |
The purchases of U.S. exports that China did make in the past two years barely got back to the amount China was purchasing in 2017 — before Mr. Trump started his trade war, according to calculations by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. exporters will never get back the sales they lost, and few have seen any meaningful growth in their sales to China under the “deal.” “The only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure,” said Bown.
The main result of Mr. Trump’s bluster on trade was higher costs to the American public. Numerous studies have shown how tariffs were mostly passed along to American consumers, causing prices to rise on thousands of popular everyday items. It was a debacle that was easy to predict. Business leaders, economists and former trade officials from both parties warned the Trump White House repeatedly that the nation would have been better off without the trade war and the tenuous agreement that was ultimately reached (and not adhered to) with China.
It’s true that the pandemic didn’t help. The destruction of business travel, tourism and students studying abroad helped fuel a big decline in U.S. services exports to China. Some of the only U.S. industries to see exports to China rise significantly in the past two years were covid-19 related products, semiconductors, liquefied natural gas, corn, wheat, pork and sorghum. In the meantime, U.S. purchases on Chinese goods jumped last year as Americans spent heavily on home remodeling and home entertainment. Overall, 2021 was a record for the U.S. trade deficit, though that is largely a reflection of the strong economic rebound. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I was feeling really good in my body,” Breezy Johnson said. “Just really, really happy. And sometimes, the universe just brings you back down.” (AP Photo/Giovanni Pizzato, File)
BEIJING — Breezy Johnson should be here, trying to find a way to fall asleep on her pillow in the Olympic Village down the slope from the Xiaohaituo Mountain racecourse known as “The Rock.” She is instead in Park City, Utah, wondering if she’ll muster the gumption to turn on the TV and watch the Olympic women’s downhill.
She should be on the start list for that race. She should be a contender for a medal in that race. She might not even be able to watch that race.
“We … shall … see,” she said, a full breath between each word.
The Olympics can be as much about disappointment as they can be about euphoria. That’s true on-site. It’s particularly true from afar. At 26, Johnson spent this season cementing her status as one of the best skiers in Alpine’s fastest discipline, the downhill. The reality is, “fastest=most dangerous.” There is risk in every race, including Tuesday at the Olympics, when the women’s downhill will be staged. There is risk in every training run, including a Jan. 21 trip down a course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. She was flying.
“I went off this jump with all that speed,” she said, “and immediately I was like, ‘F---. I am way too high. F---.’”
When she returned to earth, she heard a massive crack from her right knee. She thought her meniscus was “shattering into a thousand pieces.”
“Turns out that was my cartilage,” she said, “just crunching off like a chicken bone.”
Alpine ski racing is cruel. “It’s a beautiful and brutal sport,” Johnson wrote in a text message over the weekend, after we spoke by phone about her circumstances. She had established herself as a medal threat by finishing second in each of the three downhill races she entered this season, second each time to Sofia Goggia of Italy. Goggia is the best women’s downhill racer on the planet. She was the gold medalist at the 2018 Olympics, an Olympics at which Johnson debuted, an Olympics in which, at 22, she finished seventh.
As the American team trained over the summer on a glacier in Switzerland, they did so alongside Goggia. There was no clear winner. Goggia would be fastest one day, Johnson the next.
“I was like, ‘She’s the best, and I’m beating her,’” Johnson said. “‘I feel like I can do this.’”
She could have. In more training last fall at Copper Mountain in Colorado, Johnson badly sprained her ankle. Her reaction is telling about how Alpine racers approach their sport: “We’re ski racers. We barely need ankles. Just stick them in a cast. We basically just need them to still be attached.”
Johnson’s was, so off she went to start the speed-racing season — downhill and super-G — at Lake Louise, Canada. Think about what was behind Johnson by that point: a tibial plateau fracture before the 2018 Olympics, a torn ACL later that year that cost her the ensuing season, two more torn knee ligaments the following summer. With all that in the rear view, and given her form, Johnson was soaring.
“I was having these moments where I was like, ‘Damn, I am happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life,’” she said. “Our team was training really well. I was skiing really fast. I was feeling really good in my body. Just really, really happy.
“And sometimes, the universe just brings you back down.”
While training Jan. 8 in Italy, Johnson crashed, and one ski sliced open the front of her knee, cutting almost to the bone. She was bloodied and swollen, but an MRI revealed no significant internal damage. She skipped a pair of races in Zauchensee, Austria. When she returned to train at Cortina, then crashed, she went to the same facility to have another MRI.
“That was really fun, having people be like, ‘You’re back!’” she said. “And you’re like, 'Um, yeah. Thanks. I do something that’s really dangerous. Yes, I’m back.’”
There’s the fascinating question, then: At 26, Breezy Johnson has already suffered more than a lifetime’s worth of injuries. She chooses anyway, again and again, to hurl her body down mountainsides at speeds of more than 80 mph protected by a thin coating of Lycra and nylon. She has had days where she asks herself, “Why am I here?” She says of her injuries: “They change you.” But she has come back every time, and she intends to again.
“I’m always evaluating risk and reward,” Johnson said. “What am I getting out of this? What am I potentially risking? … At the end of the day, we do this because we love it, and I love it too much at this point to quit because of another knee injury.
“It’s more like: How do I come back? Because for me, well, this is the hard part. The hard part is not doing it. So it doesn’t get easier if you give up and you say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do this anymore,’ because not doing it is what’s hard.”
After the crash, Johnson briefly discussed whether she should try to ski at the Olympics with a brace on her knee. She asked whether she could do more damage. The answer was definitive: Yes. She elected instead for surgery and an eight-month recovery. The procedure took place Feb. 4 — the day of Opening Ceremonies.
“I couldn’t in good conscience throw away an entire season and potentially the rest of my career for one race where I didn’t know that I was going to be able to race,” she said, “let alone win a medal, let alone win.”
So she will watch. Or she won’t. She made it through much of the super-G, though “there was a lot of crying involved.” She watched bits and pieces of downhill training. When we finished talking Sunday, we continued the discussion via text.
“When you do ski racing well,” she wrote, “your mind and your body feel fully and completely alive and in sync toward that goal. And I miss that more than any medal. It hurts more than my knees ever have.”
The Olympic experience, away from the Olympics. That’s not how this was supposed to be for Breezy Johnson, who somehow continues to embrace her beautiful, brutal sport. | null | null | null | null | null |
Six months before the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, George Fitch, a former U.S. diplomat, found himself in Kingston, Jamaica, for a wedding when he met with tennis buddy and Seattle businessman William Maloney. They drank. They talked. And they concocted an idea to try to send Jamaica to the Winter Games, using bobsled as the vehicle to accomplish that feat because, to Fitch, it resembled Jamaica’s popular Pushcart Derby, and the country’s track and field pedigree lent itself to a sport that required power and pace.
“This Jamaican bobsled team was a real thing,” former coach Howard Siler said in “Breaking the Ice,” a 2014 documentary about the team. “It was real deal. It was blood, sweat, and tears; historic athletes.”
“What saved me was going to Kenny Barnes,” Fitch previously told ESPN, referencing the former Jamaican military officer. “He didn’t laugh this thing off and dismiss me out of hand. He had Major George Henry from the Jamaica Defence Force there. When I said I needed speed to push, he looked over at Henry and said, ‘Hey, George, who’s our current sprint champion?’ and he said Mike White. Likewise with Devon Harris, who was 800 meters. I said it took good hand-eye coordination to drive the sled. He said, ‘Like a helicopter pilot?’ So, same thing, he turns to George and says who’s our helicopter pilot, he says Dudley Stokes. So there you had the three principal members of the Jamaica bobsled team.”
A colonel identified Harris during a cross-country race. Harris finished 14th out of 40, but his superior liked what he saw and pushed him to try out.
Stokes played soccer and ran track as a boy, dreaming of representing Jamaica on the international stage, although he abandoned those hopes when he joined the military at 18. There, he learned to fly planes and helicopters. After a friend explained bobsledding, he was intrigued to try it.
“The most interesting thing to me was that [the sled] had to be driven,” Stokes said in a recent telephone interview. “I said to myself: ‘That will be interesting. Can I drive this?’”
Two months after Fitch hatched the idea for a Jamaican bobsled team — and four months before the 1988 Winter Games — he flew the athletes to Lake Placid, N.Y., where Siler taught them how to walk on ice and push their borrowed sled. When the group returned to Kingston, they continued to train at the army base with a makeshift sled, practicing for three hours every weekday afternoon and another six hours each Saturday morning.
Per International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation requirements, the team had to participate in a World Cup event to qualify for the Olympics. Five weeks before the Games started, the Jamaicans competed in a two-man World Cup race in Innsbruck, Austria, finishing better than four teams.
In Calgary, the Jamaican bobsledders received a warm reception during the Opening Ceremonies. They finished 30th out of 40 teams in the two-man bobsled competition, entered the four-man race for which they hadn’t practiced, and crashed, preventing them from officially finishing.
The bobsledders felt dejected. Fitch thought they were dead. But when the team emerged from the overturned sled to walk it across the finish line, the crowd greeted it with cheers and applause. To his surprise, Stokes said, Jamaica was in a frenzy.
Four years after their Winter Olympic debut, Harris, White and the Stokes brothers returned to the Olympics in 1992 in Albertville, France. A four-man team comprising the Stokes brothers, White and Ricky McIntosh placed 25th.
The Stokes brothers also guided the four-man team that finished 14th at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, besting the United States, Russia and France, among others. They returned with Harris to Nagano, Japan, in 1998, although they never again reached their 1994 Olympic apex.
Members of the 1988 team remained involved with the country’s bobsled program by fundraising or supporting current athletes. Dudley Stokes coached the bobsled program in 2002, when Jamaica fielded a two-man team in Salt Lake City. He helped manage the Jamaica Bobsleigh Federation in 2006, although the country didn’t participate in the Turin Games, and returned to help Jamaica’s first women’s team — the two-woman tandem of Carrie Russell and Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian — place 18th at the 2018 Games in PyeongChang.
Stokes was less involved during this Olympic cycle, but he helped recruit Shanwayne Stephens, the pilot of Jamaica’s current four-man team, which later this week will be the country’s first to compete in the Olympics since Nagano. Stephens and Nimroy Turgott are also set to compete beginning Monday in a two-man sled. Fenlator-Victorian, who qualified for the women’s monobob, also competed in Beijing, as did Benjamin Alexander, the country’s first Olympic Alpine skier, whom Stokes mentors.
Since the 1988 team members retired from competition, a new generation of Jamaican Winter Olympians has sought to build on the team’s foundation. It’s in that evolution that Stokes sees the 1988 team’s legacy kept alive, and where current Olympians base their ambitions and expectations. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lower rents can ease the pinch, and in many areas they’ve already become more flexible. But Joseph Gyourko, a real estate professor at Wharton, notes that only helps so much. If a significant number of the workers are gone on any given day, “You just don’t need as many Starbucks, or haircut places,” he told me, and “those folks are going to disappear. Some of these buildings, non-office buildings, will become empty. We won’t need as many.” | null | null | null | null | null |
This photographer provides a fascinating glimpse of the complexities of Ukraine
November 2008, Simferopol, Crimea/ Ukraine. Varvara Nikolayenko on stage in the role of a Soviet Pioneer on opening night for the play, "Stalin's Roads" to commemorate victims of the 1932-1933 man-made famine. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)
First and foremost, military conflicts directly affect the people involved, both soldiers and civilians. Too much of what we are presented about war comes in the form of statements about tactics and strategy. The human element is presented simply as statistics: casualties and collateral damage.
Right now, we seem to be on the precipice of open warfare between Russia and Ukraine. Boundless coverage surmising when and where this would begin has been clogging media reports for weeks now.
We have all read the coverage of the massive military force the Russians have staged on three sides of Ukraine. We’ve also heard of the resilience of the Ukrainians, prepared to defend their homeland, even if they only have wooden prop guns to train with. We’ve also seen reports of all the political maneuvers being made in the background.
Ironically, this comes at a time for another great media event, the Super Bowl. But war is not like a sporting event, where you stand on the sidelines and root for whatever team holds your heart. It rips families apart, destroys lives and has incredibly palpable effects. It isn’t a game; it’s something much more complex.
Photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz’s book “Ukraine Runs Through It” presents the complex tapestry of Ukraine and its people.
Though the book was published in 2019, it is relevant to the situation unfolding today. Mielnikiewicz gives us insight into the people, places and rituals that make up Ukraine, providing a beating, breathing portrait of the place gripping headlines right now. The insight is a complicated one. And if I’m being totally honest, it’s probably too complex for me to be able to give an adequate summary of here. Mielnikiewicz does a much better job in her own words. I’ll share some of those here.
Mielnikiewicz, who is originally from Poland but lives and works out of Tbilisi, had been working in Ukraine for some time, including during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. That event spurred an interest in continuing to document the changes taking place in Ukraine started by the revolution.
As she was doing that work, she found herself working up and down Ukraine’s Dnieper River, where she began to ask the people she encountered some questions. Of this time, she said:
“I asked people what it means to be Ukrainian, if the Dnieper River is a border or the main artery of the country and why there is a war in the East — among other questions. I revisited people and places to see if and how they changed since Maidan Revolution.
“In my story, the Dnieper River is a symbolic line of reference that serves as a metaphor of present divisions in the country, in the same time it also connects various ends of the story. My work explores those complexities of Ukraine which lay the ground to present state building — amid the war in one part of the country which is still unresolved and ongoing.”
And here’s more, this time from the introduction she penned at the beginning of “Ukraine Runs Through It”
“Witnessing the immediate and profound impact the revolution and the war had on people’s daily lives became an important element of my work, an inherent undercurrent in the river-themed project … the Dnieper has often been portrayed as the demarcation line between the Ukrainian-speaking western part of the country and the Russian dominated eastern lands. Nowadays it’s a contrived perception, even more so now since the Maidan revolutions and the ongoing (Donbas) war. The concept of “Little Russia” is buried in the past, replaced by the country, Ukraine.
“The same goes for the fabricated issue of divisions based on language. Russian-speaking language rights were used as a pretext to divide people along a reinforced East-West line to instigate unrest. … Yet in private and in the media people effortlessly mix both languages while speaking to each other as if there were one tongue.
“My book covers a time that started at the end of the Revolution of Dignity, which I believe is one of the most compelling periods in the history of modern Ukraine. Few events since the fall of Communism in post-Soviet space have had such acute international ramifications involving both western Europe and the United States. What began as a protest to a corrupt government led to a new leadership but also war with Russia resulting in a massive transformation of society.”
Mielnikiewicz’s book takes us deep into the complexity that makes up life in Ukraine. It goes far beyond a headline or a story and takes us into people’s lives, providing us with a glimpse of the very people who live with the consequences of the choices our leaders make.
Interestingly enough, the book itself is made up of two parts. When you open it up, there is a self-contained section on the left and then one on the right, mimicking the divide she describes when talking about the Dnieper. The left portion of the book is made up of portraits of people and includes Mielnikiewicz’s written reporting as well. The right side explores daily life under the stresses of conflict.
It is worth noting that while, for me at least, the photographs are the star of the book, Mielnikiewicz has also included personal stories she culled together while pursuing the photos along with textual reportage she did as well. All of this serves up a very comprehensive book.
You can find out more information about Mielnikiewicz and her work on her website, here. For inquiries about acquiring the book, click here. | null | null | null | null | null |
‘Follow the science’: As Year 3 of the pandemic begins, a simple slogan becomes a political weapon
Jayson Stell joins a rally protesting vaccine mandates and other measures related to the pandemic at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 23, 2022. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
And while scientists are trained to be comfortable with uncertainty, a pandemic that has killed and sickened millions has made many people eager for definitive solutions.
During the first year of the pandemic, Trump promised dozens of times that the virus would vanish. “It’s going to disappear,” he said in February 2020. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” Four months later, he said that “it’s dying out.” Another four months after that, he said science would prove useful against the virus: “It’s ending anyway … but we’re gonna make it a lot faster with the vaccine and with the therapeutics and frankly with the cures.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The NFL has no credibility in investigating Daniel Snyder
Daniel Snyder on the sideline before a game against the Chicago Bears at FedEx Field in September 2019. ( Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The National Football League has announced that it, and not the recently renamed Commanders, will investigate new allegations of workplace sexual harassment leveled against the Washington football franchise and owner Daniel Snyder. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated the obvious Wednesday when he said someone accused of wrongdoing can’t be in charge of finding out the truth. But the NFL looks like a poor substitute: We now know that the last time the league investigated the team’s toxic work culture under Mr. Snyder, promising an independent and impartial review, it secretly agreed to give Mr. Snyder veto power over what information could be released.
The “Common Interest Agreement” suppressing information about the investigation by attorney Beth Wilkinson was executed just days after the NFL in August 2020 took over the probe, which started after The Post detailed allegations from more than a dozen women about abuse they experienced working for or interacting with the team..
The existence of the agreement was revealed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is reviewing the NFL’s handling of the matter and held a roundtable at which the new allegations of abuse were detailed. Among the charges aired was a claim by a former cheerleader and marketing manager that Mr. Snyder made unwanted sexual advances toward her. Mr. Snyder called the allegations “outright lies,” and on Wednesday the team announced it had hired an outside group to investigate the claims before being overruled by the NFL.
During her 10-month investigation, Ms. Wilkinson interviewed more than 150 witnesses and collected hundreds of thousands of emails and other documents. Little, though, was made public, and save for the team paying a nominal fine and Mr. Snyder’s wife taking over day-to-day team operations, no one was held accountable. According to the House committee, Mr. Goodell personally instructed Ms. Wilkinson not to prepare a written report, contrary to the terms of her engagement agreement stating she would “complete a written report of its findings and make recommendations regarding any remedial measures.”
The league told the committee that the team was responsible for blocking access to more than 100,000 documents from the Wilkinson investigation. Mr. Goodell also has said the decision not to release materials was rooted in concern for protecting the privacy and confidentiality of witnesses who participated in the probe. Not only has that rationale been undermined by the release of the new information, but also it has been challenged by an attorney representing some of the former female employees. In fact, attorney Lisa Banks told us that her clients, including six who testified last week, would not have cooperated in the investigation had they known that the NFL was collaborating with the Washington Football Team. She said they are reviewing legal options. “None of this is good,” she said.
There is now no doubt the NFL was never interested in getting out the truth about Mr. Snyder and his operation; its leaders seemingly thought they could make the scandal go away with promises and PR. Credit the House Democrats for not letting that happen — and let’s hope they succeed in their efforts to uncover what the NFL and Mr. Snyder want to keep hidden. | null | null | null | null | null |
But this is also the NFL, a multibillion-dollar operation that does not take well to being sued by its employees. Thus, the league’s initial reaction to Flores’s suit was to thunder that it was “without merit.” But then, over the weekend, Goodell also sent out a memo to teams saying the underwhelming effort to promote diversity among head coaches was “unacceptable.” Which was it? | null | null | null | null | null |
At the more distant Zhangjiakou cluster, home to Nordic skiing and action events, the qualifying round for the women’s freestyle skiing slopestyle event — featuring Chinese-American superstar Eileen Gu, already the gold medalist in women’s big air — was delayed and finally postponed because of the conditions. Later, qualifying for the women’s aerials was also postponed.
Organizers cited high winds and limited visibility as the reasons for the slopestyle postponement, although fresh, natural snow on top of the hard-packed, man-made snow also could have made for an unpredictable course.
That pushed the slopestyle qualifying round to Monday and the three-run medal round — where Gu hopes to collect her second gold — to Tuesday. However, snow is expected in Zhangjiakou on Monday, as well; starting Monday, there is a medal event in freestyle skiing scheduled every day through Feb. 19. The freestyle skiing federation said organizers were attempting to stage both qualifying and the finals on Monday.
While most skiers were supportive of the decision to hold the competition Sunday in the snowy conditions, Austria’s Manuel Feller was not among them, specifically citing the visibility and the accumulation of fresh snow around the gates on the course as problematic.
“The first run was far from responsible in my opinion,” said Feller, who sat seventh after the first run, but skied out on his second run and did not finish. “The visibility was so bad you didn’t see anything. The second run, they already waited so long until it’s dark again... If you DNF in a race [because] you are not able to ski next to the gates, because there are so many bumps and so much snow next to the gates, it’s definitely not good conditions." | null | null | null | null | null |
Next stop for Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell: Minnesota
A future of Tom Brady-less Super Bowls begins. We think.
For one Bengals fan, this Super Bowl run brought his family together again
Click here to download and print The Washington Post’s Super Bowl LVI prop bets game
By Mark Maske1:24 p.m.
This is the final game with the Rams for their offensive coordinator, Kevin O’Connell. He is set to become the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings after the Super Bowl.
The Vikings chose O’Connell but could not make the hire official until after the Rams were done playing in the postseason. Jim Harbaugh interviewed with the Vikings but opted to remain at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the team’s selection of O’Connell.
It will be the first head coaching job for the former NFL quarterback. The Vikings will be the last of the nine NFL teams with head coaching vacancies this offseason to make their hire official.
O’Connell is a former quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator for Washington. He spent the past two seasons with the Rams.
No sooner did another Super Bowl — the first in this century of championship games dominated by the presence of Tom Brady to come after his retirement — arrive than there were theories that he might be interested in trying for another.
As soon as Brady announced his retirement after winning seven NFL championships in 10 Super Bowl appearances, speculation began about whether he might “unretire.” After all, he did once say he planned to play until he was 45, and that birthday will arrive in August. He didn’t exactly close the door shut on football in his podcast last week, either.
“You never say never,” Brady said. “At the same time, I know that I feel very good about my decision. I don’t know how I’ll feel six months from now.”
His team is going to be considering its options, with Blaine Gabbert and Kyle Trask presently on the roster. Might the Tampa Bay Buccaneers make a move for, say, Russell Wilson or Deshaun Wilson? That would put the decision in their hands and, in one theory posed by NBC’s Mike Florio, that might be Brady’s plan. In any event, if Tampa Bay puts Brady on the reserve-retired list after June 1, they’ll still hold his rights. If they release him, he’d be free to go where he pleases, which, Florio posits, might be the San Francisco 49ers, the team Brady grew up rooting for.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported Sunday that the Buccaneers hadn’t given up hope that Brady would return, adding that “Brady hasn’t shut the door completely, either, publicly or privately.”
Meanwhile, Brady playfully posted on social media Sunday afternoon, expressing his disappointment about missing out on this year’s big game. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opening arguments are expected Monday in the hate crimes prosecution of three White men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a landmark federal case focused on whether the defendants were motivated to chase and threaten him because he was Black.
“There were massive waves of protests demanding justice and a truthful conversation around race in our country. The fact is, it’s now 2022 and the federal hate crimes trial is just beginning, ” said Nadia Aziz, a consultant on the Fighting Hate & Bias initiative at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “When someone is murdered, so much is at stake for the family. But on a national scale, people also want to see accountability. That movement in 2020 wasn’t forgotten.”
A federal plea deal — in which Gregory McMichael, 66, and son Travis, 36, had agreed to admit to a hate crime charge — collapsed two weeks ago after Arbery’s family objected over concerns that the two would gain more favorable prison conditions. The McMichaels subsequently affirmed their earlier not-guilty pleas; their statements related to the plea deal cannot be used as evidence in the trial.
“The ramifications of bringing a high-profile hate crimes case and losing it can be pretty severe. It’s not just bad for precedent, but it might encourage the bad actors you are trying to deter,” said Benjamin Wagner, who served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California from 2009 to 2016. “You never know what will happen with a jury. And with a hate crimes case, because there are other ramifications, not to mention it could result in civil unrest, you need to be thoughtful and cautious before bringing it.”
At the time of Arbery’s death in February 2020, Georgia was one of a handful of states without a hate crime statute. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed one into law in June 2020, but by then civil rights advocates had pressed the Justice Department to intervene over what they saw as mishandling of the investigation by local authorities. Prosecutors did not bring murder charges until after a videotape of Arbery’s killing, made on Bryan’s cellphone, was leaked publicly in May 2020, prompting civil rights protests.
At the Justice Department, the case represents a test of the Biden administration’s commitment to combating hate at a time of rising White nationalism. An agency analysis last summer found that U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 82 percent of suspected hate crime cases from 2005 to 2019, winning federal convictions in an average of 19 cases per year during that period.
In Minneapolis, three former police officers are on trial to face charges of violating the civil rights of George Floyd, two months after former police officer Derek Chauvin — convicted in state court of murdering Floyd — pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges. But federal prosecutors did not explicitly allege a racial motivation in those cases. Minnesota officials said there was no evidence under state law to pursue a hate crime charge in the killing of Floyd, who, like Arbery, was an unarmed Black man.
Former prosecutors said federal hate crime prosecutions require more legal firepower and greater expertise than other criminal cases, with increased coordination between U.S. attorneys and Justice’s civil rights division in Washington.
Gilson said the Justice Department made the right call in pursuing the hate crimes case “given this moment in which the public is clamoring for some form of official acknowledgment of that.” But he added that “no matter how the case ends, while it may result in joy or letdown … I do not think anyone is confused about the role race played here.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Erin Jackson of the United States skates on the ice hoisting an American flag with her coach Ryan Shimabukuro after winning the gold medal in the speedskating women’s 500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, in Beijing. (Ashley Landis/AP)
BEIJING — The U.S. speedskating team had been waiting for someone, anyone, to win an Olympic medal. The sport that has delivered more medals than any other for the U.S. in the history of the Winter Games has been in a deep freeze. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pati and I have made an off-and-on habit of cooking together, usually on days when she’s got her Chevy Chase, Md., home to herself, and we love showing each other favorite ingredients and tricks. When she’s traveling to film episodes of her public television show, “Pati’s Mexican Table,” we can’t get together quite as often, but we always make up for lost time. She’ll break open a find from her latest trip to Mexico (exquisite chile-covered tamarind candies, or a spectacular mezcal), I’ll take her something from my garden (red poblanos we used to make what I, in my bungled Spanish, nicknamed “rojo rajas”), and we’ll taste and cook and laugh. | null | null | null | null | null |
Teen from Alexandria dies after D.C. shooting, police say
Victim was found wounded on Chesapeake Street SE
Yesterday at 2:18 a.m. EST|Updated today at 11:59 a.m. EST
A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the shooting victim. His name is DeShaun Francis. This version has been corrected.
A teenager died Friday after being shot last week in Southeast Washington, the D.C. police said.
The mother of DeShaun Francis, 16, of Alexandria, said he died after he was shot in crossfire while in his cousin’s vehicle during a drug exchange. Police said he was found Tuesday night in a car on Chesapeake Street, just east of South Capitol Street.
Police said in court papers that the shooting occurred during what was suspected to be a drug transaction.
“He was like any other 16-year-old,” Francis’s mother, Helena Bertrand, said. “He was striving for his own goals. He loved to laugh. He loved to make other people laugh. He helped in any way he could. He was striving to graduate and be his own boss.”
Francis was supposed to graduate from Alexandria City High School in 2023, his mother said. She said he would help his cousin feed the homeless during the holiday season. He is survived by his mother and father and seven siblings. | null | null | null | null | null |
For too long the media, politicians and, yes, even human rights organizations have ignored the deep essence of apartheid. This isn’t just about the intentional discrimination between non-Jewish Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. The practices of Israeli abuse and apartheid vary across the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, historic Palestine and the diaspora. The policy has been to fracture the collective Palestinian experience with settler-colonialism. | null | null | null | null | null |
Matthew Stafford, a 13-year veteran, and Joe Burrow, the No. 1 overall pick in 2020, are both appearing in the Super Bowl for the first time. They were also considered two of the most valuable passers this season, per ESPN's total quarterback rating.
stops against the run at or behind the line of scrimmage | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Brittany Bowe screamed for Erin Jackson. She had enough lungs for all 37.04 seconds of her friend’s golden Olympic skate and left plenty for the celebratory aftermath. She screamed from a bench in the middle of the National Speed Skating Oval, screamed while running to the pads, screamed so loud and for so long she said, “I think I passed out.”
Bowe understood the significance of Sunday night, when Jackson reached the crest of a mind-boggling five-year ascent and became the champion she was meant to be. When Bowe gave up her spot last month to make certain Jackson would be an Olympian, her decision transcended friendship and sportsmanship and honored common sense. Bowe knew Jackson belonged here, Olympic trials mishap be damned.
At the United States speedskating trials, Jackson caught a bad edge, slipped and stumbled during the race. It caused Jackson, the world’s top-ranked woman in the 500 meters, to finish third. Only the top two are guaranteed to go to the Olympics. So Bowe, a fellow Ocala, Fla., native who won the trials, conceded her 500-meter victory so Jackson would be assured placement on the team.
Today, Jackson is 29, though you’d never know it when you watch her smiling big, talking earnest and giggling while making an admission about her performance: “Being the short-distance athlete I am, I did get a little tired.”
An American woman hadn’t won an individual medal, period, since Chris Witty set a 1,000-meter world record while taking the gold in 2002. The struggles were consistent with the woes of the entire U.S. long-track program. Twenty years ago, the Americans won eight medals, three of them gold, in Salt Lake City. Since then, the decline has been steep, culminating in a medal-less showing in 2014 and just one bronze in 2018. It has been quite a slumber within the sport — a charter discipline, one of only six to be featured in every Winter Olympics — in which America has won more golds and overall medals than any other program.
It would have been disastrous if Jackson’s slip had cost her this opportunity. But Bowe knows the sport too well. She knows Jackson’s talent too well. And so she wasn’t going to let the best sprinter in the world wait and hope for a quota allocation to gain backdoor entry into the Olympic field. She wanted Jackson to have clarity. Besides, Bowe ended up receiving one of the spots left vacant by other nations. Bowe, who also qualified in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters, finished 16th in the 500. But she was so thrilled for Jackson you would’ve thought she had won gold, too.
In 2018, Jackson finished 24th at the Olympics after just four months as a dedicated speedskater. She was the first Black woman to qualify for the U.S. long-track team, and she reveled in the experience. Because of injuries and the pandemic, she hadn’t enjoyed a linear path over the past four years, but something clicked last November. In the lead-up to the Olympics, she won four of eight World Cup races to earn that No. 1 ranking. When she started winning, she said to herself, “Okay, that’s strange. Let’s see where it goes.”
“It was, ‘Holy crap!’ and ‘Wow!’ and ‘This is awesome!’ ” Jackson said, laughing. “Very simple thoughts. Very simple.”
The belief was worth it. Her friend, her fellow Floridian, her teammate, is the new queen of the 500 meters. Jackson is a new hope for diversity in winter sports. And she’s a savior for American speedskating. | null | null | null | null | null |
The price of palladium, used in catalytic converters, is up more than 30 percent since mid-December. And the U.S. aircraft industry relies upon Russia for the titanium used in jet engines. Just three months ago, Boeing signed a “memorandum of understanding” with VSMPO-AVISMA, a titanium producer in Sverdlovsk, confirming that it would remain the largest supplier for Boeing aircraft.
On Friday, national security advisor Jake Sullivan vowed that the U.S. — along with the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada — would impose “severe economic sanctions” on Russia following any attack.
Any new constraints would be on top of existing measures imposed following the Crimean invasion, which restrict the Russian financial and energy sectors’ access to capital markets. The U.S. also prohibits Russian oil giants from obtaining the most advanced exploration technologies for use in Arctic, offshore and shale formations.
Indeed, the U.S. was forced to backtrack in 2018 on sanctions it imposed on Rusal, an industrial metals producer controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. After the Treasury Department announced the measures, aluminum prices spiked by 30 percent, sparking complaints from U.S. manufacturers that used aluminum to make products such as cars and beverage cans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Abuse doesn’t have to happen on Capitol Hill
The U.S. Capitol on Jan. 19. (Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post)
Regarding Melissa A. Sullivan’s Feb. 8 Tuesday Opinion essay, “For Hill staffers, signs of a long-overdue reckoning”:
I am glad to see Hill staffers speaking up about the abusive conditions some face. I spent most of my career on Capitol Hill as a professional staffer, ending as a committee staff director. The conditions in these offices flow directly from the members of Congress at the top.
Each office is its own domain. I was fortunate to work for two kind, decent members: then-Rep. Mike Espy (D-Miss.) and then-Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who respected their staffs and would not tolerate the kind of abuse being discussed. They set examples of how staff were to be treated. They hired people who shared their values.
Yet we heard the stories of terrible conditions in some other offices. Some members routinely abused staff themselves. And some senior staff let the power go to their heads. They saw younger staff as gofers who should be happy to be there. Paying them a livable wage or ensuring the experience was rewarding wasn’t a priority.
Ending this abuse will take public pressure. But in a political environment where some seem to thrive by being abusive, when attacks on the Capitol itself are viewed as “legitimate political discourse,” I don’t see progress soon. A union may be helpful, but many members won’t see it as in their interest.
My advice to young people working on the Hill: Find members who genuinely value others and treat them well. Land with them, and you will have a rewarding experience. Avoid the others. It’s not worth it.
Michael Alexander, Bowie | null | null | null | null | null |
But that swift change of heart is the rare exception in Virginia politics. Most of the time, the worthies assembled in Richmond aren’t eager to make massive changes. That brings electoral risk and the potential for a loss of power and prestige. Democrats learned that lesson the hard way last November, when what they assumed would be decades of trifecta control in Richmond collapsed after a single, two-year term. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Boilermakers turned the ball over on an inbound play following Fatts Russell’s two free throws with 8.1 seconds remaining. Purdue passed the ball to another player on the end line before attempting to inbound. Play was stopped because three-tenths of a second had erroneously ticked off the clock, official Bo Boroski confirmed afterward.
Russell had 24 points, nine rebounds and six assists, and the upset-minded Terps led 48-36 with 11 minutes remaining. But the Boilermakers scored the next 14 points thanks to a three-point barrage and Jaden Ivey’s ability to get to the free throw line.
Ivey, who came in averaging 17.7 points, was held scoreless for nearly 27 minutes of game time. But his three-pointer with 13:15 remaining sparked hope for a Purdue squad that had been lifeless. Ivey turned in a conventional three-point play to put Purdue up 62-59 with 13.1 seconds left; he crossed over a defender and banked a left-handed shot off the glass as Hakim Hart fouled him.
Late in the first half, the Terps had the ball, trailing 24-23, and an opportunity to take the lead and the momentum into halftime.
It was obvious during Manning’s postgame news conference that he did not view Sunday’s game as a moral victory. But it still was progress for Manning’s group after the Terps allowed 110 points to visiting Iowa three days earlier. | null | null | null | null | null |
The price of palladium, used in catalytic converters, is up more than 30 percent since mid-December. And the U.S. aircraft industry relies upon Russia for the titanium used in jet engines. Just three months ago, Boeing signed a “memorandum of understanding” with VSMPO-AVISMA, a titanium producer, confirming that it would remain the largest supplier for Boeing aircraft.
On Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan vowed that the United States — along with the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada — would impose “severe economic sanctions” on Russia following any attack.
Any new constraints would be on top of existing measures imposed following the Crimean invasion, which restrict the Russian financial and energy sectors’ access to capital markets. The United States also prohibits Russian oil giants from obtaining the most advanced exploration technologies for use in Arctic offshore or shale formations.
Indeed, the United States was forced to backtrack in 2018 on sanctions it imposed on Rusal, an industrial metals producer controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. After the Treasury Department announced the measures, aluminum prices spiked by 30 percent, sparking complaints from U.S. manufacturers that used aluminum to make products such as cars and beverage cans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bedford said that fundraising for this endowment is continuing, but he declined to say how much money has been pledged. Nonetheless, he said that the museum “has made substantive progress” in most categories for which those funds were to have been earmarked: The pay for security guards was bumped up from $13.50 an hour in the middle of the pandemic to $16 now. Bedford acknowledged that the figure falls short of his original target of $20 an hour, but said, “In the next five years, $20 an hour is achievable.”
“The short answer,” Bedford said, “is emphatically ‘yes.’ ” | null | null | null | null | null |
Man stoned to death over alleged blasphemy
A mob stoned to death a man suspected of desecrating the Koran in a village in eastern Pakistan, police said Sunday.
The custodian of a mosque in Punjab province said he saw the man burning the Muslim holy book inside the mosque on Saturday and told others before informing police, according to police spokesman Chaudhry Imran.
Imran said police rushed to the scene, where a man was seen surrounded by an angry crowd. Officer Mohammad Iqbal and two subordinates reportedly tried to take custody of the man, but the group began throwing stones at them, seriously injuring Iqbal and slightly injuring the other officers.
Munawar Gujjar, chief of Tulamba police station, said that he rushed reinforcements to the mosque but that they did not arrive in time. The mob stoned the man to death and hanged his body from a tree.
“The ill-fated man has been mentally unstable for the last 15 years and, according to his family, often went missing from home for days begging and eating whatever he could find,” Gujjar said.
In December, a Sri Lankan manager of a sporting goods factory in Punjab was lynched after workers accused him of blasphemy.
Leader tightens grip on judiciary with decree
Saied accused the council of acting for political interests and on Sunday issued a decree creating a temporary council to oversee the judiciary.
The decree also said he has the right to object to the promotion or nomination of any judge and is responsible for proposing judicial reforms, effectively giving Saied sole power over the justice system.
The judiciary was seen as the last remaining institutional check on Saied after he suspended parliament last year and said he could rule by decree.
Several thousand people took to the streets of the capital, Tunis, on Sunday to protest the moves.
Iraqi court bans ex-foreign minister from presidency: Iraq's top court banned veteran Kurdish politician Hoshyar Zebari, a former foreign minister, from the presidency, citing lingering corruption allegations. The ruling is likely to prolong a standoff among factions over who should be the next president and prime minister. The Federal Supreme Court last week temporarily suspended Zebari's nomination after four lawmakers filed a petition. The allegations against him stem from his time as finance minister. He was never convicted.
Big waves drown 11 on beach in Indonesia: Eleven people drowned after being dragged by big waves on a beach in Indonesia's East Java province despite warnings to avoid the sea, officials said. The 11 were part of a group of 24 people who took part in a local ritual that involves swimming in the ocean, officials from the Surabaya Search and Rescue Agency said. A 2-year-old girl was among the 13 survivors at Payangan Beach, the officials said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Biden owns the Afghanistan withdrawal
Afghan women wait in heavy snowfall for food donations from the World Food Program in Kabul on Jan. 4. (Pamela Constable/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Feb. 9 front-page article “Military’s Kabul exit plan was resisted”:
At his Jan. 19 news conference, President Biden was asked about the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.
He said he “feel[s] badly what’s happening” to the Afghans and blamed it on the “incompetence of the Taliban.”
He added: “But I feel badly also about the fistulas that are taking place in the Eastern Congo. ... We can’t solve every problem.” Fistulas are abnormal, painful connections between two parts inside the body.
Mr. Biden also said he doesn’t view the U.S. Afghan exit “as a competence issue.” It was.
When he announced his decision in April last year for a total withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden assured that it would not be “a hasty rush to the exit. ... We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately and safely.”
It was none of those things.
Mr. Biden owns this.
Karl F. Inderfurth, McLean
The writer was assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Sam King
The Boilermakers turned the ball over on an inbounds play following Fatts Russell’s two free throws with 8.1 seconds remaining. Purdue passed the ball to another player on the end line before attempting to put it in play. The game was stopped because three-tenths of a second had erroneously ticked off the clock, official Bo Boroski confirmed afterward.
Russell led Maryland with 24 points, nine rebounds and six assists.
The upset-minded Terps led 48-36 with 11 minutes remaining. But the Boilermakers scored the next 14 points thanks to a three-point barrage and Jaden Ivey’s ability to get to the free throw line.
Ivey, who entered Sunday averaging 17.7 points, was held scoreless for nearly 27 minutes. But his three-pointer with 13:15 remaining sparked hope for a Purdue squad that had been lifeless. Ivey turned in a conventional three-point play to put the Boilermakers up 62-59 with 13.1 seconds left; he crossed over a defender and banked a left-handed shot off the glass as Hakim Hart fouled him.
Late in the first half, the Terps had the ball, trailing 24-23, with an opportunity to take the lead and the momentum into halftime.
It was obvious during Manning’s postgame news conference that he did not view Sunday’s game as a moral victory. But it still was progress for the group after the Terps allowed 110 points to visiting Iowa three days earlier. | null | null | null | null | null |
Milan’s Rafael Leao, right, reacts with Alessandro Florenzi and teammates Mike Maignan, background left and Davide Calabria, left, after scoring his side’s winning goal during the Italian Series A soccer match between Milan and Sampdoria, at the San Siro Stadium, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022. (LaPresse via AP) (Uncredited/LaPresse)
MILAN, Italy — AC Milan surged to the top of Serie A with a 1-0 win over Sampdoria on Sunday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bedford said fundraising for this endowment is continuing, but he declined to say how much money has been pledged. Nonetheless, he said the museum “has made substantive progress” in most categories for which those funds were to have been earmarked: The pay for security guards was bumped up from $13.50 an hour in the middle of the pandemic to $16 now. Bedford acknowledged the figure falls short of his original target of $20 an hour, but he said, “In the next five years, $20 an hour is achievable.”
“The short answer,” Bedford said, “is emphatically yes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Lower rents can ease the pinch, and in many areas they’ve already become more flexible. But Joseph Gyourko, a real estate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, notes that only helps so much. If a significant number of the workers are gone on any given day, “You just don’t need as many Starbucks, or haircut places,” he told me, and “those folks are going to disappear. Some of these buildings, non-office buildings, will become empty. We won’t need as many.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The purchases of U.S. exports that China did make in the past two years barely got back to the amount China was purchasing in 2017 — before Mr. Trump started his trade war, according to calculations by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. exporters will never get back the sales they lost, and few have seen any meaningful growth in their sales to China under the “deal.” “The only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure,” said Mr. Bown.
The main result of Mr. Trump’s bluster on trade was higher costs to the American public. Numerous studies have shown how tariffs were mostly passed along to American consumers, causing prices to rise on thousands of popular everyday items. It was a debacle that was easy to predict. Business leaders, economists and former trade officials from both parties warned the Trump White House repeatedly that the nation would have been better off without the trade war and the tenuous agreement that was ultimately reached with China (and not adhered to).
It’s true that the pandemic didn’t help. The destruction of business travel, tourism and students studying abroad helped fuel a big decline in U.S. services exports to China. Some of the few U.S. industries to see exports to China rise significantly in the past two years were covid-19-related products, semiconductors, liquefied natural gas, corn, wheat, pork and sorghum. In the meantime, U.S. purchases on Chinese goods jumped last year as Americans spent heavily on home remodeling and home entertainment. Overall, 2021 was a record for the U.S. trade deficit, though that is largely a reflection of the strong economic rebound. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Brittany Bowe screamed for Erin Jackson. She had enough lungs for all 37.04 seconds of her friend’s golden Olympic skate and left plenty for the celebratory aftermath. She screamed from a bench in the middle of the National Speed Skating Oval, screamed while running to the pads, screamed so loud and for so long, she said, “I think I passed out.”
Bowe understood the significance of Sunday night, when Jackson reached the crest of a mind-boggling five-year ascent and became the champion she was meant to be. When Bowe gave up her spot last month to make certain Jackson would be an Olympian, her decision transcended friendship and sportsmanship and honored common sense. Bowe knew Jackson belonged here, U.S. trials mishap be damned.
At the speedskating trials, Jackson caught a bad edge, slipped and stumbled during the race. It caused Jackson, the world’s top-ranked woman in the 500 meters, to finish third. Only the top two are guaranteed to go to the Olympics. So Bowe, a fellow Ocala, Fla., native who won the trials, conceded her 500-meter victory so Jackson would be assured placement on the team.
Today, Jackson is 29, though you would never know it when you watch her smiling big, talking earnest and giggling while making an admission about her performance: “Being the short-distance athlete I am, I did get a little tired.”
An American woman hadn’t won an individual medal, period, since Chris Witty set a 1,000-meter world record while taking the gold in 2002. The struggles were consistent with the woes of the entire U.S. long-track program. Twenty years ago, the Americans won eight medals, three of them gold, in Salt Lake City. Since then, the decline has been steep, culminating in a medal-less showing in 2014 and just one bronze in 2018. The country has experienced quite a slumber within the sport — a charter discipline, one of only six to be featured in every Winter Olympics — that has produced Team USA’s most golds and overall medals.
It would have been disastrous if Jackson’s slip had cost her this opportunity. But Bowe knows the sport too well. She knows Jackson’s talent too well. And so she wasn’t going to let the best sprinter in the world wait and hope for a quota allocation to gain backdoor entry to the Olympic field. She wanted Jackson to have clarity. Besides, Bowe ended up receiving one of the spots left vacant by other nations. Bowe, who also qualified in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters, finished 16th in the 500. But she was so thrilled for Jackson you would’ve thought she had won gold, too.
In 2018, Jackson finished 24th at the Olympics after just four months as a dedicated speedskater. She was the first Black woman to qualify for the U.S. long-track team, and she reveled in the experience. Because of injuries and the pandemic, she hadn’t enjoyed a linear path over the past four years, but something clicked in November. In the lead-up to the Olympics, she won four of eight World Cup races to earn that No. 1 ranking. When she started winning, she said to herself: “Okay, that’s strange. Let’s see where it goes.”
“It was ‘Holy crap!’ and ‘Wow!’ and ‘This is awesome!’ ” Jackson said, laughing. “Very simple thoughts. Very simple.”
The belief was worth it. Her friend — her fellow Floridian, her teammate — is the new queen of the 500 meters. Jackson is a new hope for diversity in winter sports. And she’s a savior for American speedskating. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Karnataka government has blamed the student wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI), an Islamist organization, for instigating the protests. As the conflict spread like fire across the state and pitted men from right-wing Hindu groups against young Muslim girls, what should have been an issue for individual institutions to resolve amicably between parents, teachers and students got an official stamp: The state government issued an order banning clothing that “disturb equality, integrity and public law and order.”
Muskan Khan, a college student in Karnataka, was heckled by a jeering mob of young Hindu men wearing saffron scarves. She turned around and shouted “Allahu akbar” to their chants of “Jai Shri Ram” (“Glory to Lord Ram”). As her video went viral, she told my media organization Mojo Story: “All of India stands with me.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Kamila Valieva decision expected at 1 a.m. Eastern
By Dan Steinberg and Emily Giambalvo8:23 p.m.
BEIJING — The Court of Arbitration for Sport completed its hearing in the case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva via video conference and said its decision would be issued around 2 p.m. Monday in Beijing (1 a.m. Eastern).
Representatives from the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Skating Union, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency and the Russian Olympic Committee attended the hearing, along with Valieva.
Valieva would be the gold medal favorite in the women’s individual competition, which begins with Tuesday’s short program, if she is allowed to compete.
Valieva was briefly suspended after testing positive for a banned substance in December. A Russian anti-doping committee lifted the suspension, and the IOC and WADA appealed the lifting of the suspension. That, in turn, prompted the expedited hearing before CAS.
The waacking was impressive on its own, but it was matched with the transfixing speed and ease that Papadakis and Cizeron bring to the discipline. Every team in the first segment of the competition had to showcase a deceptively simple-looking pattern of steps, a dance known as the Midnight Blues. Most teams had serious problems having their blades maintain the curves needed to complete the sequence successfully. For most of the event, attempts to navigate the pattern were deliberate and slow. Papadakis and Cizeron’s blues pattern, however, was slinky and assured. Judges assessed their short program as the best the world has ever seen. | null | null | null | null | null |
“There were massive waves of protests demanding justice and a truthful conversation around race in our country. The fact is, it’s now 2022 and the federal hate-crimes trial is just beginning,” said Nadia Aziz, a consultant on the Fighting Hate & Bias initiative at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “When someone is murdered, so much is at stake for the family. But on a national scale, people also want to see accountability. That movement in 2020 wasn’t forgotten.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sylvester “Syl” Johnson, a leading Chicago blues and soul singer, songwriter, guitarist and record producer whose music was widely sampled by top hip-hop rappers and DJs, died Feb. 6 at a daughter’s home in Mableton, Ga. He was 85.
Parts of Syl Johnson’s 1967 single “Different Strokes” were sampled — reused in homage — on later recordings by Kanye West, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang Clan, Kool G Rap, M.C. Hammer and the Geto Boys.
“Is It Because I’m Black” — a slow, soulful ballad with a reggae beat written by Mr. Johnson, Jimmy Leonard Jones and Glenn Watts — became part of the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. “The dark brown shades of my skin, only add color to my tears, ... something is holding me back, I wonder, is it because I’m black? ... Will I survive or will I die?”
The growing sampling phenomenon raised the issue of copyright and royalties. In 2012, Mr. Johnson reached a settlement with rappers Jay-Z and West over their use of elements of his track “Different Strokes” on their 2011 hit song “The Joy.” But he lost an earlier, $29 million lawsuit against Cypress Hill for using parts of “Is It Because I’m Black” on their 1993 song “Lock Down” without permission.
Years later, he described himself as “a jack-of-all-trades. More soul than Marvin [Gaye], more funk than James [Brown]. If I’d gone pop, you’d be talkin’ about me, not them. I rate right at the top, though I’ve been underrated all my life.”
The music publicist Lynn Orman Weiss said in an interview that Mr. Johnson was known “for breaking down barriers and bringing people together with their music. … He delivered ‘Blues Sermons’ before performing onstage, especially in his later years. … He liked to say ‘The blues is the root, and as long as the root is alive the Blues is alive. It’s the root to all popular music.’ ” | null | null | null | null | null |
Eminem, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg perform during the halftime show of Super Bowl LVI Sunday night in Inglewood, Calif. (Valerie Macon/AFP Getty Images)
While there’s no official answer yet, new publication Puck reported Sunday that “the league nixed a plan by Eminem to kneel, Colin Kaepernick-style.” However, the rapper kneeled for awhile after his performance anyway, and it did not go unnoticed.
There were lots of rumors about possible surprise guests who might show up, one of whom turned out to be none other than 50 Cent for aperformance of his 2003 smash “In Da Club.” He suddenly appeared in one of the rooms hanging upside-down, surrounded by club dancers, which seems to be a callback to his original video where he did the same thing. But of course, Twitter immediately started churning out Spider-Man and bat memes.
Clearly! And as they should. With limited time for five acts, you have to go with what people know: Blige sparkled, literally, as she belted out “Family Affair" and “No More Drama”; Kendrick Lamar popped up amid a bunch of boxes labeled “Dre Day” to launch into “Alright"; and Eminem appeared to blow up a building with a frenetic version of “Lose Yourself.” But everyone joined together, back on the roof, for “Still Dre." | null | null | null | null | null |
Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg perform during halftime. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images)
While there’s no official answer yet, new publication Puck reported Sunday that “the league nixed a plan by Eminem to kneel, Colin Kaepernick-style.” However, the rapper knelt for a while after his performance anyway, and it did not go unnoticed.
About an hour after the halftime show, CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted a statement from NFL’s public relations that no one told Eminem he couldn’t take a knee.
There were lots of rumors about possible surprise guests who might show up, one of whom turned out to be none other than 50 Cent for a performance of his 2003 smash “In Da Club.” He suddenly appeared in one of the rooms hanging upside-down, surrounded by club dancers, which seems to be a callback to his original video where he did the same thing. But of course, Twitter immediately started churning out Spider-Man and bat memes.
Clearly! And as they should. With limited time for five acts, you have to go with what people know: Blige sparkled, literally, as she belted out “Family Affair” and “No More Drama”; Kendrick Lamar popped up amid a bunch of boxes labeled “Dre Day” to launch into “Alright”; and Eminem appeared to blow up a building with a frenetic version of “Lose Yourself.” But everyone came back together, on the roof, for “Still D.R.E.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The moves paid off handsomely. Stafford had been winless in the playoffs over a dozen seasons with the Detroit Lions. In his first season with the Rams, he helped to secure four postseason victories and is now a champion. So, too, is Coach Sean McVay, who had admitted to being outcoached by Bill Belichick three years ago when the Rams, with Jared Goff at quarterback, lost to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The game shifted quickly after halftime, with a 75-yard touchdown pass from Burrow to Higgins on the first snap of the third quarter. The officials missed a penalty on Higgins for grabbing Ramsey’s facemask on the play. | null | null | null | null | null |
An alt-right podcaster kept an illegal arsenal of machine guns in his basement, authorities say
One of the guns allegedly found in the home of a Pennsylvania father and son. (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania)
The podcast hosts said it was just a theory — a “playful thought.”
After noting that “a white man with a rifle can be very dangerous to the system indeed,” Joseph Paul Berger brought up the case of Eric Frein. Recounting how the Pennsylvania survivalist ambushed and killed a police officer in 2014, hoping to start a revolution, Berger mused about the destruction that could be done by a larger group.
“Imagine if there were 10 Eric Freins,” Berger said on the first episode of “Alt-Right Armory.” “Twenty. A hundred. A thousand.”
More than once, he and his unidentified co-host insisted that they weren’t advocating violence, that they were just spit-balling.
When federal authorities discovered a trove of illegally modified machine guns in Berger’s home, court documents state, they took his words seriously. The 32-year-old Bethlehem, Pa., man, a Navy veteran and certified armorer who lives with his parents, is being held in federal custody as he awaits trial on charges of illegal gun possession.
In arguing that Berger should be detained despite his lack of a criminal record, federal prosecutors pointed to the podcast. They wrote in court documents that although his views are not the basis of the charges, they reflect an anti-government ethos that makes his release dangerous.
“It is clear,” prosecutors wrote, “that the discussions are serious.”
Arrested alongside Berger was his father, 67-year-old Joseph Raymond Berger. Investigators say the two amassed an arsenal of “extremely dangerous” unregistered weapons in a locked basement room over the past decade — 13 fully automatic machine guns and 12 silencers.
The father and son, who have each pleaded not guilty, could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Attorneys representing the father and son did not respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment Sunday. In court on Thursday, the younger Berger’s attorney said prosecutors were overreacting to political speech.
“He never incited violence,” Eric E. Winter said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “To be very clear, this is political speech. He never took any action on it. He made it clear that this was a prank.”
On the “Alt-Right Armory” podcast, Berger used the nickname “GlockDoctor1488” — the numbers an apparent reference to what the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a white supremacist code. The show discussed guns and gun rights and was interwoven with extremist and conspiracy-theory rhetoric, along with the casual use of racial, homophobic and antisemitic slurs. The two hosts espoused anti-immigrant views, spoke favorably of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and demanded the fulfillment of then-President Donald Trump’s promises for a wall along the southern border.
Berger declared the show the “alt-right’s favorite firearms-related podcast.”
He opened the pilot episode with an account of how he came to love guns, recalling shooting balloons and milk cartons in the woods of the Poconos with his grandfather at 5 years old. Later, he played the “House of the Dead” arcade game and went to shooting ranges with his father, who he said supported his gun hobby.
“My dad didn’t like me cursing,” Berger recalled. “He didn’t let me watch any bad words or any nudity on TV. But when it came to firearms, he was like, ‘No problem.’ So we went to an indoor range that rented out guns, and we got a Smith and Wesson M29. And from that moment on, I think I found my calling in life.”
Later in the episode, he and a co-host identified only as “American Spartan” railed against Democrats, gun-control legislation and George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who is the subject of persistent right-wing and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Then they invoked Frein, with Berger saying the man convicted of killing a police officer “ultimately went after the small fish.” They fantasized about bigger targets: legislators, lobbyists and left-wing billionaires.
“When you put people under stress and when the system is rigged against them, eventually they will pop off, which is why leftists don’t want people armed to begin with,” the co-host said. “They don’t want to give them the means in which to most effectively throw off the chains of left-wing oppression.”
But it wasn’t the podcast that led federal authorities to Berger’s door. Instead, according to court records, the case arose after agents from Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security intercepted three packages addressed to the Bergers in January 2021. Inside were firearm silencers imported from China, prosecutors said, with documents listing the younger Berger’s cellphone number.
Homeland Security agents obtained a search warrant for the family’s house, where they seized the silencers and guns, the agency said. An Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives expert examined the weapons and determined that each had been “modified, after purchase, to make it capable of fully automatic fire.”
“This type of fire-power is incredibly dangerous if in the wrong hands,” William S. Walker, acting special agent in charge of Philadelphia’s Homeland Security Investigations office, said in a statement announcing the arrests. “HSI Philadelphia was pleased to work alongside our partners on this important investigation to ensure the defendants are held accountable for their crimes and not able to terrorize this community or any other.” | null | null | null | null | null |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Cooper Kupp stayed curled up behind the end zone, shaken by a collision with Cincinnati Bengals safety Vonn Bell.
The Los Angeles Rams’ star wide receiver had been held over and over without a flag thrown. Finally, he drew a holding call, but after catching a four-yard pass in the corner of the end zone — and taking a hard hit from Bell — offsetting penalties nullified the touchdown.
Rattled and perhaps frustrated, he returned to the line of scrimmage, because that’s what he does, wide receivers coach Eric Yarber explained days earlier.
“The next play is the most important play, and he plays that like it is,” Yarber said.
Two plays later, with the Rams on the 1-yard line, Kupp lined up outside, did a quick stutter-step to try to shake Bengals cornerback Eli Apple, then turned toward the sideline before spinning 180 degrees to catch a short pass from Matthew Stafford in the end zone.
Kupp — the Yakima, Wash., native who received no Division I scholarship offers out of high school and was the seventh receiver taken in the 2017 draft — capped a record-setting season in fitting fashion. He was resilient. Unflappable. Reliable.
After winning the triple crown in receiving for having the most catches, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns in the regular season, Kupp was named the Super Bowl LVI MVP after securing eight catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns in the Rams’ 23-20 victory.
He didn’t return to the same player, though. Kupp returned better, establishing himself as a premier wide receiver and the NFL’s gold standard, with refined route-running, rare quickness, oft-overlooked speed and, above all, a capacity for the game that made him more like a coach than simply another chess piece.
Later on, Kupp found the words.
“I don’t know what it was that God revealed to me that we were going to be a part of a Super Bowl, that we were going to win it and that somehow I was going to walk off the field as MVP,” he said. “I couldn’t tell anyone else. … It was written already, and I just got to play free.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The moves paid off handsomely. Stafford had been winless in the playoffs over a dozen seasons with the Detroit Lions. In his first season with the Rams, he helped secure four postseason victories and is now a champion. So, too, is Coach Sean McVay, who had admitted to being out-coached by Bill Belichick three years ago when the Rams, with Jared Goff at quarterback, lost to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
“This is just a long time coming for a lot of guys,” Stafford said.
The game shifted quickly after halftime, with a 75-yard touchdown pass from Burrow to Higgins on the first snap of the third quarter. The officials missed a penalty on Higgins for grabbing Ramsey’s face mask on the play. | null | null | null | null | null |
Elana Meyers Taylor, left, and Kaillie Humphries celebrate their medals in monobob. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
YANQING, China — Kaillie Humphries, the world’s most successful female bobsled driver, won her first Olympic gold medal with the United States on Monday morning, easily taking the initial monobob event by 1.54 seconds over teammate Elana Meyers Taylor.
The 36-year-old Humphries, who left Canada for the United States in 2019, now has three Olympic golds and one bronze in four Games. She will go for a fourth gold later this week in the two-woman bobsled.
The silver was the third for Meyers Taylor, who started the day in fourth but moved into third after her first run and into second with her fastest run of the competition in her final turn.
Humphries, who built a strong 1.04-second lead over Sunday’s first two runs over former Canadian teammate Christine de Bruin, who ultimately finished third, ran slightly slower in her first of two heats Monday but was quickly able to build a bigger lead as subsequent riders had even slower runs.
Monobob was added before this Olympics as a way to create more female disciplines for gender equality. For years, bobsled was a male-dominated sport with medals given for two- and four-man sled races. The two-woman sleds were introduced at the 2002 Winter Games.
Humphries has been a dominant presence in women’s bobsledding for four Olympics now, the first three as Canada’s top female sled driver. Originally a ski racer from Calgary, she switched to bobsled after a series of injuries knocked her out of the sport. Quickly, she became a skilled driver in the only women’s Olympic event before these Games, the two-woman sled. She won gold medals in Vancouver and Sochi and a bronze in PyeongChang for Canada.
But less than a year after the 2018 Olympics, she filed a complaint with Bobsleigh Canada alleging mental and emotional abuse by the country’s bobsled coach, Todd Hays, who had been hired not long before the PyeongChang Games. Hays, in legal responses, denied the allegations, and he remains the country’s coach.
The relationship between Humphries and Bobsleigh Canada continued to sour, and Humphies, who married former American bobsledder Travis Armbruster in 2019 and was living in Carlsbad, Calif, forced a release from Canada that year, joined the U.S. team and applied for American citizenship.
After a long and frantic wait for a passport, she was granted U.S. citizenship in December, just weeks before the Beijing Games began.
Competing as an American, Humphries has continued to be a powerful driver, both in the two-woman sled and in the monobob, winning the world championship in both events last year.
Meyers Taylor, 37, who had won two silvers and a bronze as the U.S. two-woman bobsled driver, was one of the people who supported Humphries in her move to the American team, even though it meant she lost some status as the country’s top female bobsledder. Like Humphries, she has become one of the world’s top monobob drivers in addition to being a leading two-woman sled driver.
Like Humphries, she came to Beijing with an excellent chance of winning two medals at these Games. But she nearly wasn’t able to compete after a bout with the coronavirus not long after arriving in China.
Meyers Taylor, who traveled to the Olympics with her husband, Nic Taylor — an alternate on the American team — and their nearly-2-year-old son, Nico (who has Down syndrome), wound up in isolation. Nic and Nico, along with Meyers Taylor’s father, Eddie Meyers, also tested positive and were placed in isolation, with Elana in one room, Nic next door and Eddie and Nico in the room next to Nic.
Meyers Taylor was named the flag bearer for the U.S. team during the Games’ Opening Ceremonies but was unable to attend because of the coronavirus protocols. She recovered and left isolation in time to prepare for the monobob and two-woman races this week. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg perform during the Super Bowl halftime show in Inglewood, Calif. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
And while that certainly felt like history being written, it’s good to remind ourselves each year that this halftime show is always more significant than we think, regardless of who’s onstage. It’s the most widely experienced musical performance in America each year (verging on or passing 100 million viewers), so it feels wrong that, until now, rappers have only been invited to provide musical garnish at previous halftime gigs. | null | null | null | null | null |
After early score, Odell Beckham Jr. leaves Super Bowl with leg injury
After scoring the game’s first touchdown, Rams receiver Odell Beckham Jr. watched the second half from the sidelines. Despite a leg injury suffered in the second quarter, he celebrated with his teammates on the field after the Rams’ 23-20 win over the Bengals. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
The Rams were already without veteran receiver Robert Woods, who suffered a season-ending ACL injury late in the season, and certainly needed Beckham’s services, but they had to scrap their way to the Super Bowl LVI win without him in the huddle.
Beckham, who scored the Rams’ first touchdown, grabbed his left knee while running a route in the second quarter. Beckham wasn’t contacted on the play, but he rolled on the ground in pain as trainers rushed to his side. It was the same knee in which he tore an ACL in October 2020.
Beckham eventually walked off the field with help. He went straight to the medical tent before being escorted to the locker room.
The team ruled him out in the third quarter, but he returned to the sideline in a white jacket and shorts, with a sleeve over his left leg. Beckham watched the remainder of the game from the sideline, until Aaron Donald sealed the victory with a fourth-down tackle.
Then he rushed the field and embraced his teammates, including linebacker and close friend Von Miller, as tears fell.
Beckham, 29, joined the Rams after the Cleveland Browns released him in November, getting a fresh start with a team that already had a top wide receiver in Cooper Kupp.
He said last week that the Green Bay Packers were “heavy on my mind and my heart.” The Louisiana native said “there was the story of going back home” to play for the New Orleans Saints. He acknowledged the possibility of signing with the Kansas City Chiefs. He said he came “very, very, very” close to signing with the New England Patriots after speaking with Coach Bill Belichick.
But he knew Rams Coach Sean McVay, heard from several Los Angeles players and said he chose them because “it felt right.”
“And then when it got quiet,” Beckham said, “it’s just something about this place that called. … It just felt right in my heart, and it felt right in my gut. And it felt like other things, I was trying to make work. And this was the one that was calling me.”
Beckham topped 50 yards in just two of his eight regular season games after joining Los Angeles but saw his role grow in the postseason. In three playoff games, he tallied 54, 69 and 113 yards and scored one touchdown. In limited time, he added to those numbers Sunday.
Though he watched the end of the game from the sidelines, Beckham is the one who put the Rams on the scoreboard first. The game was scoreless, and the Rams faced a third and three from the Cincinnati 17-yard line.
Cincinnati was in man-to-man coverage with a single-high safety, and quarterback Matthew Stafford found a matchup he liked: cornerback Mike Hilton tasked with containing Beckham, who was lined up in the slot on the right side.
Beckham got a half-step on Hilton and pulled in Stafford’s perfectly thrown ball on the right side of the end zone.
He finished the game with 52 yards on two catches. | null | null | null | null | null |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Cooper Kupp stayed curled up in the end zone, shaken by a collision with Cincinnati Bengals safety Vonn Bell.
The Los Angeles Rams’ star wide receiver had been held over and over without a flag thrown. Just after drawing a holding call at last, he caught a four-yard pass in the corner of the end zone — and took a hard hit from Bell — only to have offsetting penalties nullify the touchdown.
Rattled and perhaps frustrated, he returned to the line of scrimmage — because that’s what he does.
“The next play is the most important play, and he plays like it is,” Rams wide receivers coach Eric Yarber said days earlier.
Two plays later, with the Rams on the 1-yard line, Kupp lined up outside, did a quick stutter step to try to shake Bengals cornerback Eli Apple, then turned toward the sideline before spinning 180 degrees to catch a short pass from Matthew Stafford in the end zone.
Kupp — the Yakima, Wash., native who received no Football Bowl Subdivision scholarship offers out of high school and was the seventh receiver taken in the 2017 draft — capped a record-setting season in fitting fashion. He was resilient. Unflappable. Reliable.
After winning the triple crown in receiving for having the most catches, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns in the regular season, Kupp was named Super Bowl LVI MVP after securing eight catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns in the Rams’ 23-20 victory.
“You got that inside leverage, so I tried to just weave to his leverage, make him move in a little bit, jab him one time and be able to just give Matthew some room to put the ball wherever he wanted to,” Kupp said of his go-ahead touchdown. “He made a great back-shoulder throw, and I was able to come down with it.”
Yet he didn’t return to being the same player.
He returned better, establishing himself as a premier wide receiver and the NFL’s gold standard, with refined route-running, rare quickness, oft-overlooked speed and, above all, a capacity for the game that made him more like a coach than simply another chess piece.
Later on, Kupp found the words as he thought back to 2019 and that loss to the Patriots.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said, “but there was just this vision God revealed to me that we were going to be a part of a Super Bowl, that we were going to win it and somehow I was going to walk off the field as the MVP of the game. I shared it with my wife because I couldn’t tell anyone else, obviously, what that was. But from the moment this postseason started, there was just a belief every game.
“It was written already, and I just got to play free.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Cooper Kupp tried to find the right words, explaining to a room full of reporters a divine message he received after losing the championship after the 2018 season. He then shared how God had told him how one day he’d win Super Bowl MVP.
Around here, they’ve marketed their stadium and sold the dream of the NFL being back in Los Angeles with the slogan: “Whose House? Rams House!” Then they filled it with the best team money could buy. But on Sunday night the sizzle came from Donald, the 2014 draft pick who has been with the franchise since it still had a Midwestern address. And the glitz provided by Kupp, who had no Football Bowl Subdivision scholarship offers after his senior season in high school but turned in one of the greatest years ever by an NFL wide receiver.
When Matthew Stafford looked just bleh as a starting quarterback, he still could play catch with his favorite target, Kupp, the real leading man in the Rams’ offensive attack.
“I tried to put it in a good spot, he made a great catch,” Stafford said, breaking down Kupp’s go-ahead touchdown reception in the simplest terms possible.
There was NBA superstar LeBron James up on the humongous, circular scoreboard, soaking it up as though he had won something. Then, later, there was NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell introducing Rams owner Stan Kroenke, saying the Rams had provided an “ending fit for Hollywood.”
This being the city that it is, Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” blared over the stadium speakers but still couldn’t drown out the squeals from a coastal fan base that loves a winner. And even more than that, they love it when their winners do it in style. The Rams completing their happy ending inside their home, in front of their fans, was just the perfect ending to the nation’s unofficial holiday of football.
The Super Bowl is the day that defines the culture. And being in Southern California, it only magnified our collective weirdness.
Ultimately, the day belonged to game’s best receiver. But for a while, the Bengals shed their little-guy status and appeared to be the Super Bowl favorites.
Preseason predictions had this team winning about five games this year. They were underdogs dressed in tiger stripes, just another rollover in the AFC. They were supposed to be … well, the Bengals again. The losers we all know and dismiss.
“[Each] and every game we played this year, we were the underdogs,” Bengals receiver Tyler Boyd said earlier in the week. “Nobody counted us in.”
Everybody, however, counted in the loaded Rams. But while a few of the newer stars added to the roster made significant plays — Odell Beckham Jr. caught the game’s first touchdown before a left knee injury forced him out of the game — the day belonged to a veteran Ram and the once-overlooked wideout.
Donald had two of the seven sacks on Burrow. Only Donald’s kids, who got to play in the fallen confetti after the celebration, spent more time on the turf than Burrow.
“I don’t know what it was, there’s just this vision that God revealed to me that we were going to win,” Kupp said, “and somehow I was going to walk off the field MVP of the game.”
The Bengals defense could’ve used a higher power to stop Kupp. It certainly wasn’t doing the job on its own. The unit was responsible for three penalties during the Rams’ game-winning drive. All three — holding, personal foul and interference — were committed against Kupp. When the last infraction moved the Rams to the 1-yard line, Bengals cornerback Eli Apple lined up against Kupp and never had a chance. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Alabama A&M hosts the Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions after Cameron Tucker scored 28 points in Alabama A&M’s 94-92 overtime win over the Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils.
The Bulldogs have gone 4-2 at home. Alabama A&M is 1-6 against opponents over .500.
The Golden Lions are 4-8 in SWAC play. UAPB allows 77.0 points to opponents and has been outscored by 13.6 points per game.
The teams play for the second time this season in SWAC play. The Bulldogs won the last matchup 70-50 on Jan. 4. Jalen Johnson scored 18 points points to help lead the Bulldogs to the win.
Brandon Brown is averaging 9.3 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.5 steals for the Golden Lions. Dequan Morris is averaging 17.4 points over the last 10 games for UAPB. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Florida A&M takes on the Alcorn State Braves after Bryce Moragne scored 22 points in Florida A&M’s 60-56 loss to the Jackson State Tigers.
The Braves have gone 2-3 at home. Alcorn State is 2-8 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Rattlers are 8-4 against conference opponents. Florida A&M is 3-5 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 12.0 turnovers per game.
The teams play for the second time this season in SWAC play. The Rattlers won the last meeting 70-68 on Jan. 22. MJ Randolph scored 21 points to help lead the Rattlers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Justin Thomas is scoring 10.2 points per game and averaging 3.7 rebounds for the Braves. Keondre Montgomery is averaging 12.1 points and 4.1 rebounds over the last 10 games for Alcorn State.
Keith Littles averages 0.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Rattlers, scoring 6.7 points while shooting 41.9% from beyond the arc. Randolph is shooting 43.7% and averaging 18.3 points over the last 10 games for Florida A&M. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Virginia Tech hosts the Virginia Cavaliers after Keve Aluma scored 20 points in Virginia Tech’s 71-59 win against the Syracuse Orange.
The Hokies are 9-3 on their home court. Virginia Tech ranks fourth in the ACC with 14.7 assists per game led by Justyn Mutts averaging 3.3.
The Cavaliers have gone 10-5 against ACC opponents. Virginia ranks seventh in the ACC with 14.2 assists per game led by Reece Beekman averaging 4.9.
The teams play for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Cavaliers won the last matchup 54-52 on Jan. 13. Francisco Caffaro scored 16 points to help lead the Cavaliers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Aluma is shooting 52.6% and averaging 15.5 points for the Hokies. Mutts is averaging 7.9 points over the last 10 games for Virginia Tech.
Kihei Clark is shooting 38.0% from beyond the arc with 1.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Cavaliers, while averaging 10 points and 4.1 assists. Jayden Gardner is shooting 45.2% and averaging 9.9 points over the past 10 games for Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bethune-Cookman visits Jackson State following Garrett's 24-point showing
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Jackson State -6.5; over/under is 120.5
BOTTOM LINE: Bethune-Cookman visits the Jackson State Tigers after Marcus Garrett scored 24 points in Bethune-Cookman’s 71-63 overtime victory over the Alcorn State Braves.
The Tigers are 3-2 in home games. Jackson State is 5-5 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 13.2 turnovers per game.
The Wildcats have gone 5-7 against SWAC opponents. Bethune-Cookman is sixth in the SWAC with 30.1 rebounds per game led by Dylan Robertson averaging 6.1.
The teams square off for the second time this season in SWAC play. The Wildcats won the last matchup 55-50 on Jan. 22. Kevin Davis scored 18 points to help lead the Wildcats to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Chance Moore is shooting 34.5% from beyond the arc with 1.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Tigers, while averaging 7.8 points. Terence Lewis II is averaging 12.6 points and 8.5 rebounds over the past 10 games for Jackson State.
Joe French is shooting 41.8% from beyond the arc with 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Wildcats, while averaging 15.3 points. Garrett is averaging 16 points and 3.7 assists over the last 10 games for Bethune-Cookman. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Bucknell visits the Lehigh Mountain Hawks after Xander Rice scored 21 points in Bucknell’s 78-72 loss to the Holy Cross Crusaders.
The Mountain Hawks have gone 6-7 in home games. Lehigh is 2-11 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Bison have gone 3-11 against Patriot opponents. Bucknell is 1-2 when it wins the turnover battle and averages 13.7 turnovers per game.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Mountain Hawks won the last meeting 97-64 on Jan. 14. Keith Higgins Jr. scored 26 points points to help lead the Mountain Hawks to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Evan Taylor is averaging 13.8 points and 5.8 rebounds for the Mountain Hawks. Nic Lynch is averaging 10.4 points over the last 10 games for Lehigh.
Andre Screen is averaging 11 points and 6.6 rebounds for the Bison. Andrew Funk is averaging 13.6 points over the last 10 games for Bucknell. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Bowling Green takes on the Buffalo Bulls after Myron Gordon scored 20 points in Bowling Green’s 94-78 loss to the Miami (OH) RedHawks.
The Bulls are 7-4 against MAC opponents. Buffalo leads the MAC with 15.2 assists. Ronaldo Segu leads the Bulls with 5.0.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Bulls won the last matchup 99-88 on Jan. 6. Jeenathan Williams scored 21 points to help lead the Bulls to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Daeqwon Plowden is averaging 16.2 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Falcons. Gordon is averaging 14.1 points over the last 10 games for Bowling Green.
Williams averages 2.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Bulls, scoring 18.9 points while shooting 43.8% from beyond the arc. Segu is averaging 10.9 points and 3.8 assists over the last 10 games for Buffalo. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Purdue Fort Wayne -1; over/under is 141
BOTTOM LINE: Purdue Fort Wayne hosts the Cleveland State Vikings after Damian Chong Qui scored 20 points in Purdue Fort Wayne’s 73-66 victory against the UIC Flames.
The Mastodons are 13-2 in home games. Purdue Fort Wayne ranks fifth in the Horizon with 14.0 assists per game led by Jarred Godfrey averaging 3.7.
The Vikings have gone 13-3 against Horizon opponents. Cleveland State is the leader in the Horizon scoring 16.2 fast break points per game.
The teams meet for the third time in conference play this season. The Vikings won 65-58 in the last matchup on Jan. 6. Tre Gomillion led the Vikings with 21 points, and Godfrey led the Mastodons with 18 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Godfrey is averaging 15.2 points, 3.7 assists and 1.7 steals for the Mastodons. Chong Qui is averaging 12.5 points, 4.1 assists and 1.8 steals over the past 10 games for Purdue Fort Wayne.
Torrey Patton is averaging 14.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.5 steals for the Vikings. D’Moi Hodge is averaging 18.0 points and 3.2 rebounds while shooting 51.9% over the last 10 games for Cleveland State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lafayette Leopards (8-15, 5-7 Patriot) at Colgate Raiders (14-11, 10-2 Patriot)
BOTTOM LINE: Lafayette faces the Colgate Raiders after Neal Quinn scored 22 points in Lafayette’s 73-69 win against the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.
The Raiders have gone 8-1 at home. Colgate is fifth in the Patriot with 30.9 points per game in the paint led by Keegan Records averaging 2.6.
The Leopards have gone 5-7 against Patriot opponents. Lafayette is 5-5 when it wins the turnover battle and averages 10.4 turnovers per game.
The teams meet for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Raiders won 72-61 in the last matchup on Jan. 31. Jack Ferguson led the Raiders with 19 points, and Quinn led the Leopards with 15 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tucker Richardson is averaging 11.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the Raiders. Records is averaging 9.9 points and 4.6 rebounds while shooting 72.9% over the last 10 games for Colgate.
Quinn is averaging 14.4 points, eight rebounds and 3.7 assists for the Leopards. Leo O’Boyle is averaging 9.6 points over the last 10 games for Lafayette. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Chippewas have gone 2-6 at home. Central Michigan is 1-11 in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Eagles are 3-10 against MAC opponents. Eastern Michigan has a 5-13 record against teams above .500.
The teams square off for the second time this season in MAC play. The Eagles won the last matchup 99-68 on Jan. 12. Bryce McBride scored 16 points to help lead the Eagles to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Miller is scoring 12.5 points per game with 3.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Chippewas. Cameron Healy is averaging 14.2 points over the last 10 games for Central Michigan.
Noah Farrakhan is scoring 15.3 points per game with 3.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists for the Eagles. Nathan Scott is averaging 11.4 points and 5.4 rebounds over the last 10 games for Eastern Michigan. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Hofstra faces the Elon Phoenix after Aaron Estrada scored 21 points in Hofstra’s 80-66 victory against the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens.
The Phoenix are 7-4 on their home court. Elon has a 1-2 record in one-possession games.
The Pride are 9-4 in conference matchups. Hofstra ranks seventh in the CAA shooting 34.0% from downtown. Kvonn Cramer leads the Pride shooting 66.7% from 3-point range.
The Phoenix and Pride square off Tuesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Darius Burford is averaging 12.2 points, 3.1 assists and 1.6 steals for the Phoenix. Hunter McIntosh is averaging 12.2 points over the last 10 games for Elon.
Estrada is scoring 18.9 points per game and averaging 5.6 rebounds for the Pride. Jalen Ray is averaging 1.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Hofstra. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Florida State hosts Clemson looking to break its three-game home slide.
The Seminoles have gone 8-4 at home. Florida State ranks third in the ACC with 9.8 offensive rebounds per game led by Malik Osborne averaging 1.8.
The Tigers have gone 4-10 against ACC opponents. Clemson has a 0-4 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in ACC play. The Tigers won the last meeting 75-69 on Feb. 3. PJ Hall scored 15 points to help lead the Tigers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Caleb Mills is shooting 43.0% and averaging 12.7 points for the Seminoles. Matthew Cleveland is averaging 6.5 points over the last 10 games for Florida State.
Hall is averaging 15.5 points and six rebounds for the Tigers. Al-Amir Dawes is averaging 6.2 points over the last 10 games for Clemson. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Prairie View A&M takes on the Grambling Tigers after Jeremiah Gambrell scored 25 points in Prairie View A&M’s 84-77 victory over the Southern Jaguars.
The Panthers have gone 4-2 at home. Prairie View A&M has a 2-5 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Tigers are 7-4 in conference matchups. Grambling is 2-10 against opponents with a winning record.
TOP PERFORMERS: Gambrell averages 2.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Panthers, scoring 9.6 points while shooting 33.6% from beyond the arc. Jawaun Daniels is shooting 51.0% and averaging 15.0 points over the last 10 games for Prairie View A&M.
Cameron Christon is scoring 13.5 points per game and averaging 3.7 rebounds for the Tigers. Tra’Michael Moton is averaging 0.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Grambling. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Creighton -10; over/under is 140.5
BOTTOM LINE: Creighton takes on the Georgetown Hoyas after Ryan Hawkins scored 30 points in Creighton’s 80-66 win against the Georgetown Hoyas.
The Bluejays are 8-3 in home games. Creighton leads the Big East with 26.1 defensive rebounds per game led by Hawkins averaging 5.6.
The Hoyas are 0-12 against conference opponents. Georgetown is 4-10 in games decided by 10 or more points.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in Big East play. The Bluejays won the last meeting 80-66 on Feb. 12. Hawkins scored 30 points points to help lead the Bluejays to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Hawkins is shooting 44.3% and averaging 13.4 points for the Bluejays. Alex O’Connell is averaging 1.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Creighton.
Dante Harris is averaging 10.1 points and 4.1 assists for the Hoyas. Kaiden Rice is averaging 8.9 points over the last 10 games for Georgetown. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Iona will aim for its 20th win this season when the Gaels take on the Saint Peter’s Peacocks.
The Peacocks are 7-3 on their home court. Saint Peter’s is 1-4 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Gaels are 12-2 against MAAC opponents. Iona is seventh in the MAAC shooting 33.1% from downtown. Jordan Wildy leads the Gaels shooting 50% from 3-point range.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Gaels won 85-77 in the last matchup on Jan. 30. Nelly Junior Joseph led the Gaels with 17 points, and Doug Edert led the Peacocks with 21 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Fousseyni Drame is averaging 7.5 points and 7.2 rebounds for the Peacocks. KC Ndefo is averaging 10.2 points over the last 10 games for Saint Peter’s. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Lancers are 13-1 on their home court. Longwood scores 77.1 points and has outscored opponents by 12.1 points per game.
The Panthers are 5-6 in Big South play. High Point ranks seventh in the Big South with 12.5 assists per game led by John-Michael Wright averaging 3.8.
TOP PERFORMERS: Justin Hill is averaging 13.5 points, 3.8 assists and 1.5 steals for the Lancers. DeShaun Wade is averaging 14.2 points over the past 10 games for Longwood.
Wright is shooting 37.7% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Panthers, while averaging 19 points and 3.8 assists. Zach Austin is averaging 15.3 points and 8.6 rebounds over the past 10 games for High Point. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Davidson hosts the Duquesne Dukes after Foster Loyer scored 20 points in Davidson’s 72-65 loss to the Rhode Island Rams.
The Wildcats have gone 9-1 in home games. Davidson is second in the A-10 scoring 76.4 points while shooting 48.7% from the field.
The Dukes are 1-9 in conference matchups. Duquesne is 4-6 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 11.3 turnovers per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Loyer is scoring 16.1 points per game with 3.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists for the Wildcats. Luka Brajkovic is averaging 12.3 points and 4.9 rebounds while shooting 62.6% over the past 10 games for Davidson.
Amir “Primo” Spears is shooting 35.8% and averaging 11.3 points for the Dukes. Tre Williams is averaging 7.4 points over the last 10 games for Duquesne. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: UMBC takes on New Hampshire in America East action Monday.
The Wildcats are 8-2 on their home court. New Hampshire is fourth in the America East with 29.9 points per game in the paint led by Nick Guadarrama averaging 0.9.
The Retrievers are 7-5 in conference games. UMBC has a 3-9 record against teams over .500.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Retrievers won 88-77 in the last matchup on Feb. 6. L.J. Owens led the Retrievers with 19 points, and Jayden Martinez led the Wildcats with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Martinez is averaging 14.7 points and 6.2 rebounds for the Wildcats. Blondeau Tchoukuiengo is averaging 12.5 points over the last 10 games for New Hampshire.
Keondre Kennedy is scoring 14.7 points per game and averaging 5.0 rebounds for the Retrievers. Owens is averaging 11.3 points and 2.7 rebounds over the last 10 games for UMBC. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Bears are 5-4 in home games. Morgan State ranks fifth in the MEAC in rebounding with 32.3 rebounds. Lagio Grantsaan paces the Bears with 5.9 boards.
The Bulldogs are 5-3 in MEAC play. South Carolina State ranks third in college basketball with 39.3 rebounds per game. Edward Oliver-Hampton paces the Bulldogs with 6.5.
The teams square off for the second time this season in MEAC play. The Bears won the last matchup 88-81 on Jan. 10. Trevor Moore scored 19 points points to help lead the Bears to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: De’Torrion Ware is scoring 11.0 points per game and averaging 5.1 rebounds for the Bears. Grantsaan is averaging 9.7 points and 6.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for Morgan State.
Antonio Madlock is scoring 11.6 points per game and averaging 5.4 rebounds for the Bulldogs. Jemal Davis is averaging 10.1 points and 5.2 rebounds over the last 10 games for South Carolina State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Missouri State hosts the Indiana State Sycamores after Isiaih Mosley scored 22 points in Missouri State’s 84-66 win against the Valparaiso Beacons.
The Bears are 10-4 in home games. Missouri State ranks fifth in the MVC with 12.6 assists per game led by Lu’Cye Patterson averaging 2.5.
The Sycamores are 4-9 against MVC opponents. Indiana State is ninth in the MVC with 5.3 offensive rebounds per game led by Kailex Stephens averaging 0.8.
The teams play for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Sycamores won the last meeting 76-72 on Jan. 26. Cameron Henry scored 16 points to help lead the Sycamores to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Patterson is averaging seven points for the Bears. Mosley is averaging 15.9 points over the last 10 games for Missouri State.
Cooper Neese is averaging 13.8 points for the Sycamores. Henry is averaging 9.5 points over the last 10 games for Indiana State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: NC State is looking to end its six-game slide with a victory over Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets have gone 8-7 in home games. Georgia Tech is ninth in the ACC with 7.7 offensive rebounds per game led by Rodney Howard averaging 1.7.
TOP PERFORMERS: Michael Devoe is scoring 17.8 points per game and averaging 4.7 rebounds for the Yellow Jackets. Dabbo Coleman is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Georgia Tech.
Dereon Seabron is averaging 18.2 points, 8.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.5 steals for the Wolf Pack. Terquavion Smith is averaging 11.5 points over the last 10 games for NC State. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Delaware State -14.5; over/under is 133.5
BOTTOM LINE: Delaware State hosts the Norfolk State Spartans after Myles Carter scored 25 points in Delaware State’s 85-72 loss to the Howard Bison.
The Hornets have gone 2-9 at home. Delaware State has a 2-14 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Spartans have gone 7-1 against MEAC opponents. Norfolk State is second in the MEAC with 36.7 rebounds per game led by Kris Bankston averaging 6.7.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Spartans won 80-51 in the last matchup on Jan. 13. Joe Bryant Jr. led the Spartans with 29 points, and John Stansbury led the Hornets with 11 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Corey Perkins is averaging 7.1 points, four assists and 1.7 steals for the Hornets. Carter is averaging 14.3 points and 5.8 rebounds while shooting 43.5% over the past 10 games for Delaware State.
Bryant is shooting 44.0% and averaging 16.5 points for the Spartans. Jalen Hawkins is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Norfolk State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Northern Colorado hosts the Southern Utah Thunderbirds after Daylen Kountz scored 27 points in Northern Colorado’s 79-61 victory over the Sacramento State Hornets.
The Bears are 6-3 in home games. Northern Colorado ranks fourth in the Big Sky with 13.3 assists per game led by Matt Johnson averaging 4.1.
The Thunderbirds are 10-3 in Big Sky play. Southern Utah scores 79.4 points and has outscored opponents by 6.7 points per game.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Bears won the last meeting 91-81 on Jan. 2. Dru Kuxhausen scored 25 points points to help lead the Bears to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Johnson is averaging 12.1 points and 4.1 assists for the Bears. Kountz is averaging 24.0 points over the last 10 games for Northern Colorado.
Maizen Fausett is averaging 12.6 points and 8.8 rebounds for the Thunderbirds. Tevian Jones is averaging 2.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Southern Utah. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Miami (OH) visits the Ohio Bobcats after Mekhi Lairy scored 24 points in Miami (OH)’s 94-78 win against the Bowling Green Falcons.
The Bobcats have gone 13-1 at home. Ohio is sixth in the MAC with 8.5 offensive rebounds per game led by Jason Carter averaging 2.1.
The RedHawks are 5-8 in conference games. Miami (OH) averages 75.0 points while outscoring opponents by 3.4 points per game.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Bobcats won 86-63 in the last matchup on Jan. 19. Ben Vander Plas led the Bobcats with 23 points, and Dae Dae Grant led the RedHawks with 11 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Mark Sears is averaging 20 points, 5.3 rebounds, four assists and 1.8 steals for the Bobcats. Carter is averaging 14 points and 6.5 rebounds over the last 10 games for Ohio.
Dalonte Brown is averaging 12.5 points and 6.4 rebounds for the RedHawks. Isaiah Coleman-Lands is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Miami (OH). | null | null | null | null | null |
West Virginia Mountaineers (14-10, 3-8 Big 12) at Kansas State Wildcats (13-11, 5-7 Big 12)
BOTTOM LINE: Taz Sherman and the West Virginia Mountaineers take on Nijel Pack and the Kansas State Wildcats on Monday.
The Wildcats are 8-5 in home games. Kansas State is eighth in the Big 12 with 13.0 assists per game led by Markquis Nowell averaging 4.9.
The Mountaineers have gone 3-8 against Big 12 opponents. West Virginia averages 68.1 points and has outscored opponents by 1.7 points per game.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in Big 12 play. The Mountaineers won the last meeting 71-68 on Jan. 8. Sean McNeil scored 26 points to help lead the Mountaineers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nowell is averaging 11 points, 4.9 assists and 2.1 steals for the Wildcats. Pack is averaging 12.8 points over the last 10 games for Kansas State.
Sherman is scoring 17.6 points per game with 3.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the Mountaineers. McNeil is averaging 7.7 points and 1.5 rebounds while shooting 41.1% over the past 10 games for West Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Toledo plays the Kent State Golden Flashes after Ryan Rollins scored 22 points in Toledo’s 100-72 victory against the Northern Illinois Huskies.
The Rockets have gone 10-0 at home. Toledo is sixth in college basketball with 38.9 points in the paint led by Rayj Dennis averaging 2.2.
The Golden Flashes are 10-4 against MAC opponents. Kent State scores 70.5 points and has outscored opponents by 6.4 points per game.
The teams play for the second time this season in MAC play. The Golden Flashes won the last matchup 66-63 on Jan. 1. Sincere Carry scored 19 points to help lead the Golden Flashes to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: JT Shumate averages 2.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Rockets, scoring 15.5 points while shooting 49.0% from beyond the arc. Rollins is averaging 19.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.8 steals over the past 10 games for Toledo.
Carry is averaging 17.6 points and 4.6 assists for the Golden Flashes. Malique Jacobs is averaging 8.9 points and 6.6 rebounds over the last 10 games for Kent State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Louis visits Saint Bonaventure trying to continue its three-game road winning streak.
The Bonnies have gone 8-2 at home. Saint Bonaventure scores 70.5 points while outscoring opponents by 3.1 points per game.
The Billikens have gone 8-3 against A-10 opponents. Saint Louis scores 78.6 points while outscoring opponents by 11.5 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Dominick Welch averages 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Bonnies, scoring 11.4 points while shooting 33.5% from beyond the arc. Jalen Adaway is shooting 53.4% and averaging 11.0 points over the last 10 games for Saint Bonaventure.
Gibson Jimerson is shooting 41.3% from beyond the arc with 2.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Billikens, while averaging 16.8 points. Collins is shooting 46.4% and averaging 7.9 points over the last 10 games for Saint Louis. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: South Carolina visits the Ole Miss Rebels after Keyshawn Bryant scored 22 points in South Carolina’s 80-68 win against the Georgia Bulldogs.
The Rebels have gone 10-6 at home. Ole Miss has a 0-1 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Gamecocks are 5-7 against SEC opponents. South Carolina has a 3-0 record in one-possession games.
The Rebels and Gamecocks face off Tuesday for the first time in SEC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jarkel Joiner is scoring 11.0 points per game and averaging 2.5 rebounds for the Rebels. Matthew Murrell is averaging 1.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Ole Miss.
Erik Stevenson is averaging 11 points for the Gamecocks. James Reese is averaging 7.6 points over the last 10 games for South Carolina. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Southern faces the Texas Southern Tigers after Tyrone Lyons scored 24 points in Southern’s 84-77 loss to the Prairie View A&M Panthers.
The Tigers are 5-0 on their home court. Texas Southern has a 3-2 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Jaguars have gone 8-3 against SWAC opponents. Southern is 3-7 against opponents with a winning record.
The teams play for the second time this season in SWAC play. The Jaguars won the last meeting 63-50 on Jan. 4. Jayden Saddler scored 16 points to help lead the Jaguars to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Joirdon Karl Nicholas is shooting 56.2% and averaging 9.3 points for the Tigers. Bryson Etienne is averaging 2.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Texas Southern.
Lyons is shooting 51.7% and averaging 13.7 points for the Jaguars. Brion Whitley is averaging 1.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Southern. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Southern Miss -12; over/under is 139.5
BOTTOM LINE: Southern Miss faces the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers after Tyler Stevenson scored 24 points in Southern Miss’ 84-63 loss to the UAB Blazers.
The Golden Eagles have gone 3-5 at home. Southern Miss allows 72.4 points and has been outscored by 9.5 points per game.
The Hilltoppers are 6-6 against conference opponents. Western Kentucky is eighth in C-USA allowing 69.5 points while holding opponents to 41.8% shooting.
The Golden Eagles and Hilltoppers square off Monday for the first time in C-USA play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Stevenson is scoring 15.0 points per game and averaging 7.8 rebounds for the Golden Eagles. DeAndre Pinckney is averaging 9.0 points and 4.5 rebounds over the last 10 games for Southern Miss.
Dayvion McKnight is averaging 14.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, 6.2 assists and two steals for the Hilltoppers. Camron Justice is averaging 11.2 points over the last 10 games for Western Kentucky. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Texas A&M looks to break its four-game home losing streak with a victory against Florida.
The Aggies are 10-4 on their home court. Texas A&M is sixth in the SEC scoring 72.9 points while shooting 43.8% from the field.
The Gators are 6-6 in SEC play. Florida averages 70.6 points while outscoring opponents by 6.2 points per game.
The Aggies and Gators meet Tuesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Marcus Williams is averaging 8.4 points and 3.6 assists for the Aggies. Quenton Jackson is averaging 13 points over the past 10 games for Texas A&M.
Colin Castleton is averaging 13.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks for the Gators. Tyree Appleby is averaging 7.9 points over the last 10 games for Florida. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: VCU will attempt to keep its three-game win streak alive when the VCU Rams take on Fordham.
The Fordham Rams have gone 6-3 in home games. Fordham ranks third in the A-10 with 25.0 defensive rebounds per game led by Chuba Ohams averaging 7.8.
The VCU Rams are 9-3 in A-10 play. VCU has a 4-2 record in one-possession games.
The Fordham Rams and VCU Rams meet Tuesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Darius Quisenberry is averaging 17.4 points and 1.5 steals for the Fordham Rams. Ohams is averaging 7.9 points over the last 10 games for Fordham.
Vince Williams is shooting 38.3% from beyond the arc with 1.9 made 3-pointers per game for the VCU Rams, while averaging 11.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.5 steals. KeShawn Curry is shooting 55.1% and averaging 8.0 points over the past 10 games for VCU. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Vermont will try to keep its six-game road win streak intact when the Catamounts face Hartford.
The Hawks have gone 2-3 in home games. Hartford ranks fourth in the America East with 12.2 assists per game led by Austin Williams averaging 2.9.
The Catamounts have gone 12-0 against America East opponents. Vermont is 16-2 in games decided by at least 10 points.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Catamounts won 82-72 in the last matchup on Jan. 23. Ben Shungu led the Catamounts with 24 points, and Williams led the Hawks with 24 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Williams is averaging 15.9 points and 5.1 rebounds for the Hawks. Moses Flowers is averaging 14.5 points over the last 10 games for Hartford.
Isaiah Powell is averaging 9.8 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists for the Catamounts. Shungu is averaging 17.3 points and 3.8 rebounds while shooting 58.9% over the past 10 games for Vermont. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Western Michigan plays the Akron Zips after Lamar Norman Jr. scored 25 points in Western Michigan’s 77-63 win over the Central Michigan Chippewas.
The Broncos have gone 3-8 in home games. Western Michigan is ninth in the MAC with 7.7 offensive rebounds per game led by Markeese Hastings averaging 3.2.
The Zips are 9-4 against MAC opponents. Akron is seventh in the MAC scoring 71.2 points per game and is shooting 46.1%.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Zips won 74-73 in the last matchup on Jan. 18. Ali Ali led the Zips with 18 points, and B. Artis White led the Broncos with 23 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Norman is averaging 20.1 points for the Broncos. Artis White is averaging 1.9 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Western Michigan. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: North Carolina Central faces the Coppin State Eagles after Justin Wright scored 24 points in North Carolina Central’s 74-64 victory against the Morgan State Bears.
The Coppin State Eagles are 2-3 in home games. Coppin State ranks fourth in the MEAC in rebounding with 32.7 rebounds. Tyree Corbett leads the Coppin State Eagles with 9.5 boards.
The North Carolina Central Eagles are 5-2 in MEAC play. North Carolina Central ranks third in the MEAC allowing 66.9 points while holding opponents to 41.8% shooting.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Eagles won 69-68 in the last matchup on Feb. 5. Corbett led the Eagles with 17 points, and Wright led the Eagles with 25 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Corbett is averaging 14 points and 9.5 rebounds for the Coppin State Eagles. Nendah Tarke is averaging 14.9 points over the last 10 games for Coppin State.
Randy Miller Jr. averages 1.4 made 3-pointers per game for the North Carolina Central Eagles, scoring 12.5 points while shooting 35.2% from beyond the arc. Wright is averaging 16.4 points over the past 10 games for North Carolina Central. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Erin Jackson has become the first Black woman to win a speedskating medal at the Winter Olympics. A gold one, at that.
BEIJING — Kaillie Humphries has captured a third Olympic gold medal, and her first for the U.S.
BOGOTA, Colombia — Brandon Matthew played the final three holes in 4-under par, making eagle on the final hole for a one-shot victory in the Astara Golf Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour.
DALLAS — Reilly Opelka won the longest tiebreaker in ATP Tour history to finish a straight-sets win over John Isner in the semifinals and beat Jenson Brooksby in straight sets in an all-American final on Sunday at the inaugural Dallas Open. | null | null | null | null | null |
The 5 worst Super Bowl commercials, from Larry David’s crypto pitch to Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus’s 5G anthem
Misused celebrities and lackluster ads in a night of few delights
Miley Cyrus appears in T-Mobile's “Do It for the Phones” commercial. (T-Mobile)
This was a rather disappointing year for those who pay more attention to Super Bowl commercial breaks than to the game itself. The most high-profile ads of the year are intended to stir emotion, whether insurance company tear-jerkers or fast-food comedy fests. But this year’s crop barely made us feel anything. Not a single tear was shed. Only a few smiles were cracked.
How psyched are we expected to get about cryptocurrency? Very, these spots would suggest. There were a handful of exceptions to the emotionless trend, inspiring either disappointment or disgust. Some simply wasted the potential of their celebrity cameos — let Dolly Parton do more! — while others made those celebrities try eating inedible objects (we’ll get to it).
In no particular order, here are the year’s five worst Super Bowl commercials.
Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton star in a Super Bowl ad promoting T-Mobile's 5G coverage. (T-Mobile)
Billed as “the first godmother-goddaughter ad in Super Bowl history,” a distinction no one cares to put in the history books, Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus come together for T-Mobile in a two-part mock-PSA about 5G. It even features a schmaltzy “We Are The World”-type anthem, “Let’s Do it For the Phones,” for which there is a full-length music video that we do not recommend. It’s not quite over-the-top enough to be funny, and it’s also an absolute waste of Parton’s immense talents (though her Super Bowl track record is not great — she made our worst list last year, too).
Larry David is a contrarian for the ages — and, in this commercial, through the ages. As a Founding Father, he pushes back on a motion to grant people the right to vote: “Even the stupid ones?” he asks. He looks Thomas Edison in the eye and says his lightbulb “stinks.” He insists no one will ever go to the moon: “It’s far! It’s too far! It’s far!”
Cut to a man pitching David on FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. David isn’t convinced.
“Eh, I don’t think so,” he says, “and I’m never wrong about this stuff.”
But the ad goes on to warn viewers against being “like Larry. Don’t miss out on the next big thing.” The quick pivot to crypto is a bit unsettling, as is the growing trend of celebrities pushing something that, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, poses much more of a risk to the average viewer. Just as “South Park” parodied Matt Damon shilling for Crypto.com, David’s spot seems more like something he would poke fun at on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Coinbase’s first Super Bowl ad features a colorful QR code floating on a black screen. (Coinbase)
We’ll give Coinbase a few points for coming up with an intriguing commercial, consisting of a QR code changing colors and bouncing around a screen in a manner similar to that one bouncing DVD logo. It seems that enough people scanned the QR code for the Coinbase app to crash during the game. But we’ll also take away a couple points for the “ugh, again?” reveal of this being an ad for yet another cryptocurrency exchange platform. (See reasoning above.)
Jennifer Coolidge, Trevor Noah, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Nicholas Braun star in Uber Eats' 2022 Super Bowl ad about the importance of knowing what is edible. (Uber Eats)
Uber Eats wants America to know that it delivers more than just food. So it delivers some not-food to celebrities including Jennifer Coolidge, Trevor Noah, Gwyneth Paltrow and “Succession’s” Nicholas Braun — who eat it. The bag says “Uber Eats,” after all. Coolidge munches on some paper towels. Noah bites a pencil and a lightbulb. Paltrow takes a hunk off her infamous “This smells like my vagina” candle.
It’s all set to the tune of that insidious TikTok earworm, “Oh No.”
“Fun” fact: Eating things that aren’t food is technically a disorder called pica. Though the commercial has small print at the bottom discouraging people from tasting their inedible Eats deliveries — no one wants to be responsible for the next Tide Pods challenge — the commercial was so cringeworthy that it prompted a response from a government agency: “Do not eat soap,” the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission tweeted partway through the game.
Avocados from Mexico is generally a reliable source of funny Super Bowl commercials, but this year’s — set in the Colosseum parking lot — felt a little dry. It begins with a group of ancient Romans standing around and bemoaning the poor state of their tailgate, during which it is announced that Maximus the Great, the emperor, has died. It seems there is no salvaging the gathering, until they notice a fan of the rival team mashing some Avocados from Mexico.
Finally, a way to liven things up! Everyone — including ancient Romans, apparently — loves guacamole. Andy Richter as Julius Caesar walks by with a salad, topped with avocado.
The ad is inoffensive in its dullness but, unfortunately, things are worse in real life. According to the Associated Press, the United States recently suspended avocado imports from Mexico “after a U.S. plant safety inspector in Mexico received a threatening message.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Politicians say that programs like TANF are sufficient. But they’re not.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks with staff members to the Senate chamber. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Eli Hager is a reporter covering issues affecting children and teens in the Southwest for ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
If the child tax credit were to be provided to these families going forward, “all the requirements that apply to those receiving TANF … would be gone,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) in October.
Doing so would “shatter a decades-old consensus” that TANF has successfully transitioned people from welfare to work, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) added in December.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and key Democratic swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), among others on the Hill, have recently echoed these sentiments.
In New Mexico and many other states, for instance, low-income single mothers applying for TANF are forced, in a relic of colonial “bastardy” laws, to first identify the father of their child (and his eye color, license plate number and parents’ addresses), and also to recall under penalty of perjury the exact date when they got pregnant, before they can get a small amount of cash assistance for things such as rent, child care and diapers. Many are also made to submit their children to genetic testing.
Work requirements don’t curb ‘entitlement.’ They just make families’ lives harder.
Some states go even further out of their way to avoid spending TANF dollars to help struggling moms, dads and kids. In Arizona, only 6 percent of families below the poverty line are able to obtain assistance from the program, partly because the state uses more than $150 million a year of its TANF funding to instead pay for child welfare investigations of many of the very same poor parents, as well as the foster care costs of removing their children from them. (More than 60 percent of Black children in Maricopa County — metro Phoenix — will see their parents investigated by the time they turn 18, according to a recent academic study.)
Reducing child poverty is a no-brainer
The sheer difficulty of accessing these dollars often leaves applicants casting about for other options. In Utah, for example, so few families seeking TANF are approved or eligible for the aid that many parents I’ve spoken to in my reporting say they feel they have to seek help from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints instead. There, they are sometimes pressured to get baptized, work for the church or read aloud from the Book of Mormon to receive assistance.
Spending less on parents and children was built into the original structure of TANF. The program’s funding was frozen in 1996 — and has not been increased since to account for inflation or population shifts. That means less and less is available per poor family with every passing year, especially in the rapidly diversifying desert Southwest where I live.
Take Nevada, which since the 1990s has changed demographically more than any other state, due both to immigration and to an influx of tech companies and other young newcomers. Between 1997 and 2015, as the state’s increasing population caused its cost of living to skyrocket, the number of kids living in poverty there more than doubled, from 67,852 to 143,407. The result: Nevada now gets the smallest population-adjusted amount of TANF funding in the nation, at only $63 a year per child. By comparison, neighboring California receives $409.
This story was co-published with ProPublica. | null | null | null | null | null |
But prospects for a breakthrough in the capital were immediately cast into doubt, with Lich tweeting that no “deal” had been made – and another organizer of the movement without central leadership telling The Washington Post the proposal did not reflect the protesters’ will.
David, an organizer of the trucker convoy’s logistics hub, who spoke under condition his last name not be used because he was not authorized to speak with the media, told The Post in a text that the letter Lich sent the city “does not reflect the majority of truckers” and implied it was “crafted without the buy-in from the rest of the board.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Haoyu Wang, 26, was taken into custody Feb. 11 at a Quality Inn in Salt Lake City after police found him in a room with his girlfriend's body. (Salt Lake City Police Department) (Courtesy of Salt Lake City Police Department)
Yet when officers entered the room around 6 a.m., only Wang’s girlfriend was dead, police said in a statement. Wang was taken into custody, and he is now being held without bail on a charge of “knowing and intentional” murder. Police said the case is being investigated as a “domestic violence-related homicide.” Court records do not indicate whether Wang has an attorney.
In January, Wang was charged with assault for hitting his girlfriend during an argument at another hotel, giving her what paramedics described as a “goose egg” on her head, according to a probable-cause affidavit in that case. He was released from jail to await trial after being deemed low risk of committing a violent crime, according to court documents. | null | null | null | null | null |
Enslaved Black Americans crossed borders to find freedom. Today’s asylum seekers want to do the same.
Restriction and deportation exist in opposition to the political traditions of the African American freedom struggle
Migrants at the Rio Grande in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, on Sept. 16.
Sean Gallagher is an historian of slavery and is currently the David Center for the American Revolution postdoctoral fellow at the American Philosophical Society.
Harriet Tubman, living in Ontario, Canada, for most of 1851 to 1861, told an abolitionist interviewing fugitive enslaved people north of the U.S. border that “we would rather stay in our native land, if we could be as free there as we are here.” She acknowledged that many of the African Americans she led out of the American South to Canada through the Underground Railroad desired to return to one day, “but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.” The abolitionist Benjamin Drew printed her testimony along with those of other runaways living in Canada in an 1856 book titled “A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee.” As he and Tubman understood, the struggle for African American freedom was by necessity a migrant, border-crossing movement for asylum.
From the American Revolution to the Civil War, enslaved African Americans fled the United States for freedom abroad in British Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Over time, African Americans’ search for freedom beyond U.S. borders led to treaties, military proclamations and court decisions that gave shape to the idea of the refugee in international law. At the same time, as historian Harvey Amani Whitfield has shown, acts of escaping to foreign free soil made migration and transnationality integral to early African American conceptions of freedom and community. These refugee politics were as American as the ideals of the Revolution itself precisely because they first took shape during the U.S. War for Independence.
Today’s asylum seekers from Haiti, Guatemala and elsewhere at the U.S.-Mexico border have a political history that connects them to the Underground Railroad out of this nation before the Civil War. Like fugitive bondpeople traveling up through the free northern states to Canada in the 19th century, today’s migrants often form traveling communities and networks for both protection and solidarity. And they frame their migration as a form of politics: using their mobility to access rights of liberty and safety.
From the outset of the American Revolution, enslaved people sought freedom or at least protection behind British lines as Black loyalists. Though Britain agreed in the Treaty of Paris at the end of the war to evacuate the United States without “carrying away any Negroes,” runaways pleaded for resettlement outside the United States. They testified to officers that they feared violent reprisals from their enslavers for having aided the Crown. Their stories trickled up to the British commander in chief, Sir Guy Carleton who agreed to relocate more than 3,000 runaways to Canada because “delivering up the Negroes to their former Masters would be delivering them up some possibly to Execution and others to severe Punishment.” African Americans freed themselves by making the violence of slavery legible as a form of persecution.
After the British Empire abolished slavery in 1833, followed by Mexico in 1837, the trickle of cross-border runaways turned into a stream of thousands of African Americans seeking protection within foreign forts, vessels and free communities of color.
By the American Civil War, more than 30,000 people would flee to Canada and perhaps as many as 5,000 took refuge in Mexico.
Enslaved people’s mobility made America’s “domestic” institution a diplomatic problem for neighboring countries. Neither Britain nor Mexico sought to antagonize the United States over slavery, but enslaved people themselves forced the issue. While Britain and the United States negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, primarily about setting borders in the Northeast and Midwest, 139 enslaved Virginians on board the ship Creole and bound for the New Orleans slave market revolted. They sailed the vessel into the British Bahamas and requested asylum. The Creole revolt turned what had been a secondary part of the negotiations — slave extradition — into a major diplomatic issue. Britain ultimately refused to put slave extradition into the treaty on the grounds that a person who had reached free soil could not be re-enslaved.
Before the late 18th century, asylum had largely been an extension of the religious policy of states. Protestant kings offered protection to their co-religionists persecuted by Catholic kings, and vice versa. But by tying their emancipation to asylum, African Americans set an early precedent in diplomacy and migration policy for the principle of non-refoulement: a government’s obligation to not repatriate asylum seekers to countries where they faced physical violence or persecution. This was a major development in the history of refugees.
Enslaved people’s freedom-seeking slowly secularized the refugee and embedded asylum in such emerging concepts as human rights and “crimes against humanity.” Their efforts bore fruit for other oppressed migrants in legislation such as Britain’s 1870 Extradition Act, which explicitly recognized the right of non-refoulement for political dissidents, and Mexico’s liberal reforms to the naturalization process for foreigners (amid its own civil and revolutionary wars). Policies and principles such as these provided the legal raw material from which nations, including the United States, developed international asylum protocols during the upheavals of the 20th century.
The politics of immigration restriction and deportation exist in opposition to the political traditions of the African American freedom struggle we now acknowledge as central to the story of American liberty.
When the Biden administration forcibly dispersed and deported about 15,000 Haitian asylum seekers encamped in Del Rio, Tex., last summer, it oppressed people engaging in a politics as American as the Fourth of July. When President Biden upholds the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for potential asylum seekers, he acts from the most atrophied sense of what American freedom and prosperity is. The refugee resistance of enslaved African Americans shows that the most liberating American political traditions have always been based in global solidarity. | null | null | null | null | null |
Viewers will decide whether the Olympics soften China’s international image
Understanding and combating the propaganda surrounding the Games.
Children perform during the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 4 in Beijing. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
Michael J. Socolow is the director of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center at the University of Maine, where he teaches media history and journalism.
Such propaganda is the goal of the Chinese dictatorship, which under President Xi Jinping is resorting to extraordinary and unprecedented media controls to ensure viewers around the world enjoy sporting competitions while celebrating his nation’s new global prominence. Xi is counting on global gratitude for the show being carefully staged and broadcast across the planet.
Will it work in changing China’s international image from an expansionist authoritarian regime to a peaceful and collaborative nation?
Only we will decide. The Games have long provided opportunities for dictators to cleanse stains and soften international images. And for Nazi Germany it worked, for a short time.
The lesson? Audiences need to carefully process images and audio from Beijing, understanding that this media is designed to alter — or even reverse — world opinion about China.
The 1936 Berlin Games briefly altered global attitudes toward Nazi Germany. In the summer of 1941, when wars in Europe and the Pacific threatened to engulf the United States, NBC introduced a public service radio program examining how liberty — as defined by those in the United States — had become threatened around the world. NBC’s Ben Grauer invited John R. Tunis, a best-selling novelist and sportswriter, to discuss the situation. Asked his opinion about why Americans might have missed alarming signals in the immediate prewar years, Tunis zeroed in on a specific event: the 1936 Berlin Games.
Coverage of the Berlin Games, Tunis argued, represented one of the most important missed opportunities for journalists to tell Americans the truth about Nazi Germany. Tunis excoriated the journalists he thought were complicit with propagating German propaganda during the 1936 Olympic festival. Only one — columnist Westbrook Pegler — had the nerve to speak up. As he told NBC’s listeners, “Hey! Wait a minute! This thing’s a racket!”
And it was a racket. But Tunis was wrong in crediting only Pegler. Some U.S. journalists relayed German realities. Reporters like Ralph Barnes, of the New York Herald-Tribune, and William L. Shirer, of the Universal wire service, described the ways Nazis “purged” Berlin “of sights unpleasant to Olympic visitors” during the Games. When Berlin’s tabloids published grisly details of a convicted kidnapper’s execution by beheading by the law-and-order Nazi regime — making clear its use of violence to rule — New York World-Telegram sports editor Joe Williams was horrified. In his column, Williams wondered why American newspapers spent more space on a “rather pointless” exhibition of baseball in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium than on the story of the “ghoulish” execution of Hans Giese. Such editorial decisions, he wrote, made it “impossible for Americans to understand the modern Germany.”
Interestingly, some of these critical stories emerged as a product of shrewd Nazi propaganda. The Nazis were eager to engage the Western press. They sought to contrast the “open” dictatorship ruling the “New Germany” with the “closed” dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, held a news conference immediately before the Games to discuss propaganda and journalism. “In the past few months, Germany has been accused of the intention to operate the Olympic Games as propaganda for the state,” Goebbels explained. “I can assure you, gentlemen, that this is not the case, because if it were the case, I would probably know,” he said. The assembled reporters laughed. Goebbels then praised Germany’s media censorship, explaining to foreign journalists how the Nazis tamed what he termed the “spiritual anarchy” of the German people by offering only unifying media messages.
Such openness worked. In fact, the Associated Press called Goebbels’s exchange with Western journalists “remarkably frank.” The Germans appeared willing to abide criticism and engage in free exchange. The Nazis implemented no strict censorship controlling the journalistic output being relayed by foreign reporters worldwide — although the sports editor of the New York Daily News, Paul Gallico, later mused about how his criticism of the regime occasionally and mysteriously ended “up in the wastebasket.”
The world’s attention was misdirected from violent and oppressive German realities, focusing instead on a “New Germany,” which, with its full employment, happy and productive citizenry and efficient modern administration, seemed to be beating the world economic depression. France’s ambassador to Germany later looked back at the 1936 Games and called them “a climax of sorts, if not the apotheosis of Hitler and his Third Reich.”
Looking back at how the German authoritarian regime exploited the Olympic Games allows us to think critically about the spectacle we’re experiencing right now. For it was ultimately the world’s newspaper readers and radio listeners who empowered the Nazi regime by allowing an entertaining sports festival to influence their perception of a murderous regime.
We can choose to use this current spotlight on China to discuss how the authoritarian regime threatens its neighbors, represses human rights in Tibet and Hong Kong, censors the Internet, and persecutes its citizens. Or we can ignore the violence of these brutal policies and just enjoy the ice skating, skiing and hockey. Should each of us choose to “stick to sports” our gratitude toward China may heighten, and the aura of goodwill spun off by the Games will validate Xi’s enormous efforts. But if we remain mindful that we’re experiencing our own exploitation, and a brazen attempt to influence our perceptions, we can blunt the political opportunity gifted to the Chinese regime by the International Olympic Committee.
Ultimately, whether the Games fulfill the propaganda aspirations of the Chinese government won’t be decided in Beijing. It will be decided in our living rooms — and in our minds. | null | null | null | null | null |
A longtime friend of the West Virginia senator has a growing lobbying business in Washington as companies seek to understand and influence key lawmaker.
Washington, D.C. — FEBRUARY 8: Chairman Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., arrives for a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Feb. 08, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When some of the Democratic officials in the room objected — Justice until recently had been a registered Republican — Puccio offered to call the man who for the last three decades has been his friend, business partner, boss, political ally and patron: Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).
“Larry’s position was, ‘Justice and I will run the party, and everything else, as we desire.' I was pushing back on that,’” said Chris Regan, then the vice chairman of West Virginia’s Democratic Party, who attended the meeting. Puccio at the time a senior adviser for Justice’s campaign. “I remember Larry just yelling back: ‘We can get Manchin on the phone, if you need to hear it from him.’”
Puccio isn’t the only Manchin ally who’s been lured to K Street — several top lobbying firms snapped up former Manchin aides last year — but he goes back further with Manchin than almost anyone else in politics. With trillions of dollars tied to Manchin’s vote, Washington clients have sought out Puccio’s guidance on how to influence the West Virginia senator.
“Larry has always been with Joe. We all started out together with nothing but the hole in our [expletive]. Their friendship is rock solid,” said Tom Mainella, the Democratic mayor of Fairmont, W.Va., and a friend of both men.
Puccio’s relationship with Manchin has made him a valuable lobbyist in Washington, where Manchin wields an effective veto over trillions of dollars in spending. Manchin’s declaration in December that he couldn’t vote for Democrats’ health care, child care and climate package — President Biden’s top legislative priority — doomed the bill for now, and his opposition to some policy ideas kept them from being included in the legislation in the first place.
The Appalachian Natural Gas Operators Coalition last year paid Puccio and his partner, Angel Moore, $180,000 to lobby the Senate and the Energy Department on “proposed taxes and fees related to energy production,” according to disclosure filings.
Manchin repeatedly expressed reservations about the methane fee proposal last year. His office declined to say if Puccio ever lobbied Manchin on the methane fee. The companies in the coalition also did not respond to questions about Puccio lobbied Manchin on the fee.
Manchin “can share thoughts with Larry, or Pucci — you know, a lot of people call him Pucci — that never go beyond Larry’s ears,” said former Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), who considers both men friends. “He’s tight-lipped.”
“There are some groups that are working alongside those of us in West Virginia,” McKay said, “but there are also those saying: ‘My second cousin twice removed drove through Charleston one time, so Manchin should listen to us.’”
Puccio’s rise in West Virginia was sometimes met by the same complaints that have dogged Manchin — that they have moved the Democratic Party too far left, and that they are too close to the coal industry. The two led a group of investors aimed at building a tannery that was later abandoned amid local pushback over its impact on a nearby river, said Leslee McCarty, who helped lead a petition against the sale and as a result later campaigned against Manchin for office. | null | null | null | null | null |
David, a media liaison for the convoy’s logistics hub, a highly organized operation in the parking lot of Ottawa’s baseball stadium, told The Washington Post the proposal did not reflect the protesters’ will. The letter Lich sent the city “does not reflect the majority of truckers” and implied it was “crafted without the buy-in from the rest of the board,” he said, speaking under the condition his last name not be used since he was not authorized to speak on this issue. | null | null | null | null | null |
“It seems to me that we are very close to returning to a period of constant provocations. The situation is not good, and what we can expect is a chorus of people that say … we need to double down, squeeze North Korea even harder,” said Jessica Lee, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute’s East Asia Program. “I would say the situation on the peninsula has evolved, and we need fresh perspectives like the ones offered in this report.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Haoyu Wang, 26, was taken into custody at a Quality Inn in Salt Lake City after police found him in a room with his girlfriend's body. (Salt Lake City Police Department))
Yet when officers entered the room about 6 a.m., only Wang’s girlfriend was dead, police said in a statement. Wang was taken into custody, and he is now being held without bail on a charge of “knowing and intentional” murder. Police said the case is being investigated as a “domestic violence-related homicide.” Court records do not indicate whether Wang has an attorney.
In January, Wang was charged with assault for hitting his girlfriend during an argument at another hotel, giving her what paramedics described as a “goose egg” on her head, according to a probable cause affidavit in that case. He was released from jail to await trial after being deemed low risk of committing a violent crime, according to court documents. | null | null | null | null | null |
A poster of Marise Ann Chiverella at a Pennsylvania State Police news conference in Hazleton, Pa., on Feb. 10. (Michael Rubinkam/AP)
With the help of a 20-year-old college student who moonlights as a genetic genealogist, law enforcement said they had determined the man responsible was James Paul Forte, who died in 1980 and would have been 22 when he killed Chiverella.
The Chiverella cold case is the latest decades-old investigation solved with the help of genetic genealogy. In May 2021, police in Colorado said a man they had rescued from a snowstorm in 1982 had allegedly killed two young women hours earlier. Using DNA found at the crime scenes, law enforcement arrested and charged the man with murder, kidnapping and assault. He is now awaiting trial. In July, an anonymous donor funded genetic testing for a 1989 murder of a 14-year-old girl in Las Vegas. The investigation set a record for the least amount of DNA used to solve a case. The man identified as the killer died by suicide in 1995, police said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Asked to help, Post readers sent searing evidence about dozens more enslavers in Congress
There were handwritten wills, birth certificates of babies born into slavery and newspaper ads placed by congressmen seeking the return of Black people who fled captivity.
Ruette Watson was among dozens of readers who responded with searing evidence of enslavement. The outpouring included wills handwritten in the 19th century; birth certificates of babies born into slavery on congressmen’s plantations; newspaper ads placed by senators or representatives seeking the return of Black people who fled captivity; letters and book excerpts and journal articles. And in the case of Watson, an oral history project focused on Black women that included a 1977 interview with her remarkable grandmother, Esther Mae Prentiss Scott.
Thanks to Watson and scores of other amateur and professional researchers — who emailed from as far away as China and France and ranged from high school students to presidential historians — The Post’s tally of slaveholders who once served in Congress has grown from 1,715 to 1,795.
The list of congressmen still left to research remains long as well — it shrank from 677 names to 587. In other words: You too can help.
[How to help The Post identify members of Congress who enslaved people]
Watson, 67 and retired from a career in IT at Rutgers University, was reading The Post’s story about congressional enslavers when she was surprised to see a familiar name: Rep. Seargent Smith Prentiss of Mississippi. He was on The Post’s list of congressmen who still needed to be researched.
Jefferson Prentiss Sr. shown in a photograph from about 1919, was born into slavery, like his father Monroe. (Family photo) (Family photo)
Seargent Smith Prentiss, a Mississippi slaveholder, served in Congress from 1838 to 1839. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
LEFT: Jefferson Prentiss Sr. shown in a photograph from about 1919, was born into slavery, like his father Monroe. (Family photo) RIGHT: Seargent Smith Prentiss, a Mississippi slaveholder, served in Congress from 1838 to 1839. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Watson pointed a Post reporter to the oral history, in which a Radcliffe researcher recorded an interview with Watson’s grandmother 45 years ago. In the interview, Esther Mae Prentiss Scott remembered her grandfather Monroe Prentiss telling her about his brutal journey to America. He was smuggled in secret long after the U.S. prohibition on the importation of enslaved people took effect in 1808, kidnapped from Africa and taken first to Holland and then to Seargent Smith Prentiss’s Mississippi plantation.
“He said they were in the hull of the ship like sardines in a can,” Scott, who died in 1979, told the interviewer.
Heartbroken by his separation from his brother Jefferson, who was enslaved on a different plantation, Monroe named his son Jefferson — also born into slavery — in honor of his brother, Scott recalled.
“I’m wearing a slave name now,” she recounted. “My mother died with a slave name, Prentiss, and my grandfather died with a slave name. ... He got that Prentiss from Seargent S. Prentiss. ... Well, I’m not ashamed of it.”
Seargent Smith Prentiss is now on The Post’s list of slaveholders. And Watson said she’s proud to help preserve the memory of her grandmother’s grandfather.
[More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.]
“We’re not that far out of slavery itself,” she said. “I could reach back one person away.”
Watson knew her grandmother, a gifted blues musician who performed with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith as a young woman. Scott worked as a maid in Mississippi and then eventually followed her daughter to the nation’s capital, where she became the beloved “Mother Scott” of her Columbia Heights church. She recorded an album at age 79, which Watson recently digitized and made available on YouTube.
[Post obituary from 1979: Mother Scott, composer, one of the last survivors of the great era of Mississippi blues]
Watson knew her grandmother, and her grandmother knew Monroe Prentiss. Slavery feels not so far away sometimes to Watson, who lives in Princeton, N.J. “We haven’t been that long from that situation. People seem to think it was forever ago, and it wasn’t,” she said. “They not only survived, but I exist today because of their strength and their ability to cope and to make the best of what life gave them.”
[At 88, he is a historical rarity — the living son of a slave]
One of those enslaved people was Alfred Cooper. Pupke traced Cooper’s story — eventually he was enslaved by Rep. John Brewer Brown of Maryland, who gave Cooper his freedom when he joined the military to fight for the Union during the Civil War.
“I don’t find it an obligatory connection. There are members of the family that say, as Henry Louis Gates says, guilt is not inheritable,” Pupke said. “But I also feel like there’s a story here to be told that needs to get out there, and somebody needs to tell it.”
Georgia Sen. Augustus Octavius Bacon, who served from 1895 to 1914. (George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress)
Mary Louisa Bacon Sturges saw her great-great-grandfather Augustus Octavius Bacon on The Post’s list of people to research. She had done some genealogy on her family, and sent documents showing that Bacon was a Georgia slaveholder as a young man — including letters that Bacon wrote home to his family during his time as a Confederate soldier, in which he wrote about an enslaved man named Richmond whom he brought to the battlefield with him and who became ill and died there.
Bacon’s addition to The Post’s database of slaveholders in Congress makes him one of the last former slaveholders to serve as a U.S. lawmaker — he represented Georgia in the Senate from 1895 to 1914. (He left his mark on the District by successfully campaigning to have the street named Georgia Avenue re-designated to its current location. In his home state, he has a county in his name.)
[The Senate’s first woman was also its last enslaver]
Other readers who wanted to contribute to The Post’s database researched congressmen who represented their home states. One Ramapo College class got to work researching several New York congressmen as a class assignment. Workers at Alabama’s state archives department searched for records from their state.
And for some, the database inspired their own projects. Sarah Cate Wolfson, a high school junior in New York City, started making a list of New York mayors who enslaved people, which she hopes to publish. Her father, who pointed out The Post’s article to Wolfson and inspired the 16-year-old to start her own project, once served as New York’s deputy mayor.
“It’s opened my eyes to how intrinsically linked New York and enslavement were,” Wolfson said. “I feel like you don’t need a street named after someone who owned slaves who you don’t even know about. There was a mayor named Richard Varick — I didn’t even know he existed before starting this. What’s the point of having a Varick Street if it’s tied to not a great person?”
Readers turned up many forms of records. Vera Cecelski, a 30-year-old manager of a historic site in Durham, N.C., sent wills and probate records demonstrating that several congressmen from her state were slaveholders. In one will, Rep. George Mumford’s aunt left him an enslaved girl named Flora. Mumford’s aunt left an enslaved woman named Dinah to another nephew. She wrote that if Dinah had future children, she wanted each of Dinah’s next four children to go to four different people among her beneficiaries.
David B. Mattern, a historian who lives in Charlottesville, said he spent more than 30 years editing the papers of James Madison, one of 12 American presidents who enslaved people. He pointed The Post toward a letter from Madison’s wife, Dolley, to her sister Anna, in which Dolley complained about her enslaved maid and asked about Anna’s.
“I would buy a maid but good ones are rare & as high as 8 & 900$— I should like to know what you gave for yours,” Dolley wrote. Along with an 1820 census that a Post journalist found, Madison’s letter helped demonstrate that Anna and her husband, Rep. Richard Cutts of Massachusetts, were slaveowners, adding Cutts to the database.
An 1804 portrait of U.S. First Lady Dolley Madison by artist Gilbert Stuart. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
By far the most prolific contributor has been Luke Voyles, a 26-year-old pursuing his PhD in history at the University of Alabama, who has identified 39 slaveholders and counting.
The thought of a list of all the slaveholders in Congress had crossed his mind as he worked on his list of more than 300 Confederates who served in Congress. When he was reading the news last month and saw The Post article, he joked that his first thought was, “Gosh darn it, somebody did it.”
Voyles got interested in civil rights as a child in rural Missouri reading biographies of presidents, then studied African history in college before turning his attention to the American South. He dove into helping with The Post’s project, often late at night after a day of teaching and working on his dissertation. He would turn on classical music from YouTube, then look at handwritten 19th-century documents until he found the name he was looking for.
“It was just a great way of trying to do the right thing, trying to do something ethical in my downtime,” he said. “When you do find the name, it’s a big rush. But also you know that you’ve done something that’s very meaningful.”
The Post’s original story said that slaveholders represented 37 states in Congress. Voyles has made that 38 states — he found an 1850 census demonstrating that Charles Debrille Poston, known as the “Father of Arizona” and its first delegate to Congress, was a slaveholder.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Gail and Mark Miller, graphics editing by Kevin Uhrmacher, copy editing by Anne Kenderdine, design by Leo Dominguez. Reader submissions managed by Teddy Amenabar.
Julie Zauzmer Weil covers D.C.'s local government. She has worked at The Post since 2013, including four years covering religion in America. Twitter Twitter | null | null | null | null | null |
The United States is stealing Afghanistan’s money
The United States crosses another red line in weaponizing global finance
Security guards watch over bank account holders in front of a Kabul bank on Sept. 29. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post/FTWP)
Over the past quarter-century, the United States has taken steps to exploit its centrality in global capital markets to advance its foreign policy interests. In the late 1990s, there were efforts to combat financial abuse via money laundering. After Sept. 11, 2001, came the crackdown on terrorist financing.
The 2005 sanctions against Banco Delta Asia so roiled North Korea that U.S. officials took notice of their newfound financial power. This led to the enhanced financial sanctions placed on Iran in 2010. Those measures had significant multilateral support. When the United States reimposed the Iran sanctions in 2018, however, it was able to block Iran’s access to Western financial markets, to the protestations of every other great power. The United States has essentially forced everyone to witness the firepower of its fully operational machinery of coercive financial statecraft.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August, Afghanistan’s central bank had deposits greater than $7 billion in the New York Federal Reserve branch. At the time, many observers noted that this gave the Biden administration financial leverage over the new regime. As Afghanistan’s humanitarian situation continued to worsen, the awkward question of what the Biden administration would do with those frozen funds persisted. Without recognizing the Taliban as the new rulers, what could the United States do with those funds?
That questioned was answered Friday. The White House issued an executive order “to Preserve Certain Afghanistan Central Bank Assets for the People of Afghanistan.” The order will take $3.5 billion and use those assets “for the benefit of the Afghan people and for Afghanistan’s future pending a judicial decision.”
Sounds like the right thing to do, yes? Some outlets covered it as such. Except that word “certain” in the previous paragraph is doing a lot of work. It turns out that the Biden White House has different plans for the other $3.5 billion. The federal government will seize those assets to compensate a small group of 9/11 victims.
In fairness to the Biden administration, they are navigating in legal waters not of their own making. Arianna Rafiq provides an excellent legal explainer, as does Erin Farrell Rosenberg, of why the Biden administration is making this move.
In essence, a group of 9/11 families secured a default judgment against the Taliban as a nonsovereign entity a decade ago. At the time it was viewed as a largely symbolic ruling. After the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last year, however, this same group of families went after the central bank’s assets held in the New York Fed. Using some bizarre logic, a federal district court ruled that because the Taliban now controlled Afghanistan, the plaintiffs could go after the frozen assets — even though the United States does not recognize the Taliban as the lawful rulers of Afghanistan (and even if they did, Afghanistan was not named as a sovereign defendant in the initial lawsuit).
The New York Times’ Charlie Savage explains that in the wake of this legal thicket “the White House’s National Security Council led months of deliberations on the central bank funds involving top officials from departments including Justice, State and Treasury.” The resulting executive order is an attempt by the Biden administration to preserve at least some of these funds for the Afghan people.
The procedural means through which the administration plans to follow through on this, however, hints at the legal farce requiring this move to work. According to Savage:
First, in his executive order on Friday morning, he used emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to consolidate all Da Afghanistan Bank assets in the United States in a segregated account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That has blocked them, but the Afghanistan central bank still owns them.
In seizing more than 40 percent of Afghanistan’s hard currency reserves — including a half-billion dollars of private bank assets required by law to be deposited into the central bank — the United States is taking a bad financial situation and making it worse. As Rafiq notes, “to the extent that the State was found liable and international law rules on reparation were given attention, reparation should be limited. If ever a case against crippling compensation could be made, it is here.” One Afghan American activist told Al Jazeera: “What Biden is proposing is not justice for 9/11 families, it is theft of public funds from an impoverished nation already on the brink of famine and starvation brought on by the United States’ disastrous withdrawal.”
It is not politically popular to declare that it is wrong for the federal government to take funds potentially available to the Taliban and give them to the families of those who died on Sept. 11. Stripped of legalese, Biden is proposing to divert Afghanistan state funds to help grieving citizens. The United States poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a fruitless effort at Afghan state-building; some Americans will not begrudge clawing some of that taxpayer money back.
None of that, however, changes the precedent of this move. The United States government is looting assets legally held by another sovereign government to reward its own citizens. If another country pulled this move — and another country might be tempted to try it using this case as precedent — it would be viewed as outright theft. It makes it much easier for other great powers to act in a similarly imperial manner.
The short-term implications of U.S. actions will be to free up some funds for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. The longer-term implication is to give other countries yet another reason to resent and fear the United States weaponization of the dollar. Because no matter what legal rationale is being provided, the federal government is stealing Afghanistan’s money. | null | null | null | null | null |
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