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The right to joy and pleasure is a crucial element of racial justice
Addressing systemic racism and state violence is not enough.
Clockwise from rear left: Nipsey Russell, Harry Belafonte, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King at an Alabama airport in 1963. (Ivan Massar/Take Stock/The Image Works/HBO)
By Brence Pernell
Brence Pernell is an attorney and adjunct law professor based in New York City.
Questions of justice for Black Americans have understandably focused on major issues such as systemic racism or state violence. But another dimension to racial justice is perhaps too frequently overlooked: the right to pleasure. While Black abolitionist David Walker was already invoking the Declaration of Independence’s claim to the “pursuit of happiness” in the late 1820s, a formal centering of Black people’s legal right to pleasure became even more explicit at the Civil War’s end. The champions of Black people’s rights understood that the right to literally make themselves feel good was — and remains — critical to the quest for freedom and equality as full people. Today, champions of justice and equality cannot afford to ignore that right’s robust historical and legal roots, especially as laws continue to be interpreted in ways that suggest otherwise.
An appreciation for the legal codification of Black people’s pleasure requires a fuller understanding of the first major constitutional step toward ensuring their personhood: the 13th Amendment. The amendment was to abolish not only slavery itself, but also all of that institution’s sprawling vestiges. The amendment, moreover, explicitly empowered Congress to ensure as much.
Framed differently, the amendment conferred freedom to Black people, and it was intended to do so in the most expansive sense.
Black people themselves understood this freedom bestowed by the 13th Amendment to include the pursuit of pleasure. After its passage, Black people loved, played, worshiped and rested, all with special zeal. Well beyond a life without forced physical bondage, this was the kind of free and pleasure-seeking life they imagined the amendment had formally granted.
The amendment’s architects agreed. The purpose, according to the amendment’s co-author, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, was not “simply to take away the power of the master over the slave.” Trumbull asked outright: “Did we not mean something more?”
The legislative steps Congress urgently took under the new powers granted to it by the amendment reinforced that, in fact, lawmakers did mean something more. Congressional leaders spoke of such legislation in ways that envisioned a freedom that generously encompassed a concern for Black people’s security of pleasure. One senator, for example, lamented the fact that one of the “necessary incidents and peculiar characteristics of slavery” had been the “abrogat[ion]” of married Black couples’ sexual liberty. He was, of course, alluding to the fact that one of slavery’s common features was that those enslaved were forced to procreate or otherwise subjected to unfathomable sexual violence.
The amendment’s authors were clear that these “badges of servitude” — many of which similarly dictated the terms under which Black people could experience pleasure — had to be “purge[d].” The legislative aim to illuminate the 13th Amendment’s overall goal was clear: “[W]e must see to it that the man made free … is a freeman indeed,” in all aspects of daily life, including, but certainly not limited to, a Black person “work[ing] when and for whom he pleases.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 attempted to begin doing just that. Grounded in the 13th Amendment and designed to outline free Black people’s rights with respect to contract, property and security of the person, it was the nation’s first civil rights legislation and intended to safeguard for Black people what Trumbull called a “practical freedom.”
“But this is not enough,” remarked another antislavery senator, Charles Sumner. He and others wanted even more legislative guarantees that expressly centered a right to pleasure for Black people, ultimately culminating in the supplementary Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was also partly grounded in Congress’s 13th Amendment power and was the nation’s first affirmative grant of what scholars have dubbed “pleasurable liberties” and rights. The act granted “full and equal enjoyment” to places like theaters and “other places of public amusement” that legislators described as promoting the “pursuit of happiness.”
The members of Congress responsible for such legislation explained that as “important as it is to testify and to vote,” Black people were “called to travel for business, for health, or for pleasure” and “long[ed], perhaps, for respite and relaxation at some place of public amusement.” Historian Amy Dru Stanley notes that such views represented a shift to a “pleasure economy” for Black people, ultimately enshrining the “fundamental right to be an amusement seeker.”
Of course, legislative intent does not determine a law’s constitutionality. Indeed, eight years after the 1875 act, the Supreme Court struck down the legislation as unconstitutional. The court characterized the right to amusement as a “social right” and therefore outside of Congress’s legislative purview. For the Supreme Court, a right to pleasure simply did not go to the “essence of citizenship” for Black people. That decision enabled the rise of the Jim Crow era, wherein entertainment and leisure options for Black people suffered under a regime of racial segregation.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would pick up the mantle nearly a century later, albeit under Congress’s “commerce power” this time. That act would ensure entitlement to the full and equal enjoyment of places of public amusement: theaters, concert halls, stadiums and other such venues.
Soon after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court endorsed a more expansive understanding of the 13th Amendment. In the 1968 Supreme Court case, Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, which concerned housing discrimination, the court channeled the spirit of the amendment’s original goals and emphasized Congress’s power to legislate in order to eradicate “all badges and incidents of slavery.” The court explained, for example, that “when racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery.” The Jones case thus reinforced the same capacious understanding of freedom under the 13th Amendment that its drafters intended: a vehicle by which all of slavery’s various remnants, including the deprivation of pleasurable liberties, would be remedied.
No Supreme Court ruling has significantly disrupted Jones or the heart of the 1964 Civil Rights Act since.
And yet there remains a tendency to cast a focus on the Black pursuit of leisure as lacking in purchase — as not only without legal grounding, but also unimportant, or even counter to other, more noble racial justice causes.
Pleasure and Black personhood, however, have historically been linked, and remain so today. What feminist scholar Brittney Cooper proclaims for Black women — that “there is no justice … without pleasure” — is, on some level, true for all Black people. Ending police brutality and systemic racism are obviously the kinds of important goals that demand a relentless commitment. But that is not enough. Antislavery political leaders knew, and we would do well to be reminded, that fully recognizing Black people’s humanity includes placing value on their inherent right to fun, to be delighted.
A full realization of that long sought-after right is still owed to Black people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Research suggests partisan views — not the added costs of U.S. tariffs — shaped how firms responded
The Savannah, Ga., port on Sept. 29. (Stephen B. Morton/AP)
By Lindsay Dolan
Robert Kubinec
Daniel Nielson
Jiakun Jack Zhang
The trade war has negative impacts on U.S. businesses and contributed to the supply chain woes that have affected nearly all aspects of the U.S. economy. Despite rising concerns that tariffs are contributing to surging inflation, the Biden administration has yet to back down from Trump’s stance on trade. So why has the trade war endured?
We ran a real-world trade data experiment
In an online survey experiment with U.S. managers over the past two years, we learned why businesses haven’t unified to push against the trade war. Our findings suggest that U.S. companies disagree strongly on whether the trade war hurt or helped their businesses, and that managers interpret information they receive about the trade war’s costs in that light.
U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods didn’t bring companies back to the U.S., new research finds
Some large, influential companies protested the trade war both publicly and privately — but why wasn’t there a broader push to stop it? To find out, we built a massive data set specifying how thousands of products used by hundreds of industries were probably affected by tariffs.
We then implemented an online experiment involving more than 900 managers of mostly small and medium-size enterprises. We randomly gave some managers detailed information about all the products their company might have purchased in the past year — naming products we know were affected by U.S. tariffs on products from China.
Next, we tracked companies’ interest in political actions to support or oppose the trade war through signing petitions, contacting members of Congress or donating to advocacy campaigns. But, to our surprise, we found that providing the detailed information to managers tended to reduce their interest in opposing the trade war — although the story only starts there.
Businesses tend to have partisan cultures
What explains this counterintuitive pattern? It’s important to understand the polarized environment in which companies are making decisions. Even for business managers, support for the trade war is partisan. According to a recent Chicago Council poll, 83 percent of Republicans favor increasing tariffs on Chinese imports. Only 45 percent of Democrats do, while 50 percent oppose these tariffs.
Our survey provided more evidence of this trend. We asked all of our participants to identify the political culture of their company using a liberal-to-conservative scale. We found these labels tracked with the company’s actions for or against the trade war: As few as 10 percent of respondents at conservative companies showed interest in opposing the trade war, while as many as 50 percent of participants at liberal companies did.
The U.S. and China finally signed a trade agreement. Who won?
It may be that companies take political positions that appeal to their local customer bases. But we think it’s more likely that managers behave like humans with opinions and limited information. We often assume businesses act in their best corporate interests, but on polarized issues like a trade war, that may not always be the case.
Who knows what about the trade war?
The figure below from our survey data reveals disagreement among U.S. companies about the trade war’s benefits and costs. When we examined data, we learned that companies in the hardest-hit industries also had the most accurate beliefs — reporting they were harmed by tariffs. For other companies, the lower number of tariffs in their industry meant they never needed to learn the detailed impacts of the trade war, leaving them to form rather inaccurate — and possibly partisan — guesses about the full impact.
Beliefs and partisanship shape political action
Putting these two clues together — partisanship in companies and diverse beliefs about the trade war — explains what’s probably going on in U.S. companies. Before our experiment, we thought that if companies knew concrete details of the trade war’s impact, those with higher costs might choose to advocate against tariffs. However, we also had a hunch as to why this also might not happen: People might interpret the data to fit their preexisting beliefs and political identities.
When we took a closer look, we found that providing information about the trade war did increase the willingness of U.S. managers to consider political action — if they had both a lot of knowledge about the trade war and believed it was harmful. We found that the opposite reaction occurred among managers who didn’t know much about tariffs but believed the trade war helped their firms. For these managers, providing this information made them less likely to oppose the trade war despite learning about the real costs to their companies.
In other words, managers were more willing to take action if the information we gave them matched the beliefs they already had about the trade war’s impact on their companies. Managers were willing to consider new information about the trade war’s effect on their companies only if they already had a reasonably good idea about the role the trade war played in the economy.
Are businesses immune to partisanship?
For companies that believed the trade war helped their business — regardless of whether this was actually true — managers interpreted additional information in that light. Furthermore, managers’ beliefs are probably influenced by partisanship, which seems to affect how businesses view the trade war. In this information-scarce and highly polarized environment, businesses’ unwillingness to challenge the trade war does not seem so strange.
Lindsay Dolan (@lindsayrdolan) is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University.
Robert Kubinec (@rmkubinec) is an assistant professor of political science at New York University Abu Dhabi and the author of the forthcoming book “Making Democracy Safe for Business: Corporate Politics During the Arab Uprisings.”
Daniel Nielson is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and the co-author of “Global Shell Games: Experiments in Transnational Relations, Crime and Terrorism” (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Jiakun Jack Zhang (@HanFeiTzu) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas. | null | null | null | null | null |
For two years, Hong Kong held off the pandemic. Then, everything fell apart.
Patients with covid-19 symptoms wait at a temporary holding area outside Caritas Medical Center on Feb. 15 in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
HONG KONG — Cocooned in mylar and fleece hospital blankets, the nearly two dozen elderly patients lay in hospital beds outside the Caritas Medical Center on Wednesday morning as health-care workers in full protective gear buzzed around them, cleaning and sanitizing.
They were among the roughly 100 waiting at Caritas as hospitals have been crippled by a tenfold explosion of coronavirus infections over the last week. Inside, however, it wasn’t much better. One patient who tested positive was isolated in a women’s bathroom with an air purifier, because there were no other rooms available, according to a nurse.
But poor planning; lagging vaccinations, particularly among the elderly; and a failure of Hong Kong’s “zero-covid” policy has left the city and its 7.5 million residents vulnerable. While the rest of the world is starting to open up, Hong Kong is being swamped by an avalanche of new cases, with more than 4,000 recorded Wednesday. That number is expected to almost double by the end of the week.
“It’s like we are playing Russian roulette and seeing who among us medical staffers test positive,” said David Chan, a front-line nurse at Caritas Medical Center and chairman of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, a labor union. Some workers, he added, are too busy to eat or use the restroom while they monitor as many as 100 patients at a time.
Coronavirus infections and deaths are continuing to rise, mirroring the exponential spread of the more transmissible omicron variant seen in other parts of the world. On Wednesday, Hong Kong recorded 4,285 new infections, and 7,000 preliminary cases. Experts say this number underestimates the severity, as positive results from rapid antigen tests are not officially recognized, and other people are probably skipping tests.
At least nine have died of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the latest victims include a 3-year-old girl and a 100-year-old woman.
Hong Kong follows what it describes as a “dynamic zero covid” policy, which broadly aims at getting local infections down to zero. This is in contrast to a strategy of living with the virus with a vaccinated population, a policy that is increasingly followed elsewhere.
This zero-covid approach is promoted by Beijing, which exerts strong control over Hong Kong’s local officials, and is the same one being implemented on the mainland. Reopening the border to mainland China, which has been closed for two years, is the stated goal of Hong Kong’s government. Plans to establish a quarantine-free “travel bubble” with Singapore were dropped after that city-state shifted to a strategy of living with the covid, and flights into Hong Kong are banned from several countries, including the United States and Britain.
Hong Kong’s strategy met its limit when the more transmissible omicron and delta variants began to spread more widely in the community, despite strict social distancing rules and draconian measures to limit international travel.
The situation in Hong Kong is evolving into an embarrassment for Chinese authorities in Beijing, which prides itself on controlling and managing covid outbreaks, and is in the midst of hosting the Winter Olympics.
Pro-Beijing media, which echoes the state’s views, have warned that losing the fight against covid could “threaten the safety of the nation.” The same outlets reported Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged Hong Kong’s government to stabilize the local pandemic situation, saying authorities there had the “main responsibility” for handling the outbreak and should prioritize controlling it “before anything else.”
In response to Xi’s comments, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said she would follow his instructions and “mobilize all available manpower and resources and adopt all necessary measures” to control the spread of the coronavirus. Over the weekend, Hong Kong officials traveled to the mainland and agreed to cooperate on various aspects of the pandemic, including enhancing testing capabilities and constructing isolation and treatment facilities.
The problem for Hong Kong, however, is that it doesn’t have the resources and capacity to eradicate covid through heavy-handed lockdowns and population control the way other Chinese cities have.
Speaking earlier this week, Lam said there were “no plans” for a citywide lockdown, as seen in places like Xian and Wuhan. Admitting that the capacity of Hong Kong’s hospitals are limited, the government announced Sunday that priority admission at hospitals will be given to children, older people and those in serious condition, halting the unwieldy practice of hospitalizing all coronavirus-positive cases.
Authorities are planning to build a mega hospital, similar to hastily built facilities that cropped up across the mainland when the pandemic hit in 2020, but so far, they have just shortlisted three potential sites.
Experts inside and outside the territory say that Hong Kong’s approach simply will not work — on one hand, it is not restrictive enough to prevent the spread of covid, and on the other, not forward-looking enough to shift to mitigation and focus on vaccinations as a pandemic end-goal.
Ooi Eng Eong, an infectious-disease expert at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said keeping with zero covid indefinitely is “not possible” and only makes sense if it is a measure to buy time to get the vaccines distributed.
“Vaccinations work, and they are the only long-term solution,” he wrote, urging the government to acknowledge that zero covid is a “temporary state.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A man died Monday in a crash in Maryland, police said. (iStock)
A driver died in a crash Monday along Kenilworth Avenue in Prince George’s County.
Local police said the crash happened about 5 a.m. in the 2100 block of Kenilworth Avenue near Landover Road. Officials later identified the driver as William Hill Jr., 56, of D.C.
Authorities said an initial investigation found that Hill was headed south on Kenilworth Avenue when he lost control of his car and hit a jersey wall. He was pronounced dead at the scene. | null | null | null | null | null |
Historically Black colleges and universities are being attacked as their success becomes more visible
The campus of Howard University in Northwest Washington. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd
Khalilah L. Brown-Dean
Pearl K. Dowe
Duchess Harris
Françoise Cromer
These threats are reminiscent of historic efforts to attack African Americans in vulnerable communal spaces, such as the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls. They also represent a specific attack on core institutions of Black communities.
For generations, when Black people suffered the daily threat of violence and were denied the full rights of citizenship, HBCUs provided a refuge in which students and thinkers could foster alternative ideas and demand that U.S. democracy live up to its promises. Now, these institutions themselves are being threatened with violence. Such threats may roll back the protections that HBCUs provided, stifling their contribution to American democracy.
Republicans and Democrats have split over whether to support multiethnic democracy, our research shows
Black colleges and universities played a crucial political role
In his pioneering book, “Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism,” historian Jelani M. Favors explains how the very creation of HBCUs was an act of resistance against views of African Americans that limited their place in U.S. society. The vast majority of HBCUs formed in the South sought to serve the needs of newly freed men and women. These institutions had the goal of providing students of African American, African and Caribbean descent with a safe opportunity to further their education beyond high school. Additionally, HBCUs are sites of political, social and economic development in Black society.
These institutions were more than just sites of learning. They were also spaces of refuge from the violent clashes happening across the United States in the post-Reconstruction era that sought to narrow Black people’s access to democracy or exclude them altogether. This legacy continued throughout the social uprisings associated with the anti-Vietnam War, civil rights and Black power movements that sought to realize the promises of America’s professed commitment to democracy.
HBCUs had the goal of educating Black people. But unlike their White counterparts, these schools were never racially exclusive. Instead, they provided educational opportunity to all. That legacy of racial affirmation helped provide students with the intellectual and social tools to understand and challenge the systemic racism in U.S. politics and society. It also meant these schools did not just have to navigate the ordinary difficulties of higher education in the United States, but also a specific hostility to schools that were seen as threatening the existing racial order.
Today, HBCUs make up only 3 percent of U.S. colleges, yet they produce almost 20 percent of all African American graduates as well as significant numbers of Black professionals in law, medicine, technology and education. HBCUs forged their ethos in the centuries-long struggle for an abolitionist democracy that would benefit everyone. This led them to emphasize graduating young people with lifelong commitments to the larger social good as their core mission. The visibility of HBCUs has increased in recent years, thanks to the achievements of high-profile alumni such as Vice President Harris, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), and Stacey Abrams and staff like Deon Sanders, as well recent philanthropic donations from wealthy donors, who have sought to alleviate their long-standing and chronic underfunding.
Increased visibility means increased vulnerability
As HBCUs have become more visible while U.S. racial tensions abound, the schools have become more obvious targets, as demonstrated by the new campaign of bomb hoaxes. These hoax calls have exerted a significant toll on the health and safety of students, faculty and staff of these anchor institutions. Their costs are compounded by the increased surveillance necessary to protect community members.
The FBI has identified a half-dozen “tech savvy” juveniles as possible culprits behind the bomb threats. Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, argues that secondary school education on racial justice and race would help counter the racist extremism, which has allegedly led some young people to target students their own age.
Huang may well be correct, but there is no political consensus to provide this kind of education. Even mentioning the issue of racial equity has led to book bannings, campaigns against teaching what some inaccurately call “critical race theory” and hostility in many U.S. school systems.
The bomb threats, like violence and defacement against synagogues, mark an increased willingness to attack the cultural and educational institutions of groups that have traditionally been discriminated against. HBCUs have provided freedom, education and safety to those whose citizenship was historically limited or denied. Now, this historical bulwark of American democracy is itself being attacked through violent threats.
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard is an associate professor of African American studies at the University of California at Irvine and professor extraordinarius in the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair at the University of South Africa. She is the president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.
Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd is professor of political science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Khalilah L. Brown-Dean is associate provost for faculty affairs and professor of political science at Quinnipiac University.
Pearl K. Dowe is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at Emory University.
Duchess Harris is professor and chair of the American studies department at Macalester College.
Kelly Richardson is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Florida.
Françoise Cromer is a visiting assistant professor of history and global studies at Saint Elizabeth University.
Elsie Scott is the director of the Ronald Walters Center at Howard University. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jessie Diggins finished exactly how she wanted: With absolutely nothing left
Rosie Brennan, left, assists Jessie Diggins after she crosses the finish line near Finland's Krista Parmakoski, assisted by Kerttu Niskanen. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — At the finish line, Jessie Diggins summoned the same effort she had four years ago, a level of exertion most humans may never know. Everything else Wednesday night was different. Up ahead there was no teammate rushing at her with an American flag, only skiers celebrating their own indelibly close victory. There was no national embrace, only personal pride. There was no medal, only pain.
As Diggins began the final lap of the women’s cross-country team sprint, she had a chance to defend the iconic gold medal she won at PyeongChang. Teammate Rosie Brennan had left her in third place, in the thick of the lead clump of skiers. On an uphill early in the lap, skiers from Germany and Finland pulled away. Diggins faded to fifth and lost contact with the lead pack. She dug and dug, but the gap remained. There would be no here-comes-Diggins moment.
Diggins crossed in fifth. Her skis spread and she collapsed on to her side. She felt dizzy and sick. Brennan leaned down, a gray blanket around her shoulders, and patted Diggins on the back. As Diggins heaved for air, Brennan unfastened her skis. Diggins rolled to her back and tried to rise. Her head plopped back into the snow. About 80 seconds after she finished, Diggins held out her hand, and Brennan hoisted her to her feet. They hugged. Brennan removed her blanket and wrapped it around Diggins.
On her feet, her bearings found, Diggins walked to the fence, hugged a team official — and smiled. Four years ago, Diggins had authored maybe the moment of the Winter Olympics, charging from behind on the last lap to win gold — the first women’s Olympic cross-country medal ever for the United States — with partner Kikkan Randall by less than the length of a ski.
It may have been the same event, but it was not even close to being the same race. The team sprint alternates every four years between freestyle — Diggins’s best discipline, in which shorter skis and more rigid boots are used — and classic. The course was different. It was at different elevation, nearly 2,000 feet higher than Daegwallyeong, South Korea.
“I’m not trying to compare today to four years ago,” Diggins said. “Literally, nothing is the same. And that’s okay. Today was going out there and skiing for Rosie and skiing as hard as I could and as best as I could. I’m really proud of this fight.”
Diggins, 30, outwardly downplays her results and carries the same goal into every race: to finish with nothing left. She still manages some gaudy results. She has validated her place near the top of cross-country skiing the past four years, and even at these Olympics, she has won a free sprint bronze and racked up top-eight finishes in all five events she has entered.
She understood the classic style would not play to her strengths. In her first event of the Games, the 7.5 km + 7.5 km skiathlon, she was in 11th after the classic portion of the race then finished sixth after posting the best time in free by a wide margin. She had used the 10 km classic to hone her classic technique for Wednesday night, when she wanted to ski her best for Brennan.
Randall retired after the PyeongChang Games, and Brennan, 33, emerged as the second-best cross-country skier in the United States after a winding career. She made her first Olympic team in PyeongChang, but a bout of mononucleosis sapped her strength. She skied in one event and finished 58th. She called it the worst race of her life. Months later, she was cut from the U.S. team for the second time, only to regain her spot over the past four years with the best skiing of her life.
Brennan already had redeemed her PyeongChang performance at these Olympics, finishing in the top 14 of all four races she’d entered, including fourth in the sprint free, by the time she approached the starting line Wednesday night. She would ski first, then Diggins, in six alternating laps.
Brennan finished her first lap in fourth place, in a pack of skiers. Diggins quickly nudged into second, briefly seized the lead and handed the race back to Brennan in second, inches behind Sweden. Brennan fell off pace then recovered, passing off to Diggins in fourth, but just 0.9 seconds behind the leader. Diggins fell to third, 2.5 seconds out of first. Brennan maintained the spot and shrunk the deficit to 2.2 seconds. She had done her job.
“I did what I could to stay in contact to give Jessie her best shot,” Brennan said. “I’m happy with that.”
Diggins shot off the line, same as the other laps, but Germany and Sweden pulled away. On an uphill, the gap widened, and it became clear there would be no 2018 reprise. She finished 12.93 seconds behind the German gold medalists, who edged Sweden and beat bronze medalists Russian Olympic Committee with room to spare. Did anything earlier in the race lead Diggins to believe the lead pack would pull away? Did the separation surprise her?
“I don’t really know how to answer the question,” Diggins said. “I was just focused on skiing as hard as I could.”
Winter Olympians often talk past the media and public that watches them intently once every four years. They are experts at sports most observers know little about, if they’ve heard of them at all. It’s often said athletes spend four years preparing for the Olympics, but that’s not true. Brennan has established herself as a force at international events. Diggins last year won the Tour de Ski, a multistage event that suggests sustained excellence.
Olympians are also disproportionately rewarded for their Olympic performances — Diggins did not make the cover of Sports Illustrated because she won the Tour de Ski. In the United States, one race can open worlds of opportunity that years of dominance on the international circuit would not. Brennan has fourth- and fifth-place finishes at these Olympics; a few more seconds and her profile back home would be drastically different. Diggins and Brennan seemed not to care about that, likely to their benefit.
“One thing the U.S. is really bad at is only caring about the Olympics,” Brennan said. “We’re racing World Cups every weekend all winter long and world championships on the other years. If you look at the results from all those races, this is in the ballpark. I wouldn’t say I had the world’s best races and certainly not the world’s worst races. It’s been a good experience, and we’ll head straight back to World Cup and keep fighting.”
Diggins expressed no discontent with her performance. She deemed it some of her best classic skiing from a technical standpoint. She felt like she had expended all the sugars in her body, leaving only lactic acid and gulps of air. There was no medal. No matter how difficult it may be for others to understand, there was still a reward.
By the end, Diggins had no chance for fourth, nine seconds behind Finland. She could have skied 32 seconds slower and still claimed fifth. She still skied herself dizzy and nauseous.
“I’m really proud of how we skied,” Diggins said. “It was so cool to see Rosie just crushing. I went as hard as I could, and there’s no doubt in my mind I could not have possibly tried harder.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Mikaela Shiffrin skies the fastest downhill training run of the day Wednesday in Yanqing. (Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)
Her start Thursday in the women’s Alpine combined at National Alpine Skiing Centre will mark her fifth individual event — as many as are available to her — and Saturday, she will add a sixth event, the mixed team race. Only one skier, Shiffrin’s rival Petra Vlhova of Slovakia has skied all six races in one Olympics — at PyeongChang 2018, the year the mixed team event was introduced — and Vlhova’s Beijing Games are finished because of an ankle injury.
While Shiffrin, the most accomplished and versatile skier in the world, thus far has been shut out of the medal stand in her four trips to the starting gate — failing to finish either of her first runs in the slalom and giant slalom and placing ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill — she still can salvage her Olympics, and there are even some signs that such a thing could be coming.
On Wednesday, while 24-year-old Frenchman Clement Noel was winning the men’s slalom on the Ice River course at National Alpine Skiing Centre, another interesting development was taking place at the faster, steeper course called The Rock just over a ridge.
There, Shiffrin, 26, skied a blistering downhill training run that led the field by nearly a full second on the eve of the combined event, which features one downhill run and one slalom. Shiffrin took silver in the event in PyeongChang in 2018 and won at last year’s world championships.
Though just 14 skiers from the field of 26 in the combined took a downhill training run Wednesday, the list included most of the top competitors, including Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin and Wendy Holdener. Four years ago in PyeongChang, Shiffrin shared the podium with the Swiss teammates in the combined: Gisin earning gold and Holdener bronze.
While training runs are notoriously poor predictors of success, Shiffrin’s time of 1:33.56 Wednesday was also more than three-quarters of a second faster than her time two days earlier in the downhill (1:34.36), the weakest individual discipline in her skill-set and one she had not raced in an Olympics until this month. Had she posted the same time Monday, it would have leapfrogged her past seven competitors and into 11th place.
“The number one lesson many people learn at the Olympic Games [is] that there’s no guarantee for anything — performance or results. But every day I get on this track and am able to do a solid run top to bottom, it gives me a chance to be a little bit more calm in my mind,” Shiffrin said of the downhill course. “I tend to think way too much, and that makes it hard to ski freely. But I kind of have to think, because I haven’t really practiced downhill in two years.”
Because of Shiffrin’s prowess as a slalom skier — having won a record 47 World Cup races in that discipline, plus an Olympic gold medal in Sochi in 2014 — it is widely assumed a downhill run like the one she unleashed in Wednesday’s training, plus a representative slalom run that sees her make it to the finish line, would result in a medal for sure. Perhaps even a third career gold, something no U.S. Alpine skier has ever accomplished.
But little has gone as expected for Shiffrin here, a reality that has dampened not only her own Olympics, but that of Team USA, which was counting on her to pad its medals total. Through the first 10 days of the Beijing Games, Ryan Cochran-Siegle’s silver in the men’s super-G stands as the Americans’ only Alpine medal and River Radamus’s fourth in the giant slalom the only close call. In five races here, Team USA hasn’t so much as placed a skier in the top 10, and it failed to enter anyone in the men’s combined for the first time.
On Wednesday, Luke Winters, Team USA’s only entry in the men’s slalom — the fewest skiers the Americans have ever entered in that event — skied out seconds into his run, ending his long-shot hopes of sneaking onto the podium and underscoring the Americans’ drought in an event in which they haven’t medaled since Phil and Steve Maher won gold and silver, respectively, in 1984.
“I would never have expected to feel in this moment — severely underperforming in an Olympics — [that] humans could be so kind,” she told NBC after the ninth-place finish in the super-G. “I never would’ve expected that the most surprising thing of my Olympic experience is how kind people have been in the face of my failure.
“I mean, it is a failure. It’s okay to say that. I am okay with that, and I’m sorry for it. But I was also trying, and I’m proud of that.” | null | null | null | null | null |
But Eric Dresselhuys has put on hold ESS’s plans to expand production by as much as eightfold, fearing the projects will pay off for developers and his company only if Democratic lawmakers enact the clean-energy tax credits they proposed as part of the Build Back Better bill. The legislation’s uncertain future has frozen hundreds of billions of dollars in private capital, according to analyses by industry groups and nonpartisan analysts, and complicated America’s much-touted clean-energy revolution.
“Investors are waiting in the wings to deploy capital for clean energy, with this industry poised to be the major engine of 21st-century prosperity,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Without these government incentives, that capital won’t get deployed. With them, we are poised to have a prosperous clean-energy economy.”
“The clean-energy tax credits would cost $300 billion and are stuffed with expensive union and protectionist mandates that will raises costs, violate global trade rules and risk retaliatory tariffs from abroad,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. “Green investments driven by securing Washington tax credits often divert investment dollars from more productive, innovative opportunities that cannot clear the hurdles required for tax credits.”
Industry groups, as well as climate activists, have been frustrated by the delays. More than 260 clean-energy companies wrote to congressional leaders in January saying that each month of delay to the Build Back Better tax incentives costs the U.S. economy as much as $2 billion in economic activity. The letter cited an analysis by the American Clean Power Association that found the legislation would more than double clean-energy investment to $750 billion over the next 10 years, while creating hundreds of thousands of new American jobs.
Democrats remain optimistic that the credits will be approved. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — whose opposition has stymied the bill — have expressed support for some of its key climate provisions, including most of the clean-energy tax incentives. But Manchin has also made clear this month that he does not want to approve an economic package right away and is focused on other legislative priorities.
Many other clean-energy industry officials say their plans will move more slowly without the tax incentives. Michael Garland, chief executive of Pattern Energy, a major wind- and solar-power developer, said in an email that his firm had “a more aggressive growth scenario plan under” the Build Back Better bill but that “without its passage we will not proceed with several projects in excess of $6 billion of investment.”
Garland said that the Build Back Better provisions “will be required to reach the climate goals in the timeframes set out.”
The bill would not only help new businesses, but old ones such as utilities that operate nuclear power plants. Nuclear power still ranks as the nation’s largest source of carbon-free electricity. Constellation Energy has 22 reactors, and a substantial number of them need government support because of tough competition from natural gas and renewable power in regional power grids. Some state governments have already provided relief.
Big oil companies, which pump naturally occurring carbon dioxide into old wells to extract more oil, are interested, too. Occidental Petroleum has joined with Carbon Engineering in a venture called 1PointFIve, which is building the first of four pilot plants. Some analysts say dozens more could be on the way — if the subsidies for enhanced oil recovery are increased from $35 to $50 a ton.
Plans to make air travel less environmentally damaging are also on hold. The start-up firm LanzaJet is opening a plant in Georgia this year that will produce a synthetic fuel for airlines that the company says shares the properties of jet fuel without traditional jet fuel’s greenhouse gas emissions. The United States currently consumes 21 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, and only 5 million of those are low-carbon. | null | null | null | null | null |
I’m aware that the United States is not Iran. Its government is not an Islamic regime, and it is not a totalitarian state. But totalitarian tendencies are unquestionably on the rise within segments of this country. We see this in the attempts to curtail women’s rights, in the rise in racism and antisemitism, and in the assault on ideas and imagination best exemplified in the banning of books.
I didn’t know. Never, when I was her teacher, could I have imagined that Razieh would someday be in jail, thinking and talking about Henry James, awaiting her execution. But perhaps jail was the kind of place to evoke James. He could not save Razieh from death. But he could remind her of life’s beauties. | null | null | null | null | null |
Foreign dignitaries pay respects at a memorial honoring Ukrainian soldiers that have fallen in the years since Russia attacked and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine during a government-declared “unity day” on Feb. 16 in Kyiv. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
KYIV — Ukrainians woke up on not knowing if February 16, 2022 was to be a date that would live in infamy. Or maybe in unity. Or maybe it would mark just another day of the grinding geopolitical intrigue they have been enduring for months.
“I have to go to work, that is all,” said Oleksander, a Kyiv retail manager walking down a street in central Kyiv, who declined to give his last name to protect his privacy. “My wife has to work. And after, we will meet for coffee.”
“Everyone is talking about war and what will happen and blah blah blah. But for people who are working, it’s all the same. Just an ordinary day,” she said the 24-year-old who was wearing headphones and working a vape pen.
Kuznetsova has been keeping a nervous eye on the value of the Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, as it has slipped against the dollar and other currencies. So far, her spending power hasn’t been eroded. She thinks the standoff continuing indefinitely is far more likely than a full-scale Russian attack, despite the wall-to-wall media hype.
Like many Ukrainians, Klymenko was keeping up on developments. He knew the Russians had announced troops were being pulled back from the border, but the NATO had yet to confirm any meaningful drawdown. Targeted cyber strikes against Ukrainian businesses and agencies were still underway. He saw predictions that the fighting would begin in the early morning hours.
As 10 a.m. approached, there were few signs that a mass show of patriotism was about to go display.
“Ukrainians are united,” said Kuleba, who was forced to flee the eastern city of Donetsk in 2014, the area now controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine’s war-battered Donbas region in the east. She has since lived in my many parts of the country, but never again in her eastern home. “My story is Ukraine’s story.”
She did not think a battle was likely anytime soon, based on her experience with a near surprise-attack by Russian-backed forces eight years ago.
At Ukraine’s national parliament, small business owners who have gathered for weeks to oppose potential changes to the country’s tax and retail laws, paused in their protests to join in the moment of unity Wednesday morning.
“We sang the anthem as Ukrainians first,” said one of the protesters. “But we still have to fight for our businesses.”
Kuchery, who owns a Kyiv coffee shop, said the United States and European leaders have made it harder on Ukrainians by pulling out the embassy staffs and fanning fears of invasion.
“I was thinking, ‘Maybe I should stay home with the kids today?’” she said. “But then you turn on your brain and think, ‘Wait, the whole world says the invasion is happening on the 16th, which means it definitely won’t happen on the 16th.’”
Tension with Russia is especially personal for Narozhnaya. She was raised in Donetsk. Her parents still live there, and it’s hard to see them with travel into and out of the self-proclaimed republic limited. There’s emotional distance too. Her parents are sympathetic to Russia and their Russian-speaking neighbors.
“But they’re family and we love them.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Inside the National Aquatics Center, where Michael Phelps swam to eight gold medals in 2008, the nursing Olympians are credible athletes worthy of their current platform. Hear them speak, and they outshine the dangerously contrarian thoughts of Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving. Watch them play, and they honor medical professionals who deserve better from a variant-fatigued public continuing to make grave decisions.
Roth, who plays for the United States, is from McFarland, Wis. She’s a full-time nurse and supervisor at Select Specialty Hospital in Madison, working a schedule of 12-hour shifts three days a week. Her hospital specializes in assisting critically ill patients. The staff has seen all the harrowing sights of the pandemic: people needing the gusts of a ventilator to hang on, heart problems, kidney failure. Sometimes, those patients must stay for weeks before being transferred elsewhere for long-term care.
Roth, 33, has perfected juggling. She was the skip of the U.S. team at the 2018 Olympics. This time, she’s the vice skip, playing the third position on a team Tabitha Peterson now commands. Roth balances nursing, curling and raising a 2-year-old son, Nolan, with her husband, Tony.
She looks forward to returning to work, too. Maybe the job will be easier. The coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are dropping again in Wisconsin. The omicron variant spike seems to be waning. The pandemic isn’t over, but there may be a brief window for health-care workers to rest. | null | null | null | null | null |
The erosion of American trust hits the U.S. military
For decades, trust in the U.S. military had bucked a trend. No longer.
U.S. troops deployed to Poland because of Russia-Ukraine tensions set up camp at a military airport in Mielec on Feb. 12. (Beata Zawrzel/AP)
On Tuesday, Pew Research Center released yet another survey demonstrating the public erosion of trust in experts and authority structures. Their report, “Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines,” focused almost entirely on the decline in Americans’ trust of scientists and doctors — and how Republicans in particular have fueled that decline. That, however, was not the most interesting finding in the report.
Don’t get me wrong — this erosion of trust has deleterious effects on the marketplace of ideas. This is a topic that the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been banging on about at some length for quite some time. That said, these aspects of the Pew report are not exactly new, and it remains the case that scientists are among the most trusted groups in society.
Scanning the results, there was another data point that caught my eye. According to Pew, “the share of Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in the military to act in the public’s best interests has fallen 14 points, from 39% in November 2020 to 25% in the current survey.”
That is quite the precipitous drop. Nor is the Pew finding an outlier. The Ronald Reagan Institute conducted a survey last autumn and warned, “For the first time in our survey, a minority of Americans—only 45%—report having a great deal of trust and confidence in the military. Alarmingly, this is down 25 points in the last three years.” Nor is this an artifact of the Afghanistan debacle — the trend line was visible last winter as well.
Pew attributed the erosion of trust in scientists to political polarization. Does that explain the drop in trust in the military? Pew does not say. Back in December, however, Task and Purpose’s Jeff Schogol looked at the Reagan survey and suggested it “is more likely that the survey results indicate that Americans are increasingly viewing the military — as an institution — through the lens of partisan politics.” He quotes Peter Feaver, who has forgotten more about this issue than I will ever remember, as saying some of these findings “may be an indication of the corrosive effects of political polarization in the body politic generally bleeding over into attitudes towards the military.”
Feaver and Schogol might be correct, but it’s a complicated story. The Reagan Institute’s report explicitly stated that trust and confidence in the military dropped across all the demographic subcategories — including party identification. So this is not a case of only Republicans, for example, turning against the military.
Furthermore, they asked survey respondents why they had low trust, and the answers were variegated: “The most common answer was political leadership, at 13%, followed by servicemembers and anything related to scandals within the military, both at 9%. Close behind at 8% were the military leadership and the concept that the military is too expensive or has the wrong priorities.”
Feaver cites the plurality response of “political leadership” as the example of partisanship kicking in, and he’s correct about that. The next couple of responses, however, fall into the basket of criticisms associated with the left rather than the right.
What might be happening is that polarization is causing partisans to distrust any institution not entirely in sync with their ideological priors. For conservatives, this means a military serving a Democratic president and articulating liberal values cannot be trusted. For liberals, this means a military failing to completely address sexual assault and far-right extremism in the ranks can no longer be trusted.
These trends remain nascent. Compared with the other authority figures Pew surveyed, the military remains more trusted than any group other than scientists. For decades, the U.S. military defied the erosion in trust in institutions that hit other American institutions. What has changed is that the military is no longer fully immune from these societal trends. | null | null | null | null | null |
On Friday, special counsel John Durham, tasked by former attorney general William P. Barr with evaluating the legitimacy of the investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election, filed a document as part of an indictment targeting attorney Michael Sussman. In it, Durham hinted at evidence related to a story that percolated briefly before Election Day that year: that a server affiliated with Donald Trump’s private company had been in regular contact with a server associated with a Russian bank.
That story was quickly debunked, but now Durham hinted that it was a function of something broader, an effort by Sussman, whose firm had been retained by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, to use analysis of data from various computer networks to find connections between Trump and Russia. Among the data sets included in that analysis were ones from Trump Tower and, provocatively, “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”
In short order, a narrative crystallized on the right pushed forward by a statement from former Trump staffer Kash Patel that was amplified by Fox News: Hillary Clinton’s campaign did something fishy with computers to spy on Trump’s campaign and his White House. Over the weekend, the cable channel and other right-wing outlets and voices echoed and amplified this idea.
Then reality finished getting its boots on. The Washington Post’s fact-checkers submerged the story in cold water as did the New York Times. A filing from Sussman’s legal team and statements from others involved in the situation like the researchers who analyzed the data state, for example, that the period in which the White House (to shorthand the “executive office” descriptor) was included in the analysis ended before Trump took office. Durham’s filing doesn’t suggest otherwise. What’s more, the data being evaluated were not a function of anything having been hacked or stolen; instead, it was an analysis of a particular, limited kind of data file that had been shared by both the White House and outside Internet service providers as part of standard practice for detecting illicit online activity. (In fact, this appears to be why the White House was sharing the data; it was a response to a Russian infiltration in 2015.)
What’s more, the question of whether Sussman was working for Clinton’s campaign is at the heart of the indictment against him. Here, again, Durham draws an inferred, not a direct line, one that Sussman contests. Regardless, the indication from Durham’s filing is not that Clinton’s team pushed downward for a probe into possible electronic links between Trump and Russia but, instead, that a technology executive who had retained Sussman independently raised the possibility to his attention and from there it moved up. Remember the timing here: this was just as material stolen from the Democratic Party by Russian hackers was being leaked and questions about Trump’s ties to Russia were being elevated (even before Clinton’s team did so publicly).
So this was the state of play as of Tuesday morning. The original storyline that Hillary Clinton’s team had overseen some sort of electronic spying on Trump including while he was president was badly undercut, leading conscientious observers to understandably want to pepper their assessments with qualifiers and caveats.
He quoted several lines from Durham’s filing, offering none of the qualifications that had emerged since Friday. He also quoted from Sussman’s response — though only the part in which it describes the Durham filing as being “irrelevant to the charged offense and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.”
To discuss the case, Hannity interviewed two guests: former California representative Devin Nunes (for whom Kash Patel had once worked) and Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett. Jarrett, I will note, is not a dispassionate observer of the overlap of politics and the law; he’s written books titled, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump” and “Witch Hunt: The Plot to Destroy Trump and Undo His Election.”
It was also Jarrett who offered the more reality-detached assessment of Durham’s filing. He alleged that a number of laws had been broken, from defrauding the U.S. (perhaps Durham’s ultimate target) to racketeering to computer crimes.
Nunes’s contributions were similarly misinformed. “Clearly anyone able to get into the White House, no matter who the president is, is something that is unprecedented. Those should be the most guarded communications in this country,” he said, suggesting that the data had been obtained illicitly, which no one, including Durham, has alleged. He later wondered how contractors could have communications of Americans all over the country, including the sitting president. Beyond the apparent inaccuracy of the “in the White House” part, this is not any collection of “communications.” It is, instead, log files of domain-name lookups that contractors and researchers use to track bad behavior online. (I wrote more about this on Monday.)
But this situation illustrates the acute challenge of ensuring a well-informed public. The network, the most-watched news channel on cable television and a driver of right-wing commentary elsewhere, has no robust mechanism in place for self-correction. It’s hard to correct television in the first place, but Fox News’s hosts have no demonstrated track record of revising their false assertions. Hannity’s segment on Tuesday night was riddled with shorthand references to his misrepresentations of the Russia investigation itself, a good hint of how this Durham stuff will eventually be concreted. (This despite at least one prominent voice in the Russia-probe skepticism universe urging caution on the Durham storyline.)
What’s useful to remember, though, isn’t just that viewers are being misinformed about what’s happening. It’s that they’re being convinced that they’re more informed. That’s why Hannity began by insisting that other networks were afraid of covering the story. He wants to reinforce the sense among viewers that they are being given exclusive access to reality, that they stand as a collective counterweight to the deceptive elites who are undercutting the country. A storyline is created and propped up with all sorts of (often unfounded) claims, with no one around to offer a skeptical assessment. Those who buy in see themselves as having more insight into what’s happening, not less.
It’s been less than a week but it will now forever be the case that some portion of the public — some large portion — will eternally believe that the Clinton campaign paid hackers to infiltrate Trump Tower and the Trump White House. This belief will be reinforced when people like myself say this is not rooted in any available evidence, because of who I am and where I work but also because of the various things that narrative reinforces. Clinton bad; Trump victim; hacking insidious. | null | null | null | null | null |
Father Andres Arango distributes Holy Communion while wearing a mask amid the covid-19 pandemic at Gordon Hall at St. Gregory's Catholic Church in Phoenix, Arizona on May 10, 2020. (Thomas Hawthorne/The Republic)
The bottom line is, historically the words of baptism have changed. To make suddenly a big deal of whether a priest uses "I" or “we” is mind-boggling. | null | null | null | null | null |
In two high-profile incidents since Friday, airline passengers terrified fellow travelers when they tried to open a plane door during their flight. It’s been a repeated move by unruly passengers in the past year.
That’s the door a Delta passenger tried to open during a flight from Salt Lake City to Portland, Ore., on Friday. The 32-year-old man allegedly removed the plastic covering over the handle of the emergency exit and pulled the handle; he later told police that he wanted to be filmed so he could share his thoughts about the coronavirus vaccine. A flight attendant ordered him to let go of the handle, and members of the flight crew restrained him, a Justice Department news release said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Foreign dignitaries pay respects at a memorial honoring Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen in the years since Russia attacked and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine during a government-declared “Unity Day” on Feb. 16 in Kyiv. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
KYIV — Ukrainians woke up not knowing if Feb. 16 was to be a date that would live in infamy. Or maybe in unity. Or maybe it would mark just another day of the grinding geopolitical intrigue they have been enduring for months.
For most, the day — which some breathless commentators had all-but declared to be the date for Russian tanks to roll into Ukraine — felt like an ordinary Wednesday.
“I have to go to work, that is all,” said Oleksander, a retail manager walking down a street in central Kyiv, who declined to give his last name to protect his privacy. “My wife has to work. And after, we will meet for coffee.”
Like many Ukrainians, Klymenko was keeping up on developments. He knew the Russians had announced troops were being pulled back from the border, but NATO had yet to confirm any meaningful drawdown. Targeted cyberstrikes against Ukrainian businesses and agencies were still underway. He saw predictions that the fighting would begin in the early morning hours.
“Ukrainians are united,” said Kuleba, who was forced to flee the eastern city of Donetsk in 2014, the area now controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine’s war-battered Donbas region in the east. She has since lived in my many parts of the country, but never again in her eastern home. “My story is Ukraine’s story,” she said.
At Ukraine’s national parliament, small business owners who have gathered for weeks to oppose potential changes to the country’s tax and retail laws paused in their protests to join in the moment of unity Wednesday morning.
“But they’re family and we love them,” she said. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - People wear Jewish skullcaps, as they attend a demonstration against an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin April 25, 2018. The leading dictionary of standard German has changed its definition of Jew, or “Jude” in German again, after a recent update caused an uproar in the country’s Jewish community. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
“Because of their antisemitic use in history and in the present, especially during the Nazi era, the words Jew/Jewess have been debated ... for decades,” the entry on the dictionary's website now says. “At the same time, the words are widely used as a matter of course and are not perceived as problematic. The Central Council of Jews in Germany, which has the term itself in its name, is in favor of its use.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Father Andres Arango distributes Holy Communion while wearing a mask amid the pandemic at Gordon Hall at St. Gregory's Catholic Church in Phoenix on May 10, 2020. (Thomas Hawthorne/The Republic)
The bottom line is, historically the words of baptism have changed. To make suddenly a big deal of whether a priest uses “I” or “we” is mind-boggling. | null | null | null | null | null |
Inside the National Aquatics Center, where Michael Phelps swam to eight gold medals in 2008, the nursing Olympians have been credible athletes worthy of a platform. When they spoke, they outshined the dangerously contrarian thoughts of Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving. When they played, they honored medical professionals who deserve better from a variant-fatigued public continuing to make grave decisions.
Roth plays for the United States, which was eliminated from medal contention late Wednesday night after a 10-7 loss to Japan. She is from McFarland, Wis. She’s a full-time nurse and supervisor at Select Specialty Hospital in Madison, working a schedule of 12-hour shifts three days a week. Her hospital specializes in assisting critically ill patients. The staff has seen all the harrowing sights of the pandemic: people needing the gusts of a ventilator to hang on, heart problems, kidney failure. Sometimes, those patients must stay for weeks before being transferred elsewhere for long-term care.
Roth, 33, has perfected juggling. She was the skip of the U.S. team at the 2018 Olympics. This time, she was the vice skip, playing the third position on a team Tabitha Peterson now commands. To compete in her second Olympics, Roth balanced nursing, curling and raising a 2-year-old son, Nolan, with her husband, Tony.
She looks forward to returning to work soon. Maybe the job will be easier. The coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are dropping again in Wisconsin. The omicron variant spike seems to be waning. The pandemic isn’t over, but there may be a brief window for health-care workers to rest. | null | null | null | null | null |
In two high-profile incidents since Friday, airline passengers terrified fellow travelers when they tried to open a plane door during their flight. It has been a repeated move by unruly passengers in the past year.
That’s the door a Delta passenger tried to open during a flight from Salt Lake City to Portland, Ore., on Friday. The 32-year-old man allegedly removed the plastic covering over the handle of the emergency exit and pulled the handle; he later told police that he wanted to be recorded so he could share his thoughts about the coronavirus vaccine. A flight attendant ordered him to let go of the handle, and members of the flight crew restrained him, a Justice Department news release said. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Investors are waiting in the wings to deploy capital for clean energy, with this industry poised to be the major engine of 21st-century prosperity,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Without these government incentives, that capital won’t get deployed. With them, we are poised to have a prosperous clean energy economy.”
“The clean energy tax credits would cost $300 billion and are stuffed with expensive union and protectionist mandates that will raises costs, violate global trade rules and risk retaliatory tariffs from abroad,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. “Green investments driven by securing Washington tax credits often divert investment dollars from more productive, innovative opportunities that cannot clear the hurdles required for tax credits.”
Industry groups, as well as climate activists, have been frustrated by the delays. More than 260 clean energy companies wrote to congressional leaders in January saying that each month of delay to the Build Back Better tax incentives costs the U.S. economy as much as $2 billion in economic activity. The letter cited an analysis by the American Clean Power Association that found the legislation would more than double clean energy investment to $750 billion over the next 10 years. Hundreds of thousands of new American jobs would be created, the association says.
Democrats remain optimistic that the credits will be approved. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — whose opposition has stymied the bill — have expressed support for some of its key climate provisions, including most of the clean energy tax incentives. But Manchin has also made clear this month that he does not want to approve an economic package right away and is focused on other legislative priorities.
Many other clean energy industry officials say their plans will move more slowly without the tax incentives. Michael Garland, chief executive of Pattern Energy, a major wind- and solar-power developer, said in an email that his firm had “a more aggressive growth scenario plan under” the Build Back Better bill but that “without its passage we will not proceed with several projects in excess of $6 billion of investment.”
Garland said that the Build Back Better provisions “will be required to reach the climate goals in the time frames set out.”
The bill would not only help new businesses, but old ones such as utilities that operate nuclear power plants. Nuclear power still ranks as the nation’s largest source of carbon-free electricity. Constellation Energy has 22 reactors, and a substantial number of them need government support because of tough competition from natural gas and renewable power in regional power grids, the company says. Some state governments have already provided relief.
Big oil companies, which pump naturally occurring carbon dioxide into old wells to extract more oil, are interested, too. Occidental Petroleum has joined with Carbon Engineering in a venture called 1PointFIve, which is building the first of four pilot plants. Some analysts say dozens more could be on the way — if the subsidies for enhanced oil recovery are soon increased from $35 to $50 a ton.
Plans to make air travel less environmentally damaging are also on hold. The start-up firm LanzaJet is opening a plant in Georgia this year that will produce a synthetic fuel for airlines that the company says shares the properties of jet fuel without traditional jet fuel’s greenhouse gas emissions. The United States consumes 21 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, and only 5 million of those are low carbon. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nighttime fire intensity in the western United States has increased by 28 percent over the past two decades.
Flames from the Cameron Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado history, burn trees along a ridge outside Estes Park, Colo., in October 2020. (Bethany Baker/AP)
When the Cameron Peak fire ignited in northern Colorado in August 2020, few could foresee its longevity. As it burned, summer turned into winter. Nearly a semester of school passed. By the time the fire was fully contained in December, it had become the state’s largest fire.
In recent decades, fires have become more intense and longer-lasting amid rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change. A key influence on their growing duration? Their increasing ability to survive the night when the temperatures typically dip and humidity rises.
A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that a trend toward warmer and drier conditions after sundown is helping blazes withstand what should be unfavorable conditions — making containment of the fire more difficult for responders. They are now less able to rely on relief in fire intensity previously offered by nighttime cooling.
“The fact that the [Cameron Peak] fire was burning for months, to me is an indication that we were essentially able to pass through the night,” said Jennifer Balch, director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We were able to burn from day to night, from day to night, and that fire burned over 200,000 acres.”
Across burnable lands, the study stated the annual number of flammable nighttime hours increased by 110 hours over the past four decades — allowing five additional nights when flammability does not cease. It also found nighttime fires have globally increased in intensity by 7 percent from 2003 to 2020.
“Our nights have been warming more than our days have been warming as a function of human-caused climate change, and that’s having a direct impact on fires,” said Balch, lead author of the study. “We’re losing the brakes on fires in terms of the cooling and moisture accumulation that happens at night.”
“The two things that change that ability to hold moisture are temperature, or how hot it is, and how much moisture is already in the air,” said Balch.
“In really hot, dry places like desert systems, you have really high vapor pressure deficit … then in places that are hot and moist compared to a desert … vapor pressure deficit goes down a little bit just as a function of the moisture that’s already in the air,” said Balch.
The U.S. West also stood out against the global average. Nighttime fire intensity from 2003-2020 increased by 28 percent in the region. The West also experiences around 11 more flammable nights compared to four decades ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Post first reported that the inspector general referred the matter to the Justice Department in 2018. But the case remained open until last summer, when prosecutors declined to press criminal charges.
With Trump’s endorsement and strong name recognition in a swath of western Montana Trump carried by seven points in 2020, Zinke is widely favored to win his home state’s new House seat.
The investigation into his real estate dealing began in the summer of 2018, after Politico reported that he had remained involved in the project while in office. This raised conflict-of-interest concerns because the project involved a development group funded by David J. Lesar, the then-chairman of Halliburton, which stood to benefit from policies Zinke oversaw encouraging oil and gas drilling on public lands.
The Whitefish land deal was one of at least 15 inquiries launched into alleged misconduct by Zinke. The investigations included one by the inspector general into his decision to deny two Connecticut tribes a permit to operate a casino; multiple inquiries into his travel expenses and whether he violated agency policy by allowing allow his wife to ride in government vehicles; and questions about his management of the department, including an investigation into a National Park Service report that removed any reference to climate change.
Zinke’s official portrait, which hangs at headquarters, shows him riding a horse in front of a tree-covered butte, a scene inspired by a photograph taken of him Bears Ears. President Biden restored full protections to it and Grand Staircase-Escalante last fall, at the urging of tribal activists and conservationists. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2021 file photo, pedestrians walk near a poster of Alex Saab that reads in Spanish “Alex Saab Free. They haven’t been able to bend him,” in Caracas, Venezuela. Newly unsealed court records show that the Colombian businessman linked to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was secretly signed up by the D.E.A. as a cooperating source in 2018 and gave agents information about bribes he paid to Venezuelan officials. However, he was deactivated as a source after failing to meet a deadline to surrender himself and was indicted in Miami federal court on charges of siphoning millions from state contracts. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Qi Guangpu of China won the country’s second gold in men’s aerials by finally landing a trick he’d been practicing for a decade. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Chris Lillis crouched low and held his face in his hands when he skied to a stop, knowing what he’d done was not nearly as good as what he can do.
He had gone for some concoction of aerodynamics and audacity in the men’s aerials final Wednesday called a back double full-full-double full, which means the 23-year-old from Pittsford, N.Y., had launched himself into the air and executed three flips and five twists. He did not land it, falling on his backside at the end.
For Lillis, that meant his Beijing Olympics were done, a sixth-place finish in the men’s aerials individual final and a gold medal in the mixed-team aerials competition to show for it.
Aerials, the freestyle skiing discipline populated mostly by former gymnasts seeking new thrills, operates with an all-or-nothing final, setting itself apart from its cousins in halfpipe, slopestyle and big air, in which skiers have three runs and their highest score counts. Even in biathlon and ski jumping, an athlete gets multiple tries at shooting five targets and hurling themselves off a hill. But in aerials, there is no room for error in the final.
“So you can come out in training, stomp every jump, do it all perfect and miss that one competition jump. And you’ve traveled across the entire world to take one jump,” said American Justin Schoenefeld, who finished fifth Wednesday. “One comp jump, and it’s a real bummer sometimes.”
It is cruel, as Chinese gold medalist Qi Guangpu, 31, said. But it is exactly how aerialists like it.
“To a certain extent, that’s just the culture of aerial skiing,” Lillis said. “It’s a little bit what sets us apart from other freestyle sports. … I like that in these big events, because it lets people really go for it in those rounds and you see super-high scores going into that final round. But at the end of the day, you have to decide a winner, and I’d say it’s the culture of our sport to just go big or go home and try to stick it.”
In aerials, the final is divided into two parts. In what’s referred to as Final 1, the top 12 athletes from qualification jump twice each and the best of their two attempts determine which six advance to Final 2.
In Final 2, the six athletes take one all-or-nothing jump to determine who medals, years of training boiled down into one eight-to-10-second performance. In Monday’s women’s final, American Ashley Caldwell had the two highest scores of Final 1 — a 103.92 on her first jump and a 105.6 on her second — that did her no good when she fell upon landing in Final 2 and earned an 83.71, finishing fourth. Her heartbreak was palpable.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” she cried into the arms of a Team USA staffer, before tearfully extolling her competitors with a smile on her face for their willingness to push the sport.
“There’s always heartbreak among great success,” Caldwell said, before congratulating women’s gold medal winner Xu Mengtao, a 31-year-old Chinese athlete just like Qi. “ … Taotao’s been pushing triples for longer than I have, and for her to win a gold medal in her own country is an incredible accomplishment and it brought tears to my eyes just as much as the sadness is.”
Progression is what aerialists willingly trade for devastation, and ultimately the pride of competing is going for the biggest trick, not winning safely. On Wednesday, 10 of the men’s aerialists scored higher than a 116.50 heading into the final round, which was the score that ultimately won Ukrainian Oleksandr Abramenko silver.
The difference? Those high-scoring runs’ tricks looked clean, but they had a lower degree of difficulty.
Qi took gold, his first individual medal in four Olympic Games and just China’s second ever in men’s aerials, by marrying both elements and scoring a 129. He went with the same trick Lillis was trying to pull off — three flips, five twists — which he began practicing a decade ago but had never landed in competition.
He donned a shiny gold helmet, launched himself and spun as his coach screamed, “You’re good, you’re good, you’re good!” from the side of the jump, indicating Qi didn’t need to adjust his speed of rotation as he was coming down to land. When he landed, he thrust both fists in the air and arched his back in exaltation as spectators erupted at Genting Snow Park.
“It’s a super difficult [trick], and it takes a lot for you to finish that,” Qi said. “ … When I did the jump, I was so excited. It’s very surreal for me. When I was in the air, I thought I was close but not there. And I finally made it.
“It’s exactly because of the fierce competition rules in the final jump that athletes all over the world want to pursue more difficult jumps. … It’s the point of the Olympic movement. Faster, higher, stronger — together.” | null | null | null | null | null |
''That’s what we play for,'' said Granato before the gold medal game. ''When we play Canada, it’s just a battle. We just don’t like each other on the ice.''
Canada won the battle and an Olympic gold medal in its national winter sport for the first time since the men’s team won in 1952. It was the beginning of a 24-game Olympics winning streak and the first of four straight gold medals.
The squads were so evenly matched that the final ended in a tie requiring overtime, and then a shootout, and then the shootout required extra shots. Finally, Team USA’s Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson finessed a puck into Canada’s net, and 20-year-old U.S. goaltender Maddie Rooney stopped a shot by Canada’s Meghan Agosta, and the U.S. team had its second Olympic gold medal.
The U.S. team is missing star center Brianna Decker, one of the world’s best players, who went out with a leg injury in the team’s first game in Beijing. | null | null | null | null | null |
That’s the consensus opinion of royal commentators, public relations experts, lawyers, biographers of the monarchy, victims rights groups and social media users in Britain — the day after the news broke that the son of Queen Elizabeth II had settled a sexual abuse lawsuit brought by a woman who says she was trafficked to him by his former friend, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The amount and details of the settlement with Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, were not disclosed in a court filing in New York on Tuesday. Andrew has repeatedly denied the sex abuse allegations outlined in the lawsuit, and he did not admit wrongdoing in a statement on the settlement.
The end of the lawsuit may allow Buckingham Palace to move on and away from Andrew’s scandals. It avoids any further embarrassing revelations that might have emerged in court proceedings.
But in the court of public opinion, Andrew is badly damaged.
He said perhaps Andrew may hope the public has some sort of collective “memory loss” or “short-term amnesia.”
“He will want to come back, but I don’t think the British public will accept it,” Borkowski added.
Andrew, viewed as a “bad uncle,” will be kept away from the upcoming celebrations of the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Borkowski predicted.
Questions will likely continue to circulate about where the settlement money comes from. Andrew hasn’t received financial support from taxpayers since giving up his position as a “senior working royal.” And Buckingham Palace has said that Andrew would be considered “a private citizen” in the legal proceedings. But that doesn’t preclude the queen from covering some of the settlement through her private wealth.
The Telegraph newspaper, citing its sources, reported the total could come to about $16 million. Legal observers have told The Post they estimated a settlement of $10 million to $12 million.
Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies would not name the amount, but said in a statement: “I believe this event speaks for itself.” Andrew’s attorneys have not publicly commented outside of the court document.
Andrew has also retained the title of a vice admiral of the navy — so far. Defense secretary Ben Wallace said Wednesday it would be up to Buckingham Palace whether to take that title away. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Biden has ordered visitor logs from the White House during President Donald Trump’s tenure to be turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — an order the National Archives said Wednesday it would carry out by March 3.
The former president claimed that the logs were subject to executive privilege. In a letter Tuesday, a White House lawyer rejected the claim, saying the National Archives should provide the records within 15 days to the House committee.
The letter was first reported by the New York Times. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
In a letter to Trump on Wednesday, David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, informed the former president that he would deliver the documents requested by the Jan. 6 committee on March 3 “unless prohibited by court order.” Ferriero said he was doing so after consultation with Remus, the Justice Department and “as instructed by President Biden.”
“The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy,” Remus said in the letter. | null | null | null | null | null |
Then reality finished getting its boots on. The Washington Post’s fact-checkers submerged the story in cold water as did the New York Times. A filing from Sussmann’s legal team and statements from others involved in the situation like the researchers who analyzed the data state, for example, that the period in which the White House (to shorthand the “executive office” descriptor) was included in the analysis ended before Trump took office. Durham’s filing doesn’t suggest otherwise. Also, the data being evaluated were not a function of anything having been hacked or stolen; instead, it was an analysis of a particular, limited kind of data file that had been shared by both the White House and outside Internet service providers as part of standard practice for detecting illicit online activity. (In fact, this appears to be why the White House was sharing the data; it was a response to a Russian infiltration in 2015.)
He quoted several lines from Durham’s filing, offering none of the qualifications that had emerged since Friday. He also quoted from Sussmann’s response — though only the part in which it describes the Durham filing as being “irrelevant to the charged offense and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.”
To discuss the case, Hannity interviewed two guests: former California congressman Devin Nunes (for whom Patel had once worked) and Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett. Jarrett, I will note, is not a dispassionate observer of the overlap of politics and the law; he’s written books titled, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump” and “Witch Hunt: The Plot to Destroy Trump and Undo His Election.”
Nunes’s contributions were similarly misinformed. “Clearly anyone able to get into the White House, no matter who the president is, is something that is unprecedented. Those should be the most guarded communications in this country,” he said, suggesting that the data had been obtained illicitly, which no one, including Durham, has alleged. He later wondered how contractors could have communications of Americans all over the country, including the sitting president. Beyond the apparent inaccuracy of the “in the White House” part, this is not any collection of “communications.” It is, instead, log files of domain name lookups that contractors and researchers use to track bad behavior online. (I wrote more about this on Monday.)
What’s useful to remember, though, isn’t just that viewers are being misinformed about what’s happening. It’s that they’re being convinced that they’re more informed. That’s why Hannity began by insisting that other networks were afraid of covering the story. He wants to reinforce the sense among viewers that they are being given exclusive access to reality, that they stand as a collective counterweight to the deceptive elites who are undercutting the country. A story line is created and propped up with all sorts of (often unfounded) claims, with no one around to offer a skeptical assessment. Those who buy in see themselves as having more insight into what’s happening, not less.
It’s been less than a week, but it will now forever be the case that some portion of the public — some large portion — will eternally believe that the Clinton campaign paid hackers to infiltrate Trump Tower and the Trump White House. This belief will be reinforced when people like myself say this is not rooted in any available evidence, because of who I am and where I work but also because of the various things that narrative reinforces. Clinton bad; Trump victim; hacking insidious. | null | null | null | null | null |
Journalist Maria Bartiromo, center, appears before President Donald Trump speaks at the Economic Club of New York on Nov. 12, 2019. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Oh, in case you were wondering, Tuberville agreed that “they’re scrambling, there’s no doubt about it.” To his credit, he did not explicitly agree that the Biden administration orchestrated the potential trigger for a global military conflict to avoid having Sean Hannity mention Hillary Clinton on-air a few times. | null | null | null | null | null |
Facial recognition firm Clearview AI tells investors it is seeking massive expansion beyond law enforcement
The company is pushing towards 100 billion images in its “index of faces,” even as lawmakers worry the company poses a dangerous threat to Americans’ privacy rights.
A facial recognition entry gate at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference last year in Shanghai. (Bloomberg/Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomber)
The facial recognition company Clearview AI is telling investors it’s on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable,” according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post.
But the company wants to expand beyond scanning faces for the police, saying in the presentation that it could monitor “gig economy” workers and is currently researching a number of new technologies that could identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from a photo or scan their fingerprints from afar.
The 55-page “pitch deck,” the contents of which have not been reported previously, reveals surprising details about how the company, whose work already is controversial, is positioning itself for a major expansion, funded in large part by government contracts and the same taxpayers the system would be used to monitor.
The document is made for fundraising purposes, and it’s unclear how realistic its goals might be: The company said its “index of faces” has grown from 3 billion to more than 10 billion since early 2020, and that its data-collection system now ingests 1.5 billion images a month.
But with just $50 million from investors, the company boasted, it could not only bulk up its data-collection powers to 100 billion photos, but build new products, expand its international sales team and pay more toward lobbying government policymakers to “develop favorable regulation.”
No federal law regulates how facial recognition should be used, though some cities and states have passed local bans or restrictions. The biggest tech giants, including Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, have limited or ended sales of the technology, saying they are worried about its risks or that they don’t want to sell it to the public before Congress has established its own rules.
Facebook, which forbids the automated copying, or “scraping,” of data from its platform and runs an “External Data Misuse” team, has banned Clearview’s founder, Hoan Ton-That, from its site and has sent the company a cease-and-desist order, but Clearview has refused to provide any information about the extent to which Facebook and Instagram users’ photos remain in Clearview’s database, an official with Facebook’s parent company Meta told The Post. The official declined to comment on any steps Meta may be considering in response.
Clearview’s cavalier approach to data harvesting has alarmed privacy advocates, its peers in the facial recognition industry and some members of Congress, who this month urged federal agencies to stop working with the company because its “technology could eliminate public anonymity in the United States.” Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) last year introduced a bill that would block public money from going to Clearview on the basis that its data was “illegitimately obtained.”
Clearview is currently battling more than 30 lawsuits in state and federal court, including litigation from attorneys general in New Jersey and Vermont and class-action suits in California, Illinois, New York and Virginia. The company is also facing a class-action suit in a Canadian federal court; government investigations in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and complaints from privacy groups of data-protection violations in France, Greece, Italy and the U.K.
The governments of Australia and France have ordered Clearview to delete their citizens’ data, saying the company had covertly monetized people’s faces for a purpose “outside reasonable expectations.” “The indiscriminate scraping of people’s facial images, only a fraction of whom would ever be connected with law enforcement investigations, may adversely impact the personal freedoms of all Australians who perceive themselves to be under surveillance,” Australia’s information and privacy commissioner Angelene Falk said in November.
Senators seek limits on some facial-recognition use by police, energizing surveillance technology debate
Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That told The Post the document was shared with a “small group of individuals who expressed interest in the company.” It included proposals, he said, not just for its main facial-search engine but also for other business lines in which facial recognition could be useful, such as identify verification or secure-building access.
Ton-That said Clearview’s photos have “been collected in a lawful manner” from “millions of different websites” on the public Internet. A person’s “public source metadata” and “social linkage information,” he added, can be found on the websites that Clearview has linked to their facial photos.
Facial recognition companies have traditionally built algorithms that can be used to search through their clients’ photo databases, like those of driver’s licenses or jail mug shots. But Ton-That has argued in testimony to public officials that swiping photos from the Internet has allowed the company to create a powerful crime-fighting tool: “Every photo in the data set is a potential clue that could save a life, provide justice to an innocent victim, prevent a wrongful identification, or exonerate an innocent person,” he said Wednesday in a statement to The Post, an echo of similar assertions he’s made in public forums.
Clearview, he told The Post, does not intend to “launch a consumer-grade version” of the facial-search engine now used by police and added that company officials “have not decided” whether to sell the service to commercial buyers.
If Clearview did, however, decide to sell any technology to a nongovernmental buyer, Ton-That said the company would first tell a federal court in Illinois, where Clearview is currently defending against class-action claims it violated a state law requiring companies to obtain people’s consent before collecting their facial data.
In a court filing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, who is presiding over the case, upheld most of the plaintiffs’ arguments challenging Clearview’s work, which she summarized as “the Clearview defendants developed technology to invade the privacy of the American public for their own profit.”
Clearview has dismissed criticism of its data collection and surveillance work by saying it is built exclusively for law enforcement and the public good. In an online “principles” pledge, the company said it works only with government agencies and that it limits its technology to “lawful investigative processes directed at criminal conduct, or at preventing specific, substantial, and imminent threats to people’s lives or physical safety.”
But the presentation shows the company has based its “product expansion plan” on boosting corporate sales, from financial services and the gig economy to commercial real estate. On a slide devoted to its “total addressable market,” government and defense contracts are shown as a small fraction of potential revenue, including in banking, retail and e-commerce.
The company said in the presentation it could “revolutionize” how workers in the gig economy are screened and be used to evaluate people on apps used for dating or finding babysitters, house cleaners or repair contractors. Clearview officials said in a statement that Airbnb, Lyft and Uber have “expressed interest” in its technology for verifying people’s identities. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Post first reported that the inspector general had referred the matter to the Justice Department in 2018. But the case remained open until last summer, when prosecutors declined to press criminal charges.
Zinke, 60, a former Navy SEAL who rode to work on horseback on his first day at Interior, served one term in the House of Representatives before he joined Trump’s Cabinet. A major proponent of oil and gas drilling, as well as coal mining, Zinke resigned under pressure less than two years later under an avalanche of investigations into his conduct.
The investigation into his real estate dealing began in the summer of 2018, after Politico reported that Zinke had remained involved in the project while in office. This raised conflict-of-interest concerns, because the project involved a development group funded by David J. Lesar, then the chairman of Halliburton, which stood to benefit from policies Zinke oversaw encouraging oil and gas drilling on public lands.
The Whitefish land deal was one of at least 15 inquiries launched into alleged misconduct by Zinke. The investigations included one by the inspector general into Zinke’s decision to deny two Connecticut tribes a permit to operate a casino; multiple inquiries into his travel expenses and whether he violated agency policy by allowing his wife to ride in government vehicles; and questions about his management of the department, including an investigation into a National Park Service report that removed any reference to climate change.
Zinke’s official portrait, which hangs at headquarters, shows him riding a horse in front of a tree-covered butte, a scene inspired by a photograph taken of him at Bears Ears. President Biden restored full protections to it and Grand Staircase-Escalante in the fall, at the urging of tribal activists and conservationists. | null | null | null | null | null |
Then reality finished getting its boots on. The Washington Post’s fact-checkers submerged the story in cold water, as did the New York Times. A filing from Sussmann’s legal team and statements from others involved in the situation like the researchers who analyzed the data state, for example, that the period in which the White House (to shorthand the “executive office” descriptor) was included in the analysis ended before Trump took office. Durham’s filing doesn’t suggest otherwise. Also, the data being evaluated were not a function of anything having been hacked or stolen; instead, it was an analysis of a particular, limited kind of data file that had been shared by both the White House and outside Internet service providers as part of standard practice for detecting illicit online activity. (In fact, this appears to be why the White House was sharing the data; it was a response to a Russian infiltration in 2015.)
Host Sean Hannity dived into the story with both feet, running forward rapidly not with the new developments but the initial, undercut ones.
“As we first reported last night,” he said, “a bombshell filing from the Durham probe details how the Clinton campaign and their associates actively — according to, of course, John Durham — exploited Internet data mined from Trump Tower and even the Trump White House to smear Donald Trump.” This, Hannity argued, was being suppressed by a “media mob” terrified of the implications — the go-to explanation from Fox hosts to transform cautious assessments of the allegations by other outlets into proof that they were trying to bury the truth.
Hannity quoted several lines from Durham’s filing, offering none of the qualifications that had emerged since Friday. Hannity also quoted from Sussmann’s response — though only the part in which it describes the Durham filing as being “irrelevant to the charged offense and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.”
To discuss the case, Hannity interviewed two guests: former California congressman Devin Nunes (for whom Patel had once worked); and Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett. Jarrett, I will note, is not a dispassionate observer of the overlap of politics and the law; he has written books titled, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump” and “Witch Hunt: The Plot to Destroy Trump and Undo His Election.”
Here is how Jarrett described what happened: “In this particular case, a tech company being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign is using cyber sleuths to penetrate in an unauthorized way the servers to collect data without permission, without knowledge of Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, the Trump transition and allegedly the Trump White House. I mean, it’s absolutely breathtaking and stunning.”
In other words, Jarrett’s claims were not only not supported by the Durham filing, but he also actively had to ignore a multitude of information undercutting the Fox News narrative about the filing to gin up his purported list of crimes.
Nunes’s contributions were similarly misinformed. “Clearly anyone able to get into the White House, no matter who the president is, is something that is unprecedented. Those should be the most guarded communications in this country,” he said, suggesting that the data had been obtained illicitly, which no one, including Durham, has alleged. Nunes later wondered how contractors could have communications of Americans all over the country, including the sitting president. Beyond the apparent inaccuracy of the “in the White House” part, this is not any collection of “communications.” It is, instead, log files of domain name lookups that contractors and researchers use to track bad behavior online. (I wrote more about this on Monday.)
What’s useful to remember, though, isn’t just that viewers are being misinformed about what’s happening. It’s also that they’re being convinced that they’re more informed. That’s why Hannity began by insisting that other networks were afraid of covering the story. He wants to reinforce the sense among viewers that they are being given exclusive access to reality, that they stand as a collective counterweight to the deceptive elites who are undercutting the country. A story line is created and propped up with all sorts of (often unfounded) claims, with no one around to offer a skeptical assessment. Those who buy in see themselves as having more insight into what’s happening, not less.
It has been less than a week, but it will now forever be the case that some portion of the public — some large portion — will eternally believe that the Clinton campaign paid hackers to infiltrate Trump Tower and the Trump White House. This belief will be reinforced when people like me say this is not rooted in any available evidence, because of who I am and where I work but also because of the various things that narrative reinforces. Clinton bad; Trump victim; hacking insidious. | null | null | null | null | null |
Clearview is battling more than 30 lawsuits in state and federal court, including litigation from attorneys general in New Jersey and Vermont and class-action suits in California, Illinois, New York and Virginia. The company is also facing a class-action suit in a Canadian federal court, government investigations in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom and complaints from privacy groups of data protection violations in France, Greece, Italy and the U.K. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nighttime-fire intensity in the U.S. West has increased by 28 percent over the past two decades.
Flames from the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado history. (Bethany Baker/AP)
When the Cameron Peak Fire ignited in northern Colorado in August 2020, few could foresee its longevity. As it burned, summer turned into winter. Nearly a semester of school passed. By the time the fire was fully contained in December, it had become the state’s largest on record.
In recent decades, fires have become more intense and longer lasting amid rising temperatures linked to human-caused climate change. A key influence on their growing duration? Their increasing ability to survive the night, when temperatures typically dip and humidity rises.
A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that a trend toward warmer and drier conditions after sundown is helping blazes withstand what should be unfavorable conditions — making fire containment more difficult for responders. Crews are less able to rely on relief in fire intensity previously offered by nighttime cooling.
“The fact that the [Cameron Peak] fire was burning for months, to me is an indication that we were essentially able to pass through the night,” said Jennifer Balch, the director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “We were able to burn from day to night, from day to night, and that fire burned over 200,000 acres.”
Cameron Peak isn’t the only notable example of nighttime fire growth. During Australia’s 2019-2020 bush fire season, fires seemed to spread more rapidly at night than during the day for the Snowy Complex Fire in the southeast of the country. In fact, about three-quarters of satellite fire detections occurred at night.
In 2017, the Tubbs Fire in Northern California burned across 36,000 acres and became the most destructive fire in the state at that time. Satellite data showed more than half of the fire detections occurred at night.
Across burnable lands globally, the annual number of flammable nighttime hours increased by 110 hours over the past four decades — allowing five additional nights when flammability does not cease, the study stated. It also found that nighttime fires globally increased in intensity by 7 percent from 2003 to 2020.
“Our nights have been warming more than our days have been warming as a function of human-caused climate change, and that’s having a direct impact on fires,” said Balch, the lead author of the study. “We’re losing the brakes on fires in terms of the cooling and moisture accumulation that happens at night.”
“The two things that change that ability to hold moisture are temperature, or how hot it is, and how much moisture is already in the air,” Balch said.
“In really hot, dry places like desert systems, you have really high vapor pressure deficit … then in places that are hot and moist compared to a desert … vapor pressure deficit goes down a little bit just as a function of the moisture that’s already in the air,” Balch said.
The increase in nighttime fire activity was not necessarily surprising, said co-author John Abatzoglou at University of California Merced, but “the magnitude of the change was noteworthy” in certain regions.
For example, the U.S. West stood out against the global average. Nighttime fire intensity from 2003 to 2020 increased by 28 percent in the region. The West also experiences around 11 more flammable nights compared to four decades ago.
Grasslands and savannas in South America, Africa and Asia and open shrub lands in Australia also saw an increase in the number of flammable nighttime hours. | null | null | null | null | null |
A major storm system is set to charge across the Lower 48 on Wednesday through Friday, causing temperatures to spike before crashing as winter eradicates the first breaths of spring. The clashing air masses will wage war, bringing an assortment of inclement weather, with severe thunderstorms, flooding, heavy snow and strong winds all likely across a zone that spans from the Southwest and the Rockies through the South and Midwest and into northern New England.
In the southern and southeastern United States, unseasonable warmth some 25 degrees or more above average will set the stage for strong to severe thunderstorms that present the risk for damaging winds and an isolated tornado or two.
It all comes as an intense high-altitude disturbance that dropped into Southern California Tuesday ejects from the Southwest. It will then intensify a nascent zone of low pressure over the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that will ride northeast before exiting interior New England by Friday.
That disturbance brought thunderstorms in Southern California on Tuesday, unleashing enough hail to whiten the ground surrounding the Rose Bowl Stadium. It ended a record streak without precipitation in the Sierras and even produced thundersnow just inland from San Diego.
Two days of strong to severe thunderstorms are likely with the storm system, though the passage of the instigating cold front has trended slower compared with previous forecasts. That means a lower potential for severe thunderstorms on Wednesday, since the front will move through eastern Texas and Oklahoma around dark, missing out on the daytime heating that would provide more energy for storms.
Storms may actually wait until around or after Wednesday night or early Thursday to get going along the Red River in southwestern Oklahoma and north-central Texas. They will sweep east along Highway 287 to the Interstate 35 corridor, with cities such as Dallas, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls, Tex., and Tulsa and Lawton-Fort Sill, Okla., included in a Level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” for severe weather advertised by the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.
A strong low-level jet stream means winds will be howling just a few thousand feet above the ground; some of the momentum will likely be mixed down to the surface in thunderstorms in the form of strong wind gusts. An isolated tornado can’t be ruled out amid the change in wind speed and/or direction with height, but the odds are low. Any twisters would probably be quick-hitting and brief.
Flood concerns that arise from ice jams are exacerbated if new water is also entering rivers and streams. In midwinter, this often happens either through rain or snowmelt, both of which could be concerns as temperatures surge into the 60s with this storm system. However, in this case, Gill notes that a period of warmth last week has melted a large portion of the snowpack, and the expectation that much of the Northeast will receive under an inch of rain limits the likelihood of significant runoff.
By Thursday, most of the snow will shift to the area from northern Oklahoma and central Kansas to Missouri and Illinois and across northern Indiana and Michigan. The band of greatest snowfall may only be 100 or 150 miles wide, which makes predicting the axis of most significant accumulations challenging. Subtle shifts of 10 or 20 miles will have major bearings on final amounts.
Similar totals will exist into central Illinois and northern Indiana, as well as in southern Michigan, where advisories, watches and warnings have yet to be hoisted. There’s a shot that somebody ends up with 10 to 14 inches of snow when all is said and done.
Gusts of 40 to 50 mph are possible in the Great Lakes vicinity, with 35 to 40 mph gusts in parts of the South.
Across south coastal New England, gusts topping 55 mph could be in the offing Thursday evening into Friday morning as momentum from aloft is mixed down. That will especially be true along the immediate coastline and in Plymouth and Bristol Counties, Mass., as well as on Cape Cod and the islands, which are under a high wind watch. Here, the winds could cause scattered power outages. | null | null | null | null | null |
Foreign dignitaries pay respects Feb. 16 at a Kyiv memorial honoring Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen in the years since Russia attacked and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine during a government-declared Unity Day. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainians woke up not knowing whether Feb. 16 was to be a date that would live in infamy. Or maybe in unity. Or maybe it would mark just another day of the grinding geopolitical intrigue they have been enduring for months.
For most, the day — which some breathless commentators had all but declared to be the date for Russian tanks to roll into Ukraine — felt like an ordinary Wednesday.
“I have to go to work, that is all,” said Oleksander, a retail manager walking down a street in central Kyiv. He declined to give his last name to protect his privacy. “My wife has to work. And after, we will meet for coffee.”
Like many Ukrainians, Klymenko was keeping up on developments. He knew the Russians had announced troops were being pulled back from the border but that NATO had yet to confirm any meaningful drawdown. Targeted cyberstrikes against Ukrainian businesses and agencies were still underway. He has seen predictions that the fighting would begin in the early morning hours.
Maidan square, the central-Kyiv plaza that was the birthplace of mass protests in 2014 which toppled Ukraine’s last pro-Russian government, had been draped with a huge Ukrainian flag. But the space was empty except for one group near the subway entrance gathered around a portable speaker.
Someone passed out handmade posters — “Ukraine is United” and “Unity Equals Love.” By the time the first strains of the national anthem began to play, about 100 people had gathered. They sang together in the cold as journalists looked on and two drones buzzed overhead. One car sounded a note of drive-by solidarity.
“Ukrainians are united,” said Kuleba, who was forced to flee the eastern city of Donetsk in 2014, the area now controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine’s war-battered Donbas region in the east. She has since lived in many parts of the country but never again in her eastern home. “My story is Ukraine’s story,” she said.
At Ukraine’s national parliament, small-business owners who have gathered for weeks to oppose potential changes to the country’s tax and retail laws paused in their protests to join in the moment of unity Wednesday morning.
“If you want to support Ukraine, why leave?” she asked. “You should be standing with us here today on Unity Day.”
Narozhnaya said she didn’t get swept up in Zelensky’s Unity Day plans, but his message of keeping calm resonated with her. Her 14-year-old son came home from school recently worried that a war would start soon.
Narozhnaya showed him three bags she keeps by the door: one with cash, one with important documents and one with food and a couple of toys. If anything happens, she told him, he should grab his 4-year-old sister and go to the bunker at the church in their neighborhood. If Mom isn’t around, then he should wait there for several days. If they get separated, they should meet at the local park the next Wednesday.
“But they’re family, and we love them,” she said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kevin Brasler is executive editor of Consumers’ Checkbook. He directs the editorial, research and publishing operations for the nonprofit consumer advocacy group, which for more than 40 years has been advising consumers on how to get the best service and prices on plumbers, veterinary care and much more. His work has put him in touch with top-rated pest control services, and helped him understand all the treatment options. His 2019 article “How to a find good pest control company” is based on Consumer Checkbook findings and reviews. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE— New York Observer editor Ken Kurson, right, publisher Jared Kushner, center, and CEO Joseph Meyer, attend The New York Observer’s 25th anniversary party, in New York, March 14, 2013. Kursen, who received a pardon from former President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, to state cyberstalking charges in New York in a deal that could eventually see the case dropped. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Choi Min-jeong (center) won her third medal of these Games, and her first gold, defending her 1,500-meter short track title. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP)
BEIJING — Scroll back a year on Choi Min-jeong’s Instagram and you’ll find a video of one of the South Korean short track star’s workouts. In the clip, she’s jumping side-to-side on the ends of what resembles a concaved plank. Her foot slams onto the left platform with a loud thump, before she launches to the right then explodes back to her left, all while tethered to a resistance band around her hips.
Each lunge sounds more powerful than the last, and it’s enough to make your quads weary just watching her bounce side to side like a thunderous ping-pong ball.
Such exercises certainly helped prepare Choi for the Olympic stage, but it was a less corporeal practice that helped the reigning gold medalist maintain her women’s 1,500-meter title Wednesday night, when she outclassed a field of recurrent champions to keep her crown.
“Before the game [I] made a lot of predictions and foresaw what was going to happen,” she said through an interpreter. “Because of those predictions, [I] was able to keep [my] leading position and finally won the game.”
Choi and compatriot Lee Yubin held leading positions early in the race before lending the role to China’s Han Yutong, a bronze medalist in the 3,000-meter relay, with 11 laps to go. Choi regained control, and as the pace accelerated with three laps left, she pulled away from Dutch world champion Suzanne Schulting, with Italy’s Arianna Fontana, the most decorated athlete in short track history, threatening from behind. Fontana won silver, edging Schulting who took bronze.
Visualizing such an impressive victory may not have been on Choi’s mind in 2018, when she said she entered the 1,500-meter final lacking experience having “never competed in any major events.”
Up until that point, Choi, then 19, had seven world championship gold medals and the 1,500-meter world record to her name. But she had never competed in the Winter Games. In her debut in PyeongChang, she won gold in both the women’s 3,000-meter relay and 1,500-meter race, the longest of the individual short track events.
Choi followed that success with seven world championship golds and three silvers. Despite suffering knee and ankle injuries in October, she entered the 1,500 final having won two more silver medals in the women’s 1,000 and 3,000 relay races in Beijing. Come Wednesday, she said she wanted to put on a show, and she did.
She cruised to a two-second victory in the quarterfinal, set an Olympic record in the semifinal (2 minutes 16.831 seconds), and in the final, outpaced late surges from Fontana, who entered the race as a 10-time Olympic medalist, and Schulting, perhaps the sport’s most dominant force after winning five gold medals at the last world championships.
“I didn’t know really what was going to happen because obviously there were a lot of good women here that were gonna fight, make it hard to be on the podium,” Fontana said. “… So being on the podium today it’s pretty big.”
Choi, now age 23, not only maintains her reign in the Olympic event, she extends the broader legacy of South Korean short track, which has carved an outsize place in the sport, as the Canadians have in curling, and as the Dutch have on the long track.
South Korea entered Beijing with 24 gold medals in short track, more than twice that of China, the next closest. China and Canada also lag behind South Korea’s 38 total medals. In Beijing, the country again has more short track medals than any other. It added a silver in the men’s 5,000-meter relay earlier Wednesday, before Choi won gold.
Earlier, Americans Kristen Santos, Corinne Stoddard and Julie Letai advanced past the quarterfinals, but all were gone by the final.
That race was reserved for Choi, who felt a responsibility to defend her crown. She wanted another gold medal. She visualized it, and she earned it on Wednesday. | null | null | null | null | null |
The company said in the presentation that it is hoping to raise $50 million in a third round of investment, known as a “Series C.” The company raised $30 million in a similar funding round last summer that valued the company at $130 million.
The presentation included the logos for a number of companies, including Airbnb, Lyft and Uber. Ton-That said they were “examples of the types of firms that have expressed interest in Clearview’s facial recognition technology for the purposes of consent-based identity verification, since there are a lot of issues with crimes that happen on their platforms.”
Clearview also said in the presentation that its systems could be used to solve “tough physical security problems” in retail and commercial real estate markets, and it included the logos of retail superstore companies such as Target and Walmart. Those companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Race in America: History Matters with Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) & Janai S. Nelson
MR. CAPEHART: Good morning. I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live in another in our series Race in America: History Matters. February is Black History Month, so we’re continuing our examination of the role Black women have played throughout American history. My first guest today is historic in her own right, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, Democrat from Ohio and chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Chairwoman Beatty, welcome to Washington Post Live.
REP. BEATTY: Thank you so much for having me, and what a wonderful time in history to be here with you.
MR. CAPEHART: And a reminder to our audience, we want you to join in on the conversation, so please tweet your questions and comments to the handle @PostLive. So, Chairwoman, who are some of the women who have inspired you?
REP. BEATTY: Well, it's interesting. When you read history matters, it does. I start with the strong Black women in my family, from my grandmother, my aunt, and my mother. And it's interesting. I saw Nannie Helen Burroughs’ name come across the screen. She was a best friend to my grandmother. I grew up in the church. And so I guess I would include her in the beginning. But certainly, there are people like Rosa Parks. I grew up hearing about Rosa Parks and her giving up--not giving up her seat on the bus in 1955. And then of course, Harriet Tubman, and you have Shirley Chisholm. And then the young folks of today. I look up to Yolanda King, you know, a teenager, the only granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., who I've had the opportunity to spend time with.
But Rosa Parks started it all for me. She taught me to stand up for what you believe in no matter what, even if it's getting arrested. Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer kind of grounded me to stand up, to speak out. And then a local woman by the name of Edna Charity Earley, good friends with Barbara Jordan, first person to tell me a Black woman could serve on a board as a volunteer, but a paid volunteer. So, she exposed me to a lot of things. So, I'm grounded with women like them--historic women.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. And so you talked a lot about Rosa Parks, which explains why you introduced legislation to establish Rosa Parks Day as a federal holiday. What's the significance of such a national holiday?
REP. BEATTY: I think it's very important for me, because she opens our eyes as the mother of modern civil rights movement. You know, it was Rosa Parks that gave us so many of our legal giants in the movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., because of what she did. Can you imagine for one year refusing to get on a bus even if that was your only way to earn an income by getting or going to work? But people stuck--they stuck together and fought for what they believed in, and it made a difference. And that's why in Ohio, I was the first to introduce the Rosa Parks Day legislation.
MR. CAPEHART: We have lost the connection--we have lost the connection with Chairwoman Beatty.
REP. BEATTY: Can you hear me now? Am I still not here?
MR. CAPEHART: Or maybe we've all lost the connection.
MR. CAPEHART: I'm not sure what--not sure what happened, but I'll take all the blame for the dropped--for the dropped signal. You were answering a question about the significance of having Rosa Parks Day be a national holiday.
REP. BEATTY: Well, I think it's very important because in Ohio many years ago, following Rosa Parks’ life, I introduced legislation that became the first in the United States as a bill to designate Rosa Parks Day, coming to Congress and continuing to work on that and be an advocate. She did so much for this country. The mother of the civil rights movement, she helped us elevate Martin Luther King, Jr. It was much more than just that December 1st day in 1955. It was her work that she went on to do with voter--voting rights, voter education, getting people registered to vote.
MR. CAPEHART: All right, because of our technical difficulties, our time is limited. So, I can't have you here and not talk about the big, big news, and that is President Biden's impending decision, impending selection of a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time. Whoever that person is, what--talk about the significance of having her on the high court on society and young Black girls in particular.
REP. BEATTY: I think this is a historic moment that will change the way we look at the justice system. But it's so much more than the justice system. Think about the culture shift. Think about what will happen when we look at all of the issues that we're fighting for--civil rights, voting rights, criminal rights. It will make a difference because she will bring herself, her culture, her justice, her freedom, a different voice that will be a voice that is void right now for us having it. It'll make a difference to not just Black girls, but it will make a difference to girls and women of all races, of all ethnicity.
MR. CAPEHART: There's a lot of concern, as you well know, that the president's pick will be the target of unprecedented racism and misogyny and sexism. Do you share that concern?
REP. BEATTY: Oh, absolutely. We saw it with First Lady Michelle Obama, who was just stellar in every avenue. We saw it with Vice President Kamala Harris, another giant and person of stellar intellect and experience. But we're ready. The nation is ready. We will stand up with whomever the president appoints.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, Senator John Kennedy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee--so he'll have a vote whether the nominee--the nomination advances out of committee--recently said, and I quote, “I want to nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog.” Talk about how offensive that is.
REP. BEATTY: Systemic racism, ignorance. It makes no sense. When you look at the candidates that are being vetted, I mean, let's talk about their academic, let's talk about their judicial opinions. Let's talk about what they will bring to the bench.
MR. CAPEHART: Congresswoman Cori Bush recently said, and I quote, “We shouldn't be pitting Black women against each other for this Supreme Court seat.” I know in my gut what that means. What does that admonition mean to you?
REP. BEATTY: Oh, I share that statement, and I've even said it. Look, when you look at the women who are out there, for my opinion, they're overqualified. They bring everything that you would want in a Supreme Court justice. And so we shouldn't be picking winners and losers, because they're all winners. The fact that your name is mentioned, makes you a winner, because the president will only bring the best, and all of them are the best.
MR. CAPEHART: No argument here from me. The Washington Post recently reported that some activists privately worry that President Biden and the Democratic Party are not moving fast enough to name the potential nominee and pushing her through. What is your view of this?
REP. BEATTY: Oh, I don't necessarily support that. He said during his campaign what he would do. Many of us civil rights leaders, me as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and other members issued statements that we did not want it delayed. We wanted him to keep his promise. And with--in less than 48 hours, he spoke to the nation and said that he would be appointing a Black female to the Supreme Court.
REP. BEATTY: You know, you recently asked Congressman Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, to put on a mask before boarding the Capitol subway system. And you said Congressman Rogers then poked you in the back and told you to get on the train. What did you take away from that incident and the congressman’s subsequent apology?
REP. BEATTY: Well, I took away that we still have incivilities, that people feel that they are privileged and that they can do and say anything they want to. But I think I sent a strong message to him. I’m about leadership and dignity and civility. But he clearly picked the wrong woman on that day. And I think he understands that. I refuse to accept his personal apology. He did a public insult, high profile, so he needed a high-profile apology.
So, the Congressional Black Caucus went to the steps in support. I was never so proud of our Congressional Black Caucus and our leadership. Speaker Pelosi demanded a public apology. He gave it, and I hope he's learned a lesson. But certainly, America knows that we are not taking the incivility, the systemic racism, and that he could disrespect me.
MR. CAPEHART: Yeah, it went beyond just your run of the mill incivility, what he said to you, and I'm not going to repeat it here. You've been in Congress, correct me if I'm wrong, since 1999. So, you've been in the body, in the House for a long time. This incivility that you're talking about and that you have experienced, has it gotten worse over time since you've been serving?
REP. BEATTY: I think it’s worse, but now I haven't been in Congress since 1999. I just want to--
MR. CAPEHART: Okay.
REP. BEATTY: I was in the State House during that time.
MR. CAPEHART: State House, okay.
REP. BEATTY: I moved to Congress in 2013.
MR. CAPEHART: Still--okay. Still, that’s a long time.
REP. BEATTY: Let me just say--it is a long time. And let me just say, yes, it has gotten worse. There would be a time that we would disagree, but we would disagree--we wouldn't be disagreeable. Now there's a lack of decorum and respect for the House. And I think much of that is from the last administration, the president who bullied people, a president who was disrespectful, a president at times that was ignorant. And I think those who are following him, in my opinion, fall into the same footsteps--ignorant, not having respect for the decorum of the United States Congress. And I think America really knows that when you see what's happening, the disrespect. That's a lack of leadership, a lack of understanding how you represent the people you serve. America is bigger than that, better than that, and deserves better than that.
MR. CAPEHART: We have a couple minutes left, but I’ve got to get you on one more thing before I let you go. As you know, the House of Representatives passed the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, it went to the Senate, and it's not going anywhere over there. Now the conversation is all about reforming the Electoral Count Act. What do you make of the efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act?
REP. BEATTY: I think it's in the right direction. I simply don't think that it's enough. It is a great start. It's progress. But we're not giving up on the voting rights or the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. They're still our top priorities.
And I equate it to when John Lewis and Martin Luther King set out to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They had all the intentions of crossing the bridge, but they turned around, but they didn't give up. They came back and they made progress. And we will do the same.
MR. CAPEHART: Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, thank you very, very much for coming to Washington Post Live again. My apologies for the technical difficulties.
REP. BEATTY: That's all right. Thank you, and I'll come back again.
MR. CAPEHART: All right, great.
Coming up, Janai S. Nelson, associate director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
MS. UMOH: Hello, everyone. I’m Ruth Umoh, editor at Fortune. And I’m thrilled to be in conversation with two accomplished leaders in the gender and justice movement who are helping survivors find healing and justice. Joining me today is Dani Ayers, CEO of Me Too International; and Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. Welcome, both of you.
MS. AYERS: Thank you.
MS. UMOH: Your two organizations, along with Time’s Up, launched this incredible initiative called We, As Ourselves, which in many ways is a call to action to center the voices and experiences of Black survivors and to really create the cultural conditions for Black survivors to be heard and supported. Dani, let’s kick things off with you. What are those cultural conditions, and what’s missing or even incorrect in the conversation about Black survivors?
MS. AYERS: Yeah, thank you for this question. The legacy of enslavement, the commodification of Black bodies, the cultural myths about Black people’s sexuality, the idea that Black people don’t feel pain in the way that White folks do, the adultification of Black girls--all of these things are conditions which leave Black folks unprotected and vulnerable. And it fuels the silencing of Black stories. Black women are often disbelieved, disregarded, and sometimes retraumatized and harmed in telling our stories. So this project is about centering Black survivors, creating spaces where they can share their stories and experiences, and we can shift the behaviors and cultural narratives that harm and silence Black survivors and build new practices where Black survivors are believed and supported.
MS. UMOH: Yeah. Perfect segue into my next question, Fatima. The name for this initiative stems from a Paula Giddings piece, and it was meant to highlight the fullness of a Black woman's identity beyond how others would like to categorize her. As you know very well, Black woman and survivors are a force in this country in ways we see and in many ways that we don't. Talk to me about how Black women are shaping our future.
MS. GOSS GRAVES: You know, this project is unapologetically for Black survivors, by Black survivors, and we've been clear about that from the beginning. Oftentimes, Black women's experiences are thought of as adjacent to other systems. You know, there's a big focus on Black women as voters every four years who show up reliably. There's a focus on Black women as mothers and as caretakers, especially in this time. But the opportunity to focus on Black survivors, but Black women in particular, for their needs, for their entrance, not through the gaze of systems that don't always show up for them, that don't always love and support them, that is exciting for us and we think overdue. It's almost our love letter to them.
MS. UMOH: Yeah. Well, let's take a couple of steps back, because what's interesting about this initiative and so much of your collective work is that you explicitly discussed the need to find joy, and to not let people take that from you. And that's particularly true for survivors. What brings each of you joy right now. And, Dani, perhaps you can kick this one off.
MS. AYERS: Yeah, sure. We're really excited at Me Too because this February during Black History Month, we're really celebrating Black joy, and see joy as resistance, see joy as part of the work to interrupt sexual violence. And so I'm really excited and having so much joy around, one, the completion of our survivor leadership training, which brought together survivors who do not have historically leadership roles in their community, to really bring healing into those communities, and then the launch of our survivors sanctuary which will be available to the public in Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April. And it's a self-guided healing journey for survivors in 5-, 10- and 25-minute exercises that center mind, body, and integrative, and will be free and available for everyone starting in April.
MS. UMOH: Fantastic. And, Fatima?
MS. GOSS GRAVES: You know, every day for the last couple of weeks, I have woken up with such great joy because I get to be a part of the work to confirm the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. And it has brought me great joy over these last couple of weeks as the country has been introduced to the many Black women who could be in that seat, who could frankly fill up multiples of Supreme Courts, there's such a deep bench.
And I think we get to dream about what that world will be to have a Black woman contributing her perspective on our laws, given how much our laws impact Black women in this country. So, it's not just that it feels long overdue. It really is a joyful celebration of Black Women's leadership and experience and imprint on this nation.
MS. UMOH: Very well said and such an inspirational way to end. Fatima and Dani, thank you both for your time. And now back to The Washington Post.
MR. CAPEHART: Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live and another installment in our series on "Race in America: History Matters," co‑produced with the Capehart Podcast.
We continue our examination of the role of Black women throughout American history with Janai S. Nelson, associate director‑counsel and incoming president of the NAACP Legal and Educational‑‑Legal Defense and Educational Fund next month.
Ms. Nelson, welcome to Capehart on Washington Post Live.
MS. NELSON: Thank you, Jonathan. It's wonderful to see you.
MR. CAPEHART: So, as we know, February is Black History Month. Black women are the foundation of that history, American history. Who are the women who inspired you?
MS. NELSON: There are so many women that have inspired me throughout my life and throughout my career. First and foremost, my mother, she is the rock upon which I stand, and I love her dearly, and she has been an inspiration throughout my life.
There are so many professional women, so many women lawyers that I admire and look up to. I'd say that among the many are, of course, Constance Baker Motley, who is in the iconography of what it means to be an incredibly zealous and brilliant advocate, fearless, relentless, and committed to the cause of equal justice and civil rights.
She also is one of the first female lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She was one of the architects of Brown v. Board of Education, which as you know dismantled American apartheid, and she was a mother. She was a community member. She was a second‑‑a first generation, second generation immigrant. I mean, she checked so many different boxes in terms of what it means to be an American and what it means to be a leader in this country, and she is one of the women that I admire greatly. But I could probably go on and on about millions of others that I do as well.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, let's keep talking about her because Tomiko Brown‑Nagin, author of the new book, "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality," recently told Washington Post Live, quote, "Historical significance and leadership are essentially coded male." Talk about the impact that's had on recognition of the contributions of Black women in our history.
MS. NELSON: I think one of the easiest ways to point to the limitations that have been placed on Black women is the fact that we still have not yet had a Black woman as a Supreme Court justice, and you have extraordinarily qualified people like Constance Baker Motley who was a federal district court judge, in fact, the very first Black woman to become a federal district court judge, but was not elevated as she should have been based on her record, based on her experience, based on her enormous potential to be one of the most excellent jurists that this country has ever known.
And that glass ceiling that is, you know, doubly thick for Black women is something that I'm acutely aware of in the profession still, and it's a loss for this country not to have the best and the brightest persons available for any and all positions in this country. Black women have been shut out of those positions for too long. Constance Baker Motley was a trailblazer, but we're talking about decades ago. And the numbers of firsts that are still happening today are far too many.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, let's talk about why that glass ceiling is doubly thick, maybe even triply thick for Black women. You've said Black women, quote, "simultaneously endure entrenched racism and sexism, the compounding effects of which often mean that their experiences of violence and racism are suppressed or overlooked." Now that we're about to see a Black woman named, nominated to the Supreme Court, talk about how that entrenched racism and sexism will bear itself out in that instance.
MS. NELSON: Well, I think we can all be optimistic and hopeful that it won't be the unfortunate display that we've seen in the Senate with respect to other nominees, but we are bracing ourselves for this to be a significant interrogation of the many qualified nominees that might become the final nominee of this White House.
I am certain that we will see sexism. We will see racism. We will see the intersection of those two in the questioning and the doubts about qualifications, but what has been wonderful is looking at the numerous lists of people that would be overqualified, as some have said, to be on the Supreme Court. And so we're ready for that conversation. We're ready for that battle, and we're ready to point out and call out those instances where Black women are being subject to a different standard or being interrogated in ways that are inappropriate or where assumptions are made about their capacity that are unfounded and unfair and unjust.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, speaking of that, I was just trying to find the full quote from Senator John Kennedy who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, somebody who will have a vote in whether the nominee gets voted out of committee, and he said he had two concerns. The first one he mentioned was "I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog." Now, in that statement, race isn't mentioned. Sex isn't mentioned. But I know in my gut what he's talking about. Talk about how‑‑assuming you also find that offensive, why is that offensive?
MS. NELSON: It is deeply offensive, and it calls into question his ability to be an objective member of the Senate to properly advise and consent on whether a future nominee is, in fact, qualified and appropriate. That is laden with assumptions about gender and sex and capacity and frivolity that is just embedded in that statement. It is deeply concerning that he would feel that he has license to make that statement in advance of vetting a nominee, and I think we need to pay close attention and begin to hold elected officials accountable when they made statements that reveal that they are perhaps incapable themselves of fulfilling the duties of the positions for which they've been elected.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. I have said that the names of the women who have been mentioned as potential nominees to the Supreme Court are‑‑they're more qualified than a lot of the people who were nominated before them and certainly who could be nominated after them, but, you know, one of the names that's been mentioned as a potential nominee is Sherrilyn Ifill, who currently runs the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for about another month until you succeed her. But talk about the significance of a Black woman, no matter who is chosen, sitting on the high court.
MS. NELSON: Well, it will be something that I think will be a game changer in terms of how we understand the law and its impact on a segment of society that doesn't often get its day in court and doesn't often have its voice heard, and that is the segment of Black women who fuel this country in so many ways, who are on the front lines defending our democracy, putting their bodies on the line, and compromising themselves in many ways to ensure that we uphold our constitutional ideals.
We're talking about Black women who suffer significant wage gap in the economy, Black women who are becoming incarcerated at an increasingly rapid rate, and Black women who are at the margins of society in so many ways. We will now have someone on the court who has some sense of what any one of those experiences might be and whether they've personally experienced it, observed it, have relatives who may have those experiences, or just having been and being a member of that broader community makes them more attuned to those conditions. And I look forward to seeing that perspective borne out in the decisions that are made in the colloquy among the justices on the court and to influence how we interpret laws that will affect Black women, all women, and other marginalized groups in our society.
MR. CAPEHART: Janai, will the‑‑my apologies. Will the LDF play a role in helping to shepherd the eventual nominee through the process?
MS. NELSON: Well, the Legal Defense Fund has been actively involved in judicial nominations for decades. We take this very seriously. As you might imagine, as an organization whose trade is to litigate in addition to our many other advocacy tools, we care deeply about the composition of the Supreme Court and deeply about the composition of all of our federal courts and state courts. We have advocated vigorously for more diversity on the court, diversity not only of race and ethnicity but of professional background, and I have to say we're quite pleased to see the judiciary diversifying rapidly under President Biden's leadership.
However, I will say that in this process, we will be paying close attention to how this nominee is vetted and shepherded through the process. We will not stand by and allow a nominee to be disrespected or disregarded inappropriately. Any nominee should be subject to the scrutiny that any other justice would be subject to. We always‑‑or often write a report and dig deep into the records of any nominee for the Supreme Court, and we will do just the same for this nominee. However, this nominee must be treated with the same respect and the same fairness that any nominee for the Supreme Court would be, and that is something that we will be paying close attention to.
MR. CAPEHART: What do you say to those people who might‑‑as with the Senator Kennedy comment, where it doesn't, like, flash bright red, doesn't have all the keywords that get people to think, oh, sexism, oh, racism, what do you say to folks who will hear‑‑because you and I both know we are going to hear some very coded, thinly veiled racist things, sexist things, misogynistic things about the nominee. What do you say to folks to prepare them for things that might not to them be obvious in the moment?
MS. NELSON: Well, what I want to say, first and foremost, is that the media has a very significant responsibility in this. The media has an obligation to point out those subtleties, to disrobe what are cloaked offenses and assumptions and presumptions about this nominee that might be unfair and that might tilt the process in a way that compromises what should be an appropriate outcome. So the media to me is, first and foremost, responsible in translating some of this for the public, and of course, organizations like the Legal Defense Fund who are out there talking about the way in which the court is critically important as a third arm of our government, that any process that leads to the confirmation of a justice must be free and fair of bias and prejudice. And we will, as I said, be paying close attention to how this process unfolds.
And this administration also has an obligation to protect its nominee and to make sure that that nominee is treated fairly.
So there are a lot of ways in which we can call it out and ways in which we can make it more difficult for those types of assaults of missives to land or have any effect, but the first way to do that is to name it and unveil it for what it is and not let it be misinterpreted by anyone, by any member of the public who may not fully appreciate some of the subtleties of the process.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. Let's switch gears here because this month marks 10 years since the death of Trayvon Martin. Talk about the impact of his death and the Black Lives Matter movement sparked by it.
MS. NELSON: His death and so many others have fueled a movement that I think has been one of the most transformative movements of our generation. It's been a catalyst for uprisings and an outpouring of action and emotion, not just in this country but across the globe, and it is still what I think is going to fuel what I know will be a reenvisioning of public safety in this country and a rededication to core principles of what it means to be an American and to uphold the ideals of this country that have never been completely fulfilled.
I think seeing that type of injustice up close, seeing the killing of young Black children indiscriminately by law enforcement, by would‑be law enforcement, vigilantes, those who want to take the law into their own hands, those are instances where racism just can't be denied, where the denigration of Black humanity and Black dignity is something that you simply cannot turn away from. That is why we saw so many people pouring into the streets in 2020 when we saw the heinous murder and callous murder of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis, and that, I believe, is something that is talking to the hearts and the core of our American public and saying we will take no more of this.
Of course, there have been divisions since. It's a complicated issue to solve, and it is not something that will be solved overnight. If it were, it would have been solved a long time ago, but I do believe that it is the catalyst that will galvanize young people across generations, across ethnic backgrounds and economic backgrounds to have us rethink the society we want to be in the United States.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, as you know, the fight for equality and social justice is often described as one step forward, two steps back. Where are we right now in that continuum do you think?
MS. NELSON: Well, you know, we've made a number of strides. I definitely would say that we are holding. We're trying to hold the line, not to swing, not to have the pendulum swing backwards, but there's no way that we can deny the fact that there is retrenchment, that there is a resurgence of bold White supremacy unlike anything we've seen in recent decades. We've always known that it was there, that it was latent, that it was an invisible force working and wreaking havoc in our society.
But now it's been laid bare. We see protests in the street. We see attacks not only on individuals but threats to HBCUs. We're seeing school boards and teachers and administrators being threatened for simply telling the truth of our history, and there's no denying that that is regression, that that is not a step forward. That is certainly a step back.
But I don't think we have to step all the way back. There is still an opportunity to use this moment to recognize and to show that the people who are advancing this very divisive movement are a minority in this country.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm.
MS. NELSON: And it's easy to forget that because their actions are often headlines, and their actions are often‑‑there's often a spotlight on what they do and not enough attention on the ways in which we are unified against those efforts. But there's more that we can do to redouble our opposition to this effort, to take us backwards, to make sure that we have the backs of our teachers and the backs of our students who want a culturally responsive, inclusive, culturally, and critically rigorous education, which is what the confrontation of our history requires and demands and something that we should embrace.
Our children are strong enough for this. They can handle the truth of our history because it will only fortify them in the fight to make the future even better.
MR. CAPEHART: Janai, what does it mean to you to be taking over as president and director‑counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund?
MS. NELSON: It means the honor of a lifetime. This is a legacy institution, a Black‑founded legacy institution that has been at the center of holding our democracy accountable to itself, and to be at the helm at this critical time when our democracy is at a crossroads is not only a challenge. It is a privilege, and it is an honor, and that is mainly because the work of past presidents and director‑counsels who have developed and nurtured this organization and have solidified its reputation. And the staff that fuels the work that we do and the clients who are at the center of everything that we do at the Legal Defense Fund, it's why we exist. They are the core of our mission, and it is, as I said, the honor of a lifetime to be in this position at this moment.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. What legacy does Sherrilyn Ifill leave, and what's the biggest lesson you've learned from her?
MS. NELSON: Well, I think it's hard to summarize Sherrilyn's legacy in a short sound bite, but I would say she's left a legacy of transformation and visionary leadership. She has shown not only through her brilliant legal strategy and thinking through of the critical interventions that were needed on the front of litigation and research and policy and organizing but also the ways in which institutions like the Legal Defense Fund need to be fortified in order to ensure that there are checks on our society when they face their darkest moments as we did and as we still are facing now. So her legacy will be one of transformation and fortification, and that is the legacy that I plan to build on with the wonderful staff and team that we have here at the Legal Defense Fund.
And there's so many lessons that I've learned in the nearly nine years that she and I have been partnering together here at the Legal Defense Fund, but the takeaway really is to be unrelenting and unapologetic about our commitment and dedication to equality and justice, that those are just causes for which we hold no shame and, in fact, great pride and great passion for advancing on behalf of Black communities and on behalf of our democracy as a whole.
MR. CAPEHART: Janai S. Nelson, currently associate director‑counsel and‑‑but incoming president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, thank you so much for coming to Capehart and Washington Post Live.
MS. NELSON: Thank you, Jonathan. Good to be with you.
MR. CAPEHART: And good luck.
MS. NELSON: Thank you.
MR. CAPEHART: And thank you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com.
Once again, I'm Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Thanks for watching Capehart on Washington Post Live. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the southern and southeastern United States, unseasonable warmth 25 degrees or more above average will set the stage for strong to severe thunderstorms that present the risk for damaging winds and an isolated tornado or two.
It all comes as an intense high-altitude disturbance that dropped into Southern California on Tuesday ejects from the Southwest. That disturbance will then intensify a nascent zone of low pressure over the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that will ride northeast before exiting interior New England by Friday.
That disturbance brought thunderstorms in Southern California on Tuesday, unleashing enough hail to whiten the ground surrounding the Rose Bowl Stadium. It ended a record streak without precipitation in the Sierras and produced thundersnow just inland from San Diego.
Two days of strong to severe thunderstorms are likely with the storm system, although the passage of the instigating cold front has trended slower, compared with previous forecasts. That means a lower potential for severe thunderstorms on Wednesday, since the front will move through eastern Texas and Oklahoma around dark, missing out on the daytime heating that would provide more energy for storms.
Storms may wait until around or after Wednesday night or early Thursday to get going along the Red River in southwestern Oklahoma and north-central Texas. They will sweep east along Highway 287 to the Interstate 35 corridor, with cities such as Dallas, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls, Tex., and Tulsa and Lawton-Fort Sill, Okla., included in a Level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” for severe weather advertised by the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.
A strong low-level jet stream means winds will be howling just a few thousand feet above the ground; some of the momentum will probably be mixed down to the surface in thunderstorms in the form of strong wind gusts. An isolated tornado can’t be ruled out amid the change in wind speed and/or direction with height, but the odds are low. Any twisters would probably be quick-hitting and brief.
Flood concerns that arise from ice jams are exacerbated if new water is also entering rivers and streams. In midwinter, this often happens through rain or snowmelt, both of which could be concerns as temperatures surge into the 60s with this storm system. However, in this case, Gill notes that a period of warmth last week has melted a large portion of the snowpack, and the expectation that much of the Northeast will receive less than an inch of rain limits the likelihood of significant runoff.
By Thursday, most of the snow will shift to the area from northern Oklahoma and central Kansas to Missouri and Illinois and across northern Indiana and Michigan. The band of greatest snowfall may be only 100 or 150 miles wide, which makes predicting the axis of most significant accumulations challenging. Subtle shifts of 10 or 20 miles will have major bearings on final amounts.
Similar totals will exist into central Illinois and northern Indiana, as well as in southern Michigan, where advisories, watches and warnings have yet to be hoisted. Somebody could end up with 10 to 14 inches of snow when all is said and done.
Gusts of 40 to 50 mph are possible in the Great Lakes vicinity, with 35-to-40-mph gusts in parts of the South.
Across south coastal New England, gusts topping 55 mph could be in the offing Thursday evening into Friday morning as momentum from aloft is mixed down. That will especially be true along the immediate coastline and in Plymouth and Bristol counties in Massachusetts, as well as on Cape Cod and the islands, which are under a high wind watch. Here, the winds could cause scattered power outages. | null | null | null | null | null |
Facial recognition companies have traditionally built algorithms that can be used to search through their clients’ photo databases, such as driver’s license images or jail mug shots. But Ton-That has argued in testimony to public officials that swiping photos from the Internet has allowed the company to create a powerful crime-fighting tool. “Every photo in the data set is a potential clue that could save a life, provide justice to an innocent victim, prevent a wrongful identification, or exonerate an innocent person,” he said Wednesday in a statement to The Post, an echo of similar assertions he has made in public forums.
The company says in the presentation that it is hoping to raise $50 million in a third round of investment, known as a “Series C.” The company raised $30 million in a similar funding round last summer that valued the company at $130 million.
The company says in the presentation that it could “revolutionize” how workers in the gig economy are screened and that its technology could be used to evaluate people on apps used for dating or finding babysitters, house cleaners or repair contractors.
The presentation includes the logos for a number of companies, including Airbnb, Lyft and Uber. Ton-That said they were “examples of the types of firms that have expressed interest in Clearview’s facial recognition technology for the purposes of consent-based identity verification, since there are a lot of issues with crimes that happen on their platforms.”
Clearview also says in the presentation that its systems could be used to solve “tough physical security problems” in retail and commercial real estate markets, and it included the logos of retail superstore companies such as Target and Walmart. Those companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The company says in the presentation that it has developed other systems beyond facial recognition, including for recognizing license plates and “movement tracking,” and that it is developing or researching a number of other surveillance techniques: camera software to detect guns and drugs; “gait recognition” systems to identify a person based on how they walk; “image to location” systems to pinpoint a person’s whereabouts based on a photo’s background; and “contactless fingerprint” recognitions systems to scan a person’s identity from afar.
In a September letter to the U.K. Surveillance Camera Commissioner office, Ton-That defended the use of real-time facial recognition watch lists for “people of interest, missing people, those with outstanding warrants for serious offenses, or for a specific security-related purpose known in advance.”
Clearview says in the presentation that its expansion plans would include spending millions of dollars more on data purchases and engineers specializing in data acquisition and that it would build out its teams specializing in commercial, federal and international sales. It says it also wants to create a “developer ecosystem” that would allow other companies to create applications using its data.
The company said that it expects to increase its annual federal revenue to $6 million this year, thanks to active expansions with DHS and the FBI and an “imminent” expansion from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that it hopes to “increase overall usage” by state and local police agencies by 300 percent.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, signed a one-year contract with Clearview in September that could extend to three years, totaling $1.5 million, federal records show. The FBI signed an $18,000 one-year contract in December; the presentation says it will grow to $2.4 million this year. The DEA declined to comment, and the FBI and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
The presentation also says Clearview is “achieving rapid international expansion,” including signing deals in Panama and Costa Rica and pursuing other business in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The company declined to offer further details, and those deals could not be confirmed.
The Clearview document includes overt appeals to American patriotism, and the company has, as is common among some tech companies, argued that its success is imperative to stopping foreign powers from gaining the lead in surveillance technology development. The company calls itself “Made in the USA” and, in several slides, compares itself with companies from China, Russia and Israel by affixing its logo next to an American flag.
But those arguments, Poulson said, should not distract from the company’s expanded ambitions — or its appetite for business far beyond the U.S. government’s interests.
“They’re explicitly trying to leverage the controversy about their company as a way to argue they’re prominent,” Poulson said. “And they’re combining that with a nationalist rhetoric — that the U.S. has to out-surveil China to protect civil liberties. It makes no sense.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Taffy Abel, a pathbreaking Native American hockey player, hid his Chippewa identity to avoid being sent to an Indian boarding school
Because of his appearance, Abel was able to blend in. “He wasn’t like Willie O’Ree or Jackie Robinson, who would have been judged by the color of their skin,” Stubbs said, referring to the first Black players in the NHL and Major League Baseball, respectively. “Taffy would have been judged by his production on the ice.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Because the two were never able to marry legally, payment from VA stopped when Gannoe died, and Martin wasn’t eligible for survivor benefits paid through the Social Security Administration. Martin’s monthly income decreased to $800 and mostly came from federal welfare, he said. For heterosexual couples, the only provision to receive Social Security survivor benefits is to have been married for at least nine months in most cases.
“It’s truly impossible to overstate the significance of these recent developments that have unlocked the pathway to benefits, both in terms of the number of people affected, and how profoundly it impacts each person,” said Peter Renn, a lawyer with Lambda Legal. | null | null | null | null | null |
''That’s what we play for,'' said Granato before the gold-medal game. ''When we play Canada, it’s just a battle. We just don’t like each other on the ice.''
Canada won the battle and an Olympic gold medal in its national winter sport for the first time since the men’s team won in 1952. It was the beginning of a 24-game Olympics win streak and the first of four straight gold medals.
The squads were so evenly matched that the tie game required overtime, and then a shootout, and then the shootout required extra shots. Finally, Team USA’s Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson finessed a puck into Canada’s net, and 20-year-old U.S. goaltender Maddie Rooney stopped a shot by Canada’s Meghan Agosta, and the U.S. team had its second Olympic gold medal.
The U.S. team in Beijing is missing star center Brianna Decker, one of the world’s best players, who went out with a leg injury in the team’s first game in Beijing. | null | null | null | null | null |
When it comes to the sport of mixed martial arts, Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson has just about done it all. He holds the record for most title defenses in Ultimate Fighting Championship history. He won the flyweight grand prix in ONE Championship, the MMA organization in which he now competes. He’s finished opponents with techniques so unprecedented they seem like they’re straight out of a video game.
Johnson, who has competed for MMA organizations in which income could easily be disrupted by injuries and fight cancellations, knows a thing or two about precarity. And yet, the sheer uncertainty of live-streaming has become too much for even the well-traveled, 35-year-old former champion.
“Wake up every day and stream full time? … Oh god no. I couldn’t do it,” Johnson said during an interview on The Washington Post’s Friday live stream, Press Play. “Sometimes I feel bad for some of the streamers; one moment they have a s---load [of subscribers], and then next thing you know, they take a little time off, and their subscriber numbers just drop. I’ll play video games because I enjoy it, but I don’t want it to be my livelihood.”
“My schedule basically consisted of this: I would go to the gym, train for a session, stream afterward, then get my second session in, come home, eat dinner, kiss my wife, and then go downstairs and stream for another two hours,” Johnson said. At the time, he was making around $3,000 per month from streaming, enough to cover his mortgage. “But then it came to a point where I was like, ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t get to go to bed with my wife. I’m absolutely exhausted. It’s just not worth it.’ ”
“I’ve talked to so many other streamers who are like, ‘Man, I want to get in shape,’ and I’m like, ‘Go to the gym. You don’t have a set schedule,’ " Johnson said. "[But they say], ‘Well, I do.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, if your subscribers don’t care about your health and well-being, then maybe you shouldn’t worry about streaming.’ ”
There is some hope for streamers who want to lead more balanced lives; platforms like YouTube are offering contracts that demand fewer streaming hours than Twitch, and content creators can proliferate their greatest hits across multiple platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Twitter as well as Twitch, thus diversifying their income. But still, it’s more apparent than ever that only an incredibly small percentage of creators at the top actually succeed, leaving the rest to toil ceaselessly in pursuit of an erratically moving target. Johnson is not the only sports star to embrace that grind — Formula One racecar drivers like Lando Norris achieved bona fide Twitch stardom as a result of the pandemic. And other MMA fighters like Sean O’Malley, Max Holloway and Quinton Jackson have followed in Johnson’s footsteps. But Johnson has been doing it longer than most, and he’s hit his limit. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: For a more perfect union, start at the beginning
Holly Metcalf Kinyon's 1776 broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)
And the key starting point can be found in the Declaration of Independence. President Abraham Lincoln wrote that it is our “apple of gold.” He recognized our Constitution as the source of our nation’s first Civil War, having failed to abide by the “laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in protecting everyone’s inalienable rights. He labeled our Constitution as the Declaration’s frame of silver. And to this day, every U.S. policymaker and public defender swears an oath to protect this persistently dysfunctional frame as the inalienable rights and liberty of billions are abused.
The chaos growing around us domestically, over our borders and around our economic/military might will not cease until a majority of us practice the patriotism embedded in our founding document. We must align on transforming its flawed engineering that gave us an un-united 50 “independent” states, two polarized political parties and thousands (if not millions) of competing special interests.
Chuck Woolery, Rockville
David Von Drehle’s Feb. 13 op-ed will resonate with those old enough to remember four television stations (counting National Educational Television, now PBS), one or two Top 40 radio stations and daily newspapers read by everyone else in your town.
As a music lover, I get depressed when I hear people say, “I hate country music” or “I hate rap.” When our culture was more “common,” they would have been exposed to all kinds of music. A random hour of listening to Top 40 could include the Rolling Stones (rock), Frank Sinatra (pop), the Supremes (R&B) and Roger Miller (country). You wound up appreciating these genres because you had to listen to them to get to the songs you liked.
A much broader spectrum of information and entertainment has its benefits, but we have lost something in the process.
Daniel V. Yager, Alexandria | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. judge in D.C. is weighing whether to keep the most high-profile defendant charged in Jan. 6 Capitol attack behind bars until trial.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, has been charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. (Aaron Davis/TWP)
Rhodes’s attorneys, James Lee Bright and Phillip Linder, have appealed Johnson’s decision directly to Mehta, the trial judge overseeing the case of their client and 10 co-defendants. Rhodes and others indicted with him are accused of coordinating travel, bringing and stashing firearms in suburban northern Virginia hotel and donning combat and tactical gear before converging on the Capitol after President Donald Trump’s speech at the White House Ellipse.
Rhodes, who pleaded not guilty and has been held since his Jan. 13 arrest, voluntarily met with FBI agents several times over a year before his indictment, offered to self-surrender beforehand in Washington, D.C., gave agents access to his phone and has no passport, his lawyers said.
“For all of the aforementioned reasons, Rhodes poses no flight risk.” Linder and Bright argued in court filings, adding, “He has not obstructed or attempted to obstruct justice. He has not threatened, injured, intimidated or attempted to do such to any witness or potential juror.”
In her ruling, Johnson credited such accounts, which included FBI reports that it found weapons in a search of Rhode’s storage unit and evidence he purchased $40,000 of firearms and related gear in the days before and after Jan. 6.
While Rhodes First and Second Amendment rights to free speech and to purchase and transport firearms were not in question, Johnson cited “the totality of the evidence” that Rhodes poses “a significant risk of harm to others” in keeping him detained. She pointed to “his leadership and strategic involvement” in not only advocating but also executing a plan to carry out violence against U.S. authorities to prevent President Biden from being inaugurated. That combination “gives rise to a credible threat that Defendant’s release might endanger others by fostering the planning and execution of additional violent events,” the judge concluded.
The rioting at the Capitol followed a rally at the Ellipse south of the White House, at which Trump urged his supporters to march to Congress. Pro-Trump rioters assaulted more than 100 officers and stormed Capitol offices, halting the proceedings as lawmakers were evacuated from the House floor.
Two days later at an Arizona rally, Trump for the first time embraced Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners.” And on Jan. 30 he dangled pardons for them, saying at a rally near Houston that he would treat them fairly if he retook the White House, saying, “If it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.” | null | null | null | null | null |
WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Five Virginia state troopers were injured during a chase on Interstate 95 on Wednesday morning, state police said.
Virginia State Police said Fairfax County police tried to stop a Ford Fiesta reported stolen in New York near the American Legion Bridge around 5 a.m, but it sped off at more than 100 mph, WTOP-FM reported.
Troopers tried to slow the car down by surrounding it on the highway, but state police said the car rammed a police car in Prince William County, setting off a chain-reaction crash involving three state police vehicles. Five troopers were treated at a hospital and released, police said.
The car kept going, but it was found nearby in a restaurant parking lot along Prince William Parkway, police said. A 19-year-old woman and 28-year-old man were arrested but police said they’re still looking for two men who ran off. | null | null | null | null | null |
Al Drago/Bloomberg News
In February 2020, Fuentes traveled to Miami and visited the condominium complex where the informant lived. During that visit, Fuentes’s traveling companion — his other wife — took a close-up photo of the informant’s car, according to court papers.
The surveillance effort unraveled when a security guard at the complex stopped Fuentes, questioned him and told the couple to leave the property.
Fuentes later told FBI agents that he had repeated contact with a person he believed worked for the Russian government, who had contacted him in May when he was visiting his Russian family. Over a series of discussions, the official made clear that he knew about the difficulty Fuentes’s wife was having trying to leave Russia and said “we can help each other,” according to court papers in the case. | null | null | null | null | null |
Top public defender for Maryland to retire
Maryland public defender Paul DeWolfe will retire this summer after more than 12 years at the helm of the state agency charged with providing legal representation to those accused of crimes who can’t afford private attorneys.
DeWolfe’s tenure as public defender has seen his administration overhaul the office, persistently battle to maintain staffing to keep up with an ever-increasing caseload and push for criminal justice reform.
He said he was proud that his administration has built a strong leadership structure, bolstered the office’s ranks of social workers and created litigation support divisions to assist trial attorneys.
But at 74, and after his second six-year term expires June 30, it’s time for him to retire rather than apply to keep his post, DeWolfe said. He looks forward to traveling and spending time with grandchildren.
“As a person that’s spent his career in courts and the justice system, there’s so many things that need to be reformed,” DeWolfe said in a phone interview, naming sentencing, pretrial and racial justice reform as priorities.
“I’d love to see some of these reforms come about. I hope that as I leave the agency, I’ve left a really strong team in place for whoever takes over next.”
The Office of the Public Defender is overseen by a Board of Trustees, which appoints the state’s top public defender. Thirteen practicing lawyers, who serve for three years each, make up the board.
The governor appoints 11 members of the board with state Senate advice and consent. Maryland’s House of Delegates speaker and the Senate president each appoint a member of the board.
The board has advertised that it’s seeking DeWolfe’s successor; applications are due March 1.
T. Wray McCurdy, chairman of the board, couldn’t say whether anyone has applied yet. But he expected a deluge of applications, as he believes DeWolfe made being public defender a more desirable position.
“He’s turned the public defender’s office from a group of distinct entities, county by county, and transformed them into a large law firm,” McCurdy said. He added that the public defender’s office plays a more central role in the criminal justice system than when DeWolfe started.
“Paul DeWolfe has put the public defender at the table with various state’s attorney’s offices, with the judges, as equal partners,” McCurdy said.
Marci Johnson is president of the Maryland Defenders Union, the organization created when the public defenders decided to unionize; it is part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. She criticized the Board of Trustees for what she described as a lack of transparency and inclusion in the process for finding a successor to DeWolfe, who has opposed their organization efforts.
Hired as Maryland’s chief public defender in 2009 by a then-three-member board, DeWolfe replaced a predecessor fired after refusing to enact cutbacks and change during the Great Recession. He inherited an office with a growing caseload and shrinking budget, and facing a lawsuit seeking to ensure defendants were represented at initial bail hearings in front of court commissioners.
DeWolfe agreed defendants needed to be represented at their first appearance and advocated for his office to get more attorneys to fill that role. However, the legislature chose to give funding to the judiciary, which set up a program to pay private attorneys to represent defendants at first appearances.
“It was a win, in that the right to counsel was affirmed,” DeWolfe said. “But there are still too many people held without bail, and reform needs to move forward.”
Doug Colbert, a University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor, helped bring the lawsuit that led to an appeals court ruling that found defendants are entitled to legal representation at initial bail hearings. He credited DeWolfe for recognizing and supporting the merits of the case but said the public defender wasn’t a strong enough advocate.
“Many times, I felt like Paul wanted to do more, but he often would measure his words when he testified in Annapolis,” Colbert said. “It’s understandable; it’s a very challenging job. Paul was limited by the different constituencies who are responsible for funding, who are responsible for hiring more lawyers.”
Johnson, who wrote about DeWolfe’s retirement in an opinion piece last month on the Maryland Matters website, said in an interview that she wished him well but that the public defenders union will look for more support from his successor.
“We are hoping for a new public defender who will not only be supportive of our union but will advocate strongly not only for the needs of our clients, but for the people who work in the public defender’s office,” Johnson said. “We’re looking for someone to have a commitment to what’s supposed to be our mission for justice, fairness and dignity for all, including the workers in the public defender’s office.”
DeWolfe said the office under his leadership pushed to change a cash bail system, prevented defendants from being sentenced to death years before capital punishment was abolished in Maryland, and argued for the release of people who were sent to prison before they turned 18 after they served 20 years.
“Building on that model, we’d love to see sentencing reform so that people who have served a certain amount of time in prison or are of a certain age could get a second look to possibly be released,” DeWolfe said.
Before taking on the statewide role, DeWolfe was the top public defender in Montgomery County. In that role, he represented sniper John Allen Muhammad, who carried out killings over three weeks in 2002 in Maryland, Virginia and D.C., before Muhammad chose to defend himself in court.
Douglas Gansler, a former Democratic state attorney general who’s running for governor, was the Montgomery County state’s attorney whose office prosecuted Muhammad. He said DeWolfe maintained credibility with judges and prosecutors by not losing sight of the facts of the cases while advocating strongly for his clients. That approach translated well to his role at the statewide level, Gansler said.
“He has a very soft voice, but he speaks very loudly on behalf of the people who need it most in the Maryland criminal justice system,” Gansler said. | null | null | null | null | null |
A donation hub set up in Ottawa provides Freedom Convoy demonstrators with fuel, food and money in an effort keep the occupation going. (Zoeann Murphy, James Cornsilk/The Washington Post)
But even as the vocal group of truckers, known as the “Freedom Convoy,” grabbed the world’s attention, many of Canada’s truck drivers were scrambling to distance themselves from the movement, which they view as radical and fringe.
“There is a vocal minority, which is trying to steal the headlines, but a silent majority has actually been working day and night,” said Manan Gupta, publisher of Road Today, a Canadian magazine for South Asian truckers. About a third of Canada’s roughly 180,000 tractor-trailer drivers are immigrants, according to the most recent survey, in 2016. | null | null | null | null | null |
It took a while to get things warming up this morning, but we still managed to make it to the low and mid-50s this afternoon. A south wind is beginning to blow increasing moisture into the area. That’ll mean some more cloudiness heading into tonight, and eventually even some humidity you might feel tomorrow. Also, some showers are a growing threat, as a cold front approaches, but most of that should hold off until after dark tomorrow.
Through Tonight: The full moon is rising with the sunset, so it’ll be making a big appearance in the eastern sky this evening. You may want to get out to see it early while skies are still rather clear. With a good deal of clouds around overnight, temperatures are kept up in a near 40 to mid-40s range.
Tomorrow (Thursday): It’s a quick taste of spring. Skies are mostly to partly cloudy throughout the day. A feisty wind is from the south is drawing in moisture. It’s sustained around 10 to 20 mph, with gusts around 30 mph. Highs should reach the mid-60s to around 70. I think most of the day is dry, but we could see some showers around as soon as sunset. They’re more likely into the night, along with even gustier winds. | null | null | null | null | null |
Al-Shabab militants strike police stations
Al-Shabab militants attacked several police stations and security checkpoints in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, early on Wednesday, officials and the militants said, a show of force as the nation prepares for a much-delayed presidential election.
State TV reported that five people, two of them children, were killed in two attacks, one on the police station in the Kahda district and another in the Darasalam district.
Dozens killed in floods, mudslides
The city of Petropolis was slammed by a deluge on Tuesday, and Mayor Rubens Bomtempo said the number of dead could rise as searchers pick through the wreckage.
Civilians joined the official recovery efforts early Wednesday. Among them were Priscila Neves and her siblings, who looked through the mud for any sign of their disappeared parents but found only clothing. Neves told the Associated Press that she had given up hope.
“There was a woman screaming, ‘Help! Get me out of here!’ But we couldn’t do anything; the water was gushing out, the mud was gushing out,” Virgilio told the AP.
Hezbollah leader claims missile capacity: The leader of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said for the first time on Wednesday that it has the ability within Lebanon to convert thousands of rockets into precision missiles and to produce drones. "We have been producing drones in Lebanon for a long time, and whoever wants to buy them, submit an order," Hasan Nasrallah said in a televised speech to followers. He said Hezbollah was able to transform standard rockets into precision missiles with the cooperation of "experts from the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Spain probes alleged sexual abuse by Catholic clergy: Spanish prosecutors are investigating 68 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic Church staff, the public prosecutor's office said on Wednesday in the first release of official data about such cases. Allegations of child abuse by Catholic clergy and of possible coverups by the church are only surfacing now in Spain, years after similar scandals rocked the church in countries such as the United States, Ireland and France.
Pakistani journalist arrested: Police arrested a prominent Pakistani journalist and government critic at his home on unspecified charges on Wednesday, his colleagues and local media said. Mohsin Baig, editor for the news outlet Online, had just days earlier suggested on a TV talk show that Prime Minister Imran Khan had showed favoritism by granting an award to a government minister with whom he has a close friendship.
Iraqi high court rules on oil policy: A surprise ruling by Iraq's high court cast doubt on the legal foundations of the independent oil policy of Iraq's Kurdish-run region and threatened to drive a political wedge between the two governments, officials warned Wednesday. Iraq's Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the legal justifications for the semiautonomous region's oil policy, effectively calling into question the future of the region's oil contracts, exports and revenue. | null | null | null | null | null |
National Cathedral, St. Albans capture titles at inaugural DCSAA swim meet
National Cathedral emerged at the DCSAA swimming championships on Wednesday. (Cory F Royster/Courtesy of DCSAA)
It only took one event, at the outset of the D.C. State Athletic Association swimming championships, for the St. Albans boys to emerge as favorites. The Bulldogs made an early statement by winning the 200-yard medley relay, and their swimmers gathered around the deck and screamed to toward the ceiling in response.
And by the end of the meet, only one team seemed to be on the Bulldogs’ level: their sister school, National Cathedral, which won or finished in second place in all 12 of the girls’ events.
The two programs — which combined for nine first-place finishes, and by far the most noise on the pool deck — captured respective wins in the first D.C. state swimming meet Wednesday at the Prince George’s Sports & Learning Aquatic Center in Landover.
“It’s hard for us, because we don’t have a lot of championship meets where we can really swim together, but we swam well as one collective unit,” St. Albans senior Fletcher Shaw said. “This is great. We already practice together every day, as if we’re one team.”
National Cathedral’s strength and depth was best exemplified in the 500-yard freestyle, in which an Eagle finished first, second and third. Sabrina Perry was proud of what her senior class accomplished in its final meet.
“One of the things our grade’s been told all year is that we’re the ones who have to reinstate all the traditions and set the tone, because most of the people in high school right now have never been on a high school swim team,” Perry said. “So hopefully, with our fingerprint next year and in the years beyond, our team will continue to do this even without us.”
National Cathedral scored 517 points, finishing well ahead of St. John’s (370 points) and Sidwell Friends (283 points).
The St. Albans boys (492 points) commanded the individual races long after their opening win, with freshman Charlie Greenwood (200 individual medley, 100 breaststroke) and junior Zach Cantrell (100 butterfly, 500 freestyle) comfortably winning their events. Gonzaga (371 points) and St. Anselm’s (274 points) rounded out the top three boys’ teams.
“As we started to get first and second in almost every event, we got a lot more excited — we kind of saw it coming as the meet went on,” said Cantrell, who was named most outstanding swimmer on the boys’ side.
While Maret sent just three swimmers to the meet, resulting in the quietest presence on the deck, the Frogs had the day’s highest success rate, as two members of their cohort combined to win four individual events — Emily Noll in the girls’ 200 freestyle and 100 backstroke; and Xavier Orlic in the boys’ 100 backstroke and 200 freestyle.
The duo’s margins of victory were atypical of the events they competed in, with Noll’s 17-second win in the 200 freestyle (1:56.24) standing out as the day’s most lopsided performance. Noll, a senior, was awarded the girls’ most outstanding swimmer trophy.
“What you saw today is a culmination of all of that club training, summer league training, middle and high school training,” Maret Coach Crosby Treadwell said. “There is a difference between the gap in their races and the gap in the other races. Those are two of the most exemplary swimmers that I’ve had the pleasure of coaching.”
The meet, added to the local slate this year, did not permit spectators, as has been the case with most D.C.-area championship swim meets this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
“1883” with Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw & Isabel May
In “1883,” the Dutton family embarks on a journey west through the last bastion of untamed America. A Paramount+ original, this new series is the origin story to Academy Award® nominee Taylor Sheridan’s hit show, “Yellowstone.” Join Washington Post Live on Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m. ET for a conversation with cast members Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw and Isabel May about the show.
Actor/Singer | null | null | null | null | null |
Last year, investors bought nearly one in seven homes sold in America’s top metropolitan areas, the most in at least two decades, according to the realty company Redfin.
Neighborhoods where a majority of residents are Black have been heavily targeted, according to a Washington Post analysis of Redfin data. Last year, 30 percent of home sales in majority Black neighborhoods were to investors, compared with 12 percent in other Zip codes, The Post’s analysis shows.
“We know historically that places where minorities live are undervalued or lower priced,” Redfin’s Sheharyar Bokhari said. That, he said, makes them more attractive to investors, driving up prices for residents.
“One of the reasons housing prices have gotten so out of control, is that corporate America sensed an opportunity,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) last week at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, a panel he chairs.
Sally Accorti Martin, the former longtime housing director for South Euclid, a small city east of Cleveland, testified at the hearing that a majority of the city’s roughly 1,600 rental units are now owned by companies from other states, and that tenants have suffered as a result.
“There is a massive racial homeownership gap in this country, which is a serious problem because owning a home is a key to building intergenerational wealth and reducing racial inequality overall,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said.
“If we had enough homes to meet this demand,” he added, “everyone would be able to buy a home.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
“The scale of the need is in literally the tens of billions of dollars,” said Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that distributed more than $300 million in grants to election agencies in 2020, funded by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
If Congress does not act quickly, “there will be gaps that could have a really negative impact on election departments’ ability to administer a safe and secure process this November,” she added. “That’s how you end up with lines that wrap around city blocks.”
But lawmakers and the private donors who stepped up in 2020 appear increasingly likely to remain on the sidelines as election administration has evolved over the past two years into a fiercely partisan issue, largely because of unfounded attacks on the last election from former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Meanwhile, Democrats’ year-long push for national voting rights legislation failed in the Senate last month, leaving the party without a clear path to close the funding gaps.
“There’s a lot of financial pressure,” said Scott McDonell, the clerk in Dane County, Wis., home of Madison. “There are a lot of demands on the election system right now.”
The impending funding gap largely flew under the radar on Capitol Hill in 2021 as Democrats battled to counter a passel of Republican-passed state laws that sought to roll back early voting, mail voting and other conveniences that became a target of Trump’s false stolen-election claims. Now, the midterm elections are already underway: Texas opened early voting this week for its March 1 primary amid fears that new voting rules could lead to the rejection of thousands of mailed ballots.
CTCL is calling for a $20 billion federal investment over 10 years, while a separate report issued by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) last month proposed an ongoing annual federal funding commitment conditioned on the adoption of a set of national voting standards that include ideas favored by both Republicans and Democrats. That could amount to as much as $400 million annually, matching the amount of emergency pandemic aid that Congress sent to election officials in 2020.
On Tuesday, a group of 33 Senate Democrats called on President Biden to include $5 billion in his upcoming 2023 budget to “ensure that state and local election officials continue to receive the resources needed to administer, improve, and modernize our elections” — money that could be spent in time for the next presidential election but not this year’s midterms.
Other financial pressures include the need to offer more competitive pay to election workers to fill a growing field of vacancies at a time when threats to election workers have hit all-time highs. The still-spreading belief that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud, including unsubstantiated allegations that tabulating machines were hacked and programmed to throw the results to Biden, has also caused a surge in demand for new election equipment.
Palmer, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2019, said he was watching the situation closely but questioned whether a new influx of federal funding would be sufficient to address it.
Meanwhile, it is unclear — at best — whether there will be a significant pool of private money to dole out this year as there was in 2020. At least 10 states have moved since then to ban election agencies from accepting private grants, with several more states considering bans this year. The Zuckerberg-Chan funding, in particular, quickly became a target of Republicans who claimed the grants were funneled to heavily Democratic cities and counties and gave Biden an unfair advantage in the 2020 election.
“We made our grant funding available to every election department that applied,” she said. “Our position from the very beginning has been it’s not an ideal situation for private philanthropy to be the funding source for election administration — election departments and voters deserve predictable, robust federal funding of elections.”
Chris Piper, Virginia’s top election administrator, said he has no problem with a ban on the outsourcing of election funding and expects such a measure to pass in Virginia this year. But in that case, “properly funding election offices across the country should be a priority,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
The doors to the U.S. Capitol are opened ahead of the inauguration of President Biden in Washington, D.C. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has not been in the House of Representatives for long (at least by congressional standards) but she has a very clear sense of the institution. It is, she told the New Yorker’s David Remnick in a recent interview, a sheet-show — though of course she didn’t say “sheet.”
Then there’s that sixth Republican. That’s Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), whose district got redrawn to be a Trump- to a Biden-voting one. (This is indicated by the blue arrow: It begins where his current district lands in its 2020 vote and points to where the new one will be, as measured by FiveThirtyEight.) He’s running for governor, something he’d had his eye on even before the new congressional lines were released. Nor is his redrawn district out of reach for a Republican, especially in a favorable election for that party. But it is a good reminder that running for other office can be a way to avoid a tough reelection fight without looking like that’s what you’re doing. | null | null | null | null | null |
Joe Snively has three goals in the last three games. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
PHILADELPHIA — The Washington Capitals have had little positives to grasp onto in recent weeks, as their woes have often overshadowed their minimal strides. But there have been a few bright spots in this stretch, including Northern Virginia native Joe Snively.
Snively’s early goal in an eventual 4-1 win against Nashville on Tuesday marked his third goal in as many games. The 26-year-old rookie scored the first two of his NHL career last week against Montreal.
“Obviously he’s learning a lot right now and getting experience,” Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said. “It was a big goal right in the first, good for us, good for him. He works every day hard. Happy for him.”
Washington’s next game is Thursday night in Philadelphia.
Snively has been a pleasant surprise for a Capitals team just trying to stay afloat. The 5-foot-9, 174-pound forward is a speedy skater with a knack for finding open ice and making the smart play. He’s impressed so much since his recent call-up from Washington’s American Hockey League team in Hershey, Pa., that it’s fair to wonder if Snively could be the Capitals’ 13th forward headed into the postseason in May.
Snively played a career-high 14:34 against Nashville and saw minutes on the second unit of the Capitals power play. He’s being put in positions to thrive, playing on the first or second forward lines.
“I train with him in the summers,” Evgeny Kuznetsov said in early February. Kuznetsov said he knows Snively “pretty well,” and was happy to see him get a chance to play. “It is always nice to see how young players earn another game,” he said.
There’s still a long way to go before the Stanley Cup playoffs — and any roster conversations. And right now, if the Capitals — who are missing T.J. Oshie and Anthony Mantha — can get healthy and don’t shake up their forward group, it appears Snively would be a long shot to make that roster.
However, if Washington decides to shed some contracts at the trade deadline on March 21 or shuffle things around, it could create an opening for him.
Oshie has been on injured reserve for a month with an upper-body injury. He resumed skating this week in D.C. Mantha is working his way back from shoulder surgery in November, but Washington is hopeful he would be ready before or right at the start of the postseason.
Snively’s rising stock doesn’t come as a surprise to those who know him best. Since he was a kid, Snively trained under Wendy Marco, the founder of Cold Rush Hockey, one of the top hockey academies in Northern Virginia. Marco said it’s been great to see Snively thrive and progress into an NHLer.
Marco remembers the first time Snively was on the ice with some of the Capitals in 2019, when he part of a skating session that included John Carlson, T.J. Oshie and Lars Eller. The group participated in a race on the ice. Snively smoked them all.
“They didn’t even know who he was,” Marco said. “He was playing for Hershey, just finished at Yale. It was a race and he was really quick. I was equally parts embarrassed and also so proud.”
Fast forward to 2022 and Snively’s production has him turning heads once again. He has three goals and three assists in eight games, and will look to continue his productivity Thursday night when the Capitals face the Flyers. | null | null | null | null | null |
The second best option for the Fed is a half-point increase at the March meeting, a decisive move, the size of which has not been seen since 2000. The latest consumer and producer inflation reports both point to the fact that inflation is headed in an ominous direction, and provide yet more proof that the time for “gradual” Fed moves is over. | 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 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 might swing open. And then what? | null | null | null | null | null |
Juan Soto's offer from the Nationals did not include payment deferrals, according to a person with knowledge of the terms. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The biggest question of the Washington Nationals’ present and future is whether they can keep Juan Soto beyond the next three seasons. And while the answer is not expected any time soon, Soto turned down a 13-year, $350 million offer before the ongoing lockout, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Svrluga: Ryan Zimmerman, face of the Nationals, walks off one last time
Soto finished second in National League most valuable player voting in 2021, logging 29 homers and a batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .313/.465/.534. He is considered one of the league’s best hitters, making it apt to frame his future earnings in comparison to the game’s top stars.
Outfielder Bryce Harper, the Nation League’s reigning MVP, signed a 13-year, $330 million deal in 2019 with the Philadelphia Phillies at the age of 26. Shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., who finished just behind Soto in MVP voting, signed a 14-year, $340 million extension with the San Diego Padres at 22 years old in February 2021. In the spring of 2019, outfielder Mike Trout, then 27, signed a 12-year, $430 million extension with the Los Angeles Angels, which stands as the largest contract in the sport’s history. And earlier this winter, starter Max Scherzer, Soto’s former teammate, broke the average annual value record by inking a three-year, $130 million deal with the New York Mets (more than $43 million annually).
If he eventually goes to free agency, he will be a year younger than Harper was when he signed with the Phillies. Tatis, on the other hand, opted for very lucrative security rather than betting on himself for an even bigger payday down the line. Some have floated that Soto will ultimately command a record-setting $500 million deal. It is a staggering number that would put the annual value and term length on the player’s terms. Often, players have to sacrifice one of those to juice the other. Soto, though, may be the rare talent who can command both.
The biggest moments of Ryan Zimmerman's career with the Nationals
In his interview with ESPN, Soto said he still envisions his future in Washington. He has shared similar sentiments across the past few years. The difference here was that, instead of just saying negotiations are Boras’s job, as he typically has, Soto publicly stated his interest in testing free agency in three years. The Nationals would then have to compete against other teams and Soto’s and Boras’s valuation.
“Juan Soto wants to win,” Boras said at MLB’s GM meetings in early November. “So the first thing that’s going to have to happen is that he knows that he’s working with an ownership that’s going to annually try to compete and win.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The doors to the U.S. Capitol are opened ahead of the inauguration of President Biden in D.C. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has not been in the House of Representatives for long (at least by congressional standards) but she has a very clear sense of the institution. It is, she told the New Yorker’s David Remnick in a recent interview, a sheet show — though of course she didn’t say “sheet.”
Then there’s that sixth Republican. That’s Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), whose district got redrawn from a Trump-voting one to a Biden-voting one. (This is indicated by the blue arrow: It begins where his current district lands in its 2020 vote and points to where the new one will be, as measured by FiveThirtyEight.) He’s running for governor, something he’d had his eye on even before the new congressional lines were released. Nor is his redrawn district out of reach for a Republican, especially in a favorable election for that party. But it is a good reminder that running for other office can be a way to avoid a tough reelection fight without looking like that’s what you’re doing. | null | null | null | null | null |
States delay pandemic loan repayments; Zuckerburg promotes top aide at Meta
States delaying pandemic loan repayments
New York, New Jersey and several other U.S. states are delaying repayment of $40 billion in federal pandemic unemployment loans, saddling businesses with higher payroll costs instead.
An influx of stimulus funds and a surge in tax receipts as the economy rebounds are helping pad state budgets. Almost half of all U.S. states have expanded their taxable wage bases since 2020. Roughly $90 billion of states’ covid aid remains unallocated as of November, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But some states say they’ve used the money on more immediate covid-related expenses and other priorities.
Facebook parent company promotes policy chief Clegg
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has promoted his top policy executive, Nick Clegg, to an even greater role inside the company — a move that will mean less involvement in future policy decisions for the CEO and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Clegg was already running Meta’s global policy organization, but Zuckerberg said in a post Wednesday that he will now “lead our company on all our policy matters,” including interactions with governments and how Meta will “make the case publicly for our products and our work.” Clegg, who was reporting to Sandberg, is now reporting to Zuckerberg, too, with the new title of president for global affairs.
Clegg’s elevated role means that Zuckerberg and Sandberg will defer to Clegg more on policy decisions.
Clegg, 55, joined Meta in late 2018, at a crucial time for the company formerly known as Facebook. It was still reeling from the aftermath of Facebook’s unexpected role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and was facing increased scrutiny from politicians and regulators for data and privacy practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Citigroup exceeded targets it set to increase the percentage of women and Black executives among its ranks, showing progress on the firm’s push to improve diversity. Black employees in the United States now make up 8.1 percent of managers in roles from assistant vice president to managing director, surpassing an 8 percent target and up from 6 percent in 2018, when the firm set the goal, according to Sara Wechter, head of human resources. Globally, the share of women in those roles increased to 40.6 percent from 37 percent in 2018.
Cantor Fitzgerald’s former global co-head of equities helped violate Securities and Exchange Commission rules on recording commissions on trades, a jury found after a week-long trial in Manhattan federal court. Adam Mattessich, who resigned from Cantor in 2018, was found liable Wednesday in an SEC lawsuit accusing him of taking “off the books” commissions on certain accounts in the form of personal checks from other traders that weren’t tracked by the firm. Mattessich, 51, hadn’t denied the conduct but argued it was acceptable within Cantor’s culture and said the firm never provided training suggesting it wasn’t allowed until more than a decade after it began.
DoorDash reported quarterly revenue Wednesday that beat analysts’ estimates, as people continued to order in after using the food delivery company’s services frequently during the peak of the pandemic. DoorDash has also doubled down on non-restaurant offerings, including grocery, pet food and alcohol to attract more users. It has tied up with a number of retailers, including Ulta Beauty, Bed Bath & Beyond and PetSmart. The biggest U.S. food delivery firm’s revenue rose to $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31, from $970 million a year earlier. Analysts had expected revenue of $1.28 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES. | null | null | null | null | null |
By 2050, sea levels in the United States will be 10 to 12 inches higher, a new government report warns.
High tide laps against the sea wall in Charleston, South Carolina. A new U.S. federal government report, says seas will be 10 to 12 inches higher by the year 2050 with major U.S. Eastern cities regularly hit with costly flooding. (Mic Smith/AP)
A United States government report warns that sea levels along the nation’s coasts will rise in the next 30 years by as much as they did in the entire 20th century. Major Eastern cities will be hit regularly with costly floods even on sunny days, the report says.
By 2050, seas lapping against U.S. shores will be 10 to 12 inches higher, with parts of Louisiana and Texas projected to see waters a-foot-and-a-half higher, according to a 111-page report issued Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and six other federal agencies.
The projected increase is alarming given that in the 20th century, seas along the Atlantic Ocean coast rose at the fastest clip in 2,000 years.
LeBoeuf warned that the cost will be high, pointing out that much of the U.S. economy and 40 percent of the population are along the coasts.
Sea level rises more in some places than others because of sinking land, currents and water from ice melt. The United States will get slightly more sea level rise than the global average. And the greatest rise in the nation will be on the Gulf and East coasts, while the West Coast and Hawaii will be hit less than average, Sweet said.
For example, between now and 2060, there may be almost 25 inches of sea level rise in Galveston, Texas, and just under two feet in St. Petersburg, Florida, while only nine inches in Seattle, Washington, and 14 inches in Los Angeles, California, the report said.
While higher seas cause much more damage when storms such as hurricanes hit the coasts, they are becoming a problem even on sunny days. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Ted Wafer, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., testifies in his own defense during his second degree murder trial in Detroit on Aug. 4, 2014. Wafer, who fatally shot a young woman on his porch will get a new sentencing hearing after the Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, unanimously threw out part of his conviction. (Clarence Tabb Jr./Detroit News via AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Law enforcement get ready for a search after a small plane crash in Carteret County, N.C., on Monday, Feb. 14, 2022. Authorities say four teenagers and four adults returning from a hunting trip were on board a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina over the weekend. (WCTI-TV via AP) (Uncredited/WCTI-TV) | null | null | null | null | null |
Under the law, children and younger adolescents are considered “protected persons,” and claims against them may be adjudicated more leniently than those against older adolescents and adults. Many have focused on 15-year-old Valieva’s protected status, suggesting that it’s the reason she has escaped punishment for alleged doping. But her status, and the proportional treatment she receives, are only part of the heavy weight on her side of the legal scales.
The law applied to Valieva’s case is the same as used in the United States. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered USA Track & Field to allow world-record holder Butch Reynolds to run in Olympic trials even though he was serving a suspension for a two-year-old steroid positive. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “A decent respect for the incomparable importance of winning a gold medal in the Olympic Games convinces me that a pecuniary award is not an adequate substitute for the intangible values for which the world’s greatest athletes compete.” The law hasn’t changed since I was one of the lawyers on the losing side of that argument.
Which brings us to the bear in the room: Russia’s doping history. Punishing Russia for its trespasses arguably requires punishing its athletes — that’s how sanctions work. The International Olympic Committee’s response to Russian doping has been to allow individual athletes to compete, but not allow the Russians to fly their flag, a sometimes-laughable approach. The effort, however, also reflects the human values the Olympics represent and the general sense among athletes that sanctions shouldn’t be on the table in sports. A corrupt nation-state should not be able, year-in and year-out, to deprive its best young athletes of the opportunity to compete against their peers.
I get the instinct that because Valieva tested positive she should not skate. I was in the race in 1983 when Jarmila Kratochvílová of Czechoslovakia set the still-standing 800-meter world record. That record is widely understood to have been the product of doping. I later helped set up the world’s first random out-of-competition drug-testing program for USA Track & Field, and I drafted the White House’s negotiating document that helped establish the World Anti-Doping Agency. I’ve learned that anti-doping efforts are strong only if they have integrity. Decisions can’t be only politically expedient; they have to be based in law and evidence. Taking down a brilliant kid whose adults may have abused rather than safeguarded her isn’t the way to fix what’s broken about the anti-doping movement. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: The Path to Gender Equity: Research and Design with Sara A. Jahnke, PhD, Rowena Johnston, PhD & Catherine Sanz
MS. CASEY: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Libby Casey, anchor covering politics and accountability. Thank you so much for joining me today for two important conversations about gender equity.
My first guest is Dr. Rowena Johnston from amfAR who is here to talk about women in clinical research. Dr. Johnston, welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. JOHNSTON: Thanks so much for the invitation.
MS. CASEY: A reminder to our audience, you can join our conversation and ask questions by sending a tweet to the handle, @PostLive.
Dr. Johnston, I want to start by asking you about the breaking news this week that a woman appears to be the third person ever cured of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Doctors used umbilical cord blood. What does this mean for the future of AIDS research and treatment?
DR. JOHNSTON: I think this case is actually interesting in a number of ways, and you brought up, first of all, that she's a woman. And this is the first time that a stem cell transplant has been used seemingly successfully, but we're going to have to wait to see. But she's possibly cured of HIV, and if so, she'll be the first woman as a stem cell transplant.
But, as you also point out, they used cord blood in this case, and there was actually kind of an important reason for that. And that is that the woman in question is not White, and the stem cells that are more likely to cure HIV come from White donors of Northern European descent. And they're likely to be a good match for people who are not of Northern European descent, and this woman is not. And when you use cord blood, you actually have a better chance to matching a wider range of people.
So I think it's really exciting not only that she's the first woman but also the first non-White person, and that, you know, all the research that we've been doing over all of these years looking for a cure for HIV is starting to pay off for a broader range of people.
MS. CASEY: It's so important that you brought up this question of race because people may not realize how significant that development is in particular. Can you just expand a little more on how the cord blood may open up sort of possibilities? How does it get your mind thinking about what could come next?
DR. JOHNSTON: You know, I think I actually want to start with a caveat, and that is we should keep in mind that this is unlikely to be a kind of cure that we would use for a lot of people. But for people who are living with HIV and who have cancer and if their cancer requires treatment with a stem cell transplant, then I think if--you know, for those people who are not of White race, we now have at least pretty good evidence that this is an intervention that can work.
She's not seemingly clear of her cancer as well as her HIV, and, you know, as we were talking about before, she's not of White descent, which means she doesn't need to look for an adult stem cell donor. She can go to a cord blood--or her doctors can go to a cord blood biobank and find a cord blood unit that could be used as part of the transplant, and because those units don't need to be, you know, as specific a tissue match as when those stem cells come from adults, then we could start to see a broader range of people, again, people living with HIV who need a stem cell transplant for their cancer, under those circumstances, I think we could start to see a broader range of people who would qualify for this treatment.
MS. CASEY: Let's talk about gender equity. Women make up about half of the HIV cases globally, and as of 2016, amfAR found that women represented just 11 percent of participants in cure trials, 19 percent of the people in antiretroviral drug trials. Why have clinical trials relied so heavily on male participation?
DR. JOHNSTON: Oh, I think there really are a lot of factors that go into that.
I think, you know, historically--hmm, there really are a lot of factors. Historically, men have been the people who have conducted the most clinical trials, and physicians tend to be more male than female. And so I think, you know, right off the bat, physicians actually of either gender tend to be a little more hesitant to recommend participation in a clinical trial to a female patient. So, you know, we start from that vantage point.
And then, you know, to be fair, it is actually quite relatively difficult to recruit and retain women in clinical trials for a number of reasons. Being in a clinical trial can take a lot of your time and effort, and women are more likely to be those responsible for child care and elder care. They're more likely to have the kind of job that you can't take discretionary time off, and maybe a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable asking their boss for time off to participate in an HIV clinical trial because it might require actually disclosing what your HIV status is.
And, you know, women are also more likely to be subject to intimate partner violence, which can also kind of prevent a lot of the ways in which they interact with the outside world. So there are a number of those kinds of what we would call structural barriers to getting women into clinical trials.
There is also, I think, a little bit of a sense from physicians that women are messy. You know, this is a quote that I've heard more than once, and it's true. You know, women have menstrual cycles, which means that our hormones fluctuate across the month, and those fluctuating hormone levels can make it difficult to interpret the effects of a drug, for example, because the hormones themselves may have an effect on that.
We also know that across the menstrual cycle, there are behavior changes. I think a lot of women could attest to that.
There's a lot of sex differences that are due to hormones or chromosomes that can make interpreting the data from women a little bit more tricky. Of course, you know, the counterargument is, as you said, women are 50 percent of the general population, a little bit more than 50 percent of the HIV population. So we really do actually need to make that effort to make sure that we're protecting the health of women.
MS. CASEY: Those numbers I referenced were from 2016. Do you have a sense that it's shifted at all in the years since?
DR. JOHNSTON: You know, I have been watching other people publish in this same area, and unfortunately, those numbers really aren't improving very much.
Now, you know, in terms of cure research, we would call that--you know, it's fairly early stage research, and so the earlier stage any research is in any disease area, the less likely you are to have a lot of women in that research.
And, again, I think people conducting clinical trials may feel like, well, let's just try it out in men because, you know, they're not going to get pregnant. We're not going to do any damage to a fetus, for example. Let's just try it out in men first before we start recruiting women into larger trials that might happen later.
I do think, though, that that's actually a missed opportunity. I mean, of course, certainly, we want to ensure the health of women and that we're doing the best that we can to protect their health, but I think there's a real advantage to having women in earlier trials because you actually have the opportunity to learn something, not only about women, but depending on the drug or the intervention, how that behaves in women, you actually may learn something that is important for all people.
You know, even just something that I'm sure we're all familiar with, because we've certainly been getting a lot of news about COVID the last couple of years, we've all heard that women are less likely to have very severe disease or to die of COVID. Now, wouldn't it be great if we could actually learn from those women what is it that's happening in the bodies of women that leave them less susceptible to such severe consequences? Might it be an effect of hormones? Might it be an effect of chromosomes? And let's see what we can learn from that and turn that into treatment for old people who are at risk of getting COVID.
MS. CASEY: Talk to us about how drugs, treatments might affect women differently than men and how you need that research to show how women could be affected.
DR. JOHNSTON: Yeah. You absolutely do need that research, and it's very well known that women are more likely to have side effects and adverse effects from drugs, and that's really across the board, across all kinds of classes of drugs.
And, you know, I would invite people to even consider something very common that we're all familiar with or have observed, and that is that alcohol, even alcohol affects women and men very differently. And it's not only a matter of body size. There is an enzyme that metabolizes or breaks down alcohol, and that enzyme is present in the bodies of women and men at different levels. And so there's really a biological basis regardless of your body size, regardless of your experience with alcohol that does differentiate how well you're going to be able to metabolize and tolerate, if you like, alcohol, something even as simple as that.
But, you know, across the board, women are more likely to have side effects, not least because there are very few drugs where there's a different dose recommended for women and men. So women have more side effects probably due to differences in how they metabolize. It's not only body size.
Across the menstrual cycle, for example, the way we excrete just anything that comes into our bodies, the way that fat is deposited around our bodies, that can lead to differences in how long a drug stays in your system and how it's broken down, and all of this adds up to kind of a cumulative greater amount of drug in your system and, therefore, a greater likelihood of side effects.
We really, actually do need to do a much better job of understanding side effects in women and really, at the point at which a drug is approved, do a much, much better job at recommending different doses for women and men on the basis of those different metabolic effects that we see in men and women.
MS. CASEY: Let's talk about getting women involved in studies, especially those longitudinal studies. What are the rates of female participation, and how challenging is it to recruit women to participate in them? You mentioned some of the variables that make it hard for women to sign up for HIV studies, for example. Do you see that across the board?
DR. JOHNSTON: I think, you know, depending on what the disease is and what the actual clinical trial, for example, is asking of participants, you know, I think if it's a survey, it's much easier to get people to sign up and participate. If you're injecting something like a COVID vaccine, for example, there was actually a little bit more trouble recruiting people. But if, you know, progressively more difficult when you get to the point at which you're asking people to give blood or even tissue samples, it becomes more and more difficult to get anybody to participate. And then you have those additional barriers that face women.
So I do think there are some things that people could do differently. You could, first of all, educate physicians and people running clinical trials as to just how important and how worthwhile it is to get women into their clinical trials. You're not only serving women because you do want to protect their health and well-being, but really, I mean, I want people to seriously consider they have the opportunity to learn something that you never would have learned if you only have men in your trial, something that really could improve the health of everybody. So you need to get physicians on board and excited about the idea that we really want to have women in our trial.
Now, you know, I mentioned that women are more likely to be caregivers. Like, what if we offered either a childcare facility at the place that the clinical trial is being done or at least some reimbursement for child care expenses while the woman goes to the clinical trial? I do think that could make a difference.
Another thing is that clinical trials often happen during office hours, which is when, you know, the rest of us are working as well. So what if there were expanded hours outside of the 9:00 to 5:00, 9:00 to 6:00 range that people might be working that could facilitate the ability of people who don't have flexibility with their jobs to actually still go and see the people running the trial, receive whatever the intervention is, give whichever samples it is that they need to give? And, you know, I think we can really make better steps towards making it a friendlier environment and something that makes it much easier for everyone to participate.
MS. CASEY: Let's talk about the FDA's rules around women of childbearing age and how they can participate in clinical trials. First of all, explain why that is a concern and if it's changing. Especially, you know, we've seen such important research and evidence being done about the COVID vaccine specifically, not just among women of childbearing age but actually pregnant women.
DR. JOHNSTON: Yeah. You're absolutely right, and it has really been quite cyclical in the United States over the years.
I mean, we can go back to the 1950s, maybe early 1960s, and the concern was first raised because of thalidomide. And very little testing was done on thalidomide in women, but after it had been approved for other uses, pregnant women did start using it because it seemed to deal well with morning sickness, and of course, we know that it was tragic results that came out of that.
And, in response to that, the FDA first actually, essentially banned women from participating in clinical trials because there was concern about protecting the health of an unborn child, and it wasn't until 1993, which is really kind of astonishingly recently, that the FDA changed their mind on that and said that women could participate in clinical trials, and a lot of the time women who participate in trials are asked to use not just one but two methods of contraception that can be a barrier. Even if you're taking oral contraceptive pill, for example, they might still ask you to use some other method, a diaphragm, condoms, whatever some other contraceptive method is, because there is really just so much concern when we don't know what might happen to a fetus.
And then you fast forward to late in the 1990s where the FDA tried to open up further to the participation of women, and it was really only 1998, if memory serves, that the FDA requires that drug companies present data that women were included in a clinical trial, and that the efficacy of the intervention, how successful the intervention is, that those data should be presented to the FDA. So, I mean, that's great, and I think it's maybe two, three years ago that the FDA is now even providing guidance about to include pregnant women in clinical trials because, at the end of the day, if you're going to ask pregnant women to take something like the COVID vaccine, but pregnant women have other health issues that don't stop just because they could become pregnant. You know, they might have some chronic condition that they have concerns about whether they can continue medications that they've been taking before they got pregnant.
If you're going to ask pregnant women to take a medication to improve their health, then you need to have the data that show that it's safe and effective to take those medications during pregnancy, and there are concerns because drugs can have effects on fetuses while they're in development, and there are certain critical times during development that you really don't want something to go wrong. And it's really quite a hard balancing act.
Certainly, you would probably want data in test tubes and animals before you would put it into pregnant women, but we really just can't escape the fact that we need those data. I mean, people's lives depend on us knowing the answers to these questions.
MS. CASEY: News out this week showing--from the CDC, this is data from the CDC showing that vaccinated pregnant women can help protect babies after they are born, but again, this gets at your point of the OB/GYNs, clinical providers need to be able to point to research and information to share with pregnant women.
Dr. Johnston, there is a concern about how women can advocate for themselves in a doctor's office, in a study, and also how well they're listened to, especially women of color. How does that influence parity in trials and research?
DR. JOHNSTON: Oh, I think that has a huge influence, and we've talked about it. Women are 50 percent of the population, and so I think mobilizing women can be a little bit more difficult than--you know, for example, in HIV, gay men are quite a strong activist group and have advocated very successfully over the years for improved treatment and access to trials and information.
But women, you know, there's such a diversity among women. As you say, there's different race, different age. You know, just because we're women doesn't mean that we all kind of think and feel as one, and so I do think that's really a challenge. I do think it's going to have to start with physicians because--or other health care providers because they are the touch point where women get their medical care.
So, if we could get health care providers to be more aware of the issues facing women and the value of including women in research, not only as research subjects, by the way, but, you know, all of us bring our own stories and our own experiences to the whole medical treatment of anything. We can learn, certainly, a lot from the individual experiences of, for example, women when they participate in a trial or even when they have a conversation with their physician. So I would encourage, you know, physicians to take the lead and really try to start having that conversation with all the people in their care, and then for women to have the confidence and knowhow to raise these questions for themselves, consider whether you want to be part of a clinical trial, and if so, how much involvement do you think you can commit to? And then maybe raise the idea with your physician. I think there are people who find it very rewarding to be a part of clinical research. You can learn more about yourself and your own condition but also to feel that you are making a contribution rather than just being the problem, so to speak.
You know, there's really, I think--you can get a real sense of satisfaction from knowing that you're helping medical science progress. You're helping not only yourself but other people who identify similarly to you, be that as a woman or any other of the identities that you might have.
MS. CASEY: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Johnston. We really appreciated hearing from you today.
DR. JOHNSTON: Thank you. My pleasure.
MS. CASEY: I'll be back in just a few minutes with my next guests, Sara Jahnke and Catherine Sanz. So please stay with us.
MS. LABOTT: Hello. I'm Elise Labott of American University, and today we're talking about gender disparities in vehicle safety.
In the U.S., women are over 17 percent more likely to die and 73 percent more likely to be seriously injured in a vehicle crash than men. So, to talk about the need for more equitable vehicle safety standards, I'm joined by Beth Brooke and Susan Molinari. They're the co‑chairs of VERITY NOW.
Ladies, thanks so much for joining us.
MS. MOLINARI: Thank you.
MS. BROOKE: A pleasure.
MS. LABOTT: Beth, let's start with you. Why should we be paying special attention to women's safety in cars as opposed to men?
MS. BROOKE: Well, it's actually pretty simple, Elise. Men are more likely to cause the car crash, and women are more likely to die in the car crash. And the statistics you gave were 73 percent more likely to be severely injured, 17 percent more likely to die. Why is that? Well, it's because auto safety standards have been designed to protect a male body, not a female body. But for years, we know that cars have been designed by men for men. But who knew that auto safety standards followed the same path, designed by men for men, actually using a man, a male crash test dummy? That's right, and this dates back to the '70s. The test started out biased, using male crash test dummies, and they stayed that way ever since.
A true woman's body is not used in the driver's seat for our 5‑Star Safety Ratings, and it needs to be. We need safety standards for all different body type. Women are physiologically different than men.
We also sit closer to the steering wheel oftentimes, and so the standards just need to reflect equitably the bodies of men and women, and the technology now exists to do so with male and female crash test dummy.
MS. LABOTT: So, Susan, Beth mentions that this was started in the 1970s, these tests.
MS. MOLINARI: Yes.
MS. LABOTT: But it sounds like we're in the 1950s here. I mean, why are these safety standards still biased towards males?
MS. MOLINARI: It sure does, doesn't it? And it sounds like we are going back so many generations.
Look, in 1970, DOT created the crash test dummy based on a 170‑pound, 5' 9" male. Twenty years later, somebody told DOT that women were driving too. So they created a female crash test dummy, which was really just a smaller version of the male, mini, mini male. That's what they were dealing with, and so we're still using that mini male as an example of the crash test dummies that are in cars and are being used at DOT. Nothing has changed, and the fact that nothing has changed isn't because there are not options out there.
There's fourth‑‑fifth generation that takes into account all those physiological issues that Beth has been talking about. New York has implemented it. DOT has validated it. It's time to stop studying and actually get this crash test dummy into cars.
MS. LABOTT: So, if these options exist and it's not so hard, I mean, why haven't they addressed this inequity before? What are the barriers for just getting it done?
MS. BROOKE: Well, so they will‑‑DOT and others will tell you that, number one, they are using female crash test dummies which, as we've already discussed, are just mini males. They are still using those in neighborhoods testing crashes, not on highways.
They will also tell you that cars are getting safer, which gratefully they are. The amount of reports of injuries for men and women are going down, but the statistics that you mentioned are still the same. Women are still dying and getting injured at a much higher rate.
And then, lastly, they will throw at you that women and men drive different cars, that men drive the big SUVs and tractors and whatever, pickup trucks, and women drive the smaller cars, and I can't even address that as a safety measure. It's like you need different‑‑
MS. LABOTT: I don't even want to go‑‑
MS. MOLINARI: ‑‑[audio distortion] no matter what.
MS. LABOTT: I don't even want to go there. I drive an SUV, so I don't know what that says.
But, Beth, the Department of Transportation just released its National Roadway Safety Strategy last month, introduced key actions to enable safer vehicles. Does that strategy go far enough for what we're talking about, and what else‑‑what are the other couple of things that can be done to ensure that women are considered equally when it comes to vehicle safety standards?
MS. BROOKE: Yeah. It's amazing. No, the strategy does not go far enough. It's a great strategy, and it calls out the need to focus on vehicle safety, but it ignores this issue. It doesn't even acknowledge that there is a disparity in crash test safety standards between men and women.
Very clearly, NHTSA needs to require that female crash test dummies be used in the driver's seat for all tests in the NCAP 5‑Star Safety Rating program, full stop, so that when I go to buy a new car, I know that that 5‑Star Safety Rating applies to me as a woman, just as it applies to a man. Women, guaranteed, are going into car dealerships today, buying more cars than men, driving more on the road than men, and yet don't know that the standards are not equitable. It can be done with a stroke of a pen. It doesn't require legislation. We just simply need to change the rule, and the strategy is perfect. Just take the executing step to change the rule.
MS. LABOTT: Well, I mean, with all the gains we've made towards women's rights, it's high time that women are given equal consideration when it comes to vehicle safety, and, Beth, as you said, it might just come down to that purchasing power.
Beth Brooke, and Susan Molinari, co‑chairs of VERITY NOW, thank you so much for joining us.
MS. BROOKE: Thank you.
MS. LABOTT: We'll send it back now to The Washington Post.
MS. CASEY: Welcome back to Washington Post Live. I'm Libby Casey, politics and accountability anchor.
My next guests today are Sara Jahnke from the Center for Fire, Rescue, and EMS Health Research. Welcome, Sara.
DR. JAHNKE: Happy to be here.
MS. CASEY: And Catherine Sanz from Women in Federal Law Enforcement. Hello, Catherine. Welcome. Thanks for being here.
MS. SANZ: Thank you.
MS. CASEY: A reminder to our audience, you can join our conversation by tweeting questions to my guests. Write to us @PostLive.
Sara, let's start with you. Right now, men still make up a majority of the firefighter workforce, but there's evidence showing more women are joining. Just describe to us the protective gear use by firefighters. We all know what it looks like, but what really goes into it, and what challenges do women face with that design?
DR. JAHNKE: So, typically firefighters wear bunker gear, which is the coat, the pants, the boots, gloves. They have helmets, and then they also have the SCB, the self‑containing breathing apparatus.
And it, you know, like everything else in the conversation this morning, was designed for men, and a lot of women‑‑we have reports about 80 percent of women firefighters say that the gear that they wear is not‑‑it's ill‑fitting, that there's something that doesn't fit well about it. Only when we asked in a survey that we did about the percent of women who believe they had good‑fitting gear, it was less than a quarter of the women.
Now, granted, this can also be an issue for smaller stature of men, but when you think about all the things firefighters are exposed to on the fire ground, it's really important that that gear fit you well, everything from the carcinogens to the heat and the smoke and those types of things.
So it's really a challenge, and it's one of the things‑‑there is a low rate of women in the fire service, so around 5 to 10 percent, depending on the way that data sampled, but I do believe that one of the reasons that that is an issue and recruitment and retention is an issue is the fact that gear is not designed for women.
There are some new designs that are coming out for women, but often departments, even when those new designs are available, aren't choosing them.
So I think it's an issue of safety. I think it's an issue of what that message says to women about how much they're wanted or are going to be accepted into the fire service, but I think, in general, there are a lot of concerns around gear, and I think that it's a major sticking point. But it's fortunately getting more attention now than it has in the past.
MS. CASEY: Sara, do you talk to firefighters who are women who are having to sort of rig things up or, you know, fix things, trying to make gear smaller or shorter or, you know, bigger in different places? Like, what are they doing? And, of course, does that raise a lot of serious safety concerns about how the gear can work properly?
DR. JAHNKE: It shocks me that in 2022, we're still hearing some of the stories we're hearing, things like‑‑in some large, well‑funded departments, women come into recruit academy, and they are given boots that don't fit, and they're told just layer. The women, like, kind of have this network where they talk to each other, and they're told to just layer several pairs of socks.
I've also worked with women who have said, you know, "I was in a training or I was in a fire, and my boots came off. They were so much, too big for me." There's a lot of, you know, cinching things in, tying things up, and there is kind of a way to hack that that a lot of women share.
But I think of that in terms of if you‑‑beyond the safety issue, if a male came into the fire service and they were given these, like, tight‑fitted, you know, female‑designed pieces of clothing or gear and said, like, "Just make that work for you," like, make that‑‑it just blows my mind that it's 2022 and this is still a conversation.
MS. CASEY: Catherine, let's turn to women in law enforcement. You know, the gear on the front lines is crucial for safety. Let's start with ballistic vests. You can tell pretty quickly that one size does not fit all, and yet the consequences can be deadly. How well are they fitting people with different body types, Catherine?
MS. SANZ: Well, the manufacturers have made ballistic vests for women. One of the problems is that agencies just buy men's vests and tell the women, "You're going to have to deal with it." So that defies the safety issues because the man's vests have things like larger armholes. So your whole side may be exposed, and if you are shot in the side, you have a greater lethality. So it's not protecting you the way it's supposed to.
MS. CASEY: I was listening to an interview with a former police officer. Her name is Rosa Brooks, and she was a law professor who decided to go into the police force to see what it was like. And she was talking about just how much stuff officers have to carry. You know, we're talking about the radio, handcuffs, gun, flashlight, just a range of things, pepper spray, and are these things designed so that a woman's body can carry them, Catherine? Are they‑‑is there talk or development about how anyone can carry all of that in sort of a healthy and safe way, much less women?
MS. SANZ: Well, the sheer weight is a problem, and it does cause issues for both men and women. The bigger problem for women is they tend to have a smaller waist, and so you're trying to put much more equipment, and it just doesn't fit.
Now, you do see where vests are going to be outward wearing, and so people are now starting to hang things on their vests like a taser or a radio of sorts, and that also changes your center of gravity, which then starts creating a whole other different type of injury, use injury to you.
There has been some inroads in changing some of the equipment, for example, the duty belt in a uniform position, but those things aren't changed for people who are in the non‑uniform sections; for example, having to go out and buy a suit and try to find one with belt loops that you can put the proper‑size belt on so you can literally carry the gun on your hip.
MS. CASEY: So let's talk to both of you about what are the real‑life consequences of this. Sara, what are the health concerns that female firefighters face, and what are you finding in your research?
DR. JAHNKE: So we recently conducted a study where we looked at the health of women in the fire service, surveyed women, career and volunteer, and we found that if women reported their gear didn't fit, they were way more likely to report some type of injury. And so I think there's a very clear safety issue.
But we're also looking at different things like cancer rates, and we do know that firefighters are at increased risk for several different types of cancer. There are a lot of reports from women we've talked to about how SCBAs are not designed to fit around their face, and so while gear and the‑‑you are going to be exposed to carcinogens on the fire ground, but ill‑fitting gear actually increases the chance that carcinogens are going to get into the body.
We know that they have‑‑it looks like they have higher rates of both cervical cancer and breast cancer and other types of cancers. We also were finding high rates of miscarriage often in the first trimester when women don't even know that they're pregnant yet. So I think that kind of the entire compilation, I think ill‑fitting gear has very real immediate and chronic long‑term consequences for women in the fire service.
MS. CASEY: Catherine, let's go to you for that same question about how does ill‑fitting gear affect women in law enforcement.
MS. SANZ: It just makes it harder to do your job. Everything from, you know, if you're wearing gloves and they don't fit right and you have to draw a weapon, how does that work, or you have to draw a taser or a baton of some sort? As you're trying to negotiate with people, you know, we do much more hands on when there is a noncompliant situation. So not having your equipment seated right on a belt or not having things secured properly because they don't fit on you right puts everybody's life in danger, not just the officer.
MS. CASEY: Catherine, do you hear the same thing that Sara talked about, about sort of a way that women share tips and talk and say, look, here's how I rigged this up, here's how I've adapted? Do you see that same thing on the force?
MS. SANZ: To a degree. You know, there's pathways. You know, people talk about, oh, you should have your suits made by this person because they make the‑‑they make suits that work really well if you're on protection detail for like Secret Service or diplomatic security. Others might be talking about where's the best place to get good shoes and things like that.
MS. CASEY: So let's talk, Catherine, about the military. We've seen the military integrating more specialized fits for female servicemembers. What do women need in terms of gear if they are on duty on the front lines in the military?
MS. SANZ: Well, the military is still struggling with trying to find the right combination of fit for women in combat, and they haven't solved it yet either. So it's a universal problem for everybody. It just varies a little bit by profession.
MS. CASEY: So the most recent data, Catherine, that we're seeing shows that, like, only almost 14 percent of federal law enforcement officers were female. This is back in 2016. Do you think the lack of data sort of contributes to a narrative that women are not a crucial part of federal law enforcement or even local law enforcement?
MS. SANZ: Oh, sure. If you don't have accurate figures to start to ascertain what the issues are and how to solve them, how do you come up with an answer?
MS. CASEY: Yeah. So, Sara, I want to talk to you more about your research, looking at all female samples of health outcomes in the fire service, and you mentioned something about pregnancy. So let's talk about how one thinks about keeping pregnant firefighters or potentially pregnant firefighters protected and safe.
DR. JAHNKE: Well, it's a challenge. It's a challenge for the department. It's a challenge for the women, and that's where I think‑‑I mean, I think Catherine just hit the nail on the head. We've got to have more data.
And, you know, on one hand, like, we see all these higher rates of miscarriage for women firefighters than the general population. We found an even higher rate for volunteer firefighters than career firefighters. So what do you do with that information?
I think back to the conversation earlier, we need to be educating OB/GYN about what the risks are. We need to be educating firefighters about what the risks are so they can make informed decisions, but I also think‑‑someone challenged me on, well, do we need to be careful about what we say about this? Because what if this means we should discourage women from getting into the fire service? Is this going to discourage women? Is this going to discourage departments?
I think it's a whole issue of family planning, in general. There are some studies that find rates of infertility among males in the fire service are higher than the general population, and that's a study out of Europe. So I think that it really doesn't speak to like we should be thinking about specifically only women.
We need to be thinking about holistic understanding that people in the fire service, people in the workforce are people first, and I think that the concerns that we see with miscarriage and reproductive health, I think it's not just going to be as we get more data just with the women.
I think we're seeing‑‑you know, there's a study out of the University of Arizona where they're looking at sperm and the impact of fighting fires on sperm. I think it's‑‑as we talk about looking at making a more equitable environment for women, I think it really pushes back to, like, we just need to make a more equitable environment for everybody and understand people are people and not‑‑everyone is not the same. So I think that is one of the benefits of creating the conversation and starting the conversations about women, women‑specific issues. It's really understanding that they are people‑specific issues.
But we are finding some concerns with reproductive health. There's some data to suggest‑‑and it's early, but there is some data to suggest that there could be some negative outcomes on child health outcomes, so that more research needs to be done on that.
But I think, like Catherine said, we have to have the research to know what the questions are to know if we're improving things.
MS. CASEY: Catherine, do you see the same thing that‑‑as Sara talked about that learning more about female health can help all health overall, that proper research and more information can help everyone?
MS. SANZ: Oh, absolutely. In law enforcement, in general, we suffer from a high level of obesity and heart disease, and some of the research is indicating that premenopausal women, which are considered to be less prone to heart disease, that that may not be true in law enforcement. But we just don't have enough research in that area.
We also‑‑going with Sara, we have agencies without pregnancy policies. You just kind of wing it as you're going through your career. So trying to figure out how to get everybody on an even keel so that we understand how families can navigate through a career in law enforcement or in the fire service or any of the first responder services is critical to maintaining a number of people in a career.
MS. CASEY: You know, Sara, I read the story of a woman firefighter who was on duty in Britain back in the mid‑1990s. Her name was Fleur Lombard, and she died while she was at work, and the cause of her death was attributed to ill‑fitting gear because these extreme temperatures were able to get in her suit. The temperatures got over, like, 600 degrees Celsius, which is over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, under her clothing and gear. And it was a big moment for research and a discussion about how protective gear needs to fit female bodies.
Can you talk to us about just the improvements or the education that's happened in the last three decades over time?
DR. JAHNKE: So I was actually disturbed to see the date of that because I thought, wow, it's been 30 years and it's not‑‑we're still having the same conversation in a lot of ways.
I mean, I won't‑‑I won't say completely. Like, there has been work. There has‑‑FEMA has recently funded, through their R&D fire prevent grants, a study to look specifically at women's gear and what's working and what's not. So I do think that there is significant effort being made right now, and I think I'm cautiously optimistic that we're seeing an area of improvement.
And I think, you know, the fact that this is a conversation that you chose to pick up and air is part of that shift that we need to see, to see true change, but the fact that that happened in 1996 and I know of women who last week were crawling out of their boots in a fire training, live fire training, like, there's so much work that still needs to be done. But I think that we're starting to see, at least I‑‑maybe I'm too Pollyannish about this, but I think we are starting to see a shift where people are taking this seriously and going, "Okay. Enough talking about it. What are we going to do? How are we going to make sure"‑‑
MS. CASEY: Catherine‑‑
DR. JAHNKE: ‑‑"that departments know what's available?"
MS. CASEY: And, Catherine, final thoughts from you just about what you'd like to see done immediately? What are changes that can be implemented right away, whether it's in terms of legislation, whether it's in terms of what's actually provided or given to women on the job?
MS. SANZ: Well, the easiest thing, it doesn't require anything except leadership within police departments and agencies to ensure that their contracting groups are purchasing the proper equipment for all their employees, not just the women. I mean, everybody needs to have the proper protective equipment that protects them throughout their careers.
MS. CASEY: All right. Well, Sara Jahnke, Catherine Sanz, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciated hearing from both of you.
DR. JAHNKE: Thank you.
MS. CASEY: And thank you for joining us here today. I’m Libby Casey. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and to find out more information about all of our upcoming programs. Thank you for watching. | null | null | null | null | null |
In a matter of seconds, most of the birds flew upward. But scores of others were left as black and yellow corpses on the ground.
The eerie and bizarre scene, captured by a surveillance camera on Feb. 7, has since gone viral. It has also sparked an online debate over what could have possibly caused the birds to so abruptly plummet to their deaths.
Theories being bandied about online range from electrocution after smacking into a power line to more outlandish suggestions, such as the interference of 5G technology or 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.
But what seems strange and ripe for speculation actually makes more sense by understanding biology, birds and their survival, experts said.
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.
“This truly was an ‘oops’ moment for the birds,” he said. “A really big ‘oops’ moment.”
The birds that were too late to hit the brakes 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 tightknit pack.
But their survival mode 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 flock of birds being dumped from the sky.
If they had died in the air from inhaling poisonous gases — or even hit a spaceship — the birds would have tumbled down with a different motion and not risen again after crashing to the ground. Electrocution, as others have posited, is also an unlikely candidate. “I mean with that many birds, they would’ve taken out the power line completely,” McGowan said.
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 |
Historic rain and mudslides in Brazil city kill at least 78
Rubble is left by heavy rains, flooding and mudslides, in Petrópolis, a Brazilian city in Rio de Janeiro state. (Antonio Lacerda/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The devastation was most acute in Petrópolis, a city of about 300,000, which was hit by a historic deluge on Tuesday, the force of the rain and quantity of water catching local officials by surprise.
Castro said it was “the greatest rain since 1932,” characterizing the catastrophe as so unprecedented that it was difficult to take preventive measures.
For Brazil, which battles flooding and landslides every year during rainy season, the scenes from Petrópolis were painfully familiar, recalling a 2011 disaster that killed more than 900 in the same area. More recently, heavy rains led to 24 deaths in Sao Paulo state in January. The country’s heavily populated southeast is especially vulnerable, and experts say climate change is exacerbating this deadly extreme weather.
Petrópolis, located about 40 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro city, was one of the country’s first planned cities, but the population has since grown vertically, building precarious homes atop mountains that are especially at-risk during downpours.
Images from this week’s rain and its aftermath showed torrents of rainwater whipping through the city’s steep streets. It flooded public squares, inundating shops and homes. The mud overturned cars and swept aside structures.
The search-and-rescue effort, which included firefighters and military police, also drew residents, who combed the piles looking for loved ones and neighbors.
Rosilene Virgilio, 49, told the Associated Press that she heard someone pleading for help, screaming, “Get me out of here!” | null | null | null | null | null |
I’m aware that the United States is not Iran. Its government is not an Islamist regime, and it is not a totalitarian state. But totalitarian tendencies are unquestionably on the rise within segments of this country. We see this in the attempts to curtail women’s rights, in the rise in racism and antisemitism, and in the assault on ideas and imagination best exemplified in the banning of books.
I didn’t know. Never when I was her teacher could I have imagined that Razieh would someday be in jail, thinking and talking about Henry James, awaiting her execution. But perhaps jail was the kind of place to evoke James. He could not save Razieh from death. But he could remind her of life’s beauties. | null | null | null | null | null |
The second-best option for the Fed is a half-point increase at the March meeting, a decisive move, the size of which has not been seen since 2000. The latest consumer and producer inflation reports both point to the fact that inflation is headed in an ominous direction, and provide yet more proof that the time for “gradual” Fed moves is over. | null | null | null | null | null |
Under the law, children and younger adolescents are considered “protected persons,” and claims against them may be adjudicated more leniently than those against older adolescents and adults. Many have focused on 15-year-old Valieva’s protected status, suggesting it’s the reason she has escaped punishment for alleged doping. But her status, and the proportional treatment she receives, are only part of the heavy weight on her side of the legal scales.
The law applied to Valieva’s case is the same as used in the United States. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered USA Track & Field to allow world-record holder Butch Reynolds to run in Olympic trials even though he was serving a suspension for a two-year-old positive steroid test. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “A decent respect for the incomparable importance of winning a gold medal in the Olympic Games convinces me that a pecuniary award is not an adequate substitute for the intangible values for which the world’s greatest athletes compete.” The law hasn’t changed since I was one of the lawyers on the losing side of that argument.
Which brings us to the bear in the room: Russia’s doping history. Punishing Russia for its trespasses arguably requires punishing its athletes — that’s how sanctions work. The International Olympic Committee’s response to Russian doping has been to allow individual athletes to compete, but not allow the Russians to fly their flag, a sometimes laughable approach. The effort, however, also reflects the human values the Olympics represent and the general sense among athletes that sanctions shouldn’t be on the table in sports. A corrupt nation-state should not be able, year in and year out, to deprive its best young athletes of the opportunity to compete against their peers.
I get the instinct that because Valieva tested positive she should not skate. I was in the race in 1983 when Jarmila Kratochvílová of Czechoslovakia set the still-standing 800-meter world record. That record is widely understood to have been the product of doping.
I later helped set up the world’s first random out-of-competition drug-testing program for USA Track & Field, and I drafted the White House’s negotiating document that helped establish the World Anti-Doping Agency. I’ve learned that anti-doping efforts are strong only if they have integrity. Decisions can’t be only politically expedient; they have to be based in law and evidence. Taking down a brilliant kid whose adults may have abused rather than safeguarded her isn’t the way to fix what’s broken about the anti-doping movement. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Mazars disavowal of Trump’s financial statements points to the folly of all those earlier attempts to pry loose details about Trump’s finances, such as his tax returns. He and his aides lied to the public, the media, Congress, the FBI and the courts. Why would he tell the truth in these filings? The question isn’t whether Trump’s financial statements “should no longer be relied upon” but why anyone would have relied upon them in the first place. | null | null | null | null | null |
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), right, endorsed Joe Biden for president days before the South Carolina primary, turning around Biden's political fortunes. (Luke Sharrett for The Washington Post)
Most nights when he’s in Washington, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) sits down to dinner with Cedric L. Richmond, one of President Biden’s closest advisers, at the members-only National Democratic Club.
“I said to her, I see that we might have a tough time this year, being that over 20 people were running, and several of them are good friends of ours,” he recalls telling his wife, who responded that she didn’t care how many people were running or how many of them were friends. “Her reply to me was … if we want to win — in fact, I think she used the words ‘defeat Trump’ — we’ve got to nominate Joe Biden.”
“You have had four women on the Supreme Court, and at no time has anybody ever discussed a Black woman. What’s this about?” Clyburn recounts saying to Biden. “That’s all I’m saying, that it would energize this community to this day if you were to place a Black woman on the Supreme Court.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Newsom nominates 1st Latina to California Supreme Court
Newsom nominates
1st Latina to high court
An appeals court judge who is the daughter of Mexican immigrants was nominated Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) as the first Latina to serve on the California Supreme Court.
Justice Patricia Guerrero, 50, of San Diego grew up in the agricultural Imperial Valley and has worked as a federal prosecutor, law firm partner and Superior Court judge and now sits on the 4th District Court of Appeal.
If confirmed, Guerrero would fill the vacancy left in October when Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar stepped down.
The seven-member court is made up of currently has four justices nominated by Democrats and two by Republicans.
Judge blocks records
of Bob Saget's death
The temporary injunction from Circuit Judge Vincent Chiu prohibits the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and District 9 Medical Examiner’s Office from releasing photos, videos or audio recordings related to the investigation into Saget’s death.
In his order, Chiu said he found that Saget’s wife, Kelly Rizzo, and his daughters would “suffer irreparable harm in the form of severe mental pain, anguish, and emotional distress if the requested temporary injunction is not granted.”
The complaint from Saget’s family argues that records from the death investigation and autopsy are confidential. Photos, video and audio recordings of autopsies are already exempt from public disclosure under Florida law.
Saget, who rose to fame on the hit TV show “Full House,” had performed at Hard Rock Live two days before his death, which was ruled an accident.
Prosecutors seek more than 7 years for Potter
Prosecutors have apparently backed away from their pursuit of a longer-than-usual sentence for the suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser when she killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist.
Kimberly Potter, 49, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday following her December conviction of first-degree manslaughter. In a court filing this week, prosecutors said a sentence of slightly more than seven years — which is the presumed penalty under the state’s guidelines — would be proper.
Potter was convicted of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 killing of Wright, who was pulled over by Brooklyn Center officers for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
Frank disagreed with defense arguments that Potter should be given a sentence that goes below the guideline range.
If the court finds that Potter’s case is less serious than the typical first-degree manslaughter case, he wrote, it should issue a sentence of between four and slightly over seven years, the presumptive sentences for second-degree and first-degree manslaughter.
Thousands of baptisms are declared invalid: Thousands of baptisms performed by a priest who served in Arizona for 16 years are now presumed to be invalid because he used incorrect wording on a subtle but key component of the sacrament, Roman Catholic officials said. People affected were baptized by the Rev. Andres Arango, who served in three parishes in metro Phoenix from September 2005 until his resignation Feb. 1. Arango's error was in saying, "We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," when he should have begun the sentence, "I baptize you." The Vatican in June 2020 declared that the formula "We baptize you . . . " was invalid and that anyone who was baptized using it must be rebaptized using the proper phrasing. | null | null | null | null | null |
The plant sprawls flat along the ground as it grows, with arrowhead-shaped leaves that radiate from the middle and that can grow to the size of a dinner plate. That’s if they even sprout. The prostrate milkweed, a rare plant found in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico, spends much of its time dormant and below the surface, a federal scientist said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week proposed listing the species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, a move that would aid in species recovery and in spreading awareness about the threats to this rare plant, which include invasive grass and human-driven development. There are 24 known locations where the plant grows in Texas and Mexico, though it is possible there are other populations of the plant that have not been observed, said Chris Best, state botanist with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Texas.
Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that “we have to pay attention to the obscure animal and plant species that together keep our world alive.” In a statement, he said he hopes protections “keep the prostrate milkweed flowering in South Texas for generations to come.”
The proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service follows a lawsuit from the center that pushed the agency to determine whether 241 plant and animal species “thought to be trending toward extinction” should be protected under federal law.
The proposal includes a plan to designate nearly 700 acres in two Texas counties as “critical habitat” for the rare milkweed.
Best said the plant spends “most of its time in dormant condition,” in walnut-size tubers underground — that is part of what makes it a challenge to know everywhere the plant is. He said the plant has adapted to a region that is often in drought and has wide variations in rainfall.
“The plant just endures these long droughts … and then you just get that perfect rain,” he said. That is when the plant can grow above the surface and flower.
Like other species of milkweeds, it can aid pollinators such as bees, butterflies and wasps that visit the plant to drink the nectar. Best noted that there are some anecdotal reports of monarch butterfly larvae feeding on the prostrate milkweed’s leaves, but the plant is so rare that it’s hardly an “important larval host.”
Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said that “from the point of view of monarchs or pollinators at a large scale, it may not be the most important plant — but it is important to their own little space.” Black added that it may be a food source for insects.
Best described a local botanist discovering a large wasp called a tarantula hawk pollinating on a prostrate milkweed.
It was promising news, he said, because the wasp may have a “wide forage range,” collecting pollen from one plant and potentially carrying it to another plant of the same species miles away.
“What that means for the survival of this plant is it could survive in very widely dispersed populations,” he said.
A key threat to the species, Best said, is a tough and invasive grass called buffelgrass that spreads far beyond where it is planted.
The milkweed has also suffered from habitat loss in areas that have been degraded by constant energy development, road construction and other human activity, officials said.
“Seems like every year they’re putting in new cable or waterlines or power lines,” Best said. “Every time you disturb the soil, buffelgrass just jumps in and takes over.”
Habitat destruction and fragmentation, Robinson said, is “what’s driving a lot of the extinction crisis that the world is undergoing.”
The benefit of a designation under the Endangered Species Act, Robinson added, would be that federal officials would be required to develop a recovery plan for the specific species.
Best said it would also raise awareness among the general public that “this is a rare part of our natural heritage.”
“Keep your eye out for it, and if conservation is something that interests you, help us look for it,” he said.
Hoffman Black, of the Xerces Society, said people often ask him, regarding rare species, “Why care?”
He compared the importance of diverse habitats and species resilience to screws on a plane.
“You can lose some screws on a plane and probably make it fine and land and then they’ll fix it,” he said. “At some point, if you lose enough screws on the plane, it’s going to crash. It’s the same thing with ecosystems.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Proud Boys member Henry “Enrique” Tarrio in 2020 in Portland, Ore. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
A D.C. police lieutenant in the intelligence branch has been put on leave amid an investigation into alleged improper contacts with a prominent member of the extremist group Proud Boys, according to four law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case.
The officials identified the officer as Shane Lamond, a 22-year veteran. Law enforcement officials said there is evidence suggesting communications between Lamond and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who described himself as the former chairman of the group.
Efforts to reach Lamond on Wednesday evening were not successful.
Speaking at a news conference, D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said only that a member of the department had been placed on administrative leave during an “ongoing investigation” being conducted by his department, the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Contee declined to answer questions in more detail, saying allegations had not been proved and that he did not want to compromise the investigation. The chief said he is committed to full transparency and accountability.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, would not describe the nature of the alleged contacts between Lamond and Tarrio or how the inquiry began. Contee said he was concerned enough by the allegation to take administrative action.
Tarrio, reached by phone, described his contacts with Lamond as professional. He said he provided Lamond or other police officials advance notice when the Proud Boys planned to rally or march in the District.
But Tarrio also said that during marches, Lamond would tell him the location of counterdemonstrators. Tarrio said that was so his group could avoid conflict, though after one violent night of demonstrations, police accused the Proud Boys of roaming the city looking for and instigating fights, targeting people they believed identified as antifa, or antifascists.
“He was just a liaison officer for when we held rallies,” Tarrio said of Lamond. He denied their relationship extended beyond that and said he is not a confidential informant for anyone on the D.C. police force.
“They’re just trying to get anybody at this point,” Tarrio said of investigators. “I only told him, ‘We’re coming into town and we’re going to hold this protest.’ That’s as far as the relationship went.”
Activists have long complained that D.C. police enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Proud Boys, pointing to fist-bumps seen between members, officers posing for photos with Proud Boys and some police turning away as members destroyed Black Lives Matters signs.
Police have denied those accusations, saying any sign of cooperation was merely officers doing their best to keep warring sides apart.
Tarrio was not at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, but his group has become a key focus of the FBI’s investigation into it.
Tarrio was arrested two days before the attack on the Capitol on charges he burned a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church during a previous protest in the District. He was released last month after serving five months in jail.
The court had ordered him to stay out of the city as his case was pending.
FBI probes possible connections between extremist groups at heart of Capitol violence
Dozens of people linked to the Proud Boys have been arrested in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. Tarrio’s conduct is also under review as part of the insurrection probe, law enforcement officials have said.
Any suggestion that law enforcement acted inappropriately in handling sources tied to the Jan. 6 attack probably would be seized upon by Republicans in Congress and elsewhere, who have repeatedly suggested that the FBI, either through undercover agents, informants or both, egged on violence.
At a hearing last month, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) lambasted federal officials for not answering questions about informants, and pressed the head of the FBI’s national security branch, Jill Sanborn, to say whether the federal government “deliberately encouraged illegal violent conduct on January 6th.” She answered, “Not to my knowledge, sir.”
While nothing currently known about the Lamond case suggests recent interactions between Tarrio and the FBI, court records show that years ago he was a prolific cooperator with federal and local law enforcement in South Florida — cooperation that grew out of a 2012 fraud case in which he pleaded guilty to helping sell stolen goods.
Tarrio has complained about being publicly identified as a government informant, posting an online screed last year criticizing government and the media for disclosing his past activities and arguing that his cooperation was done with the full knowledge and participation of his co-defendants, writing: “They have proven that if you cooperate with the US government they will hang you out to dry... So my question is... is it worth it? That I leave up to y’all to decide.”
At a 2014 hearing in the fraud case, a prosecutor described Tarrio as “probably the most cooperative from day one. From day one, he was the one who wanted to talk to law enforcement, wanted to clear his name, wanted to straighten this out so that he could move on with his life.”
The prosecutor told the court that Tarrio’s cooperation helped federal agents prosecute 13 others and aided local police with a number of undercover drug investigations.
Jeffrey Feiler, Tarrio’s defense attorney at the time, said Tarrio’s broad cooperation allowed law enforcement to successfully raid multiple marijuana grow houses and seize 100 pounds of the drug. He said Tarrio also “worked in an undercover capacity in a case involving information pertaining to an illegal immigrant smuggling ring and, again at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country.”
Magda Jean-Louis and Clarence Williams contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Former attorney general Loretta E. Lynch has previously worked with the NFL. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Loretta E. Lynch, a former U.S. attorney general, will be among the lawyers representing the NFL as it defends itself in the racial discrimination lawsuit filed by former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores.
League spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed that the NFL retained Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and that Lynch and Brad S. Karp, the firm’s chairman, will lead the defense.
Lynch is a partner in the firm’s litigation department. She served as attorney general from 2015 to 2017, becoming the first African American woman to hold the office. Lynch has worked previously with the NFL, leading the league’s investigation of allegations made by Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder about his former limited partners.
Karp previously has represented the league in a variety of matters, including concussion-related litigation.
Flores filed his lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing the NFL and teams of discriminating against Black coaches and denying them equal opportunity. Flores named the Dolphins, New York Giants and Denver Broncos while listing the 29 other NFL teams as potential defendants. Flores was fired by the Dolphins last month after a second straight winning season.
The league and the teams named in the lawsuit denied Flores’s allegations. Commissioner Roger Goodell said last week that the NFL won’t “take anything off the table” as it seeks to address its diversity issues following a hiring cycle this offseason in which only one of the nine head coaching vacancies leaguewide was filled by a Black coach.
“I put the legal claims and the legal process to the side,” Goodell said in Inglewood, Calif., at his annual news conference during Super Bowl week. “That’ll be handled by lawyers. To me, it’s more important for us to sort of listen to [Flores], understand what he and other coaches are going through, what our clubs are going through … and also, again, reevaluate everything we’re doing.”
The NFL’s hiring of Lynch was first reported by Bloomberg. | null | null | null | null | null |
Beijing Winter Olympics live updates Mikaela Shiffrin skis before women’s hockey, figure skating take stage
Eileen Gu posts highest score in halfpipe qualifying; three Americans through to final
Eileen Gu takes lead after first run of women’s halfpipe qualifying
Perspective: After their Olympics, these nurses will go back to battling covid cases
Fitness-conscious curlers are starting to fit in among Olympic athletes
Mikaela Shiffrin still has one individual event to go, and a lot riding on it
Julia Marino says she withdrew from big air after IOC objected to logo on her board
U.S. men’s curling has a few ways to advance to the semifinals
The Winter Games continue in Beijing. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Team USA star Mikaela Shiffrin, who has had a nightmare of an Olympics, returns to action, competing in her fifth individual event as the Beijing Games continue on Day 13. Elsewhere, look for key matches in curling, a sport that has gone through a bit of a glow-up, and women’s hockey, where two great rivals are set to meet for gold medals. Kamila Valieva, the Russian figure skater at the center of a doping scandal that has engulfed the Olympics, also takes the ice again with a chance to win gold. Follow along for live updates and highlights from the Winter Games.
Mikaela Shiffrin is set to compete in the women’s Alpine combined, which is scheduled to start at 9:30 p.m. Eastern with the downhill run and continue at 1 a.m. Eastern with the slalom run. It won’t be the last time you’ll see her in these Games; she’s also expected to compete in the mixed-team race late Friday night Eastern time.
The U.S. women’s hockey team will face Canada in the gold medal game, with puck drop scheduled for 11:10 p.m. Eastern. The two hockey powers have a rich and storied rivalry that has continued for years. Team USA took gold at the 2018 Winter Games, but Canada has cruised through this Olympic tournament.
The women’s figure skating competition will return with the free skate, which is scheduled to begin at around 5 a.m. Eastern. Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian star whose doping case has roiled the Games, is in the lead after the short program.
Norway, with its chill outlook on success, continues to dominate in Beijing, leading the medal count with 28 medals entering the day’s events. Team USA has collected 19 medals, including eight golds. Find the full medal count here.
By Des Bieler10:05 p.m.
Eileen Gu appears more than ready to add to her collection of medals at the Beijing Olympics. The freestyle skiing superstar, who was raised in the United States but chose to represent China, easily topped the field in qualifying Thursday for the halfpipe final.
Gu received a 95.50 in Thursday’s second run that was the only score higher than the 93.75 she got for her first run. The second-place qualifier, Rachael Karker of Canada, had a best score of 89.50. In third was Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru, who rested on her initial score of 87.50 and passed on a second run.
Among others placing in the top 12 out of 20 competitors and moving on to Friday’s final were a trio of Americans, Hanna Faulhaber, Brita Sigourney and Carly Margulies. Another member of Team USA, Devin Logan, finished in 13th place, just out of qualifying position.
Canada’s Cassie Sharpe, the 2018 halfpipe gold medalist, finished sixth in qualifying. Gu was joined by two other Chinese athletes, Zhang Kexin and Li Fanghui.
Gu, 18, previously won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle at these Olympics. In an interview with NBC following her second run Thursday, she struck an ominous note to her halfpipe competitors when it was suggested that some of them may have been saving their best tricks for the final.
“I’m not going all-out, either,” Gu said with a sly tone.
“I mean, I have a few more tricks that I would like to have the opportunity to do, but also given that it’s the Olympics, I definitely wanted to be consistent and just do my best,” she continued. Gu said the halfpipe event was “all about fun — it’s all about pushing myself and pushing the limits.”
Eileen Gu posted the highest score in the first of two runs during Thursday’s qualifying for the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe final. The top 12 out of 20 competitors, based on their best single score, move on to Friday’s final.
Gu, who has already won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle in Beijing, received a score of 93.75 for her initial effort in the halfpipe. Raised in the United States but representing China at the Winter Olympics, the 18-year-old Gu is the reigning world champion and 2020 Youth Olympics champion in the halfpipe.
In second after the first run Thursday was Canada’s Rachael Karker (88.50), who was runner-up to Gu at the 2021 world championships. The third-highest score was posted by Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru (87.50), who won bronze in the slopestyle. In fourth was Cassie Sharpe of Canada, who won the 2018 gold medal in freeski halfpipe.
A trio of Americans — Hanna Faulhaber, Brita Sigourney and Carly Margulies — placed seventh, eighth and ninth in the first run. Sigourney, 32, won bronze in the event in 2018 and finished third at the 2019 world championships.
Another member of Team USA, Devin Logan, was in 13th, just out of qualifying position with one more run to go.
BEIJING — When Strauss Mann stood alone in his crease, protecting an American net that no longer needed protecting, it didn’t matter that Auston Matthews was back in Toronto, awaiting a Thursday date for his Maple Leafs against the Pittsburgh Penguins. It didn’t matter that Patrick Kane was in Chicago with his Blackhawks, who were due to host Columbus on Thursday, too.
“We really felt like we had a lot more in us than just the quarters,” Mann said. “Everyone watching could probably feel that as well. But you can’t script it up how you want it every time, and life and hockey are about learning things and taking what life gives you and trying to make lemonade out of lemons, I guess.”
Inside National Aquatics Centre, where Michael Phelps swam to eight gold medals in 2008, the nursing Olympians have been credible athletes worthy of a platform. When they spoke, they outshined the dangerously contrarian thoughts of Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving. When they played, they honored medical professionals who deserve better from a variant-fatigued public continuing to make grave decisions.
Her start Thursday in the women’s Alpine combined at National Alpine Skiing Centre will mark her fifth individual event — as many as are available to her — and Saturday, she will add a sixth event, the mixed-team race. Only one skier, Shiffrin’s rival Petra Vlhova of Slovakia, has skied all six races in one Olympics — at PyeongChang 2018, the year the mixed-team event was introduced — and Vlhova’s Beijing Games are finished because of an ankle injury.
Julia Marino said she withdrew from this week’s women’s big air final event after the International Olympic Committee told her to cover up a Prada logo on the bottom of her snowboard.
The 24-year-old American, who won a silver medal last week in slopestyle — on the same Prada board — was initially reported to have withdrawn because of an injury she suffered in a training run. In a recent Instagram story, Marino said that her coccyx injury was a factor, but was exacerbated by the fact that, under threat of disqualification, she was made to use a red Sharpie pen to alter her board.
IG post by Julia Marino whose board was approved, and then later she was made to *draw* over the @Prada logo, which changed the board friction. Once again, the Olympic motto: making up rules as we go. pic.twitter.com/DFNLaoZGOF
— David Epstein (@DavidEpstein) February 15, 2022
“For those who don’t know, the base of the board is important for your speed and not meant to have anything on it but wax, having marker and other things on the bottom basically defeats the purpose,” wrote Marino, who shared an image of her board.
“I dropped into the jump to see how the tailbone felt after taking a slam the other day in practice, and after my base being altered, I had no speed for the jump and wasn’t able to clear it several times,” she wrote. “Was just feeling pretty physically and mentally drained from this distraction and the slam I took.
“I was super-hyped with how I did in slope, my main event, and decided not to risk further injury even tho that didn’t appear to be the top priority of the IOC.”
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee sent a letter to the IOC arguing to no avail that covering the logo was “not a feasible option” because it was “molded to the board and altering it would cause drag and interrupt the surface intended to glide.”
In a statement (via NBC), the IOC said Marino was “competing with a snowboard with branding of a company that doesn’t primarily have its business in sporting goods, contrary to Olympic advertising rules that protect the funding of the Olympic Movement.” The IOC added that it became aware of the logo after she competed in the slopestyle final, and that “together with the USOPC a solution with minimal impact was sought including the possibility of keeping the same equipment and removing the branding.”
The U.S. men’s curling team faces Denmark (1-7 in pool play) on Wednesday night at 8:05 p.m. Eastern, with its hopes of defending its Olympic gold medal hanging in the balance.
The top four teams in the 10-team pool play advance to the semifinals, and the Americans are fourth with a 4-4 record. But Britain (7-1), Sweden (7-1) and Canada (5-3) already have clinched their semifinal spots, meaning only one berth remains, and it will come down to the United States or Norway, which is 3-5 and faces Italy (also 3-5) at the same time Team USA faces Denmark on Wednesday night.
The U.S. men will advance with a win over Denmark or a Norway loss to Italy. Should the Americans lose and the Norwegians win to both finish 4-5, the Norwegians would hold the tiebreaker by virtue of their 7-6 win over Team USA on Saturday.
If the United States and Norway both lose and Switzerland defeats Sweden on Wednesday, it would mean five teams would finished tied for fourth at 4-5 (United States, China, Russian Olympic Committee, Italy and Switzerland). The United States would win the tiebreaker in that scenario because it went 3-1 against the other teams. Should only the United States, China and ROC finish tied in the standings at 4-5, the tiebreaker would again go to Team USA, this time by virtue of its 6-5 win over the ROC on Feb. 9. | null | null | null | null | null |
Historic rain and mudslides in Brazilian city kill at least 94
Rubble is left by heavy rains, flooding and mudslides in Petrópolis, a Brazilian city in Rio de Janeiro state. (Antonio Lacerda/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Castro said it was “the greatest rain since 1932,” characterizing the catastrophe as so rare that it was difficult to take preventive measures.
Exploding canals, collapsing malls: Watch Brazil’s deadly floods
For Brazil, which battles flooding and landslides every year during rainy season, the scenes from Petrópolis were painfully familiar, recalling a 2011 disaster that killed more than 900 in the same area. More recently, landslides in two states — Minas Gerais and São Paulo — led to more than 40 deaths in January, and they came just weeks after flooding in Bahia state left at least 21 dead and thousands displaced.
The country’s heavily populated southeast has proved especially vulnerable, and experts say climate change is exacerbating this deadly extreme weather.
Petrópolis, located about 40 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro city, was founded in the 1840s by Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, who sought respite there from the scorching summer heat, and the region has remained a more temperate refuge. Petrópolis was one of the country’s first planned cities, but the population has since grown vertically, building precarious homes atop mountains that are especially at risk during downpours.
Images from this week’s rain and its aftermath showed torrents of water whipping through the city’s steep streets. It flooded public squares, inundating shops and homes. The mud overturned cars and swept aside structures.
Petrópolis Mayor Rubens Bomtempo said his city is “going through an extremely grave situation.”
“It was a difficult day, very complicated, even to understand the alterations happening in the territory,” Bomtempo said at a briefing. “Up to now, we don’t have a definitive dimension” of the damage done.
President Jair Bolsonaro, on a state visit to Russia, said he has spoken to local leaders and is “committed to helping others.”
“God comfort the families of the victims,” Bolsonaro said on Twitter.
First responders have set up a field hospital and a shelter, and a convoy of government trucks has been delivering aid supplies, including food, clothing and medicine, said Angela Góes, a spokesperson for the state civil defense ministry. More than 180 people still living in high-risk areas, which authorities fear could still be vulnerable in another storm, have been moved to local schools, she said.
“Our role now is to serve the population, to put life in the city so it can function again,” Castro, the state’s governor, said in a statement Wednesday evening. “We mobilized teams, machinery and we will invest whatever is necessary for the reconstruction of this municipality and to try to minimize the pain of these families who are victims of the rain.”
The search-and-rescue effort — which included hundreds of firefighters, military police and nine helicopters — also drew residents, who combed the piles looking for loved ones and neighbors.
Rosilene Virgilio, 49, told the Associated Press she heard someone pleading for help, screaming, “Get me out of here!” | null | null | null | null | null |
A migrant begins a hunger strike with her mouth sewed shut during a protest to demand free transit through the country in Tapachula, Mexico, on Feb. 15. (Jose Torres/Reuters)
A group of migrants at Mexico’s southern border sewed their mouths shut Tuesday to demand that immigration authorities grant them passage toward the U.S. border.
Photos published by Reuters show the migrants, mostly from Central and South America, using needles and plastic thread to tie their lips together in a bid to pressure Mexican authorities to expedite their asylum claims.
The harrowing images are another sign of the desperation of migrants stuck in the southern city of Tapachula, at the border with Guatemala. Backlogs mean some wait months for asylum claims to be processed and humanitarian visas to be granted to legalize their stay in the country.
The dramatic protest also reflects an increasingly tense situation in Tapachula, where a recent massive influx of thousands of migrants from Central and South America, Haiti and other countries has overwhelmed Mexican authorities.
The number of people applying for refugee or asylum status in Mexico has nearly doubled since 2019, reaching an all-time high of 131,448 claims in 2021 — 39 percent of which came from Haitians, according to government data released last month.
Roughly 70 percent of the asylum claims are processed in Tapachula, where the country’s largest immigration center is located.
Several migrants who participated in the protest told journalists that they felt a need to express their mounting frustration over delays in getting their claims processed.
“I got an appointment in three or four months and I don’t have the money to stay in this city for that long,” Rafael Hernandez, from Venezuela, told AFP.
Others said they were carrying out the dramatic action to shine a light on the difficult conditions they are living in, with many sleeping in parks and on street benches for weeks and relying on humanitarian aid for food. According to Reuters, a dozen people participated in the protest.
“I’m doing it for my daughter,” Yorgelis Rivera of Venezuela told the news agency. “She has not eaten anything in the last few hours and I see no solution from the authorities.”
“We are like prisoners here,” Rivera added, saying she has been waiting for a response from Mexico’s migration agency for more than a month.
In a news release, Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, the agency overseeing immigration matters, characterized the migrant mouth-sewing protest as “senseless.”
“It is very concerning that these measures were taken with the consent and support of those who call themselves their representatives, with the intention of pressuring migration authorities on a service that is already being provided,” the statement read.
Mexican immigration authorities said they are dealing with asylum requests and giving priority to “vulnerable groups like children, adolescents, pregnant women, crime victims, people with disabilities and senior citizens.”
In recent years, Mexico has faced mounting pressure from the United States to stem the massive flow of migrants fleeing violence, poverty and climate change, and prevent them from reaching the U.S-Mexico border.
In return, the Mexican government has repeatedly urged the Biden administration to increase funding for Mexico and Central America — where most of the migrants come from — to create more jobs and deter migration.
During the 2021 fiscal year, U.S. authorities took more than 1.7 million migrants into custody along the Mexico border, an all-time high. Arrests by the Border Patrol also reached the highest levels ever recorded, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Washington Post.
While migrants rarely sought protection in Mexico in the past, stricter border enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border and a slowdown in U.S. asylum processing has led to a spike in people now claiming asylum in Mexico. According to migrant advocates and human rights groups, this has further strained an already flawed immigration system.
Raymundo Tamayo, Mexico director for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid group, said the “exponential growth” in the number of migrants seeking protection in Mexico, either to stay in the country or continue north, has posed significant financial and logistical challenges to Mexico’s immigration system.
“While Mexico has migration policies that align with international asylum laws, in practice, the reality is very different,” Tamayo said. “The asylum system has been completely surpassed.”
Dana Graber Ladek, chief of mission in Mexico with the U.N. International Organization for Migration, said the group has seen an unprecedented number of individuals arriving in Mexico, not only from Central and South America, but from as far as Africa and Asia.
Graber said the “drastic” measures taken by migrants Tuesday “reflects a lack of migration alternatives for these individuals who are applying for asylum, even if they might not qualify for it.”
“The asylum system is oversaturated at this point, and this is precisely why we are looking for alternatives working with the government of Mexico, hoping to identify ways to change their visa system and offer work permits for individuals who are interested in staying in Mexico,” she added.
Mexico has pushed hundreds of migrants expelled from the U.S. on to Guatemala, stranding them in a remote village far from their homes | null | null | null | null | null |
Anne Arundel County school board lifts system’s mask mandate
More than 80 percent of the county’s residents have been vaccinated against covid-19, the school system’s superintendent said
The Anne Arundel County Board of Education voted Feb. 16 to make masks optional for its school system. (iStock)
Anne Arundel County Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to make masks optional in its schools after the county met the state-required health guidelines to roll back its mandate.
Superintendent George Arlotto asked the board to lift the mandate after receiving confirmation from the Maryland Department of Health that more than 80 percent of the county’s residents have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Arlotto’s push to rescind the mask requirement follows Maryland’s State Board of Education’s guidance. The state board passed a mask mandate with “off-ramps” that allow school boards to lift the requirement when certain health provisions are reached.
A school board can lift a mask requirement if a county reaches at least an 80 percent vaccination rate, if 80 percent of the school staff and students in the building are vaccinated, or if the county has had 14 days with moderate or low transmission of covid-19.
“We can’t operate frankly as if covid is the flu, and we can’t operate as if it’s ever going to go away and completely be gone — it won’t,” board president Joanna Bache Tobin said before the vote. “We are all in a world of calculated risk, just as we are every day we get in the car.”
As a school board member made the initial motion to make masks optional, a member of the audience gave the motion a thumbs down. Other audience members cheered.
During the meeting, Arlotto said there were 133 active student cases of the coronavirus in the county school system. Two weeks before, there were 334 cases, he told board members. Among the system’s staffers, there were 29 active cases, down from 38 two weeks before, he said.
There were several outbreaks at the schools over several weeks, which caused eight schools to move to virtual instruction, Arlotto said. In the past 26 days, though, no school has had to pause in-person learning, he said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) asked the State Board of Education to rescind its mask policy in a letter last week, citing the state’s declining coronavirus case rates and hospitalizations. In a response letter to Hogan, the state board pointed to its current guidance, and said it would be “reviewing the latest data and health guidance” at its meeting on Feb. 22.
Anne Arundel’s decision comes as school systems across the country have announced plans to lift mask requirements as coronavirus cases have decreased and parents have pushed for a return to normalcy. | null | null | null | null | null |
INDIANAPOLIS — The Washington Wizards faced a cause-and-effect situation with two centers in street clothes Wednesday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The injuries left defensively challenged Thomas Bryant as Washington’s lone big man to patrol the paint. The effect was the Indiana Pacers relentlessly attacking the basket.
Indiana scored 74 points in the paint and shot 54.2 percent as Washington simply couldn’t defend the interior. The Pacers knew it and so did Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr., who went with a small lineup during a long stretch of the third quarter. At one point, Terry Taylor attacked the rim with his left hand and dunked on Kyle Kuzma, who was hit in the face in the process. He then came back with layups on the next two Indiana possessions.
“They’re dynamic. They attack, they play downhill,” said Unseld, who noted poor rebounding and one-on-one defense. “But we got to do a better job of walling off. Allowing the guys to continuously get in our paint is a problem. Some of that was transition, of course. That type of number, 74 points, you’re not going to win a lot of nights.”
The Wizards’ defensive issues put them in a 13-point hole in the fourth but they chipped away, trimming it the margin to 95-94 after Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s three-pointer.
Haliburton, who came over from Sacramento at the trade deadline, posted 21 points and 14 assists. Terry Taylor had 18 points and nine rebounds while Tristan Thompson added 17 off the bench. Six different players scored in double digits for the Pacers.
“We’re not going to give in,” Kuzma said. “We know we’re without [Bradley Beal] and we don’t really know the status of [Kristaps Porzingis]. But individually, collectively as a team we’re not just out there trying to tank away games and give in how we used to do prior to a couple of weeks ago in the season. We want to fight to the end. We want to be able to compete every single night ... and we’ve been doing that.”
Debut on hold
Porzingis won’t make his Wizards debut until after the all-star break, Unseld said. The team’s biggest trade deadline acquisition will miss Thursday’s game against Brooklyn as he continues to heal from a bone bruise. Porzingis traveled to Indiana and was limited in the morning’s shoot-around.
The Wizards were also without Daniel Gafford (conditioning) and Rui Hachimura (ankle). This was the second game Gafford has missed after being cleared from the health and safety protocol.
“It’s always an individual base, degree of his symptoms, the duration, all those things play into it,” Unseld said about Gafford. “We go upon the recommendation of our medical team and as we’ve ramped him up, evaluating him and how he’s responded to that stimulus is why we made the decision we made.
“So, I think just out of an abundance of caution, but I do I want him out there. I think it's important to make sure he's in a good place physically before we throw him out there.”
Haliburton’s arrival
Haliburton, 21, has sparkled since coming east, and Unseld said he is a difficult cover, with an extended range and a player who can flourish on the pick-and-roll. | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. men’s curling takes advantage of Danish miscue, advances to semifinals
The United States' John Shuster, John Landsteiner and Christopher Plys celebrate the victory that advanced them to the semifinals. (Eloisa Lopez/Reuters)
BEIJING — John Shuster had been curling at the Olympics long enough to understand the stakes of a match such as Thursday morning’s, long enough to know it might mean a little more than usual. He had faced his share of do-or-die games, from Turin to Vancouver to Sochi to PyeongChang, from finishing last to winning a gold medal. Over those dozen years, he had advanced to an age where he has only so many more cracks left at this, assuming he has any at all.
Shuster and the United States men’s curling team — or rink, in the vernacular — made certain Thursday morning at National Aquatics Center they would keep curling at these Olympics, that any questions about the future would be shelved for later. The Americans beat Denmark, 7-5, behind vice skip Christopher Plys, who ended a match of precise throws with a crucial, defensive stone in 10th end. The victory advanced them out of round-robin play without outside help, their hope to defend the gold medal they won so dramatically four years ago still alive.
The Americans capitalized on an early, colossal Danish mistake and cruised into the semifinals, where they will face top-seeded Britain — whom they beat, 9-7, last Friday to deal the Brits their lone loss of the tournament — with a chance to secure a medal. The United States finished 5-4 in the round-robin stage, winning three of its final four matches.
Shuster would attempt to win the third medal of his career later Thursday night, or early Thursday morning back home in Duluth, Minn. If there is such a thing as a face of U.S. curling, Shuster is it. He is competing at his fifth Olympics. The story of how the U.S. curling governing body effectively fired him after 10th- and ninth-place finishes in 2010 and 2014, only for him to assemble a band of curlers christened “The Rejects” that won gold in 2018, has become widely known.
Curling can be played into the late-40s, but the sport also has emphasized fitness in recent years, and in any Olympic cycle, losing in the qualifying tournament is an ever-present threat. Even as a gold medalist, Shuster’s rink could have been bounced from these Olympics had one final stone gone differently.
And so, the possibility existed Shuster had walked into an Olympic curling rink for the final time Thursday morning. The United States arrived with both a clear mission and a possible escape hatch. The Americans only had to beat Denmark, which entered in last place with a 1-7 round-robin record, to reach the semifinals and put themselves one victory away from a medal. If they lost, they could still advance based on tiebreaking procedures if Italy beat Norway three sheets over.
The United States had a rocky beginning. Shuster curled the final stone of the second end through the button, a failure of execution that gave the Danes a point, pushing their early lead to 2-0 even when the Americans held the hammer — the last shot of the end, a massive advantage granted by losing the prior end.
The United States recovered with two points in the third end — but over on the other side of the arena, Norway had struck with two in their third end to tie Italy.
It started to look like a tense day ahead for the U.S. rink, and then the Danes made an even more flagrant error than Shuster’s. In the fourth end, Danish skip Mikkel Krause’s last stone didn’t curl enough around two U.S. blockers, sliding out of the target and gifting three points to the Americans in an end in which they did not possess the hammer. Krause dropped his head, lifted his broom and let it fall to the ground.
The 5-2 advantage with five ends remaining allowed the Americans to shift their strategy. They could emphasize defense and allowed neutral results to become victories. In the sixth, they played for a blank — purposefully engineering an end in which no rocks remained on the sheet, which allowed them to keep the hammer in the seventh without Denmark chipping away at their lead.
Over on the D sheet, the Italians lost control after playing for a blank of their own, and the Norwegians pulled ahead of Italy, 5-4, after seven ends, then piled on another two points without the hammer in the eighth on their way to a rout. The Americans would be on their own — and that was just fine. They added a point in the seventh and then stole another in the eighth, building a 7-3 lead with two ends left.
Even when Denmark took two in the eighth, the United States still held the hammer and a two-point lead. Plys, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner took turns knocking Danish rocks off the sheet, and they had secured passaged to Thursday night. Shuster clasped hands with Plys, knowing they still had another match left. | null | null | null | null | null |
Women’s hockey live updates Team USA and Canada, the sport’s biggest rivals, meet with gold on the line
The two teams line up before the gold medal game. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
For the sixth time in seven Olympic women’s hockey tournaments, Canada and the United States are meeting in the gold medal. Canada has romped through the tournament, with a goal differential of 54-8. The United States has lost just once — to Canada. | null | null | null | null | null |
Women’s hockey live updates Canada leads Team USA, 2-0, after first period
Canada leads 2-0 after the first
Canada takes a 2-0 lead late in the first
Sarah Nurse gives Canada a 1-0 lead
Canada nearly takes an early lead, goal waived off on review
Marie-Philip Poulin notched the game's second goal. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
For the sixth time in seven Olympic women’s hockey tournaments, Canada and the United States are meeting for the gold medal. Canada has romped through this tournament, with a goal differential of 54-8. The United States has lost just once — to Canada.
Canada has a 2-0 lead after the first period. Sarah Nurse gave Canada a 1-0 lead less than eight minutes into the game, and Marie-Philip Poulin scored through a screen on a broken play with about five minutes left in the period.
By Chelsea Janes12:00 a.m.
The first period of the quadrennial Olympic showdown between the North American rivals was rather one-sided as the Canadians scored two goals and had a third waived off as they controlled the puck for much of the period. Though both teams registered 11 shots, the Canadians seemed to pepper American goalie Alex Cavallini with formidable frequency as the U.S. did its best to generate a few strong chances here and there.
After the period, U.S. captain Kendall Coyne-Schofield told NBC that her team needs to put more pucks on net and create more traffic in front of Canada’s goal if they are to chip away at this deficit and turn the gold medal game into the kind of one-goal nail-biter these teams are used to playing.
Roman Stubbs: As is customary at the end of each period, American Hilary Knight — who is appearing in a record 22d Olympic game today — waited near the door to the locker room at the end of the first to give each of her teammates an encouraging fist bump. Down 2-0, the Americans are in a deep hole. The U.S. came up with a really important penalty kill near the end of the second period, but its defense has struggled to adjust to Canada’s speed and has been spread out by crisp passing. Marie-Philip Poulin’s goal came after Megan Keller failed to clear a puck — Poulin chased it down, weaved between defenders and then had a wrister deflect off defender Savannah Harmon and past Alex Cavallini to make it 2-0. The U.S. will need to be much better in their back-end if it is going to climb back into the game.
Team Canada has done this to just about every opponent — and nearly every poor soul who steps between the pipes to face down its barrage of flying pucks — in what has been a relentless and historic march through the Olympic women’s hockey tournament.
Including Monday’s 10-3 semifinal win — which included goals by nine players and assists from 11 — the Canadians have trounced their opponents in this tournament by a cumulative score of 54-8, with the 54 goals setting a record for a single Olympics.
“You can see it on the scoresheet — we have offense coming from everywhere. We have offense coming from all four lines and all seven on defense. We’re just so deep,” said forward Sarah Nurse. “It’s the best team I’ve ever been on.”
In an unsurprising turn of events, given the way Canada has controlled the puck in the first period, Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin took advantage of a puck the Americans could not clear and buried a shot past Alex Cavallini to double her team’s lead. Poulin has been unthinkably clutch in her Olympic career, and that goal was her sixth in gold medal games alone. Cavallini allowed two goals in her first three starts of these Olympics. She has allowed two in the first 17 minutes of the final.
Roman Stubbs: Sarah Nurse had been the player offsides on Canada’s nullified goal, but she scored less than a minute later. Canada has completely dictated the pace early. After the Canadians were outshot 53-27 in the first meeting of these teams in the prelims, Nurse said, “We really want to focus on quality shots versus quantity.” They’ve got both early — seven shots to the American’s two — including Nurse’s goal.
Not a minute after referees waived off what appeared to be Canada’s first goal, the red-sweatered squad scored one that would stand up. After Canada won a faceoff in the Americans’ defensive zone, Sarah Nurse found herself with the puck and plenty of room in front of Alex Cavallini’s net. She didn’t miss. The goal was Nurse’s fifth of the Olympic tournament, and her 17 points lead all scorers. Canada leads 1-0.
About eight minutes into the first period, Canadian forward Natalie Spooner found herself with the puck with space in front of the American net and knocked it home for what looked like the inevitable after an opening few minutes in which the Canadians were outshooting the Americans by a convincing margin.
But U.S. Coach Joel Johnson challenged the call, arguing that Team Canada was offsides. Referees reviewed the call and agreed. They waived off the goal.
Roman Stubbs: All three U.S. goalies have played in this tournament, and while Coach Joel Johnson has kept his decision-making process close to the vest, he’s going with the hot-hand today in Alex Cavallini after a 25-save performance in the semifinal win against Finland. “It doesn’t matter who is our opponent, we’re fighting for a gold medal here,” she said afterward, but it will matter today: her rivals will present a formidable offensive challenge. Canada has seven of the top scorers in the tournament, led by Sarah Nurse (16 points). It’s a huge opportunity for Cavallini, who didn’t play in PyeongChang and thought about walking away from the sport, only to work her way back to this stage. Cavallini is backed up today by Maddie Rooney, the 2018 gold medal shootout hero who started the first meeting between these teams in the preliminary round, a 4-2 Canada win. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE-This Feb. 5, 2021 photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Gilbert Postelle. Oklahoma is preparing to execute Postelle for his role in a quadruple slaying in Oklahoma City in 2005. Postelle is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday morning at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, File) (Uncredited/Oklahoma Department of Corrections) | null | null | null | null | null |
Indiana scored 74 points in the paint and shot 54.2 percent as Washington simply couldn’t defend the interior. The Pacers knew it, and so did Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr., who went with a small lineup during a long stretch of the third quarter. At one point, Terry Taylor attacked the rim with his left hand and dunked on Kyle Kuzma, who was hit in the face in the process. He then came back with layups on the next two Indiana possessions.
“They’re dynamic. They attack. They play downhill,” said Unseld, who noted poor rebounding and one-on-one defense. “But we got to do a better job of walling off. Allowing the guys to continuously get in our paint is a problem. Some of that was transition, of course. That type of number, 74 points, you’re not going to win a lot of nights.”
The Wizards’ defensive issues put them in a 13-point hole in the fourth, but they chipped away, trimming the margin to 95-94 after Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s three-pointer.
Haliburton, who came over from Sacramento at the trade deadline, posted 21 points and 14 assists. Terry Taylor had 18 points and nine rebounds, and Tristan Thompson added 17 off the bench. Six players scored in double digits for the Pacers.
“We’re not going to give in,” Kuzma said. “We know we’re without [Bradley Beal], and we don’t really know the status of [Kristaps Porzingis]. But individually, collectively as a team we’re not just out there trying to tank away games and give in how we used to do prior to a couple of weeks ago in the season. We want to fight to the end. We want to be able to compete every single night . . . and we’ve been doing that.”
Porzingis’s debut on hold
Porzingis won’t make his Wizards debut until after the all-star break, Unseld said. The team’s biggest trade deadline acquisition will miss Thursday’s game against Brooklyn as he heals from a bone bruise. Porzingis traveled to Indiana and was limited in the morning’s shoot-around.
The Wizards also were without Daniel Gafford (conditioning) and Rui Hachimura (ankle). This was the second game Gafford has missed after being cleared from the health and safety protocols.
“It’s always an individual base, degree of his symptoms, the duration, all those things play into it,” Unseld said about Gafford. “We go upon the recommendation of our medical team, and as we’ve ramped him up, evaluating him and how he’s responded to that stimulus is why we made the decision we made.
“So I think just out of an abundance of caution, but I do want him out there. I think it’s important to make sure he’s in a good place physically before we throw him out there.”
Haliburton makes impact
Haliburton, 21, has sparkled since coming east, and Unseld said he is a difficult cover because he has extended range and can flourish on the pick-and-roll.
Pacers banged up | null | null | null | null | null |
Warriors: C James Wiseman, recovering from right knee surgery, has put together a few solid weeks of on-court work and the plan is to continue to push him to see when he might be closer to a return. “It’s great news,” Kerr said. ... The Warriors committed just three first-half turnovers but 11 total. | null | null | null | null | null |
Early Thursday, a separatist leader in Ukraine’s contested eastern territories told Russian state media that Kyiv government forces had been firing on them and seeking to escalate conflict. He did not provide evidence for his claim and Ukraine denied shelling Kremlin-backed militants in its east, according to Reuters. The Biden administration had previously warned that Russia could use a “false pretext,” such as a provocation in eastern Ukraine, to launch a renewed invasion.
The U.S. assessment of Russian troop strength was buttressed by Britain’s chief of defense intelligence, Lt. Gen. James Hockenhull, who said in a rare public statement that the Kremlin “continues to build up military capabilities near Ukraine.”
Some Russia experts noted that Kremlin claims of a pullback have historical precedent: reports of the last Russian troops leaving a rebel-held region of Georgia in 2008 were followed days later by an attack.
The Western alliance is considering adding more battle groups in central, eastern and southeastern Europe — including possibly in Romania and Bulgaria — to complement the four established in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia is demanding that NATO halt eastern expansion — precluding Ukraine from ever joining — and the Kremlin also wants the alliance to significantly scale back its presence and activities in Eastern Europe. The United States and its partners have said the alliance’s open-door policy is nonnegotiable but progress could be made on other issues, including reciprocal arms-control measures and limitations on military exercises.
Eleventh-hour talks aimed at achieving a diplomatic resolution to the crisis are continuing, even as the West and Russia offer alternative versions of reality on the ground. Ukraine has reportedly asked the United Nations Security Council to discuss a move by Russian lawmakers to ask Putin to recognize contested territories in eastern Ukraine as independent states. There is unlikely to be any concrete action against Russia, which is one of five permanent members of the council and could veto any resolution. | null | null | null | null | null |
France announces withdrawal of troops from Mali, reshaping the fight against Islamist groups in West Africa
Troops will shift to neighboring countries as the conflict deepens, the announcement added. “We all reaffirm our strong will to continue our partnership with and commitment to the people of Mali over the long term.”
France now has about 4,000 soldiers in West Africa — the most of any one foreign partner — deployed to repel fighters who have proclaimed loyalty to al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The trouble began in the Sahel, a vast stretch of land south of the Sahara, after the Libyan government disintegrated in 2011. Mercenaries hired by Moammar Gaddafi returned to their native Mali and pushed to create their own state through a shaky alliance with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
As the insecurity worsened, so did animosity toward leaders — and their Western partners. Protest movements have swelled across the Sahel, calling for presidents to step down and France to leave. Thus sparked a chain reaction of military overthrows: Special forces officers toppled Mali’s president in August 2020 and again nine months later, pledging to restore safety. Their counterparts in Burkina Faso last month followed suit. (Guinea, largely spared the extremist violence, had its own coup d'etat in September 2021, when officers ousted a leader carrying out a maligned third term.)
Early success unleashed jubilation: Malians draped the French flag over their balconies as they cheered on the French convoys that helped liberate cities across the north, including Timbuktu. But since then, the extremists have regrouped and spilled into neighboring countries. Word of victories — the killing of several extremist leaders, for instance — couldn’t offset talk about deadly mistakes. Chief among them: A U.N. report last year that found a French airstrike in Mali’s center had killed 19 civilians.
And the popularity of Paris has plummeted in the country of 21 million. More than 85 percent of Bamako residents in an October survey by the Malian statistician Sidiki Guindo said they were “dissatisfied” with the French operation. | null | null | null | null | null |
A rally in New York's Chinatown neighborhood on Feb. 14 in response to the killing of Christina Yuna Lee. (Seth Wenig/AP)
The authorities in both cases have not said the killings were hate crimes or motivated by race, but the episodes have put Asian Americans across the country on high alert, amid an increase in anti-Asian hate incidents during the pandemic. The San Francisco Police Department said last month that it had seen a 567 percent increase in anti-Asian hate-crime reports in 2021. Nationally, there was a 73 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 over the previous year, according to FBI data.
Covid fueled anti-Asian racism. Now elderly Asian Americans are being attacked.
San Francisco police mark 567% increase in anti-Asian hate-crime reports in 2021 | null | null | null | null | null |
The Black press provides a model for how mainstream news can better cover racism
Digging deeper, offering historical context and going beyond official narratives will better serve the audience
By Olivia Paschal
Olivia Paschal is a PhD student in History at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on land, economy and labor in 20th century rural America.
In the aftermath of the anti-racist uprisings of 2020 and the Trump presidency, many American newspapers are reckoning with how their coverage has made them complicit in racism and racial violence. Caught up in the unattainable and relatively recent ideal of journalistic objectivity, which did not take root until the 1930s, the traditional news media has struggled to cover the communities it now claims as its audience. While the historical and contemporary failures of mainstream, historically White newspapers have come to light, the path forward is not so clear.
But one historic model for how to do better can be found in Black newspaper coverage from a century ago. Amid a deluge of racist massacres in the aftermath of the First World War and the subsequent influenza pandemic, the massacre in Elaine, Ark., in 1919 was among the worst, with several hundred African Americans killed in two days of violence. While state officials sought to cover up the truth by promulgating lies through the local and national White press, Black reporters — working not just for truth, but for justice — told the more accurate story. They put the massacre in context, offered sustained coverage long past the headline moment and got specific about the systemic ills victims faced.
The Arkansas Delta region was dotted with cotton-producing slave plantations before the Civil War. After the war, many Black residents remained on the land, working as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Though a number of Black politicians held state and local office in the area during Reconstruction, the state disenfranchised its Black citizens by the late 19th century. Most remained tied to the land, trapped in the sharecropping system.
In the fall of 1919, however, Black sharecroppers in Phillips County organized a union. It was one of the earliest attempts to form a sharecroppers union in the Deep South, and its members hoped to leverage high demand for cotton into fair prices for their crops and remuneration for their labor. The county’s White political and economic elite feared the union would upend White economic and political power in the region, especially in the context of the ongoing Red Scare and labor unrest after World War I.
On Sept. 30, a White railroad guard died in a gunfight outside a church where Black unionized sharecroppers were meeting. A White sheriff’s deputy was injured as well. The Phillips County sheriff sent posses of White men to investigate. White mobs soon started traveling from within and outside the county as they heard rumors about a Black insurrection. The mobs indiscriminately shot Black people on the road, pillaged their homes and chased the Black population into hiding.
The mob terror lasted three days. Federal troops called in to quash it instead almost certainly participated in the slaughter. The gangs killed hundreds of Black people — the exact number is unknown because local White newspapers failed to report it. Five White people died in the violence and the White press covered their deaths in detail.
Beyond the killing, police and the military arbitrarily arrested 285 Black people, set up sham trials and convicted more than 50 of crimes ranging from “night riding” to first-degree murder. Twelve Black men, now known as the Elaine Twelve, faced an all-White jury and were given death sentences.
A local White newspaper, the Helena World, called the mobs of men that swarmed into the county “visitors” who had “assisted in preserving order.” It ignored the Black union members (and their White lawyer) who were languishing in the county jail, and did not even mention the union until two days after the massacre ended. Then it claimed that White “outside agitators” had been responsible for the union. Their stories fed into reporting in the New York Times that blamed the massacre on socialist and communist agitators trying to stir up a Black insurrection.
Local newspapers reflected the White supremacy of Arkansas society. White Arkansans were predisposed to believe that the violence in Elaine had been justified.
But Black journalists knew the White press would not cover racist violence fairly, so they investigated what had happened themselves. Rather than repeating official state stories like the White press did (locally and reproduced by the national papers), Black journalists sought firsthand knowledge of the events.
For example, Walter F. White, then an NAACP investigator, went down to the Delta himself. Although he was African American, he could be perceived as a White man, and thus he gained access to officials. He interviewed White local residents and even Arkansas Gov. Charles Brough. But instead of parroting their words, he provided broader context in the reporting he published in the Crisis, the Survey and the Nation.
Focused on the economic exploitation of sharecroppers, White illuminated how local elites responded to unions and to the massacre. He also highlighted how the White press fueled the false narrative that the riot was justified by a purported Black “insurrection.” He wrote that there was no insurrection. Instead, driven by fears of race and class upheaval, the violent White backlash came in response to Black sharecroppers’ attempt to build collective economic power.
The massacre, he wrote, was “an example of the underlying corruption and injustice that will lead to further conflict” if the basic issue — economic exploitation of Black workers — was not addressed. He also covered the Elaine Massacre for a White periodical, the Nation, read by largely White audiences, bringing more sympathetic White attention to the underlying issues and the event.
In December 1919, Black journalist Ida B. Wells visited the imprisoned Elaine Twelve and interviewed the men and their families. Her pamphlet, “The Arkansas Race Riot,” included testimonies from the defendants, a lengthy discussion of sharecropping and a specific accounting of the money Elaine’s sharecroppers had lost while they were incarcerated during the cotton harvest. She blended firsthand testimony with the broader context of the massacre and the racist power structures of the Deep South, specifically the exploitative sharecropping system.
Black newspapers published coverage of the Elaine Twelve for years, from 1919 until they were freed — some in 1923, some in 1925.
Their sustained attention slowly helped shift public opinion in favor of the defendants, six of whom were released after an appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the other six of whom appealed their convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court with the help of the NAACP and Scipio Jones, a Black lawyer in Arkansas. Writing for the majority in a 1923 Supreme Court ruling that said six of the defendants had been denied due process, then-Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that local White newspapers “daily published inflammatory articles” contributing to paranoia and a lynch mob mentality. By the time defendants were released in 1925, even the New York Times was publishing stories about the exploitative system of “peonage” in the Southern states.
Black journalists kept the truth in view and in context, because they could look beyond official stories and the White perspective on what had taken place. They understood Black Arkansans as human beings whose lives and deaths had mattered. They recognized the inhumanity of the sharecropping system itself, as well as how Black people’s moves to organize to gain economic power threatened the foundations of White wealth in the region.
As a result, they helped shift the national attitude toward the sharecropping system and ensured that the Elaine Twelve received a measure of the justice that a racist justice system “swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion,” as Holmes wrote in his opinion, had denied them.
The work of Black journalists is a model for how newspapers today can better cover sensational, headline-grabbing incidents of racist violence and racial injustice: putting them in social, political and historical context, giving them sustained attention and questioning the official narrative of events. Mainstream newspapers today might also glean something from the contemporary Black press, which has always taken Black audiences and Black experiences seriously. No racial reckoning in mainstream news organizations can be undertaken without doing the same. | null | null | null | null | null |
Exclusion and violence in Western U.S. states helps explain the Whiteness of winter sports
Erin Jackson of the United States holds an American flag after winning the gold medal in the speedskating women's 500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, on Feb. 13. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
By Sherri Sheu
Sherri Sheu is a PhD candidate in American history at the University of Colorado Boulder.
While many have pointed to a lack of interest or fewer economic or social opportunities for athletes of color to become involved in winter sports, one overlooked factor is that these sports are often played in states in the country’s West that have long histories of excluding people of color, through both segregation and violence.
When winter sports grew in popularity in the United States after World War II, they did so in places that were overwhelmingly White. Today, snow-sports athletes largely train at elite facilities located in the West, such as Park City, Utah; Mount Hood, Ore.; Copper Mountain, Colo.; or Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Due to the history of exclusion, this geographic concentration fueled a culture around these sports that is distinctly White.
For the United States to maintain and grow its success in winter sports, the sports federations need to grapple with this history and its legacies.
In the wake of the Civil War, White Americans disproportionately benefited from the 1862 Homestead Act, which redistributed over 270 million acres of land taken from Native Americans by military force. A head of household could receive the title for up to 160 acres of land after living on and improving it for five years.
Officially, this offer of free land was open to any U.S. citizen (or “intended citizen”) head of household, including women. However, with a few notable exceptions, Black citizens, many of whom had recently been freed from enslavement, found it nearly impossible to take advantage of the land bonanza.
Among the formerly enslaved, most restarted their lives with little more than the shirts on their backs. They lacked the capital needed to transport their families to the West and start homesteads. Odious labor contracts began forcing many of them back into agricultural labor for others in the South, almost immediately after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. These predatory labor arrangements ensured that many formerly enslaved people would never gain the resources necessary to take advantage of the Homestead Act.
Even the relatively small number of Black Americans who did make it to the West found themselves confronting a range of different institutional obstacles, which made full participation in society difficult. As Mormons sought religious freedom in modern-day Utah, the Church of Latter-day Saints in 1849 banned Black members from serving in the lay priesthood, a rite of passage begun by boys at age 12 that allowed full participation in church activities. This essentially barred Black men from full membership in the church, including church leadership, until 1978 when the ban was overturned. The ban effectively kept Black Americans out of the church and out of a state dominated by Mormon leadership.
Oregon went even further, excluding Black Americans from the state altogether during its founding. The state’s 1857 constitution legally made it a Whites-only state: “No free negro or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall ever come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein.”
If official church or state policies did not enforce racial boundaries, as happened in Utah and Oregon, segregation was enforced by racialized violence directed at non-Whites. Within a 14-month period between 1885 and 1886, a wave of anti-Chinese violence targeted 168 Chinese communities across the Pacific Northwest. The Sept. 2, 1885, massacre in the coal mining town of Rock Springs, Wyo., proved especially bloody: White townspeople murdered at least 28 of their Chinese neighbors. In the aftermath, they also burned and looted Chinese homes and bodies.
Between 1848 and 1928, White Americans also lynched at least 600 people of Mexican descent across the West. Six of those lynchings occurred in Colorado, where one 1923-1924 Ku Klux Klan membership ledger from the Denver area contained over 30,000 entries.
Put together, the areas of the country with millions of acres of snowy, mountainous terrain — which would later prove ideal for skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports — excluded people of color through a variety of legal tactics and intimidation. People of color came to see snowy mountain towns and cities as places that outlawed and murdered those who looked like them — places to avoid.
The legacy of this exclusion kept people of color from taking part in large numbers in the explosive growth of skiing after World War II, because this boom was centered in Western states such as Utah, Colorado and Oregon. There were also more subtle negative impacts of exclusion. Because the Homestead Act’s benefits disproportionately enriched White Americans, it exacerbated the wealth gap between them and Black Americans, which only compounded over time due to other legal exclusions, including redlining and the lack of access for Black veterans to GI Bill loans after World War II. This made taking up expensive winter sports — which required hefty outlays for equipment — much more difficult for many Black American families.
And exclusionary practices didn’t magically vanish when laws changed and racial violence diminished. Implicitly and explicitly, exclusionary practices and their legacies have shaped the culture surrounding winter sports. Advertising for outdoor winter sports largely portrays White participants. Culturally insensitive practices surrounding these sports range from using treated wastewater to make artificial snow on mountains deemed sacred by Native Americans to coaches demanding that a Black athlete braid her hair.
Those athletes from minority backgrounds who do take up winter sports and make it to elite levels of competition face further challenges and pressures. Athletes such as snowboarder Chloe Kim, snowboardcross rider Callan Chythlook-Sifsof and bobsledder Taylor have spoken out about the racism they have confronted from the public, coaches and other athletes. Hockey player Abby Roque, a member of the Wahnapitae First Nation and the only minority player on the 23-person U.S. women’s Olympic roster, has spoken about the necessity of being a role model for Indigenous youths to pave the way for more Native participation in the sport.
American snow and ice sports federations have begun to try to diversify their teams, with some success. Rather than focusing on recruiting those with bobsledding experience, the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation has focused on recruiting elite athletes regardless of their experience or background, including from track and field and bodybuilding. This expanded recruiting pool, in turn, has diversified the sport.
But for the broader diversity push to succeed, the federations need to understand the painful historical context in which they are operating. Committing to funding athletes or having more inclusive advertising is a start, but addressing the past will help make people from communities that have been previously excluded feel more comfortable in the environments surrounding winter sports. Moreover, understanding these past contexts will help athletes from nonminority backgrounds become better teammates.
The displays of skill and strength from athletes competing in the Olympics have dazzled children of all backgrounds watching the games. For Team USA to be competitive and successful in the future, these children need paths to participation and success. Creating an inclusive environment is part of offering such a path.
At the 1992 Olympics, Kristi Yamaguchi became the first Asian American woman to win a gold medal. This year, four out of the nine members of the U.S. figure skating team that medaled in the team event are of Asian descent. Twenty years after Vonetta Flowers won a gold medal in bobsledding at the 2002 Olympics, Black women now make up a majority of the women’s U.S. bobsledding team. The evidence is clear: opening up opportunities for athletes to compete helps strengthen their sports. | null | null | null | null | null |
Miho Takagi of Japan reacts after setting an Olympic record which stood for the gold medal during the women’s speedskating 1,000-meter finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
“I remember what my older sister said to me this morning,” Miho Takagi said through a translator. “She said, ‘It’s amazing if you win four silvers.’” | null | null | null | null | null |
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