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ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Eileen Gu was out of time.
The 18-year-old had just won her second medal of the Beijing Games on Tuesday at Genting Snow Park, a silver in women’s slopestyle that sent Chinese fans and volunteers alike into a frenzy, but as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and set about the business of answering questions at her news conference, she had no time to revel. Gu had to rush off to practice for halfpipe.
“I’m actually missing it already, so that’s why I have to cut this short,” Gu said, switching from Mandarin to English, apologizing to the packed room of reporters before her. “I always want to try to use my voice as much as possible, but I really gotta go!”
At a Winter Olympics where the theme is pressure, Gu is a study in how to use it to one’s advantage. An American-born teen skiing for her mother’s native China, she is the face of these Games in Beijing, hustling her way through with a shot at becoming the first action-sport athlete to reach the podium in three events with eyes on both sides of the Pacific trained squarely on her.
She is two-thirds of the way there. Gu, won gold in freestyle skiing big air’s Olympic debut last week, took silver Tuesday in slopestyle and has a shot at clinching the milestone in halfpipe Friday.
Watching Gu work her way through a competition and then a gantlet of media obligations provides evidence of her relationship with pressure. The number of reporters in Gu’s post-medal news conference Tuesday was comparable to the last Olympic news conference of three-time gold medalist and snowboarding legend Shaun White’s career, held in the same room last week.
White is 35, with more than a decade of practice in front of the bright lights. Gu, a little more than half his age, looked equally as comfortable.
Perhaps it was the glow of her second medal, which wasn’t a given for her in slopestyle.
The discipline, which requires riders to string together several skill-sets into one clean run across a course with rails, ramps and imposing jumps, is Gu’s weakest by a slim margin, and she entered the third heat of Tuesday’s final in eighth place. After a big fall on her second run drew a loud groan from her many supporters — as many as the small, covid-era stands would allow — Gu mustered her strongest, surest run of the day to vault to silver with a score of 86.23.
“I was feeling a little bit tired mentally after big air,” Gu said Tuesday. “I almost felt like I wasn’t fully in it. I wasn’t in the zone. I wasn’t feeling that rush of excitement and feeling too calm, which sometimes doesn’t work out the best. I’m one of those people that needs the pressure on and glad I was able to put it down.”
Gu finished just behind Swiss gold medalist Mathilde Gremaud, with whom she also shared the podium in big air and who won with a score of 86.56 in her second run. Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru earned bronze with an 82.06 from her first run.
As was the case in big air, Gu needed a clutch final run to land on the podium.
Readying for her strongest event, halfpipe, with history at stake requires a balancing act. Gu did not stop for many of the TV stations vying for interviews directly after her slopestyle medal — she did the same Monday and was instead available for interviews after her halfpipe practice later in the day — and took just three questions at her news conference.
There, she flaunted her ability to deal with a different kind of pressure.
Gu is the subject of controversy at the Games because of her decision years ago to compete for China despite being raised in San Francisco. She has faced questions at and before these Olympics about whether she surrendered her U.S. citizenship without providing a clear answer — the International Olympic Committee requires athletes hold a passport for the country they represent, and China does not permit dual citizenship.
On Tuesday, an English-speaking reporter was granted the second of three questions Gu had time to answer. He identified himself as another Chinese American person who went to Gu’s rival high school in San Francisco, and began by asking a joke about why Gu hadn’t matriculated where he went. She answered in good humor.
Does whiplash count as pressure? The reporter's second question was if Gu had made a compromise doing business in China given the government's “official narrative on things like human rights allegations.” In addition to skiing for China, Gu has filmed commercials played constantly during the Games and earns money from Chinese sponsors.
“Here’s the thing,” Gu said. “I don’t really think of skiing as a business endeavor. I mean, I guess it’s my job, but also I do it because I love it, and I chose to ski for China because there’s this massive opportunity to spread the sport to people who haven’t even heard of it before. And honestly, I have met my goal. There are 300 million people on snow, so to even have influenced a tiny fraction of that makes me immensely proud.
“I feel as though I use my voice as much as I can in topics that are relevant and personal to myself and targeted toward people who are willing to listen to me. That being said, I’m also a teenage girl, so I do my best to make the world a better place. Yeah, I’m having fun while doing it: I’m skiing; I’m hoping to inspire young girls. So that’s my message right now.”
If Gu felt awkward or uncomfortable, there was no trace of it as she moved on to the next query, then shortly thereafter moved on to practice for her halfpipe event. She clearly thrives off the pressure of competition. She is appears prepared to handle pressure from the media.
The pressure of making history is her next hurdle. Gu confronts it Friday. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Montana-raised writer is barely known, even in his own state. Let’s hope Jane Campion’s film changes that.
Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst in “The Power of the Dog.” (Kirsty Griffin/Netflix/AP)
By Alan Weltzien
Savage, who died in 2003 at age 88, was, for the most part, ignored — even in his home state. Montana’s famous state literature anthology, a fat book arrogantly titled “The Last Best Place” (1989), made no mention or inclusion of Savage or his novelist wife, Elizabeth Savage. That’s inexcusable, given the quality of their fiction.
I’ve lived in Thomas Savage’s hometown, Dillon, for three decades. A generation ago I was advised by a literary friend to read Savage, whom I’d never heard of. I’ve not looked back.
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ is a bestseller, but its author, Walter Tevis, was hardly a one-hit wonder
Over many years I’ve published several articles about Savage, taught him to college freshmen, led tours through what I’ve called “Thomas Savage country,” and talked him up whenever possible. Last year, I published a biography about Savage that explores this complicated man and his work. In my mind, Savage ranks among the best 20th-century novelists from Montana. Over the course of 44 years, he published 13 novels — all received kudos from local and national reviewers. Critics such as Doris Grumbach and The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley consistently hailed his work, regarding Savage as one of the country’s first-rate novelists.
Savage was a PEN-Faulkner Award finalist (1989) for his final novel, “The Corner of Rife and Pacific.” That’s about the only recognition he received other than glowing reviews. During his lifetime, exactly one scholarly article was published about him. At the close of a Publishers Weekly interview in 1988, Savage acknowledged the limitations of his audience, saying: “I’m writing for rather highly educated people, and I think my writing is only going to appeal to people who have extreme sensitivity. This can come by birth or it can come by education. And if you don’t have it … you’ll never understand me.”
His books never sold well. Currently only a few of his novels are in print, including “The Power of the Dog” and “The Sheep Queen.” Emily Salkin Takoudes, the assistant editor at Little, Brown, who oversaw the publication of Savage’s two best novels, estimates that when “Power” was first published in 1967, it sold 1,000 copies at most.
Savage’s obscurity became part of reviewers’ copy. The author claimed to know almost nothing about marketing his novels or about other Montana writers. In his day, a book launch consisted of one Manhattan cocktail party. With Campion’s film (in which I had a small consulting role), perhaps Savage will finally get the rousing toast he deserves.
Campion became obsessed with the novel when her stepmother lent her a copy in 2017. It was not the first time Hollywood took interest in “The Power of the Dog.” The novel had been optioned multiple times, with Paul Newman and Gérard Depardieu in mind for the role of Phil Burbank, the book’s complicated protagonist, according to Deadline. But Campion’s tenacity paid off. Her film captures the harder, harsher human landscape of Savage’s brilliant book.
Savage’s idea of the West was unlike that celebrated in most popular cultural portraits of the region. He knew a different reality from the inside, and though he left Montana at 22 (but for periodic visits), his imagination remained there. He owned southwest Montana (and Idaho’s Lemhi River Valley) in ways that only writers do. He possessed a photographic memory and re-created Dillon, the Beaverhead Valley and Horse Prairie, Mont., from the coast of Maine, where he and his family lived for 30 years and where he wrote most of his novels. Eight of his novels are set in his home ground of Montana’s southwest corner. The other five all have Montana connections.
The backstory for ‘A River Runs Through It’ has arrived, 45 years later
Annie Proulx, long a Savage fan, wrote about him in the afterword to a new edition of “The Power of the Dog”: “Something aching and lonely and terrible of the west is forever caught on his pages.” Savage’s nephew Sandy James wrote a short verse that captures much of Savage’s world: “Of mountains and valleys / of cold and cruelty / of stony silence / writes Thomas Savage / queerly.”
Savage was gay, though he married a woman and had three children. He loved family more than anything. But in Adrienne Rich’s immortal phrase, he was “split at the root,” and the sexual and gender tensions infused his life and fiction. Savage’s West is also a queer West. His plots don’t feature happy endings. He tended to mask his gay self through self-accusation and self-condemnation. Though he claimed to never write autobiography, he wrote deeply autobiographical fiction. He kept rewriting his home ground and town, as well as family members.
Phil Burbank is based on Savage’s step-uncle, eccentric William “Bill” Brenner, who died of blackleg just as Phil dies of anthrax. A mechanical wizard, Bill bathed rarely, avoided gloves, didn’t go to town and played excellent banjo. Rose Gordon and George Burbank represent versions of Savage’s mother, Beth, and his stepfather, Charlie Brenner. Peter Gordon poses the first clear self-representation of Savage, also a stepson on the Brenner (Burbank) cattle ranch. In the next half-dozen novels, Savage fictitiously grows up, and in “Sheep Queen,” the protagonist narrator is a middle-aged novelist named Tom Burton.
When Campion visited me in 2018 in preparation for the film, she took dozens of photos of Savage’s home ground. When she left the ranch, she looked back and saw the dog formation in rock that she’s said felt like a blessing from Savage to make the movie. She and Benedict Cumberbatch have repeatedly saluted Savage’s “Power” as a classic in American literature. I hope the movie brings him the recognition he deserves.
Alan Weltzien is a professor emeritus at the University of Montana Western and the author of 10 books, including “A Father and an Island” and “Savage West: The Life and Fiction of Thomas Savage.”
By Thomas Savage
Little, Brown. 228 pp. Paperback, $16.99 | null | null | null | null | null |
Weekend concerts featuring a cast studded with Broadway talent leave a critic wondering why there can’t be more theater that begins life on the arts center’s stages.
Stephanie J. Block singing “Defying Gravity” from the musical “Wicked” in “50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center.” (Scott Suchman/Kennedy Center)
The nostalgia trip was epic. A baker’s dozen of Broadway luminaries sang tune after memorable tune in the Kennedy Center Opera House last weekend, from some of the 700 musical-theater productions that have unfolded on the arts center’s stages over the past five decades.
Accompanied buoyantly by the Opera House Orchestra, Norm Lewis earned a mid-performance standing ovation with “Stars” from “Les Misérables.” Vanessa Williams and Sierra Boggess mixed creamy notes for a fusion of Stephen Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind” and “Not a Day Goes By.” Andrew Rannells provoked a chorus of nervous laughs with the naughtily heretical “I Believe” from “The Book of Mormon.” And in a pair of heartstring-tugging coups, Francis Ruffelle, the original Eponine in “Les Misérables,” reprised an emotion-laden “On My Own” while Andrea McArdle, the original Annie, sang that anthem of eternal sunshine, “Tomorrow.”
After two years of pandemic-generated disappointments for the performing arts, the two sold-out nights of “50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center” were engineered for uplift — and a reminder of the role the nation’s arts center has played as an amplifier for musical theater. The audience’s roaring reception Friday night (there was a second show Saturday) signaled the belief that we’ve collectively earned this evening of melodic pats on the back.
But the jogging of memories of all that has transpired in the arts palace on the Potomac River nudged me in a more pensive direction: What, if anything, is the Kennedy Center doing to create more such memories? The exciting acts of “50 Years of Broadway,” directed by Marc Bruni, were a joyful paean to the past, and to the signature events of American musical theater in which the institution has figured. Where, one wonders, are those kind of ambitions now?
As emcee James Monroe Iglehart explained, three musicals featured in the show, “Pippin,” “Annie” and “Les Misérables,” hold special significance to Washington: They all tried out at the Kennedy Center before making their triumphant Broadway debuts. A special tribute was included on this pair of evenings, too, to Stephen Sondheim, taking note of his recent death and honoring his own deep ties to the institution. The center’s six-musical Sondheim Celebration in 2002 is widely regarded as a watershed in the centering of Sondheim’s work in American culture. It shouldn’t be forgotten, either, that the arts center was a producer in 2003 of Sondheim and John Weidman’s “Bounce,” which later became “Road Show,” the last Sondheim musical to debut during his lifetime.
All these events occurred before Deborah F. Rutter assumed the Kennedy Center presidency in September 2014. Many of the productions took place during the tenures of Roger L. Stevens, the arts center’s founding chairman, and Michael M. Kaiser, Rutter’s predecessor. (Mr. Stevens, as he was respectfully known, did not even merit a mention during the celebratory anthology show). Over the past 7½ years, the center has become ever more predictably a high-end road house, its theater bookings filled almost exclusively with national tours. The last center-produced musical, “Little Dancer,” was commissioned by Kaiser and staged, with Tiler Peck, Boyd Gaines and the late Rebecca Luker in the leads, in November 2014.
Jeffrey Finn, the center’s vice president and executive producer of theater, is a retrospective technician: His “Broadway Center Stage” series, soon to embark on its fourth season, has offered some sterling short-run concert revivals of such musicals as “Next to Normal,” “The Who’s Tommy” and “The Music Man.” The pre-Broadway run in 2018 of the jukebox musical “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations” was a rare Eisenhower Theater tryout in the Rutter era. Original theater programming has been focused chiefly on shows for young adults.
Jeffery Finn, creator and programmer of Broadway Center Stage
Nothing on the Kennedy Center’s musical-theater roster has occurred even in the revival category to rival its productions of “Ragtime” (2009) and “Follies” (2011), both of which transferred to Broadway for modest engagements. And there has certainly been nothing on the scale of the Sondheim Celebration or even, for that matter, the 2008 curation of August Wilson’s 10-play 20th-century cycle.
The Kennedy Center’s mission statement says that one of its three pillars is “presenting, producing, and curating world-class art.” In theater, it’s relying these days far more on curating. I’ve asked the genial Finn on several occasions whether the arts center might originate more work. “It’s a goal of mine. It’s something that I always want to do,” he told me last month, adding that the time needed for the technical aspects of a new production, in the center’s limited and in-demand spaces, is hard to come by.
That seems sometimes to stymie the “producing” aspect of its mission. Although Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York traditionally has performed a broader creative role than the Kennedy Center, that complex contains many more performance spaces. Lincoln Center Theater, one of the constituent companies, just completed a presentation of an original (if flawed) musical, “Flying Over Sunset,” in its Vivian Beaumont Theater. In its second space, the Mitzi Newhouse, an original opera, “Intimate Apparel” by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage, is having its world premiere.
Still, “50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center” had me nostalgic for the days when ambitious new theater was on the arts center’s agenda. So why can’t those concerts serve as a new source of inspiration?
Of course, two-nights-only doesn’t amount to a major commitment, but the assembled talent suggested the actors’ understanding of what Kennedy Center exposure can mean. The results were often thrilling: LaChanze with “Waiting for Life to Begin” from “Once on This Island”; Stephanie J. Block belting “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from “Funny Girl” and “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked”; Tony Yazbeck tapping to the Gershwins’ “I Can’t Be Bothered Now” from “Crazy for You”; Beth Leavel offering a rousing “Some People” from “Gypsy”; Gavin Creel singing “Pippin’s” “Corner of the Sky”; Betsy Wolfe and Rannells with “Suddenly Seymour” from “Little Shop of Horrors.” It went on and on.
Anyone who was in the Opera House last weekend knows what I mean when I say: You should have been there. They are words I long to write once again — about something theatrical at the Kennedy Center that no one has ever seen.
Suzan-Lori Parks’s provocative ‘White Noise,’ with its shocking echoes of slavery, will knock the wind out of you | null | null | null | null | null |
Levi’s executive resigns, says company pushed her out for vocally opposing covid rules in schools
A Levi's store in London in 2018. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)
The president of the Levi’s brand resigned Sunday, saying that she was pushed out of the company for being outspokenly critical of covid restrictions in schools.
Jennifer Sey, who had been the president of the Levi’s brand at Levi Strauss and Co. since 2020, said in a blog post that she resigned “to keep my voice.”
In San Francisco, where the company is based, Sey was part of a group of parents opposed to school closures, and she said she attended meetings with the office of Mayor London Breed (D) and organized rallies against the policies. She moved her family to Denver — a city that is led by Democrats but has had less strict coronavirus rules than many other major U.S. cities — “so that my kindergartner could finally experience real school.”
She told the story of her family’s move to a news station in the Bay Area and discussed it during an appearance on a Fox News show hosted by Laura Ingraham, who has been known to spread misinformation about the coronavirus. That 2021 appearance was the “last straw” for Levi’s, Sey said. Leaders, including the company’s chief executive, Chip Bergh, had for months urged her to stop talking about the issue, and the dispute bled into an executive meeting where Sey said Bergh remarked that she was “acting like Donald Trump.”
Within the past month, she said, Bergh told her it was “untenable” for her to remain at the company. In the fall, she said, Bergh had told her she was “on track” to take his place, so long as she ceased talking about coronavirus policies in schools. Sey said she turned down a $1 million severance package, which she said would have included a nondisclosure agreement precluding her from speaking “about why I’d been pushed out.”
Levi Strauss and Co. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Coronavirus policies in schools have been a nationwide flash point throughout the pandemic. While severe illness from covid-19 among children is rare, experts say, some severe cases and deaths have been reported. At the same time, some health experts have raised concerns that school closures and mask mandates could do more harm than good for children.
Earlier this month, the Democratic governors of four states announced they would soon lift mask requirements for schools, reflecting a nationwide shift away from restrictions as coronavirus cases fall and pressure for a return to normalcy rises.
Although many U.S. schools closed in earlier waves of the pandemic, most districts remained open for in-person learning throughout the omicron variant’s winter spike, mindful of the damage that remote education inflicted last year and determined to avoid a repeat. Still, fights continued among politicians, administrators, teachers and parents.
Amid the omicron surge, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) said of the students in the nation’s largest school district: “The safest place for our children is a school building. And we are going to keep our schools open and ensure that our children are safe in a safe environment.”
Sey published her essay in a newsletter, “Common Sense,” hosted by Bari Weiss, a former opinion writer for the New York Times. Weiss — known for her right-leaning takes that often garnered controversy, including a piece praising cultural appropriation — resigned from the paper in the summer of 2020 after she said leftist critics on Twitter and within the paper had pushed her out. | null | null | null | null | null |
What to know about renting a storage unit
Combining households, renovating your living room or turning that spare bedroom into an office often means clearing out your possessions. But not all home projects have to involve a Marie Kondo-style purge. What about items that are still a part of your life but that just need a temporary home? That’s where self-storage comes in.
You don’t have to look far to find a storage facility these days: In 2021, there were 50,523 in the United States, up from 44,149 in 2017, according to the 2022 Self-Storage Almanac, which tracks industry statistics. And self-storage is popular, with record occupancies of 94.5 percent last year.
“People turn to self-storage usually because of some sort of life transition, such as moving or downsizing. It’s not just that you have too much stuff,” says McKall Morris, spokesperson for Extra Space Storage, one of the largest self-storage companies, with more than 2,000 properties nationwide. “Our typical customer is new to self-storage, renting for two years or less — usually about three months — and storing personal belongings. We’re also seeing small businesses rent space for extra storage of inventory or equipment.”
If you find yourself in need of some extra elbow room, here’s what to consider when selecting a self-storage facility.
Interior vs. exterior storage. An interior unit is like a supersize walk-in closet. You’ll typically bring your items to a load-in area, transfer them to a dolly and move them to your unit. Many facilities have multiple stories, so you may need to take an elevator. Some locations are designed so you can drive up to your unit. Interior spaces are protected from the elements, but there can be drawbacks. “Self-storage facilities typically have nice wide hallways and large individual unit doors, but you still may have to squeeze through one or more standard-size doors to access the hallway to your unit,” says Mark Aselstine, who used several storage units for his former business, Uncorked Ventures in California.
An exterior unit is akin to a garage. You can drive up to the door and load items directly into your unit. “You’d think that getting a drive-up unit would be amazing,” Aselstine says. “While it is often more convenient and accessible for loading, I often found my unit blocked by trucks, and it seems like people are always milling outside exterior units.”
How to know if your home is at risk for natural disasters, and what to do if it is
Customer service. The store manager should be professional, knowledgeable and familiar with the property. If they can’t answer your questions, keep looking, Morris says. Take note that some independent facilities are not staffed. With these, you can rent a unit online or contact a call center and work with an agent to choose and lease space. There should be a property manager on-call in case an issue arises, but they don’t work on-site.
Size. Morris says the biggest mistakes renters make are either overestimating or underestimating the space they need, so they either pay too much or have to rent two units. “Know what you are going to store,” she says. “Create an informal list and take some pictures you can show to the facility manager.” Look online for size guides to get an idea of what a unit will hold. For example, a 10-by-10-foot unit can generally store the contents of two bedrooms or a full living room.
The unit itself. Although it may be tempting to rent a unit sight unseen, that’s a mistake, says real estate agent Ken Pozek, who rented space for a year while waiting for his house to be built in Orlando. Pozek advises his clients to do their research and tour the facility. “You need to see the exact unit you intend to rent: what it looks like, what it smells like, does it live up to your standards,” he says. Assuming there is more than one option in your area, it can also pay to compare prices.
Access. Assess your schedule to determine how often you will need to access the unit — and when. Is the facility open 24/7, or does it have limited hours? A place that is only open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. may not fit your schedule. For example, Aselstine chose a facility that was open 6 a.m. to midnight.
Climate control. Surprisingly, a number of self-storage properties do not have air conditioning or heating. If your location gets extremely hot, cold, humid or dry, you should consider upgrading to a climate-controlled facility. Clothing may weather temperature swings, but an antique table may not. By moderating temperature, climate control can keep your items from growing mold, rusting, freezing or disintegrating. Some self-storage brands also offer specialty climate-controlled options for art, electronics and wine.
Security. A facility should be equipped with 24-hour video surveillance, door alarms and keypad entry gates. Is there someone on-site most of the time, or is the facility unprotected? Look for ample lighting and perimeter fencing. High-tech locations may use an app for opening gates and doors. Also check the type of locks used on units. The best is a cylinder lock that is fully embedded in the door, so it can’t be cut.
Price. Self-storage pricing is location-specific and based on the number of available units, the size, whether it’s climate-controlled and whether it’s a drive-up facility. According to the Self-Storage Almanac, in 2021, a 10-by-10-foot unit without climate control rented for $111.67 per month on average; a unit with climate control was $146.72. With few exceptions, contracts are month to month. Although you may get an enticing introductory offer, brace yourself for a rate increase every few months. “It’s the most annoying thing ever,” Aselstine says. “After that great intro rate, they up the price, figuring it’s more work for you to move than to pay the increase.” Be sure to ask about the company’s rent-increase practices. To save a few bucks, switch to a smaller unit once you start moving out items.
Insurance. Although the contents of your unit may be covered by your homeowners policy, it’s a good idea to buy self-storage insurance. That way, if anything happens to your stuff — a fire or burglary, for example — you receive money to replace what’s damaged or lost. The easiest way to buy this insurance is to do so when you rent your unit, because self-storage companies usually sell it as an add-on to your lease. Pricing can be as little as $9 per month for $2,500 of coverage, says James Appleton of MiniCo Insurance Agency, one of the largest self-storage insurers. Because customer storage (sometimes called “tenant”) insurance is a temporary policy, anyone can buy it, regardless of credit score; there is usually no deductible; and losses aren’t reported to your regular insurance carrier, so you don’t incur a rate increase.
Restrictions. For the most part, self-storage companies prohibit food, perishable goods, nonworking vehicles and anything flammable or combustible, such as car batteries, propane tanks or gasoline. And, adds Morris: “You can’t store yourself. You can’t live in a unit or use it as a recreational facility.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The network avoids mentions of diplomatic boycotts, human-rights abuses and questions about the host nation as it seeks to build an audience
People from China's Uyghur Muslim ethnic group attend a rally against the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games over China's treatment of the minority, near the Chinese consulate in Istanbul on Feb. 4. (Murad Sezer/Reuters)
As NBC kicked off its marathon of Olympic snowboarding, skiing and skating coverage earlier this month, network host Mike Tirico spared a few words for the less TV-friendly activities of the event’s host nation, China.
“Everyone and everything attached to these games is facing questions,” he said during a broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing on Feb. 4. “The United States government is not here. A diplomatic boycott announced this fall, joined by Canada, Great Britain and Australia, cited China’s human rights record and the U.S. government’s declaration that the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of committing genocide on the Uyghur Muslim population.”
But any viewers hoping for further exploration of those “questions” would probably be disappointed.
NBC, which has paid the International Olympic Committee billions of dollars for the exclusive U.S. television and digital rights to the games, has scarcely broken from its wall-to-wall sports coverage to report on any of the more troubling aspects surrounding China.
Since opening day, Tirico and NBC’s other hosts haven’t said another word about the diplomatic boycott (which India has also joined) or a long list of other issues, such the Chinese government’s oppression in Tibet, its crackdown in Hong Kong, its threats to invade Taiwan, its aggression in the South China Sea, or its lack of cooperation in international efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nor — besides brief mentions — has the network delved into issues specific to the Olympics, such as China’s surveillance of athletes, or government threats to punish those who speak out during the Games. NBC also hasn’t explained why the IOC awarded the games to Beijing in the first place, just 14 years after the city hosted the Summer Olympics. (Short answer: Beijing was one of only two cities to guarantee funding for its bid.)
American Olympic telecasts, of course, are rarely seminars on geopolitical issues, just as broadcasts of NFL games aren’t typically forums for discussing football’s association with traumatic brain injuries or domestic violence. The Olympics tend instead to be glossy entertainment spectacles, built around sports and the stories of superstar athletes, particularly Americans. The feel-good production is driven by the need to deliver large audiences to satisfy advertisers and to recoup prodigious rights fees. NBC’s parent company, Comcast Corp., paid about $1.3 billion to the International Olympic Committee to carry this year’s Olympics, and billions more to broadcast future Games.
To be clear: NBC’s sports division — not its news division — produces the telecasts.
Nonetheless, the network’s avoidance of many of the issues surrounding the host nation is striking, given that these Olympics may be among the most controversial and politically loaded in recent Olympic history. The circumstances this time appear even more fraught than in 2008 when China presented the Summer Games as a kind of party celebrating its emergence as a global superpower.
“It’s not too much to ask [NBC to cover] both the scintillating athletic performances and the wider political context in which they are unfolding,” said Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University whose research has focused on the Olympics’ political history.
Given bipartisan criticism of China and deeply negative public opinion in the United States, he added, NBC essentially has “structured permission” to examine more than just the results of the curling and bobsled competitions. “To not offer such vital political context may actually be more conspicuous than just offering it,” he said.
What’s more, NBC may be in the strongest position of any broadcaster in the world to withstand criticism from China or the International Olympic Committee by raising issues that go beyond the arena. Its rights payments to the IOC — some $7.75 billion, covering six Olympics until 2032 — account for as much as 40 percent of the international organization’s revenue, giving NBC ample clout and leverage.
In response to a request for comment, NBC Sports spokesman Chris McCloskey said in a statement: “We have covered the geopolitical issues of these Games extensively and, as we’ve said all along, we’ll continue to cover them if and when they impact the athletes and the competition. Viewers are tuning in to watch the Olympics.”
NBC has previously pointed to Tirico’s comments, and those by “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie and two analysts, during the Opening Ceremonies as evidence that it is providing the full context of the Games. (Guthrie during the Opening Ceremonies commented, “There is unquestionably more controversy and complications around these Games than any in our lifetimes” and also described China’s selection of a Uyghur athlete to light the Olympic torch as an “in-your-face” response to the diplomatic boycott.)
Outside these mentions, however, NBC couldn’t provide further support for McCloskey’s assertion that it has “extensively” covered these issues.
The network also cited Tirico’s report a week ago about Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star and three-time Olympian who has been the subject of international attention.
In November, Peng posted allegations of sexual assault against China’s former vice premier, Zhang Gaoli, on social media. The post was quickly removed, and Peng then disappeared for nearly a month, prompting concerns for her safety. When she reemerged last month, she disavowed her allegations — a reversal many suggested was prompted by threats from Chinese officials. Tirico reported that IOC President Thomas Bach had met with Peng over the previous weekend, and that she had attended several Olympic events. He added that “questions about her ability to speak freely continue to persist.”
But NBC went no further. In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, an executive producer said the network hadn’t requested an interview with Peng, despite her presence at times just a few feet from NBC’s cameras at the Games.
As it has in previous Olympic telecasts, NBC has left many of the harder realities of China and the Olympics to its news division, segregating these reports from its hours-long prime time broadcasts.
“NBC Nightly News,” anchored by Lester Holt, reported on several unflattering aspects of the Games before the competition began, including the Chinese government’s pursuit of fugitive Hong Kong protesters, its spying in the United States, and the systematic abuses of its Muslim citizens.
But the bulk of its coverage has been about the competition itself, along with soft features on American athletes, including a compilation of their TikTok videos.
The network’s prime-time telecasts haven’t differed much from its sports-only Olympics coverage in years past. NBC’s approach was even predicted by the sportscaster Bob Costas, who hosted 12 previous Olympics telecasts for the network. During an interview on CNN last month, he anticipated that NBC would “acknowledge the issues at the beginning, and then address them only if something specific that cannot be ignored happens during the course of the Games.”
NBC may be faced with a no-win situation no matter how it presents the games, said Paul J. MacArthur, a Utica College professor who has studied Olympic broadcasting.
“No matter how much or how little airtime the network dedicates to geopolitical issues during the Olympic broadcast, it will face criticism,” he said. “Some will want NBC to focus more on political issues, some will be unhappy with the nature of its political coverage within the Olympic broadcast, and some will want NBC to just stick to sports.” | null | null | null | null | null |
(Moritz Vennemann/Moritz Vennemann/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
Time and again, pastor Andres Arango poured holy water on the heads of his parishioners during baptismal ceremonies, performing the Catholic sacrament that signifies the reversal of all past sins and the birth of an innocent person.
“We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Arango, a priest in the Diocese of Phoenix, repeated during countless ceremonies.
But Arango misused one word that eventually compromised the validity of all of those rituals: Instead of saying “I baptize you,” he used the word “We,” the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has announced in a news release.
Arango’s incorrect word nullified all of the baptisms the priest performed using that language, a probe conducted by the diocese recently revealed.
“If you were baptized using the wrong words, that means your baptism is invalid, and you are not baptized,” the diocese said on its website. “You will need to be baptized.”
Following the news, Arango, who was named pastor of St. Gregory Parish in Phoenix in April 2017, resigned. His resignation became effective on Feb. 1.
“It saddens me to learn that I have performed invalid baptisms throughout my ministry as a priest by regularly using an incorrect formula,” Arango said in a letter published on the Diocese of Phoenix’s website. “I deeply regret my error and how this has affected numerous people in your parish and elsewhere.”
Arango did not immediately respond to messages from The Washington Post early Tuesday. Neither the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix nor St. Gregory Catholic Church answered messages from The Post early Tuesday.
The mistake goes beyond baptism, the first Catholic sacrament. Because baptism is a sacrament that opens the door to others, if an individual was improperly baptized by Arango and later received other sacraments, such as confirmation or marriage, they may need to repeat some or all of those sacraments after they are validly baptized.
In 2020, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi said there appeared to be other instances of priests changing the wording during baptisms. Morandi said that, according to the Vatican, no priest shall add, remove or change “anything in the liturgy on his own authority” — an incident that would likely invalidate the sacrament.
Before joining the Diocese of Phoenix, Arango was a member of the Eudist community, an order dedicated to the training of future priests and to the preaching of missions. According to the diocese, Arango was used to saying “We baptize you,” instead of “I,” when presiding over baptisms in both Spanish and English.
After it was reported to Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted that Arango was using the wrong word, a “careful study” found that “all of the baptisms he has performed until June 17, 2021, are presumed invalid.”
Any baptisms Arango performed after June 17, 2021, are presumed valid, the Diocese of Phoenix said, and there is no need to repeat them.
Olmsted, who said he does not believe Arango acted in bad faith, pledged to help correct any invalid baptisms.
According to the Diocese of Phoenix, Arango “has not disqualified himself from his vocation and ministry” and will continue to help those who were incorrectly baptized. It added that he remains in “good standing” as a priest. The diocese said that as of right now, other sacraments performed by Arango are considered valid.
The priest is asking his parishioners for forgiveness.
“I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience my actions have caused and genuinely ask for your prayers, forgiveness, and understanding,” Arango said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Black internationalism is the antidote to America’s love of war
How Charlotta Bass, a Black woman and peace activist, anticipated America’s path to militarism
From left, Vincent Hallinan, Charlotta Bass and Paul Robeson in California in August 1952. (Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty Images)
By Denise Lynn
Denise Lynn is author of "Where is Juliet Stuart Poyntz? Gender, Spycraft, and Anti-Stalinism in the Early Cold War" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021). She is professor of history and director of gender and Africana studies at the University of Southern Indiana.
A hundred different organized groups have urged the Biden administration to reject war with Russia, despite mounting tensions caused by Russia moving closer to invading Ukraine. Polling shows little public support for a U.S. military response, nor has the administration shown any inclination toward one. But some voices in D.C. would like to see a more hawkish response.
We will see how these tensions unfold in the days and weeks ahead. Yet in a moment like this, it is worth reflecting on how peace activism has been marginalized in Washington. This marginalization has its roots in the Cold War, when voices calling for peace — especially those who highlighted how U.S. militarism harmed freedom abroad and at home — were systemically silenced. A key example comes from the work of Charlotta Bass, a Black woman, journalist and peace activist.
Bass, originally from Rhode Island, moved to California in 1910. She began working for John Neimore’s newspaper the Owl. When Neimore unexpectedly died, Bass took over the paper, renaming it the California Eagle. It was one of California’s earliest Black newspapers. From the beginning, the paper focused on civil rights issues in the growing Los Angeles metropolitan area. Bass combined journalism and editing with social justice activism. She had been a registered Republican for decades, but during World War II, her politics shifted further to the left and she began working with more liberals and leftists, including communists.
She and other liberals grew concerned after the war, as U.S. domestic and foreign policy became increasingly focused on communist containment. She was an early and outspoken critic of Cold War policy and believed it would lead to a state of permanent war. Perhaps more importantly, Bass worried a commitment to anti-communism would be catastrophic for global freedom struggles. She worried anti-communism would empower the United States to silence its critics, specifically in the civil rights movement, and intervene in independence movements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
In 1948, she became active in Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party run for president. Wallace criticized the Truman administration’s increased militarization, its stand against the Soviet Union, and the wedding of the civilian and military economies. The California Eagle became a major venue for criticizing the containment policy and anti-communist harassment, and for publicizing global peace efforts. By this point, Bass had become a recognized leader among global peace advocates. In 1949, she was invited to attend the Women’s Asiatic Conference in China to encourage the United States to open relations, but she was unable to attend.
In January 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced his approval for building a hydrogen bomb. By that summer, the United States led NATO forces to intervene in Korea’s civil war. Bass and peace advocates around the world worried about the use of nuclear weapons during the war, especially given that U.S. policymakers, including Truman, did not dismiss the possibility. She also argued that U.S. intervention in Korea came even as U.S. officials ignored or enabled racist violence at home.
That year, she was invited to attend the Defenders of Peace conference in Prague. Bass noted that the goal of the attendees was to prevent another world war, and the group hoped the Stockholm Appeal, known pejoratively as the “Ban the Bomb” petition, was the best way to accomplish it. The petition, created in March 1950 by the Partisans of Peace, a group linked to the Soviet’s World Council of Peace, called for international control of nuclear weapons and charging any nation that used them with human rights abuses. Weeks after the start of the Korean War, the petition gained thousands of signatures. When Bass returned home, she used her newspaper to circulate news of the petition and to urge her readers to sign.
Unfortunately, Secretary of State Dean Acheson dismissed the petition as communist propaganda, targeting those that advocated it as enemies of the state. Bass noted that the petition threatened Acheson and the State Department because of its success and its criticism of U.S. policy.
In 1950, while no law prevented peace advocacy, those who criticized U.S. Cold War policy and its ever-increasing military budget were denounced, harassed and sometimes imprisoned and deported.
For her efforts, Bass was harassed and followed by the FBI beginning in 1942. To link her to a larger communist conspiracy, the FBI gathered evidence that included her opposition to restrictive covenants, advocacy for anti-lynching legislation and calls for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. Authorities also saw Bass’s connections to activists abroad and the global peace movement as suspicious.
Because of her activism, she was unable to secure a visa in 1949 and was not allowed to attend the Women’s Asiatic Conference in China. She did travel to the Prague conference, but her movements were monitored. After the conference, Bass traveled to the Soviet Union to meet again with some of the Russian delegates she met in Prague. The FBI later questioned her about the trip and ordered her to surrender her passport, which she refused to do.
The FBI added her to its security index, which identified individuals who would be detained during a national security crisis. On a few occasions, FBI agents noted that she was not a communist and tried to close her file. But FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover rejected that conclusion. In 1946, an informant claimed, without evidence, that she was a concealed communist, justifying surveillance that lasted until her death in 1969. Even in her elder years, when she suffered from debilitating arthritis, the FBI considered her a national security threat.
Bass would later write that the United States ignored an important opportunity with the “Ban the Bomb” petition. She insisted that had the country adopted its basic tenets, it would not have devoted so much time and billions of dollars shunning China and the Soviet Union. She and her colleagues had warned that the Cold War, and its first theater of conflict in Korea, was a watershed moment.
Then, U.S. intervention occurred despite widespread opposition, which according to historian Marilyn Young taught American politicians that permission was not needed to fight a war. It also justified a bloated military budget at the expense of social welfare. And it occurred at a time when anti-communists likened social welfare programs to a communist plot, undermining support for popular and necessary social programs.
By accusing peace activists of allying with the “enemy” and expanding the surveillance state to monitor them, the United States became what Bass had warned about: a nation devoted to war while continuing to deny its citizens the dignity of their basic needs. Today, the United States has hundreds of bases overseas and has recently approved the largest military budget in history; meanwhile, millions of Americans have little access to housing, food and health care, and systemic racism persists. On the eve of the Cold War, Bass warned that justice could not exist in a nation committed to war; unfortunately, policymakers did not heed the warning. | null | null | null | null | null |
Democracy goes far beyond voting rights
The Black freedom struggle embraced democracy as a collective practice as much as a system of rules and individual rights
Faith leaders, including the Rev. Stephen A. Green, are detained with students after staging a sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 18 to urge the Senate to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
By Daniel Martinez HoSang
Daniel Martinez HoSang is associate professor of ethnicity, race & migration at Yale and author of "A Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone."
Voting rights legislation introduced by congressional Democrats in the fall is on life support. Indeed, the untimely collapse of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act came within just a few days of President Biden’s speech last month in Atlanta championing the measures.
That speech conjured the heroes of the civil rights movement — Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, John Lewis — to decry the new wave of Republican legislation restricting voting access at the state and local levels. Biden insisted that voting rights represented the highest of democratic ideals: “The right to vote and to have that vote counted is democracy’s threshold liberty. Without it, nothing is possible, but with it, anything is possible.” Securing the right to vote and ending widespread voter suppression were indeed central aims of groups such as King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and many hundreds of local grass-roots organizations.
At the same time, King and many others asserted a vision of democracy that went well beyond voting. As scholar and activist Angela Davis has written, “When democracy is reduced to the simple fact of elections … whatever we might consider to be freedom has disappeared.” Democracy, in this tradition, is a verb — a collective practice as much as a system of rules and individual rights.
Today, in the absence of federal voting rights legislation, struggles over the meaning of democracy, governance and democratic participation will turn again to the states and local jurisdictions, much as they did during the civil rights movement. Their experiences contesting voter suppression to expand democratic practices and consciousness hold crucial lessons for our current moment.
One such example unfolded 58 years ago in Hattiesburg, Miss., amid a voting rights drive organized by SNCC that featured the famed organizer and trainer Ella Baker. Then, as now, federal voting rights legislation faced years of obstruction in Congress. And while national advocates pressed for change in Washington, it was in local communities such as Hattiesburg that the engine of democracy churned most powerfully.
In Hattiesburg, a combination of poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures prevented nearly every Black resident in the surrounding county from registering to vote. Black people who attempted to register faced constant threats of violence and jail. Suppression of the Black vote was central to maintaining the region’s rigid Jim Crow structure and bolstering the authority of White elites and the system of one-party rule they controlled.
In response, a much broader and more transformative model of democratic participation emerged — reaching far beyond the issue of voting to foster practices of education, knowledge-making and community development that were themselves forms of collective self-governance.
Even before the mass voter registration campaigns of the early 1960s, Baker spent dozens of years helping to build small organizations across the South, recruiting people to identify the issues that shaped their lives. She embraced models such as the “citizenship schools” activated across the region in the 1950s, which held that democratic participation and governance could not be secured through voter registration alone. New voters would have to think, teach and learn about what governance meant to them and their communities. These popular education programs marshaled the talents and experiences of Black teachers (mostly Black women) to educate and engage adult learners. They implicitly rejected the dominant models of leadership, in which an exceptional person who allegedly bore unique skills and capacities was elevated and empowered to act on behalf of others.
Baker brought these experiences and commitments to a mass meeting on Jan. 21, 1964, at St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Hattiesburg, “with every seat filled, every aisle packed, the doorways jammed [with] … a thousand people, massed tight in blackness.” Such meetings were important tactics and triumphs in and of themselves, made possible by many thousands of one-on-one conversations in living rooms and on front porches across the region.
The crowd rose to its feet to sing freedom songs, and eventually, the 60-year-old Baker moved to the podium. With more than three decades of organizing and movement-building experience, Baker was deeply respected by the throngs of local people, student organizers, and faith and civil rights leaders assembled in the sanctuary.
She began by noting that some civil rights leaders had recently claimed that “the final stages of the freedom struggle” had arrived, implying that once the right to vote had been secured and segregation had been outlawed, freedom would be realized. Baker disagreed. She insisted, “Even tomorrow, if every vestige of racial discrimination were wiped out, if all of us became free enough to go down and to associate with all the people we wanted to associate, we still are not free.” The freedom struggle was just at the beginning. Voting alone would not address the “millions of people who go to bed hungry every night.” She insisted, “People cannot be free until there is enough work in the land to give everybody a job.” The right to vote could never be separated from a vision of what the ballot could be used to achieve.
She believed in the power of group-based political education and consciousness, or what she described as “the information that comes from lots and lots of study.” She referenced SNCC’s plan to open dozens of Freedom Schools across Mississippi that summer, founded in a new curriculum that explored politics, art, history and culture. In contrast to the segregated and underfunded schools that Black students attended in Mississippi that reinforced white supremacy, the dozens of Freedom Schools would explicitly focus on political consciousness and social power.
Finally, Baker made clear that Black people struggling for the right to vote were not simply trying to obtain an exalted freedom already enjoyed by most White Americans.
They aspired instead to develop methods and practices of democracy based on new values, relationships and possibilities that had never been fully realized in the United States. “Remember,” Baker told the crowd, “we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”
She stressed that White Mississippians, who had long been “fooled” by the “big lie” that their freedom was dependent on the violation of Black life, were not free either. The Hattiesburg struggle, which was led by local Black people and guided by their experience and collective analysis, concerned the “right” for everyone “to grow and to develop to the fullest capacity.” For Baker, even the “White brothers in Hattiesburg” could not realize their full capacity as humans, or “the human spirit for freedom,” through systems premised on violence and terror.
The next morning, SNCC launched “Freedom Day.” Hundreds of residents converged on the courthouse to register to vote, refusing police demands to disperse. They returned each day for months in what became a “Perpetual Picket,” facing arrest and harassment, but also emboldened by their collective ability to confront a system that had long insisted that resistance was futile.
The democratic energies unleashed in local communities such as Hattiesburg set the stage for Freedom Summer, the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Within 12 months, hundreds of thousands of Black people in the South had registered to vote, and nearly 400 were elected to office. As Baker predicted, the right to vote alone did not spell freedom. The broad-based coalition that Baker summoned in Hattiesburg faced powerful forces of reaction, and by the 2000s, school segregation, economic disparities and voting restrictions began to accelerate once again.
Today, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each electoral cycle with the hopes of tipping the partisan balance one way or the other; Black voters are often addressed only during 11th-hour election appeals. These efforts often ignore the legacy of Baker and SNCC that is alive in local communities, one that links voter registration and education drives with opportunities for everyday people to connect the right to vote to a broader vision and practice of social transformation. Groups such as Cooperation Jackson, Project South, Highlander Center and Southerners on New Ground (SONG), among many dozens of others, carry forward these traditions.
As Republican intransigence dims the prospects of national voting rights expansion, such grass-roots efforts represent the best hopes to renew and invigorate Baker’s vision for a shared and wider vision of freedom. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jan. 6 defendants are trying to claim an unusual defense. It isn’t working.
Yes, counting the electoral college votes is an ‘official proceeding’
A box of electoral votes is carried through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after lawmakers objected to accepting Arizona's votes for Joe Biden. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
By Teri Kanefield
Teri Kanefield is an author and a graduate of the University of California Berkeley School of Law. For 12 years, she maintained an appellate law practice in California.
Was the certification of the electoral college vote — which occurred in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — an “official proceeding” under U.S. law?
The answer to what sounds like an obscure question has enormous consequences for those charged so far in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and for those still under investigation. The reason: “Whoever corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding or attempts to do so” has violated U.S.C. 1512 (c) (2) — and violating this statute is a felony that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in federal prison.
More than 275 Jan. 6 defendants have already been charged with obstructing an official proceeding under that law. Defense lawyers have been trying, so far without success, to throw out charges under this section of the U.S. Code on various grounds. Some defendants, for example, argued that the law doesn’t apply to electoral count votes. Others argued that the statute is unconstitutionally vague.
These arguments have some merit, but they appear to be heading toward the junk heap of failed defenses.
Defense arguments focus on the legislative history and purpose of the statute. The law was enacted in 2002 after the Enron accounting fraud scandal. On Oct. 17, 2001, the Securities and Exchange Commission informed the Enron Corporation that it had initiated a formal inquiry into its accounting practices. Two days later, Enron’s accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, launched what prosecutors called a “wholesale destruction” of documents. Later, they defended the shredding of documents on the grounds that under the law as it then stood, destroying evidence was illegal only if an official proceeding was pending.
So Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which included the section on obstructing official proceedings, as a comprehensive revision of corporate accounting practices. Since then, the statutory language has been used to preserve evidence in investigations of white-collar crime and penalize those who destroy such evidence.
The First Amendment may not help Jan. 6 defendants as much as they think it will
Given this background, Jan. 6 defendants have argued that an “official proceeding” under this statute is limited to hearings where evidence is being presented and facts or rights are being determined. The counting of electoral votes, they argue, was a “ceremonial and administrative event” and not an “official proceeding” under the law. Therefore, they argue, charges brought against the insurrectionists for obstructing the counting of electoral votes should be dismissed.
So far, courts have rejected these challenges. Just last week, for example, U.S. District Judge John Bates rejected defendant Sean Michael McHugh’s claim that the statute was not intended to apply to formalities such as the certification of the electoral college vote. The court held that “official proceedings” in the statute is defined to include “Congressional proceedings,” and that there is no requirement in the plain language of the statute that requires the proceeding be evidentiary or investigative. Similarly, courts have rejected defendants’ claims that the statute is constitutionally vague and applies only to such behavior as the destruction of evidence and not the kinds of acts committed by the insurrectionists.
These obscure court victories have important implications for federal prosecutions moving forward. In his Jan. 5 speech on the attack on the Capitol, Merrick Garland explained how complex investigations work: “We resolve more straightforward cases first because they provide the evidentiary foundation for more complex cases,” he said. “Investigating the more overt crimes generates linkages to less overt ones. Overt actors and the evidence they provide can lead us to others who may also have been involved. And that evidence can serve as the foundation for further investigative leads and techniques.”
One of the many advantages for prosecutors in working their way up from the more overt crimes to the less overt ones is that they can resolve these kinds of challenges early in the process — so that as they move into more difficult cases, courts have already given the green light on using the law to obstruct an official proceeding in cases relating to the insurrection and the attempt to interfere with Congress’s counting of electoral votes.
That law offers clear advantages to prosecutors. Charging insurrectionists under 1512 (c) (2), for example, permits prosecutors to sidestep the question of whether planners of the rally intended violence. To be prosecuted under this statue, the defendant need only have intended to “obstruct, influence, or impede” the counting of the electoral votes.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recently confirmed that the Justice Department is investigating the fake electoral college certifications that declared President Donald Trump the winner of states he lost. Because courts have already rejected claims that U.S.C. 1512(c) (2) doesn’t apply to the certification of the vote, prosecutors need only determine whether creation of the fake elector certificates was intended to “obstruct, influence, or impede” the electoral vote count. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been linked to the creation of the fake electors and the scheme, and the Jan. 6 committee is reportedly trying to explore whether the White House was coordinating the effort and whether any laws were broken.
‘Trump said I could’: One possible legal defense for accused rioters
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection, hinted that the statute could reach as far as Trump. Last month, she said of Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows: “Mr. Meadows’s own testimony will bear on another key question before this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’ official proceeding to count electoral votes?”
It cannot be a coincidence or accident that she used the exact language from Section 1512 (c) (2).
Given how frequently federal prosecutors have been bringing charges under this statute (and the ease with which they are defeating challenges to this statute by defense teams), we can expect to see it used to file more charges in the future. | null | null | null | null | null |
Let’s review a strategy document!
A few thoughts on the new U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy
From left, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House in September. (Evan Vucci/AP)
A perennial problem in American politics and foreign policy is that, as Sandy Berger once put it, “the urgent always overtakes the important.” What with 24/7 news cycles and social media firestorms, Berger’s maxim has only increased in power in this century.
Last Friday, for example, the Biden White House made three major foreign policy moves. First, it seized the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, a move that Spoiler Alerts reported on Feb. 14. Second, it issued multiple warnings that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent — warnings that will hopefully prove to have helped avert an actual invasion.
The third move was to release “The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States,” the Biden administration’s strategy document aimed at what it (and everyone else) considers to be the most important strategic region on the planet. This announcement might have received the least attention, but if war in Ukraine is averted, it could have the most long-lasting significance.
After perusing the document, here are my five quick takeaways from it:
A return to continuity. As previously noted in Spoiler Alerts, one of the oddities of the Trump administration’s strategy documents was its effort to suggest a radical break from prior approaches. While that can capture attention, it can also weaken the U.S. ability to credibly commit beyond a single presidential term.
The new Indo-Pacific Strategy document stressed continuity rather than rupture. It noted that since the end of the Cold War, “administrations of both political parties have shared a commitment to the region.” The George W. Bush administration “understood Asia’s growing importance.” The Obama administration “significantly accelerated American prioritization of Asia, investing new diplomatic, economic, and military resources there.” At which point the strategy document says: “And the Trump Administration also recognized the Indo-Pacific as the world’s center of gravity.”
Is this a low bar to meet? Yes, but stressing continuity still matters.
China, China, China! The document is upfront in presenting the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the most significant threat to the U.S. vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. The introductory section flat out says, “The PRC’s coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific.” As to how the United States will counter the challenge from the PRC, there is an artful appeal to both partners and rivals in the region: “Our objective is not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.”
The Quad will be an important vessel for the Indo-Pacific Strategy. The Quad gets mentioned 12 times in a 18-page document. The action plan includes “Deliver on the Quad” as one of the 10 planks, pledging regular meetings at the ministerial and leader level and to “strengthen the Quad as a premier regional grouping and ensure it delivers on issues that matter to the Indo-Pacific.”
AUKUS will not be as important a vessel. In contrast to the Quad, the pact was only mentioned twice in passing. In contrast, some variation of “European partners” was referenced at least five times. One can interpret this as continued diplomatic cleanup from the creation of AUKUS, but it might also reflect the more limited aims of that arrangement.
The Biden administration still has some homework to do on the economic dimension. Compared with plans for the Quad, the references to the Indo-Pacific economic framework remain extremely vague. This is not surprising, given the mismatch between what would entice partners in the region and what the Biden administration is prepared to do. One can only hope that the Biden team takes a good hard look at “Filling In the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” a CSIS paper from Matthew Goodman and William Alan Reinsch that fleshes out some interesting ideas in much greater detail. | null | null | null | null | null |
‘Legacy’ admissions were introduced to keep elite schools White. My research finds that that’s hurting Black and Brown students today.
A gate opens to the Harvard University campus. (Charles Krupa/AP)
By Jasmine Harris
Banning legacy admissions policies addresses the white-supremacist foundations of higher education, which explicitly prohibited non-White students for more than 200 years. Schools originally introduced legacy policies to limit the number of non-White students admitted each year. Without this bill, elite colleges and universities will remain predominantly White, despite the changing racial landscape of the United States and the growing numbers of applications they receive from Black and Brown students.
But the impact of banning legacy consideration would go beyond changing admissions processes. It would limit the advantages of attending elite universities that legacy students receive over a lifetime. Entrance into these highly selective institutions is crucial to maintaining or increasing a person’s class identity and social status, in part dictating their potential for income and wealth generation. It includes access to exclusive networks of people, places and events. Attending these schools brings a great deal of social capital.
These graduates learn about job openings not available to the general public: HR professionals perceive them as having advanced skills, which influences who gets recruited or hired. And these graduates have a higher likelihood of landing a private-sector job, where the pay is much better. A 2015 U.S. Department of Education data point shows the median annual earnings of Ivy League graduates are more than double that of graduates from non-Ivy League schools; 10 years after graduation, Ivy Leaguers make well over $70,000 per year, $40,000 more than their non-Ivy counterparts.
But legacy admissions also affect college students’ experiences on campus. And this legacy of White dominance means that Black students often don’t feel like they belong, my research finds.
The history and long-term impact of legacy admissions
Prestigious schools began more heavily weighting “legacy” applications in the 1920s to respond to a spike in applications after World War I. At the time, schools were trying to keep from being flooded with immigrants and Jews. During the 1960s civil rights movement, as these same schools began admitting Black students, they amended these policies to minimize the number of Black students admitted. From the start, legacy policies successfully limited the percentages of non-Whites and non-Protestants in the student body.
With legacy admissions artificially keeping the percentage of White students high, these colleges and universities thus became what sociologist Victor Ray calls “racialized organizations,” where race shapes the institutions’ policies and practices in ways that mimic and reinforce society’s racial hierarchies. Race shapes who is present and who is not in higher education, how resources are allocated, the potential postgraduate return on students’ educational investment, and what experiences people have on campus.
The history of racial exclusion means that most legacy students at elite institutions continue to be White. For instance, nearly 70 percent of legacy applicants to Harvard are White. In Harvard’s Class of 2022, 36 percent of those admitted were legacy students. Consequently, the needs and perspectives of White students continue to dominate the campus culture and the formal and informal policies that govern it.
Congress failed to restore ‘preclearance,’ a key voting rights protection. My research shows that it worked.
Who feels like they belong?
To see who felt like they belonged, I administered an online survey to 360 undergraduates at a predominantly White liberal arts college in Pennsylvania over the 2017-2018 school year. In addition, I hired undergraduates themselves to interview an additional 34 students and to conduct a focus group with another 26 students. In both the surveys and interviews, we asked students where they feel safe and connected to others on campus; how they dealt with spaces where they felt unsafe or disconnected from the campus community; and whether they felt the institution itself supported their desire to feel safe and connected in those spaces.
All undergraduates on college campuses struggle with the question of whether and when they “belong.” Young people trying to find themselves and each other in new surroundings make for a chaotic environment. One of the advantages of legacy status is that those students arrive feeling already at least somewhat familiar with the institution. Black and Brown students consistently report a long list of barriers to fitting in. They report more difficulty adjusting to campus life; a lower sense of belonging; and a higher sense of feeling like impostors. These feelings likely contribute to the fact that Black and Brown students underperform their White peers in such measures as GPA, how long it takes to complete a degree, and overall graduation rates, as reported by the U.S. Education Department.
Why aren't Americans more alarmed by white-supremacist violence?
When I think of home
American colleges and universities often promise potential students that the campus will feel like home. Being admitted to the most prestigious of these schools is supposed to mean you are welcomed into the family. But when the student body is predominantly White because of a long-standing policy expected to last into the future, minoritized students can have a hard time feeling as much comfort on campus as their White peers.
Legacy policies imply that students whose ancestors attended a school have a moral right to be there. It is home by association. In his Harvard application letter, future president John F. Kennedy wrote that part of his interest in the school was in wanting to go where his father did — and that it would provide a better education than any other school.
When almost one-third of the student population are legacy students, drawn from a pool that’s overwhelmingly and historically White, Protestant and male, the feeling of being a valid member of the Harvard “family” is implicitly limited to one group: White Protestant men.
Jasmine Harris (@DrHarrisJay) is associate professor of African American studies and coordinator of the African American studies program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic during his victory in last year's Wimbledon singles final in London. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)
The world’s top-ranked men’s tennis player, Novak Djokovic, said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that he had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus and was prepared to sacrifice playing in Grand Slam tournaments rather than be forced to take the shot.
In an interview with the BBC, the Serbian star said it was a “misconception” and “wrong conclusion” that he was part of the anti-vaccine movement, stating instead that he supported the freedom to choose.
“I was never against vaccination,” Djokovic said. “I understand that globally, everyone is trying to put a big effort into handling this virus … but I’ve always represented and always supported the freedom to choose what you put into your body and for me that is essential.”
Asked whether he was prepared to forgo major tournaments such as the French Open and Wimbledon, Djokovic said, “Yes, that is the price that I’m willing to pay. … The principles of decision-making on my body are more important than any title or anything else. I’m trying to be in tune with my body as much as I possibly can.”
Djokovic, 34, was deported from Australia in January after a nearly two-week saga that included court challenges, visa cancellations and a stay at an immigration detention hotel as protesters and supporters stood vigil outside. The government canceled his visa on the grounds that his presence in the country might incite anti-vaccine sentiment and “civil unrest.”
Governments, employers and public health officials globally have encouraged coronavirus vaccination and championed its primary role in quelling the spread of the deadly virus. In many countries, those who are unvaccinated face the loss of their jobs and greater travel restrictions.
People who are vaccinated and boosted have considerable protection from serious illness, top health officials have said, with the unvaccinated more vulnerable to death and hospitalization from covid-19. Health officials have also argued that getting vaccinated helps to protect others, including the immunocompromised.
Novak Djokovic is out of the Australian Open. But what about the other Grand Slams?
Djokovic said that he understood he was part of a global sport and that not being able to travel freely because of his unvaccinated status could hinder his storied career.
“I understand the consequences of my decision,” he said. Djokovic has won the French Open twice, including in 2021, and has six Wimbledon titles, including the past three.
Although he has been championed by those in the global anti-vaccine movement, “I have never said that I’m part of that,” he added.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic’s refusal to get vaccinated makes him an outlier in the sports world — but he’s not alone. (Julie Yoon/The Washington Post)
Djokovic’s deportation had sparked a diplomatic crisis, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic claiming the tennis star was the victim of a “political witch hunt,” as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the decision, noting that Australians “have made many sacrifices during this pandemic … and they rightly expect the result of those sacrifices to be protected.”
Djokovic said in the BBC interview that he sympathized with the people of Australia who had to endure a strict and lengthy lockdown and understood the “frustrations” toward him.
“I would like to say that I always followed the rules,” he said. “I never used my privileged status to get into Australia by force or do anything in this entire process.”
Last month’s men’s Australian Open final was won by Spanish star Rafael Nadal, who at the time said he felt “sorry” for his rival over the uproar but noted that Djokovic knew the risks. Nadal said that he supported vaccination and that it was “normal” for people in Australia to feel “very frustrated with the case.”
Djokovic, who has tested positive for the virus twice, said he has never downplayed the severity of covid-19 — which has so far killed more than 5.8 million people globally.
“Millions of people have and are still struggling with covid around the world so I take this very seriously,” he said.
He also did not rule out getting vaccinated in the future, stating: “I keep my mind open.” | null | null | null | null | null |
China's Su Yiming performs a trick during the men's snowboard big air finals at the Winter Olympics on Feb. 15 in Beijing. (Elsa/Getty Images)
By Vic Chiang
There was no need for the third run. On the strength of his first two scores alone, Chinese snowboarding sensation Su Yiming had secured his first Olympic gold. The pressure off, he savored the moment by floating through a single rotation and took a midair instant to pick out his parents in the crowd in Beijing.
“This moment couldn’t have happened without my parents. Without them, there wouldn’t be me as I am; there wouldn’t be this day,” he told journalists afterward.
Su’s victory in snowboarding big air on Tuesday, coming just three days before his 18th birthday, delivered a fitting ending for his barnstorming debut Olympics and secured his position alongside skier Eileen Gu as the fresh-faced stars of a new generation in Chinese winter sports.
The two teenagers have won hearts and medals and become overnight idols for China’s aspiring snow bums and powder hounds. They have also sparked discussion about the role of wealth, education and social status in the pursuit of athletic excellence. With cosmopolitan lifestyles, social media followings and lucrative sponsorship deals, the pair are a stark departure from many of the country’s Olympic stars who often hail from hardscrabble backgrounds and were trained up from a young age in state sports academies.
The evolution of Chinese sport, coming during a crackdown on private tutoring, “excessive wealth” and obsessive fandom, has many asking: How — and whether — your average Chinese family can produce the next Eileen Gu or Su Yiming?
“The state training system is waning in winter sports, with elite sports training giving way to scouting from amateurs and clubs,” said Beijing-based sports columnist Yang Wang. “Su Yiming is a perfect example of this new type of talent scouting. In the future, China will see more and more self-made athletes.”
While the Chinese public met Gu and Su at this Olympics, close followers of China’s winter sports dreams may have already seen the pair in a documentary called “The Aspirations of Youth” released in 2017.
Aside from time on the snow, Gu is shown horse-riding and telling the interviewer “I do want to be a professional athlete but only so long as it makes me happy.” Asked whether Su would continue as a child actor — yes, he has starred in a movie — or as a snowboarder, his mother, Li Lei, replied, “If he wants to turn his hobby into a job, we will support him.”
As Gu’s gold medal set Chinese social media alight last week, Chinese commentators argued that the American-born and -raised 18-year-old, who scored 1580 on her SAT and is an accomplished pianist and model, was a paradigmatic child of “tiger parenting.” That image was strengthened after her mother, Yan Gu, thanked a crammer class in Beijing’s Haidian district for her academic success.
Although he grew up in China, 17-year-old Su’s life has more in common with Gu’s than with most of his fellow Chinese Olympians. He was a child actor who played a skiing country kid with mussed hair in the 2014 blockbuster “The Taking of Tiger Mountain.” He lists surfing, hip hop and guitar as hobbies on his official Olympics bio.
For many, however, such achievements appear unattainable. “For the majority of Chinese families, if a child cannot make it to America for schooling, then this superior model of ‘American schooling plus Haidian private tutoring’ is not relevant for them,” wrote social commentary blog Slave Society.
The article then drew a jarring comparison between Gu’s privilege and the plight of a mother of eight recently found chained up in a poor village in Jiangsu province. “The reality is, the vast majority of women don’t have an opportunity to become Eileen Gu, but if there is no progress in the legal system or cultural awakening, then everyone could well and truly live through the tragedy of the women in a dark room in Fengxian County,” it said.
The blog was suspended for 15 days.
China’s Olympic success has traditionally relied on a system of nationwide sports academies that recruit talented children and place them in an environment where they focus on sports above all else.
The lack of an U.S.-style sports culture remains an obstacle for ending this reliance on state-run programs, said Xu Guoqi, a historian at the University of Hong Kong who studies China’s Olympic program. “Compared to American or European children who grow up loving sports, society expects Chinese people to pursue academic achievements.”
That has begun to change in recent years, as more athletes from affluent backgrounds make it to China’s Olympic squad. Swimmer Wang Shun, who won gold in the 200-meter individual medley at Tokyo 2020, has a similar star power and is from a wealthy background.
But rags-to-podium stories remain common. At the other end of the spectrum is Quan Hongchan, the 14-year-old diver whose gold medal made her the breakout star of Tokyo 2020. Quan, born to a farming family in rural Guangdong, had a childhood dedicated to diving after she was recruited by a local sporting academy at age 7.
After her win, Quan told media that she was motivated to train harder because she wanted to make more money to cure her ill mother, and she disclosed that she had never been to an amusement park or the zoo.
Much of China’s medal count this year still relies on these national training programs. Chinese speed skaters, for example, overwhelmingly come from a single location: Qitaihe, a coal-mining town in the northeast of the country that became a national training hub after local skater Yang Yang became China’s first Winter Olympic gold medalist in 2002.
Skater Fan Kexin, who won gold this month as part of the 2,000-meter short-track mixed-relay team, has described how she used to live in a single room with her parents who worked as shoe cobblers.
But Chinese commentators have noticed a different vibe among younger members of the team. “From Su Yiming, you can see that the new generation are less frightened of the taking the stage, and can take delight in sport for itself,” said Cathy Tu, the founder of an education consultancy in Beijing.
Su and Gu have been seized upon by Chinese state-run media as embodying the confidence and “zest” of Team China athletes born since 2000. “They no longer look up to the West and are proud of being Chinese,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told the Global Times newspaper.
That possessive nationalist rhetoric clashes, however, with increasing numbers of Chinese athletes who consider themselves members of a global sporting community. Gu maintains she is American when in America and Chinese when in China. Su, who will soon graduate from a foreign languages high school in the southwestern city of Chengdu, considers North American snowboarding greats to be his idols.
A similar dynamic exists in ice hockey, where internationalization has driven the sport’s development. Not only are China’s men’s and women’s teams both heavily dependent on foreign-born players, few of the Chinese-born players hail from the northeastern cities that are the traditional base for state-led training programs.
Instead, Chinese players are mostly graduates of youth clubs that cater to well-to-do families in major cities. Many later played in North America. Rudi Ying, 23-year-old forward, for example, is son of well-known director Ying Da and has played back and forth between China and the United States since he was 9.
For China’s burgeoning middle-class and affluent families, winter sports already have become a status symbol. “Not every Chinese wants to become a national sports hero like the basketball legend Yao Ming,” commentator Feng Zhen wrote for Hong Kong-based Phoenix New Media. “But everyone wants to live like Eileen Gu.”
But Tu, the education consultancy founder, urged people to “stay awake” and recognize the outsize role that affluence plays in these athletes’ success. “Most of the kids who can pursue their dreams to follow interests in music or sports still come from rich families,” she said.
For Zhang Shaobo, director of “The Aspirations of Youth” documentary, counters that while China is wealthy enough to produce many similar athletes, hard work is still a massive factor.
“In China, there are many families that are richer than Su and Gu,” he told the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper. “Why, is there only one Su Yiming, one Eileen Gu? Actually, aside from talent, they have put in way more effort than everyone imagines.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Israeli prime minister makes historic visit to Bahrain, seeking to fortify Arab coalition against Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, right, speaks with Bahrain's foreign minister, Abdullatif al-Zayani, in Manama, Bahrain, on Feb. 14. (Government Press Office/Reuters)
MANAMA, Bahrain — With a red carpet and an honor guard of dozens of fully outfitted soldiers who performed Israel’s national anthem, Naftali Bennett was welcomed on Tuesday as the first Israeli prime minister to visit Bahrain, a historic move for Israel as it attempts to fortify a regional axis of defense against Iran.
Bennett’s visit to the tiny, oil-rich country comes as Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf advance security collaboration — and as a shadow war between Israel and Iran, with tit-for-tat attacks on commercial vessels at sea, becomes increasingly public.
It also coincides with a final phase of negotiations in Vienna between Iran and world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal.
“In this turbulent era, it is important that our region in particular sends a message of cooperation and goodwill and standing against threats together,” Bennett told reporters before flying to Bahrain on Monday.
Israel has clashed with President Biden over his promises to restore U.S. participation in the deal, pledging “compliance for compliance” in order to limit the Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Since the United States withdrew from that deal, Iran has been rapidly advancing its nuclear program, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. Israel views Iran’s nuclear program as cover for plans to develop atomic weapons; Iran insists it is intended only to generate nuclear energy and denies any intention to build a bomb.
On Tuesday, amid a schedule that included meetings with the Bahrain’s king, its crown prince, high-ranking state officials and a group of young entrepreneurs, Bennett met representatives of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, and called its contribution a “significant element in maintaining regional stability,” according to a statement.
Abdullah al-Junaid, a Bahraini political analyst, said players in the region have been disappointed to see Americans “go it alone,” rather than formulate a cohesive regional approach, in attempts to contain threats from Iran.
“We would definitely like to see a new approach to the ‘containment’ by the U.S. toward Iran, and believe that Vienna shouldn’t be the only course,” he said.
As an alternative to solutions being debated in Washington and Vienna, Persian Gulf nations and Israel have been attempting to formulate a regional response to Iran, experts say.
Since the signing of the Abraham Accords that normalized ties in 2020, announcements of once-clandestine security relations between Israel and the Arab states in the gulf have accelerated, said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He added that these included “gateway” countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which are widely viewed as mediators between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
About 860 people have traveled from Saudi Arabia to Israel over the past year, according to data released by Israel’s Ministry of Health coronavirus monitoring website, though it does not specify how many were Saudi citizens.
Earlier this month, Israeli and Bahraini defense ministers signed an agreement “which will contribute to the stability of the region,” said Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. His visit, made possible by a flight over Saudi airspace, coincided with a U.S.-led naval exercise involving some 60 nations, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Last fall, navies from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates conducted their first joint military exercise with Israeli warships, in a five-day drill on the Red Sea that was coordinated by the U.S. Navy. | null | null | null | null | null |
(The Washington Post/iStock images)
By Janna Mandell
Among these unwelcome ingredients is a group of preservatives called parabens. Now, products such as Aussie Miracle Moist Conditioner with avocado and jojoba, and Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash are labeled “paraben-free,” and retailers including Target and Sephora have “clean” beauty aisles where parabens are forbidden.
The concern raised about these widely used synthetic preservatives stems from research showing that parabens can mimic the hormone estrogen and a broadly criticized 2004 study that suggested a potential link between parabens and breast cancer. But what if parabens are not as dangerous as feared? And what if the substitutes being used in countless “paraben-free” products can have major side effects? Could it be that the focus on parabens has been misplaced?
That’s the stance of many scientists — including Philippa Darbre, professor emeritus in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading in Great Britain, who led the controversial 2004 study that sparked the worry about parabens and breast cancer. And it’s making some of us who follow the industry (including myself, once open to the concept of “clean” beauty) start digging into the science that has spread fear of parabens and other synthetic ingredients.
But first, some background: Parabens were introduced in the 1920s and are found in personal care items, food products and pharmaceuticals such as antacids, cough suppressants and antidepressants. They became the preservatives of choice because they are broadly antimicrobial and inexpensive and rarely prompt an allergic response. Of the 21 parabens, the four most commonly found in cosmetic and skin care products are methylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben and ethylparaben.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have deemed parabens safe for use in cosmetics (a category that includes makeup, skin care, hair care and shaving products) with no suggested limits on concentration. The European Union’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety considers the use of methylparaben and ethylparaben in cosmetics safe at the maximum authorized concentrations (0.4 percent for one paraben or 0.8 percent when used in combination) and the use of propylparaben safe up to a maximum concentration of 0.14 percent.
These concentrations are higher than those typically used in cosmetic formulations, according to Lalita Iyer, a New York City-based cosmetic chemist who has formulated personal care products for both beauty conglomerates and indie brands. “Parabens are one of the most effective broad-spectrum preservatives out there,” Iyer said. “The beauty of parabens is that you can really use them at a low percentage.”
But doubts about the safety of parabens were raised in the late 1990s, when research led by British molecular endocrinologist Edwin Routledge indicated they could have an estrogenic effect. Those results prompted Darbre’s 2004 paper, a small study that found parabens in the tissue of breast tumors and sparked concerns that there could be an association between parabens and breast cancer. While much of the research into the hormonal effects of parabens that followed was conflicting, none of it confirmed a connection between parabens and breast cancer.
According to “Parabens Toxicology,” a 2019 review of the literature led by surgical dermatologist Anthony Fransway, no study of parabens has concluded that they contribute to hormone disruption, breast cancer or skin cancer in humans. “Until such time as convincing data are published and verified, claims that parabens have any role in these controversial and important health problems are premature,” the researchers wrote.
But that didn’t settle the matter. While research was ongoing, concern about parabens had taken hold in the public, and “paraben-free” products started appearing on drugstore shelves and beauty counters. Experts warn, however, that these formulations are potentially more harmful than their counterparts because the preservatives used in place of the parabens are less studied and more likely to cause an allergic response or allow product contamination.
“The issue is that when people freaked out about parabens, we started using more preservatives, which are way more allergenic,” said Walter Liszewski, an assistant professor of dermatology specializing in allergic contact dermatitis at Northwestern University in Chicago. “For example, my Head & Shoulders shampoo says ‘paraben-free’ but uses methylisothiazolinone (MIT) in place of parabens, which is way nastier.” Methylisothiazolinone is a known contact allergen.
Iyer, the cosmetic chemist, added that natural preservatives typically do not extend the shelf life of a product more than six months, compared with two years for parabens, and that natural preservatives kill a much narrower spectrum of microbes. “This is extremely problematic,” she said.
According to the FDA’s “Cosmetics Recalls and Alerts” page, several “clean” companies have voluntarily recalled products in the past two years because of the presence of mold, yeast and bacteria. This included multi-level-marketing company Beautycounter, which voluntarily recalled Beauty Counter Brilliant Brow Tinted Brow Gel because testing found a species of mold Penicillium.
Esther Oluwaseun, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based research and development formulation chemist, said that most of the recalled product cases listed on the FDA’s site could have been avoided had the brands used broad-spectrum preservatives like parabens. “But because parabens have been demonized, formulators are forced to use less effective preservative systems.”
Darbre’s 2004 study, “Concentrations of parabens in human breast tumours,” has been broadly discredited. Critics started raising concerns immediately after its publication, citing the study’s small sample size (20 tumors), its failure to look at control samples of normal breast tissue, its inability to determine the source of the parabens and possible contamination of samples used in the research.
Later that year, Darbre published a response in the Journal of Applied Toxicology stating, “Nowhere in the manuscript was any claim made that the presence of parabens had caused the breast cancer.” But in the public mind, the connection had been made, though scientists and organizations have continued to point out the research’s flaws.
The American Cancer Society agrees with the criticism: “The study did not show that parabens caused or contributed to breast cancer development in these cases — it only showed that they were there,” it says on a Web page about parabens. The National Cancer Institute also noted that there is no evidence parabens cause breast cancer and included a footnote to a 2019 report by the industry-funded Cosmetic Ingredient Review’s expert panel, which concluded that 20 of the 21 parabens in the report are safe in cosmetics as long as the total in a product is less than 0.8 percent.
Despite the strong critiques, Darbre’s study has been cited close to 1,000 times since publication. Timothy Caulfield, the Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta, said it’s not unusual for what he calls “zombie papers” to live on. “This is a big problem — bad studies are polluting the academic literature and, sometimes, meta-analysis.”
Caulfield said there are other forces at work that are contributing to the public’s wariness of parabens, however, pointing to some beauty companies that he says spread “chemophobia” (the irrational fear of chemicals). “I don’t know a universe where chemicals don’t exist,” he said, “but that’s the narrative that brands like Goop and Honest Company like to sell, and unfortunately, it’s extremely effective.” Goop and Honest Company declined to comment.
Iyer also cited the influence of retailers such as Sephora that promote paraben-free products. “Brands want that ’Clean at Sephora’ label on their products,” she said, “so they refuse to use parabens.” A representative from Sephora said the company’s Clean at Sephora criteria “reflect the latest data and research.”
But Iyer also has concerns about the way research about parabens is being disseminated to the public. “I think a lot of the push away from parabens stems from organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) spreading misinformation and cherry-picking data to meet their agenda.”
The activist organization’s science, tactics and publications, including its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of produce most likely to be contaminated by pesticides, have been questioned by experts.
Iyer pointed to the EWG’s parabens overview page, saying that the organization had chosen “outdated studies to meet their narrative” and left out context. For example, the page cites a study of rats exposed to butylparaben during development, which found harm to the animals’ reproductive systems. But, she said, the rats were orally fed high amounts of parabens “which is quite different than topical application on humans. It’s fearmongering.”
When asked about these examples, Carla Burns, the EWG’s senior director of cosmetic science, said the parabens article was written in 2019. “We have more recent information,” she said, “and the continuing, evolving scientific space is listed on our Skin Deep database under each of the applicable paraben ingredient pages.”
Evolving science does not seem to have affected the public’s mistrust of parabens, however. That concerns Darbre, author of the 2004 study, who has continued her research into estrogenic chemicals. She now says many hundreds of such chemicals “may add together at low concentrations to make cells grow up to their maximal rate.” Therefore, she said, “hounding” one set of chemicals, such as parabens, is not useful.
“It would be wonderful if a single chemical could be identified as a sole problem and then replaced by something ‘safe,’ but this is unlikely to happen,” Darbre said. “What often happens now is that one chemical with ‘bad press’ is replaced by a new chemical with less data.”
She cited the reduction of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical heavily used in plastics until 2008. When products are sold as “BPA-free,” she said, it “lures everyone into thinking that the new products are ‘safer’ when all that has happened is that other bisphenols have replaced bisphenol A.”
And as for parabens, which are being stripped from products partly based on her research? “They are cheap and effective as preservatives,” she said, “and the only alternative to removing preservatives is for the shelf life to be reduced dramatically.”
Janna Mandell is a San Francisco-based journalist covering the beauty and wellness industries. | null | null | null | null | null |
A Louisville mayoral candidate was shot at during meeting in his office. Police charged a local activist with attempted murder.
Louisville Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg speaks during a news conference in Louisville on Feb. 14. Greenberg was shot at Monday morning at a campaign office but was not struck, though a bullet grazed a piece of his clothing, police said. (Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Craig Greenberg, a Democratic mayoral candidate in Louisville, was having a short meeting with four members of his campaign team Monday morning when a man stood in the doorway of the office, aimed a gun at the politician and started shooting, Greenberg said Monday.
One of Greenberg’s staffers managed to slam the door shut, he said, and the team used tables and desks to barricade themselves inside as the shooter fled.
No one was injured, Greenberg added during a news conference in which he provided his account of the incident, “despite one bullet coming so close that it grazed my sweater and my shirt."
“All of us are blessed, and I’m blessed to be standing here today with you," he said.
Police later arrested 21-year-old Quintez Brown, an activist. Brown is being held on charges of attempted murder and wanton endangerment, a Louisville Metro Police Department spokeswoman confirmed in an email to The Washington Post. No attorney was listed for Brown in court records, and attempts to reach his family early Tuesday were unsuccessful.
At a news conference Monday, before Brown was publicly identified by police as the suspect, Louisville Police Chief Erika Shields said investigators believed Greenberg was targeted and the gunman acted alone. She added that police were proceeding in their investigation with an “open mind” and had not yet determined a motive. She left open the possibility that the shooting may have been politically or religiously motivated, or that the shooter may have been suffering from “mental issues.”
Brown is being held at the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections, according to a police spokeswoman.
Brown is from West Louisville and attended the University of Louisville as a political science major, according to a university article. Having previously worked with violence-prevention groups, Brown as a freshman was selected to participate in an Obama Foundation program in which he met the former president, the article added.
Brown subsequently wrote opinion pieces for the Courier-Journal as an intern, the paper reported, and participated in racial-justice protests in 2020. In June, Brown’s family asked the community for help after he went missing, WAVE reported. Brown was found safe on July 1, and his family requested privacy “while we tend to the most immediate need, which is Quintez’s physical, mental and spiritual needs,” the Courier-Journal reported.
About five months later, Brown announced plans to seek a seat on the Louisville Metro Council.
Greenberg, an attorney and former chief executive of a small hotel chain, according to his LinkedIn profile, is vying to replace Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat who is finishing out his third and final term. Greenberg has cited public safety as his top priority and released a plan in January that called for fully funding the city’s police force, taking illegal guns off the street and providing bigger rewards to people who provide information on homicide cases. He leads in the race in fundraising, the Courier-Journal reported.
Louisville ended 2021 with 188 homicides, breaking its 2020 record of 173, WAVE reported. The increase tracks with a nationwide rise in gun violence in 2020 and 2021.
Declining to comment on the shooter’s possible motivations, Greenberg said what happened on Monday gave him “new resolve” to work to end gun violence.
“It all happened so quick, but it’s a very surreal experience,” Greenberg added. “I know there are far too many other people in Louisville who have experienced that same feeling. I’m fortunate that was the first time that’s happened to me; I certainly hope it’s the last.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A handyman was asked to build a ‘strange’ room in a couple’s garage. Police say their son was locked inside and surveilled.
Police discovered a small room in a Florida family’s garage that matched a description a handyman said he was asked to build, a criminal complaint states. The structure contained a small box spring and mattress with a gray sheet and pillow, the complaint adds. (Screengrab WPBF)
When a Florida couple asked a handyman in December to build an office in their garage, the man accepted the job, according to a criminal complaint.
Timothy and Tracy Ferriter told him exactly what they wanted him to build: an 8-foot-by-8-foot structure with its own ceiling and door, a police report states. The space also needed to have electricity, a window air conditioning unit and a camera in the ceiling — and it had to be built in two days, the report adds.
The Ferriters, the police report says, also requested the structure only have a doorknob on the outside “so if someone were inside the office they would not be able to exit unless someone opened the door for them from the outside."
The handyman said something felt off, so he contacted the Jupiter Police Department to report the incident.
It wasn’t until police visited the house about one month later — after the Ferriters’ 14-year-old adopted son had run away from home — that they discovered a small room in the family’s garage that matched the specifications described by the handyman, a criminal complaint states. The structure contained a small box spring and mattress with a gray sheet and pillow.
When police found the teen at school the next day, he made several allegations of abuse against his parents, including that they had kept him inside the locked structure in the garage for up to 18 hours per day and made him use an orange bucket as a restroom, the complaint adds. The boy also told police he was forced to clean the bucket after using it. The boy’s statements, along with other evidence, led to the Ferriters’ arrests last week, police said. Timothy and Tracy Ferriter, both 46, each face felony charges of aggravated child abuse and false imprisonment.
Nellie King, the couple’s attorney, told The Washington Post that police have not conducted an objective and thorough investigation. King said she provided police with “critical evidence” that was ignored. She did not immediately respond to a request for additional details about the evidence presented.
“In the criminal legal system, the temptation for a community to rush to judge is tempered by the judicial process, a presumption of innocence, and the facts,” King said in a statement to The Post. “What Tim and Tracy have lived through the past many years will therefore be presented in court.”
In case of fatal torture of Calif. 8-year-old, are his social workers responsible?
Jupiter police began looking into the family’s situation starting Jan. 28, when Tracy Ferriter called police to report that the teen had gone missing, according to the criminal complaint. Her son, she allegedly told police, had run away from home on several occasions. The police report says Tracy told officers that the teen had “behavioral disorders” and was in trouble at school the day before, which is why she thought he ran away.
Two days later, police returned to the Ferriters’ home to ask whether the child had returned. Tracy agreed to let one of the officers enter the residence, police said. While giving a tour of the house, Tracy showed the officer the structure in the garage, which matched the description from the handyman, according to the arrest report.
Inside the room, the police report states, there was a small desk with schoolbooks, as well as a foldable chair. Above the bed, the ceiling held a small home-security camera, the report adds.
First, Tracy allegedly told the officer that the room was built as an office. When the officer asked her about the exterior lock, she said the room was used for storage and later said it was used by “all of the children,” police records state.
Police said they found the boy on school property on Jan. 31 and took him to the Jupiter Police Department for an interview. There, the teen shared that he stayed locked inside the room in the garage “a lot,” sometimes with the lights off, according to the complaint. He was not allowed to play with friends or family and spent most of his time reading inside the room, the police report states. The rest of the house was off limits, the teen told police.
The boy told investigators he did not feel safe at home and that his dad allegedly “gets aggressive.” One time, the teen told police, he was slammed against a wall and then slapped in the face. The behavior also “happened a lot in Arizona,” where the family used to live, the boy said, according to the complaint.
When he was not in his room or at school, the teen told police, he was asked to do yard work until he was again locked up. The boy also told investigators he is often fed leftovers that he eats inside his room. Police took him to a hospital specializing in behavioral health for an assessment, the results which were not specified in the complaint.
Authorities later interviewed two of the boy’s siblings, who corroborated what their brother had told police, according to the criminal complaint. One of his sisters, who got emotional during the interview, told police that whenever she misbehaved she had her phone taken away, but that whenever her brother misbehaved, he was locked inside his room, ordered to do yard work or write sentences.
The teen and the couple’s three other children are now in the care of Child Protective Services, WPBF reported.
Security camera video obtained via a subpoena also corroborated the teen’s statements, police said. The footage showed the boy being locked in the garage structure on numerous occasions, according to the arrest reports.
Police arrested the couple on Feb. 8. Both Timothy and Tracy Ferriter were released the following day on $50,000 bonds, jail records show.
The couple is due back in court next month. | null | null | null | null | null |
From left, Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes will host the 2022 Academy Awards. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project; Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix)
After going three years without an emcee to shepherd the ceremony, the Academy Awards show will split the Oscars’ hosting duties among Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes at this year’s event. The news was first reported Monday by Variety and officially confirmed Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”
All three actresses have backgrounds in comedy, whether working on screen or, for Emmy winners Schumer and Sykes, in stand-up. Schumer has appeared in films such as “Trainwreck” and “I Feel Pretty”; it was announced last year that her show “Inside Amy Schumer” would be revived on Paramount Plus. Sykes, who has worked extensively in television on series such as “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine” and “Black-ish,” currently stars on Netflix’s “The Upshaws.” Hall, who starred in the “Scary Movie” franchise, has enjoyed a bit of a career renaissance since starring in the 2018 film “Support the Girls,” going on to land lead roles in TV’s “Black Monday” and “Nine Perfect Strangers.”
According to “Good Morning America,” it has been 35 years since there were at least three Oscars hosts; Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn and Paul Hogan emceed the 1987 ceremony.
Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog” collected 12 Academy Award nominations on Feb. 8, including those for best picture and best director. (Allie Caren/The Washington Post)
This year will mark the first time the Oscars have had a host since Jimmy Kimmel in 2018. Kevin Hart stepped down from hosting the 2019 show after facing widespread backlash over his past homophobic tweets. Instead of replacing the comedian, ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relied on celebrity presenters to carry the show through its end. The Oscars went without a host for the next two years as well.
Variety noted that new ceremony producer Will Packer — known for producing films including 2017′s “Girls Trip,” starring Hall — was heavily involved in the conversations about potential hosts after he was “tasked with bringing excitement back to the festivities and increasing viewership.”
The academy also announced Monday its new #OscarsFanFavorite campaign, in which Twitter users will be able to vote for their favorite film of the year. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the chosen title will be announced during the actual broadcast — seemingly a reimagined version of the popular film category that was widely criticized a few years ago and, ultimately, tossed out.
In an academy news release issued Tuesday, Packer said “this year’s show is all about uniting movie lovers."
“It’s apropos that we’ve lined up three of the most dynamic, hilarious women with very different comedic styles,” he continued. “I know the fun Regina, Amy and Wanda will be having will translate to our audience as well. Many surprises in store! Expect the unexpected!”
The 94th Academy Awards will air Sunday, March 27 on ABC. | null | null | null | null | null |
(Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Monday sued Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., alleging that the social media giant for years collected Texans’ biometric data without their full consent, in violation of state privacy laws.
Paxton’s lawsuit, filed in district court in Harrison County, alleges that Facebook collected users’ biometric identifiers from photos and videos without properly informing them, shared the data with third parties and failed to delete it in a timely way, from about 2010 to late 2021 — when Meta announced it would shut down Facebook’s facial recognition system and delete the data it collected on more than 1 billion people.
In a statement, Paxton called the allegations “yet another example of Big Tech’s deceitful business practices.” At a news conference on Monday, he said the state will ask the court for damages in the “billions of dollars.”
The lawsuit comes at a sensitive time for Facebook, which changed its corporate name to Meta in October amid deepening crises for its social media business, rebranding itself as a forward-looking creator of a digital world known as the “metaverse.”
The company settled a class-action lawsuit that made similar claims in Illinois last year for $650 million. Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment early Tuesday. A spokesperson for Meta told The Washington Post in a statement that the Texas claims “are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
The complaint claims that Facebook — which it estimated had some 20.5 million users in Texas in 2021 — knowingly violated the state’s Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI) and Deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act (DTPA) for over a decade with its now-defunct, facial-recognition-based photo and video tagging technology.
The DTPA bans “false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices” in business, while CUBI makes it illegal for private entities to capture, disclose or profit from a person’s biometric identifiers without their informed consent. It mandates that biometric identifiers collected for commercial purposes be stored and shared carefully and destroyed “within a reasonable time,” defined in the law as “not later than the first anniversary of the date the purpose for collecting the identifier expires.”
In Illinois, Facebook unsuccessfully tried to quash a class-action lawsuit filed in 2015 on behalf of millions of users in the state who said the social media platform collected and stored their biometric data without their consent, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Under the Texas biometrics law, which like the Illinois law requires the informed consent of the people whose data is being collected, violations can incur civil penalties of up to $25,000 each. Meanwhile, violations of the DTPA enforced by the Texas Attorney General’s Office can result in fines up to $10,000 each.
The Texas complaint says Facebook created the illusion of a safe environment in which people could upload private photos of themselves and their families. Facebook, it claims, offered its users the option to tag their loved ones in the photos and then captured data relating to people’s identifiable facial features without their permission or informed consent, profited off it by sharing it with third parties and failed to properly dispose of it, “exposing Texans to ever-increasing risks to their well-being, safety and security.”
Facebook has defended its photo-tagging feature, including by arguing that users have had the option of opting out since 2017. In its statement from November announcing the end of the technology, the company said that over a third of its daily active users opted in and that it had put other safeguards in place for users, such as “the option to be automatically notified when they appear in photos or videos posted by others.”
Still, the company said then, it would continue to use facial recognition in some instances, such as when users have been locked out of their accounts. “There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” it said. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
The Texas Attorney General’s Office suggests in the complaint that Facebook may continue to engage in improper use of biometric data in the future, even as the company said in November it would shut it down in photos and videos and delete its users’ individual “facial recognition templates.”
It also points out that “Facebook has made no such commitment with respect to any of the other platforms or operations under its corporate umbrella, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Reality Labs, or its upcoming virtual-reality metaverse.”
Paxton, a tea party favorite who is running for his party’s nomination for re-election, has launched legal actions against several tech companies, including Apple and Google, alleging privacy or antitrust violations.
Texas attorney general, Google’s new competition cop, says everything is ‘on the table’
He faces several challengers in the Republican primary on March 1 who hope to capitalize on the two-term attorney general’s ongoing legal troubles, including allegations of abuse of power made in 2020 by former aides, which Paxton’s office in an internal report called “either factually incorrect or legally deficient” as it concluded that Paxton “committed no crime.”
Last week, Paxton’s office launched an investigation into GoFundMe after the donation platform refused to disburse millions of dollars collected in a fundraiser to the organizers of the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” of vaccine-mandate protesters in Canada, with the company citing “evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation.”
— Elizabeth Dwoskin contributed to this report.
Inside Facebook, Jan. 6 violence fueled anger, regret over missed warning signs
Analysis: Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings | null | null | null | null | null |
Prices for the residences currently available start at about $890,000
The Silver Line’s extension into Northern Virginia is still causing ripples of residential development in the D.C. area. EYA, for instance, is building Townhomes at Reston Station, a community planned for 115 residences, with more than 65 sold and seven available now for purchase.
EYA is leveraging the community’s location to attract buyers looking for a hybrid urban-suburban experience in Northern Virginia. Its townhouses are near the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station (already open on the Silver Line), Reston Town Center, the expansive, mixed-use Reston Station development and the Dulles corridor.
Sean and Larissa Seeberger, both 35, were among the first buyers at the new community. Larissa is an artist, and Sean works for the federal government. They moved from southern Virginia for Sean’s job and made their way to Reston via an Internet search. They are among the early buyers who have already moved in.
“We love the Reston area because it is family-oriented — we have a 4-year-old — and it has great Metro accessibility,” Larissa said. “D.C. is close, but the area does not feel too urban. And we love that the neighborhood is growing rapidly.”
The planned community of Reston has a colorful history. It was created from the ground up by developer Robert E. Simon, a Harvard-educated visionary who conceived of a self-contained community — one where residents could eat, sleep, work and play — long before the concept became widely popular.
Townhomes at Reston Station has units in three floor plans — Anderson, Baker and Conrad. The Baker and Conrad models, both of which are currently unavailable, have an elevator as standard equipment. Prices on the available Anderson units start at about $890,000 for about 1,690 square feet. Prices on Baker units, about 2,420 square feet, and Conrad units, about 2,570 square feet, are expected to start at about $1.2 million when they become available again.
The Seebergers selected the Baker. “We wanted a space that had separation but also allowed for a great room feel to keep an eye on our 4-year-old and to have space for entertaining,” Sean said. “We also both have our own office spaces that are separate from the living space.”
He described the elevator as “an added feature that we did not know we wanted, but it is a wonderful luxury.”
All the townhouses are configured on four levels, with a two-car garage on the first level and a roof terrace, a bedroom, a loft area and storage space on the fourth. None of them have a basement. Homeowners association fees are $185 a month, which covers snow and trash removal, community landscaping and maintenance.
There are no options for customizing the buildings’ exteriors, but there are ways to personalize the interiors. “After purchase, the homeowner meets with our designer to determine finishes and colors, as well as to select any optional upgrade features,” said David Ortiz, sales manager. “The homes offer new-home design features, with high ceilings, light-filled rooms with oversized windows, top-quality finishes, open floor plans for living spaces and entertaining.”
Although Townhomes at Reston Station does not offer a private pool or a clubhouse, a quarter of the four-acre site is dedicated to parks and other open space. And residents are eligible to join the Reston Association, which operates and maintains amenities and activities for all of Reston that include boating, fishing, swimming, tennis, pickleball, golf and a trail network.
Ortiz said he believes that Townhomes at Reston Station occupies a sweet spot amid all the playing and working. “While the homes are close to everything in Reston, they are also part of a distinct community with its own neighborhood parks, paths and seating areas,” he said.
Schools: Sunrise Valley Elementary, Langston Hughes Middle, South Lakes High.
Transit: The community has easy access to the Dulles Toll Road and the Wiehle-Reston East Metrorail station (Silver Line).
Nearby: Reston Station, Reston Town Center, Dulles International Airport, Reston National Golf Course, Lake Fairfax Park, Hidden Creek Country Club.
Townhomes at Reston Station
11301 Reston Station Blvd., Reston, Va.
A total of 115 townhouses are planned, with seven currently available for purchase. Two of three floor plans are not currently available. Prices for the available Anderson units start at about $890,000. Prices for Baker and Conrad units, when they become available again, are expected to start at about $1.2 million.
Builder: EYA
Features: The residences have nine-foot-high ceilings, wide-plank flooring, multi-port multimedia taps, LED lighting, a two-car garage, WiFi-enabled thermostats, stainless-steel appliances, quartz countertops, undermount sinks and quartz vanity tops in the main bathroom.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 3 or 4 / 3 or 4
Square-footage: 1,690 to 2,570
Homeowners association fee: $185 a month, which covers snow and trash removal, community landscaping and maintenance.
View model: Virtual or in-person tours are available.
Sales: David Ortiz, sales manager, or Sarah Metzfield, sales assistant, 703-935-1959, Ext. 101, or restonstation@eyamarketing.com. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A Virginia deputy AG just learned the hard way about the danger of social media
Sophia A. Nelson, a scholar in residence at Christopher Newport University and former House Republican Congressional Committee counsel, is the author or “ePluribus One: Reclaiming Our Founders’ Vision for a United America.”
There is a lot of talk these days about “cancel culture,” from the NFL to Netflix to Spotify to Emmy-winning daytime talk show “The View.” I know it all too well.
I had my own horrible cancel culture experience last fall on my college campus at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. I tweeted a question to which some in the LGBTQ+ community on my campus took offense, and, in an instant, my fledgling career as an adjunct professor and as a historic first-time Black female scholar in residence at the university came to a screeching halt in the wake of anger, recriminations, protests and demands to silence me. I will not be returning to teach after this spring.
My experience is one that we see commonly on our nation’s college campuses, where students get outraged and have hurt feelings over something that a faculty member or fellow student has tweeted, posted online or said. They go into angry protest mode, and all bets are off. The most recent incident occurred at Georgetown University when incoming law center director IIyla Shapiro was put on suspension after he referred to a potential Black woman Supreme Court nominee as a “lesser choice” over a man of color that he considered a better choice. I don’t like his words, but he should be free to tweet them.
I think we should all just admit out loud what we all say privately: Sharing our opinions online is not only increasingly unwise, but it also can be a career-ending experience that could destroy a person’s reputation, life and ability to earn a living.
The latest victim of her own posts is Monique Miles, a promising young Black lawyer based in Alexandria Virginia, who was just named to the office of Attorney General as a deputy overseeing elections and other public affairs issues in the commonwealth.
Full disclosure, I know Miles. She is smart and capable and would have done well at her new job. And I was heartsick to see that her promise had been quickly disrupted by her Facebook posts from Jan. 6, 2021, during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Miles said she has since changed her point of view and accepts that President Biden was duly elected president of the United States and that the election was indeed fair and free.
Let me be clear: I do not agree with her posts. I do not think the people who stormed our nation’s capitol were patriots. They were unlawful mobsters, enraged by an unstable president (who, we now know, was flushing classified documents down the toilets) and his minions, who sold them a big lie about the 2020 election and who very intentionally and strategically riled them up before the unseemly behavior that day. I also believe that we knew in November 2020 when the election was called that Biden indeed was elected. But each citizen has a right to express political and social views on social media as a private citizen. To take that away from us is a violation of our most sacred freedoms: our free thoughts and our free speech.
Some will argue that “consequence” culture should be the new rule. I disagree strongly. Who gets to decide what consequences I or anyone else should suffer because you don’t like my point of view, my political affiliations or my religious expression? That is not America, folks. We are in a very dangerous place when we start to shut people down, shut them out, demand they be removed, demand they not be allowed to speak, be seen or heard because something they said or tweeted angers us. That is just not the values upon which our great nation was founded. Facts are what we must consider when talking about firing people, investigating them or removing them from our great American community of ideals, discussions and, yes, debate.
We find ourselves here in the year 2022, in the commonwealth of Virginia with hotlines to tell on teachers who might dare to teach accurate racial history in our classrooms. We are banning books and curriculums and, in Florida, trying to enact laws limiting what and how gay kids can talk about themselves. It’s surreal. This is not the America I know and love.
I do not want Black Lives Matter protests silenced. I do not want white nationalists silenced. I do not want to be silenced when I want to ask a civil question on my Twitter feed and have my colleagues come after me to ruin my professional career with smears and attacks on who I am as a person. That is neither fair nor right.
Here is my point: None of us should be defined by a tweet or post. None of us should lose our right to work, provide for our families or to be treated as a full member of the American family.
Monique Miles deserved a second chance. As a young Black woman in an administration with so few Black high-level appointees, I wish she had been counseled not to resign. I wish the Facebook posts had come up early in the vetting process so the Attorney General’s office could have been proactive, explaining it and saying what she was prepared to do to help herself and others not get caught up in emotional movements based on feelings, not facts.
We have got to stop canceling people because of social media posts. Instead, let’s start a call-out culture that corrects, heals and grows us all into better human beings. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: There are plenty of bipartisan policies to help kids. Someone should tell the GOP.
First lady Jill Biden walks with children from D.C.'s Aiton Elementary School outside the White House on Feb. 14. (Susan Walsh/AP)
From missed school to mental health crises to lack of adequate day care, the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected children. The upside is that the crisis has also provoked a reassessment of public policies to help them.
Take a recent report from the progressive Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute, titled “Rebalancing Children First.” The bottom line of the analysis: We need to start “rewriting the generational contract” to better invest in children.
The report posits that major investments in the elderly (e.g., Medicare and Social Security) have put a serious dent in poverty among seniors — but have done so at the expense of children. “In 2019, the share of the federal budget spent on children was 9.2 percent and the share spent on the adult portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid was 45 percent,” the report states. “In 2020, the share of the federal budget spent on children fell to 7.4 percent even as total expenditures on children rose. … This allocation is a statement of national priorities — priorities that the working group agrees need to change.”
Whatever imbalances existed prior to covid-19, the toll the pandemic will take on kids may be permanent. This includes not only the loss of caretakers and diminished academic performance, but also factors that can affect their mental health, such as “changes in routines, missed significant life events, isolation, anxiety, and parental stress.” The report projects that many children will “lose tens of thousands of dollars of lifetime earnings due to the time they spent out of the classroom. For low-income children especially, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make up this lost time.”
Had AEI not been involved in producing the report, one might have expected it to include proposals typical of the left, such as increasing capital gains and corporate taxes. Instead, it suggests a mix of centrist ideas to reform taxes and restrain spending on wealthy Americans: “Increased spending on children should be financed by offsetting new spending with cuts to entitlement programs that benefit upper-middle-class and affluent seniors; so-called corporate welfare, including agriculture subsidies; subsidies to well-off households in the federal tax code; and increased tax enforcement.”
Alas, hardly anyone on the GOP side of the aisle will endorse this sort of approach. Republicans have rejected any tax increases on the wealthy. And they oppose subsidies for child care, universal pre-K and changes to make the expanded child tax credit permanent.
The specific recommendations for children include expanding the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit (without the sort of minimum income requirement that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III has insisted on) as well as benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The report also provides data confirming the benefits of a two-parent household, so it endorses measures to eliminate the so-called marriage penalty, increase parental income (e.g., technical training) and to “encourage young adults to plan and be mentally, financially, and relationally prepared for parenthood before starting a family.” Finally, the report encourages additional investment in education — including preschool.
Frankly, the joint report at times sounds like a Democratic Party platform committee report. Consider this passage:
There have been policy successes on the health front in recent years. Expanded health insurance coverage for children has improved health. . . . Environmental improvements such as reduced use of lead in gasoline and other products and other policies that have resulted in cleaner air have had strong impacts. These gains should be protected. But health insurance is not enough: the working group supports policies that promote children having affordable access to doctors, preventive care, and acute care. And further progress needs to be made to protect children from the lifetime consequences of early exposure to lead and other environmental toxins.
This is not the mind-set of the current GOP. Indeed, the party’s anti-empathy ideology is more accurately reflected in a recent declaration from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.): “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children.”
It is striking how antithetical the report is to the MAGA worldview. The notion that government should be helping to solve problems (not creating inane cultural memes), and using data to form policy options (not wallowing in conspiracy theories) has resonance in only one political party these days.
AEI has not gone “socialist,” which is the term most Republican politicians would use to describe many of the policy proposals in the report. Instead, AEI and Brookings have presented a powerful argument that properly directed government resources can make major improvements in the lives of “other people’s children.” Now, we just need a center-right party that would further that message. | null | null | null | null | null |
How music can be a powerful tool for parents
(Chanelle Nibbelink/Illustration for The Washington Post)
By Amy Paturel
This went on for months. I gave patient parenting tactics an earnest try. I thought my children would eventually fall in line. Then, out of sheer frustration one morning, I began crooning “It’s a Beautiful Morning,” and they perked up. I had learned the power of melody.
Whether I’m waking them up in the morning (“Rise and Shine”) or trying to calm them before a doctor’s appointment (“Hakuna Matata”), I break out in song. Unorthodox, maybe. But it turns out that this approach to getting my children, 10-year-old twins and an almost-8-year-old, to rally isn’t unfounded. A 2020 study shows that music boosts listening, cooperation and trust among people of all ages.
Like many children, my boys are rowdy, loud and easily distracted. But in the sometimes painful slog of parenting, I’ve discovered that music is more than just a way to command my kids’ attention and encourage them to follow instructions. It’s a way to connect with them at a level that’s more in tune with the development of their minds.
You don’t have to be musically inclined
“Music speaks to children in the areas of the brain that process sound and emotion, which are both fully developed at birth,” says Joan Koenig, the founder and director of the American Conservatory Preschool & Kindergarten in Paris and the author of “The Musical Child.” “The thinking center of the brain doesn’t come on board until the mid-to-late 20s. But with music, we have this tool that engages children in a language they can understand and feel through vibration.”
Add movement to the mix — whether that means dancing with your infant, pushing your child on a swing or rowing with your teen — and you’ll create an interpersonal synchrony, or an instance when your sensations or movements overlap, that bonds you together, says Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, assistant professor at the School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa in Israel. So it seems there’s a relational benefit to the nightly dance parties we started when our twins became toddlers — a ritual we continue to this day, though usually with Minecraft music.
For years, educators have recognized that whether you’re teaching children a new language or to stand in line, information is better learned — and retained — through melody. At Koenig’s school, teachers have songs for sitting down, standing up and going to the park. They even use raps, complete with choreography, to help children learn multiplication tables. “The proof that it works is in your own memory,” Koenig says. Consider this: How did you learn your ABCs, and do you still remember them?
In 1993, a study published in Nature even suggested that playing Mozart made children smarter. The movement was so powerful, scientists called it the Mozart effect. But according to Psyche Loui, director of the MIND s(Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics) Lab at Northeastern University, , there’s nothing special about Mozart. Instead, it seems that early exposure to music, particularly in the form of musical activity and training, may have benefits that extend beyond chidren’s intelligence.
Think beyond early childhood
If you’ve ever sung in a choir, played in a band or sung loudly in a bar with dueling pianos, chances are you’ve experienced the high that comes from becoming part of the music. It turns out that the art of making imperfect music with another person, something Koenig calls “musicking,” releases feel-good hormones that bond people together.
Amy Paturel is a health writer and professor in Southern California who also teaches personal essay writing. Find her on Twitter @amypaturel. | null | null | null | null | null |
Top environmental groups call on Biden to protect mature trees and forests on federal lands from logging
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! We hope you had a good Valentine's Day with the people and things you love, including the planet. 🌍
Protecting older trees is a simple climate solution, groups tell Biden
More than 70 environmental groups today launched a campaign that calls on President Biden to protect mature trees and forests on federal lands from logging.
While many policymakers look to shiny new technologies to solve the climate crisis, advocates say that safeguarding trees has long been a simple way to store carbon dioxide, preventing the potent greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere and warming the planet.
"We often call it the climate solution you don't have to invent," Ellen Montgomery, public lands campaign director for Environment America, told The Climate 202. "Trees are literally standing right there in front of us."
In addition to Environment America, the groups launching the campaign include the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Wild Heritage. Their specific demand is for the U.S. Forest Service to begin crafting a rule to protect all old-growth trees on federal lands from logging.
In 2001, under President Bill Clinton, the Forest Service enacted a “roadless rule,” which prohibited road construction and timber harvesting on nearly 50 million acres in national forests.
However, most trees on federal lands are located elsewhere, according to the groups.
"Right now, there isn't anything that protects older parts of our nation's forests," Kirin Kennedy, director of people and nature policy at the Sierra Club, told The Climate 202. "So we're looking to put those protections in place."
U.S. forests stored about 58.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service.
While the data was not broken down by the age of forests, experts say that older trees store more carbon than younger trees.
Old-growth forests can also prevent erosion, protect drinking water, and provide a habitat for fish and wildlife.
Asked for comment on the campaign, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Suzanne Flory said in an email, “The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The Forest Service is an agency based in science. Decision-making is complex and based on variety of factors, including local economies, multiple-use needs and the best-available science.”
Troubles in the Tongass
The campaign comes after the Clinton-era roadless rule sparked a years-long battle over logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reported last year.
The Tongass holds the equivalent of 9.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide — nearly twice what the United States emits from burning fossil fuels each year.
In 2020, under President Donald Trump, the Forest Service exempted more than 9 million acres in the Tongass from the roadless rule in response to a petition from former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. The decision drew praise from timber companies and Republicans, while it prompted fierce pushback from many Alaska Natives and Democrats.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also emerged as a vocal champion of the Trump-era rule, saying it would provide greater economic opportunities for residents of southeastern Alaska. A spokeswoman for Murkowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Under Biden, the Forest Service announced last year that it was taking steps to restore protections to the roadless areas of the Tongass. The agency recently solicited public comments on a proposed rule, and a final rule is expected this summer.
“We're really in favor of protecting the Tongass because of what it holds as a natural resource — and because of the benefits it provides not only to Alaska, but to the United States as a whole,” Kennedy said.
Criswell Davis, a consultant and founding director of the Timber & Forestry Foundation, a group that advocates for a more sustainable U.S. timber industry, told The Climate 202 that he also opposes logging in the Tongass.
“When you get an email that says ‘Don’t print this email' at the bottom, that leaves people with the impression that we're running out of trees," Davis said. “But that's really not the case. We actually have 50 percent more trees growing now than we did 50 years ago."
He added: “We are all for the preservation of these old-growth forests. These trees will stand for hundreds — if not thousands — of years. They are iconic.”
Western mega-drought is the worst in 1,200 years, study finds
The mega-drought in the American West, which began in 2000, was fueled by climate change and now ranks as the driest 22 years in the region in at least 1,200 years, Diana Leonard reports for The Washington Post.
A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday found that human-induced global warming played a huge role in intensifying the drought — which has diminished water supplies, devastated farmers and ranchers, and helped spread wildfires across the region — and will probably encourage it to continue.
Researchers said that temperature, more than precipitation, plays a key role in driving such severe and extended droughts, the New York Times’s Henry Fountain reports. While precipitation fluctuates and varies regionally, temperatures are rising across the board as greenhouse gases continue to be pumped into the atmosphere. Hotter air is better able to pull water out of the soil, crops and forests, generating just enough extra dryness to make droughts extreme.
U.N. to finalize report on how global warming alters lives
Scientists and governments met on Monday to wrap up a major United Nations report on how climate change interferes with people’s lives, disrupts the environment and alters the Earth itself, Seth Borenstein and Frank Jordans report for the Associated Press.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of hundreds of top scientists across the globe, releases three huge reports on climate change every five to seven years. The current update, to be released publicly on Feb. 28, will describe how global warming is already dangerously affecting humans and the planet, explain what to expect in the future, and outline the risks and benefits in adapting to a warmer world.
In August, the first report found that humans have pushed the climate into “unprecedented territory," with U.N. Secretary General António Guterres calling the findings “a code red for humanity."
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine roil global energy markets
Oil and gas prices could rise dramatically as energy markets brace for a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the New York Times’s Clifford Krauss reports. An invasion could deal a blow to any country reliant on Russia for energy, as it is Europe’s largest source of natural gas and the world’s third-largest oil producer.
Although the United States is not a big importer of Russian oil, Americans would still be affected by high gasoline prices, which are rooted in global markets. Soaring prices could also pose a threat to climate policies if lawmakers become more willing to increase domestic oil and gas production to compensate, rather than investing in renewable energy.
Key Democrat backs Sarah Bloom Raskin for top banking regulator
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said Monday that he will support Biden's nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin’s to be the Federal Reserve's top banking cop, Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung reports.
The comments from Tester, a moderate Democrat in a 50-50 Senate, probably mean that Raskin's nomination will advance out of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, when it is set to vote.
At her confirmation hearing before the committee this month, Raskin faced questions from Republicans wary of her longtime focus on climate. But Tester said he expected “that she will be confirmed by the full Senate" following the committee vote.
Biden administration looks to decarbonize heavy industry, promote hydrogen
In a briefing with reporters on Monday, senior administration officials said the White House is taking several steps to implement the provisions in the infrastructure law aimed at making heavy industry less carbon-intensive, according to our colleague Steven Mufson, who tuned in to the briefing.
The officials said that the First Movers Coalition, a public-private partnership that Biden unveiled at the United Nations climate summit in Scotland last year, would expand to include aluminum, cement, chemicals and carbon removal. The coalition already includes steelmakers, shipping, trucking and aviation.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Department announced that it would promote the use of low-carbon materials in construction projects funded by the infrastructure law. And the Energy Department said it would press ahead with efforts to establish “hydrogen hubs” to promote the development of clean hydrogen, for which the law provided $8 billion.
Clean hydrogen was the subject of a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing last week, where Michael J. Graff, chief executive of American Air Liquide Holdings, said that the company would explore hubs in the Gulf Coast, California and the Northeast.
“Hydrogen isn’t the only answer to the energy transition,” Graff said in an interview with Mufson, “but we won’t get there without it.”
Environmentalists urge SEC to include carbon offset reporting in climate rule
Environmental groups are calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to require companies to report whether they purchase carbon offsets to meet emissions targets as part of a new climate risk rule, Bloomberg Green’s Natasha White and Akshat Rathi report.
In a letter, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund said that disclosures about offsets are crucial because they have “significant environmental, accounting and social integrity problems” that contradict companies' climate pledges.
Ohhh yea that’s the spot! pic.twitter.com/c7A8iQtqki
— explore.org (@exploreorg) February 13, 2022 | null | null | null | null | null |
Sverre Lunde Pedersen helped guide Norway to its second consecutive gold medal in the event. (Wang Zhao / AFP)
“It’s just an amazing feeling to be able to skate as fast as we did with the whole team,” Norway’s Hallgeir Engebråten said. “This is a team effort, and it means everything.”
That Norway, which defeated the Netherlands in a semifinal pitting the reigning Olympic and world champions, again found itself in the gold medal race is less surprising than the team it faced. The ROC team circled the oval in an Olympic record 3 minutes 36.62 seconds to upset the United States, which entered the competition expecting to contend for, if not win, the gold medal after setting a new world record in the event in early December.
The Americans did that while using a strategy they pioneered, in which the lead racer spearheads the race for its entirety, absorbing the brunt of wind resistance. The development was a departure from the more traditional approach in which a team’s three skaters may cycle through front, middle, and tail positions throughout the race.
Joey Mantia, a two-time men’s mass start world champion, led the world record effort two months, but that same team, which includes Casey Dawson and three-time Olympian Emery Lehman, decided to swap Mantia for Ethan Cepuran against the ROC to rest Mantia for a potential gold medal final.
“The strategy was always to switch out me at some point in the lead, whether it came in the semi or the final,” Mantia said.
In team pursuit, two teams of three begin the race on opposite ends of the oval, at the center of each stretch. They race eight 400-meter laps, one behind the other, and the winner is named when a team’s final skater crosses the line first.
Since the event’s 2006 debut, Norwegian men had finished no better than fourth before their 2018 title.
After a Mantia-led American team beat out the Netherlands for the bronze medal, Norway earned a comfortable victory over the ROC team, whose time was four seconds slower than its Olympic record pace two hours before.
Before the men’s final, Japan’s women held a .32-second lead over Canada before they turned into the final straight, where Nana Takagi, lost her balance and slid into the padding. Canada coasted across the line with in an Olympic record 2 minutes 53.44 seconds. The Netherlands defeated the ROC team for bronze.
Less than an hour later, Engebråten shouted and raised his arms as Norway’s six-legged train split to cross the line in 3 minutes 38.08 seconds. Teammate Sverre Lunde Pedersen, the only returning member from the 2018 gold medal squad, described Tuesday’s medal as having particular significance after last year, when the team took fourth in world championships.
After years finishing behind the Canadians and the Dutch, Pedersen was asked if consecutive Olympic titles solidifies Norway’s place on the team pursuit map.
“It shows that as a team that we are able to skate very good,” he said. “It’s making the way for us.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Her sexy ‘Euphoria’ and snarky ‘White Lotus’ characters shock (and scare) viewers. But she swears she’s nothing like that in real life.
Sydney Sweeney's roles on “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” have made her an HBO breakout star. (Philip Cheung for The Washington Post)
As Olivia on “The White Lotus,” Sydney Sweeney narrows her blue-as-Barbicide eyes over a copy of “The Portable Nietzsche” to toss off a vicious, vocal-fried observation that will straight-up shatter a grown man’s confidence while sending a tremor of terror through anyone older than 30 watching at home. As Cassie on “Euphoria,” those same eyes go Bambi-wide in love, hope and panic; rather than fear her, viewers fear for her, a naive romantic melting down as the guy she’s secretly having sex with studiously ignores her, lest his volatile ex (who is also Cassie’s best friend) discover their tryst.
Cassie is the girl even bad boys dream about. Olivia is the stuff of most parents’ nightmares. It is very funny and a little odd to think of Sweeney, the 24-year-old responsible for both characters, as being either one. When we meet over Zoom, she is eating animal crackers, sitting on the floor of the house in Los Angeles she bought with her “Euphoria” money. The home is perched on a hill overlooking a golf course, with high ceilings striped with exposed wooden beams and a backyard big enough for her dog, Tank, to run happy laps in all day.
It’s cliched to compliment an actor by saying they’re nothing like the characters they play. But Sweeney, who comes across as practical, levelheaded and extremely self-aware, seems almost parodically distant from the roles that made her famous, two unstable young women with no idea who they really are, one of whom she doesn’t even like. When she watched herself as Olivia in “The White Lotus,” Sweeney says, “I was like, 'I cannot stand this girl. If I ever ran into her, I’d be so scared.’” People have asked Sweeney if they think Cassie and Olivia would be friends. To which she replies: “You really think Olivia would be friends with anybody?”
“The White Lotus” is a classic Mike White creation, a biting, uneasy satire about rich people in paradise who keep finding ways to be miserable on a luxury vacation. Olivia’s best friend could be lying to her, her dad could have cancer, and all her brother’s earthly possessions could be swept up by the sea — and she would look on, bored by it all, a droll comment always at the ready.
“I just thought there was real courage in the way she was able to understand and tap into that kind of cynical coverup that I think so many young people do,” said Connie Britton, Sweeney’s TV mom on “The White Lotus.” “She was able to capture that in such a nuanced and honest way, in a way that another actor might have thought they really had to play that. Sydney never played it. She just embodied it.”
Meanwhile, “Euphoria” feels like it was concocted in a lab to incite panic among anyone old enough to remember where they were on 9/11. A chaotic, hedonistic swirl of sex, glitter and fentanyl, the series premiered in mid-2019, right around when TikTok exploded, and seems designed with that app’s frenetic, remixed consumption in mind. Though she’s sometimes on screen for only minutes of the hour-long episodes, Sweeney’s a breakout star online, her darkly comic big swings as meme-able as they come: waking up at 4 a.m. to have a manic episode via elaborate skin care routine; drunkenly wailing along to Sinead O’Connor while using a bottle as a microphone; projectile-vomiting into a hot tub; scream-crying in the girls’ bathroom that she has “never, EVER been happier.”
Between the two shows, Sweeney has basically been crowned Miss Teen HBO, a regular presence on Sunday nights, the most prestigious time slot in prestige TV landscape. “I don’t even get my generation,” Sweeney says, yet she has become something of an avatar for Gen Z, encapsulating adults’ twin concerns about teens today: that they are either like Olivia — manipulative, ruthless — or Cassie — so hungry for approval that they make themselves easy prey. In portraying both, Sweeney has found herself at the center of two charged cultural conversations around the depiction of young women on television.
“Your eyes are drawn to her,” White said. “She doesn’t have to do a lot to bring you in. And it was something that I didn’t even really realize [until] we were editing: There’s just something about her. She’s a little scene-stealer. She just has that thing that makes someone a star.”
Sweeney has been aimed arrow-straight at the career she now has since she was a tween in Spokane, Wash., and an independent movie was being shot in her state. She persuaded her parents to let her audition by putting together a presentation on a five-year business plan of what would happen if she got the role: an agent in Seattle, commercials for a reel, travel to Los Angeles, then booking a TV show during pilot season. Her parents, figuring nothing would come of indulging this fantasy, relented, and Sweeney got the part. (Perhaps you caught her cinematic debut in “ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction”?)
What followed, Sweeney says, was seven years of auditioning and landing nearly nothing. “I was getting small, really cringeworthy things,” she says. After two years, her family relocated to L.A. to support her still-nascent career. “People from back home … didn’t understand what we were doing, and so I got a lot of hate for that,” Sweeney says. “I was getting so many terrible phone calls and emails and just random text messages from people telling me I should kill myself, that I'm ugly, [and] telling my parents they can't believe that they're letting their daughter go to a hell-ridden city.”
Sweeney struggled to assimilate at her high school in Burbank. She regularly missed class for auditions (though still graduated valedictorian), and she says her 1990 Volvo that “leaked oil everywhere” was formally exiled from the gated student parking lot to make space for her classmates’ nicer cars. “It’s just a very unhealthy environment to grow up in.”
In time, Sweeney started stringing together meatier parts. She played a devout, doomed young bride on Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a psychiatric patient on HBO’s “Sharp Objects,” a passionate drama kid on Netflix’s one-season-wonder “Everything Sucks!” Finally came the audition notice that would change everything, for a new HBO series that promised to tell the unfiltered truth about growing up with anxiety and addiction: “Euphoria.”
During casting, information was kept largely under wraps, and a handful of women were brought in to read for just one part: Maddy, Cassie’s best friend (played by Alexa Demie). Sweeney was scandalized by what little she could learn — “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this show, my family’s going to kill me’” — and initially passed on the audition.
But the producers came back to her, asking if she’d put herself on tape for Cassie, a girl who falls for every guy she dates but gets pilloried for her alleged promiscuity. Sweeney begged to read the full pilot, which didn’t tell her much more about her character (as Sweeney puts it, “It’s literally just Cassie getting naked on a bed”) but did sell her on the series as a whole. Though most young people would probably die at the thought of even watching “Euphoria” with their parents (and vice versa, no doubt), Sweeney asked her mom to read with her so she could submit a tape. She requested more scripts and a call with creator-writer-director Sam Levinson, who told her more about Cassie’s journey. “I knew I could bring way more to Cassie than what is just written,” says Sweeney, who takes her character development seriously, writing entire books for every character she plays, tracking their lives from birth to the present day.
“It’s tricky with a character like that, who is doing things that most of the people watching the show don’t agree with,” said Maude Apatow, who plays Lexi, Cassie’s sister. “But Sydney is so thoughtful about her characters and her preparation, and I think she really loves the character she plays and creates these backstories for them … [so] they seem so vulnerable and complicated. She’s never judging the parts that she’s playing.”
White had seen some episodes of “Euphoria” but didn’t recognize Sweeney on her “White Lotus” audition tape. “She had this great, deadpan, monotone approach that I thought was pretty funny,” White said. “Lots of actresses that did it in a little bit more of a precocious way, or a more traditionally comedic way … they were landing the zingers. She just had this disaffected, blank way, [and] it was kind of an original take. … I don’t think she has a lot in common with Olivia, per se, but she ended up being the perfect person.”
“She is, at the same time, just incredibly savvy and professional and smart, but also has this innocence and naivete,” Britton said.
White knew he had something special when they shot the scene in which Olivia offers mock comfort to her dad (Steve Zahn) when he finds out his father died of AIDS complications and likely had sex with men. “He could’ve still been butch, Dad,” she assures him.
“The way she landed those lines,” White said. “This valley girl slash intellectual slash little nymphet, it was like: Oh, my God, this girl is going to steal this episode.”
While the behavior of Cassie and Olivia can be terrifying for different reasons, Olivia’s malice and Cassie’s desperation play very differently on screen, in large part because of how often Cassie is shown in compromising positions without clothes.
The graphic scenes in “Euphoria,” particularly those featuring Sweeney, have prompted some criticism among viewers who question exactly how much and how often skin must be shown in service of Cassie’s story. But Sweeney says she finds the show’s nudity “empowering.” She was made to feel so self-conscious about her body in high school, where she was regularly dress-coded for wearing the same clothes as her peers with smaller chests, she says. Now, she says, “I actually feel more powerful with my body. I feel more confident. I feel more free.”
She reiterates that she has never felt “pressured” to do anything explicit on “Euphoria” and that Levinson recently added clothing to a nude scene per her request. “I said, ‘Sam, I don’t think that she needs to be naked in the scene and I don’t feel comfortable doing it. Everyone’s just going to look at my boobs and not actually take the scene seriously for the content that’s happening.’ He was like, ‘Okay, yeah. You don’t have to do that.’ … I appreciate people being worried … but I’m totally fine on ‘Euphoria.’”
“I think that people are projecting a lot onto how she should feel, or what they think she should feel, about the nudity,” said Molly Lambert, a pop culture reporter and one of the sharpest observers in the very active “Euphoria” online universe. “But I also think the nudity on the show is obviously there to titillate. It’s not just plot-driven, necessarily always. But it is also plot-driven, which is that her story line is that she’s getting treated like a piece of meat by everybody. … Not taking her at her word that she doesn’t feel exploited [is] misogynist.”
While in clumsier hands Cassie could seem pathetic, “[Sweeney] is really funny. That’s what makes her compelling,” Lambert said. “She has an almost Cameron Diaz energy: She’s the hot girl who is a really good comedian. I think she’s very good at doing the drag of being a babe, but she seems, as a person and an actress, to know who she is: just sort of a regular girl.”
Sweeney’s performance as Cassie, Lambert added, “is offset by the fact that Sydney Sweeney herself seems really smart and self-aware about the performance she’s doing, and that she seems nothing like the character.”
She pointed to Sweeney’s TikTok account, @SydsGarage, where Sweeney documents the process of fixing up a 1969 Bronco. Contrary to her on-camera style, “She’s just wearing a white tank top and using a blowtorch to fix a car. It just makes her seem like she’s a real person.”
Sweeney’s “Euphoria” character is ending the season with her secret exposed, her life and sanity apparently coming undone. (Apatow: “Sydney plays a nervous breakdown so well.”) In real life, all of Sweeney’s efforts seem to be coming together. She’s busy with her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, and “Euphoria” has been renewed for a third season. And she feels like her work is finally clicking with viewers, especially after “The White Lotus” debuted, which sent some “Euphoria” skeptics back to her work on that series. “People are like, ‘Oh, my God, where did she come from?’” she says. But nobody asks her that anymore. “People are now taking my performance more seriously and giving me respect.”
She remembers traveling in Europe after “The White Lotus” aired and being recognized in public more and more. “For the first time I was getting followed into stores,” she said, but “people were scared to come up to me because they thought I was going to be mean like Olivia. I was like, ‘That’s not me, don’t worry.’” | null | null | null | null | null |
The Horizon series and Aloy, from pitch to polish
Guerrilla Games’ big franchise was born of a desire to ditch Killzone’s doom and gloom
Guerrilla Games art director and Horizon franchise creator, Jan-Bart van Beek (left) and Guerrilla Games Director, Mathijs de Jonge (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
After making four mainline games in a franchise called Killzone, which tasks players with exterminating endless waves of futuristic, Nazi-like soldiers, Amsterdam-based Guerrilla Games collectively wanted a break from doom and gloom.
When Guerrilla Games art director and Horizon franchise creator Jan-Bart van Beek read reviews of past Killzone games and saw writers wonder what a studio of their talent could make beyond steel and glass gun games, it hit him.
“What if they make something exuberantly beautiful?” van Beek said, summarizing a recurring message of these critiques. “That inspired the studio to stretch our creative muscle, to extend our thinking in new ways again.”
In 2010, van Beek began developing a concept for a beautiful but recovering post-apocalyptic Earth, in which the ferocity of nature was made manifest in the form of large robotic beasts, hunted by a scarlet-haired woman. That idea was thrown into a studio-wide pitch process for Guerrilla’s next game — finally, a break from the Killzone series. This pitch process included game concepts in a wide variety of genres, including linear adventure games, puzzle games and even a football game.
Guerrilla Games Director Mathijs de Jonge said the studio began to unite around van Beek’s idea. But confidence in the concept was shaken a bit when “Enslaved: Odyssey to the West” released in October 2010. That title, by British developer Ninja Theory, featured a similar aesthetic and world concept, and also starred a redheaded, female protagonist.
“That’s our whole list of ingredients,” van Beek said. “If they were going to hit it out of the ballpark, we shouldn’t follow them and maybe we should start looking at something else.”
Review: ‘Horizon Forbidden West’ is a sprawling and satisfying sequel
The studio went back to another pitch process, only for Hermen Hulst, the studio’s co-founder and now head of PlayStation Studios, to suggest they return to the Horizon concept. They found that the whole studio had a lot of affection for Aloy, the scarlet-haired hunter, and her journey. Moreover, Guerrilla staff believed they could build a fantastic open-world game — the kind of experience they would be excited to play.
“There was quite a big draw toward Horizon because of all the challenges that it brought,” de Jonge said. “Let’s do an action role-playing game! We love to play those kind of games.”
Settling on van Beek’s concept meant staffing up with a narrative director, programmers and other talent skilled in the open-world and action role-playing genres. Released in 2017, “Horizon Zero Dawn” became the studio’s first attempt at a game telling a narrative over a large map, where there was a chance players could miss substantial parts of the world — or, even worse, get bored during exploration.
“One of the initial things we discovered was pacing,” de Jonge said. “By building prototypes, we discovered we wanted something to happen every 50 meters or every 100 meters or so. … We designed ‘Horizon [Zero Dawn]’ on paper basically with that pacing in mind, and it’s something we are still using today.”
The game was always envisioned to take place in a wild, overgrown and lush American landscape, even though the team briefly discussed staying in Europe or the Netherlands. North America’s geographic diversity and iconic locations (such as San Francisco and other cities in the 2022 sequel, “Horizon Forbidden West”) make for easy-to-recognize landmarks in gameplay, as well as a compelling stage for a science-fiction future where humanity lacks any knowledge of human achievement from most of their history.
Aloy was also always meant to be a woman. Like with the series’s themes of restorative beauty, centering femininity in its heroism was an element of the studio recoiling from the loud masculinity of the Killzone games, de Jonge said.
“One thing we were also a little bit frustrated during the Killzone days was on our box cover, we had the enemy. We had the Helghast,” de Jonge said, referring to the iconic, red-eyed Nazi-like soldiers of Killzone. “We didn’t have a hero character. So this was a counter reaction. Let’s do a female protagonist, and put her on the box cover.”
The striking red hair, too, was planned from the beginning, said van Beek; it was meant to catch the eye, like the hair of a Disney princess. While various different concepts of Aloy were focus tested, the scarlet design always won out.
“We had all sorts of Aloys there … we already knew which one we gravitated toward, and that was the same one as the focus tests,” de Jonge said.
But while the Horizon story features a diverse cast with many different ethnicities represented, Aloy as a character does evoke the narrative trope of the “white savior,” in which a white character rescues non-White people from their misfortunes. The franchise’s costume design and aesthetic is inspired by Native American imagery and the image of the classic American frontiersman; van Beek described Aloy’s story as “sort of like a Western story, with a girl riding on horseback traveling over the Great Plains.”
The first game’s script generated controversy by using certain words to describe warriors that was seen as insensitive to Native Americans. The game’s narrative director, John Gonzales, said the studio didn’t mean to offend, and that the art was inspired by cultures from all over the world. Sure enough, prominent characters like Aloy’s friend Erend seem inspired by the Vikings.
As the world changes, so will the voice of the hero. Where does that leave Nolan North?
Because the burden of saving humanity’s chance for a future lies on Aloy, it was important to the team that she and the characters around her seemed believable and relatable, reacting how actual people might when they discover San Francisco as ancient ruins of their ancestors, whom players can imagine as our near future selves, destroyed by their own technology. Aloy and humanity’s relationship with their past and present is further elevated in “Forbidden West.” It’s a result of the studio doubling down on what made the first game’s story so memorable to its fans: the idea of “futurist archaeology.” In “Forbidden West,” for example, the recipe and cooking method for pizza is a new and intensely intriguing concept for humans a thousand years in the future who have lost touch with their history.
While the franchise’s first chapter answered many questions about how Aloy’s world came to be, the studio was challenged to sustain that mystery through a sequel. Judging from largely positive reviews of the latest game — including our own — it seems the studio met that objective.
“You don’t ever want to get to the stage where we have no more surprises, no more mysteries to speak of,” van Beek said. “People now know the universe, so it’s one of those things we keep looking for, what else can we pull out of the rabbit’s hat.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Waseem Azeem leaves a Pakistan court in handcuffs Sept. 27, 2019, after the verdict in his trial for killing his sister Qandeel Baloch. (Shahid Saeed Mirza/AFP/Getty Images)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Qandeel Baloch was a mega star on Pakistan’s social media and a well-known celebrity and model before she was murdered by her brother Waseem Azeem in a so-called “honor killing” in 2016.
The case made global headlines, and Azeem was sentenced to life in prison in 2019, but on Monday a court ruled he could be released after his parents granted him forgiveness, triggering a legal pardon under Islamic law.
“The appeal court has acquitted the accused in the case on the grounds of a family settlement and lack of evidence,” Sardar Mehboob, Azeem’s attorney told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
“There is nothing left in the case. The convict will be released soon from the prison,” his attorney added, noting that the court order had yet to be made public.
The Taliban says it will rule under sharia law. What does that mean?
Azeem was arrested in 2016 after he confessed to killing his 26-year-old sister for posting what he called “shameful” pictures on social media.
“I was determined either to kill myself or kill her,” he said at the time. “I have no regrets.”
Under Islamic law in Pakistan, sometimes called sharia law, a murder victim’s family is able to pardon a convicted killer. The siblings’ parents lobbied for his release and the mother, Anwar Bibi, welcomed the court’s decision, according to the Associated Press.
“I am happy over the acquittal of my son, but we are still sad for our daughter’s loss,” she said. “I am thankful to the court, which ordered the release of my son at our request.”
The brother of a Pakistani social media celebrity has admitted to strangling her in an 'honor killing'. (Reuters)
Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem and who was 26 when she was killed, first caught the public’s attention in an audition for “Pakistan Idol,” a singing competition spun off from the “American Idol” TV show. She didn’t win or even make it past the first audition, but her reaction to her rejection led to a viral video on Facebook.
She leveraged her brief moment of social media fame to attract thousands of fans to her Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts, where she regularly posted pictures and videos of herself, some deemed provocative in Pakistan, which led to abuse.
“I am an inspiration to those ladies who are treated badly by society,” she once said, acknowledging the storm of vitriol her posts created in some conservative quarters. “I will keep on achieving, and I know you will keep on hating.”
Portraits of fear and loss: Taliban rule through the eyes of four women in Afghanistan
Baloch’s murder at the time drew nationwide condemnation. Her bother Azeem admitted to covertly slipping her a sedative then strangling her, he said, in their family home near the city of Multan in the Punjab province of the country, which neighbors India and Afghanistan. Azeem said his motivation was the taunting and embarrassment his sister brought upon their family.
After her death, Pakistan’s parliament passed an anti-honor killing law, which outlined harsher punishments and partially closed loopholes for some familial pardons, according to Human Rights Watch. But tougher penalties have not automatically translated into greater justice for women in the patriarchal country, the advocacy group says.
Azeem’s impending release has triggered uproar among human rights activists and on social media in the country.
“This is not the first time sentences for heinous crimes have been reduced or overturned. Why do these loopholes still exist in our judicial system whereby murderers can eventually walk free?” wrote actor Osman Khalid Butt on Twitter.
“This man who confessed of killing Qandeel, his own sister, is a free man today in the same country where Qandeel couldn’t live her life freely & was honor killed for the choices she made as a free citizen of this country,” wrote Pakistani lawyer Nighat Dad.
Six years - and an anti-honor killing Bill - later, we're back to square one.
About 1,000 honor killings occur each year in Pakistan, according to the global Honor Based Violence Awareness Network, a resource center, which says the figure is likely an underestimate. The women are usually murdered by close relatives for violating conservative norms on love and marriage. | null | null | null | null | null |
Violinist-violist Chelsey Green will perform at the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival. (Derrel Todd Photography)
Festival director Paul Carr has long used the term to refer to the acoustic, straight-ahead bebop jazz that he loves. However, he came to jazz through the R&B-infected pop jazz of the late ‘70s, such as the Crusaders and Grover Washington Jr. With covid’s physical and economic effects hitting the live-performance-intensive music particularly hard, audience building is a more crucial concern than ever.
Carr’s approach is to introduce a new performance stage to the MAJF: one that presents the kind of gateway he experienced.
“The Oval Stage lets people encounter jazz through things that they might be more familiar with,” Carr explains. “The artists performing there have histories in all different types of music, and they’ve used that to build a career and an audience in more contemporary forms of jazz.”
Check out these new recordings from DMV artists
These are artists with significant profiles in the Washington area and beyond, including renowned R&B/jazz vocalist Lori Williams (Feb. 18) and smooth jazz keyboardist Marcus Johnson (Feb. 20). Perhaps most exciting, however, is the multifaceted violinist-violist Chelsey Green, who performs Feb. 19.
A native of Houston, Green is a classically trained player with a doctorate in music from the University of Maryland (and is an associate professor at Berklee College of Music). Her playing, however, is light-years away from the ivory tower. Funk, soul, hip-hop, gospel and dance-pop are all tributaries to her sound — not to mention the jazz standard repertoire (some of which she adds a soulful alto vocal). All of it, however, comes with a precise conservatory technique and impeccable sense of rhythm.
Green might easily serve as an entry point into not just jazz, but any number of genres.
Should the Oval Stage accomplish its mission of nudging listeners toward traditional jazz, there are two other stages to choose from. The MAJF Club Stage features local artists, with an emphasis on vocalists such as Brazilian-jazz stylist Maija Rejman and smoky-voiced chanteuse Tacha Coleman-Parr. However, some instrumentalists are also featured, notably blues guitarist Dave Cole and alto saxophonist Terry Koger.
The festival’s Ronnie Wells Main Stage naturally plays host to the top draws, many of whom this year share the bandstand with university big bands (a staple of the MAJF since its inception). In particular, a trio of acclaimed young alto saxophonists — Sharel Cassity, Lakecia Benjamin and Tia Fuller — feature with the West Virginia University, North Carolina Central University and Georgetown University jazz ensembles, respectively.
Yet each of these is a formidable accomplished and accomplished player in their own right. (Especially Fuller, a member of Beyoncé’s band and a musical contributor to Pixar’s Oscar-winning film “Soul.”) And this wouldn’t be the MAJF festival if it didn’t put those three talents together on the same stage. Saturday night’s “Alto Madness Sax Summit” gives them a forum for what could be anything from a fierce battle to a sublime collaboration (probably elements of both). If Green and the other Oval Stage artists can bring in new fans, “Alto Madness” ought to be enough to keep them.
Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival
Hilton Hotel and Executive Meeting Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville. midatlanticjazzfestival.org.
Dates: Feb. 18-20. “Alto Madness Sax Summit” takes place Feb. 19 at 8:30 p.m. on the Ronnie Wells main stage; Chelsey Green performs Feb. 19 at 10 p.m. on the Oval Stage.
Price: $25-$85 single session tickets; $155-$185 day passes. | null | null | null | null | null |
Several vehicles were involved in the crash along Route 1
An 82-year-old driver was killed in a crash in Woodbridge, police said. (iStock) (iStock)
An 82-year-old driver was killed on Valentine’s Day in a crash involving four vehicles in Woodbridge, police said.
Officials with the Prince William County police said in a statement that the crash happened just before 11 a.m. on Route 1 near Wigglesworth Way.
Police say that John Joseph Angevine, of Beltsville, was driving north on Route 1 when his Lincoln Town Car crashed into a Jeep Grand Cherokee that had veered into oncoming traffic after colliding with a Hyundai Elantra that had pulled out of a parking lot, crossing the southbound lanes. After being hit, Angevine’s car then crashed into the fourth vehicle, a Mercedes GLE.
Angevine was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The three other drivers, all Woodbridge residents, were taken to a hospital. The Hyundai driver was treated for minor injuries; the two others received serious injuries.
Officials said “alcohol and drug use do not appear to be factors in the crash” but they’re still considering whether speed played a role. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man wounded in an officer-involved shooting in Fairfax County
A man was wounded in an officer-involved shooting in Lorton, Fairfax County police said Tuesday morning. He is in a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Police said the incident happened in the 8300 block of Fitt Court. Officers “responded for a suspicious van” that was parked in that area and “encountered an armed man, which resulted in an [officer-involved shooting,” according to a Twitter message from the department. | null | null | null | null | null |
(Courtesy of Yingzong Xin/Washington Post illustration)
By Yingzong Xin
Name: Yingzong Xin
Location: San Francisco Bay area
Job title: Character designer, sketch artist at Pixar Animation Studios
Previous jobs: Character designer at Tencent Timi
What led me to my current role: I started to draw when I was 3 — and I drew on my parents’ beautiful white walls at home. They didn’t blame me, so I’ve kept drawing. My dad is a writer, so we had many books at home, too. I loved reading classics like “Pride and Prejudice,” “Jane Eyre” and “Frankenstein,” and when I was touched by the stories, I created illustrations. So I’ve always connected drawing with stories.
Working for the animation industry is the perfect way to combine my love for art and story. Not to mention my passion for fashion — for a short period of time, I was considering being a fashion designer. But after I learned that I’m not very good at sewing, I used drawing to express my love of beautiful clothes and dresses. So being a character designer really is a great way to combine my passions.
How I spend the majority of my workday: My day is all about drawing and creating art. Working from home doesn’t affect me that much as a digital artist; I draw at home, along with attending lots of Zoom meetings. I am pretty comfortable working at home because I enjoy a quiet and private working environment with my two hairless cats, Princess and Lady. I often work very, very late, sometimes until midnight.
9 a.m.: I am not a morning person. If I have a 9:30 meeting like I do today, I wake up just a half-hour before to get ready and eat breakfast. This is the benefit of WFH.
9:30-10 a.m.: I have a meeting with people from the tech department. In this meeting, we usually review 3D models and talk about questions, like how to transfer 2D designs into 3D models.
10 a.m.: I check my email and social media accounts, including Twitter and Instagram.
11:30 a.m.: I meet with our art team. Each film has its own art team, and we design the look of the film, the characters, sets, lighting, etc. — basically all the visual elements of the animated film. We are a small team, with about 12 people, and we’re all very close. This art team meeting is for us to talk about our assignment, schedule and whether we have any updates. If anyone has any questions about our assignment, this is a good time to ask.
Noon: Zoom lunch with my co-workers from the art department. We have this lunch gathering every Friday. It’s a good opportunity to make connections during the pandemic and have random, fun chats. I like these lunches, even if I can’t make them every week.
1:15 p.m.: Another meeting to talk about a project for our movie. In a full-length animated feature, there are so many characters for us to design. Sometimes, a certain character or group of characters might need a little more attention, so we’ll build a tiny team focused only on developing that type of character. During this meeting, we talk about the problems we’re encountering when making a particular character.
1:45 p.m.: My desk time. With no meetings, I can finally work on my assignment now.
2:30 p.m.: We have an art review this week. This is usually the most important meeting of the week for us. We create a presentation, show our designs to the film director and get notes from the “boss.”
4 p.m.: A post-art review meeting with the art team. We usually talk about what we learned from the review and what our next steps are going to be. We also talk about what fun plans we have for the weekend!
7 p.m.-midnight: After dinner, I rest, play some video games and watch Netflix with my boyfriend. I continue drawing, but this is on my own time. Besides my studio work, I also do TikTok drawing videos just for fun, and I also have interest in making my art into different products, so I am trying to start a little business at night. I always find myself more productive at night, so I work right up until going to bed.
It might sound stressful, but I don’t feel that way — I enjoy my day-to-day very much! | null | null | null | null | null |
Inflation Will Be Exactly What People Expect It to Be
Promotional sale signs in a window reflecting construction work on Trongate in the east end of Glasgow, U.K., on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. The Office for National Statistics will report the latest U.K. Consumer Price Index Inflation figures on Wednesday. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Sometimes yesterday’s crazy idea turns out to be sane or even essential. For instance, Fischer Black, the late finance economist and co-discoverer of modern options pricing theory, argued that the rate of price inflation will be whatever we think it will be.
If expectations are that inflation will be high, it will be high. If expectations are that inflation will be low, it will be low. For Black, who died in 1995, this was always true, at least for modern economies.
I never agreed with Black on this point, but increasingly I have begun to wonder if he wasn’t on to something. Plenty of people like to say that they knew at the time that the big money supply increases of 2008-2009 were not going to lead to high inflation. There are also people who like to say that they knew at the time that the combined monetary and fiscal response from the pandemic would lead to much higher rates of price inflation. But relatively few people can gloat about getting it right both times.
In Black’s view of the world, if people expected inflation to be high, they would spend and borrow more. Banks would create the money for this process to be self-sustaining. Under this framework, Black might have argued that no major inflation resulted after 2008 because Americans simply were not bullish enough, given the recent financial trauma.
Paul Krugman has argued that there was not high inflation after 2008 because the U.S. economy was in a liquidity trap. Black’s rejoinder to the Keynesians was a subtle one: We are always in a liquidity trap. Since banks can bid for reserves, and reserves can pass in and out of banks freely, the net value of additional bank reserves must be equal to other uses of the funds. The monetary expansion of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which operates through banks, is thus like swapping two nickels for a dime. Whether or not nominal interest rates are zero, after the swap banks can still move back to whichever portfolio they wished to hold. Thus any Fed actions will prove neutral if that is what the banks, and the economy as a whole, desire.(1)
One argument is that it is different this time because the U.S. government engineered a major fiscal policy response to the crisis, not just a monetary response. Maybe, but if you focus on the fiscal side, you should be very strongly on Team Transitory — that is, believe that currently high inflation rates will fade rapidly. The fiscal response now lies firmly in the past, and so the inflationary pressures should be subsiding.
I can’t say that view has been refuted — who knows what next month may bring? — but it is looking less likely. If anything, the data are showing the inflationary pressures being transmitted to more sectors of the economy.
The reality is that the U.S. economy, along with many others, saw a recovery of surprising speed and strength in 2021. That produced a lot of optimism, which mostly has persisted, even in light of delta and omicron. In the Black view, that optimism produces a lot of spending and borrowing. Nominal variables will explode accordingly, and indeed they did.
Have you ever wondered why a country such as South Korea had inflation as high as 19% during its high-growth years? In general, high-growth countries often have high inflation. Those results make sense in the Fischer Black worldview.
So if Black was right, what does this mean looking forward?
Market expectations for inflation have recently turned up sharply for the one-year horizon, and for the three-year time horizon they still stand above 3%. Black did not argue that such expectations had to be stable, but that they may be the best guess for where we are headed. Another idea that is suspect is the notion that the Fed can steer the rate of price inflation as it chooses.
I can’t quite bring myself around to the Fischer Black view on inflation. I was brought up believing in a well-defined quantity of money that causally determines the price level, and I still see central banks commanding a lot of attention from the markets. Nonetheless, as central banks rely more on market expectations to orchestrate macroeconomic outcomes, I no longer see the Fischer Black views as so far from the current mainstream.
I am reminded of Hamlet’s words to Horatio. If the world as a whole is getting weirder, and it seems to be, then maybe inflation is, too.
• What Inflation in 2022 Will Teach Us About Capitalism: John Authers
• Surging Inflation Puts the Fed in an Impossible Situation: Robert Burgess
• What Would Modern Monetary Theory Do About Inflation?: Clive Crook
• America Needs Higher, Longer-Lasting Inflation: Karl Smith
(1) Both market monetarists and Keynesians admit that in a traditional liquidity trap, monetary policy still can be effective if the Fed can make credible promises to inflate. I regard this as a substantive concession to the Fischer Black view, even if it is not usually presented as such. | null | null | null | null | null |
A New York Department of City Administrative Services representative, right, speaks with job seekers during a Catalyst Career Group job fair in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018. U.S. filings for unemployment benefits unexpectedly declined last week, hovering close to an almost 45-year low and signaling a tight job market, Labor Department figures showed Thursday. (Bloomberg)
A couple of weeks ago, a travel writer disclosed her salary on Twitter: It was $107,000, and a lot of people were surprised that you can make six figures as a travel writer. That would be great news to someone who was considering that as a career, but had been told journalism doesn’t pay.
• How to Choose an Ideal Spouse (for Your Career): Sarah Green Carmichael | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: What sort of ‘comeuppance’ is in store for Trump?
Attorney General Merrick Garland in New York on Feb. 3. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Were Raskin the attorney general, I would be entirely confident of that prediction. But Attorney General Merrick Garland seems to be so deliberately timid and apolitical to the point of appeasing anti-democratic forces.
Still, much of the hand-wringing over Garland is premature and uninformed. In evaluating the context in which the attorney general might pursue criminal charges against Trump, his critics should be realistic.
In the inconceivable category should be anything associated with the Mueller investigation. The statute of limitations has run out on the first possible incident of obstruction — that is, Trump asking then-FBI director James B. Comey “to back off” prosecuting his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as the Lawfare blog recently explained.
The Justice Department has been silent on the Comey-Flynn incident as well as other incidents of alleged obstruction for which the statute of limitations will also run out in the next few months. Trump Attorney General William P. Barr determined in 2019 that no prosecution of these potential crimes would unfold (after misrepresenting the contents of the Mueller report). There is zero reason to believe Garland will take them up now.
Lawfare speculates that Garland might consider the Mueller charges “closed as a result of Barr’s having closed it.” That is consistent with “a long tradition of administrations not using the Justice Department to investigate their predecessors.”
It is also consistent with Garland’s much-criticized decision to adhere to the Justice Department’s position on the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit against Trump. Garland simply is not going to plant his flag on issues the department already passed on during the prior administration.
There is further reason to forgo criminal prosecution related to the Russia investigation: The investigation conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was multifaceted, hard to follow and failed to engage the public’s attention, let alone its ire. Will Trump “get away” with possible crimes? It happens all the time. Potential criminal defendants who are prosecuted on more recent, “easier” grounds are not necessarily brought to justice on each and every instance of wrongdoing. Al Capone famously went to prison for tax evasion, not for his violent crimes.
Garland critics incensed that he is “letting this go” should keep in mind that the public essentially held Trump accountable for his serial wrongdoing by voting him out of office in 2020. Moreover, given a choice (and it is a choice, because of limited resources) between prosecuting Trump for the convoluted series of events set out in the Mueller report or for the coup attempt in January 2021, the latter is infinitely more critical due to the severity of the potential crime(s), the needed deterrent effect and the available witnesses and evidence.
Raskin offers some comfort that Garland sees possible crimes related to the insurrection — such as obstruction of Congress and seditious conspiracy — quite differently. Raskin points out that “people were on Garland’s case about the fact that there had been no indictments for seditious conspiracy. And then there was a huge indictment on seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers, and presumably more to come.” He explains, “There were these overlapping circles of conspiracy to knock over the Capitol and take down our government.” It seems Trump was at the center of those circles.
At this point, Garland should be taken at his word. During his remarks regarding the anniversary of Jan. 6, he declared, “The Justice Department remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.” If Garland reneges on that promise, there will be plenty of time for recriminations.
Why is the FBI (apparently) not conducting an investigation parallel to the Jan. 6 committee? Quite simply, it does not need to. Raskin says the Jan. 6 committee is accumulating evidence — hundreds of witnesses and thousand of documents. The Justice Department, with or without a criminal referral from the select committee, can act on that evidence plus anything acquired in its own investigation of more than 700 individuals tied to the insurrection. Oh, and each time Trump opens his mouth and makes incriminating statements (e.g., admitting that he wanted his vice president to “overturn” the election), he adds to the mound of evidence against him.
Trump’s comeuppance might also emanate from New York tax authorities or from the prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga., investigating his plea for the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes.
Let’s see what the select committee’s public hearings later this year set forth. If the evidence is as compelling as Raskin and his fellow committee members keep suggesting, Garland will find it exceptionally difficult not to prosecute. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Maryland can protect firefighters and other first-responders with a bill that bans some chemicals
The Maryland House of Delegates gathers in Annapolis on Dec. 6. (Brian Witte/Associated Press)
By Christine Taylor
Christine Taylor is the widow of firefighter George Walter Taylor.
My husband, George Walter Taylor, a firefighter, was 46 years old when he died. We were married for almost 20 years. I came from a family heavily involved in the fire and rescue service, career and volunteer, so we were the perfect match. I am a nurse, so in addition to sharing intense working hours, I share his commitment to helping others. Together we raised four children and spoiled two grandchildren. Walter, as he was known, spent 31 years of his life in the fire service, starting at the age of 15 and ending the moment he took his last breath.
As a professional firefighter, Walter was a strong advocate for protecting the health and safety of his fellow firefighters. He knew the dangers they faced on the job, including those unseen. He knew they were being diagnosed with medical problems and various cancers attributed to their multiple exposures to harmful chemicals and substances. In particular he knew about the risks of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which he, and his colleagues were exposed to in some of the firefighting foams they used, in the air they breathed when consumer products such as rugs and carpets burned and even from their gear, which was coated in the chemicals. These chemicals are often known as “forever chemicals,” because they don’t break down in the body or in the environment. This makes them particularly dangerous because they’ve been linked to a host of illnesses, including cancer.
Walter’s lifetime exposure to PFAS was 31 years. He used firefighting foams containing PFAS and was exposed to combustible materials on the fireground while wearing his turnout gear.
In May 2018, Walter was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic neuroendocrine cancer. For two years, we tried various treatments to decrease the spread of his cancer, with no success. Walter died on May 25, 2020, peacefully with all of us at his side. His autopsy listed the cause of death as metastatic neuroendocrine cancer related to occupational exposures.
Walter is not alone. According to the International Association of Firefighters, cancer is the leading line of duty cause of death for firefighters, with 75 percent of firefighter deaths coming from occupational cancers. I can’t bring Walter back, but we owe it to him and the families of Walter’s fellow firefighters to do everything we can to reduce their exposure to PFAS and other cancer-causing chemicals. Doing so will help not only our firefighters and their families but also all of us. Firefighters like Walter are the canary in the coal mine for these chemicals, which are putting all of us at risk as they make their way into the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.
Since Walter’s passing, his oldest daughter, Miranda, has given birth to our third granddaughter. Our daughter Kayla is a paid EMT/volunteer firefighter that is getting married this year to a firefighter. Our son, Justin, is a volunteer firefighter aspiring to be a paid firefighter. Our youngest daughter, Mackenzie, celebrated her 10th birthday last week and has dreams of being a firefighter, “just like Daddy.” We know that Walter is always watching over us, but our desire for him to physically be here breaks our hearts on even the happiest of days.
Fortunately, the Maryland legislature and Gov. Larry Hogan (D) have a chance to help protect Walter’s fellow firefighters and Maryland families from ever having to feel the pain, hurt and loss that my children and I feel every day. The bipartisan George “Walter” Taylor Act, being debated in Annapolis, would stop the use of these dangerous chemicals in rug and carpets and food packaging and ensure fire departments switch to safer alternatives for firefighting foam. The bill also would require notification for all firefighting gear that contains PFAS chemicals. I am thankful to state Sen. Sarah K. Elfreth (D-Anne Arundel) and Del. Sara N. Love (D-Montgomery) for introducing the bill and am calling on every legislator and the governor to support it.
By passing this law, we can protect the lives of our firefighting brothers and sisters, so they can continue to protect your life and the lives of Maryland families. | null | null | null | null | null |
Katja Hoyer, Mac Margolis and Keith Richburg join Washington Post Opinions as Global Opinions columnists
Washington Post Opinions today announced it is adding Katja Hoyer, Mac Margolis and Keith Richburg as Global Opinions columnists, building on the diverse perspectives Post Opinions offers around the world. Hoyer, reporting from London and Berlin, will write about German and European politics, culture and society; Margolis, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will have a focus on Brazilian and Latin American politics; and Richburg, based in Hong Kong, will write on developments in Asia, Africa and Europe.
“We are dedicated to offering sharp commentary about the most important global stories from journalists on the ground,” said Elías López, senior editor for Global Opinions at The Washington Post. “We are excited to add Katja, Mac and Keith to our roster of more than 20 Global Opinions columnists and contributors. They bring deep knowledge to areas of great interest to readers, like Europe’s security landscape; Brazil’s democratic climate, and China’s increasingly assertive role in Asia.”
Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian and journalist. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and the author of “Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918."
A longtime correspondent and foreign affairs writer, Margolis has spent four decades reporting on Brazil and the rest of Latin America, as a correspondent for Newsweek International and a contributor to The Economist, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Times of London and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. From 2014 to 2021, he worked for Bloomberg Opinion. Margolis is also the author of “The Last New World: the Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.”
Richburg, an award-winning former Post correspondent and foreign editor, has been based in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Nairobi, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and New York City. His coverage for The Post ranged from the Somalia intervention and the Rwanda genocide, to the Hong Kong handover, to the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union. Since 2016, he has been director and professor of practice at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center. He is the author of “Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.” | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 11: Zach Purser Brown is pictured. Staff portraits of Washington Post Employees. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Announcement from Editorial Video Director Micah Gelman and Executive Producer, Live Moments Lauren Saks:
We are delighted to announce the promotion of Zach Purser-Brown to Senior Producer, Live Moments. Zach will join Lauren Saks in leading the team responsible for bringing the biggest live events to Washington Post viewers on-site and YouTube. From the biggest political moments -- to historic space launches, royal weddings and funerals, and celebratory parades for the Washington Capitals and Nationals -- our live programming has become essential viewing for subscribers and would-be subscribers.
Zach will also work closely with Lauren and our TiKTok team to increase the reach and engagement of the third-ranked and fastest-growing social media platform.
Since coming to The Post in 2019, Zach has covered two impeachments, a presidential election and an insurrection. He edited the weekly series “Impeachment This Week” and produced a moving obituary for Rep. John Lewis told, in the late-congressman’s own words. Last year, he chronicled the crisis in Afghanistan through a series of interviews with The Post’s White House team. He has written for Retropolis and The Fix, and appeared on “Post Reports” to discuss an early lockdown in 14th-century Britain during the Black Death.
Before joining The Post, Zach covered Brexit as a producer for Sky News in London, and worked as a producer for BBC Newsnight, the British broadcaster’s flagship current affairs program. Zach studied Arabic and Persian at Cambridge University and enjoys cycling and obsessing over the plight of Manchester United. He lives with his wife, Emily, and their young daughter, Zadie, in the District.
Please join us congratulating Zach on his new role. He started Monday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Winter notes: Yorktown swimming, after rare region meet victories, braces for state meet
Yorktown girls hold up their Class 6 Northern Region Championship. (Christine Burgeson)
Even without Torri Huske, who graduated last year after breaking two national high school records, the Yorktown girls have their eyes set on a second straight Class 6 state swimming and diving title and are among the favorites to triumph at Saturday’s meet in Stafford. There’s even a chance the team is even stronger without its Olympian: on Feb. 5, the girls won their first regional meet since 1984 (and the boys capturing their first since 1975).
Like most teams, Yorktown’s time together has been restricted because of the pandemic. Many swimmers practice more regularly with their clubs, so team chemistry often comes in the form of traditions away from the pool, such as group dinners. And it’s more difficult to communicate with one another during meets.
“Yorktown and Arlington Public Schools take covid really seriously. … They’ve zoned in and made sure we’re all wearing masks, which is completely fair,” senior Lauren Hartel said. “But it’s definitely a big difference from club meets at the beginning of the year, when we really didn’t have to wear masks on the deck.”
Yet, when the 400-yard freestyle relay concludes Saturday’s meet with three seniors swimming in the event, the senior class is preparing to embrace all of its emotions.
“I know we’re probably all going to be bawling our eyes out after we finish,” Hartel said. “States is always my favorite meet to go to. It always has the best energy to it.”
For the sixth straight year, Robinson wrestling won its region championship. But when the Rams celebrated the Virginia Class 6 Region C title on Saturday in Alexandria, it meant a little more.
Junior Edgar DeJesus has been in the hospital since Christmas Day. He experienced paralysis and is now walking again, but it’s uncertain what his future holds. The Rams have kept DeJesus in mind and used his struggle for inspiration.
“One of our mantras is, you always think of things that are bigger than you,” Coach Bryan Hazard said. “It’s difficult when you’re a dad to see a kid who really just works hard and loves being a part of the program, and they just can’t be a part of the program.”
The Rams — who have 14 seniors on their roster — work hard together, not just on the mat. Sammy Gerard and Tommy Luther are three-sport athletes, also playing football and lacrosse. Cooper Rudolph, Saturday’s heavyweight champion, also plays football.
Gerard won his fourth region title, making him the fourth Robinson wrestler to accomplish that feat.
“He’s been a stalwart for us,” Hazard said.
On Friday, Yorktown prevailed over Flint Hill, 10-1, to cap its first undefeated regular season, and earn a bye in the first round of Northern Virginia School Hockey League playoffs. The Patriots (10-0) only allowed 11 goals this season.
“Honestly, late in the game, it’s very rare that I’m looking for a certain defenseman to put out there,” Ferrara said. “I have sophomores, juniors and seniors all who are really capable, so generally I just put the next bodies up there, but they’ve done an incredible job as a group really focusing on defense.”
The Yorktown coaching staff has stressed that “next-person-up” mentality all season.
Over the summer, the Patriots held off-ice workouts twice per week at the Yorktown track to get in shape for the upcoming season. The workouts were helpful in retaining hockey skills in the offseason, but they had more of an impact off the ice, strengthening the bonds between the players. Ferrara believes that has helped them execute his defensive strategy.
“This group was special, but not really necessarily because of the hockey play as much, but really just the team aspect to them,” he said.
“The end of last year and into the beginning of this year, you could just feel there was something special with them, just how they treat each other. They treat each other with respect, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud to coach a group of players, win or lose, as I am of them.”
Teams across D.C., Maryland and Virginia will be spending this week gearing up for championships that will crown the top performers before the opening of the spring outdoor season.
This winter, after many schools had limited chances to compete because of the pandemic, championships are operating with modifications.
The D.C. State Athletic Association will be hosting public and private schools on Feb. 20 at George Mason University after securing a new venue midway through the season. Perennial front-runners St. John’s and Archbishop Carroll are again likely to contend for the title, but after an irregular season, there could be unexpected dark horses in contention as well. Spectators will not be allowed at the event.
The D.C. Interstate Athletic Association, meanwhile, did not be host a championship this year because of coronavirus protocols.
Maryland public schools will compete for their state championship at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore. The biggest competition will come Friday during the 4A divisional state meet. The Howard girls and Walter Johnson boys, who won the 4A crowns last outdoor season in the spring, could be teams to beat. Spectators are not permitted, but the event will be live-streamed by the National Federation of High School Associations.
Virginia schools will get their state title shot at the Virginia High School League championships, which begin Feb. 25 with Class 5 and 6 in Virginia Beach. Competitions for other classes will be at Liberty University. The Battlefield boys are looking to build off a Class 6 outdoor title won with great balance last June. | null | null | null | null | null |
Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis, of Germany, start the 2-man heat 3 at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
“They are so far away from everyone,” Rinaldi said of the Germans. “We knew it on this kind of track. The longer the track, the less we have a chance. We knew it. They’re all good drivers, good pushers. ... What they’re doing is crazy. Sometimes it may be unfair for us, but this is their sport.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland House speaker raises concerns about social equity as debate over marijuana legalization begins
Adrienne Jones, the first Black person to serve in the position, says Maryland needs to ‘make sure the equity part of this is right’
Employees at SunMed Growers tend to medical marijuana plants at the company's grow facility in Warwick, Md. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Maryland House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore) is so cautious about legalizing marijuana in her state that she hoped to start the process this year by putting the issue to voters in November. Nothing else.
The heavy lifting — deciding who should get licenses, how the program should be regulated and how to ensure it is equitable — should wait until the 2023 legislative session, she said.
As the first Black person and first woman in her role, she feels the weight of ensuring a process that achieves something she says no state has: equity in who benefits from loosening rules that disproportionately ensnared Black people in the criminal justice system.
But as that caution ran up against the urgency of younger, more liberal members of her caucus who pointed to processes well underway elsewhere and the continued disproportionate number of arrests of Black residents, she has agreed to back a proposal that automatically expunges some marijuana-related arrests, among other things.
The measure bends toward the type of justice she has pursued across other issues touching on race, from public health to policing to funding for historically Black universities and colleges. And as debate begins in earnest about what the billion-dollar industry might look like, she is adamant any regulatory process that follows a referendum must center on the people largely left out when medical marijuana was legalized: entrepreneurs of color.
“We want to make sure the equity part of this is right, so that everyone who wants to go into [business] can,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to be blocked out for any reason.”
With an increasing number of states legalizing adult use of marijuana, including Virginia, the first south of the Mason-Dixon Line, other Maryland lawmakers, including Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), say it is time to forge ahead.
“Punting-the-ball approach, although I understand that it may be wanting to avoid some of the tougher issues, we have other states around the region that are moving forward and they are creating a marketplace to get tax dollars out of what is an unrelated illicit market,” said Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), who has sponsored a bill to legalize and regulate marijuana that Ferguson supports.
Jones envisions taking multiple steps before implementation, leaving the most controversial ones for next year. The initial step deals with criminal justice, allowing for automatic expungements and, starting on Jan. 1, legal possession of up to 1.5 ounces. After the 2022 session, studies would be done on the impact of marijuana on public health and on what might be needed to help women and minority businesses enter the industry. The debate on licenses and regulations would be left for the 2023 legislative session.
Others say Maryland has had enough time, and it has the ability to pass legislation this session that creates a strong equity program, one that avoids past pitfalls and follows some of the successes of other states. Maryland cannot remain an outlier in the region, they say.
How Black female lawmakers led Maryland’s historic effort to transform policing
The state is surrounded by D.C., which legalized adult use in 2014, and other states, including Pennsylvania and Virginia, that have moved forward on legalization. Last month, a bill in Delaware cleared an initial legislative hurdle.
Feldman’s measure, which has a social equity program, doesn’t currently include a referendum, but Ferguson and Feldman are open to putting the question to voters. They said voters should know what legalization would look like before they are asked to cast their ballot.
“We are ready to move forward on this issue,” Ferguson said in an interview last week. “We’ve learned from a number of other states. I think at this point 18 states have legalized adult use, and we’ve seen the detrimental impacts of marijuana criminalization with a failed war on drugs that has done nothing to reduce consumption but instead has created a marketplace that exists regardless of whether or not it’s legal and ensnared people of color disproportionately.”
On average, a Black person is 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a White person, even though Black and White people use marijuana at similar rates, according to a 2020 ACLU report, “A Tale of Two Countries.”
In Maryland, Black people are 2.1 times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though marijuana is used at similar rates. The state has three counties, Worcester, Dorchester and Calvert, in the nation’s top 10 counties for marijuana possession arrest rates per 100,000 people, the report found. Black people in several counties, including Queen Anne’s, Cecil and Frederick, are arrested at twice the national average for marijuana possession.
Black people have so far been shut out of the limited market for marijuana, having secured none of the state’s 15 licenses awarded for medical marijuana, said Michael Arrington, a former state lawmaker, lobbyist and head of the Maryland Minority Cannabis Business Association.
“We don’t want to see a wealth opportunity generated and that community doesn’t stand to benefit in nominal ways,” Arrington said. “It’s not about speed to the market. The market isn’t going anywhere.
The two bills, supported by Jones that are sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman Luke H. Clippinger (D-Baltimore), call for a referendum and largely focuses on criminal justices issues. The automatic expungements would apply to anyone previously found guilty of simple possession of marijuana with no other charges connected to the arrest. It also would affect anyone currently being held for a marijuana conviction. The studies would look at a range of things, including the impact of marijuana usage on public health, advertising legal marijuana and barriers to entering the industry.
“We need to learn from our mistakes of the past because we cannot repeat the debacles that took place in the rollout of medical cannabis licenses,” Clippinger said during a hearing on Monday.
Feldman’s bill includes a criminal justice element that deals with expungements and, among other things, creates a disparity study, a start-up fund for small, minority-owned businesses and a “community investment repair” fund for communities disproportionately affected by marijuana arrests.
Sen. Jill P. Carter (D-Baltimore), who has championed criminal justice revisions, has introduced a separate bill that the ACLU of Maryland is lobbying for passage. It would raise the legal limit to four ounces; prohibit an officer from using the smell of marijuana, without other legitimate cause for suspicion, as probable cause to arrest and perform a search of a person or a vehicle without a warrant; vacate some past marijuana convictions; ensure that legal marijuana use cannot be the basis to deny housing, parole, or child custody; and reallocate 60 percent of tax revenue to Black and Brown communities affected by the war on drugs.
A report released last week by the Minority Cannabis Business Association, a national trade group, found that less than half of the states that have legalized medical or adult use marijuana have social equity programs. Thirteen of the 18 adult-use states and two of the 18 medical-only legal cannabis states have social equity programs.
House Economic Matters Chairman C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), who is Black, said during Monday’s hearing that “we are not going to leave our people behind … my goal is not just to create Black jobs and minority jobs, but to create Black millionaires … That can only be done if we move forward steadily, but knowledgeably.”
Jonathan P. Caulkins, a drug policy researcher and operations research and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said while a lot of focus is placed in some states on entrepreneurs the biggest effect of legalization will be on expungements.
“Tens of thousands people are affected by that, and I think sometimes the sense of scale is lost in the debates,” he said. Caulkins said moving forward with the expungements seems “smart, going for the big target, even if the other dimensions come along a year or two later.”
Jones said the House companion bill is designed to immediately repair the damage done to those who have a simple possession on their record and are unable to get a job or an apartment.
Meanwhile, she would not say whether she personally supports legalization.
“It’s not about what Speaker Jones wants or doesn’t want,” she said. “… If done right, the approach that we’re doing, it would help Black and Brown people who are in jail for simple possession. … So in that case, I’m more there, but I still want us to dot our i’s and cross our t’s before full implementation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Remington rifle cartridges. (Julie Jacobson/AP)
When the families of nine of the victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School began their lawsuit against the gunmaker of Bushmaster AR-15 style rifle, they were driven by the goal of sparing other families the pain that had upended their lives.
On Tuesday, the victims’ families marked a victory in their effort with the announcement of a $73 million settlement with Remington Arms, which manufactures the Bushmaster. The settlement, which comes after a protracted court battle, marks the first instance in the United States of a gun manufacturer facing liability for a mass shooting.
“They had the motivation to do whatever they could … so that other families — whether they are in a suburb or township or city — would not have to go through the kind of pain and the loss that they had,” Joshua Koskoff, an attorney for the families, said during a Tuesday news conference.
Koskoff said the settlement sends a signal to gunmakers that they cannot act with impunity and clearly “have skin in the game.” The lawsuit contended, among other things, that Bushmaster was a “combat weapon” improperly marketed to civilians.
“A linchpin of the settlement is that it allows these families the rights to share what they learned with the public,” Koskoff said of documents obtained during the lengthy court battle.
Mass shootings in the U.S. are overwhelmingly committed by men. Experts are examining the place of masculinity in the gun debate. (Nicki DeMarco, Erin Patrick O'Connor, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
Tearful family members of the victims gathered in a Connecticut hotel room Tuesday as Koskoff discussed the culmination of their eight-year-long battle that began two years after shooter Adam Lanza was armed with the high-powered rifle during his rampage in Newtown, Conn., that killed 28 people, including 20 young children.
Remington, which has filed for bankruptcy, offered to pay nearly $33 million to the nine families last July.
Koskoff noted that the families of the victims “would pay it all back just for one minute” with their loved ones lost in the mass shooting.
“That would be true justice,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Britain’s Prince Andrew on Feb. 15 settled the sexual abuse lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was trafficked to him by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Alexa Juliana Ard, William Booth/The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — Britain’s Prince Andrew has settled the sexual abuse lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was trafficked to him by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a court filing Tuesday revealed. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.
Andrew was sued in August by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was recruited by Epstein and his longtime paramour Ghislaine Maxwell when she was a teenager in Palm Beach, Fla., where Epstein maintained a villa residence. She alleged that the couple introduced to Andrew, who was a friend of theirs.
Giuffre, now a mother living in Australia, alleged that she was forced to have sexual encounters with Andrew in New York, London and on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in the early 2000s.
In a one-page statement filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, the parties agreed that Andrew “never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks..”
Prince Andrew’s lawyers, arguing for dismissal of sexual assault lawsuit, point to accuser’s secret settlement with Jeffrey Epstein
The statement continues that it is “known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.”
“He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims,” the statement continues.
The settlement comes shortly after a federal judge in New York overseeing the lawsuit sought help from courts in the United Kingdom and Australia to secure the testimony of witnesses living in those countries.
A notice filed to the same judge on Tuesday said that, in light of the settlement, Giuffre would be withdrawing her civil claims against Andrew.
“The amount is confidential,” Giuffre’s attorney David Boies said in a statement, adding that the settlement “speaks for itself.”
Prince Andrew, cast into the royal wilderness, will fight his lawsuit alone
Legal peril for Prince Andrew puts spotlight on who will pay
Ghislaine Maxwell convicted of trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Biden should stop passing the buck on the Afghanistan debacle
U.S. soldiers stand guard at the airport in Kabul in August 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)
That is a lesson President Biden should take to heart in how to handle the continuing fallout of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, which seared into our collective memory horrifying images of desperate Afghans clinging to the landing gear of U.S. aircraft in a desperate bid to escape Taliban tyranny. Even as more than 20 million Afghans stand on the brink of starvation, he continues to engage in unseemly buck-passing that only hurts his popularity and undermines his credibility.
Biden’s most complete statement on Afghanistan was an Aug. 31 speech in which he accepted “responsibility” for the decision yet insisted, incredibly enough, that the evacuation was an “extraordinary success.” He focused on the 120,000 people evacuated from Kabul, even though, by some estimates, 90 percent of the interpreters and other Afghans holding special immigrant visas were left behind.
Also continuing to the present day is Biden’s blame-shifting on Afghanistan. Last week, in an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt, he refused to accept the accounts of U.S. military commanders who said that the administration failed to prepare for the rapid rise of the Taliban and the resulting need to evacuate so many people. “No,” Biden said. “No, that’s not what I was told.” Asked whether he was rejecting the commanders’ testimony, he said, “Yes, I am. I am rejecting them.”
Their accounts comport with the findings of George Packer, whose Atlantic article “The Betrayal” offers the fullest and most depressing chronicle of the shambolic exit from Afghanistan. Refugee advocates begged the administration to begin airlifting vulnerable Afghans to Guam for asylum processing in early 2021, when the United States still controlled air bases all over the country. White House officials responded, according to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), “We’re on it. Don’t worry. We know what we’re doing.” But they weren’t on it, and they didn’t know what they were doing.
It is easy to blame staffers for this debacle, but the buck stops with the president. While showing empathy for fellow Americans, Biden has consistently displayed indifference to the fate of Afghans. (Some argue that Biden again displayed his indifference when he decided to give the families of 9/11 victims half of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank funds, rather than using the entire amount to relieve that country’s humanitarian disaster.) In early 2020, when Biden was asked whether would bear some responsibility for the loss of rights that Afghan women would suffer after a U.S. pullout, he responded, “Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Rice has represented New York’s 4th Congressional District since 2015
Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) speaks after a House Democratic caucus meeting in 2018. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Rep. Kathleen Rice (N.Y.) said Tuesday that she would not seek reelection, becoming the 30th House Democrat to announce a planned exit from the chamber ahead of what could be bruising midterm elections for their party in November.
“As I turn to the next chapter of my own personal and professional story, I do so with profound thanks to the community leaders, colleagues and staff who have lived our shared commitment to service with courage and humility,” Rice, who has represented New York’s 4th Congressional District since 2015, said in a statement.
Rice, a former prosecutor and Nassau County district attorney, said she would continue to focus on “protecting our democracy and serving my constituents” for the remainder of her term.
She gave no indication as to what she might do next. She made her announcement on her 57th birthday.
Twenty-nine other Democrats have announced they will retire or seek another office, according to the House Press Gallery. Thirteen Republicans have done the same. Control of the chamber will be at stake in the November midterms.
In 2020, Rice was reelected with more than 56 percent of the vote against Republican Douglas Truman. Before Rice’s election in 2014, the seat was held by longtime Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.).
New York Democrats bolstered incumbents and drew new pickup opportunities for themselves in redistricting the state’s congressional map but left Rice’s seat relatively untouched. Biden won the district by 12 points.
Rice’s seat is among 70 that the National Republican Congressional Committee has announced it is targeting for potential pickups in November.
In a statement Tuesday, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wished Rice “the very best in her next chapter.”
“Rep. Rice has dedicated over three decades to public service, rising up the legal and political ranks from prosecutor to district attorney to United States representative,” Maloney said. “During that time, she has admirably fought public corruption, advocated for veterans, and been a leader on national security.”
Rice was a Republican until she switched parties in 2005. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kamila Valieva returned to competition Tuesday. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Weir and Lipinski typically provide entertainment and skating insight during commentary that often centers on Weir’s amusingly outlandish outfits. This time, Weir’s criticism of the Valieva situation was searing and his and Lipinski’s outrage was clear from the very beginning of NBC’s live broadcast at 5 a.m. Eastern time.
“We have to remind ourselves that she is just 15 years old, a minor, and I know more than anyone what it’s like to compete at an Olympic Games at 15 years old,” Lipinski told viewers. “But a positive [drug] test is a positive test. She cannot skate.”
“If you can’t play fair, then you can’t play, and it is a shame because she is a tremendous athlete.”
As Valieva warmed up hours later for her turn in the competition, Lipinski and Weir had not changed their tone, which was unusually critical for Olympic broadcasts.
“It’s not just about her skating or not skating,” Lipinski began. “It’s affecting everyone at these Olympic Games to think that there’s going to be no medal ceremony if she’s on the podium. … I can’t even comprehend that. Imagine how it’s affecting so many other skaters’ lives and their experiences.”
“The Olympics were everything that I ever dreamed about, everything that kept me going on the day-to-day,” Weir said, “and to have that experience and that feeling … diminished because of a positive drug test on one of your competitors when everyone else adheres to the rules … it’s a slap in the face to every other skater.”
Lipinski added, “it’s putting a permanent scar on our sport.” Lipinski was a gold medalist as a teenager at the Nagano Games in 1998, and she called standing on the podium during the national anthem her most vivid memory of her Olympics and said it was “so sad” that it was “being taken away.”
According to Weir, the skating community is furious that Valieva is being allowed to compete. Lipinski said she feels that, and sadness, too. Valieva helped the Russian Olympic Committee win the team event earlier in the Games and leads the standings of the women’s competition after the short program.
After her performance Tuesday, Valieva declined to speak with reporters. Valieva was teary-eyed after skating, and Weir addressed the Games’ other competitors, saying, “We’re so sorry it’s overshadowing your Olympics.”
Lipinski reminded viewers that over the past year, she had regarded Valieva as the best figure skater she had ever seen. “Saying that now not only makes me confused but it makes me angry and disoriented by everything that I thought that I knew,” she said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kamila Valieva was emotional during the women’s figure skating competition Tuesday. (How Hwee Young/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
As she left the ice at Capital Indoor Stadium, Valieva cried. She looked down and bent over. She straightened up. She stared at the roof. You could sense the heaviness of the past week, one that engulfed her in a drama from which she will never escape. It razed the remainder of her adolescence. With each tear, a vestige of youth dripped away.
Among the many vacuous reasons the Court of Arbitration for Sport gave in clearing Valieva was that, with her complicated case still unresolved, it didn’t want to cause “irreparable harm” to her. She’s an athlete whose under-16 status makes her a “protected person” in World Anti-Doping Agency lingo, which affords her more due process flexibility.
The adults stretched the rules and logic so much that it snapped the integrity of an entire sport. You’re left to look at Valieva as the culprit when, at every step of the process, older people failed her and then pretended they had acted in her best interest.
Their protected teen absorbed it all on this night: the scrutiny, the criticism, the cynicism, the ridicule, the pressure, the doubt. Somehow, Valieva skated and danced and jumped and spun at an elite level. Under different circumstances, it would have been a praiseworthy effort.
However, it didn’t leave you awestruck, just torn. There couldn’t be any unabashed admiration. At the Olympics, a prodigy carried on like a prodigy, but this was no dream skate. The audience was troubled, or perhaps full-on angry, that it could not fully trust what it saw. The doping controversy tainted the moment. With another night of competition remaining, the agitation will linger, and of all people, the 15-year-old will feel it the most.
So much for preventing irreparable harm.
“Tough situation for everyone,” U.S. figure skater Mariah Bell said. “And she’s young.”
If Valieva fares well Thursday in the long program and finishes the job, she won’t be wiping happy and relieved tears at a medal ceremony. No one will. Russia won the team event with Valieva’s help, and after the six-week-old positive test for a banned heart medicine was made known Feb. 8, the International Olympic Committee decided to hold off on presenting medals. Now, it will also delay passing out hardware for the singles competition until after the conclusion of Valieva’s case. Don’t know about you, but this is my first sporting event in which organizers preempted the possible disqualification of an athlete by making up an “In Case This Is Dirty” handbook.
The role Valieva played in this fiasco may never be clear. It seems implausible, but she could just be a kid who mistakenly ingested trimetazidine, a drug for people with a condition called angina that, if used as a performance-enhancer, could improve endurance. She could be aware that she was doping, or she could be an unaware victim of another Russian plot to defraud Olympic glory.
For Valieva, innocence is a protean concept. Culpability for the trimetazidine found in her system — and the convenient delay in reporting it — will be decided in sport court. But at 15, Valieva has already lost the remainder of her childhood purity. This tale is drenched in tragedy, but it is most heartbreaking to wonder where a child shoved into the thorniest bushes of adulthood goes from here.
A week ago, her youth was a blessing. She was so advanced, so evolutionary. Fifteen looked exhilarating.
Fifteen has been downgraded to gloomy.
After her short program, Valieva walked quickly through the media mixed zone with her coach, Eteri Tutberidze. She clutched a large stuffed animal. She did not attend the news conference. She doubles as the most notorious and anonymous athlete at these Games.
At the end of this saga, which is destined to be long and frustrating from any perspective, Valieva figures to be either an acquitted champion who won’t be able to shake the doping stigma, or an illegitimate champion scrubbed of distinction. It would be a waste of brainpower to make an early prediction. The only certainty is that Valieva stands at the center of controversy as a fleeting star who will cease to matter soon in Tutberidze’s assembly-line figure skating program.
She’s young enough to make an Olympic comeback. Most her age do. But on the Russian team, she’s doubtful, at best, to be around in four years. Expendability has become the custom as Tutberidze keeps developing more agile skaters at younger ages, pushing the sport to its physical brink. Russian women, both 15, won gold in the past two Winter Olympics. In 2014, it was Yulia Lipnitskaya. In 2018, it was Alina Zagitova. Lipnitskaya, who struggled with anorexia, retired at 19. Zagitova stopped competing at 17, discouraged because she couldn’t beat younger Russians who were toying with quad jumps.
The reigning Olympic champion was 17 and hopeless. Compare it with the United States, where Karen Chen made the team at 22, and Bell competed Tuesday at 25. Alysa Liu, who is 16, has a future that may include two more Olympic appearances.
Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva, the Russian silver medalist from 2018, were in the arena Tuesday. They came to the media room for a snack and went unnoticed until a couple of reporters approached them and asked for pictures. They smiled and engaged in small talk, a 19-year-old former gold medalist and a 22-year-old former silver medalist whose services are no longer needed.
After Thursday’s finale, after her case is settled, Valieva may not be heard from again. She has yet to really live, but the most publicized — and now polarizing — phase of her life is closer to the end than it should be. For her, athletic reinvention is impossible. A chance at Olympic redemption is laughable. She is forced to see the big picture before her vision fully develops.
“It’s hard enough for me, and I’m 25,” Bell said. “So I don’t know what it would be like if I was 10 years younger.”
For two minutes and 40 seconds, Valieva let muscle memory and music guide her Tuesday night. Her determination was impressive. She survived. But did she cheat along the way to grit?
When the tears dry, surely she will be 10 years older. The girl, what’s left of her, ought to tighten the grip on that stuffed animal. | null | null | null | null | null |
Their ‘Ask a Muslim’ project went viral. Now they have a travel show about Islam in the U.S.
Rapper-activist Mona Haydar and husband Sebastian Robins star in the ‘The Great Muslim American Road Trip’ for PBS
Mona Haydar and husband Sebastian Robins star in the PBS show “The Great Muslim American Roadtrip,” which premieres summer 2022. (Adam McCall/PBS)
Mona Haydar and Sebastian Robins felt they had a deep understanding of Islam. But filming “The Great Muslim American Road Trip,” a docuseries that will air on PBS this summer, made the married couple realize how much more they had to learn.
Haydar, a Syrian American rapper and activist whose music videos boast millions of views on YouTube, grew up Muslim. Robins, a writer and educator, converted to Islam after they met. The show follows the couple as they traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles via historic Route 66 in September. Along the way, they learned about Islam’s roots in America, explored nearby Muslim communities and took in the sights. In Chicago, they met with Muhammad Ali’s daughter Maryum Ali and toured the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) to learn about structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, known for his work on the innovative tubular design for high-rises. On more than a dozen stops, Haydar and Robins visited with restaurateurs, doctors and authors.
“This is a deep passion of ours; it’s our faith and our practice,” Haydar said. “And it really felt like this epic quest of learning and finding the clues and piecing them together.”
The couple garnered widespread attention for their “Ask a Muslim” project, following terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino in 2015. Outside a Cambridge Mass., library, they set up signs that invited passersby to “talk to a Muslim” and ask them questions over free doughnuts and coffee. Haydar’s song “Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab)” was also named one of 2017’s best protest songs by Billboard.
By The Way talked to the Michigan-based couple about the goals of their show, how the trip informed their feelings about identity and assimilation, and how they handled the long drive.
Q: How did the idea for the show come about?
Mona: It was an interesting call we got asking us if we were interested in taking a road trip across the country, and we kind of hopped on the opportunity. Having been a couple for almost a decade, and parents for basically eight of those years, for us it was an exciting opportunity to explore a little bit of Route 66 and also our own relationship.
Q: What did you learn about the Muslim American experience along the way?
Sebastian: I feel like from beginning to end, it was really kind of mind-blowing and -opening for us.
Mona: Our son listens to audiobooks, and he loves the ones about mysteries and solving the mystery. And it actually felt that way a little bit of the time to me, where we were on this epic quest to unearth the hidden secrets. We’re both highly educated people, and we both somehow were not educated at all about this particular topic.
Q: What do you hope viewers take away from the show?
Mona: I hope people laugh at us. We’re very kind of corny and we have our little inside jokes, and I hope that people feel let in on that because I think we’re funny and I think we have a funny rapport and banter. I hope that that’s what people take away, feeling a human connection in a time where so many of us were isolated for so long.
Sebastian: We really wanted to use that journey as a lens for something bigger. I hope people can kind of see that story through us, [with] us as this lens or this magnifying glass or this reflection booth, to tell the story of a group of people that has largely either been ignored or maligned. I don’t mean just celebrities like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, who deserve all the research and stories and movies they can get, but the people who are running restaurants, the people who are rebuilding mosques, the people who are —
Mona: Doctors and serving their communities.
Sebastian: Yeah, just humbly. And they’re never going to become famous, but their story deserves to be told just like every sort of ordinary hero’s story. That felt like a real privilege to meet those folks and give them even just a small platform to share their story. And also the story of Islam in a part of America where you don’t associate — you don’t associate that part of the country with a lot of diversity, with religious diversity, and you certainly don’t think of Islam when you think of Missouri and Oklahoma and New Mexico and Nevada. And so, to say like, “Yeah, this is an amazing country, and there are these rich stories if we peel back the surface, if we dust off the glass a little bit and look.”
Q: How did the show impact your feelings about identity?
Sebastian: When you’re traveling, you’re in this very vulnerable position, and you’re kind of naked in the world. You don’t know where to eat. You don’t know where to go to the bathroom … and you’re sort of at the mercy of the people around you. People like hosting and showing [other] people their city. When someone’s in need, you have this moment where you can kind of be the good Samaritan. I experienced that a lot with people, and that was very humbling. To be the guests in other people’s mosques and other people’s restaurants and being really let into these intimate stories was a privilege, just to feel held and safe and have people open up to us and have us have this exchange.
Mona: In the Islamic conceptualization of life, having this human experience, we’re called travelers. From the moment of birth until the moment of death, you’re just traveling through this life, and the idea is that you don’t take too much on. You don’t carry your baggage. You don’t accumulate stuff just to accumulate stuff, but it’s about actually accumulating knowledge and meaning and infusing yourself with meaning, and intention, and attention — you know, that inward focus of love, and that kind of fine-tuning of consciousness. [On a trip like this] you don’t know where you’re gonna be sleeping the next day. Is the hotel going to meet your needs? Are you going to have enough food that you can eat? Sebastian’s a vegetarian. He often struggled to find good sources of protein along the way. It really connected me to a more, kind of, identity of consciousness, of being in this world and knowing that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
“Yeah, this is an amazing country, and there are these rich stories if we peel back the surface, if we dust off the glass a little bit and look.”
— Sebastian Robins
Q: What did doing this together mean for you as a couple?
Sebastian: It was a little bit of a second honeymoon for us. It was the first time we had really been alone since our first son was born eight years ago, and add on top of that covid and home-schooling two kids and quarantining and all that. We ended up at the place [in New Mexico] where we met on our anniversary, and that was just by chance. And that was really beautiful and we got to talk a little bit about how and where we met.
But I think the deeper answer to that question is that when we go out in the world, we experience the same thing very differently because of how we look, and because of how people perceive us and because of how people behave toward us. I am a man. I’m white. You don’t think Islam when you look at me, you don’t think Muslim when you hear my name. So, I get a lot of free passes. I get a lot of privilege. So, we had a lot of time to kind of debrief these encounters. I feel like our relationship is sometimes colored by that.
Mona: That’s always has been a theme within our relationship. You know, it’s a merging of cultures, a merging of identities and a deep learning and profound learning process in our marriage. And I feel like that inquiry is so beautiful to me because we’re constantly challenging each other to be more open, more kind, to ask more vulnerable questions, to be more authentic with one another and to not be afraid of what might come up in asking those questions. There were definitely parts of the trip that probably folks will see that friction. We don’t pretend to have a perfect relationship, and it’s part of the reason why we have made it 10 years and hope to make it another 30. We are working on ourselves. So, this trip was kind of like a magnifying glass.
Q: How was the trip itself? That’s a long car ride.
Mona: I have ulcerative colitis. So being in the car, I wouldn’t call it the favorite thing of mine. It’s not fun. But we did well. [We filmed in] a really amazing moment during the pandemic when numbers were super, super, super down and low. So, driving across the country in a car, not feeling afraid of people, knowing that the numbers were very chill and feeling very safe, I know that my body was pretty comfortable a majority of the way, a majority of the stops.
Sebastian: We’ve also driven across the country multiple times with our children. So, to do it without one or two small kids in the back seat was kind of like, “This is great.” Like, “This is a vacation.” We listened to a lot of music. We argued about a lot of music and things. Ate a lot of terrible food. Ate a lot of great food in unexpected places. | null | null | null | null | null |
A backcountry skier was caught Sunday in an avalanche in an area known as Dave's Wave, near Loveland Pass in Colorado. (Summit County Rescue Group)
The duo had returned to the top of a ridge.
A day earlier, the mother and son had successfully skied down a chute on the west side of a mountain pass in Colorado, but they returned to retrieve a piece of rappelling equipment.
As the son traversed below the ridge on Sunday, cutting across a steep slope, one of the skiers triggered an avalanche, said Anna DeBattiste, a spokesperson for the Summit County Rescue Group. The deluge swept him 200-300 feet, DeBattiste said, and dropped him about 50 feet off a cliff.
“You can imagine the shock and horror that his mother must have felt,” DeBattiste said. She had stayed up on the ridge and was out of the path when the avalanche began.
As the avalanche started, the woman skied around to the side of the cliff band and down to the bottom, where she found her son buried, waist deep in snow, with only minor injuries.
“I wouldn’t call it surprising, I’d call it shocking, amazing,” DeBattiste said. “I would have expected him to be gravely injured or worse, taking that kind of a ride and dropping off of a 50-foot cliff. He’s just very lucky.”
The Summit County Rescue Group was one of at least five groups, including first responders, that received a call and arrived at the scene of the avalanche at Loveland Pass, in an area known as Dave’s Wave.
But they never left the road, DeBattiste said.
“By the time we got there, we heard they were on their way out,” DeBattiste said. The group flew a drone over the skiers, and the mother was able to signal to the drone that they were okay.
The skiers have declined to speak with the media, DeBattiste said, but the rescue group wanted the public to be aware of avalanche dangers and safe practices for these areas.
“It should be noted they were experienced and had all the right gear,” DeBattiste said — but she warned that even when people are prepared with the right resources, “they’re not going to save you in every situation. If you’re jumping off a 50-foot cliff, it really doesn’t matter what kind of equipment you have.”
The skier was caught in what’s called a “terrain trap,” which occurs when people are caught in a slide and may hit a tree or drop off a cliff.
The pair are “physically okay. I would imagine they’re pretty shook up. … You can just imagine how traumatic it was for them,” DeBattiste said.
The Summit County Rescue Group’s Facebook page described the skiers as “experienced, knowledgeable and well equipped.” They had avalanche transceivers, an electronic device that signals your location to help someone find you if you’re buried. The skier also had an avalanche air bag that inflates to keep the user above the snow, though the violent ride prevented him from being able to deploy the bag.
Boy pulled out of well in Morocco dies after four-day rescue mission that transfixed the world
There were 37 fatalities in the United States in the 2020-2021 season, according to an avalanche accident report compiled by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Of those deaths, 12 were in the state. The site has tallied nine U.S. fatalities in the 2021-2022 season, with three in Colorado.
DeBattiste described a tragic avalanche that was triggered last month on Colorado’s North Star Mountain: A young couple was snowshoeing with their dog on a trail and were all buried and killed.
“What made it so sad and also so important for the public to know is … they didn’t know they were going into avalanche terrain, they didn’t know they needed any avalanche awareness,” she said.
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center issues forecasts with avalanche danger ratings, and she urged people to read forecasts and to be aware of the conditions and potential risks before going out. The center also has “Know Before You Go” online training programs for beginning backcountry skiers.
For winter hikers and snowshoers, she also recommended learning how to evaluate slop angles — a slope that will slide is generally between 30 and 45 degrees, she said, “and that’s what you want to stay away from.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A jury ruled against Sarah Palin in her libel case against the New York Times, one day after the judge said he would toss out her claim, saying she had not met the high legal standard required in libel cases involving public figures and journalists.
But since he expected his ruling to be appealed — a process that could alter long-standing protections afforded journalists writing about public figures — he wanted future courts to have both his ruling and a jury verdict to consider. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I have the unique opportunity to actually be around,” said Zimmerman, who lives in Northern Virginia with Heather and their four children. “My parents … my mom was a teacher; my dad worked two jobs sometimes. My dad would work till 10, 10:30 at night and then would be at work at 6 o’clock the next morning. So I wouldn’t see him when I got home from school, and he’d be gone before I woke up for school. | null | null | null | null | null |
The two-man bobsled team representing Trinidad and Tobago competed Tuesday. (Adam Pretty/Getty Images)
But even that rough outline can’t quite convey the sense of wonder and disbelief that filled Marcano on Tuesday night as he tried to explain an improbable journey that zoomed from the initial notion of pushing a bobsled to actually pushing a bobsled in the Olympics in a little more than six months.
“Nobody would believe this,” he said in a gentle island lilt that sounded like the way coconuts smell or blue saltwater feels. “I’m not even sure I believe it.”
It is perhaps best left to Axel Brown — the driver of Marcano’s sled and, along with Marcano and alternate Shakeel John, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s first Winter Olympians in 20 years — to explain what in the holy creation happened to put them all together on a six-degree Fahrenheit night on a mountain in China.
It was Brown, a veteran of seven years in bobsled in Britain, who got the idea last summer to switch his national designation to his mother’s Trinidad and Tobago — which he did officially in July — and recruit a team to race in Beijing. He admits he was inspired, at least in part, by “Cool Runnings,” the heartwarming (and at least partially true) story of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team that competed in the Calgary Games.
“We’re living in the shadow of that legacy now,” Brown said, “so I think we should embrace it.”
To recruit a brakeman, he turned first to Instagram, clicking through the profiles of some of the top Trinidadian sprinters — the nation boasting a long legacy of them, with Ato Boldon perhaps the best-known — until he landed on Marcano’s page. At 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, Marcano was bigger and broader than most sprinters — perfect, in other words, for bobsled, where the best athletes combine foot speed with superb upper-body strength.
In a direct message, Brown — himself an athletic experimenter who walked onto the football team at Colorado State University in 2013 — explained his mission and asked Marcano if he would consider trying out as his brakeman.
Marcano thought the guy was either a lunatic or a grifter.
“At first, I was like: ‘Um, I’ll let you know. I’ll get back to you,’” he said. “Then I didn’t.”
“He was skeptical,” Brown said, “understandably.”
But Brown wore him down with multiple messages over the course of a few days, filling Marcano in on his credentials (five years in Britain’s bobsled program as a brakeman, two more as a driver), his funding (a budget of $100,000), and his vision. The last of these came with the magic word: Olympics. There were no promises, but Brown thought he could get them qualified for Beijing via the North American Cup early in the winter.
A longtime sprinter who was a finalist three times in the 100-meter dash at Trinidad and Tobago’s national championship — and a member of the country’s 2021 World Championships 4x100-meter relay team until the meet was canceled because of the pandemic — Marcano, at 35, had just about given up on his dream of making a Summer Olympic team. But here was a seemingly realistic pathway to the next-best thing: the Winter Olympics. The extent of his bobsled knowledge was that Jamaica once had a team and that track athletes such as Lolo Jones and Lauryn Williams had transitioned to the sport.
“He told me: ‘Coach, I want to try this bobsled thing. I’m going to go for it,’” said Pete Charles, sprint coach at the Central Park Track Club in Manhattan, where Marcano trains. He had earned lanes in the 60-meter dash at the prestigious Millrose Games and the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix this month, but he had to withdraw because of the Olympics.
Brown and Marcano agreed to meet in October in Park City, Utah, for what amounted to a tryout camp. Also there was John, a 20-year-old sprinter Brown had discovered on a trip to Trinidad and invited to join the tryout. John agreed and 10 days later was on a plane to Utah.
It was there that Brown first came to understand what Marcano was capable of. Within two days of push-training at a practice facility, Marcano had met the Canadian push standard — a metric that serves as something of an international standard — and had also beaten Brown’s own best times from his days as a brakeman by almost three-tenths of a second, an eternity in bobsled.
“He was already, by that measure, one of the best in the world in bobsled,” Brown said.
By the time they all got to Beijing, Marcano had made countless push-runs at practice facilities — where the track is short and straight, without the turns and steep drops of an actual bobsled track — but had yet to experience the real thing. That would come at the Olympic track in Yanqing, a 5,300-foot monster with 16 turns and nearly 400 feet of vertical drop.
Two days after his first trip down the track, Marcano would carry the Trinidad and Tobago flag in the Opening Ceremonies — making him perhaps the first athlete to have that honor before actually competing for that country in his chosen sport.
And 10 days after that, he and Brown made their first official run down the Yanqing track. His first words to Brown: “I think I’m hooked.”
“Someone’s first-ever race is in the Olympics? It never happens,” marveled Brown, who knows better than anyone how incorrect that is, because sometimes, in fact, it does. | null | null | null | null | null |
OpenPath enables publishers the ability to integrate directly with The Trade Desk. In doing so, advertisers can gain direct access to advertising impressions created by those publishers, and publishers are better positioned to maximize revenue from those impressions. In this way, OpenPath aims to remove the inefficiencies often present in the programmatic supply chain for digital advertising, including opaque and harmful privileges of the walled gardens.
“OpenPath levels the playing field for advertisers, ensuring they get transparent and objective access to the very best digital advertising inventory, starting with many of the world’s top journalistic outlets,” said Jeff Green, co-founder, chairman and CEO, The Trade Desk. “OpenPath is an excellent example of industry leaders working together to advance an open market that ensures transparent price competition and maximizes value for both advertisers and publishers. With that in mind, as OpenPath launches, The Trade Desk will turn off Google Open Bidding on its platform.”
"We have long believed that a more streamlined supply chain benefits both advertisers and publishers. With Zeus, we have seen this translate into real revenue for publishers as they’ve taken control of their programmatic strategy,” said Julia Belanger, GM of Zeus at The Washington Post. “We’re pleased to partner with The Trade Desk, creating an OpenPath integration that enables our Zeus Performance publishers access to this new network.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Post releases The Power Index, an examination of top priorities for business and policy leaders
The Washington Post, in partnership with Kantar, the world’s leading evidence-based insights and consulting company, today released The Power Index, a first-of-its kind survey uncovering the top priorities for business and policy leaders. The original, independent research finds business leaders tend to prioritize economic issues while policy leaders are focused on societal issues.
“Business and policy sit at the center of global power, and The Washington Post is uniquely positioned to lift the hood on how that power works,” said Joy Robins, Chief Revenue Officer at The Washington Post. “We are always focused on creating data-driven ways to support our partners and their brand storytelling, and we’ll leverage these relevant, useful insights as we create content on their behalf.”
The survey is based on responses from 150 policy leaders from government organizations and associations that influence them with a mix of political leanings and 150 business leaders from a variety of industries and business sizes. The topics of corporate and national cybersecurity innovation and navigating the role of new global economic powers are top of mind for business leaders, while trust in large institutions and income equality are top of mind for policy leaders. Both identified reskilling their workforce, upgrading infrastructure and diversity, equality and inclusion as key priorities.
While leaders in business and policy have different priorities, there are some commonalities in how they think about issues. According to the data:
Economic competitiveness is top of mind: There’s a need to build for the future economy through infrastructure and skills.
Experience silos dictate ability: Both sides feel most effective when operating within their own fields.
The powerful often feel powerless as individuals: The more complex an issue the less confident leaders are in their ability to make change.
“Following the pandemic, there’s a fundamental shift in the way businesses must operate, and policymakers play an integral role in creating successful economic environments. We set out to better understand the dynamics at play from both sides in this never before done research,” said Simon Davies, Vice President, International Client Partnerships at The Washington Post. “It was important that we not only identify where their priorities meet, but also the actions needed to make progress, creating an essential resource for brands communicating with stakeholders from business and policy communities.”
Highlights of the research are available here. A more in-depth look at the research findings is also presented in a white paper. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Of course, social media was full of it but I was like swiping it away because I am here to focus on myself and not other things,” said Germany’s Nicole Schott, 25.
The Valieva situation was a bit of a quagmire for other skaters, a place it seemed many were willing to wade into, yet not willing to go too far. There seemed to be anger that someone who had tested positive for a banned substance was allowed to compete, but no one wanted to say too much.
It became an awkward dance of outrage and indifference. And a deflated admission that Valieva’s positive test months ago, its subsequent revelation last week and Monday’s ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that allowed Valieva to compete Monday had overwhelmed everything else. Here to skate, they were suddenly talking about something that had nothing to do with skating.
“I wish it was a level playing field and it’s not but they’ve made a decision they’ve made and I can’t do anything about that,” Great Britain’s Natasha McCay said.
“What’s fair is that I’m here and that I did it in a way that I’m very proud,” American Mariah Bell said a few minutes later, standing in the same spot in the mixed zone. “I don’t know about anything else. It’s not my business. Obviously, I feel sad for my teammates. It seems wrong to punish people who have done things the right way.”
“Honestly, I really like Twitter. I think it’s funny. But every time I go on Twitter, I’m like I can’t read this right now, so I don’t check it anymore and also Instagram because my direct messages are flooded with stuff,” said Swiss skater Alexia Paganni.
Paganni, 20, who was born in Connecticut and has lived most of her life in the New York City suburb of Harrison, was asked what kinds of things people were saying in those direct messages.
There were expressions of sympathy toward Valieva, especially because of her age. Other skaters expressed frustration and sadness that the winners of this event — as well as the medalists in the team event (in which Valieva helped the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee to a gold) — will not get their medals in a ceremony here since the International Olympic Committee has decided to not hand them out with Valieva’s case still unsettled.
Suddenly there was a noise near the door. Valieva appeared with a Russian team jacket over her purple skating dress. Behind her was a large man who was a part of the country’s delegation. They walked quickly down the winding pathway, saying nothing, looking straight ahead.
Valieva hugged a stuffed animal that appeared to be some kind of a purple hippopotamus. She said nothing. The Russian official said nothing Seconds later, they were gone and the room fell into an odd stupor. On a night when many skaters said that her drug test had dominated their Olympics, the person at the center of the storm said nothing. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pedestrian dies after crash in Prince George’s County
A pedestrian has died after being hit by a vehicle in Maryland.
Prince George’s County police said the accident happened around 6:50 p.m. Thursday near Indian Head Highway and Oxon Hill Road in the Oxon Hill area.
Authorities said the pedestrian — who was later identified as Brandon Harris, 39, of Oxon Hill — was walking in the far right lane and was hit by a vehicle. The driver stayed on the scene and was not hurt. Harris suffered critical injuries and died Saturday. | null | null | null | null | null |
The backlash followed. A study published by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access surveyed 275 teachers who belong to organizations that address equity and tolerance and found the majority reported efforts to block teaching on issues of race. Some teachers also said their districts were pulling away from previously announced equity efforts.
Pinellas County history teacher Brandt Robinson, who had spoken at a school board meeting about these issues, was accused by a parent of violating the law because his syllabus included a book about Black Americans that referenced the year 1619. The parent lost her appeal.
“Which ones are political?” she replied. She stuck to her position and was allowed to keep the decals but, in a concession, replaced a large Black Lives Matter flag in her library with a smaller one. A district spokesman had no comment. | null | null | null | null | null |
A new report by Wesley Lowery revealed failures in how the Inquirer covered the Black community — and treated its Black reporters
(Alejandro A. Alvarez/ Philadelphia Inquirer)
Wesley Lowery sounds a little cynical when he talks about the vaunted history of the Philadelphia Inquirer, with its slew of Pulitzer Prizes and its reputation as a crusading newspaper.
“There’s been no lack of self-mythologizing by the great White men of the Philadelphia Inquirer,” the former Washington Post reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner told me Saturday.
Lowery has spent the past several months digging out a very different story. A story of how the paper has failed its city in many ways.
“Rather than being an ‘inquirer for all,’ as its motto proudly claims, the paper has for the whole of its history been written largely for and by white Philadelphians, and largely at the expense of the Black residents who currently constitute a plurality of the city,” the story states.
Under the headline “Black City, White Paper,” Lowery’s 6,400-word exploration of this history was published online today and will be in print on Sunday. It is the first installment in a larger project at the Inquirer, “A More Perfect Union,” that will roll out over the remainder of this year.
“We’re also considering what it means that Philadelphia is the birthplace of institutions like the first hospital, penitentiary, university and library system — all of which have a huge and lasting legacy on our country today and where inequality persists,” said Errin Haines, the project’s leader, and founding editor at large for the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics. Like Lowery, Haines is not an Inquirer staffer. She lives in Philadelphia and serves on the board of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the nonprofit organization that owns the Inquirer and gave significant funding to this project.
It’s notable — and brave — that the paper’s publisher and top editors were entirely hands-off with this investigation. They believed that their noninvolvement was a necessity, for credibility’s sake. Haines told me they kept their promise and left the project in her hands.
“If we’re going to be holding institutions accountable, it seems right to look at ourselves first,” Gabriel Escobar, the paper’s editor told me last week — though he acknowledged “it is very scary” to be publishing a major project that he hadn’t reviewed in advance.
Escobar, who joined the Inquirer a decade ago, was appointed editor in late 2020. His predecessor, Stan Wischnowski, resigned earlier that year, soon after a brutal staff meeting and a sickout in which many Inquirer staffers stayed home to protest racism inside the paper and in its coverage — a chain of events set off by a headline that, in the midst of the protests following the murder of George Floyd, seemed to equate the value of storefront windows with Black lives: “Buildings Matter, Too.”
Nearly two years later, the fallout from the summer of 2020 continues in newsrooms across the country. At The Washington Post, the Newspaper Guild labor union that year called on management to adopt 11 proposals to address disparities in hiring, promotion, pay, training and retention of minority employees; the paper has made progress, but it’s safe to say that there’s plenty of work left to be done.
A few large newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Kansas City Star, have published investigations of their own failures, both in coverage and in their internal practices; in some cases, they have apologized to their communities.
“We were inspired by the critical self-examinations done by other news organizations but also wanted to go a step further,” Inquirer Publisher Lisa Hughes told me. It’s a part of the paper’s pledge, as expressed in Lowery’s piece, “to be an anti-racist institution.”
Lowery sees “this so-called reckoning” as a way of “looking our failures squarely in the face,” he told me. His investigation details the paper’s on-again, off-again efforts to diversify its staff. In the decades after hiring its first full-time Black staff reporter in 1954, it made progress but not nearly enough.
The piece is full of appalling anecdotes. One early Black staffer, Acel Moore, “had to take an Inquirer editor outside and explain that he would not be responding to ‘boy.’ ”
In 1978, Black reporter Maida Odom wrote a feature story that ended up with an editor’s byline on it instead of hers. “When she demanded to know how this happened, Odom was told the copy desk assumed her editor had written the piece,” Lowery reported. Years later, when she raised objections to another reporter laying claim to one of her scoops, an editor described her outrage as “Aunt Jemima goes to war.”
Lowery interviewed more than 75 people, including non-journalists in Philadelphia, such as the Rev. Mark Tyler, senior pastor at Mother Bethel AME Church, who was blunt in his criticism.
“When you talk to regular Black Philadelphians, if you ask them ‘Does the Inquirer speak for you? Does it speak for your community?’, most Black Philadelphians will say no,” Tyler said. “I don’t know if the Inquirer is capable of the change that is needed, just like I don’t know that America is capable of the change that is needed. But I desperately hope that it is.”
Lowery is not at all certain that even the most tough-minded internal investigations can heal the wounds.
“The Inquirer has been as aggressive as anybody in trying to do the work now,” he told me. But he has doubts about the relationship between community and newspaper, not only in Philadelphia but in cities and regions across the country. “Sometimes harm has happened and it can be hard to grapple with the fact that we can’t fix this,” he said.
True enough. But it’s inspiring to see the Inquirer and others put so much muscle into trying. | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW YORK — A jury ruled against Sarah Palin in her libel case against the New York Times, one day after the judge said he would toss out her claim, saying she had not met the high legal standard required in libel cases involving public figures and journalists.
But since he expected his ruling to be appealed — a process that could alter long-standing protections afforded journalists writing about public figures — Rakoff explained that he wanted the jury to keep deliberating, so that future courts to have both his ruling and the jury’s decision to consider.
It was the first libel case against the Times to go to trial in nearly two decades, and its long path to trial has drawn close attention from press freedom advocates. A landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling set a high bar for public officials — later extended to include all prominent individuals — who try to sue journalists for libel.
In 2017, when Rakoff first reviewed Palin’s case — in which the former Alaska governor sued the Times for an editorial that inaccurately suggested a link between some rhetoric from the political action committee and a 2011 mass shooting — he dismissed it, stating that it was doubtful that she could demonstrate that the Times had shown the “actual malice” required by that 1964 standard. The newspaper corrected the error hours later.
Yet an appellate court reinstated Palin’s case, prompting many legal scholars to wonder if the courts’ once-forgiving attitude toward journalistic errors had begun to wane — and whether media organizations may find themselves increasingly beset by costly litigation.
Regardless of the judge and jury’s decision this week, it remains likely that Palin will appeal the case again, at a time when higher courts may be open to reassessing the “actual malice” standard. At the Supreme Court, both Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch have signaled an openness to reviewing the 1964 precedent, which has not been seriously challenged in half a century.
This legal tinderbox of a lawsuit began in the wake of a June 2017 shooting attack on a group of Republican lawmakers who had gathered at an Alexandria baseball field to practice for a game. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was among those wounded. Within hours, a writer for the New York Times’s editorial page had started crafting an editorial, later published under the headline “America’s Lethal Politics,” that took note of another mass shooting — the one that injured then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and killed six people in Tucson. That shooting, the Times wrote, had been preceded by the circulation of a map by Palin’s PAC that placed stylized crosshairs over targeted Democratic districts. “The link to political incitement was clear,” the Times wrote.
An attorney for Palin, Kenneth Turkel, said his team was “obviously disappointed” with the outcome and is still deciding whether to appeal.
“That being said, anytime a jury convenes and renders a decision, that is our system, allowing a private citizen like Gov. Palin or anyone to seek redress against a giant media company that wields so much power," Turkel told reporters outside the courthouse Tuesday.
As she left the courthouse, Palin praised Turkel and fellow attorney Shane Vogt for “doing all they can to make sure the little guy has a voice, the underdog can have their say.”
A spokeswoman for the New York Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha, on Tuesday called the jury’s verdict a “reaffirmation of a fundamental tenet of American law: public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish or intimidate news organizations that make, acknowledge and swiftly correct unintentional errors."
She added: ”It is gratifying that the jury and the judge understood the legal protections for the news media and our vital role in American society." | null | null | null | null | null |
Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Atlanta in 2020. (Brynn Anderson/AP)
Both the Democrat and Republican seeking to oust Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) are calling foul on a proposal by GOP lawmakers that would prohibit fundraising while the legislature is in session.
State legislators say the measure is fair only given that current officeholders are prohibited from raising money during the legislative session, but Democrat Stacey Abrams and former senator David Perdue, who is challenging Kemp in the GOP primary, say the proposal unfairly targets their campaigns and gives Kemp an unfair advantage.
Abrams’s team notes that the move came shortly after her campaign announced outraising Kemp in December and January. According to her campaign, she raised a total of $9.2 million in December and January, and had $7.2 million on hand. Kemp reported raising $2.5 million during the same period, with a total of $7.4 million between July 2021 and Jan. 31. The governor’s campaign said in a Feb. 1 news release that it had $12.7 million in cash on hand. Perdue, according to media reports, raised $1 million during December and January.
In a letter to supporters over the weekend, Abrams noted her fundraising advantage during December and January and said Kemp “fears both our grassroots team and his GOP primary challenger, which is why he and his lieutenants in the legislature developed a cynical ploy to temporarily stop us both from raising funds.” Abrams urged her supporters to donate to her campaign “as soon as possible” in the event the measure passes.
The intent of the original law was to avoid the appearance that lawmakers were trading votes for campaign dollars during the sessions, which tend to attract lobbyists and others pushing legislation and funding for their favorite projects.
“We understand that Brian Kemp is afraid of Donald Trump and afraid of Stacey’s 100,000+ grassroots donors, but the idea that a governor seeking re-election would seek a legislative ban on fundraising by all his opponents is beyond the pale,” Seth Bringman, spokesman for the Abrams campaign, said in an email Tuesday.
As Stacey Abrams enters governor’s race, Georgia becomes a key 2022 battleground
After losing his slush fund in court this week, Brian Kemp wants to ram through another Incumbent Protection Act to try and rig this election in his favor.
CALL YOUR STATE SENATOR and tell them to VOTE NO on Kemp’s Incumbent Protection Act (HB333). https://t.co/GVSl3Hpk1b
— David Perdue (@DavidPerdueGA) February 11, 2022
The General Assembly session began in January and is scheduled to end April 4. Opponents of the measure are concerned, however, because Kemp has the power to extend the session or call special sessions, further hindering challengers’ ability to fundraise.
The legislation also came after a federal judge’s ruling — in a suit brought by Perdue — limited Kemp’s ability to use money from a special campaign committee approved by the legislature last year that allowed the governor and House and Senate caucuses to raise unlimited donations. Kemp can’t use the money during the Republican primary, but he can continue to raise money via the fund and use it for other races.
“Brian Kemp’s response to the Court taking away his corrupt slush fund is to push another Incumbent Protection Act — this one even more brazen and politically motivated,” Perdue’s campaign said in a statement Tuesday. “This attempt by incumbents to shut down their challengers’ ability to raise money is politics at its worst. If 20-year career politician Brian Kemp spent half as much time protecting Georgia’s elections as he does scheming to hold on to his office, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
In a statement, Kemp’s campaign spokesman, Cody Hall, said: “It’s no surprise that David Perdue and Stacey Abrams are joining forces to maintain the blatantly unfair status quo and continue raising money for their campaigns when the Governor is prohibited by law from doing so, solely because he is the incumbent during a legislative session. The surprising part is that they are being so open and honest about it.”
Asked if Kemp encouraged or assisted lawmakers in drafting the changes to the campaign finance law, Tate Mitchell, the campaign press secretary, responded in an email Tuesday: “The Governor’s floor leaders did not introduce the legislation. If it was passed in the legislature, the Governor would have to sign it to have the force of law, but we don’t comment on pending legislation until the language is final.”
Georgia’s gubernatorial race will be one of the most-watched in the nation. Kemp narrowly won the governor’s race in 2018 after hard-fought campaign with Abrams, who accused him of engaging in voter suppression after he declined to recuse himself from overseeing the election as secretary of state. The election was marred by numerous irregularities in faulty and too few voting machines in some precincts, tens of thousands of voters having their registrations suspended after early voting had already begun, and an unknown number of mail-in and provisional ballots tossed or not counted because of a lack of uniform standards.
Abrams acknowledged that Kemp was the “legal” governor of Georgia, but she declined to concede to him. She instead filed a lawsuit and became one of the country’s leading voting rights advocates. Her organization, Fair Fight, has raised more than $100 million since it launched in late 2018. The group gave millions in grants to grass-roots groups working with women, young people, rural communities, LGBTQ groups and people of color around the country during the 2020 elections.
Perdue, who lost his reelection bid in 2020, has emerged as a critic of both Kemp and Abrams, blaming them for President Donald Trump losing Georgia because of unproven claims of massive voter fraud. Trump egged Perdue into launching a primary challenge against Kemp. | null | null | null | null | null |
Svrluga: Ryan Zimmerman: Face of the Franchise, Mr. Walk-Off, Washington’s forever
“I have the unique opportunity to actually be around,” said Zimmerman, who lives in Northern Virginia with Heather and their children. “My parents … my mom was a teacher; my dad worked two jobs sometimes. My dad would work till 10, 10:30 at night and then would be at work at 6 o’clock the next morning. So I wouldn’t see him when I got home from school, and he’d be gone before I woke up for school. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nicaragua’s Ortega government puts the political opposition on trial
Juan Sebastián Chamorro, left; Félix Maradiaga, right. (Inti Ocon/AFP/Getty Images and Reuters)
By Ismael López Ocampo
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The government of President Daniel Ortega has launched rapid trials that could lock away most of the political opposition for years, entrenching his family’s control over this Central American nation after years of steadily mounting repression.
Seven opposition figures went on trial on Tuesday, including Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a scion of one of Central America’s most prominent political families, and two other contenders in last November’s presidential elections. Ortega won a fourth consecutive term in that vote, after all of his serious challengers were arrested or fled the country.
Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have dismantled the country’s democracy with startling speed. After crushing nationwide demonstrators in 2018, their government arrested protest leaders, shut down news organizations and stripped the legal status of civil society groups. Last year, with elections looming, authorities intensified the crackdown, jailing around four dozen opposition politicians, journalists and business leaders.
Nicaragua has become the most dramatic example of the crumbling of democracy in Central America, a trend condemned by the Biden administration that is contributing to surging migration.
The trials are “an attack on all types of dissidence,” said Carolina Jiménez, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group. She said they lacked even the minimum standards of due process. “We know these sentences aren’t pronounced by an independent justice system, but by the presidential couple.”
Nicaraguan government shuts down private universities
Nicaraguan authorities have accused the jailed activists of working with foreign powers to undermine the government. “These are the same people who promoted and directed terrorist actions in the failed coup in 2018,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement last month, referring to the anti-government protests. More than 350 people were killed in those clashes, mostly by security forces, according to human rights groups.
The trials of the political opponents began on Feb. 1. So far, all 21 of those tried have been found guilty, receiving sentences of up to 13 years. Human rights groups and relatives say the detainees’ lawyers have not been permitted to mount serious defenses. “This is a judicial farce. These trials have no validity, because these people are innocent,” said Ana Lucía Álvarez, the sister of Tamara Dávila, a political activist.
The seven facing trial on Tuesday include the three potential presidential contenders — Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, a former ambassador to Washington, and Félix Maradiaga, a Harvard-educated political scientist. Also charged were José Adán Aguerri, former head of the country’s business association, José Pallais, who had served as deputy foreign minister, and Dávila and another activist, Violeta Granera. All were accused of treason.
Chamorro, an economist, is the nephew of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who defeated Ortega in presidential elections in 1990. The Chamorro family has dominated Nicaragua’s privately owned media for decades. Family members were leading opponents of the Somoza dictatorship that controlled the country for 44 years. Violeta Barrios’s daughter Cristiana, viewed as another top candidate in last year’s elections, is under house arrest and expected to also face trial soon.
Ortega, 76, was a leader of the leftist Sandinista rebels that toppled the government of President Anastasio Somoza in 1979. He presided over the government until 1990, and returned to power in elections in 2007.
Spies, harassment, death threats: The Catholic Church in Nicaragua says it's being targeted by the government
Families of the prisoners say they have been poorly treated, with little access to their relatives and insufficient food. One, Luis Rivas, an economist and business leader, has lost 44 pounds in prison and has not been able to see his five children, who range in age from 5 to 19, according to a person close to him. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear his family could suffer reprisals. Rivas was found guilty on Monday, and is awaiting sentencing.
The prisoners “are in total isolation, they are in punishment cells,” Álvarez said. “They can’t see the sun, they have no idea what’s going on around them.”
Last week, one of the most storied prisoners died in captivity. Hugo Torres, 73, was a retired army general who once fought with the Sandinistas. In 1974, he look part in a raid on a party in which the guerrillas captured members of the Somoza government, whom they later traded for detained Sandinistas, including Ortega. The Nicaraguan government said Torres had suffered from an unspecified illness. His death raised alarm among human rights groups and the opposition about deteriorating conditions in the jails.
Torres, who had become a strong critic of the president, was arrested last June.
Nicaragua’s Ortega is strangling La Prensa, one of Nicaragua’s most storied newspapers
Biden denounces ‘pantomime election’ dominated by Ortega
‘Express burials’ raise fears Nicaragua is hiding a coronavirus tragedy | null | null | null | null | null |
Even in Loudoun County, beautiful equestrian country, home of the horse-riding, high-tech engineer and one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Add in truck drivers, cashiers, teachers, nurses and other blue-collar workers and the county’s median annual household income is still around $130,000.
And they are having as much difficulty with the meaning of critical race theory, an intellectual movement that examines systemic racism, and defining gender and explaining how coronavirus is spread as anywhere else. Just not as bad as in Florida, where CRT-crazed residents used weed killer to burn “FU” on the lawn of a school board member and falsely reported her to authorities for child abuse.
One student, who was White, recalled being taken by her mother to the birthplace of abolitionist Harriett Tubman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After learning about the Underground Railroad, she wondered why that had not been taught in her schools.
Another parent recounted meeting Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, who was 14 when he was lynched in Money Miss., in 1955. A White woman had claimed Till had whistled at her. Years later, she recanted the story. The speaker explained that Till’s mother had held an open coffin funeral to make sure that the world knew what had happened, that the truth would not be covered up, that history would not be forgotten.
“These are legal affidavits, you must accept them,” a woman said loudly, pointing at the boxes. Others joined in demanding that the board sign for and accept the documents.
Another speaker from the Black History teach-in commented about those who had complained about mask mandates making them feel “oppressed” and “segregated.” He told the story of a great uncle who had been in the first class of Black Marines trained in segregated facilities at Montford Point in North Carolina before shipping off to fight in the Pacific during World War II. | null | null | null | null | null |
“There are signs of a big cold front in early March in the mid-continent,” he said, while acknowledging it’s an open question as to how much of that cold reaches the eastern U.S.
Based on computer models projections, which are bouncing around, Rogers foresees March being a variable month. “We may have some transient cold events in the first half, and then prevailing warmth for the second half,” he said.
In terms of snow, Rogers wouldn’t rule out seeing some more. He expects below average amounts over the next two weeks but sees an opportunity for near-average amounts through the first half of March.
Although measurable snow hasn’t fallen in the District since Jan. 28, the seasonal snowfall total of 12.3 inches is still running ahead of the average Feb. 15 amount of 9.6 inches. However, with no snow probable in the next 10 days, the difference from average will only be about an inch by Feb. 25.
Unless Rogers is right and snow chances increase some toward the end of February and early March, the District could end up with below-average snowfall for the fifth time in the past six winters.
Recall just four weeks ago, we were discussing “a historically snowy January” as more than a foot of snow had fallen in a series of three storms in the first half of the month. But since Jan. 16, just 0.2 inches has accumulated.
The winter may not only end up with only below average snowfall, but also seems virtually assured to have its sixth milder than normal winter in the past seven.
December was 5.9 degrees warmer than normal, second mildest on record
January was 2.9 degrees colder than normal, the 66th coldest on record
February, so far, is running 2.0 degrees warmer than normal, tied for the 18th mildest on record | null | null | null | null | null |
The beginning of the school year in Afghanistan is March 23, less than six weeks away. The Taliban told the world that all girls might be allowed to return to school. But now, it’s “a question of capacity,” a Taliban official says.: It’s not that teenage girls shouldn’t be educated; it’s that they need to be fully segregated from boys and men. They need their own separate classrooms in their own separate schools. They need their own separate living facilities. They need teachers who are female.
Do I want girls to attend school in Afghanistan? Yes, absolutely. I want it now, and I wanted it throughout the years prior before the Taliban’s takeover: years in which the international community poured money and attention into Afghanistan, and years in which an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls nonetheless didn’t attend school.
Their eyes, and mine, are on March 23. On that day, across our nation, the school doors may swing open. And then what? | null | null | null | null | null |
(Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Every member of Congress up for reelection is a prisoner of forces outside their control. You can serve your constituents with skill and compassion, but if you’re up for reelection in a bad year for your party, you could be in trouble. On the other hand, if your election comes when everyone is mad at the other party, you can be an outright nincompoop and get swept triumphantly back to office.
The idea started with four Democrats facing reelection this year in swing states: Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. It would suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon tax through the end of the year, and replace the revenues lost to the Highway Trust Fund — as much as $20 billion — with general funds.
They’re not the only ones doing this — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants a similar holiday of the state’s gas tax — but that just shows how tempting, and empty, this idea is.
Would this make a difference in your family’s finances? Even if you buy a lot of gas — say 20 gallons a week — that means you’d save a whopping $3.60 a week. Why, that’s almost $15 a month! It’s not exactly going to change your life.
Still, this impulse among lawmakers is understandable. Your constituents are demanding you do something about inflation, and the truth — If I could eliminate inflation I would, but I can’t — isn’t very satisfying. So what can you do? You’re a lawmaker, so you propose a law.
This paragraph from The Post’s story sums up the problem well:
That’s all true. Knock 18 cents off the price of a gallon, and it’s a fair bet that your local gas station would just raise the price by, to pick a number at random, 18 cents — padding their bottom line without giving you any discount.
Not only that, before election day the price of gas will go up and down approximately 267 times, since that’s the number of days between now and then. Maybe prices will be higher in November than they are now, and maybe they will be lower; no one knows for sure.
So even if you get a day’s worth of positive stories about how you cut the gas tax to give folks some much-needed relief, people are likely to forget about it, if they ever hear about it in the first place.
That’s true of a lot of what lawmakers do, and they may figure that even if their constituents just get a fleeting warm feeling about them, it wouldn’t hurt. And in the scope of less-than-worthwhile proposals, this is nowhere near the most harmful; it’s not like they’re advocating banning books or privatizing Social Security, and you can find more appalling demagoguery in Congress any day of the week.
They’re driven by global markets and complex systems. They’re affected by many different variables. No informed person could think that their senator can solve inflation. And if the senators were honest, they’d admit that a big part of their work involves confronting futility — much of the time, the most important problems are the ones that are the hardest to solve.
Which makes it hard to get angry about something like a gas tax holiday; the electorate gets as much pandering as it deserves. But we don’t have to call it anything else. | null | null | null | null | null |
The biggest moments of Ryan Zimmerman’s career with the Washington Nationals
By Jesse Dougherty | Feb 15, 2022
L.Todd Spencer
Just a few months after their first game in Washington, the Nationals used the fourth pick in the Major League Baseball draft on a third baseman out of the University of Virginia. The kid, a 6-foot-3 power hitter, was from nearby Virginia Beach. And while he was obviously talented, no one could have known then what Ryan Zimmerman would mean for the franchise.
GREGORY SMITH/AP
Once the upstart Nationals faded from the standings, the team promoted Zimmerman, just 20 years old, on the first day of September. He made his debut that night at Turner Field in Atlanta, striking out in his only plate appearance. He would never go back to the minor leagues.
Preston Keres/The Washington Post
The first of Zimmerman’s 11 career walk-off homers came on Father’s Day at RFK Stadium. “I knew it was gone as soon as he hit it,” his dad, Keith, told The Post’s Barry Svrluga of a game-winning shot that cleared the left field fence.
To end the first game at Nationals Park, Zimmerman crushed a solo homer to center that christened the new stadium. The blast went a long way toward earning him the nickname “Mr. Walk-Off.”
Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post
Zimmerman made his first of two all-star appearances at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Subbing in for David Wright for the National League, Zimmerman went 0 for 2 with two popouts. That season, Zimmerman earned a Gold Glove award at third base, Silver Slugger honors for that position and finished 25th in most valuable player voting.
Zimmerman agreed to a six-year, $100 million contract extension with the Nationals, further cementing his status as the face of the franchise. Later that year, the club won its first National League East title, kick-starting a near decade of on-field success.
Plagued by recurring issues in his right shoulder, Zimmerman made a full-time move from third to first base for the 2015 season. Various injuries ultimately limited him to 61 regular season games in 2014, 95 in 2015, 85 in 2018 and 52 in 2019.
Zimmerman contributed to the biggest ninth-inning comeback in Nationals history — in which they erased a six-run deficit against the New York Mets — with an RBI double off Edwin Díaz. The next batter, Kurt Suzuki, capped the 11-10 win with a three-run walk-off homer.
With the Nationals facing elimination in Game 4 of the National League Division Series, Zimmerman padded a slim lead against the Los Angeles Dodgers with a three-run homer in Washington. The Nationals eventually won the game and series, advancing past the NLDS for the first time.
In the first World Series game in club history, Zimmerman fittingly hit the first World Series home run in club history, a solo shot off Houston Astros ace Gerrit Cole at Minute Maid Park.
Jonathan Newton /The Washington Post
Zimmerman and the Nationals won the city’s first World Series title since 1924, beating the Astros in seven games.
At age 35, Zimmerman opted out of playing in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement, he said: “After a great deal of thought and given my family circumstances — three young children including a newborn, and a mother at high risk — I have decided not to participate.”
On the final day of what would be his final season, Zimmerman received an emotional send-off at Nationals Park. Manager Dave Martinez removed him before the eighth inning, leaving Zimmerman alone on the field, face wet with tears, while the crowd showered him with a standing ovation. Zimmerman just kept mouthing, “Thank you.”
Perspective | Ryan Zimmerman: Face of the Franchise, Mr. Walk-Off, Washington’s forever | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Watergate 50th Anniversary: Dwight Chapin
MR. DUFFY: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. I’m Michael Duffy, opinions editor‑at‑large at the Washington Post, and thank you for joining us.
2022 is the 50th anniversary of Watergate, the break‑in that led to the downfall of the 37th president, Richard Nixon. In times since, Mr. Nixon has emerged as a more complex, if not always more admired president than he was at the time of his resignation in 1974.
Our guest this morning is Dwight Chapin, a personal aide in many capacities to Mr. Nixon for more than a decade. Mr. Chapin worked with and watched Mr. Nixon closely in those years and joins us today to talk about that chapter in his life. He's the author of a new book, "The President's Man: Memoirs of Nixon's Trusted Aide."
Good morning, Mr. Chapin, and thank you for joining us.
MR. CHAPIN: Hi. Good morning, Michael. Nice to be with you.
MR. DUFFY: Mr. Chapin, you're 80 or 81, I believe. Watergate is 50 years behind us, and I want to start by asking you, if you might tell us, why did you write this book now so many years later?
MR. CHAPIN: I wrote this book now because‑‑for two or three different reasons. One, I felt that I had a responsibility to history and to the‑‑to chronicle the incredible era that I was privileged to witness. That was number one. Number two, I believe that there are many attributes about President Nixon and the man, and I knew him very well. And I feel that he has, over through history, been misunderstood, and I wanted to put on the record the man, everything about the man that I knew.
And then, lastly, I have grandchildren and hopefully, eventually, great‑grandchildren, and I wanted them to know what had happened to their great‑grandfather or grandfather when he served the president.
MR. DUFFY: You grew up in Kansas and went to the University‑‑I'm sorry?
MR. CHAPIN: No, I did grow up in Kansas. I'm proud of that, yes.
MR. DUFFY: And then went to the University of Southern California where you really got your start in politics, correct?
MR. CHAPIN: Well, yes. What really happened is that in 1960 when President Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles, I had, through a family contact, the opportunity to work for CBS in their anchor booth, and I clicked‑‑I used to clip the teletype machine and take the stories into the studio where there was Eric Sevareid, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Douglas Edwards, and I would put the copy into the producer's basket there. And being in and around that whole process, the news‑gathering process, the convention in itself, Kennedy coming to the convention, I think that infused me with a phenomenal interest in politics, and then that carried over very quickly to USC where I became involved in the campus‑type politics.
MR. DUFFY: And tell us more about how you became involved in Republican politics, because I gather your first actual political job was with Sam Yorty, who was a Democrat.
MR. CHAPIN: Yes. Well, yes. He ran for mayor of Los Angeles. I was in high school at that time, and I took bumper stickers door to door, rang the bell, and suggested to people that they either put a bumper sticker on the car or, at the minimum, vote for Sam Yorty. He was kind of a character, and I think he was‑‑at that time when he was running in Los Angeles, he was a Democrat. But I believe he had a‑‑it was an independent‑type campaign.
MR. DUFFY: You would go to work for Richard Nixon for the first time in 1962 in his governor's race against then the incumbent governor, Pat Brown, of California. What did you do in the 1962 race, Mr. Chapin?
MR. CHAPIN: Yeah. In the 1962 campaign, I had been assigned to be a fieldman. I was a senior at USC. I took time off from school, and I was in charge of setting up campaign headquarters in the San Fernando Valley section of L.A. County, Santa Barbara County, and Ventura County. And, at that time, we would put together these little campaign headquarters community by community and get in volunteers that worked the precinct sheets. It was a very grassroots‑type operation, and my job was to establish these little headquarters and to make sure they were staffed and that all of the precinct work was being done. But it was basically, in this era, this 1970‑‑1962 campaign for governor where I met Richard Nixon for the first time, but I also met many of the players that would continue with him on through to the White House days.
MR. DUFFY: Now, most--all most people remember that race, Mr. Chapin, s what Mr. Nixon said at the end of it. Tell us that story, and tell us what you think he meant by the famous quote that he said at the Beverly Hilton that day.
MR. CHAPIN: Yes. It was the Beverly Hilton, the morning after the election. I was standing there with my great friend, Mike Guhin. We were in the ballroom, and we‑‑there was this kind of a hustle, and everybody said Nixon was coming down from his suite up above. And he came down, and he went on the stage, and that's when he said, "Gentlemen, you're not going to have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore because this is my last press conference."
And, as a result of that, I remember Howard K. Smith, who was on ABC at the time, a few days later had a major show called "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon," and at that point, everybody thought Richard Nixon was finished.
As for me, I got in my car that morning, and I drove around Los Angeles. Literally, all day, I drove around just sobbing. I was a young man. I had worked my heart out. I had been up all night. I really didn't think he would lose. I believed in him and thought he was going to win, and I may have been one of the only people in Los Angeles who thought he was going to win, but that's where my head was.
MR. DUFFY: And looking back on that moment now, given what you know about Nixon, what do you think he was really feeling? What do you think? Was he just angry at the press? Was he feeling sorry for himself? What do you make of that particular moment?
MR. CHAPIN: Yes. That's a great question. That's a great question, Michael, and I address that in "The President's Man." In my book, I believe that there was a real clue there that morning, a kind of a psychological clue, if you will. He let his hair down. He talked about how he had been vilified by the media and so forth, and I think, psychologically, he thought his career was probably over at that point. And he was letting it be known that he did not feel that he had been treated properly, at least, I would say, objectively, by the media, and had been characterized as someone other than who he was. And that's why he reacted the way he did, and I believe that that was a clue to what we find later on when he's in the presidency.
MR. DUFFY: And yet just six years later, he's running hard again. In 1968, both parties have fairly large internal splits between different factions. The country is a mess. Nixon wins the presidential race in '68 with 43 or 44 percent of the vote. What was your role in that campaign?
MR. CHAPIN: Well, very quickly here, I helped him out at the Goldwater convention in '64, and then in 1966, I had moved from Southern California to New York. And I worked as a fieldman.
I also‑‑when I got to New York, I called Rose Mary Woods, his secretary, and I volunteered, and I would go down in the evening after my work at J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, and I would answer correspondence. As I detail in the book, "The President's Man," one of the important parts of that, going down and working and answering correspondence, was that the lady that was teaching me how to answer these letters was Mrs. Nixon herself, and she really got to know me. She got to know about my wife, Susie, and our children, and out of that, I believe, became the roots of trust. I believe she passed on to Mr. Nixon that this young man was working hard and was somebody he should consider as perhaps his personal aide, and that's what happened.
After the 1966 election, I was invited by him to come down to the office and did so, and he interviewed me very briefly. But he interviewed me and offered me a job to become his personal aide, which I did throughout the 1967 period and into 1968 and all through that election and until we walked into the White House on the 20th of January 1969.
MR. DUFFY: As you know, you did travel with him. You were in the White House, his appointment secretary among other roles, and you wrote in the book that as you got physically closer to him in the White House, in the West Wing, and you became‑‑got to the point where you were literally in the office next door, he nonetheless remained somewhat elusive from you. You wrote, I believe, that he had‑‑he cultivated what you called a "mystique," a magic of mystique, almost a mystery. How come? Looking back on that, what was that about do you think now with some benefits of hindsight?
MR. CHAPIN: Yes. Well, first of all, we're talking about 50 years ago‑‑
MR. DUFFY: Yes.
MR. CHAPIN: ‑‑and relationships that people had. First, I was a personal aide and a member of his staff. I was not his buddy‑buddy or friend. I make my role, and I carried out my role. So this was‑‑never once did I consider myself as Nixon's buddy or friend or top advisor or anything like that. So the‑‑my position was one of, for lack of a better word, servitude, an assistant, and I was able‑‑because of the length of time that I had been around him, I intuitively knew what it is that he liked or disliked or wanted to do and so forth. And that became‑‑as I mentioned to someone the other day, that really became my credential. I knew him, and my immediate boss, Bob Haldeman, who was the chief of staff, who had been around Nixon for a significant period of time himself, helped train me in this role.
And then the president himself through the years that I worked for him would let me know what his likes and his dislikes were, and so I was given basically a gift of understanding him. And that became the thing that served me so well during this period, and I think it's also what adds so much insight and meat and material to "The President's Man," the book.
MR. DUFFY: You said at the top that you felt that he was misunderstood. Tell us why you think he was misunderstood.
MR. CHAPIN: Well, I think he was misunderstood in large part, Michael, because of the interpretation of him. I mean, obviously, Watergate is huge in the interpretation of Richard Nixon. In fact, that's one of the reasons I wrote the book is that‑‑is to balance it.
I remember the book by Tom Wicker, the great New York Times' writer, who said, you know, Nixon's greatest accomplishments may have been in his domestic policy. Well, if you went out and asked 10 people on the street about Nixon's accomplishments in domestic policy, you wouldn't find one person probably that could tell you what they were, and that's because all of the focus on Richard Nixon and his reputation and what he was about is on either one of two things, the opening of China or Watergate. And you have a man here that served the nation as a public servant for over a half a century.
He was brilliant. He was a strategist. He did great things for the country. He was a partisan who was a bipartisan, and by that, I mean Richard Nixon, when he‑‑the first week in office, he gave us instructions that every week‑‑every week‑‑he wanted to have the bipartisan leadership of the Congress into the Oval Office to discuss issues and what they would do on legislation.
You know, today, in today's environment that we have in Washington, it's national news if the bipartisan leaderships come down and meet with the president in the cabinet room. With Nixon, it was on the schedule every week. He knew these men. He liked these men. Were they opponents? Yes. Did they have differences? Yes. But they were able to talk to one another, and Nixon was superb at this. It was one of his great calling cards.
MR. DUFFY: You know, William Safire, another‑‑well, he was a speechwriter to Richard Nixon‑‑once described him as a‑‑I think a "seven‑layer cake," that you could kind of cut your fork down in three, three or four layers, and sort of understand what was going on, but you could never get to layers five, six, and seven. Do you agree with that assessment? Does that sound right to you? And if so or if not, tell us why.
MR. CHAPIN: Well, first of all, Bill Safire was a great friend of mine, and I would never disagree with Bill on anything. And I think he's right. Richard Nixon had these various layers, and many people do, particularly people in public life.
The question is, what were those layers? And Nixon‑‑I would identify two or three of the important ones. One is his strategic thinking. Another layer would be his concern to be a president that was representative of and looked out for all people, all Americans. Another layer would be his Quakerism. This is a man that did not want‑‑did not believe in war. This is a man that wanted peace.
His privacy, he was a very private man. That's another layer.
One that we would all probably identify was his layer of mistrust because so often he was cast as the opposition. This is a man who carried the political baggage for General Eisenhower when Eisenhower was the president. Here is a man that went after Alger Hiss, the communist. Nixon was very anti‑communist. So some of these layers were controversial and were really not liked by many people.
So there were many layers to that cake that Bill Safire was trying to define, and I wish Bill‑‑I don't know that Bill specifically said here are what those layers are, but I've tried to give you a few here today.
MR. DUFFY: Now, that's helpful, and you're right that there were huge domestic accomplishments during the Nixon era with a Congress that was still largely Democratic: OSHA, the all‑volunteer military, EPA, Title IX, quite a few. What do you think made Nixon so confident in his belief and ability and yet, as you once said, paranoid about his rivals? He had both. He was both very sure of what he wanted to do but also quite fearful of those who would oppose him, and did that, in your view, take a toll?
MR. CHAPIN: Yes. But I don't know that I would use the word "fearful." I would sure use the word "apprehensive" and "on guard," and I say if I‑‑I would have to see the specific passage on how I use "paranoid," but even paranoids, as the joke goes, sometimes have the right to be paranoid.
I mean, he was under attack constantly, and the liberal media and the liberal elite were constantly after him. And when I say liberal elite, where I talk Ivy League, I'm not talking about some young man or woman that's going to Princeton or Yale or Harvard or something like that. I'm talking about attitude, an attitude of superiority, and Nixon hated that. Nixon‑‑obviously, he liked the brain power of Ivy League people. I mean, he had Dr. Henry Kissinger. He had Patrick Moynihan. He had James Baker. He had George Shultz. He had people that had come out of the Ivy League community. The issue with Nixon was how do they think, and then‑‑and then to what degree they would give him leeway in terms of understanding his leadership style versus thinking the arrogance that only they knew what was right or knew what was wrong. And I tried to make that clear in "The President's Man" that there's a hell of a difference here.
MR. DUFFY: Now, I wasn't going to ask you this until later, but that theme you just hit on there, particularly with respect to Ivy League and elites is an enduring one and continues in our own politics today a half century later. The Republican Party has become more populist, more working class, more anti‑government. What do you think Richard Nixon would think or make of today's Republican Party?
MR. CHAPIN: Well, these parties change and go back and forth. I mean, do you remember the Republican Party where, good God, the conservatives were way over on one side and the liberals on the other, and they could never get together? You know, it's like AOC versus the more conservative Democrats. I mean, it's kind of like this thing swings back and forth, this pendulum.
And I think that President Nixon, who was a master at understanding this, would say the pendulum is swinging. Just, you know, the great thing that works is time, and that time is going to help us sort out some of these national priorities.
I would venture out on this one little limb here and say that in terms of a lot of the disputes going on, Nixon would say, you know, "Why are the kids in the sandbox throwing sand at each other? We have issues of consequence. We have national issues, foreign policy issues that need to be decided, and yet we waste our time day after day after day off on these sidebar issues. And it's time that America got focused, that we have solid, strategic thinking," and he would bring together the best minds he could and start solving those problems.
And when I'm talking to others, I always make the point that, you know, sometimes at 5:00 at night or 5:30, he would have Dick Russell, a Democratic senator, or Stennis, a Democratic senator, or any number of different people that he had known as he worked in Congress to the White House. They would sit there in the Oval Office and have a cocktail and talk things over. It was the mentality that existed back in that period is something that needs to be reestablished now, and it's not impossible to do.
MR. DUFFY: Yeah. Back to the '72 campaign really briefly‑‑and we don't have a lot of time left‑‑Nixon would win that race, of course, in a landslide, but he did go to unusual and, in some ways, illegal lengths to secure that reelection. Your own role in it resulted in you going to prison for nine months. Looking back, would you have done it differently, said something differently? Any regrets about that period?
MR. CHAPIN: [Laughs] Well, looking back, I definitely would not have hired Don Segretti, but the Segretti affair was really not part of Watergate. I make that point in my book. It's really separate from what we know as Watergate. It's more of the prankster‑ism, dirty trick side of things, and obviously, I wouldn't go back and do that now if that were possible.
But I will say this, and I make the point in "The President's Man." The rewards that I had as a young man to witness and to work with a man of the brilliance and the interest in public service that Richard Nixon represented was priceless‑‑priceless‑‑and even though I paid a very stiff price‑‑and I know that, you know, I'm on the wrong side of the ledger when it comes to evaluating all about Watergate, but when I evaluate my life working for Richard Nixon, it's nothing but a net plus, and he was a great man. And I was very honored to serve him.
MR. DUFFY: Mr. Chapin, thank you for your time and for sharing your memories and recollections of the 37th president with us, and congratulations on your new book.
MR. CHAPIN: Well, thank you. Thank you, Michael, and congratulations on that great book you wrote, too. Thanks.
MR. DUFFY: To check out other interviews we have upcoming at WashingtonPostLive.com, go to that website to register for other interviews, and thank you for joining us today. | null | null | null | null | null |
A man gasses up his vehicle in Alexandria. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Every member of Congress up for reelection is a prisoner of forces outside their control. You can serve your constituents with skill and compassion, but if you’re up for reelection in a bad year for your party, you could be in trouble. On the other hand, if your election comes when everyone is mad at the other party, you can be an outright nincompoop and get swept triumphantly into office.
The idea started with four Democrats facing reelection this year in swing states: Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia. It would suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon tax through the end of the year, and replace the revenue lost to the Highway Trust Fund — as much as $20 billion — with general funds.
They’re not the only ones doing this — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wants a similar holiday of the state’s gas tax — but that just shows how tempting, and empty, this idea is.
Would this make a difference in your family’s finances? Even if you buy a lot of gas — say 20 gallons a week — that means you’d save at most a whopping $3.60 a week. Why, that’s almost $15 a month! It’s not exactly going to change your life.
Still, this impulse among lawmakers is understandable. Your constituents are demanding you do something about inflation, and the truth — If I could eliminate inflation, I would, but I can’t — isn’t very satisfying. So what can you do? You’re a lawmaker, so you propose a law.
This paragraph from The Post’s article sums up the problem well:
That’s all true. And not only that, before Election Day the price of gas will go up and down approximately 267 times, because that’s the number of days between now and then. Maybe prices will be higher in November than they are now, and maybe they will be lower; no one knows for sure.
So even if you get a day’s worth of positive coverage about how you cut the gas tax to give folks some much-needed relief, people are likely to forget about it, if they ever hear about it in the first place.
That’s true of a lot of what lawmakers do, and they might figure that even if their constituents just get a fleeting warm feeling about them, it wouldn’t hurt. And in the scope of less-than-worthwhile proposals, this is nowhere near the most harmful; it’s not as if they’re advocating banning books or privatizing Social Security, and you can find more appalling demagoguery in Congress any day of the week.
They’re driven by global markets and complex systems. They’re affected by many variables. No informed person could think that their senator can solve inflation. And if the senators were honest, they’d admit that a big part of their work involves confronting futility — much of the time, the most important problems are the ones that are the hardest to solve.
Which makes it hard to get angry about something such as a gas tax holiday; the electorate gets as much pandering as it deserves. But we don’t have to call it anything else. | null | null | null | null | null |
A Delta Air Lines plane leaves the gate on July 12, at Logan International Airport in Boston. (Michael Dwyer/AP)
“Homeland security is homeland security,” the union’s president, Sara Nelson, said. “Our flights are under attack by a small number of people and it has to stop. … This is not about ‘masks,’ and the worst attacks have nothing to do with masks. You’re either for protecting crew and passengers from these attacks or you’re against.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“There are signs of a big cold front in early March in the mid-continent,” he said, while acknowledging it’s an open question as to how much of that cold reaches the eastern United States.
Based on computer-model projections, which are bouncing around, Rogers foresees March being a variable month. “We may have some transient cold events in the first half, and then prevailing warmth for the second half,” he said.
In terms of snow, Rogers wouldn’t rule out seeing some more. He expects below-average amounts over the next two weeks but sees an opportunity for near-average amounts through the first half of March.
Although measurable snow hasn’t fallen in D.C. since Jan. 28, the seasonal snowfall total of 12.3 inches is still running ahead of the average Feb. 15 amount of 9.6 inches. However, with no snow probable in the next 10 days, the difference from average will only be about an inch by Feb. 25.
Unless Rogers is right and snow chances increase some toward the end of February and early March, D.C. could end up with below-average snowfall for the fifth time in the past six winters.
Recall just four weeks ago, we were discussing “a historically snowy January” as more than a foot of snow had fallen in three storms in the first half of the month. But since Jan. 16, just 0.2 inches have accumulated.
The winter may not only end up with below-average snowfall, but also seems assured to be milder than normal for the sixth time in the past seven years.
December was 5.9 degrees warmer than normal, second mildest on record.
January was 2.9 degrees colder than normal, the 66th coldest on record.
February, so far, is running 2 degrees warmer than normal, tied for the 18th mildest on record. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Ban Saudi tourney participants from pro golf in the U.S.
Golfers at the Saudi International tournament in Jiddah on Feb. 6. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)
The Saudi International golf tournament was held this month, and many PGA golfers played, and Harold Varner III won [“Hoge grabs first win at Pebble Beach,” Sports, Feb. 7].
I don’t see this as a cause of celebration for any of the U.S. Professional Golf Association golfers. In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul under the direction of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. All Americans who participated in this tournament are making themselves complicit in this murder. They are willing to take blood money.
Because they are willing to overlook murder for money, it is incumbent on the leaders of American golf to take a stand. The PGA, PGA Tour and U.S. Golf Association should ban any American who plays golf in any tournament funded by Saudi Arabia from playing in any of their sanctioned events. The Masters Tournament, not played under the auspices of the PGA Tour or USGA, should not offer invitations to any golfer who plays in any Saudi tournament.
These sanctions should remain in place until the crown prince is held responsible for his actions.
Malcolm “Hank” Lyle Jr., Asheville, N.C. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Get guns off the streets
Pamela Thomas, 54, was killed by a stray bullet in Northeast D.C. on Feb. 9. (Family photo)
Last week, a stray bullet killed Pamela Thomas, a mother who died in her 8-year-old’s arms in Northeast D.C. on her way to a birthday party [“Stray bullet kills D.C. woman,” Metro, Feb. 11]. The traumatized boy is one of thousands of young Americans whose lives have been ended or destroyed by gunfire. The fact that Congress is unable or unwilling to control life-threatening firearms is a terrible indictment of the moral values of our country. We are not taking care of our children.
From New Year’s Day to Valentine’s Day, at least 37 children 11 or younger were killed by guns in our country; 82 were injured. The numbers are even worse among those aged 12 to 17: 142 were been killed by guns and 348 injured. There were 49 mass shootings, three mass murders and 166 unintentional shootings.
In 2020, 999 kids 11 or younger were killed or injured; 4,142 12-to-17-year-olds were killed or injured. There were 611 mass shootings, 573 murder-suicides and 2,315 unintentional shootings.
Guns have three purposes: hunting or sport shooting, war and killing people. Let’s get guns off our streets, now.
Marian Molinaro, Chevy Chase | null | null | null | null | null |
“Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” with Brian Koppelman, David Levien & Beth Schacter
“Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” tells the story of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful unicorn companies and the tumult of its corporate culture. Join Washington Post Live on Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 3:00 p.m. ET for a conversation with showrunners and executive producers Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Beth Schacter about the start of the transportation company, the rise and fall of Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick and the show’s depiction of startup culture. | null | null | null | null | null |
For more than four years, Sarah Palin waited for her chance to go head-to-head with the New York Times in court.
This tinderbox of a lawsuit began in the wake of a June 2017 shooting attack on a group of Republican lawmakers who had gathered at an Alexandria baseball field to practice for a game. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was among those wounded. Within hours, a writer for the New York Times’s editorial page had started crafting an editorial, later published under the headline “America’s Lethal Politics,” that took note of another mass shooting — the one that injured then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and killed six people in Tucson. That shooting, the Times wrote, had been preceded by the circulation of a map by Palin’s PAC that placed stylized crosshairs over targeted Democratic districts. “The link to political incitement was clear,” the Times wrote. | null | null | null | null | null |
Furious residents of Canada’s capital say they feel abandoned by public institutions
As the demonstrations here grind into a third week, locals say they feel abandoned and helpless. They are also furious about the disruption and what they describe as an insufficient response by police and government officials. On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the country’s Emergencies Act. The law, approved in 1988 but never before used, allows the Canadian federal government to prohibit public assemblies and remove people and property from prohibited spaces.
The convoy began as a protest of U.S. and Canadian rules requiring cross-border truckers to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. It has since snowballed into a movement against all pandemic-related public health restrictions, which are imposed mostly by the provinces, and Trudeau.
“I could not think of a more horrendous way to undermine the faith and trust in our public institutions, in our law enforcement institutions,” Christian Leuprecht, a political scientist at the Royal Military College of Canada, said of Blair’s comments. | null | null | null | null | null |
Taxes. Though the state’s two-year budget has yet to come up for a vote, the House has approved measures that would authorize all of Youngkin’s tax-cut proposals: Doubling the standard deduction, one-time rebates for taxpayers, exempting the first $40,000 of military retiree pay, suspending an increase in the gasoline tax and eliminating the full 2½-cent tax on groceries.
The Senate has been more cautious. While that chamber passed a measure to address the grocery tax, it only did away with the state’s 1½-cent portion, leaving a 1-cent local portion in place. The Senate also punted the standard deduction question to next year so it can be studied.
But the full Senate unanimously passed a bill meant to prevent a surrogate mother from being forced to abort a fetus with abnormalities or reduce the number of fetuses she is carrying. The bill, brought by Sen. Mark J. Peake (R-Lynchburg), the father of quadruplets, would make it illegal for child surrogacy contracts to require a surrogate to do so against her will. The Senate passed the bill in 2020, but it never got out of committee in what was then a Democrat-controlled House.
Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) said addressing the state budget, and assuring funds reach the people who need it most, would be a key priority moving forward, along with making sure the Senate Democrats’ “brick wall” protects progress on issues like voting rights, immigration and gun violence protection. | null | null | null | null | null |
The family of a cinematographer shot and killed on the set of the film “Rust” filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Alec Baldwin and the movie’s producers Tuesday.
Lawyers for the family of Halyna Hutchins announced the lawsuit filed in New Mexico in the name of Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, and their son, Andros, at a Los Angeles news conference.
The “reckless conduct and cost-cutting measures” of Baldwin and the film’s producers “led to the death of Halyna Hutchins,” attorney Brian Panish said. A video created by the attorneys showed an animated re-creation of the shooting.
Baldwin has that said he was pointing the gun at Hutchins at her instruction and that it went off without him pulling the trigger. Emails sent seeking comment from an attorney for Baldwin and a representative of the film’s other producers were not immediately returned.
Baldwin said he does not believe he will be criminally charged in the shooting. “I didn’t pull the trigger,” Baldwin said. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.”
Four teenagers among victims in plane crash
One body has been pulled from the Atlantic Ocean by search crews combing the area and there is no indication that anyone survived the crash, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck said Monday. Everyone on board the plane was from North Carolina, and most lived in Carteret, a coastal county that includes the southern edge of the Outer Banks.
The teenagers were identified as Jonathan Kole McInnis, 15, of Sea Level; Noah Lee Styron, 15, of Cedar Island; Michael Daily Shepard, 15, of Atlantic; and Jacob Nolan Taylor, 16, of Atlantic. All four teenagers on board went to East Carteret High School, the school system said in a statement.
Lewis, 29, and other neighbors rounded up hundreds of candles for mourners in the parking lot of a shuttered grocery store.
The single-engine Pilatus PC-12/47 crashed into the water approximately 18 miles northeast of Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort about 2 p.m. Sunday, according to an email from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Police find missing girl hidden under staircase: A young girl reported missing was found by officers searching a home in New York's Hudson Valley, police said Tuesday. The child was found in good health Monday night in a Saugerties home east of Cayuga Heights, where she was reported missing in July 2019 at 4 years old. Officers executing a search warrant found the girl with her noncustodial mother in a cold, wet, makeshift enclosure under a basement staircase. She was turned over to her legal guardian. The noncustodial parents and a third person were arraigned on charges of custodial interference and endangering the welfare of a child. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Pandemic Preparedness with Rick A. Bright, PhD, Helen Clark & Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here at the Post.
Today we're going to be talking about the potential for future pandemics, and I'm going to be talking with two former heads of state who have been working together on this issue of pandemic preparedness. I'm delighted to welcome Her Excellency, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the Right Honorable Helen Clark. A very warm welcome to you both.
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Thank you.
MS. CLARK: Thank you.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: And a word to our audience, we'd love you to join in the conversation. So please tweet your questions or comments to the Twitter handle, @PostLive. That's @PostLive. Please do join us.
And, Prime Minister Clark, I'd love to start with you. You and‑‑the two of you have co‑authored a report titled "Losing Time." That was three months ago in November that you released it. Where do we stand now? Are people heeding that message, or are we in even worst straits?
MS. CLARK: I think we've lost even more time. There are a number of things that have to be done across new governance mechanisms, financing, working out how to equitably distribute global public goods in crises like these, new legal instruments to ensure that we get off running fast when a pandemic hits, and a stronger WHO. All these things are obvious and have to be done, but progress is pretty slow.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So that's distressing and brings me to a question, President Sirleaf, for you. You talk about vaccination in this report and say it's not the only mechanism we need in order to address health inequities around the world. What else do we need to be thinking about?
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Hello. Before we go further into that, let me give a reality check. COVID‑19 started at the end of 2019. The Director‑General of World Health Organization organized an independent panel for pandemic preparedness and response. That started in July 2020. It submitted its report in May 2021, and that report stressed stop the pandemic, was the number one call in the recommendations.
We've had advocacy, the IPPPR group, with G7, G20, civil society, every organization you can think of. Today we stand where we are just as Helen has just said, and the reason for that is global unity and global dynamics have changed the situation. There is not enough political will to be able to carry out the recommendations to stop this pandemic.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Yeah. That's very distressing and actually does bring me to a broader question. You know, the pandemic came at a time of rising nationalism. Is that coincidental, or do you think that sense that individual countries are acting in their own self‑interest actually precipitated this pandemic?
MS. CLARK: Not only at a time of rising national self‑interests but also at a time of great geopolitical polarization, and the two combined have been really huge obstructions to the response.
The only way we could overcome this pandemic fast was to all act together instead of the most powerful grabbing what they could for themselves. We can't stop this pandemic unless it stops for everyone, and to cut to the chase of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's key point, of the 10 billion or so vaccines that have been administered, 346 million have gone to Africa. I mean, it is criminally irresponsible really to leave much of a continent unvaccinated if you say you want to stop the pandemic, as most would.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So, President Sirleaf‑‑
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: But let's get back to the question of vaccines.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: ‑‑based on what you heard on that question of vaccination.
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Yeah.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: What else [audio distortion].
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: We really‑‑why as important as the fascination is, we still need to have other things. We need to make sure that national health systems are made better, better equipped to be able to fight the pandemic. We need to make sure that the supply chain for being able to get vaccines, therapeutics from the manufacturing to the affected, you know, are improved. We need to make sure that intellectual property rights are waived or licenses granted so there can be manufacturing particularly in the south where most of the people were deemed not vaccinated, so that we can get‑‑we can get them vaccinated as quickly as possible, to be able to achieve the 70 percent target date that's been set to have been accomplished by the middle of 2022.
And then there are more than that. There are therapeutics. There are other types of supplies, PPEs, and other things that need to be done. We need an improved and fully financed WHO establishment for vaccine manufacturing. We need an independent, reliable financing system, and so all of those are what are needed if we are going to not only stop the pandemic but ensure that we are prepared to be able to meet the threat of any other coming future pandemic.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So, Prime Minister Clark, there's a very striking sentence in your introduction when you say this pandemic cannot catalyze real change. What will? Talk to me about solutions, other countries that are doing the right thing here and are a model for the next step, for looking ahead, for the kinds of solutions we need and you're talking about.
MS. CLARK: I'd like to think my own country was making a pretty good stab at limiting transmission and protecting the health and well‑being of its people but, of course, often gets laughed at a bit because people say, "You're an island, and it's easier." Well, you can make your luck with this.
But I think a key point is that to stop a pandemic, you have to stop transmission, and that means throwing the whole toolbox of public health measures at them. The vaccine is a critical tool, but you won't stop a pandemic only with a vaccine. You do need to modify behaviors. You need to really systematize the mask wearing, the physical distancing to the extent that you can, and that's easier, of course, in some countries than in others.
I have a huge concern that the way transmission is being left to rip through, whether it's because of a denial of vaccination, for example, through Africa, or whether it's because countries with a lot of populous pressure on them are just removing all controls. We are creating new opportunities for more variants, and I feel like we're a dog chasing its tail globally and not doing the things systematically and in a coordinated way, which would stop the pandemic.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So, President Sirleaf, you published‑‑this report was published‑‑excuse me‑‑right before Omicron came at the end of November and a variant as your colleague here was talking about, and after that happened, there were travel restrictions put in place with enormous economic consequences for South Africa. How can we avoid this sort of fallout when a country like South Africa comes forward with needed information for the global community but feels penalized by the response?
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: I guess I think we need to see the pandemic as more than a health threat. We need to see it at once that has to‑‑affects health, education, every aspect of society, that the linkage of the effect of a pandemic in so many ways tells us that when we plan any system to avoid having another health threat, we must see it as an all‑‑an all something. We must see it that it's linked to other sectors. We must make sure that there are viable social safety nets for society's more vulnerable sakes.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I think we may have lost your sound, and I'll come back because this really does bring me straight to a question for Prime Minister Clark.
Do we have the structure in place? Do we need a new structure? The WHO‑‑we've just heard from President Sirleaf about the fact that a pandemic is not just a health issue. The main global body overseeing this, it's primarily a health issue. What would you like to see? Do you see any chance of a new global structure coming in place to provide a solution that can deal with economic, national security, and political issues that‑‑and economic and education?
MS. CLARK: That's what our panel recommended, a package of recommendations‑‑
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Right.
MS. CLARK: ‑‑starting with governance‑‑
MS. CLARK: ‑‑bringing heads of state and government into a governance structure which would oversee and encourage the international organizations and nations to work together.
We did advocate a new legal instrument, which the wheels are grinding very, very slowly on at the World Health Assembly negotiations, still really another two years‑plus away from reaching any fruition, and there's no agreement on content or form at this point, and critical, we'll be getting some agreement on how to allocate global public goods in the event of a pandemic.
And, as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said, our panel supports the TRIPS waiver, the waiver of intellectual property rights in the event of a pandemic like this so that everybody has a fair chance to be able to access the goods and technology required.
We need the financing facility and new facility in place so that countries can be supported to prepare for pandemics and supported to respond when the worst happens, and we need to strengthen WHO. WHO can get to the site of an outbreak immediately. They can publish the information that it has. They can act in a precautionary way in blowing the whistle on what it believes is something with pandemic potential.
So a lot of things have to come together in this package, and at the moment, bits and pieces are being looked at. Our panel has a view that the General Assembly needs to support our reform architecture pathway to bring everyone and behind across health, social, economic institutions in [unclear].
MS. STEAD SELLERS: And just one follow‑up question, how optimistic are you that those measures, those very costly global measures will actually take effect?
MS. CLARK: I think it needs to be brought together, which is why we advocated attention for the General Assembly. At the moment, it's a bit here; it's a bit there. You know, the G20 looking at finance, WHO almost‑‑WHA--assembly, on a slow track towards some things. It needs a bigger picture, reform push around a package, and one is concerned that you end up with lowest common denominator across the areas that our panel advocated the change in.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I just want to push a little bit more on this. How do we get those? The G20 had an estimate of, I think, $75 billion in costs, $15 billion per year needed to make these sorts of changes. Where is it going to come from? Where is the political will?
MS. CLARK: Well, that's small money really on a global level to prevent a pandemic that is probably going to cost the world $25 trillion, isn't it, over a period of years, with lost global output? So the recommendation we had was from each according to their means, to each according to their needs, sort of standard formula that institutional‑‑institutions are funded by internationally. And it's not a serious impasse to raise the 10‑ to $15 billion a year.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Well, President Sirleaf, I'd love to ask you a little bit more about vaccination because you understand so well these issues across the world. I think the WHO had a target of 70 percent vaccination by the middle of this year. Is that now realistic in any sense?
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: We must make it, and this is why we have to accelerate all the efforts to ensure that all of those who have not been vaccinated have the opportunity to do so. The inequity that is costing lives and providing opportunities to‑‑it provides opportunity for the pandemic to circulate to mutate. Unless we meet those targets, unless we're able to ensure that all the other countries have the ability, have the access, then we can be assured that if no one is safe‑‑unless everyone is safe, no one is going to be safe with this pandemic.
Let me use the‑‑let me use also the example of the experience we had with Ebola in Liberia, and there, we were quite sure that some of the basic things that needed to be done was to ensure full communication, full coordination, full partnership, full leadership, and I think the COVID‑19 has demonstrated that the women leaders have always--have been able to address the pandemic and to find a way to solve it much better because of their ability to be able to reach beyond the normal and place emphasis on where it's needed, emphasis on people, people like community health workers, frontliners who take the responsibility. And so I believe that it's possible for us to achieve those, but it's going to take the effort on the part of everyone.
And we need more global unity and cooperation. That is lacking today to be able to have the‑‑to be able to take the decisions that are needed whether by G7 or G20, to be able to ensure that global health‑‑that national systems, you know, are reformed and improved upon, that the Global Fund‑‑
MS. STEAD SELLERS: What's the‑‑
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: ‑‑has money, COVAX has what it needs, all of those.
I agree with Helen. It's not a question of the financial resources. The global financial system has the resources, and the cost of not being able to take‑‑to turn those resources into stopping this pandemic is going to lead to a much greater cost of having to be able to address the losses in economic activity, the losses in lives, and all of that, but Helen has said it.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I have a follow‑up question. What is the pathway that better communication? How can we implement is my first part, and the second part, we're so dependent now on mRNA vaccines. What are the practicalities of delivering that‑‑many need refrigeration‑‑across countries in Africa?
MS. CLARK: Well, the old story, where there's a will, there's a way, and what we've seen is major pharmaceutical companies really obstructing attempts to get vaccination out there and to support truly regional efforts to manufacture and supply.
So I have no doubt that with, you know, real goodwill, you could have the vaccination production set up in Africa, but even as we speak, the news lines are running hot with how the attempt to set up the mRNA hub in South Africa is being obstructed.
Look, bottom one to me is that in a pandemic, we need a global understanding through the WTO's intellectual property rights agreement, that these rights will be waived in a pandemic, and that every effort will be made to have equitable access. That's how in the end, we got on top, to the extent we have gotten on top, of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It was because countries could access vaccine at affordable costs, and of course, you had the Global Fund kick in to raise the money to help those who really needed them but couldn't afford them. So we need that kind of big spur to be half of the approach on this as well.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Well, let me just ask you‑‑
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: May I just‑‑
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Yes, go ahead.
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: Will you let me just mention the South Africa experience? Because Helen mentioned South Africa. South Africa was very effective in bringing together a strong partnership between the public and private sector, to be able to address some of the needs of refrigeration and something for the protection of the vaccines. South Africa coordinated to be able to get Africa's own center for disease control functioning to be able to start that, and so‑‑and just think about it. South Africa's own scientists, when they discovered certain things, they were punished for this, and so we see the African experience in addressing this pandemic has a lot to mow for what is required because the greater number of the African people have not been vaccinated.
But I think in terms of effort by Africa to address it and to use the institutions the best way they could, given the lack of equity that existed in having them access vaccines is something that needs to be looked at, their story, and how we can use some of those methods that Africa used that can be perhaps applied in whatever systems will be prepared to prevent another pandemic.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Prime Minister Clark, I can't resist asking you a question that comes to me through what President Sirleaf just said, which was about women's leadership. You praise your own country. You have a woman leader there. As we look ahead, is there something about the way women lead countries that make this sort of global cooperation possible?
MS. CLARK: What we observed from the earliest times of the pandemic was that, by and large, the women leaders around the world did pretty well in managing their national responses, and I put it down to less ego, often less narcissism generally across women leaders, willing to take advice, to take on board the best scientific and public health information coming through and to act on it.
Now, of course, sustaining this right through a pandemic as populations get weary is not easy. Everyone's responses has faulted under this kind of pressure, but on balance, I think history will record that the women leaders really put their best foot forward.
One more point on women, of course, women and children have been really particularly disadvantaged by this pandemic. The women who depend on ongoing sexual reproductive health services said not because they're sick, because they're healthy women having their babies, needing their contraception, these kinds of services have suffered terrible disruption. And the fallout for women has been great in other ways too, greater economic impact, more domestic violence recorded, more girls not returning to school.
So getting on top of this, putting in place the steps that will stop a further pandemic threat, materializing it into a devastating global pandemic like this, this has to be a global imperative. And to see the slow progress, the dragging the chain, whether it's getting out vaccines or agreeing on new legal instruments, all the new governance or financing mechanisms, it really is very concerning.
Most panels of reviews have come to pretty much the same kinds of conclusions about what needs to be done, not now but before as well, but reports tend to languish unless you get out and advocate for them, which President Sirleaf and I continue to do.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I have time, I think, for one last question, President Sirleaf, I'd like to ask you. You mentioned Ebola, the scourges that have hit some developing countries and the developed world have seen far less of. Looking ahead when we're talking about a future pandemic, do you see the keys to understanding how to tackle these sorts of threats coming from the developing world?
MS. JOHNSON SIRLEAF: I believe the experience we had with Ebola worked and even though thousands died, but we were able to stop the disease in record time, and that is because we focused on proper communication, reliable information, communication to the public, to be able to address their fears, and to assure that their confidence was built, to put the responsibility into the hands of those at the local level that had authority and that knew the culture and a way to be able to get people to get away from the hesitancy of being able to take the remedial measures that were necessary.
And so because of that, I believe those systems have already been researched, and I think we can look at those and see how we use them to ensure that in planning future systems that those basic methods are taken into account.
The IPPPR report, evidence‑based, has really gone into deeply, you know, how‑‑what we need to do to be able to ensure that we are prepared globally to afford another pandemic and what's necessary now to take those recommendations and to have a meeting of global leaders to look at those recommendations and to implement them as quickly as possible.
I know that WHO has endorsed all. There may be one recommendation for which there is not full consensus, but I think, generally, those recommendations can stand the test of time, and they should be implemented.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Thank you so much. Unfortunately, that's all we have time for. President Sirleaf, Prime Minister Clark, thank you so much for joining us with those humbling and enlightening messages.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I'm going to be back after a short break with Dr. Rick Bright from The Rockefeller Foundation. Don't leave us. I'll be back soon.
MS. UMOH: Hello. My name is Ruth Umoh, editor at Fortune magazine.
Here to chat with me today is Dr. Gavin Cloherty. Dr. Cloherty is head of Infectious Disease Research at Abbott and leads the Pandemic Defense Coalition. His innovative research and groundbreaking clinical studies are changing the way infectious diseases are detected and diagnosed.
Welcome, Dr. Cloherty.
DR. CLOHERTY: Thank you. It's great to be here.
MS. UMOH: Well, I'm so excited to have you here today, as you have extensive background in infectious diseases. You are a scientist and have researched many viruses from hepatitis to COVID‑19. What takeaways have you learned from the pandemic?
DR. CLOHERTY: Well, I think one of the big takeaways from this pandemic was a reminder that viruses never sleep. You know, they don't see borders. They're always active, and they move fast, and I think we have to move faster.
So, you know, it's also really demonstrated the importance of global collaboration, collaborations between different types of partners, between public health institutions with private sector, providing ongoing surveillance to help identify new variants, new emerging pathogens, which will enable us to respond quickly.
I think it also, you know, illustrates how no one nation, no one organization, no one tool is really going to be enough to mount an effective fight. It showed us that it takes, you know, health protocols, testing, vaccinations, and we've learned over the 30 years that we've been hunting viruses around the world that, you know, our‑‑what we know impacts our ability to respond. We can't fight what we can't see.
MS. UMOH: Absolutely. You bring up a great point about the need for ongoing vigilance and surveillance. How then can a global collaboration better prepare us for future pandemics, and what can we do now?
DR. CLOHERTY: So I think, you know, really fighting pandemics is a team sport. Nobody wants to live through another pandemic like we just have, and global collaboration is more important now than ever to help us prepare for future threats.
That's why Abbott has launched the Pandemic Defense Coalition, which is a first of its kind, privately led global, scientific, and public health network that's dedicated to the early detection and rapid response to emerging pathogens, a network of eyes on the ground always looking for emerging pathogens and also looking at how known pathogens are changing, to make sure that diagnostic tests continue to work, that vaccines are not impacted.
I could use our example of our partner in South Africa alerted us very early and quickly to the Omicron variant, and we were able to rapidly analyze the sequences and ensure that our tests will work and reassure the hospitals, doctors, and patients that rely on our tests.
And looking forward, the coalition, you know, it is possible that it could identify the next potential pandemic threat, and if someone presents with an illness of unknown origin or an unknown illness, we would be able to rapidly characterize that sample, develop diagnostic tests, enable a response to try and prevent overseeing from becoming a pandemic if there are more cases, if things start to emerge.
MS. UMOH: It sounds to me like we will need to rely on scientists much like yourself more than ever as we move forward. How do education and training play a role? And, subsequently, how is Abbott advancing this goal?
DR. CLOHERTY: That's an excellent point. You know, from a global health security perspective, we really need to reinforce and build up the next generation of virus hunters that are armed with the latest technologies and techniques and expertise.
You know, fortunately, Abbott and others are actively involved in that. We're supporting fellowships around the world that are training the next generation of virus hunters, that are providing field‑based lab experience and epidemiology training, sequencing bioinformatics, all of these elements that you have to bring together to mount an effective response.
You know, these virus hunters, there's so many viruses that can infect you, and it's so difficult to keep an eye on all of them. We really need to be able to work smarter and faster to leverage all of the technologies that are out there, to isolate DNA, sequence that, gain insights.
You know, our Abbott scientists here right outside my door are sequencing and analyzing millions of sequences every day because we need to be ever vigilant to stay one step ahead of the next pandemic.
MS. UMOH: "Working smarter and faster" is certainly the key phrase. Thank you, Dr. Cloherty, for this prescient and deeply knowledgeable discussion.
Now back to the Washington Post.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Hello, and welcome back to Washington Post Live. For those of you just joining us, I'm Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here.
We're talking about pandemic preparedness, and my next guest comes from The Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Rick Bright. He is CEO of the Pandemic Prevention Institute there.
Dr. Bright, a very warm welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. BRIGHT: Frances, thank you very much. I'm eager to be here and glad to hear the rest of the conversation. It's been a great program you've had so far today.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Well, thank you.
And a word to our audience, we would like you to join in. So, if you have questions or comments, please tweet them to the handle, @PostLive. That's @PostLive on Twitter.
Dr. Bright, my colleagues and I have written a number of stories over the last two years about what the end of a pandemic might look like. Please tell us what you think a pandemic end looks like, and are we heading towards one?
DR. BRIGHT: Well, I certainly hope we'll see the end of this pandemic soon, Frances, but, you know, many people‑‑I mean, us included‑‑are eager to put this pandemic in the rearview mirror. But I also think it's really important to remind everyone that most objects, if not all objects in a rearview mirror are often closer than they may appear. And so while we are tracking numbers of cases carefully, while we're seeing hospitalization cases and even deaths start to decline in some places of the world, they are still going up in other places of the world.
We're far from putting this pandemic behind us at this point because there's still a lot of work we still need to do to vaccinate a large part of the world and to bring together the tools and the science and all of the ability we have to control and manage this pandemic, bring it together in a coordinated way so we can move beyond the crisis stage.
So, when you ask me what my vision of ending the pandemic would look like, I believe that SARS‑CoV‑2 virus is going to be with us for a long, long, long time. It might be with us forever, actually, be the forever virus like influenza, but that doesn't mean we have to be in a constant state of panic. And it doesn't mean we even have to go through cycles of panic. We have made remarkable progress, scientists around the world, in developing vaccines and therapeutics, diagnostics. We've learned a lot about masks and social distancing.
The challenge, however, is as we heard the former guests on this program just to talk about, is getting equitable access to those tools, making sure that everyone has them where and when they need them, making sure that testing and test supplies are in abundant supply so that we can coordinate when and where and how to test and link testing to treatment, et cetera. So we have the tools. We need more. We need to make them more accessible. We need to make sure they're more equitably available, but I believe by using these tools and understanding the virus with all of the data we're collecting, all the genomic surveillance data, and other data around the world, we can get a hold of this outbreak. We can manage it, and that is what the end of the pandemic will look like into a regular new normal, managing it somewhat like we do influenza.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So I want to keep our conversation as forward‑looking at possible, and we did just hear, as you said, from two former heads of state about their predictions. What is your view of the role of heads of state in coming months and years when we face future threats, not only from this virus as it evolves but from future pathogens?
DR. BRIGHT: Well, heads of state play a very important role, and I think we've learned from this pandemic, though, that it's important to make sure, to ensure that heads of states play a balanced role. And I think one of the critical things that we would like to see heads of states do better in the future, to ensure a pandemic-free future, if you would, is better collaboration and better communication, and better coordination.
We saw heads of states behave and respond very differently in different nations across the world. We saw a lot of nationalism. We saw a lot of isolationism. We did see some collaboration as well and coordination, but we need to see much more of that.
I think one of the responsibilities for heads of states is that global coordination and collaboration. It's also very important that they set a leadership role for their citizens within their nation and also for citizens around the world.
We've learned the hard way that the leadership exhibited by heads of states is important and also is followed, and sometimes it's followed in ways that we never anticipated if it wasn't in step or aligned with the science. And so we want to make sure that heads of states do have the best scientific information and they lead by example and we are able to translate complex science to better empower and better enable people at every level across every nation to be able to play a larger role in a pandemic response as well so there is more of a balance between heads of states and the citizens as well by having access to better information at all levels.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Dr. Bright, I know you're supremely interested in data collection. My colleague, Lena Sun, recently wrote a story about wastewater surveillance. How important is that kind of technology going to be going ahead, and what kinds of critical infrastructure investments do we need around the world to enable that kind of monitoring?
DR. BRIGHT: Well, Frances, we've all learned‑‑and especially, COVID‑19 is‑‑and made it strikingly clear that our global public health surveillance system has been highly reactive, but unfortunately, by the time a pathogen or new variant is discovered or detected in a clinical specimen, it's already too late to contain it. It's usually spreading to many parts of the world.
And so there are a number of tools and technologies that have been utilized and evaluated during this pandemic that are showing great promise, and wastewater is one of those. Wastewater surveillance is an old technology. I think it first started back in 1854 and then used in the 1950s and '60s for polio as well, but it's really coming into its own as we use it to track and monitor the prevalence of SARS‑CoV‑2 in a community.
We've learned that wastewater sampling can detect SARS‑CoV‑2 variants in a community sometimes two to three weeks sooner than a clinical specimen might be collected in that same community, and the value of that is not only knowing where and what variant might be in a community, but giving us that head start or that leeway, we can surge supplies to hospitals in that region who might be anticipating a surge of increased cases and a surge of increased hospitalizations. We can make sure that there are hospital resources and health care personnel available to prepare for those surges. We can send vaccines and therapeutics and ventilators and oxygen supply to those regions, so a number of things that we can do by just having that two‑ to three‑week warning that a virus or a new variant might be surging in that particular area.
And with the wastewater, we can even get down to the ZIP code level or community level outside of a school system or a nursing home system to better understand what might be happening at that very hyper‑local level.
Another important thing, though, with the wastewater surveillance, as important as it is to know that something is surging in a community, it's also important to know when it's waning in a community. So, as we've been seeing in the wastewater systems in Boston, Massachusetts, for example, we saw that Omicron variant going up in the Boston community which informed us that we needed to have better resources available in that community.
We've also used wastewater to watch the prevalence of SARS‑COV‑2 and Omicron come down in that community, and this information then added to other data such as hospitalizations and deaths in the community are valuable to be able to guide us using an evidence‑based policy approach when we might consider options for changing or modifying some of the public health mitigation measures such as mask wearing or social distancing or other requirements in the community.
It allows us to transition from a light‑switch approach, such as mask on, mask off, to a more nuanced approach, changing perhaps from mask mandates to recommendations for a mask or encouragement of mask wearing in certain areas of communities, to titrate those responses so we have more freedom and more comfort, if you will, in times when we know that virus is in a lull versus knowing when to tighten up those requirements and medications when we see the virus might be surging.
So wastewater, again, is one of those powerful tools. It's low cost. It's noninvasive. We don't have to do nose swabs or throat swabs, and it can often tell us much more about a community than a few individual clinical samples.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So some of the most successful public health implementations have been low cost and very widely spread, but just give me a little bit of a blue-sky answer. When we see this next, you know, pathogen, whatever it is, barreling towards us, heaven forbid, where do you expect the next innovation to come from? Where do you expect to see the surveillance that might prevent the kind of widespread that we have suffered from SARS‑CoV‑2?
DR. BRIGHT: Well, that's a great question, and at the Pandemic Prevention Institute that we're establishing at The Rockefeller Foundation, we're focused on data. We're focused on different types of data around the world.
You know, genomic data tells us a lot. If we know a particular virus or pathogen is in a community and is causing an outbreak, it's important to be able to track that pathogen as it spreads. It's important to be able to monitor it as it changes, as it might become resistant to our therapeutics or maybe even evade the immune response to our vaccines. So genomic surveillance gives us a lot of that information.
It's also important to think about other types of data such as mobility data or consumerism data or environmental data, for example. All of those are giving us different types of signals that something might be happening in a particular spot or a particular region of the world, and we find when we combine those nontraditional data types with our traditional clinical and epidemiological data, we can be much more predictive about something that might be occurring.
What's really important, though, as you might imagine, there's lots of data there, and it's all in different forms and different sites and different languages in many times. So it's important that we build a platform that allows us to connect disparate type of data and overlay those and use a number of modern data analytics.
I mean, we are borrowing analytical tools from the financial sector and from other sectors to be able to look at data, apply some artificial intelligence or machine learning in different ways, but assemble it and reassemble it in new ways like a deconstructed cake, for example, and reconstruct it in new ways to see what signals might appear that we would have otherwise missed.
We believe by doing this and enabling others to do this around the world at a very local level and at regional and global levels, then we'll be able to spot these signals and see these signals of impending danger much sooner, and when we see those signals, it triggers a response. It can speed a response to something that might be occurring or emerging or reemerging in a region. You can trigger the development of vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostics much sooner. You can trigger public health mitigation efforts like mask wearing or social distancing or quarantining much sooner, and by combining those early signals with a faster response, those are how we believe we can stop an outbreak before it gets out of control and becomes another pandemic.
And that is what we're focusing on at our Pandemic Prevention Institute, and we're doing that by partnering globally. You know, we don't believe that it's important--or that it should be a centralized database. We believe this should be a distributed rule, a federal rule, if you will, for people and scientists in every community working in a similar platform locally so they know what's happening in their community, and they're empowered to take responsible actions to protect their community, but at the same time, they're connected globally so that local information is empowered even more by global awareness. And by working together at all levels, we can stop pandemics.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Dr. Bright, I have a Twitter question that's come in. I'm going to read it to you from my phone. It comes from Adam Zadeh who asks‑‑and it's related to what you were just saying‑‑looking ahead to identifying future threats, including AMR, how good a job are we doing connecting lab and genomic data to human outcomes?
DR. BRIGHT: We're not very good at all at that right now. It's a great question, very leading question.
I mean, as we've seen and as I think I've described, there are lots of data around. There's lots of data, lots of data types.
It was painfully aware in this pandemic, if we didn't already know from AMR and other outbreaks, that all these various data types of siloed. Some are coming from academic labs. Some come from private‑sector labs. Some come from public health labs. And a lot of the data are, as I said, in different formats or different language codes within the data, and they don't overlap or they don't stack well.
Clinical data are disconnected from genomic data. So, if you have a‑‑if you identify a novel mutation or a variant in a virus or impact of a bacteria, it's very often disconnected from the patient. So you don't really understand the impact of that mutation or that variant on a clinical outcome.
A lot of times we have vaccine and vaccination data on efficacy of vaccines, but it's disconnected from the clinical outcomes in terms of which type of vaccine might have been more or less effective in that community or in that person or population.
So we need to do a much better job at finding ways to connect that genomic data, which is all about the virus in many cases, to the "so what," as we call it. Is it just a mutation, or does it have an impact? What does the phenotypic data look like associated with that virus or that modified bacteria? Is it really a drug‑resistant bacteria and organism, and is it spreading?
And one of the things that we're doing at our institute is working with partners to find ways to break down those silos, connect those data in new ways. Believe it or not, there are legal barriers in some cases. There are concerns about privacy, and so we want to make sure that as we find ways to connect new types of data that we're respecting privacy, we're respecting sovereignty of data as we find it in many countries as well, but we're still finding ways to identify signals in those data types and perhaps even connect to that signal level so we can have those better insights that tell us what's happening.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Dr. Bright, we're getting close to the end of our time, but I wanted to ask you about the mRNA vaccines. They've been the enormous triumph certainly for this country of the pandemic. They are difficult to take around the country, and now we're learning that they may not last. They might have enduring impact. We may need ongoing boosters.
So, when you look at this issue globally and you look at future pandemics, how do we address them? Do we need a different kind of vaccine for the rest of the world now? What's the manufacturing challenge? And when you look ahead to future pandemics, are we prepared to come up with universal vaccines or some other approach to pandemics?
DR. BRIGHT: Well, we're a lot better prepared today than we ever have been in the past because of the technology and the innovation that we've seen in developing vaccine platforms.
I believe there's a lot of power and opportunity in the mRNA‑based vaccines still. It's an early iteration of this technology. It had never been used at this scale and then never been scaled at the volumes that we've seen. Because it works so well, it is an opportunity to continue optimizing that vaccine platform and other similar platforms that may not be messenger RNA, but might be using the same type of vaccine platform concept, such as adenovirus‑based vaccines and other recombinant‑based vaccine platforms.
I'm a strong believer in these platforms. Once we've demonstrated that these platforms such as mRNA can make a successful vaccine that is safe and highly efficacious and protective and protecting people from being hospitalized and dying‑‑and that's what we're seeing with these vaccines‑‑we can also see where they need to be improved.
And so the duration of immunity is not as long as we had hoped in terms of antibody response, but they're still a very powerful and durable in making this strong cellular--T‑cell response, which is what's saving people's lives today.
Can we optimize them to make a stronger, more durable antibody response? I believe we can. Can we optimize them to make a more broadly reactive antigen so a vaccine that will work against more variants of SARS‑CoV‑2 or perhaps broader protection against all types of influenza? I believe we can. I believe it is the first step in opening a broad future for utilizing recombinant‑based technologies and synthetic technologies such as mRNA‑ and DNA‑based vaccines that open the door to other innovations that will make the vaccines not only durable, but we need to innovate them so they are room‑temp stable, so we don't have that super‑cold chain requirement that we have with the current mRNA‑based vaccine generation. We can make vaccines that can be delivered orally. We can make these vaccines that are delivered through the skin on patches. So we can remove the needle and syringe from the process. We can remove the cold chain from the process. All of these are things that will make these new generations of vaccines more powerful, more accessible, more affordable, and easier to reach into more places that are traditionally harder to reach with the first generation of vaccines that require this cold chain and storage and hard to get into those communities.
The future is bright. I'm very excited this technology works. I'm very optimistic about it. I know the scientists are all over it, not only in the U.S. but around the world, and I believe the next generations of these technologies are going to really open the door to improving access and affordability and thereby improving health around the world from many of the pathogens we're facing today.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Unfortunately, that's all we have time for, but, Dr. Bright, I want to thank you for leaving us with that very positive and forward‑looking message.
DR. BRIGHT: Thank you, Frances. It's been my pleasure.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. As you know, if you’d like to see more of Washington Post Live’s programming, you should go to WashingtonPostLive.com.
Thanks for joining us. I'm Frances Stead Sellers. | null | null | null | null | null |
As the former president’s business is being investigated, Mazars said it can no longer vouch for financial statements it prepared for the company
(Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Two investigations in New York are looking at whether former president Donald Trump’s company falsified its records to either avoid taxes or get loans.
And Trump and his company just got troubling news on that front: Their accounting firm won’t vouch for them anymore and is ditching them entirely. Mazars said in a recent letter that a decade’s worth of financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization “should no longer be relied upon,” report The Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell and Shayna Jacobs.
That is a damning development for Trump’s company, because it lends credence to the allegations that some of its financial statements were misleading or false. Here’s what’s going on.
What the Trump Organization is being investigated for
Did the former president’s business dodge taxes and/or commit fraud?
The attorney general of New York, where the Trump Organization is based, is investigating whether Trump undervalued his properties, such as his golf courses, so the company could pony up less when it came time to pay taxes. She is also looking at whether the Trump Organization overstated the value of its properties to banks to get better deals on loans.
There is a similar criminal investigation of the company led by the Manhattan district attorney, which alleges that the company doctored tax records to avoid paying taxes.
What they have found so far
These two investigations have been going on for several years. The one led by the attorney general of New York is a civil investigation, which means it could lead to the Trump Organization paying fines or being subject to lawsuits.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) hasn’t alleged direct wrongdoing by the former president, but she’s trying to get him and his children to talk under oath as she tries to determine whether “widespread fraud” permeated the Trump Organization. She has said her investigation has obtained nearly 900,000 documents from the Trump Organization.
As for the criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer were indicted this summer on suspicion of keeping two sets of books to dodge taxes. Prosecutors allege the company had one set of internal books keeping track of cars and tuition and gifts for company executives, and another set of books for tax authorities that omitted all of that taxable compensation.
How Trump’s accounting firm factors into this
The firm, Mazars, is a crucial link for investigators. The accounting firm has worked with the Trump Organization for decades, and it helped the company prepare financial statements that Trump would hand out to banks and potential business partners.
A number of these statements were just flat-out wrong, The Post reported in 2019. For instance, one said Trump Tower had 68 stories; it has 58. Another said that a vineyard he owned in Virginia had 2,000 acres; it had 1,200.
These were so far off from reality that one accounting expert told The Post it was “humorous.”
In 2019, as Trump’s exaggerated financial statements came to light, Mazars didn’t comment.
But as James’s investigation has gone on, Mazars has suddenly decided that it had no choice but to stop working with the former president’s company and to disavow a decade’s worth of financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization.
“While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate,” Mazars executive William J. Kelly said in a recent letter revealed by James’s investigation. He cited findings by James and Mazars’s own internal investigation as reasons to sever ties with the Trump Organization.
House Democrats say this mirrors what they found in their investigations. They spent years trying to get financial records from Mazars — Trump sued, and that case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Congress eventually got the records and in October said it found that Trump’s financial statements to apply for a lease for the Trump International Hotel in D.C. were misleading.
“Mazars’ letter is further confirmation of what has long been suspected: former president Trump’s claims about his shady financial dealings simply cannot be trusted,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is still investigating Trump’s financial conflicts as president.
What this could mean legally for Trump
It’s bad news for his company. Legal experts say this probably means that the very firm that prepares his documents has arrived at its own findings that are consistent with at least some of the allegations made against the Trump Organization by investigators. It’s pretty damning that Mazars now says its own work can’t be trusted.
“Accounting firms don’t make the decision to quit their clients lightly,” said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who is with the University of Michigan Law School. “ … They are distancing themselves from the Trump Organization because they fear that wrongdoing is likely to be exposed.”
Could Mazars be in trouble, too? McQuade said it’s possible. “This effort to distance themselves could be an effort at self-preservation,” she said. It depends on whether Mazars knew the information it was getting from the Trump Organization was false or whether it was misled, too. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Stephanie Keith and Ruby Mellen | Feb 15, 2022
OTTAWA — For more than two weeks, demonstrators, some of them in big trucks, have descended on the Canadian capital to protest coronavirus vaccine mandates. The movement, which demonstrators call the “Freedom Convoy,” has brought disruption and unrest to Ottawa. Fireworks and horn-honking echo late into the night, while authorities and truckers remain in a standoff.
STEPHANIE KEITH/for The Washington Post
Ninety percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated. Many are distancing themselves from the convoy. The protests began in late January after the United States and Canada imposed new rules requiring truck drivers to be fully vaccinated to cross the border. The movement has since evolved into a larger protest against pandemic-related restrictions.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday became the first leader to invoke Canada’s Emergencies Act. Officials say it will give the government more tools to break up what they call illegal blockades in Ottawa and at several border crossings.
Demonstrators have said they remain determined to fight.
“I love it here,” Mike Johnson, 53, who drove from Ontario’s Niagara region in his truck, said before Trudeau’s declaration. “I’ll stay to the end.”
Mike Johnson, 53, of Ontario's Niagara region, on Feb. 10.
Stephanie Keith for The Washington Post
Even non-truckers came out to show their support. Mike Marsh, 48, from Pine Falls, Manitoba, said he came in a personal vehicle and would “stay until the mandates are lifted.”
“I’ve never been so proud to be Canadian,” he said.
Mike Marsh, 48, of Pine Falls, Manitoba, on Feb. 10.
Some Ottawans are frustrated with the chaos they say is plaguing their city.
Ann Miller, 62, is vaccinated. She said she grew up going to protests in Ottawa. “But our protests were on the sidewalk, and they were peaceful. They didn’t disrupt," she said. “I don’t know why these guys can’t do the same thing.”
“It’s just rude and not Canadian,” she said. “That’s not how we do things here.”
Ann Miller, 62, of Ottawa, on Feb. 11.
Brock Caissie, 36, brought his family to Ottawa from Prince Edward Island to protest the mandates.
“We don’t have to have the government telling us what we have to do and we can’t do when it’s our right to choose,” Caissie said. He said he is not vaccinated.
His children were born during the pandemic. Seeing him and his wife in public with masks on terrifies their son, he said.
Brock Caissie, 36, and his family, of Prince Edward Island, on Feb. 11.
Erin Chapman, 27, said the honking drove her and her dog mad.
The arrival of the protesters has made her feel unsafe. She is vaccinated.
“I saw people defecating in the streets, people drinking in the streets, people bring propane tanks into a downtown residential neighborhood, so if one cigarette butt goes off, the entire neighborhood is up in flames,” she said.
Erin Chapman, 27, of Ottawa, on Feb. 11.
Nathan Jack, 35, of Toronto, found the protest “the most beautiful place on earth.” He is not vaccinated.
“The love, the compassion,” he said. “This protest is the most important event of my lifetime. It’s our Normandy.”
Nathan Jack, 35, of Toronto, on Feb. 11.
Cole Rivard, 37, of Ottawa, said he had seen people “go on racist rants.” He is vaccinated.
“I caught a video at one point of somebody at the local McDonald’s telling a woman who is clearly Canadian, because she had a darker complexion, to ‘get the hell of my country,' and stuff like that.”
“I’ve heard from people who have been threatened just for wearing a mask walking down the street.”
Cole Rivard 37, of Ottawa, on Feb. 11.
Minakshi and Animesh Das immigrated to Canada six months ago. Both are fully vaccinated. They have found their lives disrupted by the protests, with prices rising in grocery stores and the honking making it "impossible for people to sleep,” Animesh said.
Minakshi, 43, and Animesh Das, 49, of Ottawa, on Feb. 11.
Christine Lewis, 37, said she experienced a severe allergic reaction after her first coronavirus vaccination. She came from St. Catharines in southern Ontario to stand with the protesters. “People should have a choice,” she said.
Christine Lewis, 37, of St. Catherines, Ontario, on Feb. 12.
Andre Landry came to Ottawa from Quebec with his wife, Ann. He said he has been at the protest for two weeks and plans to stay as long as he can. They are both unvaccinated and don’t want their kids “to have to be vaccinated to be able to go to the store," Andre said.
Ann, 39, and Andre Landry, 49, of Quebec, on Feb. 12.
Bobby Ramsay of Ottawa said he has had good conversations with protesters. He also thinks it’s time for them to leave his city.
“It’s affecting the residents in the neighborhoods, and they are scared,” said Ramsay, who is vaccinated. "I came down here so that people are confronted with that reality.”
Bobby Ramsay of Ottawa, on Feb. 10.
Amy Sevigny of Guelph, Ontario, said that getting the vaccine was best for her but that she believes people should have a choice and the government “cannot force anything on anybody’s body.”
“We really needed this protest after two years of restrictions," she added.
Amy Sevigny, 53, of Guelph, Ontario, on Feb. 12
Dana-Lee Melfi, 50, said he has been standing 10 hours a day with “no signs, no nothing, with the most powerful weapon ever, and that is my fingers in peace.”
“We will combat this tyranny with love and peace,” he said. “We are going to change the world.”
Dana-Lee Melfi, 50, on Feb. 11.
Anastasia Reeve’s family and fiance are vaccinated, but she said she’s worried about her health if she gets the shots. The 38-year-old came to Ottawa from Toronto. She plans to stay as long as she can, but she wants to return to her life. “I just want to back to work and get married at city hall,” she said.
Anastasia Reeve, 38, of Toronto, on Feb. 12.
Editing by Chloe Coleman, Reem Akkad and Matthew Brown | null | null | null | null | null |
Bishop McNamara stays perfect in the WCAC with a victory at Elizabeth Seton
Mustangs 62, Roadrunners 47
Frank Oliver and his Bishop McNamara Mustangs are eyeing another WCAC title. (Michael Errigo/The Washington Post)
Technically, the Bishop McNamara girls remain the reigning champions of the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference. But, given the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic, the Mustangs are defending a title that they won 24 months ago.
It was their first WCAC championship since 2008, an indelible moment for a program that had worked for a long time to reach those heights. But it’s hard to maintain a connection to something that happened so long ago and was followed by so much.
“This is a totally separate season — separate group, separate entity,” Coach Frank Oliver said. “... So we want to just enjoy ourselves with this year and this team.”
This team may not have many ties to the success of the past, but lately it’s looking more and more like a championship squad. On Tuesday night, the No. 3 Mustangs scored a 62-47 win at Elizabeth Seton, preserving their undefeated record in the D.C. area’s toughest conference.
“We’re getting there,” said senior guard Yonta Vaughn, the only starter left from the 2019-20 team. “We haven’t fully gotten in the flow yet, but it’s all about making progress right now.”
The Mustangs had last year’s campaign scrapped by the pandemic, and there have been lingering effects this winter. The regular season was split in two by an omicron-fueled pause that stretched from before the holidays into mid-January. Many programs chose to exercise caution, but McNamara was especially hampered by pandemic-related concerns. At a low point in January, the Mustangs were forced to cancel a game against Paul VI minutes before tip-off because of a late-arriving positive test.
“We didn’t know when the next game would be,” senior guard Gia Cooke said. “We had to stay in the gym, though, because when we were able to play, we still had a target on our back. We just didn’t always know when that was going to be.”
Now that the Mustangs seem to be past that period of uncertainty, the second half of their season has been dominant. They have not lost since Dec. 21 and, with four games remaining until the WCAC tournament, McNamara is the league’s only program — among the boys and girls — with an undefeated record.
On Tuesday, the Mustangs (14-4, 8-0) entered a Seton gym brimming with the school spirit of a packed senior night crowd — and then methodically defused the Roadrunners (7-10, 5-5). With playmakers in Vaughn and sophomore Madisen McDaniel, the Mustangs seemed most dangerous in transition, where a sharp pass or two consistently produced easy baskets. The Roadrunners put together a run in the fourth quarter to get within eight, but at this point McNamara knows how to overcome a challenge.
“This team has really kept the faith and stayed resilient,” Oliver said. “We know it’s not going to be easy, but those are championship ingredients.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Taxes. Though the state’s two-year budget has yet to come up for a vote, the House has approved measures that would authorize all of Youngkin’s tax-cut proposals: Doubling the standard deduction, one-time rebates for taxpayers, exempting the first $40,000 of military retiree pay, suspending an increase in the gasoline tax and eliminating the full 2.5 percent tax on groceries.
The Senate has been more cautious. While that chamber passed a measure to address the grocery tax, it only did away with the state’s 1.5 percent portion, leaving a 1 percent local portion in place. The Senate also punted the standard deduction question to next year so it can be studied.
But the full Senate unanimously passed a bill meant to prevent a surrogate mother from being forced to abort a fetus with abnormalities or reduce the number of fetuses she is carrying. The bill, brought by Sen. Mark J. Peake (R-Lynchburg), the father of quadruplets, would make it illegal for child surrogacy contracts to require a surrogate to do so against her will. The Senate passed the bill in 2020, but it never got out of committee in what was then a Democratic-controlled House.
Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) said addressing the state budget, and ensuring funds reach the people who need it most, would be a key priority moving forward, along with making sure the Senate Democrats’ “brick wall” protects progress on issues like voting rights, immigration and gun violence prevention. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man is fatally shot in Southeast D.C., police say
Shooting was reported on 9th Street, according to authorities.
Accident or crime scene cordon tape, police line do not cross. It is nighttime, emergency lights of police cars flashing blue, red and white in the background. (iStock)
A man was shot and killed Tuesday night in Southeast Washington, the D.C. police said.
The shooting was reported about 8:35 p.m. in the 3800 block of Ninth Street, said Officer Sean Hickman, a police spokesman. No information was available immediately about a suspect or motive.
The name and age of the slain man were not released. | null | null | null | null | null |
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — RayQuan Evans scored 17 of his career-high 28 points in the second half, including the go-ahead three-point play with 14 seconds left, and Florida State beat Clemson 81-80 on Tuesday night to snap a six-game losing streak and keep hopes of an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament alive. | null | null | null | null | null |
Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on alert while he annexed Crimea from neighboring Ukraine in 2014, stating later that year, as Russia escalated its backing for separatist fighters in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, that, “It is best not to mess with us when it comes to a possible armed conflict.” Russia, he told the audience comprising participants in a Kremlin youth camp, “is one of the leading nuclear powers.”
“I’m confident,” the senior intelligence official said, “that the so-called ‘exercise’ is also intended to put Russian troops and advance Russian capability into a geographic position to send a message to the alliance that, ‘Look, if you seek to operate in that airspace, whether to do a noncombatant evacuation from Ukraine or if you intended to intercede militarily in this, you would have to fly through our engagement zone and those air defenses.’ ”
It’s a signal, said retired Adm. James G. Foggo III, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, that “it will be a combined land, air and sea campaign.” | null | null | null | null | null |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Oil refineries, utilities and other companies that must pay to emit greenhouse gases in California have saved up so many credits allowing them to pollute that it may jeopardize the state’s ability to reach its ambitious climate goals, according to a report by a panel that advises state officials. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Beijing Winter Olympics live updates: Americans take gold, silver in men’s ...
Each skater here must walk along this path when they finish competing. Reporters stand on either side of the barriers, and the skaters are expected to stop and answer questions as they move down the path, an area known as the mixed zone.
“Of course, social media was full of it, but I was like swiping it away because I am here to focus on myself and not other things,” said Germany’s Nicole Schott, 25.
The Valieva situation was a bit of a quagmire for other skaters. There seemed to be anger that someone who had tested positive for a banned substance was allowed to compete, but no one wanted to say too much.
It became an awkward dance of outrage and indifference — and a deflated admission that Valieva’s positive test months ago, its subsequent revelation last week and Monday’s ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that allowed Valieva to compete Tuesday had overwhelmed everything else. Here to skate, they were suddenly talking about something that had nothing to do with skating.
“I wish it was a level playing field and it’s not, but they’ve made a decision they’ve made and I can’t do anything about that,” Great Britain’s Natasha McKay said.
“What’s fair is that I’m here and that I did it in a way that I’m very proud,” American Mariah Bell said a few minutes later. “I don’t know about anything else. It’s not my business. Obviously, I feel sad for my teammates. It seems wrong to punish people who have done things the right way.”
“Honestly, I really like Twitter. I think it’s funny. But every time I go on Twitter, I’m like, ‘I can’t read this right now,’ so I don’t check it anymore — and also Instagram because my direct messages are flooded with stuff,” Swiss skater Alexia Paganini said.
Paganini, 20, who was born in Connecticut and has lived most of her life in the New York City suburb of Harrison, was asked what kinds of things people were saying in those direct messages.
There were expressions of sympathy toward Valieva, especially because of her age. Other skaters expressed frustration and sadness that the winners of this event — as well as the medalists in the team event (in which Valieva helped the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee to a gold) — will not get their medals in a ceremony here because the International Olympic Committee decided to not hand them out with Valieva’s case unsettled.
Suddenly there was a noise near the door. Valieva appeared with a Russian team jacket over her purple skating dress. Behind her was a large man who was part of the country’s delegation. They walked quickly down the winding pathway, saying nothing, looking straight ahead.
Valieva hugged a stuffed animal that appeared to be some kind of a purple hippopotamus. She said nothing. The Russian official said nothing. Seconds later, they were gone and the room fell into an odd stupor. On a night when many skaters said her drug test had dominated their Olympics, the person at the center of the storm said nothing. | null | null | null | null | null |
In a matter of seconds, most of the birds flew upward. Scores of others were left as black and yellow corpses on the ground.
Theories range from the interference of 5G technology to a collision with an invisible spaceship. A local zoo technician suggested the birds had died after inhaling toxic gas from the region’s high levels of pollution — driven by the “use of wood-burning heaters, agrochemicals, and cold weather in the area,” according to local outlet El Heraldo de Chihuahua, which first reported the story. Another theory was that they could have gotten electrocuted after smacking into a power line.
The striking scene of lifeless birds strewn across a sidewalk has given fodder to social media sleuths, who are trying to piece together the mystery. But what is strange and ripe for speculation actually makes more sense by understanding biology, birds and their survival, said experts, who explained why other hypotheses do not hold up.
For all the theories out there, Kevin J. McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said “the only thing that makes sense” was that the birds were fleeing from a predator — and some mistakes were made in their escape.
The birds that were too late to hit the brake in the video are yellow-headed blackbirds, a migratory species first described in 1825 by the nephew of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Their calls sound like a rusty door opening, with raspy “oka-wee-wee” sounds. Fleeing winter weather, the yellow-headed blackbirds jumble into massive flocks, McGowan said, making their way from Canada and the northern United States toward Mexico during the year’s colder months.
When they are being attacked by a predator — such as falcons, hawks and owls, all of which inhabit Chihuahua — the birds inch closer together to create a tight-knit pack.
But their survival move is not always foolproof. They can sometimes misjudge their speed or the distance from the sky to the ground — resulting in the uncommon, but not unheard of, visual of a bucket of birds being dumped from the sky.
Now, for the thousands of yellow-headed blackbirds that survived and will make their way back north, the ornithologist had a piece of advice\. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Air Force -10.5; over/under is 119
BOTTOM LINE: Air Force takes on the Boise State Broncos after A.J. Walker scored 27 points in Air Force’s 76-64 loss to the San Diego State Aztecs.
The Falcons have gone 6-4 in home games. Air Force is 3-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Broncos have gone 10-2 against MWC opponents. Boise State leads the MWC with 9.6 offensive rebounds per game led by Mladen Armus averaging 3.4.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ethan Taylor is averaging 9.2 points, 3.5 assists and 1.6 steals for the Falcons. Walker is averaging 1.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Air Force.
Abu Kigab is scoring 13.9 points per game with 6.3 rebounds and 2.2 assists for the Broncos. Degenhart is averaging 8.5 points over the last 10 games for Boise State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dixie State visits New Mexico State following Allen's 24-point performance
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: New Mexico State -16; over/under is 143
The Aggies have gone 11-1 at home. New Mexico State ranks seventh in the WAC with 9.5 offensive rebounds per game led by Johnny McCants averaging 1.6.
The Trailblazers are 5-7 against conference opponents. Dixie State is second in the WAC with 15.6 assists per game led by Cameron Gooden averaging 3.7.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Aggies won the last meeting 77-69 on Feb. 11. Allen scored 20 points points to help lead the Aggies to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Allen averages 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Aggies, scoring 19.8 points while shooting 33.8% from beyond the arc. Jabari Rice is shooting 38.9% and averaging 11.2 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico State.
Gooden is averaging 12.1 points and 3.7 assists for the Trailblazers. Hunter Schofield is averaging 15.8 points and 7.1 rebounds over the past 10 games for Dixie State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Eastern Michigan hosts Buffalo following Mballa's 20-point showing
Ypsilanti, Michigan; Thursday, 6 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Buffalo takes on the Eastern Michigan Eagles after Josh Mballa scored 20 points in Buffalo’s 112-85 victory over the Bowling Green Falcons.
The Eagles are 7-4 in home games. Eastern Michigan is 5-13 against opponents over .500.
The Bulls have gone 8-4 against MAC opponents. Buffalo leads the MAC with 12.5 offensive rebounds per game led by Mballa averaging 3.7.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Bulls won the last matchup 102-64 on Feb. 9. Maceo Jack scored 22 points to help lead the Bulls to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Noah Farrakhan is averaging 15.7 points for the Eagles. Nathan Scott is averaging 10.4 points over the last 10 games for Eastern Michigan.
Jeenathan Williams is scoring 18.9 points per game with 5.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the Bulls. Ronaldo Segu is averaging 10.7 points and 3.0 rebounds while shooting 44.4% over the past 10 games for Buffalo. | null | null | null | null | null |
Florida International hosts Middle Tennessee following Jefferson's 30-point showing
BOTTOM LINE: Middle Tennessee visits the Florida International Panthers after Josh Jefferson scored 30 points in Middle Tennessee’s 78-63 win against the Charlotte 49ers.
The Panthers are 10-3 in home games. Florida International has a 5-0 record in one-possession games.
The Blue Raiders are 8-3 in conference play. Middle Tennessee averages 74.8 points and has outscored opponents by 7.8 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tevin Brewer is scoring 15.1 points per game and averaging 3.5 rebounds for the Panthers. Eric Lovett is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Florida International.
Jefferson is averaging 14.6 points for the Blue Raiders. Sims is averaging 10.3 points over the past 10 games for Middle Tennessee. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Enrique Freeman and the Akron Zips host Keshawn Williams and the Northern Illinois Huskies in MAC play.
The Zips have gone 10-2 in home games. Akron has a 3-2 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Huskies have gone 4-9 against MAC opponents. Northern Illinois is 1-8 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 13.4 turnovers per game.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Zips won 70-64 in the last matchup on Feb. 9. Freeman led the Zips with 21 points, and Williams led the Huskies with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Bryan Trimble Jr. averages 2.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Zips, scoring 10.2 points while shooting 34.3% from beyond the arc. Freeman is shooting 65.3% and averaging 11.8 points over the past 10 games for Akron.
Williams is averaging 16.4 points for the Huskies. Trendon Hankerson is averaging 2.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Northern Illinois. | null | null | null | null | null |
Martinez leads Wagner against Sacred Heart after 22-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Wagner takes on the Sacred Heart Pioneers after Will Martinez scored 22 points in Wagner’s 80-65 overtime loss to the Merrimack Warriors.
The Pioneers have gone 4-6 at home. Sacred Heart is third in the NEC shooting 33.6% from downtown, led by Alex Watson shooting 40.4% from 3-point range.
The Seahawks are 11-1 in conference matchups. Wagner scores 71.2 points and has outscored opponents by 11.2 points per game.
The Pioneers and Seahawks meet Thursday for the first time in NEC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tyler Thomas averages 2.3 made 3-pointers per game for the Pioneers, scoring 16.9 points while shooting 34.3% from beyond the arc. Aaron Clarke is averaging 16.2 points and four assists over the past 10 games for Sacred Heart.
Zaire Williams is shooting 27.6% from beyond the arc with 1.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Seahawks, while averaging 5.7 points. Alex Morales is averaging 17.3 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.3 assists over the last 10 games for Wagner. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — She has raced on at least 15 different bobsled tracks in 11 countries. She’s had no fewer than 41 different teammates in her sleds. She possesses more Olympic medals than any bobsledder in U.S. history, with a chance at one more this weekend. She has become an advocate, fighting for equality for women in sports. And she became a wife and mother along the way. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, a meeting is held to celebrate the 80th birth anniversary of North Korea’s late leader Kim Jong Il in Samjiyon City, North Korea Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS) | null | null | null | null | null |
Zuma’s effort to have the prosecutor taken off his corruption case was rejected Wednesday by Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Piet Koen, on the grounds that it “lacks reasonable prospects of success.”
Zuma’s imprisonment last year sparked riots in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces in which more than 300 died and millions of dollars of property was looted or destroyed. | null | null | null | null | null |
The history of beauty pageants reveals the limits of Black representation
Black contestants — and winners — have not translated into changed beauty standards or structural transformation
In 1968, Saundra Williams, 19, of Philadelphia, is crowned the first Miss Black America in Atlantic City, N.J., flanked by first runner-up Theresa Claytor, 20, right, and second runner-up, Linda Johnson, 21. (AP)
By Mickell Carter
Mickell Carter is a doctoral student in the history department at Auburn University.
In January, Cheslie Kryst, a lawyer, television correspondent and former Miss USA, died by suicide. Her loss has been widely felt. In part, this is because Kryst’s title as Miss USA was historic. In 2019, she helped make pageant history when she and three other Black women — Nia Imani Franklin, Kaliegh Garris and Zozibini Tunzi — took home the titles of Miss USA, Miss America, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe, respectively. It marked the first time that Black women had won four major pageant titles in the same year. “Finally the universe is giving value to black skin,” Leila Lopes, a former Miss Universe, wrote at the time.
For decades, mainstream beauty standards have centered on whiteness, with White women becoming the epitome of “beauty” around the world. Consequently, that narrow definition of beauty has excluded Black women. While Lopes was correct about Black representation increasing at the highest ranks of beauty pageants, anti-Blackness remains ingrained in U.S. and global beauty standards.
Beauty pageants have long been a space for contesting exclusion. In 1968, for example, activists staged protests at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. The pageant had historically excluded women of color and had never featured a Black contestant. Two groups protested: feminists declaring the pageant sexist for objectifying women’s bodies and civil rights activists exposing its racism. The NAACP organized an alternative contest, the Miss Black America pageant, also held in Atlantic City on the same day as Miss America.
At Miss Black America, Black women combated racial discrimination by creating their own space to celebrate Black beauty in an all-Black pageant. The event emerged from a growing movement of Black consciousness, where Black people sought self-determination and empowerment on their own terms. It was a specific attempt to reject what psychologist Huberta Jackson-Lowman describes as globalized Eurocentric standards of beauty where “beauty must adhere to European characteristics in terms of skin color, facial features, hair texture and length, eye color, and physique.” Global industries encouraged, maintained and marketed these White and Eurocentric standards of beauty celebrating thinness, light skin, long hair and other features. Pageants were part of this production.
But the first Miss Black America, Saundra Williams, triumphed with her natural Afro hairstyle and “curvy” figure distinct from what the competition’s sponsors deemed “the White stereotype” of typical pageant winners. In contrast, Williams wore a “bright yellow jumpsuit with bells around her ankles,” portraying a Pan-African and global Black identity with her “Fiji” African-inspired dance. Williams held her title with pride as she stated, “this is better than Miss America.” She articulated Blackness as more than sufficient, with notions of Black Power and Black beauty on display as she suggested, “with my title, I can show Black women that they, too, are beautiful, even though they do have large noses and thick lips.”
In 1970, the Miss America pageant finally featured a Black contestant. Even more consequentially that year, Jennifer Hosten became the first Black winner of Miss World since its creation in 1951. The contest was held in London, and as in the United States in the late 1960s, the British women’s liberation movement protested the pageant over sexism and its objectification of women.
Some women, including Hosten, a Black woman from Grenada, did not view pageants in this light. Hosten explained, “It wasn’t my thought that I was being exploited. If I had thought that, I wouldn’t have taken part.” She said she simply entered pageants to travel, represent her country and possibly make money. By selecting a Black winner, the pageant seemed to signal a shift in beauty standards to be more inclusive and representative.
But the politics of the event were also ambivalent. As the world criticized South Africa for its highly racist and unjust apartheid system, Miss World organizers allowed the country to send two candidates — one White, one Black — to compete on the country’s behalf. Although Pearl Jansen, a Black South African, placed second at the event, the pageant explicitly displayed South African apartheid on a global platform by allowing dual contestants.
Moreover, White media outlets undermined Hosten’s win, with skeptical headlines that asked: “Miss World is Black, and is she the most beautiful girl in the world?” It was difficult for some viewers and commentators to see a Black woman as fully beautiful in light of long-standing Eurocentric beauty standards. As sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig has said, as a pageant like Miss America “established the reigning definition of beauty, it reinforced cultural codes that placed Black women outside of the beauty ideal.”
Contrasting Miss Black America in 1968 and Miss World in 1970 is instructive. Although both selected Black winners, Miss Black America enabled Black women to express disapproval of Eurocentric beauty standards and demonstrate that their beauty did not need White validation. Miss World, by contrast, demonstrated the limitations of a politics of representation, given how the pageant’s gesture at inclusion — inviting two contestants from South Africa — reinforced segregation and masked oppression under a thin veil of diversity.
Steadily, Black representation in pageants has increased. In 1984, Vanessa Williams became the first Black winner of Miss America. The progress continued until Black women won all four major titles for the first time in 2019. In 2021, three Black women won the major competitions of Miss USA (Elle Smith), Miss Earth (Destiny Wagner) and Miss Teen USA (Breanna Myles). Although by some measures this increase in Black representation demonstrates more diverse beauty standards and shifting categories of acceptance, it would be premature to suggest that the world is progressing toward an anti-racist society.
Even in a moment of historic global reckoning with white supremacy and racism through Black Lives Matter protests, it is not clear whether representation can translate to meaningful equality. For example, Abena Appiah, winner of the 2020 Miss Grand International pageant and the first Black woman to represent the United States in that pageant, wore a custom gown that portrayed images of victims of police brutality such as Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The moment stunned, and Appiah gained access to a global platform. But her win has not translated to broader structural change or attention. Less than two years after Floyd’s killing, the same police department killed another Black man, Amir Locke.
Evidence suggests that the fashion world’s promises to expand diversity in the aftermath of 2020s anti-racist uprisings have gone unfulfilled. And in the beauty industry, whiteness remains big business; the global market for skin whitening is projected to increase to more than $11 billion by 2026.
This suggests that conversations surrounding diversity and inclusion are not enough. When we see strategies touting the importance of “representation” alongside a profound lack of structural change, we can only conclude that it is insufficient, at best, and, at worst, a distraction from other forms of struggle. | null | null | null | null | null |
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