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FILE - Chicago White Sox infielder Julio Cruz is shown in this 1986 photo. Cruz, an original Seattle Mariners player from their inaugural season who later became a Spanish-language broadcaster for the franchise, has died, the team announced Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022. Cruz played for Seattle and the Chicago White Sox during his career.(AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Chasing Cancer: Women & Cancer with Thalie Martini & Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)
MS. ABUTALEB: Good morning, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Yasmeen Abutaleb, a health policy reporter here at the Post.
Today's program is part of our Chasing Cancer series, and my guests are here to talk about women's health, cancer, and how the pandemic has shifted the landscape for women.
My first guest is Thalie Martini, CEO of Breast Cancer UK. Thalie, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MS. MARTINI: Thank you very much for having me.
MS. ABUTALEB: A reminder to our audience, we want you to join our conversation. So tweet your questions and comments to the handle @PostLive.
Now I want to get to our conversation. Globally, breast cancer is now the most common type of cancer diagnosed worldwide, with over 2 million new cases in 2020 alone. Thalie, can you talk to us about the work you're doing to heighten awareness about breast cancer prevention?
MS. MARTINI: Sure. Well, as you mentioned, we at Breast Cancer UK‑‑we're passionate about prevention, and we're passionate about putting prevention first both in terms of public policy but also awareness. And there's a very good reason for that, and that's because it's estimated that between a quarter and two‑thirds of breast cancers that are diagnosed every year could actually be prevented because they have, in fact, been linked to preventable risk factors. So we believe that's a really, really important reason for prevention to be taken very seriously and for awareness of prevention to be something that is a top priority.
So we've been doing this for 20 years. So the work that we do is very much about public awareness. So we produce education content on our website, but we also provide support to people so they can understand what the risk factors are in their lives and how they can take action, importantly, to reduce their risk.
But we do a lot more than that as well. So we fund research. We believe, actually, that prevention is an area of research that's been quite neglected, and of course, understandably, research into treatment and into care and into cures is really important. It's made a huge difference actually to the mortality rate of breast cancer over the past 50 years, and so the rates have, thankfully‑‑the mortality rates have, thankfully, really reduced by over 35 percent.
But, as you've mentioned, what we have seen over the past 50 years is a consistent increase in the incidence rate. So, in the U.K., for example, incidence rates have doubled in the past 50 years. We believe that there is something in our lifestyle, there's something in our environment that is contributing to that, and so that's why we're devoting all of our investment in scientific research into exploring the lesser understood risk factors and the causes of breast cancer.
And then the other thing that we do that's really important is that we raise awareness at a public policy level because we also feel that there's a neglect around prevention priorities.
So that's our work, and the really important thing about our work is ensuring that people understand why prevention is so important, so talking about, you know, risk reduction, for example.
MS. ABUTALEB: Well, because you've been doing this so long, I'm curious how you've seen the pandemic shift the landscape in the U.K. We know that in the U.S., there has been a dramatic impact on screenings and prevention measures, of course, because, you know, elective surgeries and procedures were delayed for so long, and then still there was fear of people going into the hospital. So what impact have you seen in the U.K., and how has it compared to the sort of general trend that you've been seeing in screening and prevention?
MS. MARTINI: Yeah. I mean, we've seen very similar impacts, so huge delays in people receiving any screening services, even being able to attend GP surgeries, and so what that's led to, essentially, is people not getting their diagnosis or not having an early detection, because early detection is very, very important when it comes to breast cancer. Early detection can lead to a full recovery, and so that is something that we're seeing being delayed more and more.
We're also concerned that the impact of COVID will take a long time for services to recover, and so, ultimately, that could lead to a lot of people having much poorer outcomes once they do get their diagnosis. So I do think that's a trend, you know, across the world.
We see this as underlining the importance of prevention action and awareness about prevention. So many people aren't aware that there are lots of things that they can do in their everyday life to reduce their risk. There are some very well‑understood risk factors such as what we eat. So it's quite‑‑it's well understood that, you know, eating a diet that's high in fruit and vegetables, that can help with lots of other risk reduction, but it also helps with reducing breast cancer risk. Being physically active, that can reduce our breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent, but the other important thing about physical activity is that it really is like a magical pill. It can reduce our risk of recurrence if we've had a diagnosis very significantly, and it can also reduce our mortality rate after we've had a diagnosis by up to 40 percent, so regular physical activity. We're not talking about marathons or crossing the Channel. We're talking about bringing simple motor exercise into our everyday lives on a regular basis. That has a huge impact.
And then other risk factors include alcohol consumption. So reducing alcohol intake is very important as well for reducing our risk and then exposure to harmful chemicals in the environment. Now, that's a lesser understood risk factor, and so there's been a lot of evidence over recent years to suggest that endocrine‑disrupting chemicals, which are quite ubiquitous in our environment, have been linked to increase breast cancer risk. And that's an area of particular concern to us primarily because there is so much more research that needs to be invested in this area for us to really understand the impact that EDCs have on our general health but, importantly, in our case, with breast cancer.
So that's an area that we invest in as a charity. We're one of the few charities, certainly in the U.K., that invests in research, that looks into the links between EDCs and breast cancer risk, and of course, we raise awareness at a government level so that government is aware that it's very important to put environmental protections in place to protect the public.
So there's a range of factors that will contribute to increasing our risk, and if we take action now urgently and we can reduce the amounts of people who hear the words "you have breast cancer"‑‑and this is such an important thing now, given that there's such a stress on our services across the world, but we're seeing it in the U.K. just as much.
MS. ABUTALEB: From your vantage point, which countries or governments do you think are doing the best job or an exemplary job or just even have strategies that maybe other countries should adopt in detecting and treating breast cancer?
MS. MARTINI: Yes. I think really across the developed world, we have, you know, similar levels of screening services, which are all effective. What I'm concerned about is that most of these services across the world have been impacted, so not just the screening services for breast cancer but other early detection services for other cancers as well.
What we find in, say, European countries is that we have a legislation in place that, up until recently, the U.K. also was involved in that has protections in place and regulations in place for certain chemicals in our environment. Now, that is a gold standard, which in the long term will have a very positive impact on reducing our exposures to EDCs, and as I mentioned earlier on, we are concerned that our exposure to EDCs is contributing to these increasing incidence rates. So that gold standard is something that we as a charity look to. We want it to be duplicated, and we want it to be really followed in the U.K., very importantly, so that we can maintain and also improve those protections.
But, in terms of treatment, interventions, and detection, you know, we have gold standard services here in the U.K. as much as in Europe and in the U.S., but we do know that they've been impacted quite significantly by the pandemic.
MS. ABUTALEB: So there seems to be a correlation between some of these prevention techniques and advanced industrialized countries where breast cancer rates are higher. Can you help us understand why that seems to be the case?
MS. MARTINI: Well, I think what I can explain is that what the research tells us about incidence rates, and the research tells us that in affluent regions, so regions such as the USA, the U.K., Europe, Australasia, the incidence rates are much, much higher than in less affluent regions, so places like South Central Asia or the Middle East and most of Africa. In fact, the rates are four times higher in those regions.
So, as I mentioned earlier on, there definitely appears to be something in our lifestyle and in our environment that is leading to these increased incidence rates, particularly in affluent nations, although we are seeing incidence rates going up in some of the less affluent regions as well.
But there are protective risk factors as well that are very important for breast cancer, such as breastfeeding, for example, and such as having children at an earlier age, and in wealthier regions, potentially breastfeeding rates are lower, and people are having fewer children. But then there are lots of other risk factors as well such as what we eat, such as how physically active we are, and also the exposures that we might have in our everyday life or in our occupation as well to chemicals. And then air pollution, that plays a role as well.
So there's a number of factors that collectively will contribute to our breast cancer risk, but what the data does tell us is that in those wealthier nations, the rates are certainly much higher.
MS. ABUTALEB: What other actions can be taken to close the gaps for women and breast cancer patients in the United Kingdom?
MS. MARTINI: Well, closing the gap in terms of reducing rates, I can certainly‑‑I can certainly talk to that. There's a number of things we can do individually, and then there's a number of things that the government can do at a public level.
So I mentioned earlier on about legislation to reduce our exposure to chemicals that can increase our risk, but there are also policies that a government can put in place really to put prevention first and prevention education first so that it's something that's available to patients when they speak to their GPs, for example, so supporting health professionals as well, to support their patients around prevention actions, so understanding what to‑‑what's a healthy diet. So, for example, having lots of fruit and vegetables that are high in carotenoids, they can help reduce our risk how to‑‑supporting people to maintain a healthy weight and supporting people to be regularly physically active with expectant mothers as well supporting‑‑and also providing education around breastfeeding.
There are a number of things that people can do both at an individual level, but also at a policy level supporting prevention throughout our lives could make a huge difference in really bridging that gap and bringing those incidence rates down.
MS. ABUTALEB: And building on that question, what is being done to encourage young women to get screened earlier or to take some of the preventative measures that you've laid out?
MS. MARTINI: Well, I think the awareness level of young people is quite low around how prevention is important in their lives as well. I think there's an expectation, and I can relate to that when I was young as well, an expectation that breast cancer is an older person's disease, which in reality it is. I mean, most breast cancers will be diagnosed in women over 50. However, it's never too‑‑never too soon to start to take prevention seriously.
So we do have a number of charities in the U.K. that support young women to be aware of their breasts, and that's the most important thing is to be aware of our bodies and aware of our breasts and know what to look for, so understand when to check our breasts and also how frequently to check our breasts. And that is the most important thing for young women to think about, first of all, is to know their bodies and to know what to look for, what the signs are of breast cancer, but then to understand how they can put action into their lives so that over the course of their whole lifetime, they're able to take action to reduce their risk of ever developing the disease in the first place.
And I don't think there's a general understanding in the community with young women around these actions that they can take, and we're taking it seriously because we're developing content and resources specifically for high school‑age young people, to provide them with educational material that they can engage with, that they can relate to, to help them understand that, actually, they can do things now that are going to really benefit them in the future.
MS. ABUTALEB: You had mentioned at the start of our conversation how much the landscape has shifted in the last 50 years, and I want to ask you because the number of new cancer cases worldwide in 2040 is expected to be 47 percent higher than in 2020, with breast cancer becoming the most common type of cancer diagnosed. So what are some of the immediate actions that need to be taken now to maybe help make that number lower over the next 20 or a little bit less years?
MS. MARTINI: Yes, you're absolutely right. We are expecting cases to just keep climbing.
Alongside that, we know we're managing cancer much, much better, but what we want to see is the rates coming down. And so those measures really require a combination of research, to really significant research into prevention, so we understand more about what the risk factors are. So we know a lot about the risk factors, but there are lots of areas that we still don't understand enough on. So we definitely need to see more investment in research. It's something that we as a charity want to do, but we can't do it alone, so investment in research so we understand what action we can take.
Obviously, public awareness raising it, making it, you know, a very general knowledge and general understanding of what the things are that we can do to reduce our risk of developing breast cancer. I think a lot of people think that breast cancer is an inevitability. Not all breast cancers are preventable, but a good proportion are, and if we understand how to reduce that risk, that will certainly go some way towards reducing the incidence rates and reducing the increase in incidence rates.
And then, finally, it's that public policy making sure that we have those protections in place, because it's not just about behavior change. That has an impact, obviously, but good strong public health policies that are in place to support prevention, that can make a huge difference.
So, really, it's about knowledge, understanding what the risk factors are, what the causes are, and then putting that knowledge into action so that the public is aware of what they can do to reduce their risk, but then that action needs to also be translated into policy areas that protect people and that support them to reduce their risk so that, you know, cancer doesn't occur in the first place.
MS. ABUTALEB: And we have about two minutes left. So I want to ask you on a final note, how are you addressing the gaps in cancer education among different communities of women in the United Kingdom? How do you specify outreach to various groups, and is there data that you use to determine who's at highest risk and how you might target some of those outreach efforts?
MS. MARTINI: Yeah. No, that's a great question, and it is something that we're very, very committed to achieving.
So I mentioned younger women. That's an area of‑‑that's an area that we haven't traditionally engaged as well with. So we want to be able to engage with younger women. So we're talking to younger women in their communities to understand what's important to them, but then also across communities, there's a whole cohort of people who won't have access to our information. So we believe that working with health professionals, to support health professionals to better understand how they can provide guidance and advice to people in their communities as well is very, very important. So that's a piece of work that we believe is important that we will carry out as well.
Another area that we're focusing on this year is cancer in men because men‑‑breast cancer in men because men can get breast cancer too. So, you know, the incidence rates are much, much lower in breast cancer, but nevertheless, men can develop breast cancer. And I don't know if that's commonly understood either. So we are talking to men directly because there is obviously a stigma and there has been a stigma in men talking about how breast cancer might affect them. So we've been talking to men about how we can develop some educational resources for them as well, and we'll be releasing that later on this year as well.
So the work that we do is very much gaining insights, talking to our supporters, and then going out and talking to those different communities to understand what kind of information is important to them, how we can produce educational material that's going to be accessible to them, and then working with them to develop that information.
MS. ABUTALEB: And really quickly, what advice would you give to the audience watching, particularly the women watching about how they can best take care of themselves and try to stay on top of the screening and prevention measures that you work so hard on?
MS. MARTINI: Well, I think there's a few lines of defenses that we can really‑‑we can really vouch for. First of all, be breast aware, so understanding your breasts. So that means checking your breasts at the same time very month, regardless of your age. If you're young, your risk of developing breast cancer is very low, but it's great to get into the right habits at a young age. If you're older, particularly postmenopausal, that's when your risk starts to increase. So being breast aware is very important.
Now, that aside, there are many actions also we can take. So, as we get older, a lot of older ladies will feel that "Well, you know, it's inevitable now. There's nothing I can do." Well, actually, prevention action is really relevant when we are older. So there's lots of things that we can do after the age of 50, after the age of menopause.
So reducing alcohol intake is a really good way to reduce our risk. There's some very strong evidence linking alcohol consumption to breast cancer risk. The more we drink, the more our risk goes up.
Being physically active when we're older and keeping our weight down is also very, very important, so having a healthy weight, particularly postmenopausal, is known to reduce our risk.
And also, for people who are considering taking hormone therapy, for example, it's good to talk to your GP about that because there are known, also, links between hormone‑‑HRT and breast cancer as well.
So keeping physically active, having a good balanced diet‑‑so, when we think about a good balanced diet, we can refer to the Mediterranean diet, so a diet high in fruit and vegetables‑‑keeping alcohol consumption low, and then thinking about also, you know, reducing our intake of fat and sugar to keep our weight down as well.
MS. ABUTALEB: Well, we're, unfortunately, out of time, but thank you so much, Thalie Martini. This was a terrific discussion.
MS. MARTINI: Thank you.
MS. ABUTALEB: I'll be back in just a few minutes with our next guest, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Please stay with us.
MS. SALBI: Greetings. My name is Zainab Salbi. I'm the founder of Women for Women International, and the focus of our conversation today is addressing the continued challenges faced by women to access cancer screenings and treatment.
I'll be in conversation with Reshema Kemps‑Polanco, executive vice president and head of Novartis Oncology US, on actions that Novartis is taking to reduce the barriers to address the disparities women can face in accessing cancer screening, treatment, and possible solutions for improving outcomes among women in both the short and long terms.
Reshema, welcome to this conversation.
MS. KEMPS‑POLANCO: Thank you so much. It is a great pleasure to be here with you.
MS. SALBI: Wonderful. Thank you.
Reshema, the challenges in women's cancers are multifaceted. You yourself had a personal experience with your best friend's diagnosis. Of all the challenges, which do you consider to be the biggest or would have the most impact if addressed?
MS. KEMPS‑POLANCO: It's a really pivotal question, and I think the first one I would say is early detection or screening. We know that screening and early detection saves lives, and we also have learned that through the pandemic, at least in 2020, we saw a dramatic decrease in the number of cancer screenings, particularly in the space of breast cancer and cervical cancer, where some of the screening rates were down anywhere from 80 to 90 percent. And that is definitely concerning because lack of screening delays diagnosis and delays treatment and can really put patients' lives at risk. So this is a very important piece.
The second one is access, making sure that even when patients are screened properly and they're diagnosed that they have access to medicines at the right time, and so this is something that Novartis Oncology is committed to and is of great concern for us to help be a part of that solution.
And you mentioned, very near and dear to my heart, my very best friend, and we lost her, unfortunately, in 2020 at 48 years old. She was actually diagnosed when we were 38, and I say 38 because we are actually one day apart. We were born one day apart. We were college roommates, and she was the godmother to my children. We were very close. She was like a sister to me, and she was diagnosed at 38 and went through six months of treatment, which was successful. And we thought that she was in remission and in some ways cured, and then at the age of 46, the cancer returned, and it was metastatic.
And what was incredibly inspiring about my friend and her legacy is her sense of hope and always having a plan, and this is one of the things I'm really a proponent of is having a plan. And part of that plan is ensuring that screenings are occurring on time.
MS. SALBI: Well, first of all, I'm so sorry for your loss, and I can't think of a better way to honor her life than the work that you are actually doing with Novartis. You had mentioned a lot of the structure barriers to care, including access to screening, as you just mentioned earlier. What can be done to boost screening rates in underserved communities?
MS. KEMPS‑POLANCO: I think the first step is really understanding what are those disparities that we keep hearing about. If you just take women, for instance, we know that women generally have higher health care costs, and they face really unique challenges, you know, things as basic and simple but yet complex as, you know, having appropriate childcare.
And I also know, you know, as a woman myself who tends to be the caregiver in my family, sometimes we neglect ourselves. We put ourselves last, and we're very selfless, and we neglect our own self‑care. And so it is multifactorial.
But what can we do about it? And we're already doing some things at Novartis in terms of partnering with wonderful organizations like the American Cancer Society, where we have the Get Screened program, really aimed at education and ensuring that screenings or the lack of screenings that we've seen during the pandemic, that we can get those back on track, particularly in underserved communities.
The second thing I will mention is a program that we call "More Than Just Words," and that's really focused on African American, Black women facing breast cancer and helping to educate them about what questions they should be asking, screening, biomarker education, as well as self‑care, and finally, also working with the multidisciplinary team around how can we better educate even health care providers around, you know, health care disparities.
MS. SALBI: Now, last but not least, there's so much talk about when it comes to breast‑‑women and cancer. There's so much more focus on breast and cervical cancers. I'm interested in learning what other areas of cancer treatments do you believe require more focus than they are currently receiving, and before we end, I also want to talk about what do you think companies like Novartis could be doing more to potentially improve outcomes.
MS. KEMPS‑POLANCO: Yes. So, in addition to breast cancer and cervical cancer, we're seeing an increase in diagnosis of lung cancer in women, particularly in high‑income geographies; in addition to that, also colorectal cancer when both men and women should be screened by age 45. And so, between breast, cervical, lung, and colorectal, those are four cancers right there that if we can get ahead of those, we can really save lives.
In terms of what Novartis' commitment and what more we can be doing, it first starts with innovation. We must continue innovation from a research and development standpoint to really follow the boldest science that may lead us to cures or life extension, and also partnerships are critical and partnership with an industry, with government, and private stakeholders, because this is a very complex disease. And no one entity will solve it alone. We must all work together to save even more lives.
MS. SALBI: Thank you very much, Reshema. I know I have learned a lot from all that you shared. It's truly an honor to know you and to know of your amazing work, and now back to The Washington Post.
MS. ABUTALEB: Welcome back. For those of you just joining us, I'm Yasmeen Abutaleb.
Joining me now is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who battled cancer privately after being diagnosed at age 41 with breast cancer.
Representative, thank you so much for joining us.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I can't hear you.
MS. ABUTALEB: We're working on establishing a connection. We'll be back in just a second.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Yes, Yasmeen, I can hear you. That's okay. I can't‑‑yeah, there we go.
MS. ABUTALEB: Okay.
Thanks for bearing with us. Joining me now is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us today.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Thank you for having me, Yasmeen, and thank you to The Washington Post for doing this really important feature on breast cancer and the decline in screenings.
MS. ABUTALEB: Well, we're thrilled to have you today.
A reminder to our audience, we want you to join our conversation. So tweet your comments and questions to the handle @PostLive.
Congresswoman, I want to dive into our conversation about breast cancer screening and prevention, but while we have you, I want to ask you about the news that we're seeing dominate this week, which is this escalating situation with Russia.
Ukraine this morning declared a state of emergency. The White House is defending a first tranche of sanctions on Russia. Do you think President Biden's step‑by‑step approach to sanctions will work, and do you think that they'll hold Putin back from any further incursion?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, let me just be very clear that Putin's encroachment on the sovereignty of an independent nation is an absolute outrage, and in all the years that I have been in Congress, which is going on 18, I've never seen the world more united against an aggressor like the world is united against Putin right now. And making sure that the initial extremely biting sanctions that President Biden has imposed along with our allies, including the closure of Nord Stream 2, is going to really be painful, unfortunately, to the Russian people, and the banking sanctions will be very painful to Putin himself. And it will just get more and more painful if Putin doesn't decide to recede from his aggressive desire to take over the sovereignty of another nation.
MS. ABUTALEB: Well, thank you for answering that question for us, and now I'm going to go back to our program for today.
This breast cancer is obviously an issue that's deeply personal to you. So can you tell us a bit about your personal story and what it was like for you to battle cancer at age 41?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Sure. My story is really important in terms of the topic that you're focused on, and that is that I was diagnosed when I was 41 years old. One day, Yasmeen, I was the picture of health, and the next day, I was a cancer patient. And I found my lump myself when I was doing a routine self‑exam in the shower. I really had just had my‑‑just after I turned 40 years old, I had my first mammogram, which really came back clean, except for some calcifications, and that heightened my attention on needing to pay a little attention to my breast health.
So had I not had that first mammogram, I probably would not have necessarily done that self‑exam or found the lump, and often women, particularly younger women, are diagnosed at a later stage because, you know, we're not thinking we could get breast cancer. We focus on every other thing except our health.
And so, thankfully, I caught my breast cancer at a very early stage. Thankfully, I had health insurance, and thankfully, we weren't in the midst of a pandemic like we have been, and I didn't have a lot of obstacles in my way to be able to go right to the doctor and get checked further.
It turned out that I had early-stage breast cancer, but Yasmeen, it also turned out that I was diagnosed after a genetic test with carrying the BRCA2 genetic mutation, which as an Ashkenazi Jewish woman made me five times more likely‑‑I was five times more likely to carry that mutation, and I had between a 40 and 85 percent chance of getting breast cancer in my lifetime, having a recurrence, and even getting ovarian cancer. So it was critical for me that I was diagnosed when I was because the chances of my getting more serious cancer and then potentially ovarian cancer were quite high.
And so early detection is the key to survival, and it's just absolutely essential that we make sure that access to screenings is available for all women and that we make sure women get them.
MS. ABUTALEB: Your experience battling cancer overlapped or coincided with your time in office as a congresswoman.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Yes.
MS. ABUTALEB: How did that intersection of your personal health and your professional work inform your later work in Congress to address these issues? And, of course, in your personal story, early detection was key to having a good outcome.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, it was‑‑they were really very intertwined. I was already serving in Congress when I was diagnosed, and I kept my diagnosis private because we had very young children at the time. And cancer is a very scary thing, and I wanted to protect them from the worry that, you know, Mommy might not survive.
And then, also, I didn't want my breast cancer to define me. Cancer patients really lose all control, or you certainly feel like you do. So making sure that I could control the information that I was giving out and that I could focus on my health as well as my job was important to me.
But I knew when I finished my breast cancer journey‑‑and thankfully, because it was caught early, I knew I was going to be‑‑or at least my doctors were telling me, you know, that I could be confident that I was going to be okay‑‑I wanted to use the platform that I have as a member of Congress to help other women, to make sure that I could use‑‑I mean, Yasmeen, I had been very involved in the fight against breast cancer as a state legislator even, and I didn't know that I was at higher risk as an Ashkenazi Jewish woman of having a breast cancer genetic mutation. And if I didn't know, I knew so many other women didn't know that.
So I did more research. I spent time working with the cancer advocacy groups, and we introduced‑‑and it eventually became law‑‑the EARLY Act, which is the Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act.
About 25,000 women a year under 45 years old are diagnosed with breast cancer, and it's just absolutely essential that we know that it's important to pay attention to our breast health, that you know what's normal for you, so you know when something feels different. So this legislation created a national education and awareness campaign that is based at the Centers for Disease control, and it provides funding. I was able to get that funding increased to $9 million a year at the end of last year when we reauthorized the legislation, and it also provides grant program funding to organizations that help young women deal with the unique challenges that we face when we're diagnosed with breast cancer, because, you know, it doesn't present in the same way as it does in older women.
Sometimes it will be nipple discharge. Sometimes it will be redness on your breast tissue, and so making sure you know the warning signs and making sure that you know what you normally feel like is really, really critical. And so having those resources to get the word out to women that are at higher risk, like women like me, I am, and also African American women, by the way. African American women are less likely to get breast cancer, but they are more likely to die from what is known as triple‑negative breast cancer. That's the breast cancer that African American women are more likely to get, and it's just so essential that if you're a higher risk that you make sure that you pay attention and get those screenings.
And, you know, we women, we take care of everyone else in our life except ourselves. We have to stop putting ourselves last, and you have to make sure that you get those annual screenings, and that you make sure that you go to the doctor and get your clinical breast exams and your other gynecological appointments as well.
MS. ABUTALEB: You mention that in your case, you didn't have the pandemic as an obstacle to getting screening when you did that self‑exam and noticed something. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has said it conservatively estimates 10,000 excess deaths over the next decade from undiagnosed or underdiagnosed breast and colorectal cancers from COVID‑19. Can you talk to us about what you've seen in terms of impact with the pandemic on screenings and prevention, what it's been like being a representative during that time and just the ability of patients to be able to attend the routine doctors' appointments and screenings that they need to attend to make sure they are staying on top of their health?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Sure, absolutely. One of the most disturbing statistics that has come out of the COVID‑19 pandemic is that there has been, according to the Centers for Disease Control, an 85 percent drop in women getting screened for breast cancer and for other gynecological cancers. And that, we know, over the next few years is going to result in diagnoses at a later stage and more deaths.
And so I wrote a letter along with a number of my colleagues to the Centers for Disease Control and urged them to really get more on top of getting the word out and using the bully pulpit that they have to be able to help make sure that women know that it is safe, that they should not put their own lives at risk when it comes to making sure that they can protect their breast health.
I know it's been concerning because, you know, the hospital beds were full. You were trying to make sure that you were keeping yourself socially distanced from others, but making sure that you go and get those screenings is absolutely critical.
I just use myself as an example and countless women that I've spoken to and all the statistics that say that early detection is the key to survival. That is why I am here to be able to do this interview with you, because I did that self‑exam, because I went and got a mammogram right after I turned 40 years old.
And, you know, there are those that have tried to make even that access more difficult. I have filed and passed legislation that ensures that women can get a mammogram between 40 and 50 years old, because we have a federal health‑‑public health agency that has thrown obstacles in the path of women in that 10‑year age cohort. So it's really critical that every woman, once you turn 40 years ago, get a mammogram. Make sure that you know what's normal for you so that you know when something feels different. I just can't stress that enough.
MS. ABUTALEB: I want to follow up on something you said right there, which is that you approached the CDC about this very alarming trend. Can you tell us a bit more about how you and your colleagues decided to approach them and what the outcome of that effort has been?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, we've sent them a letter, and we've been communicating with them directly because, I mean, obviously, the Centers for Disease Control has a lot on their plate, but‑‑and they are the ones that have highlighted how large the percentage drop in breast cancer screenings has been.
But we need them to get the word out. We need them to really use resources to engage in public service announcements, to reach out to the health care community and help ensure that women know that, yes, you know, you've had to keep yourselves careful‑‑you've had to be careful about not getting COVID. Yes, the hospitals have had to put off routine exams, but now it is time to go back out there and make sure you get screened.
You know, Yasmeen, I myself, I have to get an MRI every‑‑I had a double mastectomy as part of my treatments, and I have to get an MRI every two years. And I delayed my MRI for that same reason, because it was a very concerning time, and, you know, thankfully, when I went and got my MRI, everything was okay. But we do all have to make sure that we give ourselves the best chance to survive. It is so critical, no matter what age you are, that you continue to get those regular screenings.
And we need help. We need to get‑‑I mean, there's so much going on now. We're still really in the midst and throes of COVID in so many places in this country, and there has just been a real concern. People worry about whether, you know, are they going to have to wear a mask the whole time that they're in their‑‑that they're in their screening, and is it safe? Are the hospitals able to accommodate me?
So it's just‑‑it's a time when our public health agency really needs to make sure that we can help get the word out and expend resources to do so.
MS. ABUTALEB: A major focus of your legislative work has focused on young women. The EARLY Act identifies gaps in education for young women. What's your message for young women? Especially because you were very young when you were diagnosed with breast cancer.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, like I said, as someone who in my professional life spent a lot of time focused on legislation that would help women who were dealing with breast cancer, I thought I knew most of what there was to know about breast cancer. And then when I found my own lump and was diagnosed myself, I had no idea that I was at higher risk. There are so many women that don't know they're at higher risk. Ashkenazi Jewish women and women of Jewish‑‑of Eastern European descent, we are five times more likely to carry that genetic mutation that increases our risk of breast cancer. Like I said, African American women, they have less of a chance of getting breast cancer or lower rate of getting breast cancer but more likely to die when they get it because they're more at risk for triple‑negative breast cancer.
And also, we have a risk of health care providers dismissing us. So often health care providers don't realize that women can‑‑young women can and do get breast cancer. So the EARLY Act that I passed into law and was able to get funds appropriated for also educates health care providers so that they know the warning signs, and they know when a young woman comes in, is concerned about something related to her breast health, not to just send her home and tell her to wait and watch it or, you know, not just dismiss them and tell them young women don't get breast cancer.
Make sure that those health care providers are talking to young women if they do have breast cancer about things like fertility, because if you do, God forbid, have breast cancer and you have to go through chemo and you haven't had children yet, there are so many health care providers, Yasmeen, that don't talk to young women breast cancer patients about preserving their fertility.
And there are so many other challenges like if you're dating someone and you're not yet married, you're dating someone and you've had a double mastectomy, when do you share with them that you have had breast cancer, and how do you talk about that? It's just a whole different set of issues that young women have, and the EARLY Act legislation really helped us focus resources and information, education, and attention for young women and health care providers so that we make it more likely that a young woman‑‑because our mortality rates are higher than the rest of the women's population that get breast cancer, so that we make it more likely that we bring those mortality rates down for young women, and that they're more likely to survive.
MS. ABUTALEB: And can you also talk to us about the reauthorization of the PALS Act and what that does for women?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Yes. So there's an agency called the United States Preventative Services Task Force. It's a public health agency that, unfortunately, doesn't really include any cancer experts, and they have repeatedly since 2009 issued a recommendation that women between 40 and 50 don't need to get regular mammography. Nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to the breast cancer organizations and medical oncology experts, mammograms‑‑mammography should begin at 40, and so Congress since 2009, first in the Affordable Care Act and then through the PALS Act that I passed with former Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, that legislation made sure that we put a moratorium on the implementation of that recommendation so that health insurance companies would continue to cover mammography beginning at age 40. That made sure that at the VA, women who‑‑women veterans beginning at age 40 are able to also get those screenings because it's absolutely critical.
There are thousands and thousands of women each year that are in that age cohort that are diagnosed with breast cancer, and we want to make sure that they have every chance for survival. So that legislation, we're trying to extend once again, and I expect that we'll pass that extension this year. In the meantime, we also included language extending that protection in the Appropriations Act that I expect we'll pass in the next couple of weeks.
MS. ABUTALEB: I'm curious. I mean, can you give us your assessment of the cancer treatment resources in the U.S. and our screening capacity? If you had to grade it, what grade would you give our cancer treatment options for women in the United States?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, really, I have to‑‑I would maybe give it a B minus right now, maybe a C plus. It leaves a lot to be desired.
I mean, for example, beyond that we have an affordability problem, if you don't have health insurance, then getting access to affordable mammography is very difficult. The Affordable Care Act makes mammography screenings free, but of course, you have to have the coverage, and we do have gaps in that coverage.
I mean, millions of women were able to gain access to it once the Affordable Care Act passed, but we still have many more women that we need to make sure of their coverage.
But then, for example, if you are at higher risk, one thing I discovered in the last several years‑‑and this actually happened to my own mother‑‑if you have a genetic mutation and you are on Medicare, if you have a risk of having a genetic mutation like I do and you're a Medicare patient, you have to be‑‑Medicare requires you to be diagnosed with breast cancer already before they will cover your screening.
Even though I was a BRCA2 mutation carrier and I had had breast cancer, my own mother could not get Medicare to cover a screening to see whether she carried the mutation unless she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Well, we shouldn't wait until women have breast cancer before we make sure that we can test them for a mutation that puts them at higher risk. We want to know whether they're at higher risk so that they can take steps to prevent themselves from getting breast cancer.
So I introduced the Reducing Hereditary Cancer Act with Lisa Murkowski and Senator Ben Cardin and Congressman Fred Upton, bipartisan, bicameral legislation that will say, Medicare, you need to cover genetic screening when a close relative has a genetic mutation, and you need to make sure you cover the prophylactic treatment that a patient may want to seek if they have it, because it's much better to make sure people don't get breast cancer than it is to have to deal with all the ramifications once they do. Common sense. I kind of can't believe that Medicare doesn't already cover this.
MS. ABUTALEB: And I think we have time for one more question, and I think this is a really important one, especially given your personal experience. What other work do you think needs to be done to provide greater equity in cancer care among women, especially in minority communities or some of the communities you've highlighted who are at increased risk?
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: That's our biggest problem right now is that we really have such disparate access to gynecological screenings.
First, you know, you have to have access to affordable health care, whether that's through health insurance coverage or through a community health center or through your employer, through‑‑health care coverage through your employer. But there are large gaps.
In 13 states, for example, there are legislatures that haven't closed the Medicare coverage gap, and so nearly a million people don't have access to health care and coverage in those states if they can't afford it. We have to make sure that we are investing more resources and making sure that women and minority communities are able to get access to those critical screenings, and we need more outreach.
There are so many women culturally who, you know, live in and among communities where gynecological health is not something that you talk about out loud. It's not something that they necessarily talk about with their daughters, and so that generationally gets passed on. That reticence gets passed on, and so through education, through access, through affordability, and through health insurance coverage, we have to make sure that we close all of those gaps, because the consequence to not doing that is death.
MS. ABUTALEB: We're unfortunately out of time, but thank you so much for joining us today, Representative Wasserman Schultz. I know you took a lot of time out of your schedule, and we really appreciate getting to hear about your work and your personal story.
REP. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's my absolutely pleasure and passion to be able to help make sure‑‑help you help other women know that they should get screened and that they are potentially at risk, and we have to make sure we save lives. So you're helping us save lives. Thank you so much.
MS. ABUTALEB: Thank you.
And thank you for joining us today. To see what other interviews and programs we have coming up, head over to WashingtonPostLive.com.
I'm Yasmeen Abutaleb. As always, thanks for watching. | null | null | null | null | null |
Evidence for this comes from a recent study by the Bank for International Settlements that looked at historical data on the relationship between home prices and nominal short-term rates. It found that a 1% decline in nominal short-term rates led to a 5% increase in housing prices.
(Corrects name of the Bank for International Settlements in the 10th paragraph.) | null | null | null | null | null |
The Biden administration acquiesced to the Illinois judge’s decision, and moved to dismiss the remaining cases around the country. That left states that favored the public charge rule without recourse, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told the justices Wednesday.
“This was an unprecedented legal maneuver,” Brnovich said. He wants to intervene to defend the rule, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which covers the West, turned him down. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bethany Kaley Farber’s ordeal began in April, when she was waiting to board a flight to Mexico at Los Angeles International Airport and Transportation Security Administration agents told her that she was wanted by the law.
In the lawsuit, Farber says she repeatedly told authorities that she had never been to Texas and had never been accused of a crime, but she was jailed for 13 days without bail before police admitted that they had taken the wrong woman.
“Her constitutional rights were violated based on the negligence of the city of Los Angeles,” Rodney Diggs, Farber's attorney, said in an interview Wednesday.
“They could have easily checked and compared her fingerprints; they could have checked her driver license, Social Security number. There are numerous things that they could have done to prevent and avoid her ending up locked up in jail,” Diggs added.
Farber’s friends and family took matters into their own hands, sending the district attorney attorney handling the case in Texas documentation and evidence showing that she was not in Texas the day she was accused of committing a crime.
“She said, ‘Oh my God, we are so sorry, we will expedite this. We will get her out,’” Farber’s mother, Terry Brodie, told Southern California news station ABC7.
“From law abiding citizen to inmate over night, Bethany is now suffering from anxiety and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” the statement read. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Texas Capitol in Austin. (Eric Gay/AP)
In the wake of Donald Trump’s false claims about voter fraud, Texas Republicans last fall passed a controversial law that left in place the state’s two-week early voting period but made it more complicated to vote by mail, imposed strict rules and penalties for poll workers, and eliminated drive-by voting and 24-hour voting.
Election officials asked state legislators to push back the start of these changes, or even delay the primary, so they could have time to educate voters on the new rules.
But state officials refused. So on March 1, the first primary of the 2022 election season will be held in a state where it is harder to vote than in others. There are two key groups that could be especially affected by the changes: racial minorities, who more often use drive-by and overnight voting, and seniors, who more often use mail-in ballots.
Before this law, Texas had already made it quite difficult to vote by mail. You have to be 65 or older, or prove you won’t be home on Election Day or for early voting, or that you have a disability that prevents you from voting in person. The new law does allow people to vote by mail if they are toward the end of a pregnancy.
The new law sets up very specific ID requirements to apply to vote by mail. You need to include your Texas driver’s license number, or the last four digits of your Social Security, on the application and the return envelope. (There are two lines under the flap of the envelope for this.)
If you forget to include either on the return envelope, or if your ID doesn’t match what the county has on file for you, your ballot application is rejected.
Because most of the people allowed to vote early are 65 or older, this rule could be disenfranchising the Republican base in Texas, which leans older and tends to vote more reliably than younger voters.
The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner reports that in February, counties rejected thousands of ballots because voters didn’t know to include their ID numbers on the envelope. The month before that, counties rejected a high number of ballot applications for similar reasons — as many as 25 to 30 percent. NBC News reports nearly half of mail ballot applications in El Paso County have been rejected, with election officials saying many long-standing voters have been caught up in extra layers of bureaucracy.
Jennifer Anderson is the top election official in Hays County, outside Austin. She said her county has been spending lots of time and money doing a “huge” outreach to voters — and still had to reject about 25 percent of mail ballot applications. As rejected ballot applications are sent back, she said, she hopes those rates will go down. “But this may still be a problem with smaller counties that don’t have as large of a staff and time to reach out to voters,” she warned.
But there is an exception to this in the Houston and Austin areas, two Democratic strongholds in the state. A federal judge recently ruled that officials can encourage voters who meet the guidelines to vote by mail.
Popular ways to vote in Texas during the pandemic — especially in populous communities of color — are now eliminated. You can’t vote by drive-through; you have to go into the polling place (with the exception of curbside voting allowed for some voters with disabilities). Nor are there 24-hour polling places anymore.
If there’s another pandemic (or a natural disaster, or an ice storm), election officials are prohibited from altering voting practices to accommodate that. There is wiggle room if there’s an emergency involving the actual polling place. “You could still put a tent in a parking lot,” Anderson said.
If you qualify and successfully apply to vote by mail, you can’t drop off your ballot in a drop box; the law bans them — despite boxes being used in red and blue states that have offered voting by mail for years without problems.
The secretary of state is also required to check Texas voter rolls every month to see whether noncitizens are on them. Critics say that could knock off people who are citizens and eligible to vote but who weren’t when they applied for their driver’s license.
In Texas, you can vote two weeks before the election. However, the law codifies hours for early voting: It can’t start before 6 a.m. (or 9 a.m. on Sundays) and it has to end by 10 p.m. If you are in line on an early-voting day when polls are supposed to close, you can still vote.
Before this, the law allowed people to take time off work to vote only on Election Day. Now they can take time off work during the early voting period to vote.
When you go to vote, expect to see a lot more observers around you. The law expands the rights of partisan poll watchers — people who volunteer or work for parties to observe voting and vote-counting — but it is vague about how to police them.
One Texas election official told Gardner that has had a chilling effect on his ability to recruit poll workers. Anderson said she worries that good-faith poll workers, many of whom work for nominal pay, could be punished: “There’s a lot to know and a lot to learn, and there’s a lot of fear of a poll worker being charged with a crime for a mistake — which I know is not the intent of the law, but it can happen. That is concerning.”
It could have a chilling effect on voters, too. The law makes no recognition of the fact that Texas poll watchers have a history of intimidating voters of color. As the Associated Press reports: “As recently as 1962, Republican poll watchers in some parts of Texas challenged Black and Latino voters to read and explain the U.S. Constitution before casting ballots.”
Finally, most counties are required to set up a 24-hour live stream during ballot counting. Some counties’ election offices don’t have IT departments. Anderson said she wonders what the consequences are if a live stream goes out. Is that grounds for someone to contest an entire election?
Almost all of these violations could lead to jail. | null | null | null | null | null |
The move was a shift for Trudeau, who on Monday said his government still needed the sweeping powers even after the blockades protesting public health restrictions were cleared over the weekend because there were “real concerns” that new blockades could pop up and that protesters might be regrouping at satellite hubs outside Ottawa.
Trudeau last week became the first leader to invoke the 1988 Emergencies Act, and the House of Commons voted Monday to endorse the use of the law. But its unprecedented use also drew criticism from civil liberties groups, some opposition lawmakers and several provincial premiers.
The act was written to be a last resort, to use when there were no other laws on the books that might end an emergency. Several legal analysts said that it wasn’t clear that the blockades met the threshold or that authorities had exhausted existing tools.
In an effort to choke off funding for the demonstrations, the government used the emergency powers to require crowdfunding sites to comply with terrorism financing and money-laundering laws. They also gave banks the authority to freeze accounts of those involved with the protests without a court order.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said this week that accounts that were frozen belonged to “influencers” of the protests and/or owners of the vehicles involved in the blockades “who did not want to leave.” It said that it did not provide a list of donors to financial institutions.
Isabelle Jacques, an assistant deputy finance minister, told a parliamentary committee Tuesday that 206 personal and corporate accounts with holdings of more than $6.1 million had been frozen. She said financial institutions started to unfreeze accounts this week.
Police in Ottawa carried out a massive operation over the weekend to clear the blockades that had for several weeks clogged major thoroughfares, including the one in front of Parliament, prompted several businesses to close because of security concerns, and disrupted the lives of residents.
Protests that shut down several U.S.-Canada border crossings — including the busiest, the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit — were also cleared.
On Monday, authorities in Ottawa said that they had towed 115 vehicles, arrested 196 people and charged 110 of them with offenses including assault and possession of a weapon. | null | null | null | null | null |
Johns Hopkins curators examine musical mystery linked to Edgar Allan Poe
Sam Bessen, a curator for the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries, holds a manuscript of sheet music that may have been copied by Edgar Allan Poe. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
In reality, the document — a piece of sheet music titled “Mr. Po” and bearing the intriguing inscription: “ascribed to my wife, Mrs. Poe, by EA Poe: 1835. Richmond, Virginia: editor” — is nearly certainly a forgery, though a definitive determination has not yet been made. But, it would be a forgery so audacious and without any obvious motive that it amounts to a mystery in its own right.
“If you’re going to try to forge a document by Poe, why would you forge something in musical notation instead of trying to pass off a ‘lost poem’? If this were legitimate, it would be the only known example of musical notation in Poe’s hand that I’m aware of.”
The exhibit, which runs from March 15 through July 31, also will feature about 100 songs culled from the library’s collection of 30,000 pieces of sheet music. Highlights include works signed by the songwriter Ira Gershwin and aviator Amelia Earhart.
The exhibit also includes a copy of the late Maryland jazz great Ethel Ennis’s recording of “God Bless the Child.”
Although the author of “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” lived most of his life elsewhere, Poe’s family hailed from Baltimore, he died in Baltimore, and Charm City has long claimed the 19th-century bad boy as one of its own.
The song’s anonymous author was likely unaware of the then-18-year-old Poe, who self-
published his first book that same year. But over the next decade, the lyrics developed uncanny resonances to the poet’s courtship of his young cousin.
Nonetheless, on May 16, 1836, the couple were wed — at least officially.
Some scholars suspect that they secretly eloped eight months earlier. These experts point to a marriage license that Poe obtained in Baltimore on Sept. 22, 1835.
He investigated further, and found that the piece of sheet music had been purchased in 1939 by Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe Society from George H. Wright of Palo Alto, Calif., who claimed in a letter to have found the document in “a second hand store.”
Wright accepted a price of $12.50 for the sheet music of “Mr. Po,” a sum that would be worth about $250 in 2022.
The following year, May Garrettson Evans, the first female reporter for the Baltimore Sun, referred to the song in the book “Music and Edgar Allan Poe: A Biographical Study.”
The paper itself is old. Jeffrey Savoye, secretary/treasurer of Baltimore’s Poe Society, said that the sheet was not made out of wood pulp, indicating that it dates to before the Civil War.
Peter Bower, a paper historian and analyst based in London, concluded that the watermark — a pattern on paper aimed at discouraging counterfeiting — was made using an electrotype. That process wasn’t created until 1838, or three years after the piece of sheet music supposedly was written.
The “A” in Poe’s signature is also atypical — large and rounded, instead of the angular “A” the poet preferred.
“Poe certainly knew the difference between these words,” Savoye said, estimating that the odds are less than 1 percent that Poe copied the song and signed it himself.
It seems that Poe wrote an article for the New York Sun newspaper about a trip across the Atlantic Ocean supposedly undertaken by a man named Monck Mason in just three days in a gas balloon.
Unfortunately, not a single word was true. Two days later, the newspaper was forced to retract the article. | null | null | null | null | null |
Baltimore State’s Attorney Mosby accuses U.S. prosecutors of bias in charging her
Lawyers for Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, seen above Jan. 14 in Baltimore, argued that the indictment against her should be dismissed because it is exclusively the result of federal prosecutors’ animosity toward her. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun/AP)
Emily Opilo
In making their case for a federal judge to throw out the charges against the two-term Democratic state’s attorney, Mosby’s lawyers revealed new information about the year-long criminal tax investigation of her and her husband, Democratic City Council President Nick Mosby.
The motion, one of three defense pleadings filed over the weekend, asks U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby to throw out the case against Baltimore’s state’s attorney because of “prosecutorial vindictiveness” on the part of U.S. Attorney Erek Barron and Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise, the lead prosecutor on the case.
They described her indictment as the culmination of a “crusade to ruin the political career of a young, progressive, Black, female elected official.”
Even if Mosby’s attorneys have raised legitimate concerns about the appearance of bias, the effort to shut down the prosecution is unlikely to succeed, said David Jaros, faculty director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at University of Baltimore School of Law.
For instance, Mosby’s lawyers included in their filing a declaration from Sheaniqua A. Thompson, a top adviser to Nick Mosby at City Hall. She wrote that she worked with Barron between 2017 and 2019 while he was a Democratic state delegate and she was policy advocate for a nonprofit organization.
Mosby made two early withdrawals of a combined $81,000 from her retirement savings account without penalty under the federal CARES Act by claiming to have suffered financially from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the indictment. However, federal prosecutors say she suffered no such hardship, and noted that her salary increased. She is paid nearly $248,000 a year.
She is also accused of using the money from the withdrawals for down payments on an eight-bedroom rental home near Disney World and a condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Federal prosecutors said she lied on mortgage applications for those properties by neglecting to disclose a federal tax lien and declaring the Orlando-area house would be a second home, when she planned for it to be a vacation rental.
The documents attached to the motion show Bolden went to great lengths to quash the criminal tax investigation before charges were filed. The motion repeatedly says prosecutors neglected to consider exculpatory evidence but does not detail that evidence.
“My client is clearly an innocent spouse,” attorney William C. Brennan Jr. wrote of the state’s attorney in a March 2021 letter to Lawless.
While documents attached to the motion show that federal officials considered filing tax charges against Marilyn Mosby, no such charges have been filed. Her husband also faces no tax charges. | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet even the apparent sameness of so many disclosures and admissions, over so many years, should not blunt the importance of a recent report that former Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as archbishop of the German cities of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, failed to discipline abusive priests and enabled them to maintain their roles in ministry.
The new report, commissioned by the German Catholic church and conducted by a law firm, is based on the church’s own documents and accounts from witnesses. “In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct,” said Martin Pusch, one of the authors, said in a news conference in January at the report’s unveiling. | null | null | null | null | null |
About 2 million high-net-worth households control $25 billion in investable assets, nearly half of the nation’s total, Cerulli reports. That is up from 27 percent a decade ago. Huge transfers of unearned wealth undermine the principle that economic rewards should accrue to the deserving, reinforcing a system in which the very top benefits from increasingly extreme advantages relative to the rest of the nation. | null | null | null | null | null |
KYIV, Ukraine — The threat of war has shredded Ukraine’s economy, and many Ukrainians are asking why they are the ones suffering instead of Russia. The pressure from Russian troops has closed international offices, canceled flights and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in investment to dry up within weeks. Ukrainian officials say the economic destabilization is a pillar of the “hybrid war” Russia is waging. The economic woes include restaurants that dare not keep more than a few days of food on hand, stalled plans for a hydrogen production plant and uncertain conditions for shipping in the Black Sea, where container ships must carefully edge their way around Russian military vessels.
NEW YORK — Wall Street’s losses mounted Wednesday as world leaders waited to see if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders troops deeper into Ukraine. The S&P 500 fell 1.8% to an 8-month low, worsening what is now the benchmark index’s second correction in two years. The technology-heavy Nasdaq lost 2.6% led by losses in Apple and Microsoft. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.4%. U.S. Treasury yields inched higher, as did gold prices. A potential war in eastern Europe has added to investors’ concerns about the global economy.
LONDON — Britain promised to hit Russia with “powerful” sanctions over its military confrontation with Ukraine. But the slim sheaf of measures announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has disappointed allies and critics alike. The U.K. has slapped asset freezes and travel bans on three wealthy Russians and sanctioned five Russian banks in response to President Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognize two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine. Johnson says there will be more to come if there is a “full-scale” Russian invasion. But critics say that could be too little, too late. Financier and anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder said that of all the international sanctions announced so far, only the American ones would have “stung Putin.”
DETROIT — The CEO of Ford Motor Co. says the automaker has no plans to spin off its electric vehicle or internal combustion businesses. But Jim Farley says Ford is reinventing itself to remove costs and ramp up for large-scale EV and software sales. Farley told the Wolfe Research virtual global auto technology conference Wednesday that Ford needs to hit Tesla-like profit margins by using common electric motors, electronic components and other parts across all sizes of vehicles. To do that, he said the company needs radically different human talent than it now has. He also said Ford has too many people and too much complexity, and it doesn’t have the expertise to transition to battery-electric vehicles.
NEW YORK — Lowe’s Cos., the nation’s second-largest home improvement chain, offered an upbeat annual outlook after reporting strong fiscal fourth-quarter results that showed a still sizzling housing market. The report follows a robust report from larger rival Home Depot. Lowe’s, based in Mooresville, North Carolina, said that it earned $1.21 billion, or $1.78 per share, for the quarter ended Jan. 28. The home improvement retailer posted revenue of $21.34 billion in the period. Earnings and revenue both beat Wall Street expectations. Lowe’s also forecast results for the current year ahead of estimates.
FRANKFURT, Germany — Automaker Stellantis says it made a solid 13.4 billion euros in its first year. That’s three times the profit from the two separate companies that combined to make Stellantis at the start of the 2021. The company said Wednesday that the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group paid off in cost efficiencies worth more than 3 billion euros. The company scaled up its production of battery cars, joining a global trend as it made almost 400,000 low-emission vehicles. The company also announced that its 43,000 U.S. workers represented by the United Auto Workers union will get record profit-sharing checks of $14,670.
OMAHA, Neb. — A federal judge has extended an order preventing the two largest unions at BNSF from going on strike over a new attendance policy the railroad imposed this month. The judge ruled that a strike by the unions that represent 17,000 BNSF workers would violate federal law. He determined the issue is a minor dispute under their contracts, so it must be settled through negotiations or arbitration. Union leaders said they were “infuriated” by the ruling and will consider appealing. The unions argued that the new rules discourage workers from taking sick time during the pandemic and penalize employees for missing work for any reason. | null | null | null | null | null |
Another well appears to dry up.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York State Attorney General Letitia James arrive at Manhattan Criminal Court for the arraignment of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg on charges of tax fraud in New York on July 1, 2021. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post)
Donald Trump has been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits — or had been as of about five years ago. That was the tally from USA Today, including all manner of legal disputes, from workers’ compensation claims at his properties to lawsuits involving the 2016 campaign. That’s about the point at which the paper stopped counting, incidentally; its total is certainly too low.
To some extent, this is a reflection of his association with a business named after himself. To some extent it’s also a reflection of his approach to that business: being willing to use legal threats as a tool to get what he wanted and often gambling that he could weather or settle legal claims brought against him.
On Wednesday afternoon, we learned that the prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who were leading the investigation into the Trump Organization had resigned their positions. This appears to be downstream from skepticism expressed by the new head of that office, Alvin Bragg, who was elected last November and assumed the position in January. Those resignations don’t mean that the probe is dead, but they certainly suggest that the investigation might want to make sure its will is in order.
The Manhattan investigation was also moving forward in coordination with an investigation at the state level, helmed by Attorney General Letitia James. When a Trump Organization accountant, Allen Weisselberg, was indicted last year, James and then-Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance marched proudly into the courtroom in front of a phalanx of cameras. Vance is gone, apparently kneecapping New York County’s involvement in the effort, but it’s not clear that the state probe will follow the same trajectory. In fact, last week, a judge ordered that Trump be deposed as part of the state’s investigation.
For example, he announced his candidacy in 2015 while facing a fraud lawsuit brought by the state of New York centered on his short-lived real-estate-seminar program called “Trump University.” That suit and a few related ones were settled shortly after Trump won the 2016 election. (He did not admit wrongdoing.) While he was president, New York began another probe, looking at activity related to his nonprofit organization, the Trump Foundation. (That probe stemmed in large part from Washington Post reporting.) Ultimately, Trump was fined and the foundation ordered to shut down.
There are two other investigations worth mentioning. After Trump pressured election officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., opened a probe considering whether he’d broken the law in doing so. In January, she empaneled a grand jury in the case. There’s also the investigation that’s was begun by D.C.'s district attorney last year, considering the Trump inaugural committee’s fundraising and spending. It’s expected to go to trial in the fall. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: “1883” with Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, and Isabel May
MR. JORGENSON: Good afternoon, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Dave Jorgenson, video producer here at The Post.
Let's talk about "1883." It's the origin story for the Dutton family, central to Taylor Sheridan's other hit show, "Yellowstone." The series streaming now on Paramount+ depicts how grueling, dangerous, and unknown life on the Oregon Trail was and what it meant to fight for survival.
I am delighted to be joined today by three of the series' leads: Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, and Isabel May. Hello. They're all there. Thank you so much for all three of you for joining us here today.
MR. ELLIOTT: Hey, Tim. Hi, Isabel.
MS. MAY: Hi. Hi, Sam.
MR. McGRAW: Nice to see you.
MR. JORGENSON: I just could watch you all talk to each other all day. This is like a‑‑I feel like‑‑you know, I just watched all nine episodes here in this exact room, and this is a very unique experience where now you're just here talking back to me. It's like a new Paramount+ feature where you get to Zoom the actors right afterwards, so very excited.
And a reminder to our audience, we want to join our‑‑who want to join our conversation that you can tweet your questions and comments to the handle @PostLive.
So let's get into it. "1883" premiered to 4.9 million viewers and is the most watched title on the service globally, racking up a ton of buzz and a lot of fan theories, including mine, about where the series is going to go, especially after Episode 9.
One of the most impressive aspects of the series is its depiction of what the Wild West really was like in the 1880s, and so let's start here with Tim. I'm very curious about so many things, but let's get to the basics here for maybe people who aren't as familiar with the show or looking to get into it.
James Dutton is the earlier ancestor for the central character in Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone." Can you talk to us more about the series and the origin story for that hit show?
MR. McGRAW: The series "1883" or the series "Yellowstone"?
MR. JORGENSON: I'm‑‑excuse‑‑talk about‑‑no, no. Talk to us about "1883." We can talk about "Yellowstone" another time. I want to talk to you about "1883."
MR. McGRAW: Yeah. You know, I think I‑‑I think if the chronology works out correctly is I think I'm the great‑grandfather of John Dutton, and, you know, it's really about setting out to find a new life. And I think that my character, James, is running from a lot of demons in his past. You know, he was in the Civil War. He was a captain in the Civil War and led his men into a battle that most all of them were killed. He ended up being in a war prison for three years, and Margaret, my wife, she nursed during the Civil War and waited for me for three years while raising a child.
So I think he has a lot of PTSD, which wasn't a thing back then, and I think that a lot of those guys, Shea and Thomas and Margaret and everybody that went through that experience back then, were looking for a better life and looking for sort of an escape from the turmoil in the world that was left behind after all of that. And they were looking for a better place, and I think that James had set out to do that.
I think the most interesting thing about it for James Dutton's character is, you know, he set out to do this alone. He set out to do this by himself with his wife, his daughter, his five‑year‑old son, his sister, sister‑in‑law, whichever she was, his niece, and all of them set off to take on this thing alone. And then he meets up with Shea and Thomas, and then they put together this whole wagon train of all these people and these Eastern European immigrants that came over to try to make a better life for themselves as well.
And it was just such a traumatic and trial‑by‑fire sort of experience. Nobody really knew what to expect‑‑I think Shea and Thomas probably knew what to expect better than anybody else did, but it was just rife with danger and turmoil, and you never knew‑‑I think you never knew what was going to happen.
I think I told Taylor early on when we started shooting this that I can't imagine a time that James Dutton ever slept. I mean, I think he was constantly concerned and worried about what was going on and what was going to happen next. I think he was constantly second‑guessing himself in a lot of ways. I can't imagine a time he ever slept.
I felt like I aged five years in the six months that we shot this. These two didn't age at all.
MR. JORGENSON: I think you're all kind of stuck in time. That was the feeling I got. You're all so good in these parts that it feels as if you are not from our time. It feels like they just somehow got cameras back to 1883 and started shooting you all and seeing what happened, and I think you do a really good job, especially portraying the PTSD. And as you said, there wasn't exactly a vocabulary of what was happening, but I think you do a really good job of showing that.
One of my favorite scenes is the flashback scene to the Civil War, and it's just kind of you and, you know‑‑spoiler alert, minor spoiler alert‑‑Tom Hanks just kind of sitting next to each other. And I can't imagine what that was like. Can you tell me a little bit more about that scene and shooting that scene?
MR. McGRAW: Well, the first thing I can tell you is it was super hot that day, and we had all those clothes on, and I had all that hair on. I felt like I looked like Sasquatch walking across the‑‑walking across the battlefield.
But, you know, Tom is a great guy. We've been family friends for a long, long time, and Rita and Faith are best friends, and we've hung out a little bit. And I called Tom up and sent him the script, said, "Look, if you have time, there's this little cameo in this thing that we're doing. No pressure at all. I've never asked you to do anything, but if you feel like it works for you, you know, let me know." And right away, he said, you know, "Tell me when and where, and I'll be there," and he couldn't have been more gracious when he was on set. He was super nice to everybody, and anybody who knows Tom knows he's that kind of guy anyway.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. It's a little annoying that every time I‑‑I mean, I don't know him at all. I've never met him, but every story you ever hear from him or from any celebrity of‑‑anyone, they're just like he's the best. People that had a wedding, he just runs by and takes a picture with them, but we'll get away from Tom Hanks for now.
And I don't want to talk about "Yellowstone" at all because I do think as, Sam, you said in other interviews that "1883" is its own show, and I think that's true in a lot of ways but especially for me. I watched the first two episodes without even knowing it was related to "Yellowstone," which tells you a lot, just how much this show stands on its own.
Can you tell what it was like, though, to work with Taylor Sheridan who seems to be juggling about seven shows at once these days?
MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, wow. That's the big question, isn't it? What's it like to work for Taylor Sheridan?
Yeah. First off, yeah, "Yellowstone" does stand‑‑or "1883" does stand on its own because it came before "Yellowstone." I'm still trying to figure out how Faith and Tim got into "Yellowstone" before "1883."
MR. JORGENSON: [Laughs]
MR. ELLIOTT: But that said, Taylor Sheridan is‑‑you know, I mean, Taylor is the reason we're all here looking at a TV screen or a‑‑whatever kind of a screen we're looking at here. That shows you what a techno‑peasant I am. He's the reason we're all here. He's the reason for everything, and he's‑‑you know, he's‑‑Taylor is a‑‑quite seriously, he's a brilliant man, and he's an incredibly talented writer. He's a poet in my world, and I think that this lady on the screen here next to us can tell you about that better than I can. I mean, the stuff that Taylor writes for women and particularly here for Isabel to me is some of the best stuff in the film.
MR. JORGENSON: Well, that was a great transition, Sam. I can go right over to Isabel with my next question with that.
MR. ELLIOTT: Well, go for it. You'll probably hear enough of me talk already.
MR. JORGENSON: I don't think anyone has ever been tired of hearing you talk, so I think you can‑‑
MR. McGRAW: No, no, no.
MR. JORGENSON: ‑‑rest easy there. You might as well be a ring tone at this point.
But, Isabel, I do want to ask you about, you know, this character itself but also the preparation for it. There's this cowboy camp that you all, you know, got yourselves into ahead of time. Can you tell me more about that and what‑‑I don't know‑‑as much detail as you can about cowboy camp going into filming?
MS. MAY: Yeah. I found out I'd be a part of the project before he had written it, which I think most of us were a part of it before he'd written it. So I had some time to sit with this character.
Obviously, I've never experienced something like that. So I just had to kind of wait, and he told me bits of her was his first impression of me when I first met him. And so I kind of went, whoa. What about myself? What do I have that kind of is reflected in this character? So I had think on that a little bit.
But then he told me I needed to be able to ride a horse‑‑we all did‑‑and well and convincingly, and so I just immediately‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Mission accomplished.
MS. MAY: Oh, thank you. I don't know.
MR. JORGENSON: Yes.
MS. MAY: I immediately jumped on one as soon as I possibly could and have come to fall in love with horses and horseback riding and the open plains. So, if anyone has a cabin somewhere in Wyoming or Montana or away from civilization, I would like it.
Yeah. We did cowboy camp about, I think, towards the middle to end of August, and that just‑‑you know, just fun games. I mean, it was a luxury to be involved with. I know a lot of projects don't give you that kind of time to create bonds, relationships with your fellow actors and build skills that you really will need to utilize and during the filming process. So it was really special.
MR. JORGENSON: That's great. And I heard, I think, all of you at one point talking about the physicality of just being out there and shooting. You know, Tim and Isabel, you had done a podcast a month or so ago where you were in Vegas and said it was very jarring to suddenly be in Vegas after just being out there shooting, and I'm really curious about, one, just what it was like to be out there shooting every day, waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. to shoot and the physicality itself, learning to ride a wagon and work with horses.
Sam, I'd like to direct that back to you, you know, if that was‑‑in your huge illustrious career, where this sits in everything that you've done and experienced.
MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, wow. I'm not sure about huge and illustrious, but this‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Humble for sure.
MR. ELLIOTT: In terms of the westerns‑‑in terms of the westerns that I've been fortunate enough to be involved in, this is the best one for me for many, many reasons. It's the real deal. I feel like this is authentic‑‑as authentic as it possibly could have been, the words on the page, the people on the show, you know, and it was a long journey. It was a five‑months journey on this trail, and it was‑‑everybody suffered on all sides of the cameras, you know, either from the intense heat or the bitter cold, and, you know, it was‑‑I think I can speak for‑‑I'm not going to speak for Tim and Isabel, but I think safely it was a‑‑you know, it was a labor of love for everybody involved. I don't think there's any secret about that. You know, it was a gift. It was just an incredible gift, I think.
It certainly‑‑it's my favorite western I've ever done, and I've worked on other shows that, you know, I feel very strongly about, about what we did, about‑‑they all pale compared to this thing, I think.
MR. JORGENSON: I think you're right for my money. I'm not a person that's been huge into westerns, but, man, did I dive into this. And one thing that I really appreciate about it is because it's, you know, a series. We get a lot of time with each character as opposed to, you know, 90 minutes to two hours.
And, Isabel, specifically, I want to talk to you. I feel‑‑of all the characters‑‑and maybe this isn't a mystery to any‑‑or I don't think anyone disagree that you seemed to evolve the most throughout the show. We hear from you. It's your voice. Can you tell me a little bit how you prepared for this 18‑year‑old, coming‑of‑age story on the plains, which is a story that I don't‑‑I can't think of a story that I've seen before in any film or TV.
MS. MAY: I would agree with you there.
I read accounts of women that had actually taken that trek from Texas, Tennessee, and other East‑‑kind of East Coast states to Oregon and specifically teenagers who were women. Once you were that age, you were a fully grown woman, perhaps married or with children.
There's one in particular, one woman in particular who I became very invested in named Mad Anne Bailey, and she had a pretty remarkable story that kind of somewhat reflected Elsa's story. If anyone thinks that Elsa is a bit too fictional for their taste, I would disagree.
Yeah. I think what's interesting about Elsa's trajectory is, you know, I think when you're a teenager and becoming a woman, that's probably the greatest growth one could go through in their life, and that's reflected on screen. I don't think we've ever seen that growth during such a treacherous journey or a young girl undertaking something like this. So, yeah, I don't think it's ever been made before, and she gets to make mistakes along the way and be frustrating and difficult and experience all sorts of tragedies and fall in love more than once. It's pretty beautiful, pretty epic.
MR. JORGENSON: It is.
MS. MAY: I like to think of it as an epic poem like the "Odyssey" or the "Iliad" something.
MR. JORGENSON: I love that, and I think that's a really good way to think about it because your voice‑over throughout the show, throughout every episode really, if you kind of strung that all together, I think it's its own‑‑it's its own epic poem.
And one aspect that I really love about your character is her relationship with the other characters, Tim's character, of course, but also with Faith Hill who plays your mother. I think there's a really good‑‑it's‑‑I don't know. It's over time the way you talk with her, I feel like you become equals by at least Episode 9, where I'm at. I don't know what happens next, but I feel like now you're at a point where your conversations, they go back and forth in a way that feels much more like you kind of are becoming your own person. But your mother is also expressing her love for you in her own way.
And I want to show a clip of that for the audience that I think really expresses this.
MR. JORGENSON: Isabel, can you talk to us about that relationship between Margaret and Elsa and why that might be dynamic and central to the plot?
MS. MAY: Well, I think what's remarkable about the story is that you have these conversations strewn throughout the entire season. So you have it early on, and Elsa is in a very different place in her life, and Margaret is in a different place. And Margaret kind of continues to repeat herself throughout, but Elsa's response changes, and that's kind of reflective of the journey in and of itself. What you're seeing Elsa go through is kind of what everyone is going through.
And the narration, as much as it‑‑yes, it's her own, but she's very much telling everyone's story. It's not Elsa's story, in my opinion at least. It's this wagon train's story, and yep. It's, I guess, all I can say about that.
MR. JORGENSON: That was‑‑that was perfect.
And, Tim, I actually have a Twitter question for you, so I'm going to read this off my phone. Excuse this weird way of doing it, more technology.
MR. JORGENSON: But a question from Dave Michaels, how did your experience acting in "1883," given the harshness of the trail West and lack of government control, affect your understanding of right and wrong? Did it cause you to reassess your own moral compass?
MR. McGRAW: I don't know‑‑I mean, it's so hard to look through the lens of history. So I don't think that it changed my own moral compass, but it certainly made me think that there were plenty of times during that area where you didn't have time to calculate right and wrong or you didn't have time to calculate who was a good guy and who was a bad guy, because if you took that moment to think about if you're doing the right thing towards this person that's showing up that you don't know, if you took a moment to think about that and if you made the wrong decision, it could mean your life or it can mean your family's life or it could mean the people that are in your charge's life.
So I don't think that‑‑I think that that's the morality that's different than today because we have a different sort of lens to look through. I think James, Shea, Thomas, everybody that lived along those times and during those times, there were plenty of innocent people that ended up being killed because you didn't have time to ask questions. You didn't have time to try to put it on a scale. It was all about survival, and it was about‑‑purely about survival. It was purely about self‑preservation and family preservation and your people preservation.
So I think if it changed any view that I had, it was the view that you can't look back and judge the morality of somebody during those times according to what they did because there were a completely different set of circumstances and a completely different lens to look through.
MR. JORGENSON: That's great, and I feel like something that the show does so well is show these sort of moral dilemmas and also the sacrifices that come out of it. I feel like a lot of shows, you watch sacrifices, and it feels like it's sort of engineered. It doesn't feel necessarily‑‑it feels like it's shock value, but here all the sacrifices made, they feel earned. And you just‑‑it hurts that much more.
MR. McGRAW: Yeah.
MR. JORGENSON: And we actually have a clip that gets at that very issue.
MR. JORGENSON: Tim, to kind of follow up more on that, something that comes up a lot in that scene and other scenes is "We're going to go north," "Now we're going to go west." It sounds like my wife and I when we get lost on a road trip, but more seriously here, it's a little more‑‑the stakes are a little higher.
MR. JORGENSON: And I felt watching this, you know‑‑everyone grew up, at least I grew up, you know, in my school in Kansas City reading about the Oregon Trail, and you see signs, "Hey, this is the Oregon Trail. It passed through here." And that was kind of my extent of it. It was a little bit romanticized. So I'm kind of curious how this impacted your preconceived visions of the West, Oregon Trail, and just perception of freedom and the promise to free land.
MR. McGRAW: Well, it certainly gives you a perspective on how hard it was and how difficult it was and the difficult decisions that you had to make along the way.
I love‑‑for me, I love Shea and James' relationship throughout this show because I think you certainly see the‑‑it's a sort of alpha male sort of leadership battle that's going on, but you also see‑‑and I think you see it from the very beginning‑‑that there's a lot of respect between the two. And I don't think that there's this animosity. I think that there's just‑‑you know, James is pretty stubborn and hardheaded, but he also knows that Shea knows what he's doing. So there's this sort of evaluation that's always going on between their relationship about what's the right thing to do.
So I think that that probably went on quite a bit. I think that everybody probably evaluated every step of the way of every day that they traveled, if they were doing the right thing, if they were going the right way, if they had the right provisions, if they were making the right decisions.
I mean, I‑‑did they sleep? I mean, I can't imagine Shea and James or Thomas really ever sleeping during the entire time, I mean, the troubles and worries that you had to deal with.
So‑‑and we didn't even get to‑‑like Shea or Sam just alluded to in that scene, we didn't even get to the crossing of the mountains and where there were no trails, and you had to take wheels off and put sleds on and pull things across. I mean, it was just incredibly arduous, and the strength and fortitude that the people had that made it, I mean, look, there's some good stock there from the people that survived that trip and the people that came and the ancestry that came from that, because that was something that I would love to know what the percentage was of the folks that made it that started out on that trail and started out on that journey because it was hard for us.
I mean, and we‑‑I mean, we were one, one‑millionth of what they had to go through, even in the elements that we had to face, but, you know, we got to leave at the end of the day. We got to go home and take a hot bath at the end of the day. We got to clean the dirt off of us at the end of the day. So imagine day after day after day for months and months and months on end and fighting the‑‑I mean, the elements were probably the toughest thing you had to fight. Then you had the bandits, and way down the list was Native Americans.
So, I mean, there was just so much that you had to deal with and to fight against‑‑and the lack of knowledge of the people who set out across the trail to do that, and the learning curve that they had just within a few weeks and months, just to be able to continue on the journey and survive at all, I mean, it was just absolutely incredible.
And what it makes me do is want‑‑it makes me want to go back and read more about it and find out more about it and sort if discover more stories.
MR. JORGENSON: I had the same reaction, and, you know, not to make this about me, but I realized I had all these things from my grandma that I asked her a few years ago where my family came from. They all settled in Montana in the 1880s. So what a weird coincidence?
MR. ELLIOTT: Oh.
MR. JORGENSON: But, yeah, across the‑‑and, you know, I don't think it was quite as harsh as this. I'm hoping not, but maybe it was, and I'm watching this now with that perspective going, wow. I never even thought about that for more than one minute. So I appreciate you all bringing that to life.
MR. McGRAW: I wouldn't have probably made it a week.
MR. JORGENSON: I saw you said that, and then you just settled down. Yeah. That was a‑‑I had a question for Isabel. You know, how long do you think you would go on? Would you go all the way to‑‑all the way, or would you just kind of stop at one point and go, hey, Denver is pretty nice?
MS. MAY: No. I mean‑‑
MR. ELLIOTT: She'd go all the way.
MS. MAY: Yeah. Thanks, Sam. [Laughs] I think I'd make it. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little too‑‑
MR. ELLIOTT: No doubt in my mind.
MS. MAY: I don't know.
MR. JORGENSON: It's tough. Who knows? But just to bring us back from‑‑
MR. McGRAW: Both of those guys are tougher than I am.
MR. JORGENSON: [Laughs] I think you're all pretty tough. At least you can ride horses really well, so that counts for something.
But to bring it back from 1883 all the way to 2022, I have some Twitter questions again, this time for Sam. I've got a couple, but we'll go to the first one here. From an Aussie fan of both "Yellowstone" and now "1883"‑‑to Isabel, Tim, and Sam, but we'll direct at you, Sam, for now‑‑I think this show has parallels with today, the pandemic, in showing the strength and resilience people needed just to survive. What are your thoughts about that?
MR. ELLIOTT: Wow.
MR. JORGENSON: That's loaded.
MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah. You know, I think it's got‑‑you know, the story certainly had parallels to any modern time. I don't even think it necessarily during the pandemic. That just kind of ups the odds of the difficulty factor. I mean, history tends to repeat itself, you know, and shame on us if we don't learn from past history. You know, that to me is the most disappointing thing about, you know, the world we're living in today. We just keep‑‑you know, we just keep making the same mistakes, it seems like, you know. We're verging on another World War at this moment in time, not to descend into politics, but, you know, history repeats itself, you know.
We've all been talking about how difficult this journey is, you know. It's‑‑and yeah, I agree with Tim totally, wholeheartedly that, you know, there wasn't anybody on this show that was tough enough to make that trip except for Isabel.
MR. ELLIOTT: You know, that said, I think this country is full of people that could have made that trip and could make that trip today. I mean, we were around a lot of them, the people that live outdoors, the people that, you know, can fend for themselves, the hunters, the people that are survivalists, the people that are great horsemen and great wagon drivers. You know what I mean? There's plenty of stock in this country that's tough enough to make this journey today. The trouble is that most of us have just gotten soft with modern times, you know, or maybe it's‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Sam‑‑
MR. ELLIOTT: ‑‑the good fortune we've had.
MR. JORGENSON: ‑‑I could let you talk forever, and trust me, I want to. But I'm being told I have to start wrapping things up, but a lot of good things there to unpack. I'm going to keep it short for my last question. I want to ask each of you to sum up the experience of working on "1883," whether or not you would have made it, but the experience of working on "1883" in one word. I'll start with Tim.
MR. McGRAW: Incredible, just incredible. I mean, I don't know what else I could say. You said one word, so I'll say incredible.
MR. JORGENSON: You got one word. That was great. Yeah. I just‑‑I felt like that was an incredible answer.
Isabel, one word.
MS. MAY: Epic. Everyone already said that, but‑‑
MR. McGRAW: That's a good frame, yeah.
MR. JORGENSON: Epic poem. No, the epic poem thing stuck with me. That's good.
MS. MAY: The epic poem.
MR. JORGENSON: I like it. Yeah.
Sam, one word.
MR. ELLIOTT: Overwhelming.
MS. MAY: [Laughs] I was going to say that.
MR. JORGENSON: That seems to have resonated with your fellow cast members.
MR. ELLIOTT: Love you both.
MR. JORGENSON: I have a rhetorical question for you.
MR. ELLIOTT: [Audio distortion] but I love you too.
MR. JORGENSON: The love is flowing. Sam, the love is flowing from this last tweet I'm going to read. It's more of a rhetorical question, but how does it feel to be a sex symbol to the over‑55 crowd? That's your last tweet.
MR. McGRAW: [Laughs]
MR. ELLIOTT: That [audio distortion]. I don't believe that's true. Who told you that? Your mom?
MR. JORGENSON: It's on Twitter. It has to be true.
MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, it's on Twitter.
MR. JORGENSON: My mom would agree with that, though. That's true.
MR. ELLIOTT: I just had a‑‑I was rumored to have had a Twitter account yesterday. It was a fake account that somebody had set up a number of weeks ago, and I was very fortunate that my publicist took it down for me yesterday. So I'm Twitter‑less at the moment again, and I'm happy to be that.
MR. JORGENSON: Well, if anything, we can‑‑
MS. MAY: Me too, Sam.
MR. JORGENSON: All right. Probably for the best. Tim, you and I have our own problems still on Twitter, but, you know, good for you all being off Twitter.
And thank you so much, Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, Isabel May, for joining me today. It really was a terrific discussion, and I appreciate it.
MR. McGRAW: Love you guys.
MS. MAY: Thank you so much.
MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. You too, Tim.
MR. JORGENSON: A reminder to our audience that "1883" is on Paramount+, and the season finale airs this Sunday.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you’d like to check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com.
I'm Dave Jorgenson. As always, thank you for watching. | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia state Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, hopes to reach a compromise on the state budget with Republicans in the House of Delegates. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
How it all shakes out will be a test of just how much sway the new governor, a political newcomer who took office Jan. 15, has in a divided Capitol. Youngkin has had one major win so far — making masks optional at schools statewide — but only because three Senate Democrats pushed legislation on that front, supplanting an executive order Youngkin had issued on his first day in office that drew court challenges.
Knight said he has a good relationship with his counterpart in the Senate — Finance and Appropriations Committee chairwoman Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) — and that he expects a cordial process.
“I have not been hearing any requests [from constituents] for tax cuts, but I hear on a daily basis the need for services for people with mental illness, for people with intellectual disabilities, for our aging population, and most particularly for our schoolchildren and college students,” Howell said. "All of these are pent-up needs that we have not been able to do lately. And now we have an opportunity to catch up.”
At least one Republican on the Senate Finance committee agrees with the cautious approach on tax cuts. Sen. Emmett W. Hanger, Jr. (R-Augusta), a former co-chairman of the committee, said he thinks the issue of tax relief needs more review.
On Thursday, the House and Senate will each vote on its preferred budget plan and send it to the opposite chamber. Then they’ll spend until the end of session reconciling differences.
The Senate budget retains the $44.3 million that Northam had proposed to expand access to early-childhood education, which had been a priority for first lady Pam Northam. But the House version cuts that to $6 million, eliminating plans to serve more 3-year-olds, according to the Commonwealth Institute.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City), former co-chairman of the Finance committee, said he had not yet studied the House budget but said he knows the two chambers have taken sharply different approaches to the two-year spending plan.
The Senate budget, he said, uses federal American Rescue Plan money and other unanticipated money to fund one-time projects and programs. “The House is focusing more on some tax relief,” Norment said. "Just speaking broadly, conceptually, those are very conflicting approaches.”
“It’s sort of on-brand for Republicans to try to pump up the tax cuts,” said Del. Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax). “We think people want some tax relief but not at the expense of teachers and classroom instruction, class size, having school renovations done” and other spending priorities.
“Sometimes when our differences are smaller, they become more pronounced than when they’re larger,” he said. “There’s just room to maneuver with the two different budgets." | null | null | null | null | null |
The U.S. average for regular unleaded gasoline hit $3.53 gallon, which is nearly a dollar more than last year
The U.S. average for regular unleaded gasoline hit $3.53 gallon on Wednesday, according to AAA. That’s 21 cents higher than last month and a hefty jump from the $2.65 recorded a year ago.
Rounding out the 10 most expensive states, according to AAA: Hawaii ($4.51), Oregon ($3.98), Washington state ($3.98), Nevada ($3.95), Alaska ($3.85), New York ($3.75), Pennsylvania ($3.73), Washington, D.C., ($3.72) and Arizona ($3.71). | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia state Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, hopes to reach a compromise on the state budget with Republicans in the House of Delegates. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
How it all shakes out will be a test of just how much sway the new governor, a political newcomer who took office Jan. 15, has in a divided Capitol. Youngkin has had one major win so far — making masks optional at schools statewide — but only because three Senate Democrats pushed legislation on that front, supplanting an executive order Youngkin issued on his first day in office that drew court challenges.
Knight said he has a good relationship with his counterpart in the Senate — Finance and Appropriations Committee chairwoman Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) — and that he expects a cordial process.
“I have not been hearing any requests [from constituents] for tax cuts, but I hear on a daily basis the need for services for people with mental illness, for people with intellectual disabilities, for our aging population, and most particularly for our schoolchildren and college students,” Howell said. “All of these are pent-up needs that we have not been able to do lately. And now we have an opportunity to catch up.”
At least one Republican on the Senate Finance Committee agrees with the cautious approach on tax cuts. Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R-Augusta), a former co-chairman of the committee, said he thinks the issue of tax relief needs more review.
On Thursday, the House and Senate will each vote on its preferred budget plan and send it to the opposite chamber. Then they have until the session ends on March 12 to reconcile differences.
The Senate budget retains the $44.3 million that Northam had proposed to expand access to early-childhood education, which had been a priority for first lady Pamela Northam. But the House version cuts that to $6 million, eliminating plans to serve more 3-year-olds, according to the Commonwealth Institute.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), former co-chairman of the Finance committee, said he had not yet studied the House budget but said he knows the two chambers have taken sharply different approaches to the two-year spending plan.
The Senate budget, he said, uses federal American Rescue Plan money and other unanticipated money to fund one-time projects and programs. “The House is focusing more on some tax relief,” Norment said. “Just speaking broadly, conceptually, those are very conflicting approaches.”
“It’s sort of on-brand for Republicans to try to pump up the tax cuts,” said Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax). “We think people want some tax relief but not at the expense of teachers and classroom instruction, class size, having school renovations done” and other spending priorities.
“Sometimes when our differences are smaller, they become more pronounced than when they’re larger,” he said. “There’s just room to maneuver with the two different budgets.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The petition, filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court in December by the education advocacy group Open FCPS Coalition, accused Cohen of “neglect of duty, misuse of office [and] incompetence” for voting to keep schools closed in fall 2020 to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Like school districts nationwide, Fairfax — whose nearly 179,00 students make it Virginia’s largest system — offered online-only education for much of the first year of the pandemic, although it has operated entirely in-person so far this school year.
In his order Wednesday dismissing the petition against Cohen, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Gardiner wrote that “the Petition is not based on facts sufficient to show probable cause for removal.” He dismissed the case “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.
The Open FCPS Coalition, a parent activist group that formed in late 2020 to hold the county School Board accountable for its actions during the pandemic, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Spokesmen for Fairfax County Public Schools did not either.
The coalition targeted these three members, out of Fairfax’s 12 board members, because of their track record of speaking and voting in favor of school closures, according to the group’s website.
The coalition alleged that Cohen had violated the rights of students with disabilities by voting in favor of closing schools at the same July meeting “without making any dispensations for students with special needs.” Caudill wrote that the allegation is “not factually supported based on the presentations, discussions and testimony at the July 21, 2020 meeting.”
“The consensus of the Board, giving deference to the amount of information provided at the meeting and the unsettled nature of the … pandemic,” he wrote, “constituted a well-reasoned and legitimate exercise of discretion and authority.”
In response, Caudill pointed out a key detail of the Fairfax system’s survey design: “If no instruction preference was selected the default response was considered as an in-person instruction response,” he wrote. He added that, of the 186,188 respondents to the survey, 83,548 parents (45 percent) chose in-person learning, 77,442 parents (or 42 percent) chose online learning and 25,198 simply did not respond, leading their answers to be counted as a preference for bricks-and-mortar schooling. | null | null | null | null | null |
If the U.S. men’s national soccer team is to qualify for the World Cup next month, it’s going to have to do so without standout midfielder Weston McKennie, who was diagnosed with a broken foot Wednesday.
McKennie was injured late in a UEFA Champions League round-of-16 match Tuesday between his Italian club, Juventus, and Spain’s Villarreal.
In a statement Wednesday, Juventus said he suffered a compound fracture of the second and third metatarsal bones in his left foot. The initial recovery time, the club said, is about eight weeks — a timetable that rules McKennie out of the U.S. team’s last three World Cup qualifiers.
In a Concacaf region offering three automatic berths, the United States (6-2-3) sits second, even with Mexico (6-2-3) on points (21) but holds the tiebreaker on goal differential. Canada (7-0-4, 25 points) is first.
Panama (5-4-2, 17) and Costa Rica (4-3-4, 16) remain in the running. El Salvador (2-6-3, nine points), Jamaica (1-6-4, seven) and Honduras (0-8-3, three) round out the group.
In his second season with the Italian giants, he has made 28 appearances (21 starts) across all competitions and scored four goals. With the national team, he has started seven qualifiers, scored against Mexico and Honduras and displayed an all-around game that has made him perhaps Coach Gregg Berhalter’s most important player.
On Monday, though, Dortmund said it was not as serious as first feared and Reyna could return to training in two weeks. That would put him on track to join the U.S. team for training camp starting March 21. He hasn’t played in a qualifier since the opener in El Salvador on Sept. 2. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukraine imposes state of emergency; Biden anno...
What counts as an ‘invasion,’ or as ‘lethal aid’? Here’s what some terms fr...
A Russian army personnel carrier close to the border with Ukraine, in Rostov Oblast, Russia, on Feb. 22. (For The Washington Post)
“I wouldn’t say that [it’s] a fully fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, told reporters.
The White House initially wrestled with whether Putin’s actions constituted an invasion. But in a speech Tuesday, Biden was explicit: Russia’s moves on eastern breakaway regions marked “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
The “line of control” refers to the roughly 260-mile divide in eastern Ukraine separating areas held by Russian-backed separatists from territory controlled by Kyiv government forces. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, separatists proclaimed “people’s republics” — often referred to as “breakaway republics” — in the east. Fighting in the area has claimed 14,000 lives since 2014.
Biden said Tuesday that the United States would continue to supply “defensive” weapons to Ukraine. Washington rushed anti-armor missiles and other weapons to Ukraine in January and February. Britain, Poland and other European countries have also used the term to describe their own weapons shipments to Ukraine. Diplomats are careful to use the term in the face of accusations that supplying weapons to Ukraine could threaten Russia.
But some have questioned the notion that any weapon could be defensive. At least one Western country remains skeptical of the idea: Germany has declined a request from Ukraine for “defensive weapons” such as anti-drone rifles and portable surface-to-air missiles, citing its long-standing policy against sending arms to conflict zones.
European leaders have also pursued targeted sanctions against Russia. Asked whether the White House would impose sanctions against Putin himself, a senior Biden administration official told The Washington Post that “all options remain on the table.”
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Ukraine’s ability to join it, lies at the center of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. NATO was formed in 1949 and designed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. The military alliance, which initially had just 12 members, has since grown to 30 countries. | null | null | null | null | null |
“We fully support Kemba’s decision to shut it down for the remainder of the season and use this time to prepare for next season,” Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose said in a statement released shortly after ESPN broke the news. “His long-term success on the court remains our priority.”
Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau had previously pulled Walker from the rotation in November, citing then a desire for a bigger lineup better on defense as his team began to falter after a 5-1 start. The 31-year-old guard was not idle for long, as injuries and covid issues put him back on the court following a 10-game absence.
When he returned to action in mid-December, Walker had an impressive initial showing with 94 points over a three-game span. Since then, however, he has missed 11 games with chronic knee issues, and when available to play he has misfired frequently. Over his past 16 games, Walker shot just 27.4 percent from three-point range and 34.4 percent overall from the field, with an average of 7.9 points in 24.2 minutes.
The Knicks have plummeted to a 25-34 record coming out of the all-star break, 12th in the Eastern Conference and in danger of missing the NBA’s play-in round. Their disappointing season also gives Thibodeau reason to veer from his usual tendencies to rely on veterans and instead begin to give younger players more time. The immediate effect of the move to sideline Walker will be to clear the way for the soon-expected return of 14th-year guard Derrick Rose from injury. Alec Burks, who has started this season when Walker has missed games, could also be given that role for the rest of the season.
Walker grew up in the Bronx and was a New York City high school star before going on to a standout career at Connecticut that included authoring a number of memorable moments at Madison Square Garden. Much was made of his return to the Garden when he signed a two-year free agent deal worth $17.9 million with the Knicks last summer following a buyout of his contract after a trade from the Boston Celtics to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but things haven’t gone as well as he or the Knicks might have hoped.
With Walker entering the final year this summer of a two-year deal he signed with New York, the Knicks and his agents will look for a trade partner in the offseason, according to ESPN. The team reportedly shopped a number of its veterans at the NBA trade deadline earlier this month but apparently found no takers and, oddly enough for a squad with a poor record, finds itself with too many players who merit appreciable amounts of playing time.
Walker was a three-time all-star in Charlotte before going to the Celtics in a 2019 sign-and-trade deal. His performance began to slide after a knee injury suffered in the 2020 All-Star Game, and the Celtics packaged a first-round pick with Walker to get the Thunder to take his maximum contract off their hands last summer. He was with OKC for less than two months when they agreed on the buyout that led to his signing with the Knicks. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Actor Alec Baldwin attends the 2019 PEN America Literary Gala In New York on May 21, 2019. Attorneys for the family of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was shot and killed on the set of the film “Rust,” say they’re suing Baldwin and the movie’s producers for wrongful death. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES — The husband of a cinematographer shot and killed on the set of the film “Rust” says it’s “absurd” that Alex Baldwin believes he’s not to blame for the shooting and he was “so angry” when Baldwin didn’t accept responsibility. | null | null | null | null | null |
James Hill, Post Writers Group editor, dies at 75
James Hill in The Washington Post newsroom. (TWP)
James S. Hill, a journalist who became managing editor of The Washington Post’s Writers Group of opinion journalists and columnists, editorial cartoonists and comic strip authors, died Feb. 7 at his home in Sun City, Ariz. He was 75.
The cause was lung disease, said a daughter, Amanda Knee.
Mr. Hill was managing editor of the Writers Group for 14 years until retiring in 2014. Among the writers he helped syndicate were Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne Jr., George Will and, until his death in 2018, Charles Krauthammer.
As an editor, Dionne wrote in an email, Mr. Hill was a stickler for “using the right word, conveying thoughts clearly — but always saw the fun in it. … He was shrewd and realistic about how the world works, but never fell into a deadening cynicism.”
James Sherman Hill was born in Winfield, Kan., on Oct. 4, 1946. He was an infant when his father died, and he was raised by his mother, a nurse.
He attended Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he took his first newspaper job at the Herald-Leader.
He later held reporting and editing positions at newspapers including the Kansas City Star, the Oakland Tribune, the Los Angeles Times (from 1979 to 1990), the Phoenix Gazette and the Arizona Republic. In Washington, he taught a graduate course on journalism at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
In retirement, Mr. Hill moved to Arizona from Manassas Park, Va.
In addition to his daughter, of Albuquerque, survivors include his wife of 55 years, Connie Pierson Hill, of Sun City; another daughter, Lisa Spears of Denver; and four grandchildren.
In a column published after Mr. Hill’s death, Ruben Navarrette Jr., a Latino columnist syndicated with the Writers Group, described him as a “protective father figure. He called me ‘son’ and made my well-being his concern. He gave me advice when I needed it, and scoldings when I deserved.”
Without Mr. Hill, Navarrette added, “it’s doubtful that I would have had a writing career at all.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“We fully support Kemba’s decision to shut it down for the remainder of the season and to use this time to prepare for next season,” Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose said in a statement released shortly after ESPN broke the news. “His long-term success on the court remains our priority.”
Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau pulled Walker from the rotation in November, citing a desire for a bigger lineup that is better on defense as his team began to falter after a 5-1 start. The 31-year-old guard was not idle for long; injuries and coronavirus issues put him back on the court following a 10-game absence.
When he returned to action in mid-December, Walker had an impressive initial showing with 94 points over a three-game span. Since then, however, he has missed 11 games with chronic knee issues, and when available to play he has misfired frequently. Over his past 16 games, Walker shot just 27.4 percent from three-point range and 34.4 percent overall, with an average of 7.9 points in 24.2 minutes.
The Knicks have plummeted to a 25-34 record coming out of the all-star break, 12th in the Eastern Conference and in danger of missing the play-in round. Their disappointing season also gives Thibodeau reason to veer from his tendency to rely on veterans and instead begin to give younger players more time on the court. The immediate effect of the move to sideline Walker will be to clear the way for the soon-expected return of 14th-year guard Derrick Rose from injury. Alec Burks, who has started this season when Walker has missed games, also could be given that role for the rest of the season.
Walker grew up in the Bronx and was a New York City high school star before going on to a standout career at Connecticut that included a number of memorable moments at Madison Square Garden. Much was made of his return to the Garden when he signed a two-year deal worth $17.9 million with the Knicks last summer following a buyout of his contract after a trade from the Boston Celtics to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but things haven’t gone as well as he or the Knicks might have hoped.
With Walker entering the final year this summer of a two-year deal he signed with New York, the Knicks and his agents will look for a trade partner in the offseason, according to ESPN. The team reportedly shopped a number of its veterans at the trade deadline this month but apparently found no takers and, oddly enough for a squad with a poor record, finds itself with too many players who merit appreciable amounts of playing time.
Walker was a three-time all-star for Charlotte before going to the Celtics in a 2019 sign-and-trade deal. His performance began to slide after a knee injury suffered in the 2020 All-Star Game, and the Celtics packaged a first-round draft pick with Walker to get the Thunder to take his maximum contract off their hands last summer. He was with Oklahoma City for less than two months when the Thunder agreed on the buyout that led to his signing with the Knicks. | null | null | null | null | null |
Extremely low temperatures will show up every winter, but these events will continue to decrease as the climate warms
This week, much of the United States will experience frigid and stormy wintry weather because of a blast of air from the Arctic. Temperatures have already plunged to below zero across the Midwest, setting records in some locations. As of Wednesday morning, more than 50 million people across the country are under a winter storm watch, warning or winter weather advisory.
For this cold season, we’ve already seen quite a few minimum temperatures below 0 degrees. In the northern latitudes and higher elevations, those lowest temperatures have occurred more frequently. But is this season’s number of very cold days anomalous?
The seasonal total is a bit below average. This latest event could get some of those stations closer to their average seasonal total. It’s likely that, for much of the Lower 48 states, this week will be the last time we see those temperatures until the next cold season.
Across the northern Great Plains and in the far northeast, it’s common to observe about 30 days of temperatures below zero. For some spots, including much of Alaska, there are about 60 days of temperatures below zero.
Unless you live around the southern reaches of the United States or along the Pacific Coast, the February average minimum temperatures are still in the teens and 20s for much of the country and even colder farther north. While the coldest month of the year is either December or January for the majority of locations, it’s still no surprise that we can get very cold outbreaks in February.
So, yes, during the winter, we can still get really cold. But that’s not to say climate change hasn’t had an impact on those colder temperatures.
Climate scientist Brian Brettschneider showed that most of the country is seeing an increasing trend in the lowest temperature observed each year, by an average of about 4.3 degrees.
Additionally, a recent update of State Climate Summaries has found that many states are experiencing a decreasing trend in the number of very cold nights, especially since the 1990s. Despite experiencing the most frequent number of extreme low temperatures, the decreasing trend in low temperatures is probably most pronounced for Alaska. (If you’re interested in exploring more temperature statistics for your location, check out this interactive map of climate perspectives from the Southeast Regional Climate Center.)
While we can expect extremely low temperatures to intrude every winter, these events will continue to decrease as the climate continues to warm. That does not necessarily mean that cold temperatures will disappear completely — at least not in our lifetimes. Regardless of the changes our climate experiences, it’s important to be prepared for the entire range of possibilities. | null | null | null | null | null |
Churchill guard Bryce Wilson holds up the winners' hardware after the Bulldogs beat Damascus to win the Montgomery County championship. “When we get the ball moving and running,” Wilson said, “we’re unstoppable.” (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In the midst of the Churchill boys’ basketball team’s game-turning run Wednesday night, guard Andrew Silver leaped to intercept a pass near midcourt. The senior grabbed the ball and was milliseconds from stepping out of bounds when Coach David Blumenthal, standing behind him, yelled for a timeout.
The referee awarded the call, giving the Bulldogs another possession in a stretch when they seemed to score at will. Blumenthal and his players believe there are few teams in Maryland that can beat them when they’re playing their best, and No. 13 Churchill showed why in the inaugural Montgomery County championship game at Richard Montgomery High.
In their 69-47 win over Damascus, the Bulldogs pulled away with a 25-5 run in the second quarter. For six minutes, Churchill dominated from the three-point arc, on the fast break and even with clutch timeout calls.
Notebook: National Christian is king of its new conference
“When we get the ball moving and running,” guard Bryce Wilson said, “we’re unstoppable.”
An opponent has only had an answer for Churchill once. The Bulldogs (20-1) fell to Bethesda-Chevy Chase, 66-60, on Feb. 10. Churchill star Tre Stott returned that game after serving a three-game suspension for being involved in an on-court fight Jan. 31, and the junior said his team underestimated opponents entering the regular season’s final month.
“When we finally came together and played Churchill basketball,” said Stott, who matched Wilson with a team-high 18 points Wednesday, “I knew nobody could stop us in the county.”
It’s a rare thing for Churchill players and coaches to make such a claim. The Bulldogs last reached the state semifinals in 1978 — when they won the 4A championship. Churchill emerged as a county contender in recent seasons but lost to Parkville in double overtime of the 4A quarterfinals in 2020, when Maryland last conducted a basketball postseason.
Boys' Top 20: St. Stephen's/St. Agnes, Wilson on rise
Montgomery County limited spectators most of the season because of the pandemic, but it lifted them Tuesday. That created an electric atmosphere, and Churchill gave the crowd a show against Damascus (18-3) in the county’s new biggest game.
“When this team is clicking … they can compete with anybody,” Blumenthal said. “When they’re really in that zone, they can do some amazing things on both ends of the floor. Sometimes it’s tough to always do that for 32 full minutes, but when they can put together four- or five-minute spurts here and there, they can really change the game.”
Clarksburg girls roll on
There have been few doubts that Clarksburg is the county’s top girls’ team. The Coyotes (21-0) validated their stellar regular season with a 66-39 win over Whitman (17-3) in Wednesday night’s championship game.
Sitting atop the county standings is also rare for No. 9 Clarksburg. In the first few seasons after the school opened in 2006, the Coyotes desired to finish .500. Two guards, senior Mia Smith and junior Riley Nelson, have turned Clarksburg into a top contender when it enters the 4A playoffs next week. The Coyotes, who have won every game by double digits, have never qualified for the state semifinals.
“I didn’t think that we would make history like this,” said Smith, who scored a game-high 25 points. “We could beat anybody in Maryland when we put our mind to it and play together.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia launches attacks on Ukraine
Who are the Russian individuals or businesses targeted by new E.U. sanctions?
The European Union announced new sanctions against top Russian officials, companies, lawmakers and “leading propagandists” this week as it sought to punish Moscow for threatening Ukraine.
The measures, which also target some Russian banks and restrict access to E.U. capital and financial markets, went into effect late Wednesday.
The 27-member bloc says the sanctions are just a first step and has promised more severe penalties if Russia launches a full-scale invasion.
The Internet Research Agency is a Russian company based in St. Petersburg and financed by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked businessman already under E.U. and U.S. sanctions for his ties to the Wagner mercenary group.
“In this capacity, the Internet Research Agency is responsible for actively supporting actions which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” the note said, adding that the company is “financed by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and therefore associated with a listed person.”
The E.U. also listed Prigozhin’s wife and mother as sanctions targets for their involvement with businesses owned by Prigozhin.
His first foray into business was a hot-dog stand. In a series of food-related ventures in the 1990s, he opened a fast food cafe, then food marts and upscale restraints in Russia’s major cities. He later became known as “Putin’s chef” after founding a catering company that scored a $1.6 billion contract to source 90 percent of food orders to Russian soldiers in 2012.
The E.U. said he plays “an active role in Kremlin decision-making process by taking part in the Russian ‘Security Council’ and influencing the elaboration of decisions by the president in the field of Russia’s defense and national security.”
The E.U. says that under Shoigu’s “command and orders, Russian troops have held military drills in the illegally annexed Crimea and have been positioned at the border.” The minister is “ultimately responsible for any military action against Ukraine,” the official sanctions note said.
The E.U. said that “through her function, she promoted a positive attitude to the annexation of Crime and the action of separatists in Donbas.”
The state-funded media outlet has also been linked to disinformation campaigns and Russian propaganda. A 2017 report from the director of national intelligence said that “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine … contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Prosecutors leading criminal probe into Trump business practices resign in frustration
Former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance approved seeking an indictment, but his successor, Alvin Bragg, seemed uninterested, people familiar with the situation said.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), who declined to seek reelection as district attorney, told a team led by seasoned litigators Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz to go to a grand jury to begin the process of securing a case against Trump. Vance concluded there was enough evidence after a two-year probe to obtain an indictment and conviction, those people said.
The final decision, however, would fall to Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg (D), who was sworn into office Jan. 1.
One person familiar with the situation said the new prosecutor took weeks to read memos Dunne and Pomerantz had prepared on the case and didn’t meet with them for some time. When they did meet, he didn’t seem keenly interested, said this person, who like others interview spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations in an ongoing investigation.
Analysis: Once again, Trump appears to evade a legal trap
“We are grateful for their service,” said Bragg’s spokeswoman, Danielle Filson, adding that the investigation into Trump and his business practices “is ongoing.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who has an active, parallel civil probe into Trump’s business practices, may proceed alone with a civil lawsuit, a person familiar with the situation said. But James’s office also has partnered with Bragg in the criminal investigation. On Wednesday, James spokeswoman Delaney Kempner said the joint criminal inquiry “is ongoing and there is a robust team in place that is working on it.”
Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor who was working on the Trump case without taking a salary, confirmed his departure but declined to comment further. Dunne, who served as Vance’s general counsel, could not be reached for comment. Vance, who is now in private practice, declined to comment on the resignations, which were first reported by the New York Times.
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer representing Trump Organization in the criminal matter, declined to comment. Trump had not issued a statement by Wednesday evening.Should the criminal case in Manhattan yield no indictment of Trump, it would not be the end of his legal woes. In addition to James’s civil inquiry and other pending civil claims, a prosecutor in Georgia is weighing whether Trump committed crimes in pressuring state election officials to overturn the results of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The Westchester County district attorney in suburban New York is also looking into Trump’s business and has subpoenaed records related to one of Trump’s golf clubs there.
In the Manhattan probe, Vance’s administration did not rush to seek an indictment by the end of 2021, believing that Bragg — who would inherit the case — should handle the conclusion of the grand jury process, one of the people familiar with Vance’s thinking said.
Dunne and Pomerantz expected the support for an indictment would transfer to Bragg’s administration, the person said.
Trump Organization in talks to host controversial Saudi golf events at former president's golf courses
Another person briefed on the case said Bragg and James had a good relationship as they pursued their joint investigation. But a second person with knowledge of the situation said James’s office still wanted to take a more aggressive tack at times during the investigation.
The investigation by the district attorney’s office was in a holding pattern for at least a month after Bragg failed to communicate a sense of direction, according to a different person with knowledge of the situation. Dunne and Pomerantz were growing increasingly frustrated, this person said.
Since taking office in early January, Bragg has been largely consumed with discussions, meetings and public appearances over his controversial “Day One” memo, which dictated a set of lenient policies on charging decisions and bail. He drew pushback from officials and residents at a time when violent crime is intensifying — leading to a lengthy effort to clarify to his staff and the public what the memo meant.
The district attorney’s investigation of Trump’s business practices started in 2019 and included a protracted legal battle that resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that Trump’s personal and business tax returns must be turned over, in compliance with a subpoena to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.
Weisselberg’s attorneys also argued in the 140-page filing that the case is marred by its reliance on Michael Cohen for information. Cohen, a former Trump attorney who is now an outspoken critic, pleaded guilty in federal court to campaign finance violations and to lying to Congress in 2018. He served prison time for the crimes.
Weisselberg was given immunity for his cooperation in the New York federal investigation that resulted in charges against Cohen. Weisselberg’s attorneys have also argued that the district attorney’s case stemmed from that probe and the immunity he got in federal court should extend to the state court matter.
Bragg generally declined to discuss his plans for the Trump case on the campaign trail last year, saying it would be improper for him to do so without having access to the evidence. He highlighted, however, civil investigations into Trump’s business dealings that he was involved in previously as a top lawyer at the attorney general’s office.
James, in contrast, repeatedly promised in public appearances to examine potential illegal activity in Trump’s business dealings. She has been criticized by Trump and his allies for those pledges.
Since joining the district attorney’s criminal case, James has declined to speak publicly about it. But she has released a wealth of public information about her civil case, which covers much of the same subject matter. Last week, a New York Supreme Court justice ordered Trump and two of his adult children — Ivanka and Donald Jr. — to sit for sworn testimony in the civil case in coming weeks.
Pomerantz was still interviewing witnesses for that probe as recently as this month. On Feb. 2, he spoke for an hour with Jonathan Greenberg, a former Forbes magazine reporter who for several years compiled the magazine’s list of the nation’s richest people — a list that Trump was very eager to be on.
It was for those stories that Trump called Greenberg pretending to be “John Barron,” a public relations representative for the developer. In their Feb. 2 call, Greenberg said, Pomerantz “let me know he was getting ready to present his best case” to his superiors.
“He said he was in the final round and they needed to prove intent,” Greenberg recalled in an interview Wednesday. “He said, ‘We need to prove that Trump wasn’t just drinking his own Kool-Aid’” when his company told lenders that he had assets that were worth far more than what he actually owned.
Greenberg said the prosecutor told him that the tricky part of getting a green light to move ahead with a prosecution of Trump was finding evidence that proved that Trump “wasn’t just blowing smoke as a marketing tactic, but was lying and knowing that he was lying.”
Dawsey reported from Washington. Marc Fisher contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Both objectives fell into place Wednesday night as 22-year-old Catarina Macario scored two breathtaking goals in the first half and 23-year-old Mallory Pugh added two after intermission during a 5-0 victory over Iceland in Frisco, Tex.
Asked which of Macario’s goal impressed her most, Pugh said: “I think the first one. Actually, the second one was great, too.”
Most of those veterans were not part of this squad as Andonovski opted to evaluate younger players. On Wednesday, he started seven players under 25. It was the youngest U.S. lineup in SheBelieves Cup history and the youngest in any competition in almost four years.
Macario — who moved to the United States at age 12 and became eligible for the U.S. squad early last year — is the most promising of the young players. In her first year, though, she was largely overshadowed by the veterans and seemed reluctant to take the initiative.
There is no questioning her ability. Last winter, she left Stanford after her junior season and signed with French power Olympique Lyonnais. This season, she is tied for second in the French scoring race with nine goals in just 13 matches.
Iceland, No. 16 in the FIFA rankings, had won its first two matches, edging New Zealand, 1-0, and the Czech Republic, 2-1. A draw against the United States would suffice, but after 12 defeats and two ties in the previous 14 meetings, Iceland faced long odds.
The Americans were unbothered by the conditions, humming from the start and generating numerous scoring chances. They had struggled in the final third of the attack against the Czechs and benefited from three first-half own goals against New Zealand.
On this night, Andonovski wanted to see both the creating and finishing. The scoring touch was absent, though, as Pugh and Kristie Mewis squandered wonderful chances and Iceland’s Sandra Sigurdardottir made two quality saves.
Notes: O’Hara, who captained the team for the second time in the tournament, became the 24th U.S. player to appear in 150 career matches. … The Americans will play two home friendlies during the FIFA fixture window April 4-12. Washington’s Audi Field was the front-runner for one game but the sides have so far failed to reach a deal. … In the first match Wednesday, the Czech Republic (0-1-2) hit the crossbar twice in the last 20 minutes and limited New Zealand (0-2-1) to no shots on goal during a 0-0 draw. | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia's Kihei Clark looks for room to move in a crowded paint during Wednesday night's 65-61 loss to Duke. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
But they could get no closer and fell to the Blue Devils, 65-61, at John Paul Jones Arena. Clark scored a career-high 25 points, 18 of which came in the first half on six three-pointers. His late layup led to Virginia fouling Duke’s AJ Griffin on the inbounds play, and Griffin made both free throws to seal the win.
The result prevented the Cavaliers (17-11, 11-7) from collecting a fourth Quadrant 1 victory in their late-season push to fortify a wobbly NCAA tournament résumé.
“We can battle with the best of them,” Clark, whose six three-pointers also were a career high, said of the Cavaliers’ NCAA tournament credentials. “Our coaching staff does a really great job of preparing us for each night, so, yeah, I think we’re a tournament-caliber team.”
Virginia lost for the second time in three games but is 5-2 this month, including a 69-68 win at Duke on Feb. 7, when Reece Beekman made the winning three-pointer with 1.1 seconds left to secure the Cavaliers’ best victory.
Their only other Quadrant 1 win this month came at Miami. Virginia entered Wednesday 82nd in the NCAA’s NET rankings, which the tournament selection committee considers when determining at-large berths.
“There’s no question Virginia is a tournament team,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “The numbers, you have to be careful. You need to give eye tests, too, and they’re playing as well as anyone in our conference right now and have been for about a month. It’d be a sin if they’re not in the NCAA tournament.”
Clark made 9 of 15 field goal attempts and added seven assists and six rebounds. Senior forward Jayden Gardner added 16 points, but Virginia couldn’t find a way to sweep the Blue Devils in the regular season for the first time since 1994-95.
Jeremy Roach (Paul VI) had a team-high 15 points for Duke (24-4, 14-3), which had a 28-20 advantage in points in the paint. That margin is especially significant given the Blue Devils permitted Virginia 52 points in the paint in the first meeting.
Trailing by eight with 6:48 left in the second half Wednesday, the Cavaliers scored seven points in a row, capped by Clark’s floater in the lane, to trim their deficit to 52-51 with 5:02 to go. Moments later, Clark had a clean look from behind the arc but misfired, and Gardner missed a midrange jumper.
Griffin then scored eight points in a minute and a half to give the Blue Devils a 60-55 lead with 2:05 to play, setting up the frenetic final minutes.
The Cavaliers failed to carry the momentum from Clark’s sizzling first half into the locker room, trailing 30-25 after permitting Duke to score 13 of the final 16 points, including three-pointers from Griffin and Trevor Keels (Paul VI) and Paolo Banchero’s layup with four seconds to play.
“I told them there’s zero room for arrogance or pride in this game,” Virginia Coach Tony Bennett said. “There’s a bunch of room for humility and tough passion and what our program is about, but the last thing I said is: ‘Don’t make too big a deal of this. This is an important game. Go play, and then we’ll have two more important games and go from there.’ ”
Here’s what to know about Virginia’s loss:
Honoring Coach K
Shortly before tip-off, Bennett walked onto the court and took the microphone to express his admiration for Krzyzewski ahead of the legendary coach’s final game in Charlottesville.
Bennett also acknowledged Krzyzewski’s wife of 53 years, Mickie, who walked around the court with Virginia Athletic Director Carla Williams about half an hour before the game.
After his remarks drew applause from Cavaliers fans, Bennett presented the retiring Krzyzewski with a wooden plaque in the shape of a basketball jersey carved with “Coach K” across the front.
Krzyzewski took the time to walk across the court before the ceremony to greet former Virginia coach Terry Holland, who sat courtside. The two coached against each other for a decade after Krzyzewski took over the Blue Devils in 1980.
“His contributions, they’re monumental to the game, the modern game of basketball and college basketball,” Bennett said. “When someone can last that long and do what he’s done, again it was the right thing to do.”
Gardner shines defensively
Gardner guarded Banchero, a 6-foot-10 freshman sensation and projected NBA draft lottery pick, for most of the game and limited Duke’s leading scorer to eight points on 2-for-13 shooting, including 0-for-3 from behind the arc.
In the teams’ first game, Gardner held Banchero to nine points on 3-for-9 shooting. | null | null | null | null | null |
Colorado State’s David Roddy (21) runs in transition during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Wyoming Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022 in Fort Collins, Colo. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via AP)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — David Roddy had 26 points and 11 rebounds as Colorado State defeated Wyoming 61-55 on Wednesday night. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russia-Ukraine live updates U.S. vows to hold Russia accountable after it begins attack on Ukraine
Russia has ‘launched a full-scale invasion,’ Ukrainian official says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declares martial law, describes Russian attack as ‘unjustified and deceitful’
A Russian army column at a railroad platform close to the border with Ukraine on Feb. 23. (For The Washington Post)
Russia on Thursday launched a military assault against Ukraine, President Biden said, with explosions occurring across a wide swath of the country, in what the president called an “unjustified attack” that signals “a premeditated war.”
The explosions could be heard in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Kharkiv, in the country’s northeast. A senior Ukrainian official said there were also explosions at the country’s largest airport, in Kyiv. Air raid sirens were going off in the capital, though the official said that they were intended to wake up residents and that there were no indications of incoming warplanes.
The attacks came as Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the launch of a “special military operation” to carry out the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine and end eight years of war in the country’s east, where Kyiv government forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law. Kyiv’s generals said the military was at full combat readiness and had repelled a Russian air attack, though few claims were immediately verifiable amid the uncertainty of armed conflict.
In a statement, Biden said Putin “has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering” and promised that he would face “further consequences.”
Biden on Thursday morning will meet virtually with leaders of the Group of Seven nations to discuss the unfolding crisis.
Several European NATO member states said they would request security consultations in Brussels on Thursday, citing a potential threat to their security, territory or independence.
By Sudarsan Raghavan2:45 a.m.
KYIV, Ukraine — By 9 a.m. Thursday, roughly four hours after launching their attack on Ukraine, Russian forces had targeted Ukrainian military sites across the Texas-sized country, according to Ukraine’s defense forces.
They include intensive shelling of Ukrainian military units in the east and rocket and bomb attacks on several airfields, including Boryspil, the main international airport outside the capital, Kyiv. Other military facilities were also targeted in what appeared to be an effort to significantly weaken Ukraine’s military infrastructure.
In a second statement, the military said its air force repelled a Russian air attack, shooting down five Russian aircraft and a helicopter in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine, one of the primary theaters of the spreading conflict.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported several Russian attacks far from the disputed eastern regions including the shelling of an airfield in the northwestern city of Lutsk; military warehouses in a central part of the country engulfed in flames; and a military unit was shelled in the village of Kamenka Buzhskaya in the country’s western Lviv region.
By Hannah Knowles2:20 a.m.
Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs says Russia has “launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
“Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes,” Dmytro Kuleba tweeted early Thursday morning local time. “This is a war of aggression.”
He said that Ukraine “will defend itself and will win" and urged the world to “stop Putin.”
In a later tweet, he called for the world to immediately impose further sanctions on Russia, as well as dispatch weapons and equipment, humanitarian assistance and financial support to Ukraine. “Fully isolate Russia by all means, in all formats,” Kuleba wrote.
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s ministry of internal affairs, said troops are in Odessa — one of Ukraine’s most populous cities — and are crossing into Kharkiv, a city in the country’s northeast, according to NBC.
By Isabelle Khurshudyan2:01 a.m.
As Russia launched a military assault against Ukraine on Feb. 24, explosions were heard near Kharkiv, in the country’s Northeast. (Whitney Leaming)
President Biden said Russia “alone is responsible for the death and destruction” its military action in Ukraine may bring, according to a statement released late Wednesday after Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced plans to launch a “special military operation” in the country.
“President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering,” Biden’s statement read. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”
Calling Putin’s military actions "unprovoked and unjustified,” the president pledged that the United States and allies will coordinate their responses in a “united and decisive” fashion. Biden will meet with leaders from the Group of Seven nations Thursday morning and will address the American people on further sanctions to deter Russian aggression.
Shortly after Putin’s speech, explosions could be heard in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Kharkiv, in the country’s northeast. A senior Ukrainian official said there were explosions at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport.
In a video address posted on social media on Feb. 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians to remain calm, and stay at home if they can. (Ukrainian Presidential Office)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law after Russia on Thursday launched a multipronged attack on its neighbour, with explosions heard across a wide swath of the country.
In a statement posted on the president’s website, Zelensky described Russia’s military operation as “an unjustified, deceitful and cynical invasion.”
Russia is carrying out strikes on military targets and other important defense facilities, border units are under attack, and the situation in Donbas — in the country’s east, where Ukrainian government forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists for the past eight years — has degraded, the statement said.
The country’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies are on alert, while the National Security and Defense Council is working in emergency mode ahead of a meeting called by Zelensky.
“Ukrainians will never give up their freedom and independence to anyone,” the statement said. “But now the fate of not only our state is being decided, but also what life in Europe will be like. Whether at least something of the force of international law remains will depend on the world’s fair and just response to this aggression.”
President Biden has promised that “the world will hold Russia accountable” for what he described as an “unprovoked and unjustified attack” on Ukraine, and other global leaders were also quick to condemn Russia’s actions and call for a decisive response.
In a video address posted on social media Thursday, his second of the day, Zelensky urged Ukrainians to remain calm, and stay at home if they can.
Hours earlier, before the assault began, the president made an emotional appeal to the Russian people to stop their leadership from sending troops across the border and into his country, warning of the despair that would come from a needless war.
By Paul Sonne1:30 a.m.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation against Ukraine in an address carried on Russian state television early Thursday, as the Kremlin attacked military targets across Ukrainian territory in what President Biden called “premeditated war” against Russia’s western neighbor.
Putin described the goal of the military operation as ending the “genocide” against the people in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have been at war with Ukrainian forces since 2014.
“Its goal is to protect people who have been abused by the genocide of the Kyiv regime for eight years,” Putin said. “And to this end, we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. We will also bring to justice those who committed the numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.”
Though Putin said the operation was about the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, the Russian military proceeded to attack a wide range of targets across the country, including in the capital, Kyiv, and the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Putin said Russia didn’t plan to occupy Ukrainian territory but made references to the right to self-determination by local peoples, suggesting that Moscow could be planning to organize referendums in areas of Ukraine after the military campaign.
The Russian leader made mention of the referendum that Russia held in Crimea in 2014, subsequently annexing the piece of Ukrainian territory located on the Black Sea.
Putin also directly addressed members of the Ukrainian armed forces, calling on them to lay down their arms and refuse to take orders from their superiors in Kyiv.
He also warned anyone considering interfering with Russia’s plans of grave consequences, appearing to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.
“Whoever tries to interfere with our actions should know that the Russian response will be immediate and will lead to the kind of consequences you have never experienced in your entire history,” Putin said. “We are ready for any scenario of events.”
He said Russia could no longer tolerate a Ukraine that he said had been taken hostage by forces hostile to Russia.
Putin said Russia “cannot feel safe and develop and exist with the constant threat coming from the modern territory of Ukraine.”
Therefore, he said, he had no choice but to authorize a military operation. He noted, “We simply weren’t given any other option to defend Russia and our people other than that which we will use today.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.S. vows to hold Russia responsible after it ...
Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, dared his Russian counterpart to confirm that a massive attack was underway on Feb. 23. (United Nations)
French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris “strongly condemns Russia’s decision to wage war on Ukraine” and demanded that Moscow “end its military operations immediately.” Macron had cast himself as Putin’s interlocutor in recent weeks, claiming a central role in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia aimed at heading off such a conflict.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called the attack “unjustified and unjustifiable,” saying that his country is working with its European and NATO allies to respond “immediately, with unity and determination.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a late-night statement Wednesday that his country “condemns in the strongest possible terms Russia’s egregious attack on Ukraine.” He added that “these unprovoked actions are a clear further violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. They are also in violation of Russia’s obligations under international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”
President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced what he called a “special military operation” in the early hours of Thursday in Europe — just as members of the United Nations Security Council were gathering for an emergency session initiated by Ukraine.
Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter that it was an act of “unprovoked, evil, aggression” from a permanent member of the Security Council.
Even China, which has backed Putin’s criticisms of NATO but has not outright endorsed the Kremlin’s actions against Ukraine, called for restraint.
Zhang Jun, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, urged all parties to “exercise restraint and avoid further escalation of tensions.” Speaking to the Security Council just after Putin announced that Russian troops would be entering Ukraine, Zhang said, “We believe that the door to a peaceful solution to the Ukraine issue is not fully shut, nor should it be.”
“If Russia goes ahead with an all-out war despite repeated warnings from the international community, our government has no choice but to participate in the sanctions by such means as export curbs against Russia,” said a foreign ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing department rules.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg condemned what he called “Russia’s reckless and unprovoked attack on Ukraine, which puts at risk countless civilian lives.”
“Once again, despite our repeated warnings and tireless efforts to engage in diplomacy, Russia has chosen the path of aggression against a sovereign and independent country,” he said in a statement early Thursday, adding that NATO members will “meet to address the consequences of Russia’s aggressive actions.”
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter that “the world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”
Amanda Coletta in Toronto, Lily Kuo in Taipei, Min Joo Kim in Seoul and Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Both objectives fell into place Wednesday night as 22-year-old Catarina Macario scored two phenomenal goals in the first half and 23-year-old Mallory Pugh added two after intermission during a 5-0 victory over Iceland in Frisco, Tex.
Asked which of Macario’s goals impressed her most, Pugh said: “I think the first one. Actually, the second one was great, too.”
The star, though, was Macario, who moved to the United States at age 12 and became eligible for the U.S. squad early last year. Last week, she said she had been nervous playing for the four-time world champions in 2021 and that she needed to start “making things happen.”
There was no questioning her ability. Last winter, she left Stanford after her junior season and signed with French power Olympique Lyonnais. This season, she is tied for second in the French scoring race with nine goals in just 13 matches.
After Wednesday’s match, Macario said, “It’s always special playing for this team but it definitely comes with a lot of pressure. It’s always tough how to balance that. Even when we started the tournament, I could feel myself definitely being more free but still being a little tight, not being able to play the way I know how to play. I feel with this big match today, I needed to put my best self forward and show my teammates and show Vlatko and the nation that, yeah, I belong here.”
It also came on a night the players wore wristbands supporting transgender children. This week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) directed state agencies to conduct “prompt and thorough” investigations into the use of gender-affirming care for transgender children.
“With the platform we have,” Macario said, “we really wanted to showcase why this team is so different and why we do things that are much bigger than just the games.”
Most of the veterans were not part of this squad as Andonovski opted to evaluate younger players. On Wednesday, he started seven players under 25. It was the youngest U.S. lineup in SheBelieves Cup history and the youngest in any competition in almost four years.
Iceland, No. 16 in the FIFA rankings, had won its first two matches, edging New Zealand, 1-0, and the Czech Republic, 2-1.
The Americans were unbothered by the conditions, humming from the start and generating numerous scoring chances. The scoring touch was absent, though, as Pugh and Mewis squandered wonderful chances and Iceland’s Sandra Sigurdardottir made two quality saves.
The Americans completed a third consecutive shutout and improved to 13-0-2 against Iceland.
“We are leaving this tournament believing we are moving in the right direction,” Andonovski said. The young players “proved they are capable of winning games and performing well. ... There is still a lot of room for growth in the group. We can all see the potential. It’s a process. It’s going to take time. … Realistically this is still not enough. We still have to get better and better.”
Notes: O’Hara, who captained the team for the second time in the tournament, became the 24th U.S. player to appear in 150 career matches. … The Americans will play two home friendlies during the FIFA fixture window April 4-12. Washington’s Audi Field was the front-runner for one game but the sides have so far failed to reach a deal. The venues are expected to be announced soon. … In the first match Wednesday, the Czech Republic (0-1-2) hit the crossbar twice in the final 20 minutes and limited New Zealand (0-2-1) to no shots on goal during a 0-0 draw. | null | null | null | null | null |
Leading climate scientists will meet with officials in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Light rain falls outside the White House on Jan. 28 in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)
“What we're seeing now is a result of past inaction,” she said. “That past inaction is haunting us. And so the question is, how do we accelerate effective action?”
President Biden took office promising to take a whole-of-government approach to curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the Earth. But the event comes as Biden’s massive climate and social spending plan, known as the Build Back Better bill, remains stalled on Capitol Hill.
However, Lubchenco said the discussion would not dwell on the uncertain fate of the spending package, which would have been the largest climate and clean energy investment in the nation’s history.
“We don't plan to focus on specific legislation at this event,” she said. “What we are doing is seeking guidance and knowledge from experts about why there is hesitancy to move ahead with effective action to reduce carbon emissions, to reduce greenhouse gases. And that's a broader topic than any specific piece of legislation.”
The luminaries traveling to the White House on Thursday include Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who is known for creating a “hockey stick” graph of rising global temperatures, and Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University whose 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt” explored how a handful of high-level scientists denied the dangers of tobacco smoke and global warming.
Shahzeen Attari, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies how and why people make decisions about climate change, plans to highlight her research on the issue’s ideological divides. For instance, she found in a 2020 paper that both conservatives and liberals support shifting away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, but they disagree on policies to achieve this transition.
Other attendees Thursday include Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy who has sought to engage evangelical Christians in climate discussions; Gernot Wagner, a noted climate economist at New York University; and Marshall Shepherd, a leading international expert in weather and climate at the University of Georgia.
OSTP was rocked by scandal on Feb. 7 when Eric Lander, Biden’s top science adviser, resigned as director after an internal review found that he bullied and demeaned staff. Lander apologized for mistreating subordinates in a note to staff, and Biden on Feb. 17 tapped social scientist Alondra Nelson to be acting director of the office.
“We live in an incredibly distracting world, so I don’t blame people for not being aware of these issues,” Oreskes said. “But I think it’s really, really helpful when an organization like the OSTP says, ‘Hold on, there’s something important that people need to know about.’” | null | null | null | null | null |
What’s happening amid the coronavirus pandemic is nothing new
Hasiba N. Ali conducts a class at the Clara Muhammad School in Southeast Washington in 2001. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Amaarah DeCuir is a senior professorial lecturer in the School of Education at American University, and a senior inclusive pedagogy fellow with the Center for Teaching, Research and Learning, also at American University.
In this moment marked by the coronavirus pandemic, national uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism, and reports of harmful and dismissive treatment of Black students in classrooms, Black families are withdrawing from local public schools at rates that far exceed previous years. It is a reminder that despite 65 years of desegregating our nation’s schools, the school integration movement has failed to provide Black students with the conditions they need to thrive — well-funded schools, relevant curriculum and freedom from discrimination.
But this is not new. Facing unacceptable educational conditions for their children in the past, Black families have made the same difficult decision to come together, organize, defend their rights to educate their children and create anti-racist alternatives that empower communities.
In 1931, a truant officer turned up at the home of Sister Clara Muhammad, a mother of eight and the wife of Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) spiritual leader. Pounding his fist on her door, the officer demanded that Clara Muhammad send her children back to the Detroit Public Schools. Muhammad, however, refused in an effort to protect her children from what Black activists had identified as the deeply entrenched racism in the city’s schools.
At the time, activists in Detroit pointed to documented acts of discrimination against African American teachers, unequal funding for schools serving Detroit’s Black students and White families who fought against school integration. In response, many Black families, with the support of the NAACP, galvanized a “continuous fight against discrimination in our school system.”
The situation in Detroit was far from unique at the time. In 1932, in Berwyn, Pa., the township school board allocated $250,000 toward the construction of a new school but forbade African American enrollment, claiming that Black students already had a school building, without acknowledging that the existing building was old and under-resourced.
Like Muhammad, Black families voiced their displeasure with their feet. They withdrew some 200 children from the local public schools for the duration of the 1932-33 school year, refusing to consent to Southern-style Jim Crow schools in their Pennsylvania community. In October 1933, four parents were charged with violating state truancy laws and a judge fined them $2.50, nearly the equivalent of a day’s wages for a domestic worker. Each parent opted to serve jail time instead of paying the fine.
Later that year in Montclair, N.J., five African American parents similarly defied state truancy laws in response to a local school board’s attempts to concentrate all Black children into one school, disregarding district boundaries. Again, they faced charges for violating the law.
In 1934, these conditions led the U.S. Department of the Interior to organize a National Conference on the Education of Negroes. Conference attendees, including national education leaders and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, identified “serious deficiencies and inequalities in Negro education facilities” and found that one-third of African American students were out of school because of inadequate or inaccessible school facilities.
For Muhammad, the decision to keep her children out of the public schools and find alternative ways to ensure an education for them was a symbol of self-determination. Armed with just a seventh-grade education, a commitment to educate, a small chalkboard, paper and pencils, Muhammad quickly became the inaugural teacher of the NOI, educating her own children along with others inside her family home.
There she taught reading and writing using her own family’s history and the core tenets of her faith to teach students how to express their own opinions — courageous acts of educational resistance that challenged rote memorization common in classrooms at that time.
By 1932, Muhammad’s home-based school had grown into the new University of Islam, an independently run Nation of Islam elementary and secondary school for Black children in the Detroit area.
Many Black families living amid racism and Jim Crow regarded the University of Islam as an important model of responsive teaching meant to foster social inquiry, create cultural self-awareness and uplift the race. At a time when public school education for Black children was limited to basic reading skills, the University of Islam promoted its core beliefs — know self, love self and do for self — to foster academic achievement and community reeducation.
Within a few years, 400 students from NOI families withdrew from the public schools and studied under the leadership of Muhammad. When Detroit school officials grew alarmed at the large numbers of African American students withdrawing from the public schools, they ordered the University of Islam to close, classifying it as a “cult” school.
On April 16, 1934, Detroit police surrounded the school, blocked entrances, cut communication wires and raided the building. The Atlanta Daily World chronicled the day’s events as “the wildest scenes of rioting and battling ever recorded in Detroit police annals.” Police officers arrested 19 teachers and staff for running a school that did not have state approval to operate and for “subversive” teaching. The police seized books and school records for an investigation they claimed was to “determine if the University of Islam met the state requirements for public and parochial schools.”
At a judicial hearing the following week, the judge dismissed charges against all of the teachers, except for NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, who was placed on six months’ probation on the condition that he return the students to the Detroit public schools.
But this did not deter the Black community, and as the NOI spread across America during the years of Jim Crow, so too did its schools. School leaders sought to meet state standards for enrollment and curriculum, despite continued police attempts to shut down their schools.
By 1975, Clara Muhammad’s first school in her living room had given way to a network of 41 independent elementary and secondary schools across major American cities and towns, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, New York, Detroit and Washington, D.C. After her death, her youngest son, Imam W.D. Muhammad, then serving as the leader of the NOI, renamed the schools in her honor, calling them the Clara Muhammad Schools.
Rafiq Iddin, a staff member at a Clara Muhammad school in Philadelphia during the mid-1990s, put it this way: “We felt that public schools were mis-educating us so we began hiring our own teachers and taking our children out of the public schools.”
Today many Black families are still facing injustices in the public schools, including high rates of exclusionary discipline, too few Black teachers and re-segregated schools. This leads to difficult choices, just as Clara Muhammad and the families who joined her schools realized in the 1930s.
Although Black families today do not face the same threats of jail sentences and court fines for withdrawing from public schools, they do worry about finding alternative school solutions. Some choose to home-school, an option made more accessible through online networks and curriculums that center on the needs of Black families. No longer limited by geography, many home-school families come together to organize communities that share social and academic learning opportunities. Other families seek charter schools or independent schools led by educators who center on the well-being of Black children.
The decision to withdraw children from school was not easy and it was not neutral in the 1930s. Today it remains a powerful act of social resistance. | null | null | null | null | null |
The pressure on presidents to conduct personal negotiations as a last resort
President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive for the U.S.-Russia summit in Geneva June 16, 2021. (Saul Loeb/Pool via REUTERS) (Pool New/Reuters)
Tizoc Chavez is a visiting assistant professor of government at Colby College. He is the author of “The Diplomatic Presidency: American Foreign Policy from FDR to George H. W. Bush” (University Press of Kansas, 2022).
Over the past couple of months, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken multiple times. Late Sunday night Biden agreed “in principle” to a summit with the Russian leader, before diplomatic negotiations broke down after Russian troops moved into separatist territories in Eastern Ukraine and the United States imposed sanctions. Then early Thursday Putin launched military action in multiple Ukrainian cities, which Biden labeled an “unprovoked and unjustified” attack. These developments would seem to dash hopes for diplomacy.
But diplomacy may yet be the only option for minimizing bloodshed and preventing the installation of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. And a meeting with Putin would be an incredibly high-risk, high-reward gamble for Biden now that Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.
Yet. Biden has great faith in the power of personal diplomacy. He believes it can build relationships and lead to greater understanding, allowing two leaders to tackle thorny problems constructively. In doing so, he is following the standard presidential playbook.
In the second half of the 20th century, American presidents consistently resorted to personal diplomacy, especially in times of crisis. But, such a strategy has produced a mixed record of success. While it can be a valuable tool in crisis management and provide the opportunity for consultation, coordination and understanding, it can also lead to recriminations, misunderstanding and stalemate.
The United States emerged from World War II a superpower. Amid the Cold War that found the United States with new global commitments, the president became a central player in international affairs with tremendous political, economic and military power.
When crises occurred, and issues of war and peace were at stake, the president usually got pulled in and resorted to the strategy of personal diplomacy. And with the advent of nuclear weapons, it became even more necessary for leaders to maintain close communication and contact.
For example, in the late 1950s, a crisis over the divided city of Berlin seemed intractable. While the capitalist, Western-controlled half of the city flourished, the communist, Soviet-dominated eastern half did not. As a result, mass waves of migrants fled from east to west. This was an economic and public relations disaster for the Soviets, leading Nikita Khrushchev to issue an ultimatum to settle the city’s status and remove the Western powers.
After talks at lower diplomatic levels went nowhere, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to visit the United States for face-to-face talks. Their meetings went well, but the goodwill was short-lived. Less than a year later, Soviets shot down a U2-spy plane, heightening suspicion between the two countries and deteriorating relations. A scheduled conference between Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the leaders of Britain and France in May 1960 fell apart, and a planned Eisenhower visit to Moscow later that year was canceled.
Khrushchev did meet with Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, in 1961. But the summit was a disaster, and the breakdown of diplomacy eventually prompted Khrushchev to erect the Berlin Wall later that year. Though the United States condemned it, the wall did stop the flow of East Berliners to the west, removing a major Soviet irritant.
In retrospect, President Lyndon B. Johnson also had mixed results with personal diplomacy, ultimately showing that the practice isn’t a cure-all.
In 1964, a crisis involving the island of Cyprus pitted NATO allies Greece and Turkey against each other. Trying to avoid a Turkish invasion of Cyprus and a direct conflict between Turkey and Greece, Johnson wrote letters to leaders of both nations and eventually invited them to the White House. But while the Turkish president was open to Johnson’s proposal, the Greek leader was not. Lucky for Johnson a military conflict didn’t erupt — at least not while he was president. But while Johnson might have prevented the worst possible outcome, his personal diplomacy couldn’t solve underlying issues and left a festering problem. Three years later, he had better results.
In 1967, the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors erupted. Though a regional conflict, it drew in the United States and the Soviet Union, each allied with a different combatant. Johnson used the “hotline” between the two nations’ leaders to communicate with his counterpart, Alexei Kosygin. Between June 5 and June 10, the two men exchanged 20 messages as they labored to end the fighting and avoid any misunderstanding that might lead to direct conflict between the nuclear-armed superpowers. And the following week the leaders continued their dialogue face-to-face in an impromptu summit in Glassboro, N.J., the halfway point between Johnson in Washington and Kosygin, who was in New York to address an emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly about the Middle East conflict. The talks were friendly, but there were no major breakthroughs, leaving Johnson with “mixed feelings” about the meeting.
President George H.W. Bush also invested in personal diplomacy with mixed results. In 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bush called leaders around the globe. He called so many, that his chief of staff, John Sununu, joked that “when he left office his index finger was an inch shorter” from all the dialing. Bush also physically met with some world leaders, most importantly Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Those meetings resulted in a multilateral coalition supporting U.S. efforts to evict Iraq from Kuwait.
But Bush’s personal diplomacy came up short when the Chinese government brutally suppressed protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He tried to call Deng Xiaoping, but the Chinese leader wouldn’t take the call. This angered Bush, who had considered Deng a friend. After the snub, Bush sent the Chinese leader a lengthy personal letter that reestablished communication but didn’t necessarily improve U.S.-China relations, which treaded water for the rest of his presidency.
This mixed record shows that presidents don’t often engage their foreign counterparts because they are confident of success. Indeed, personal diplomacy is often done as a last resort. For example, at least early in his presidency, Johnson took less pleasure in personal diplomacy and often had to be persuaded by his advisers to do it. With the Turkey and Greece crisis, he told his secretary of state: “‘Now, what in the hell’s Lyndon B. Johnson doing inviting this big mess right in his lap?’ I have no solution. I can’t propose anything.” But as he admitted, the administration was “absolutely desperate.”
Likewise, Eisenhower didn’t have much faith in his ability to persuade and was leery of negotiations between world leaders. But inviting Khrushchev to visit was the only idea he had left to reduce tension in Berlin. And even then, some in the administration thought it might be a mistake.
Similar desperation is evident with the situation in Ukraine. As the United States warned of an imminent Russian invasion last week, Biden hurried to schedule a call with Putin and warned of “swift and severe costs.” But as one national security official said, there was “no fundamental change in the dynamic that has unfolded now for several weeks.” And that’s the rub for Biden.
Regardless of the likelihood for success, all postwar presidents have been expected to engage in crisis personal diplomacy. The public, the media and other heads of state see it as a measure of the president’s leadership. And in trying to manage global hot spots, presidents have felt the need to try everything at their disposal. Even if the odds are stacked against them.
With Putin moving into Ukraine, Republicans are already criticizing Biden’s efforts as diplomat in chief. But as his predecessors know well, despite America’s influence and power and the level of charm and charisma of any given president, personal diplomacy can only do so much, and it is only effective if foreign leaders see the benefit of easing tensions in the first place. | null | null | null | null | null |
One person died and four people were injured Tuesday night after a crash in Alexandria.
The incident involving several vehicles happened just before midnight in the 3200 block of Duke Street near the Capital Beltway, according to police. One person died and another person suffered critical injuries. One other person had serious injuries and two others had minor injuries, according to police. | null | null | null | null | null |
At his first address to a joint session of Congress in 2021, President Biden proposed an ambitious policy agenda. Here's what he accomplished. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Every president announces a slew of initiatives in a State of the Union address, and we can expect many to be advanced on Tuesday when President Biden addresses Congress. Although Biden’s first address to Congress in 2021 was not officially a State of the Union message, here, in order of delivery, is a summary of the key proposals, pledges or priorities he announced last April — and what happened to them.
With Democrats only narrowly in control of the House and Senate, Biden’s track record on legislation is mixed, primarily because he failed to persuade all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus to support a slimmed-down version of his Build Back Better plan. As a result, Biden’s failure rate was about three times as high as his success rate. By contrast, President Barack Obama did reasonably well in fulfilling his legislative priorities until Republicans won back control of Congress.
Biden: “The International Monetary Fund is now estimating our economy will grow at a rate of more than 6 percent this year.”
✔️ Not quite, but Biden’s citation is close enough for government work. Real gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, increased 5.7 percent in 2021 (from the 2020 annual level to the 2021 annual level), in contrast to a decrease of 3.4 percent in 2020, according to the Commerce Department.
Biden: “The American Jobs Plan creates jobs replacing 100 percent of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines so every American can drink clean water.”
✔️ Biden’s 10-year $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan evolved into a smaller bipartisan infrastructure bill that authorized about $566 billion of gross budget authority (and tax cuts), which will be spent mostly but not entirely over five years. Nevertheless, it stands among his biggest accomplishments of his first year in office. About $55 billion is devoted to wastewater, drinking water and water supply. In December, the White House released a plan that included guidance that outlines “the critical steps local water systems should take to achieve 100% lead service line replacement.”
Biden: “It creates jobs connecting every American with high-speed Internet, including 35 percent of the rural America that still doesn’t have it.”
✔️ The infrastructure bill included $65 billion allocated to broadband expansion, which will be administered by the Commerce Department.
Biden: “The American Jobs Plan will create jobs that will lay thousands of miles of transmission lines needed to build a resilient and fully clean grid.”
✔️ The infrastructure bill gave authority to the Energy Department to designate national transmission corridors for clean electricity projects and cleared up a legal ambiguity concerning the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority over state regulators.
Biden: “The American Jobs Plan will put engineers and construction workers to work building more energy-efficient buildings and homes. Electrical workers — IBEW [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union] members — installing 500,000 charging stations along our highways so we can own the electric car market.”
✔️ The infrastructure bill includes $5 billion for states to build a national charging network and an additional $2.5 billion for a competitive grant program for communities that the administration says “will put us on the path to a convenient and equitable network of 500,000 chargers.”
Biden: “I’m calling on Congress to pass the Protect the Right to Organize Act — the PRO Act — and send it to my desk so we can support the right to unionize.”
❌ The House passed the pro-union bill in 2021, on a vote of 225 to 206, but there was not enough Republican support to pass it in the Senate.
Biden: “While you’re thinking about sending things to my desk, let’s raise the minimum wage to $15.”
❌ A bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 was introduced in both houses, but no action was taken. Biden on his own authority directed that nearly 70,000 federal workers be paid $15 an hour, starting in January, and that 300,000 employees of federal contractors see raises to $15 over the course of the year.
Biden: “Let’s get the Paycheck Fairness Act to my desk as well — equal pay. It’s been much too long.”
❌ The measure to eliminate pay disparities between men and women was blocked in the Senate.
Biden: “The secretary of defense can tell you — and those of you on, who work on national security issues know — the Defense Department has an agency called DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. … The National Institute of Health — the NIH — I believe, should create a similar Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.”
❌ Legislation to create such an agency was introduced in October but has not passed either chamber of Congress.
Biden: “My American Families Plan guarantees four additional years of public education for every person in America, starting as early as we can … It shows that adding two years of universal high-quality preschool for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old, no matter what background they come from, it puts them in the position to be able to compete all the way through 12 years. … When you add two years of free community college on top of that, you begin to change the dynamic.”
❌ Biden’s American Families Plan picked up pieces of the Jobs Plan discarded from the infrastructure bill and was repackaged as a much-smaller plan dubbed Build Back Better — which passed the House but stalled in the Senate. The version that passed the House put a six-year time limit on universal pre-K, while funding for tuition-free community college was eliminated from the compromise package.
Biden: “We’ll increase Pell Grants and invest in Historical Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, Minority-Serving Institutions.”
❌✔️ The failed version of Build Back Better contained only a modest increase in Pell Grants and less money than planned for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). But the American Rescue Plan provided $3.7 billion to HBCUs and the Education Department discharged $1.6 billion in debt.
Biden: “I’m proposing a legislation to guarantee that low- and middle-income families will pay no more than 7 percent of their income for high-quality care for children up to the age of 5.”
❌ This was also in Build Back Better, and so it also has not become law.
Biden: “The American Families Plan will finally provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave and medical leave — family and medical leave.”
❌ The final version of Build Back Better did not include this provision.
Biden: “Let’s extend that child-care tax credit at least through the end of 2025.”
❌ Biden’s inability to win approval of Build Back Better meant the temporary boost in the child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan that Democrats hoped to keep going was terminated with the start of a new year.
Biden: “Let’s give Medicare the power to save hundreds of billions of dollars by negotiating lower drug prescription prices.”
❌ Build Back Better would have allowed the federal government to negotiate for some high-cost drugs covered under Medicare Part B (medical services and prevention) and Part D (drugs).
Biden: “I will not impose any tax increase on people making less than $400,000.”
✔️ Biden kept his promise on this score.
Biden: “We’re going to reform corporate taxes so they pay their fair share and help pay for the public investments their businesses will benefit from as well.”
❌ Build Back Better, as passed in the House, would have included a corporate tax increase, but it had been scaled back.
Biden: “We take the top tax bracket for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans — those making over $400,000 or more — back up to where it was when George W. Bush was president when he started: 39.6 percent. That’s where it was when George W. was president.”
❌ This idea did not even make it into the final version of Build Back Better because of opposition by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)
Biden: “We’re going to get rid of the loopholes that allow Americans who make more than a million dollars a year and pay a lower tax rate on their capital gains than Americans who receive a paycheck.”
❌ The House version of Build Back Better included a 5 percent surcharge on gross income over $10 million and a 3.8 percent surcharge on profits made by high-income S corporation owners. But it did not close this loophole — and paradoxically, it would have repealed the $10,000 limit on the federal deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT. That provision would have mainly benefited the wealthy.
Biden: “The IRS is going to crack down on millionaires and billionaires who cheat on their taxes.”
❌ Build Back Better would have increased funding for IRS enforcement, but so far Biden’s efforts to reinvigorate the IRS have fallen short.
Biden: “American leadership means ending the forever war in Afghanistan. … after 20 years of value — valor and sacrifice, it’s time to bring those troops home.”
✔️ Biden kept firm to his pledge to have U.S. troops depart Afghanistan — but, boy, it was messy.
Biden: “My fellow Americans, we have to come together to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, to root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system, and to enact police reform in George Floyd’s name that passed the House already.”
❌ Bipartisan negotiations to reach an agreement overhauling the nation’s policing practices collapsed in September.
Biden: “I also hope Congress can get to my desk the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ Americans.”
❌ In January, a group composed of 503 corporations — including 160 Fortune 500 companies — backed this legislation, which passed the House but remains stalled in the Senate.
Biden: “Let’s authorize the Violence Against Women Act, which has been law for 27 years.”
❌ VAMA expired in 2019, and reauthorization has been stalled because of a gun-control provision — the so-called boyfriend loophole — that generated GOP opposition. A new version of the bill, introduced this month, does not contain the provision, which would have prevented the purchase of guns by people convicted of domestic violence against a partner they had not married.
Biden: “I will do everything in my power to protect the American people from this epidemic of gun violence, but it’s time for Congress to act as well. … We need more Senate Republicans to join the overwhelming majority of Democrat colleagues and close the loopholes requiring a background check on purchases of guns. We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And don’t tell me it can’t be done. We did it before, and it worked.”
❌ No progress has been made in advancing gun-control legislation, let alone enhanced background checks and an assault weapons ban. The Biden administration instead has pushed executive actions aimed at stemming un-serialized, privately made firearms known as ghost guns and distributing funding for community violence intervention programs.
Biden: “On Day One of my presidency, I kept my commitment and sent a comprehensive immigration bill to the United States Congress. … We also have to get at the root problem of why people are fleeing.”
❌ No progress has been made on immigration legislation, even as apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at the border soared to new highs in Biden’s first year.
Biden: “Congress needs to pass legislation this year to finally secure protection for 'dreamers’ — the young people who have only known America as their home.”
❌ The House in 2021 passed the latest version of this legislation, which would give a path to citizenship for “dreamers” who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children or who overstayed their visas as children. But the Senate remains a roadblock.
Biden: “Congress should pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and send it to my desk right away.”
❌ Senate Republicans have blocked debate on these bills. | null | null | null | null | null |
One person died, and four others were injured Tuesday night in a crash in Alexandria.
The incident involving several vehicles happened just before midnight in the 3200 block of Duke Street near the Capital Beltway, according to police. One person died, and another suffered critical injuries. One other person had serious injuries, and two had minor injuries, according to police. | null | null | null | null | null |
While Beijing urges calm, Chinese analysts blame the United States and Ukraine for provoking the Russian attack
The Russian attacks are the greatest test yet for an emerging Moscow-Beijing partnership, which has recently shown signs of evolving from what many considered a “marriage of convenience” to something resembling a formal alliance.
Despite the outward show of mutual support between the two countries, there have been indications that China was caught flat-footed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of military action.
Minutes after the declaration, Chinese representative to the United Nations Zhang Jun told a Security Council meeting: “We believe that the door to a peaceful solution to the Ukraine situation is not fully shut, nor should it be.”
For instance, in an interview on Tuesday, Ma Bin, a Russia expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Chinese publication Yicai that the ball was in Ukraine’s court and “there would not be a war” because Russia still preferred a diplomatic resolution.
While he said China always supports the principle of protecting national sovereignty, “there are some countries that are being used by external forces as a tool to harm the territorial integrity of other nations.” He added, “Lots of people in China say that Ukraine did not manage the balance between powers and that passive approach led to Russia taking this extreme measure.”
In the run-up to Putin’s announcement, China continued to blame the United States and NATO for being instigators of the conflict, brushing aside warnings from the White House about the Kremlin’s intention to invade.
But China’s support for Russia has also stopped short of direct approval for military action. Over the weekend, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated that all countries sovereignty must be respected, adding that “Ukraine is not an exception.”
Hawkish commentators in China were quick to explain Putin’s attack on Thursday as the result of provocation from the United States. “That the situation came to today’s step is due to spiraling escalation,” Fu Qianshao, a military commentator, told the nationalist Shanghai Observer. “Russia had already said many times that it would withdraw troops, but America always promoted an atmosphere of conflict.”
Lyric Li in Seoul and Pei Lin Wu and Vic Chiang in Taipei contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NBA’s first 75 years is filled with unforgettable players and stories
National Basketball Association history includes stories of big characters, hard work and even circus clowns.
Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors poses after scoring 100 points in a March 2, 1962, game against the New York Knickerbockers. Chamberlain may have had an assist from unusually loose rims in the Hershey, Pennsylvania, arena. (Paul Vathis/AP)
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is celebrating its 75th season this year. To mark the occasion, the league named the 75 greatest players in NBA history.
The list includes legends such as Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Larry Bird, as well as current stars such as Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
I’ve been thinking about the NBA for years because I researched and wrote a book called “Hardcourt: Stories From 75 Years of the National Basketball Association.” The book is a history of the NBA for kids and includes stories about the players and other people who made the league what it is today.
Some of the stories are famous while others are not as well-known. For example, many basketball fans know that Wilt Chamberlain (NBA career: 1959-1973) set a league record by scoring 100 points in a game in 1962. But the giant center may have been helped by the loose rims at the arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. (Loose rims allow more shots to roll into the net.) Why were the rims loose? A circus had recently been in town, and the clowns may have loosened the rims by hanging on them during their act.
Bill Russell (1956-1969) won an amazing 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics. The Celtics were able to draft Russell, who had led the University of San Francisco to back-to-back national championships, as the Number 2 pick. You might wonder why the Rochester Royals, who had the Number 1 pick, didn’t choose him. It was because the owner of the Celtics, who also owned a popular ice show called the Ice Capades, promised to let the Royals’ arena host the moneymaking show for a week.
George Mikan (1949-1956) was the first NBA super star. The 6-foot, 10-inch center, who wore glasses when he played, was a big attraction. He was so popular that a sign outside the Madison Square Garden arena once advertised “Geo Mikan v/s Knicks” for a game there between Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers and the New York Knicks.
Even the greatest players had to work hard to become better. After his rookie-of-the-year first season in the NBA, Michael Jordan (1984-2003) returned to North Carolina and asked his college coach what he needed to do to get better. The coach said Jordan had to improve his jump shot. Jordan, already a star, spent all summer working on his jumper.
Similarly, Larry Bird (1979-1992) thought he needed a step-back jump shot to improve his game. Bird took 800 (!) step-back jump shots each day one summer at home in Indiana.
I also learned that the NBA was not always the big deal it is today. In the early 1950s, teams traveled by trains, not airplanes. When the Boston Celtics traveled to play in Rochester, New York, and then to Fort Wayne, Indiana, the train would stop in a cornfield and the players would ask for car rides to Fort Wayne from high school students.
Great players, great moments, great games. It leaves any hoops fan looking forward to more hardcourt stories in the years to come.
In its early years, NBA blocked black players | null | null | null | null | null |
Shock-and-Awe Sanctions Could Still Stop Putin
It’s not too late to wage a “shock-and-awe” campaign of sanctions against Russia — even with the invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow fought an economic battle two years ago. Its rival wasn’t the West, but Saudi Arabia. The battleground wasn’t the old Soviet empire, but the oil market — and, against the odds, Riyadh defeated Moscow. Despite big differences with today’s crisis, an examination of what the Saudis did and how they did it, is key to understanding Russia’s weaknesses.
The military doctrine of shock-and-awe offers the tantalizing hope that swiftly inflicting enormous pain on an enemy would destroy its will to resist, almost before any fighting has actually started. Conceived by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade of the U.S. National Defense University, it is known as “rapid dominance” in military circles.
The Saudis applied it to the Russians — economically.
In March 2020, Riyadh and Moscow, which until then had been working together to manage the oil market, had a falling out. Saudi Arabia, worried about the impact of Covid-19 and wanted to cut oil production to shore up prices. Moscow didn’t see the need at that time. That resulted in the OPEC+ oil cartel becoming a free-for-all, with each member pumping and selling as much or little crude as it wanted.
Saudi Arabia went after Russia by going all-out on production, sparking an oil price war. The Kremlin was caught completely by surprise. In one go, Saudi Arabia offered the biggest ever price discounts for its crude, and announced a big output hike. When trading started, Brent crude suffered its largest one-day price drop since the 1990-91 Gulf War, plunging 24%. The Saudis were showing they were ready to shoot themselves in the foot to inflict pain on Russia.
With oil prices in free fall, the Russian ruble plunged nearly 5%, touching a record low against the dollar. Over the next few days, Saudi Arabia made further announcements with the clear intent of driving oil prices even lower. It succeeded; in two weeks, oil prices plunged 40%.
The Saudi shock-and-awe campaign was so brazen that its motive was clear to Moscow: a maximum of economic pain to force the Kremlin back to the negotiating table — immediately.
It worked and the two oil powers ultimately came to an agreement. The episode demonstrates that Russia is economically vulnerable, and that oil — and other commodities — are its greatest weakness. The Kremlin may have already priced in Western sanctions on its banking sector, its sovereign debt, and its oligarchs. What it has not counted on is that the West would shoot itself in the foot — by cutting commodities imports to zero — to thwart Putin.
Saudi Arabia is a theocracy and not accountable to voters angry about economic pain. So there was no real resistance to the strategy. For the West, targeting oil, natural gas and other commodities may be unpalatable because of the heavy economic cost. But they are the quickest way to stay Putin’s hand.
As of today, the West is actually financing Putin’s war in Ukraine, buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Russian natural resources every day. Either stop buying them, or find a way to stop the payments, including disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, the global inter-bank payment system. It’s the only thing that he’s unlikely to have priced in. It may be too late to prevent the invasion. But there’s still time to keep him from pushing toward Kyiv.
Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a Sin All Russians Will Bear: Leonid Bershidsky | null | null | null | null | null |
(leykladay/iStock)
The issue was that the money used to pay for those things didn’t actually belong to Wickersham, but to the Miss Florida Scholarship Program she was in charge of leading, according to prosecutors.
For years, Wickersham was the executive director of the nonprofit organization, an annual beauty pageant that awards financial aid to participants and winners to advance their education. But from December 2011 to June 2018, she stole around $100,000 from the organization, according to prosecutors.
Mary Wickersham, who also goes by Mary Sullivan and Mary Harvey, has since been indicted on seven charges involving defrauding the organization and its individual donors by opening a separate company under a similar name to divert donations and contributions meant for the Miss Florida Scholarship Program.
She is scheduled to appear again in court on Feb. 28 at 10 a.m., court records show. | null | null | null | null | null |
The E.U. has been the object of derision for years. Britain left in a huff over complaints that its policies were stifling growth and national sovereignty. In the last Ukraine contretemps in 2014, a State Department official — who has since returned to State to serve the Biden administration — was caught on tape using an expletive to describe the E.U.’s fecklessness. Even in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week, the media ran with the narrative that U.S. and E.U. leaders were divided and lacked a coordinated plan.
Two Eastern European countries neighboring Russia — Poland and Lithuania — went a step further, encouraging Ukraine’s membership in the E.U. in a joint statement with Ukraine: “We emphasize that, given the significant progress in the implementation of the Association Agreement and internal reforms, as well as the current security challenges, Ukraine deserves E.U. candidate status and Lithuania and Poland will support Ukraine in achieving this goal.”
The current crisis may prompt the E.U. to take its own defense more seriously. Bergmann explains, “The E.U. can mobilize massive amount of money — they just borrowed 800 billion euros for economic recovery, investing in digitization and the energy transition.” They can, for example, start purchasing “high-end equipment — air tankers, missile defense systems — that makes them dependent on the U.S. military.” | null | null | null | null | null |
On returning to normal
What exactly is “normal” at this point?
GOP California lawmaker Kevin Kiley's mask bears an image of maskless Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
As the omicron wave has subsided and as formal pandemic restrictions have started to be removed in even the bluest of localities, there are a lot of calls to “get back to normal.” And all of these calls are reminding me of the pain I am now not feeling in my shoulder.
Let me explain: About five months ago I started to feel some pain in one of my shoulders. Like any busy middle-aged man, I popped some ibuprofen and tried to walk it off. “It’s probably tendinitis,” I wishcasted, hoping it would go away on its own.
The pain worsened considerably over the next few months, to the point where I realized that even with peak omicron I needed to see a physician. Many doctor visits and one MRI later, the diagnosis was osteoarthritis of an acromioclavicular joint brought on by bone edema. That sounded bad, but the treatment proved to be straightforward: A cortisone shot into the joint to reduce the swelling.
I received my cortisone injection two weeks ago, and by my estimate about 95 percent of the pain has disappeared. This is good news! As the pain has receded, however, it has not exactly been a return to normal. For one thing, after four months of pain my body has built up a muscle memory of which actions hurt and which do not. It is the strangest experience to perform a quotidian task and realize that you are tensing up, expecting it to hurt. And then it doesn’t. There are times when I feel a twinge and I cannot tell whether it’s actual pain or merely the memory of past pain.
Furthermore, cortisone shots are not cures, they simply reduce inflammation temporarily. Ideally my shoulder gets back to normal and builds up the necessary strength, making further treatment unnecessary. That said, the possibility of more pain is on the horizon.
All of this is happening as I have read repeated calls by the likes of Yascha Mounk and others proclaiming that “the time to end pandemic restrictions is now.” Mounk’s article caused quite the stir a few weeks ago, in no small part because he acknowledged that there are not a ton of formal restrictions at this point. Indeed, what Mounk wants has less to do with formal restrictions and more to do with changes in human behavior: “Politicians and public-health officials should send the message that Americans should no longer limit their social activities, encouraging them to resume playdates and dinner parties without guilt.” He concluded: “Just as we are willing to take on calculated risks in other areas of life, so we should be willing to tolerate some risk of infectious disease.”
I do not want to limit my activities. The thing is, I also want my shoulder to be pain-free but that is never going to happen again. I lived with it for long enough that it would take a sustained period of pain-free activity for me to forget about it. Even now, I feel much better than I did two weeks ago, but my brain does not entirely trust my body at this point.
For a lot of us, the pandemic has altered our lives for two years. Many of us hoped last summer that we had left the coronavirus behind, but that proved not to be true, in no small part because some folks who oppose pandemic restrictions also refuse to take the single-most important step to making that outcome more feasible.
Human beings are habitual creatures. For many Americans, living through the pandemic has built up muscle memories that will not be easily forgotten — especially after the bait-and-switch of last summer.
If no new variant emerges, and the spring and summer permit more outdoor activity, and we get through the next few months without another wave of infections, maybe life will return to a facsimile of the pre-pandemic normal. If it goes on long enough, that will become the new normal.
Telling Americans who have behaved one way for two years to behave differently is the middle-aged pundit version of telling someone in pain to walk it off. For many of us, that option is no longer available. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Canadian truckers’ ‘freedom convoy’ disrupted life and blockaded borders. Did the protest succeed?
The trick, for activists, is to get authorities and other audiences to focus on their issues as well as their tactics.
People hold sign and flags as truckers and supporters continue to protest coronavirus vaccine mandates, in Ottawa on Feb. 5. (Lars Hagberg/Reuters)
By David S. Meyer
On Jan. 15, the Trudeau government put into effect a mandate that truckers crossing into Canada from the United States would have to show proof they’d been vaccinated against covid-19. Nearly 90 percent of Canadian truckers, and almost as high a proportion of Canadians, are vaccinated. Nevertheless, some Canadian drivers and their supporters took the new restriction as a provocation.
A week later, hundreds of truckers staged driving protests across the country, filling the highways in long lines heading toward parliament in Ottawa on Jan. 22. Along the way, they were periodically met by crowds of up to a few thousand people cheering them on. They staged an encampment on Parliament Hill, and planned blockades of border crossings.
Although at first the truckers claimed they were objecting to the vaccine mandates, a range of other causes claimed what some called the “freedom convoy,” as far-right groups and politicians attempted to raise money for the campaign and to speak for it. A collection of other flags and messages turned up in pictures and videos of the protest: In addition to the familiar Canadian maple leaf flag, observers could find flags representing the United States, including the Confederacy, Make America Great Again (MAGA), and sprinklings of Nazi paraphernalia. QAnon enthusiasts claimed allegiance with the convoy, all part of a larger unfolding plan. And support from the far right in the United States and around the world far outstripped support in Canada.
Ottawa police have now committed to clearing out the convoy’s protests outside the parliament. So what did the dramatic protest accomplish?
In short, the freedom convoy was a disruptive protest tactic expressing opposition to the government and its policies. Whether it will affect either will depend less on the creativity and commitment of the protesters and more on whether they reach the right audiences.
How disruption works
People protest when they’re dissatisfied with something; disruption is a way to get other people to pay attention. Generally they hope to capture the attention of authorities, journalists and the general public by doing such things as interrupting life’s daily routines, hammering on a missile nose cone, kidnapping a governor or yelling at a member of Congress in a public meeting. In general, larger groups command attention by virtue of their size, and can deploy less confrontational tactics, like marching in a park or carrying signs. Smaller groups get attention with more dramatic tactics, including blockades, sit-ins and even political violence.
Disruptive protest works when it focuses broader attention on a group or a grievance. Protest actions are often popular only in retrospect. For instance, at the time, nearly three-quarters of Americans opposed the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech; those who supported it were roughly the same slice who supported such then-radical actions as the lunch counter protesters and Freedom Riders.
Nevertheless, 1960s civil rights protesters were able to draw attention to the cause with their soaring rhetoric, steadfast commitments to nonviolence, visible support from some politicians and celebrities, all contrasted with the televised brutality against them. Activists visibly suffered for their cause, resulting in landmark legislative achievements.
In a successful effort, attention to the disruptive tactic is accompanied by at least some attention to the protesters’ cause. More recently, the Occupy movement captured national attention in 2011 with encampments in hundreds of American cities. Occupy avoided issuing a central messaging strategy. But in my research, I’ve seen that its disruptive protests shifted public attention to issues of gross political and economic inequality, adding the “99 percent” as shorthand for the idea that the vast majority of Americans have been left out of prosperity while a few enjoy extreme wealth. Occupy gained public support for many elements of its cause — even as some observers were appalled by its tactics. It was one of the sources pushing the Democratic Party toward a greater focus on inequality. When activists and politicians talk about relieving student debt, that’s in part a result of Occupy, which raised the issue and built organizations to press it.
Similarly, the 2020 nationwide Black Lives Matter protests after the police murder of George Floyd focused public attention on racialized police violence, as seen in media reports, Google searches and Wikipedia pages visited, according to a forthcoming paper by social scientists Zackary Dunivin, Harry Yan, Jelani Ince and Fabio Rojas. Support for the cause grew initially, dropping as the media covered the few violent confrontations associated with the protests.
The trick for activists is to get authorities and other audiences to focus on their issues as well as their tactics.
Did the truckers succeed?
Occupy lasted nearly three months and eventually included 600 encampments in the United States, and hundreds more globally. With far fewer protesters than the freedom convoy created much more disruption, threatening commerce as well as public order and provoking strong government action.
Canadians strongly opposed the freedom convoy in Canada; two-thirds supported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration of emergency to clear out the protesters. Canadians generally supported their country’s strict public health mandates, which the truckers opposed. The freedom convoy’s tactics appear to have eclipsed attention to its cause. More significantly, 57 percent of Canadians believed that its real aim was to promote far right politics. Unlike the civil rights movement in 1963, the convoy cannot claim potential allies in government.
Thus far, the freedom convoy has found much stronger support south of the border in the United States. Former president Donald Trump supported the truckers. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) not only supported them but expressed hope that they might come to the United States and disrupt the Super Bowl. And the freedom convoy has inspired allied covid-mandate protesters around the world.
The key issue for protesters is whether street politics can connect with institutional politics. In Canada so far, conservative political leaders — like most truckers — have kept their distance.
A truckers’ convoy may now be en route to D.C. But in the United States, if supporters with 18-wheelers can find allies in office, things may be different.
David S. Meyer (@davidsmeyer1), professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine, writes about social movements; his most recent book is How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter (Wiley, 2021). | null | null | null | null | null |
The latest: Cities, towns and villages are being bombarded, and Russian troops are pushing toward Ukraine’s capital. There are reports of growing casualties. The situation is developing rapidly, and we’re tracking the updates here.
When did it start? Shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” last night after weeks of buildup. Russia has thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders.
What Russia wants: It’s trying to push back against growing Western influence in a region it considers its own, as explained by these maps.
The U.S. promised to hold Russia accountable.
What to watch: President Biden will meet with allies this morning and plans to announce another round of sanctions.
What are sanctions? In this case, an economic alternative to military force. The U.S. has ruled out sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
How is the rest of the world responding? There’s been widespread outrage so far.
Gas prices have spiked across the U.S.
The national average yesterday was $3.53 a gallon, nearly a dollar more than a year ago.
Why this is happening: The crisis in Ukraine. Russia is an important oil supplier, and prices could get higher with a full-scale attack because of sanctions and potential pipeline damage.
Where it’s most expensive: California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Nevada.
Pregnancy-related deaths jumped in 2020, mostly for women of color.
The data: The rate of Black women who died of pregnancy or childbirth rose 26% from 2019, according to a new report. The rate of Hispanic women who died rose 44%.
Why? Minority women already face health-care barriers, and the pandemic likely made them worse, experts say.
An investigation into Donald Trump’s business may be falling apart.
What’s happening: Two New York prosecutors leading the case quit, frustrated that their new boss hasn’t seemed interested in taking the next step in the investigation, according to Post reporting.
What is the case? It centers on whether the former president and his business inflated the value of their assets to get better deals.
Texas is trying to limit transgender treatments for kids.
What’s happening: Gov. Greg Abbott told the state this week to investigate uses of gender-affirming care for transgender children as child abuse.
What kinds of care? Treatments like gender reassignment surgery and puberty-blocking medications.
The bigger picture: This is the latest attempt by Texas and other states to limit this kind of care.
Another winter storm will make its way across the country.
The forecast: Snow and freezing rain from the Midwest to New England today and tomorrow. The storm already dropped over a foot of snow in the Rocky Mountains.
A brutal cold: Many cities in the Midwest hit record lows yesterday, and below-zero temperatures nearly reached Texas.
And now … if you’re searching for some comfort food tonight: Try one of these cozy casserole dishes. | null | null | null | null | null |
The best things to do in the D.C. area the week of Feb. 24-March 2
The National Gallery of Art's East Building closes for renovations after this weekend, so you only have a few more days to get a rooftop selfie with Katharina Fritsch's “Hahn/Cock.” (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Editor’s note: While mask requirements vary across the region, many nightclubs and performing arts venues require proof of vaccination as a condition of entry. Check websites or social media before making plans.
Daybreaker’s Wünder Tour at the Smithsonian American Art Museum: Hop on your mat for a yoga practice with a score from live musicians, and then dance your heart out — all before 9 a.m. Early-morning sober rave party Daybreaker swings through Washington with a sunrise celebration called Wünder, held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s glass-enclosed Kogod Courtyard. Bring a mat and water bottle, and stick around for breakfast and an “adaptogenic mushroom drink” before you go about the rest of your day. 6 to 9 a.m. $20-$45.
Mardi Gras at Hi-Lawn: Fat Tuesday is just days away, but some people can’t wait for brass bands, hurricanes and colorful masks. (Or, more likely, they have to work on Wednesday.) Hi-Lawn, the rooftop bar and event space atop Union Market, is trading its après-ski menu for muffulettas and shrimp po’ boys through the weekend, though you’ll still be able to gather with Hurricane and Sazarac cocktails around fire pits if needed. The celebration includes bands and DJs on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Free; Reservations suggested.
Beyoncé vs Rihanna Mega Dance Party at Union Stage: Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo dance parties have been selling out at Union Stage, and now the venue at the Wharf is branching out with a new event: the Beyoncé vs. Rihanna Mega Dance Party. It should be fairly obvious what DJ Just Because will be spinning for the audience’s dancing (and singalong) pleasure. 7 p.m. $10-$35.
‘Celebrating Hazel Scott: The Darling of Cafe Society’ virtual screening: Hazel Scott was a triple threat. As a pianist, she performed alongside Count Basie’s Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall in the 1930s and 40s. She appeared on screen in “Rhapsody in Blue” and other musicals in the 1940s. In 1950, she became the first Black woman to host a TV program, “The Hazel Scott Show.” Shortly afterward, she was accused of being a communist, blacklisted, and moved to Paris. Learn more about Scott’s legacy and activism during a special virtual screening of “Celebrating Hazel Scott: The Darling of Cafe Society,” sponsored by the March on Washington Film Festival. 7 p.m. Free.
An evening at the Embassy of the Czech Republic: Get transported to the Czech Republic for a night filled with food, drinks and culture. Sample a Czech buffet while trying out popular Czech beers and wines. The embassy also has an opera performance featuring music from the classical and romantic periods, as well as an art gallery, graphic exhibition and a short film showcasing Prague and the Czech countryside. 6:30 p.m. $68.
Trivia for the Culture at Saint-Ex: The Wave, a platform for Black communities, celebrates Black history through trivia at various Black-owned restaurants and bars in Chicago and the District. They’ve returned to D.C. for a music trivia night, with the winners receiving two tickets to this year’s Broccoli City Festival. Think up a clever team name, then register in advance. 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Free.
Last chance: National Gallery of Art East Building: A warning for art lovers: This weekend is your last chance to visit the National Gallery of Art’s East Building until June. Home to the museum’s modern and contemporary art collection, the East Building is temporarily closing to finish years-long renovations, including the restoration of the skylight. If you want to snap a selfie with “Hahn/Cock” on the rooftop or spend a few moments contemplating the Rothko Room in the Tower, do so ASAP. Through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Free.
National Gallery of Art to temporarily close East Building for renovations
Oscar nominated short films at various theaters: The Academy Award-nominated short films are sometimes dismissed as the Raisinets of the Oscars: bite-sized portions of cinematic sweetness, with only nominal nutritional value. The reality is quite different. Despite films that do, sometimes, hew to the gently inspirational and uplifting, particularly in the category of animation, which Pixar has historically dominated, Oscar shorts are more often than not deeply serious and powerfully moving works of storytelling. That’s never been more obvious than this year, when even the animated program — now being showcased in area theaters, along with live action and documentaries — is sprinkled with seriously grown-up content: sex, nudity and even bestiality; police-state violence; loneliness, suicide and the aching alienation of modern life. The nominees hit area theaters this weekend, including AFI Silver, E Street Cinema and the Angelika Film Center at the Mosaic District, divided into separate Live Action, Animation and Documentary programs. Screening times and ticket prices vary.
Mardi Gras at Metrobar: Also getting a jump on Fat Tuesday, the Metrobar beer garden along Rhode Island Avenue NE hosts the Blues Style Brass Band Friday evening from 6 to 9 p.m., followed by DJs and fire artists. Bring the kids on Sunday afternoon for a free screening of “The Princess and the Frog” at 4 p.m. Friday party 6 p.m. to midnight. Free.
Mardi Gras celebrations: A parade with floats, bands and stilt walkers is the centerpiece of Saturday’s Mardi Gras party at the Wharf. It kicks off at 3 p.m., and is followed by dancing on the District Pier with the Naptown Brass Band and a pop-up bar selling Hurricane cocktails made with Thrashers Rum. Fireworks cap the party, beginning at 6:30 p.m. While many places draw inspiration from New Orleans, there are other parties happening in the D.C. area. The Caribbean-themed Islands Lounge in Wheaton is celebrating Carnival on Saturday at the Pop-Up Carnival Fete, with veteran DJs Sprang International, Super Slice and Fyah Oats spinning soca from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., with a $20 cover in advance.
Atlas Intersections Festival at the Atlas Performing Arts Center: The annual Atlas Intersections Festival thrives on moving art out of neat, comfortable boxes. Audiences might hear a symphony orchestra perform with saxophone and bansuri, a bamboo flute from India; be spellbound by a poet while watching a painter create works inspired by the spoken word; or see young choreographers merge hip-hop dance moves with ballet. Over three weekends, the Atlas Performing Arts Center features almost two dozen dance companies, musical groups and storytellers, sharing art from around the globe. Some performances feature post-show talk-backs and meet-and-greets. Through March 15. Prices vary by performance; opening weekend $20-$35.
Ice Yards at Yards Park: Below freezing one night, near 70 degrees a few days later. We’ve had a roller coaster of a winter in D.C. — wait, that was just this week. It looks like things will chill down again for Ice Yards, the annual winter celebration in Yards Park. Spend the afternoon looking at ice sculptures, trying curling or ax throwing, jumping on a snowboard simulator, or drinking hot beverages around a firepit. The high point is the Polar Plunge, in which hardy souls will jump into aboveground swimming pools to raise money for the Special Olympics. Tickets include a drink voucher and a $5 donation to the Special Olympics. 1 to 4 p.m. $15.
Jazz and Freedom Festival at the Eaton: Music and activism intertwine at the seventh iteration of this festival, co-produced with the nonprofit jazz foundation CapitalBop. The afternoon starts with a panel discussion about racial justice, moderated by Aja Taylor, the co-founder of mutual aid group Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, before the music begins. The five sets include Jupiter Blue, featuring members of the Sun Ra Arkestra; steel pan performer Victor Provost and his band; and a jam session led by the Collect!v Crew. Beyond music, the day includes live painting and a photo exhibition by Kyna Uwaeme. 3 to 11 p.m. $20 suggested donation.
D.C. in Bloom: The History and Science of the Capitol’s Cherry Blossoms: With the opening of the National Cherry Blossom Festival less than a month away, this is the perfect time to learn about D.C.'s favorite spring flowers. National Park Service rangers Jen Rudnick and Bethany Bagent share the history and stories of the cherry blossoms, as well as other flowering trees on the Mall, during this virtual talk organized by the U.S. Botanic Garden. 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Free; registration required.
Makers Mile in Old Town Alexandria: Over the last two years, many of us have discovered new interests — maintaining a sourdough starter, growing succulents, learning to cross stitch. If you’re looking to diversify your talents and hobbies, the two-day Makers Mile in Old Town is a one-stop shop. Over the course of two afternoons, 22 different businesses lead a wide spectrum of workshops and demonstrations: Learn to make earrings or fabric pompoms, try printmaking or painting on canvas, refresh with a barre class, or watch a tea ceremony. (There’s even a chance to make a mimosa with a syrup you can recreate at home.) Feel free to wander from shop to shop, but some events require advance registrations. Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. $30.
Black Love Pop-Up at Bammy’s: On the final weekend of Black History Month, Bammy’s hosts a day with a pop-up market of Black-owned businesses, trivia and board games; themed cocktails; a DJ set; and a screening of the 1999 Omar Epps comedy “The Wood.” Attendees are asked to bring Black history-themed children’s books, which will be donated to local elementary schools. Anyone gifting a book receives a free cocktail. 3 to 8 p.m. Free.
Dodie at the Fillmore: Singer-songwriter Dodie, short for Dorothy Clark, started documenting her life over a decade ago on YouTube through music and bubbly, honest vlogs. Now, she’s traded acoustic covers for well-produced, sparse songs of her own, that feel like a string of secrets sung in a low whisper, a best friend in your ear. In an age in which bedroom pop artists such as Clairo are coaxing us to embrace the most vulnerable parts of ourselves, Dodie has been doing so for years on her channel, never shy about sharing her internal struggles or expectations. On her 2021 debut album “Build a Problem,” she continues to do what she’s best at: singing about the big feelings found in life’s tiny, memorable moments. Her lyricism is biting, despite the light vocal harmonies. “So this is it now … 24 … I still count everyone I kiss,” she points out in “Special Girl.” Then, she casually remarks, “The bitter ones still taste the best.” 7:30 p.m. $28.
John Roseboro at Union Stage: Be wary of falling in love while listening to John Roseboro’s newest single “It’s You I Like.” Originally written and recorded by Fred Rogers, Roseboro’s version of the song is accompanied by his signature crisp guitar chords. In 1 minute 24 seconds, Roseboro transforms the song’s original innocence into something deeply romantic. He has the kind of voice that’s capable of singing anything, but there’s a modernity to his approach. Roseboro has sought much of his inspiration in bossa nova, and combined with an ineffable, effortless west coast energy and a spiritual-focused approach to his music, Roseboro has certainly earned his nickname of “Angel of LA.” Roseboro’s debut album “Human Nature” touches upon faith, humanity, social justice and love, a tribute to the life he’s had and what’s still to come. It’s not until his song “Mere Mortal” that you’re reminded of his age: “I’m only 25, I’ve got the rest of my life,” he sings, as if shrugging off any future fears, fully content with every version of himself. 7:30 p.m. $15.
Mardi Gras celebrations: Finally, the big day arrives. Bayou Bakery in Arlington is always a prime destination on Fat Tuesday, thanks New Orleans-born chef David Guas and his popular food and drink specials — think muffulettas, jambalaya and king cake washed down with $5 New Orleans cocktails and $3 beers, accompanied by live funk and jazz, until 7 p.m. Dauphine’s, the large New Orleans-inspired restaurant downtown, celebrates its first Mardi Gras with a blowout party with an open bar, passed hors d’oeuvres, multiple food stations, a live band and DJs included in the $150 tickets. At the Navy Yard, Due South is also hosting an all-you-can-eat New Orleans feast with live music, beginning at 4 p.m. The $40 tickets cover food and two drinks. In Chicago, Detroit and other places with large Polish communities, Fat Tuesday is Paczki Day, which involves eating fluffy, sugar-covered jelly-filled doughnuts. Ivy and Coney, D.C.’s quasi-official Detroit-and-Chicago-themed neighborhood bar, offers a free paczki with the first beer purchased, and will also have homemade pierogi for sale.
Cheers to 3 Years at Silver Branch Brewing: Silver Branch celebrates three years of crafting European-style beers — and some IPAs, too — over five days of parties in Silver Spring. Everything kicks off March 1 with the release of a new flagship IPA dubbed Dr. Juicy. Beers, cocktails, wine and tacos are $5. The week continues with trivia on Wednesday, which will test your knowledge of Silver Branch history; the actual anniversary on Thursday; a night of lagers served in one-liter steins on Friday, along with live music by Hays Dowdy; and live music by Miss Moon Rising on Saturday. Times vary; free admission.
New Columbia Swing Returns at the Josephine Butler Parks Center: After two years, the New Columbia Swing crew is back spreading the gospel of Lindy Hop and swing dancing at the historic Josephine Butler Parks Center across from Meridian Hill Park. Jon Tigert and the Corner Pocket Jazz Band perform music to get bodies moving from 9 to 11, and there’s a beginner dance lesson at 8 p.m. Organizers suggest uploading a vaccination card in advance. (More concerts follow on March 8 and 15.) 8 to 11 p.m. $15 in advance, $18 at the door.
‘Chocolate’ at Songbyrd Music House: Can I Kick It? continues its monthly film-and-DJ series at Songbyrd with the 2008 martial arts movie “Chocolate.” The Thai film stars Yanin Vismitananda as a gangster’s daughter who uses her martial arts skills to settle her dying mother’s debts. Vismitanada already had experience in taekwondo before being discovered by director Prachya Pinkaew, lending extra credibility to the action sequences. 6:30 p.m. Free.
Dua Lipa at Capital One Arena: In her 2018 song “No Rules,” Dua Lipa reminded the brokenhearted to never, ever contact their exes, no matter the circumstances. The sleeper hit was sincere and defiant in its messaging, establishing Lipa as a new kind of pop star, someone whose confidence was enviable but not unattainable. And on her second album “Future Nostalgia,” released in 2020 and the recipient of last year’s Grammy Award for best pop vocal album, Lipa proves her pop girl pedigree while shaking up her radio-friendly sound. Influences of disco, funk, R&B and electronic music are the perfect complement to Lipa’s vivacious persona. Lead singles “Don’t Stop” and “Levitating” solidified her place in pop music, but it’s songs like “Pretty Please” that stand out. Lipa admits vulnerability, wanting validation from the object of her affections, a singular feeling encapsulated in one phrase that shamelessly begs — pretty please. 7:30 p.m. $315-$625.
Maxwell Park Navy Yard second anniversary: Maxwell Park’s Navy Yard outpost opened just two weeks before the city shut down in March 2020. But even as the dining and bar scene has reopened in fits and starts, Maxwell Park has become one of the neighborhood’s go-to bars. The monthly themed menus find ways to introduce you to wines and grapes you’ve never heard of (and never knew you needed to try). The service is friendly and helpful, and never talks down to neophyte drinkers. And the soundtrack — upbeat nonstop pop from the ’80s to Lizzo — works for date night or a girls’ night out. The bar marks its second birthday by offering all sparkling wines for half-price, which, given Maxwell Park’s wine list, is not something wine lovers can pass up. 5 p.m. to midnight. Free admission. | null | null | null | null | null |
Majority of D.C. residents support clearing of homeless encampments, Post poll finds
At the same time, District residents give Mayor Muriel Bowser low ratings on creating and maintaining affordable housing
An encampment in the L Street NE tunnel, where homeless people sought refuge in January 2020. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
A majority of D.C. residents support an effort by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to clear homeless encampments, while giving her low marks for building and maintaining affordable housing in the District, according to a Washington Post poll.
Three-fourths of Washingtonians say they support the city’s plan to clear the camps and provide housing support for the camps’ residents, including large majorities across age, income and racial groups. Bowser’s pilot program has sparked pushback from advocates, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a handful of council members. The controversy, however, has failed to stop the clean ups.
“The encampments themselves, while not everyone may be hurting public health and safety, personally I’ve walked by them in NoMa and I’ve had my child and myself cursed at,” said Katie, 37, a D.C. resident who asked that her full name not be used for privacy reasons. “I’m not saying they need to be removed because of the discomfort of people walking by,” she said, though she added that shesupports removal as long as the residents are relocated.
According to The Post’s poll, 19 percent of residents oppose the policy. In interviews, some residents offered support for camp clearings while also worrying about whether resources were being properly directed to solve more structural issues related to homelessness.
“I really have mixed feelings. I understand why the clearings are necessary,” said Kristina Svensson, 53, of Chevy Chase, D.C. “I don’t really want to walk downtown much now because it’s not pleasant, and also because it’s a security thing.”
Svensson also wondered, though, if policies are in place to address root causes.
“Job training and mental health are the two issues that are feeding into the homelessness problem that I feel aren’t being addressed now,” she said.
D.C. Council votes to continue the clearing of homeless encampments
Concerns over homelessness track with larger citywide anxieties related to affordable housing.
When asked to name the overall biggest problems facing the District, housing costs and housing is the No. 2 most frequent response — at 14 percent — with another 7 percent citing homelessness. Crime is the most frequent response, cited by 36 percent of residents, up sharply from 2019 as housing concerns declined.
A 69 percent majority of D.C. residents also say it would be difficult to afford rent in their neighborhood if they had to move from their current home, a concern that is higher among Black residents and longtime District residents.
Fears over spiking housing costs are also reflected in the low ratings residents gave the mayor for creating and maintaining affordable housing in the District. According to the poll, 65 percent of respondents say Bowser is doing a “not so good” or “poor” job, and 64 percent rate her negatively on addressing homelessness in the District, both similar to her ratings in 2019. Bowser’s negative marks on housing and homelessness contrast with her 58 percent overall job approval rating in the latest poll.
“The homeless encampments are a symptom of D.C. not building enough housing,” said Chris Jordan, 37, a resident of Columbia Heights. “We shouldn’t touch [the camps], we should be building more housing.”
The Washington Post poll was conducted from Feb. 2 to 14, with a random sample of 904 adult D.C. residents. Polling was conducted by live interviewers over landlines and cellphones. The overall margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Among White residents, 77 percent support clearings, while 72 percent of Black residents and 76 percent of Hispanic, Asian or others groups also agree.
The poll also finds wide support among D.C.’s wealthiest and poorest. Eighty-one percent of residents making $200,000 or more annually back clearing, as well as 79 percent of residents with annual incomes below $50,000.
A slight divide on support, however, does break along age groups. Older District residents are more supportive of the policy, with 82 percent of those 65 and older backing the mayor’s policy. Among D.C. adults under 30, 68 percent support the policy.
The survey reveals that housing anxiety — particularly over the cost of housing — weighs on residents’ plans for their future in the District. Many do not believe they can afford to stay.
Twenty-six percent of residents say they would move from the city if given the chance, including 7 percent who say they would move to the suburbs and 18 percent who would move outside the D.C. area. The most-cited reason District residents give for wanting to leave is housing affordability — 41 percent. Crime is the No. 2 most-cited reason at 14 percent. Another 9 percent say they would relocate from the District due to family reasons, and school and work are each cited by 4 percent.
The District of Columbia’s population declined by 2.9 percent from 2020 to 2021 according to the Census Bureau, marking a turnaround from two decades of growth.
The group most likely to say they want to move from D.C. is adults under 30, 42 percent of whom say they would move if given the chance. Most say they would leave the area completely. Imani, 21, counts herself among them, citing rent. The mother of a young child, she pays $250 a month to live in a house with two other adults and their children in Ward 4.
“I’ve lived here my whole life but now rent is terrible, way too high,” Imani said, who declined to give her first name due to reasons of privacy. “I live with multiple people just to afford a place to live that’s a house.”
Given the opportunity, Imani said she would move “somewhere in the South,” she said. “It would be cheaper, of course.”
Deep divides over program meant to move homeless out of encampments are on display at D.C. Council hearing
Svvenson also said she would leave the District. For her it’s a matter of jobs. “I just don’t feel like there are a lot of job opportunities in the city, and what is here fit really specific profiles,” she said, mentioning the higher-paid positions appear to be in government-related industries. As a veteran of entertainment and fashion, she said she would be more likely “not to move to Maryland or Virginia but New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, where there are opportunities in my industry.”
The poll shows the desire to move registers differently depending on a resident's income, race and which part of the city they call home.
D.C. residents with lower incomes are more likely to want to relocate, with 39 percent saying they would leave town if they could. Most in that group report they would leave the area. Less than a quarter of other income groups say they want to relocate.
Ward 2 and 3 residents are the most likely to say they would not move from D.C., with 84 percent saying they would stay put. The largest share of residents who would move if given the change — 35 percent — live in Wards 7 and 8.
Also, 33 percent of Black residents say they would leave the District if given the chance, while 16 percent of White residents express the same sentiment. Residents without a college degree are also twice as likely than those with college degrees to say they would like to move, 36 percent versus 18 percent. | null | null | null | null | null |
The issue was that the money used to pay for those things didn’t belong to Wickersham, but to the Miss Florida Scholarship Program she was in charge of leading, according to prosecutors.
For years, Wickersham was the executive director of the nonprofit organization, an annual beauty pageant that awards financial aid to participants and winners to advance their education. But from December 2011 to June 2018, she stole about $100,000 from the organization, according to prosecutors.
Mary Wickersham, who also goes by the names Mary Sullivan and Mary Harvey, has since been indicted on seven charges involving defrauding the organization and its individual donors by opening a separate company under a similar name to divert donations and contributions meant for the Miss Florida Scholarship Program.
She is scheduled to appear again in court on Monday at 10 a.m., court records show. | null | null | null | null | null |
The White House on Jan. 28. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
“What we’re seeing now is a result of past inaction,” she said. “That past inaction is haunting us. And so the question is, how do we accelerate effective action?”
President Biden took office promising to take a whole-of-government approach to curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the Earth. But the event is being held as Biden’s massive climate and social spending plan, known as the Build Back Better bill, remains stalled on Capitol Hill.
However, Lubchenco said the discussion would not dwell on the uncertain fate of the spending package, which would be the largest climate and clean energy investment in the nation’s history.
“We don’t plan to focus on specific legislation at this event,” she said. “What we are doing is seeking guidance and knowledge from experts about why there is hesitancy to move ahead with effective action to reduce carbon emissions, to reduce greenhouse gases. And that’s a broader topic than any specific piece of legislation.”
Those visiting the White House on Thursday include Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who is known for creating a “hockey stick” graph of rising global temperatures, and Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University whose 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt” explored how a handful of high-level scientists denied the dangers of tobacco smoke and global warming.
Shahzeen Attari, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies how and why people make decisions about climate change, plans to highlight her research on the issue’s ideological divides. For instance, she found in a 2020 study that both conservatives and liberals support shifting away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy but disagree on policies to achieve this transition.
Other attendees Thursday include Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University and the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy who has sought to engage evangelical Christians in climate discussions; Gernot Wagner, a noted climate economist at New York University; and Marshall Shepherd, a leading international expert in weather and climate at the University of Georgia.
OSTP was rocked by scandal on Feb. 7 when Eric Lander, Biden’s top science adviser, resigned as director after an internal review found that he bullied and demeaned staffers. Lander apologized for mistreating subordinates in a note to staff, and Biden on Feb. 17 tapped social scientist Alondra Nelson to be acting director of the office.
“We live in an incredibly distracting world, so I don’t blame people for not being aware of these issues,” Oreskes said. “But I think it’s really, really helpful when an organization like the OSTP says, ‘Hold on, there’s something important that people need to know about.’ ” | null | null | null | null | null |
The E.U. has been the object of derision for years. Britain left in a huff over complaints that its policies were stifling growth and national sovereignty. In the last Ukraine contretemps in 2014, a State Department official — who has since returned to State to serve in the Biden administration — was caught on tape using an expletive to describe the E.U.’s fecklessness. Even in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week, the media ran with the narrative that U.S. and E.U. leaders were divided and lacked a coordinated plan.
Two Eastern European countries near Russia — Poland and Lithuania — went a step further, encouraging Ukraine’s membership in the E.U. in a joint statement with Ukraine: “We emphasize that, given the significant progress in the implementation of the Association Agreement and internal reforms, as well as the current security challenges, Ukraine deserves E.U. candidate status and Lithuania and Poland will support Ukraine in achieving this goal.”
The current crisis might prompt the E.U. to take its own defense more seriously. Bergmann explains, “The E.U. can mobilize massive amount of money — they just borrowed 800 billion euros for economic recovery, investing in digitization and the energy transition.” They can, for example, start purchasing “high-end equipment — air tankers, missile defense systems — that makes them dependent on the U.S. military.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: I woke up to explosions in Kyiv. It wasn’t the first time Russian aggression upended my life.
Police and security personnel inspect the remains of a shell in a street in Kyiv on Thursday. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)
I woke up to explosions Thursday morning. I looked out of the window of my building in a suburb of Kyiv, and there was a mushroom-shaped dark cloud. Soon cars started leaving the parking garage, so I grabbed my laptop, watered my plants and left.
The city looked as alive as ever. I called my mother to make sure she finds a safe spot — but she has experience. She was forced to flee our home in Donetsk for Kyiv in the autumn of 2014, after Russia unleashed war there. She left all she had — her job as a schoolteacher, our apartment. Now the fear of losing everything haunts her once again.
My family and I have lived with Russian aggression for years. It has divided us and destroyed our sense of safety, and now it has brought us together in anger and fear.
My aunt called from Donetsk, crying: “You prayed for me then, now I am praying for you now.” A call from my father followed. “I hope they won’t conscript me into the army,” he told me. He is an engineer. He stayed in Donetsk after the war began — he supported Russia and its separatist ideas back then. We did not speak for a couple of years: My dad disagreed with my front-line reporting, and I did not take it well.
As we chatted a few days ago, he cut me off to say something I had never heard from him before: “I understand it all, do not worry. I know I had some doubts when the war started, but I changed my mind a long time ago.”
He does not support Russia anymore. It took him eight years to figure things out. I can’t really blame him. Russia’s propaganda machinery persuaded my father and millions of others to believe what Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted them to believe: that people in the Donbas are Russian, and the region belongs to Russia.
As Russia recently blamed Ukraine for heavy shelling in the Donbas (which Ukraine’s military swiftly denied), it asked residents to prepare for an “evacuation.” That brought to mind my grandmother, who was taken from her home in western Ukraine and brought to Donetsk in the east in the late 1950s. She had no say in it. People were paid for every person they recruited to rebuild Donetsk after World War II. According to her, Donetsk welcomed people from every corner of Ukraine at the time and she heard plenty of dialects of both the Ukrainian and Russian languages on the streets.
I have similar memories from growing up in Donetsk. I spoke Russian, but I sang Ukrainian Christmas carols in church and wore the traditional embroidered shirt on International Vyshyvanka Day in May. Verses from the poet Taras Shevchenko adorned the walls at my school.
This is why Putin’s claims make no sense to me. Right now all I feel toward Putin’s Russia is fury. I covered the war in the Donbas extensively. For that, I was called a traitor and blacklisted by Russia-backed authorities, who cut me off from my home.
It’s clear Putin will not stop until he torments and destroys all of Ukraine. He declares my region “an independent state,” but who gave him this authority? I, a Ukrainian and a native of Donetsk, certainly didn’t.
Just days ago, Putin openly stated that my country should not exist. On Thursday, he launched a massive military operation to vanish it. He must be stopped until it’s too late. In fact, it is nearly too late. I won’t say we have been abandoned by the West, but it seems that we are going to be fighting alone. And yet Putin is not just our villain — he is now Europe’s and the world’s problem now.
After I left my building Thursday morning, I walked for three kilometers along unmoving traffic to meet a colleague — he offered a safe place to stay away from the shelling near my house. It hasn’t been that long since I was on the front line in the Donbas, so the trauma flared up — I couldn’t grasp that Putin was attacking a city that was so calm just a few hours ago. I check on my mom every half hour.
“Do not cry,” she says.
“I am not crying,” I reply.
“There’s an underground parking garage next to my building. We can hide there.”
She sounds surprisingly calm.
“I love you. Everything will be fine.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: What worries me most about the classified information discovered at Mar-a-Lago
Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
Attorney General Merrick Garland was on firm ground when he signaled Tuesday that the Justice Department will take a methodical approach to the discovery of classified material at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence: “We will … look at the facts and the law and take it from there.” Whether Justice will launch a full investigation into the legality of Trump’s actions remains to be seen.
What can’t wait, however, is a full-blown inquiry into Trump’s handling and safeguarding of classified information, including top-secret documents, that were taken with him when he left the White House. Some of the information in Trump’s possession at Mar-a-Lago was so sensitive that, with respect to the top-secret materials, unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause, by definition, “exceptionally grave damage” to national security.
The U.S. government has no choice: Regardless of Garland’s plans, national security officials must determine whether Trump took all the appropriate steps at Mar-a-Lago to protect spirited-away classified materials from unauthorized disclosure or compromise. (In a statement, Trump denied any impropriety in his possession or handling of the materials.)
In fact, the government, presumably FBI agents, should have been on the ground at Mar-a-Lago the very day the National Archives and Records Administration advised the Justice Department that it had identified “items marked as classified national security information” within 15 boxes at Trump’s private estate. The Post reported the National Archives discovery more than a week ago. What has happened since then? This isn’t an innocuous inquiry.
Government agencies that produced, own and are responsible for controlling the top-secret information that was taken have a need to know whether their information could have fallen into the wrong hands. Lives, vital sources and methods of collection, critical U.S. interests, including relations with foreign governments, depend upon top-secret information being properly safeguarded.
For me, this is neither a juicy Trump news story nor a spectator sport.
I spent years of another life protecting U.S. classified information. My activities ranged from investigating individuals’ trustworthiness to handling national security documents, to putting in place physical and procedural safeguards, to preventing unauthorized disclosures to those without a need to know. I did it in Washington and in Europe, and when the Cold War was rather heated.
Garland can ponder his next move. But someone in a position of authority had better find out what Trump did with top-secret materials taken from the White House, his tender sensibilities notwithstanding.
There are carefully prescribed government-wide procedures for the handling, storage, protection and transporting of top-secret information.
Where were the documents kept at Mar-a-Lago? How were they stored, and in what kind of equipment or facility? Who at Mar-a-Lago had potential access to them? Given the circumstances of their removal from the White House, and Trump’s past defiance of the Presidential Records Act, which requires document preservation, the government must — not should — but must investigate the thorny question of whether classified information in Trump’s possession might have been compromised.
And respond accordingly.
Whether top-secret materials were or were not intentionally mishandled — and who, if anyone, was grossly negligent — are important questions, but for another day. Political partisans can also spar over those issues.
For now, the government needs to know how, exactly, former president Trump treated highly sensitive national security information taken from the White House more than a year ago. This is urgent. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russian Aggression Puts Erdogan in a Bind
In a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would “not recognize any step against Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and counseled against further military action. He was, of course, referring to Putin’s decision to recognize the two self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and send Russian troops into eastern Ukraine.
The Turkish president’s office said after the call that this reflects Erdogan’s “principled approach” to the crisis. It is consistent with Ankara’s longstanding position on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine: Turkey condemned the 2014 seizure of Crimea, a position Erdogan reiterated during a 2020 visit to Kyiv.
His consistency will be welcomed by his counterparts in the U.S. and Europe, who for several years have been anxious about Erdogan’s drift away from the West and toward Russia. A member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey has outraged other members of the group by purchasing Russian missile-defense systems. In Syria, Ankara has made accommodations with Moscow and attacked Kurdish militias that the U.S. and Europe regard as important allies in the fight against the Islamic State. In speeches, Erdogan has routinely directed rhetorical vitriol at American and European leaders. And in return, they have frequently frozen him out of their deliberations.
But it would be a mistake to interpret his position on Ukraine as a signal that he wants to come in from the cold. Beyond wagging a disapproving finger at Putin’s territorial adventurism, Erdogan has shown little interest in imposing punishment on the Russian leader. Ankara has maintained that sanctions would get in the way of a negotiated solution.
This has as much to do with economics and politics, local and regional, as with principle. Russia is one of the top 10 destinations for Turkey’s exports and one of the top three sources of its imports. As much as Russian oil and gas, Turkey’s economy is heavily dependent on Russian visitors — the more so now as the tourism industry begins to recover from the Covid slowdown.
Turkey, which maintains strong trade ties with both Russia and Ukraine, would like nothing better than a speedy resolution of their differences: Erdogan has even volunteered his services as a peacemaker. A war that hinders trade with Ukraine would be bad enough, but sanctions that limit trade with Russia would be devastating to Turkey’s economy, which is struggling to recover from the combined effects of the pandemic, a plunging currency and Erdogan’s own unorthodox economic policies.
Erdogan knows from recent memory the pain Turkey feels when economic ties with Russia are hindered. The last time trade between the two countries was severely constrained was in 2015: Then, the restraints were imposed by Putin, in retaliation for Turkey’s shooting down a Russian military jet. The number of Russian visitors plummeted, and the Turkish leader was obliged to apologize.
Beyond the imperatives of economics, the two presidents pursue conflicting ambitions. Erdogan regards Turkey’s hinterland — and more broadly, the region covered by the old Ottoman empire and the Turkic ethnic group stretching from areas bordering the Black Sea through parts of the Caucasus and much of Central Asia — as being in his preserve and outside the purview of the West and Russia alike. This sometimes puts him at odds with Putin, who is fired by a similar vision of reasserting influence over the old Soviet Union and the empire of the czars.
The two men were most recently at cross purposes in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, where Ankara’s military assistance for the former, a Turkic-majority nation, proved decisive, upending the delicate balance Moscow had imposed on the former Soviet republics.
Erdogan also has upset Russia in Ukraine, by supplying the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky with military drones and the technology to make them. Earlier this month, Turkey defiantly proclaimed it wouldn’t let Russian anger prevent the deepening of military cooperation between Ankara and Kyiv.
Here, too, history is at play. Large parts of modern Ukraine were ruled from Istanbul until late in the 18th century, when a Russian invasion displaced much of the ethnic Crimean population. Turkey now has a sizable Crimean Tatar community, and feels responsible for those who remain in their traditional homeland.
Still, if Erdogan regards Putin as an interloper in his province, he also needs Russian support to pursue foreign-policy goals that conflict with those of the West. His assault on the Kurdish militia — which Ankara regards as a mortal threat because of its link to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey — wouldn’t be possible without the tacit support of Moscow, which maintains a large military footprint in Syria to prop up the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.
Russia is also a useful foil against the West. Erdogan uses overtures to Moscow as a bargaining ploy with NATO partners: Witness his periodic threats to buy Russian jets if the West denies Turkey the latest fighters.
For all those reasons, Erdogan’s druthers would be to limit his “principled approach” on Ukraine to that phone call. But if the man on the other end of the line has decided to send his forces further west, Turkey’s president may finally be forced to do what he has deftly avoided until now: Pick a side.
Oil, Gas and Commodities Aren’t Being Weaponized — for Now: Javier Blas | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 particle isolated from a patient, in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md. The coronavirus mutant widely known as stealth omicron is now causing more than a third of new omicron cases around the world. But scientists still don’t know how it could affect the future of the pandemic. (NIAID/NIH via AP, File) (Uncredited/NIAID/NIH) | null | null | null | null | null |
Police: Motorcyclist, 19, killed in crash in New Castle
NEW CASTLE, Del. — A 19-year-old motorcyclist is dead after a crash in New Castle on Wednesday night, Delaware State Police said.
The crash happened on state Route 13 just before midnight, police said in a news release.
A Yamaha motorcycle was traveling at a high rate of speed on southbound Route 13 when a Honda Accord pulled out from McMullan Avenue and entered the left turn lane, police said.
The Yamaha switched from the middle lane into the left lane, where it hit the rear of the Honda, police said. The 19-year-old Newark man was thrown from the motorcycle and the Honda veered onto the median, where it hit a guardrail and continued across northbound lanes and off the road, where it stopped.
The motorcyclist died on the scene and the 23-year-old woman who was driving the Honda was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, police said. The investigation is ongoing, police said. | null | null | null | null | null |
How the League of Nations’ weak response to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia helped precipitate World War II
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, second from left, is flanked by Italian and German officers on the occasion of the celebration of the 14th anniversary of Italian fascism on Oct. 28, 1936. (AP)
By Brian J. Griffith
Brian J. Griffith is a historian of modern Europe with an emphasis on the political and cultural history of Fascist Italy. He is currently serving as the Eugen and Jacqueline Weber postdoctoral scholar in European history at University of California, Los Angeles.
After weeks of building tensions, Russian forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine early Thursday. Objecting to Ukraine’s potential membership in both the European Union and, more immediately, the American-dominated NATO military alliance, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to be pursuing his nation’s “security interests” in eastern Ukraine by establishing a buffer zone between an expanding liberal democratic West and an increasingly authoritarian Russian Federation.
In launching the invasion, Russia is clearly demonstrating that actions taken by the West after Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula in 2014 — including the E.U. suspending economic and diplomatic negotiations with the Russian Federation, and the West placing Russian and pro-Russian Crimean officials on no-fly lists — weren’t a deterrent to further Russian aggression.
Instead, Putin seems determined to demonstrate his country’s geopolitical sovereignty and imperial prowess to the Western powers. This sort of signal-sending aggression is not the first time that a strongman authoritarian leader explored the fragile boundary between international diplomacy and unilateral militarism. Just over four years before the outbreak of World War II, Italy’s “Duce,” or “Leader,” Benito Mussolini, intentionally brought the post-World War I international diplomatic order to its proverbial knees, demanding a “small place in the sun” for fascist Italy among the imperial possessions of East Africa.
The consequences of the Duce’s defiance of international diplomacy provides a warning to today’s political and diplomatic leadership — refusal to take a hard line against Putin could have catastrophic unintended consequences.
On Oct. 2, 1935, Mussolini delivered an impassioned speech from the balcony of his party’s headquarters in Rome to a mass of Italians assembled below in Piazza Venezia. Proclaiming the dawn of a glorious new age for fascist Italy, Mussolini outlined what he imagined would be a “gigantic spectacle” that the entire world would jealously admire.
During the preceding months, tensions between Italy and Ethiopia — both members of the ill-fated League of Nations (1920-1946) — had been gradually building. In December 1934, a dispute between a group of British and Ethiopian surveyors and Italian colonial soldiers stationed, technically, on the Ethiopian side of the border with Italian Somaliland boiled over into open hostilities, providing Mussolini with a useful pretext for ramping up Italy’s armed forces for imperial conquest.
Yet, Mussolini had had his eye on “reclaiming” Ethiopia for Italy for far longer. Mussolini saw an opportunity to expand the Italian empire, but also to restore his nation’s tarnished honor, avenging a disastrous attempted invasion of the historically independent African kingdom in the 1890s. He saw an invasion as a way to prove that Italy was equal in both civilization and military prowess to the Western powers, which he and many other ultranationalists contended had badly mistreated Italy during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
Perched confidently atop his headquarters’ balcony in Rome, Mussolini blasted the Great Powers. “We have been patient for 13 years, during which the circle of selfishness that strangles our vitality has become ever tighter,” he said. With regard to Ethiopia, he continued, “we have been patient for 40 years! It is time to say enough!”
The next day, Italy’s troops poured over the Ethiopian border. The invasion created one of the first major crises for the international diplomatic order established by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I — most especially the League of Nations, which its designers had hoped would promote diplomacy and prevent the carnage of industrial-scale warfare.
The League’s Covenant aimed to prevent invasion and occupation of member states (which included both Italy and Ethiopia). Article 11 warned that any “war or threat of war” was “a matter of concern to the whole League,” and would prompt it to take “any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations.”
The League responded to Italy’s violation of Ethiopia’s sovereignty by imposing economic sanctions in December 1935. These sanctions, however, primarily applied to industrial materials, above all oil supplies, and League members did not uniformly abide by them. The United States, moreover, which was not a member of the League, even increased its exports to Italy in the months after the latter’s conquest of Ethiopia.
Mussolini responded by calling for a global “Day of Faith,” during which Italians across the world donated wedding bands and other precious possessions so they could be melted down into gold bars and shipped to Rome to offset the impact of the sanctions. Mussolini also subsequently withdrew Italy from the League.
By May 1936, Italian troops had occupied Ethiopia’s imperial capital, Addis Ababa, ending the war and adding Ethiopia to Italian East Africa. Shortly thereafter, having largely failed to protect Ethiopia from unjust aggression and a loss of its sovereignty, the League dropped its sanctions against Italy — a humiliating outcome exposing the international diplomatic body’s impotence.
The following month, Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile Selassie I, passionately appealed to the League’s members, begging them to respond to Italy’s flagrant violation of his kingdom’s sovereignty. To the Great Powers, “who have promised the guarantee of collective security to small states” at risk of invasion, Selassie asked, “what measures do you intend to take?”
The League, however, had already given up.
This failure sent a clear signal to other authoritarians — most especially Adolf Hitler — that the League was either unable or unwilling to enforce the international order it purportedly sought to establish.
Even as Italy’s troops were still snaking their way toward Addis Ababa, Hitler began sending 32,000 Nazi troops back into the Rhineland between Germany and France — a flagrant violation of the 1926 Locarno Pact, which established a demilitarized buffer zone to preserve peace.
Two years later, Germany invaded, occupied and ultimately annexed Austria to the Third Reich — a move explicitly forbidden by Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles. In the same year, Hitler sought to unify “Greater Germany” by amassing Nazi troops along the border between the Third Reich and the “Sudetenland” region of Czechoslovakia, where many German-speaking communities had lived for generations.
Hitler’s military brinkmanship tested the boundaries, and extreme limits, of interwar Europe’s politics of diplomacy. Amid these clear signals that Hitler was prepared “to risk world war” to “unite the Sudeten Germans to their fatherland,” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously chose “appeasement” — and, to his mind, the avoidance of a wider military conflict — over the enforcement of the Versailles system. With Hitler’s (ultimately meaningless) “assurances” that the Third Reich’s expansionist campaigns were limited to the reunification of the “Greater Germany” community, Chamberlain returned to the United Kingdom from negotiations with Hitler in Munich believing that he had reestablished “peace in our time.”
Almost exactly one year later, Hitler launched the invasion of Poland, precipitating World War II.
Hitler’s bellicosity exposed how badly the League of Nations had handled the Ethiopian Crisis in 1936. Europe’s leaders saw the invasion of Ethiopia as little more than a minor imperial conflict and a momentary crisis in an otherwise stable, and permanent, international diplomatic system. Very few foresaw how Mussolini’s exposure of the League’s empty words and hollow values would embolden Hitler and lead to a global war.
In 2022, Putin is borrowing from Mussolini and Hitler’s playbook by testing what the rest of the world — especially NATO and the United Nations — will tolerate in terms of flagrant violations of the post-World War II international system. His stated motivation is similar — restoring Russia’s honor and uniting what might be roughly understood as a “Greater Russia” via the annexation of Ukraine’s southern and eastern territories.
Again, it’s possible to look at the conflict as a small, local issue — one without overriding global import. But the lesson from the League of Nation’s handling of the Ethiopian Crisis is clear — when international institutions refrain from enforcing rules and responding strongly to aggression and, instead, rely on the imposition of weak sanctions or other limited punitive measures, it sends a clear signal to all authoritarian leaders that disregard for international norms and laws is possible. It tempts them into aggression and escalation, which can eventually spiral into action so flagrant that it forces the world’s powers to act militarily. | null | null | null | null | null |
With WWIII looming, the trucker ‘convoy’ is demanding our attention. But what do they want?
Bob Bolus of Scranton, Pa., drives his semi leading a “Freedom Convoy” in Pittston Township, Pa., on Feb. 23. (Christopher Dolan/The Times-Tribune/AP)
The National Guard has been activated, state police are on high alert, snow trucks are positioned to thwart the invasion, and Capitol Hill is full of unmarked cars parked in strategic spots and waiting.
We are on the brink of World War III. But these measures — and the millions of dollars they will cost us — have nothing to do with Vladimir Putin.
Bob Bolus and his four trucks are coming.
With the international gaze fixed on Ukraine, Bolus decided to launch his own war — in our backyard.
“We’re going to put a stranglehold on D.C.,” said Bolus, 79, a bloviating Trump supporter from Scranton, Pa., known for the boldly decorated, pro-Trump big rig that he steers into the sightline of any camera he can find.
Fences aren't freedom and statues aren't history
“They don’t have enough cops, enough people to stop us,” Bolus told me from his rest stop in Harrisburg, Pa., on his way to D.C. “We’re going to shut the Beltway down.”
Which is pretty funny. Because we do a fine job of shutting down the Beltway with gridlock on our own, twice a day, nearly every day.
Inspired by the truckers “convoying” in Canada (at least one of whom told a judge he “thought it was a peaceful protest and based on my first amendment,” forgetting he is not American), groups of American truckers are planning convoys across the nation to D.C. to demand their rights.
(And who would’ve thought the Macho Men of America would look to Canada for inspiration on how to fight?)
The “People’s Convoy” has maps online that bleed red as they trace all the routes and stops of convoys purportedly coming from across the nation, just in time for President Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1. They’re raising money and organizing meetups on several social media platforms.
On Wednesday, Bolus said he was headed toward D.C. with “50 or 60” trucks behind him.
“This is false,” wrote Reuters journalist Julio-César Chávez, who followed Bolus from Scranton as he roared toward D.C. and posted updates on the size of Bolus’s convoy. “The convoy has never broken above 15 vehicles.”
Bolus was the sole semi once he got to the Beltway on Wednesday. And he eventually turned around and headed back to Scranton. But he said he plans to return next week, when he believes the rest of the convoy will arrive from across the nation.
“We’ll be back in force, that’s a promise,” he said, pledging to keep up his fight. “We’ll have 90,000 trucks coming.”
But what are they fighting for?
The Canadians started out angry about mask and vaccine mandates. Then they began talking about a wealth gap, government overreach. Confederate, Nazi and Trump 2024 flags popped up in the protests.
Bolus wants attention, that’s for certain. Some of his grievances are printed on the side of his 18-wheeler:
“There is ‘NO COLOR’ in America
There’s only 1 RACE
The HUMAN RACE”
There’s also a big picture of him, looking like a sea captain who moonlights as Santa. You’d think he was running for office. Actually, he tried — at least four times. But he was kicked off the Scranton mayoral ballot each time over felony convictions, according to one of the lawsuits he filed in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to get back on the ballot.
He told me he’s mad at “Nancy Pelosi’s Gestapo” and “that wacko mayor of D.C.” and “the federales.” His people are “unified,” “invincible,” “standing up and fighting.” But details on what they’re fighting for are scant.
The list of things we’re all paying attention to right now is long. But here we are, spending energy and money on these convoys and their free-floating grievances and nonspecific demands, as sensible as a toddler’s temper tantrum.
But we can’t dismiss them because of Jan. 6.
The way D.C. prepared for Jan. 6 protesters is all about White privilege
In 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was about to be inaugurated, law enforcement officers whose job was to make sure the president was sworn in heard similar plans from detractors across the nation.
“It was whispered that there was a plan … to blow up the Capitol and seize the arsenal and navy yard; that Washington soon would be isolated, with railroad tracks torn up, bridges burned, telegraph wires destroyed; that armed secret societies were springing up throughout Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, ready and geared for action,” wrote Norma B. Cuthbert, introducing the collection of Pinkerton papers from the Huntington Library in “Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot.”
They took it seriously, encircled the Capitol with troops, and Lincoln was inaugurated. Today, law enforcement officers aren’t taking any chances.
“We are taking them seriously,” U.S. Capitol police said, as they plan for the State of the Union and the potential for copycat convoys.
“They called me,” Bolus said, about the phone call he got from D.C. police investigators who cornered him on his plans.
“We’re not going into D.C.,” he said he told them. “Not today, at least.” | null | null | null | null | null |
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Feb. 24 condemned Russia's “cold-blooded” attack on Ukraine “in the strongest possible terms.” (Reuters)
“Russia has attacked Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told journalists from NATO headquarters in Brussels. “Peace in our continent has been shattered.”
Explosions went off across Ukraine on Feb. 24 as Russia bombarded cities, towns and villages while advancing toward the capital of Kyiv. (The Washington Post)
Ukraine is not a member of NATO but it has expressed a desire to join. Russia contends that the eastward expansion of NATO — which has accepted nearly a dozen Central and Eastern European nations as members since the breakup of the Soviet Union — poses an existential threat.
Details of NATO’s new plans are scarce. Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that the alliance has activated its “defense plans” at the request of its top military commander, Gen. Tod Wolters. The plans, Stoltenberg said, “will enable us to deploy capabilities and forces, including the NATO Response Force, to where they are needed.”
Justyna Gotkowska, a program coordinator at the Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw-based think tank, said next steps may involve sending troops from the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), a contingent of some 20,000 rapid-response forces, to NATO’s eastern flank. She expects to see “more European allies involved in enhancing military presence on the eastern flank,” she said.
Gotkowska said NATO would be expected to invoke Article 5 only if Russia attacked one of its member countries directly — what Stoltenberg on Thursday referred to as a “spillover” of the conflict into nearby NATO member states, such as Hungary, Slovakia or Poland.
Biden has deployed extra military resources to Central and Eastern Europe, including sending U.S. troops to Romania and Poland, but has said that they will not fight in Ukraine. The Pentagon on Tuesday detailed a new round of deployments to Eastern Europe, sending fighter jets, attack helicopters and infantry as it bolsters security in the region.
Jennifer Hassan and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Signs adorn the porch of Henry Widener and his wife, Paula Riff, at the LaSalle Park Apartments in Chillum, Md. The two helped organize a rent strike among tenants. (Amanda Voisard/The Washington Post)
By Anu Narayanswamy
Kyle Swenson
The federal government for the first time Thursday released data on how it spent billions of rent relief dollars, offering a detailed snapshot of who tapped aid to remain in their homes in the middle of the pandemic’s economic chaos.
In 2021, 80 percent of the money distributed by the Emergency Rental Assistance Program went to low-income households, according to new data released Thursday by the Treasury Department. There were 3.8 million payments made to eligible households last year.
Of the program’s available $46.5 billion, $20.6 billion was spent last year. The remaining funds have been already been obligated — for example, allocated to a pending application from a renter — or have not yet been spent by local jurisdictions, while a portion will be paid out by Treasury to local governments as they spend down their fundings, according to an agency spokesman.
The new data also breaks down the number of applicants for money by race, ethnicity and gender. While the demographic breakdown is available only for about 67 percent of the households, it gives a snapshot of how this money was distributed.
Last year, forty-two percent of the primary applicants self-identified as Black, while 20 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino. A large proportion — some 65 percent — of the primary applicants receiving the aid money identified as women, a Washington Post analysis of the new data shows.
“The fact that we’re seeing in the data really significant access by very low-income people, by people of color, is a reflection of the fact that Treasury created a clear set of guidelines upfront and then encouraged grantees to adopt promising practices,” said Noel Poyo, Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary for community economic development.
Poyo added: “You don’t reach very low-income people and communities of color by accident, because it’s actually harder to reach people who have been most impacted by the pandemic and that tend to face the most barriers to access.”
Evictions are about to restart as tenants wait on billions in unspent rental aid
Designed as a national pool of money for renters struggling to stay in their homes throughout the course of the pandemic, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program was funded through two relief packages passed in Congress in December 2020 and March 2021.
The program initially faced criticism over slow rollout. The program funneled money directly to local jurisdictions. Some local governments were able to quickly establish systems for processing applications. Others struggled with backlog and delays. A Post analysis showed that six months after the first program was approved by President Donald Trump in December 2020, only 12 percent of the initial $25 billion had reached renters.
The difficulties involved in dealing with hundreds of local jurisdictions — many with nuanced reporting and implementation processes for the program — hampered the efforts to capture of clear picture of who was receiving the money nationally until now.
Reporting is mandated in the statute, but the department acknowledged they have been stymied by many grantees of this program having little to no infrastructure to manage the millions of dollars which had to be distributed.
The department acknowledged this contributed challenges they have had in producing a more comprehensive look at the distribution and making it available publicly till now. The department will continue to monitor the data coming in, increasing the detailed portrait of who has used the program.
“There’s a lot of people who still have need, and that’s why we’ve still got our nose to the grindstone, but this is a significant indicator of progress,” Poyo said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Flares burn on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota on Oct. 27, 2021. Over much of the last decade, oil and gas operators in Texas and a dozen other U.S. states have flared, or burned off, at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. (Isaac Stone Simonelli/The Howard Center for Investigation via AP) (Uncredited/The Howard Center for Investigation)
By the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism | AP
AUSTIN, Texas — Wayne Christian wanted to brag, he said, rocking in his burgundy leather chair atop the dais of the powerful Railroad Commission of Texas. Colleagues and staff were doing “a darn good job,” and people who “gripe about the environmental issues” were misinformed. | null | null | null | null | null |
117th Congress: Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio)
Bipartisan lawmakers have called for new sanctions against Russia in response to its multipronged attack against Ukraine. On Thursday, March 3 at 10:00 a.m. ET, join Washington Post Live for a conversation with Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, about how the United States and Congress should respond.
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) | null | null | null | null | null |
‘She’s not afraid’: Ukrainians in London speak of their loved ones back hom...
‘She is not afraid’: Ukrainians in London speak to their loved ones back home
A woman stands at the entrance to a bomb shelter at a school in Mykolaivka, eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 20. (Mstyslav Chernov/AP)
Asked how she felt about Russia launching a series of attacks on Ukraine early Thursday, the 35-year-old, who asked for her full name not to be used to protect family, and who had left the country when she was 7 years old, said she was scared. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Biden on Wednesday night got the news that no president wants: An antagonistic foreign power had decided to formally attack a U.S. ally militarily.
What awaits Biden is a series of difficult choices, even as the United States itself isn’t going to war. He must balance Americans’ lack of desire to get involved in the crisis with the geopolitical realities of what a Russian takeover of Ukraine would mean. What also must be balanced: combating perceptions of a weak Biden foreign policy to this point — about 4 in 10 Americans approve of his record on that issue after a chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal last summer — while accounting for Americans’ lack of appetite for disruption in their personal lives, particularly in connection with gas prices and inflation.
One thing we know so far is that Americans don’t want to go to war, and Biden has made it abundantly clear that we won’t be doing so in Ukraine. A poll released Wednesday showed that only one-quarter of Americans want the United States to take on a major role in the conflict. White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated the same day, “We are not going to be in a war with Russia or putting military troops on the ground in Ukraine fighting Russia.”
Another poll showed that 69 percent of Americans supported additional sanctions on Russia. But when it was noted that such sanctions would possibly and presumably lead to rises in fuel and gas prices, support for them dropped to about half.
Gas prices have been a thorn in Biden’s side, both because of the direct impact they have an Americans’ perception of the economy and because of the historic inflation they have contributed to. In that way, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could scarcely have come at a worse time on the domestic political front. While presidents have very limited control over gas prices, as many as 6 in 10 Americans have blamed Biden in some measure for those rising prices.
Psaki was asked Wednesday about gas prices that had risen to around $5 per gallon in one of the most expensive states, California, and she said the administration was looking at all options to stem a further increase. But she again emphasized there will be costs.
Leveling with the country about that emerging reality is one thing; getting them to buy into accepting those costs is another matter entirely. And as Washington Post reporter Philip Bump wrote this morning, that’s hardly a given — especially with high-profile factions on the right rationalizing what Putin is doing and effectively arguing that the United States has no interest in what’s happening in Ukraine. That view doesn’t yet permeate the right, but it’s peeking through at a moment in which people are beginning to pay attention to the issue in earnest. And more establishment-oriented Republicans don’t seem to have any appetite to combat it, beyond stating their own opposing views.
We’ve seen how that’s worked out for them on myriad other issues. The easy and readily available argument for Biden critics will be to blame him if and when high inflation and gas prices climb higher. Some analysts have suggested an energy shock caused by the Russia-Ukraine crisis could shave one percentage point off the gross domestic product and send the annual inflation rate from 7.5 percent up to 10 percent — the highest in more than 40 years — or higher. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that Russian invasion forces had taken the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the scene of a 1986 meltdown that sent a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe and left a no-man’s land of contaminated soil and other fallout, which remains dangerous
“The Chernobyl zone — the exclusion zone — and all installations of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have been taken under control of Russian armed groups,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in a televised statement, adding that no casualties had been confirmed there yet.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had previously announced that fighting over the area had begun.
There was no immediate way to confirm what Russian forces are doing in the zone, located about 80 miles north of Kyiv and just 12 miles from the border with Belarus. Russia massed forces in Belarus in the weeks leading up to Thursday’s attack on Ukraine.
In the decades since the accident, studies showed that radiation from the Chernobyl accident led to thyroid conditions, particularly in children, as well as cancer. The United Nations estimated that at least 4,000 may have died as a result of exposure to radiation.
The Chernobyl zone, one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the world, has remained closed since 1986, though a small number of people still live in the area — mostly elderly Ukrainians who refused to evacuate or who quietly resettled there later.
A concrete shelter was built in 1986 to prevent the release of about 220 tons of highly radioactive material. A new and safer structure was completed over the site in 2017, and operation was handed over to Ukrainian authorities in 2020. The structure is “strong enough to withstand a tornado,” according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It was designed to last at least 100 years and built to withstand temperatures ranging between minus-45 degrees and 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
A Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said Russian forces invading from Belarus were battling Ukrainian national guardsmen, who were “fighting hard” to protect storage facilities for “unsafe nuclear radioactive waste.”
His account could not immediately be confirmed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Fox News host Tucker Carlson often echoes Russian president Vladimir Putin's claim that Ukraine is not a democracy. (Screenshot via YouTube/ and Screenshot via YouTube/Fox News/Screenshot via YouTube/Fox News)
“You can’t say it enough, Ukraine is not a democracy … In American terms, you would call Ukraine a tyranny.”
Carlson has been channeling many of Russian Vladimir Putin’s arguments for invading Ukraine, including that Ukraine is not a democracy. Putin has asserted that the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych — what Putin labels a coup d’etat — “did not bring Ukraine any closer to democracy and progress.” He stressed the role of oligarchs and attacks on political opponents and media outlets.
“Ukraine, to be technical, is not a democracy,” Carlson said. “Democracies don’t arrest political opponents and they don’t shut down opposition media, both of Ukraine has done. And by the way, Ukraine is a pure client state of the United States State Department — again, that’s fine. We are not made about that, go ahead and run Ukraine if you think you can do a better job than Ukraine is. Just don’t tell us it’s a democracy.”
To some extent, whether Ukraine is a democracy is a matter of opinion, so we will not offer a Pinocchio rating. But Carlson — who has expressed admiration for Hungarian President Viktor Orban and his crackdown on civil liberties — is stacking the deck against Ukraine. It is a fledging democracy, with significant growing pains, largely the result of Russian pressure and interference in its affairs. It is certainly not “a tyranny.”
Ukraine has many aspects of a democracy. The president, who is head of state and commander in chief, is chosen by a popular election. The legislature has a mix of single-seat and proportional representation. The prime minister who is chosen through a legislative majority and is head of government. The Supreme Court is appointed by the president upon nomination by the Supreme Council of Justice.
But what’s on paper is not necessarily the same as what happens in practice. The constitution, for instance, guarantees the right to peaceful assembly but there is no law that specifically provides for freedom of assembly.
Zelensky has been engaged in a bitter political feud with the man he defeated in a landslide in the 2019 election, Petro O. Poroshenko. Prosecutors have sought to arrest Poroshenko on charges of treason and supporting terrorism, but a court in January said he could await trial while released on his own recognizance. Poroshenko had been accused of facilitating coal purchases for government enterprises from mines under the control of Moscow-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine, helping finance the militants. He says the charges are politically motivated.
Freedom House, a nonpartisan think tank which ranks democracies, has labeled Ukraine “a transitional or hybrid regime” in one recent report and “partly free” in a second report.
Hungary, Carlson’s fave, is also listed as a “transitional or hybrid regime” and does not rank much higher than Ukraine. Ukraine’s overall Freedom score, moreover, is higher than Mexico and Indonesia, two countries often labeled democracies. | null | null | null | null | null |
Demonstrators gathered Sunday at the White House to protest the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine. (Kenny Holston/Getty Images)
Dozens of demonstrators converged outside the Russian Embassy early Thursday morning as Russia began its military assault on their home nation — a precursor to a larger demonstration planned outside the White House this afternoon.
“I was in shock, and we we very much afraid,” said Nadiya Shaporynska, who was one of the demonstration’s organizers and is from the Ukrainian city Dnipro, in an interview Thursday. “I had the feeling that we should do something. We came to Russia’s embassy to show our protest and to say, ‘Hands off Ukraine. Stop the war in Ukraine.’”
Later in the morning, after the demonstration died down, police made at least one arrest outside the embassy. A D.C. police spokesman said officers Thursday morning saw a woman trying to spray-paint something on a sidewalk outside the embassy and disrupted her activity. Police could not confirm what was spray-painted, though eyewitnesses at the scene said the word “murder” had been painted in red. Around noon workers already were pressure-washing the graffiti away.
The police spokesman said members of the U.S. Secret Service patrol, which handles security outside the foreign embassies in D.C., took the woman into custody for destruction of property. The identity of the woman was not immediately released pending charges being filed. A spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service did not immediately comment.
Russia launched the assault on Ukraine from multiple directions early Thursday morning, with Russian President Vladimir Putin undeterred by world condemnation of the attack and sanctions that the United States and European allies levied this week.
Seeing reports of explosions, Shaporynska and her husband called their parents, who still live in Ukraine, fearing for their safety. They said people were emptying the shelves at grocery stores, rushing to the banks to withdraw money. | null | null | null | null | null |
Karen Soverino, Postal Service employee
Karen Soverino, 71, a surveillance program specialist for the independent counsel’s office of the chief postal inspector, died Jan. 21 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. The cause was leukemia, said a brother, Harry McWreath.
Ms. Soverino, an Arlington resident, was born Karen McWreath to an American father and Austrian mother in Munich and grew up in the Washington area. She worked 30 years for the Postal Service and retired in 2007.
Ali Moghtader, otolaryngologist
Ali Moghtader, 86, an otolaryngologist who practiced in Woodbridge, Va., from 1966 to 2012, died Jan. 18 at his home in Falls Church. The cause was complications from dementia, said a daughter, Michelle Moghtader.
Dr. Moghtader was born in Kermanshah, Iran. His practice included head and neck surgery and facial plastic surgery. He was former chief of the medical staff of Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge (now Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center) and president of the Prince William County Medical Society.
Sophia LeSane, volunteer poll worker
Sophia LeSane, 87, a District homemaker who was a volunteer poll worker during elections, died Jan. 8 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was complications from covid-19 and pneumonia, said a son, Timothy LeSane.
Mrs. LeSane was born Sophia Minnick in Saluda, S.C., and had lived in Washington since 1948.
Beulah Key, NOAA aide
Beulah Key, 87, a retired assistant in a seismographic unit within the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration that measures earthquake activity, died Jan. 9 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was complications from heart ailments, said a daughter-in-law, Caecilia Key.
Mrs. Key was born Beulah Bryant and was a native and lifelong resident of Washington. She worked 30 years for the Commerce Department before retiring in 1994.
Victoria ‘Vicki’ Dixon, Interior Dept. aide
Victoria “Vicki” Dixon, 70, a senior external affairs specialist in the office of the Secretary of the Interior who retired in 2016 after 27 years with the agency, died Jan. 8 in Naples, Fla. The cause was a stroke, said a family spokesperson, Joan Moody.
She was born Victoria Sands in Shelbyville, Ill. A former resident of Arlington, Va., she moved to Naples in 2021. | null | null | null | null | null |
(iStock) (Simon Ingate/iStock)
New research shows MIS-C has also occurred in a very small number of individuals who had been vaccinated. In a study published Tuesday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, CDC researchers found 21 cases of MIS-C out of more than 21 million individuals ages 12 to 20 — or about one per million — who had received at least one dose of the vaccine between December 2020 through August 2021. All but six of the 21 individuals showed evidence that they were previously infected with covid-19, which has been linked with MIS-C cases. The authors stressed they could not determine if vaccination contributed to the illness in those cases.
“The vaccine is safe, and the data, if anything, should make parents feel better about getting it,” said Sophie Katz, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Katz said the data shows that the chances of a child developing MIS-C after the coronavirus vaccine is about one in a million. “Your child is twice as likely to get struck by lightning than to get MIS-C after the vaccine,” she said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Mobile voting would create more problems than it solves
Election volunteer James Morris puts up signs at the Marie Reed Recreation Center in D.C. in 2018. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
I was distressed to read in the Feb. 21 Metro article “D.C. bill calls for mobile voting” that most D.C. Council members have now co-sponsored legislation to authorize voting by mobile phone. No voting system linked to the Internet can provide adequate security from sophisticated hacking, manipulation or a host of potential technical failures.
After a career as an expert on elections for the United Nations and other organizations, I came away convinced that paper ballots are the best guarantee of voting integrity and of a transparent, verifiable process that ensures public confidence in an election. Though it’s a laudable goal to make voting more accessible, voting by mobile phone would open a Pandora’s box of future troubles for D.C.’s elections.
Peter Eicher, Washington | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A reality check on Ukraine
A Russian army column near the border with Ukraine. (For The Washington Post/FTWP)
The Biden administration’s uncertain initial reaction as to whether Russia’s troop movement into eastern Ukraine constitutes an “invasion” invites a reality check [“White House wrestles with what counts as an ‘invasion,’ ” front page, Feb. 22]. The United States and Russia are engaged in a dance over the partition of Ukraine and the balance of power in Eastern Europe. President Biden’s earlier statement that the United States would respond to an impending invasion by imposing economic sanctions, not sending in troops, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the green light by lowering the risk of an ensuing war. The Russian leader now can “negotiate” a stepwise expansion of the motherland by force, threat or/and diplomacy.
Measured partition carries some benefits for the United States, including a more cohesive and defensible NATO and a hyper-focus on the precarity of Europe’s growing dependence on Russian energy. In the future, Western threats to stop the flow of gas could be a pretext for Russian interference and expansion into countries that the pipelines cross, including the remnants of Ukraine.
The extent of Western sanctions will illuminate the evolving balance of power. Foor how long and to what degree will the flow of gas be affected, and who will suffer? At what point should the West cancel, or even disable, the new gas pipeline to Germany? Which sanctions are enforceable and might affect Russian policy and behavior? And how much of the music accompanying the strategic dance is hot air?
Karl Polzer, Falls Church | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: We haven’t reached the end yet
A campaign hat for former president Donald Trump sits on the dashboard of a vehicle that was part of the Lansing Freedom Convoy, which drove past the Michigan Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
The Feb. 21 editorial “Not much to celebrate” asked, “Will Donald Trump’s call to violent action, which culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, become the template for the conduct of future candidates?” “Culmination” means conclusion, but unfortunately, it is clear we haven’t seen the conclusion. He continues to foment division. He continues to lie. He continues to encourage his “core” to question the validity of the last election.
The painful divides in our country, which he encourages, should have us all worried about what might be or where the country will be when we reach “the conclusion” (the results) of his actions.
Joyce Siegel, North Bethesda | null | null | null | null | null |
If you’ve ever been to Utqiagvik, Alaska, formerly known as Barrow, odds are you weren’t expecting a tropical paradise. The nation’s northernmost town, Utqiagvik is home to roughly 4,700 people and is situated on Alaska’s North Slope, about 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Winters are long, brutally cold and unforgiving — not to mention the fact that “polar night” brings 66 straight days of darkness in Utqiagvik. Blizzards are routine and happen every couple of weeks during the cold season.
A winter storm warning is issued when snow or mixed precipitation accumulates to a certain threshold. In parts of the Northeast, for example, the threshold is six or more inches in a 12-hour period, or eight inches in a 24-hour window. In south Florida, 0.5 inches of snow would trigger the issuance of warnings.
Blizzard warnings involve snow, but the snow doesn’t have to be falling — there just has to be enough “blowing or drifting snow” to limit visibilities to a quarter mile or below for three consecutive hours. That comes with sustained winds or frequent gusts over 35 mph.
Utqiagvik only averages 5.39 inches of precipitation annually. Technically speaking, any place that sees fewer than 10 inches is classified as a desert. Deserts don’t have to feature sand, hot temperatures or cactuses. In fact, polar deserts are often drier than their mid-latitude counterparts.
We can review a plot showing roughly five years’ worth of data from January 2017 to January 2022. It depicts the number of blizzard warnings issued by every National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in the country.
During that window, the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, which forecasts for Utqiagvik, issued a total of 144 blizzard warnings for its CWA, or County Warning Area. The most issued for any CWA in the Lower 48 during that same time frame was two dozen, which came from the Weather Service in Grand Forks, N.D.
Of course, you’re never going to wind up with a four-foot snowfall in Utqiagvik. If you’re looking for blizzard conditions and extreme snow, try the Sierra Nevada or east of Lakes Erie or Ontario. Southeast New England tends to get whopper snowstorms too, as was the case just a few weeks ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
The report’s authors at Treasury do not sound optimistic that significant change will come at either the federal or state levels. “As of 2017, alcohol companies reported 303 lobbyists in Washington D.C. and spent nearly $12 million on state-level lobbying,” the report said, observing, “Lobbying is a feature of our political system.”
And three-tier distribution is a fixture of our marketplace. | null | null | null | null | null |
And so she spent the day of Germany’s unconditional surrender, in May 1945, celebrating with rapturous crowds, as well as British, American and other Allied servicemen, in the streets of London. One of her great regrets, she said, was not witnessing the liberation of her hometown of Rumes by the U.S. 2nd Armored Division on Sept. 2, 1944, when American soldiers were showered with flowers by her Comet Line comrades.
Henriette Lucie Hanotte was born in Sépeaux, France, on Aug. 10, 1920, to a Belgian veteran of World War I and his French wife. The family moved to Rumes when Henriette was still a baby. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech Thursday announcing broad attacks on Ukraine, said the purpose of the “military operation” was to “denazify” the country — the leader of which, President Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and had family members die in the Holocaust.
Calls for “denazification” are geared toward explaining the war to Russians, former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul said on MSNBC on Wednesday.
“There is a history of some Ukrainians fighting on the Nazi side … but a very small group,” McFaul said shortly after Putin authorized the attack. Putin “is pulling on that thread from history to say that what you had was a neo-Nazi usurpation of power [in Ukraine] in 2014.”
“Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did,” Zelensky tweeted. “As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history. Russia has embarked on a path of evil.”
Putin has long claimed that Ukraine is historically Russian. He has tried to control the country by supporting pro-Russian governments.
But that narrative took a beating in February 2014, when massive pro-democracy protests in Ukraine ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. In response, Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and backed a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
The military operation’s “goal is to protect the people that are subjected to abuse, genocide from the Kyiv regime for eight years, and to this end we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and put to justice those that committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful people, including Russian nationals,” Putin said in a Wednesday television address, according to Russia’s state news agency.
Though this rhetoric, critics say, Putin is exploiting the trauma of World War II and the Holocaust and twisting history for his own interests.
Ukraine’s state-run Twitter account, which has been waging an online meme war against Russia, on Thursday tweeted an image of what appeared to be a tall Adolf Hitler caressing the face of a smaller Putin. | null | null | null | null | null |
Novak Djokovic’s reign as the No. 1 player is coming to an end. (Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press)
Jiri Vesely, a tournament qualifier from the Czech Republic, beat Djokovic, 6-4 7-6 (7-4), in a match that lasted 1 hour 59 minutes in the Dubai Tennis Championships. Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, who lost to Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final, will be the No. 1 player when the Association of Tennis Professionals releases its new rankings next week.
“It’s great for tennis to have somebody new at world number one again,” Vesely said. “Tennis needs, of course, new number ones. A new generation is coming through. I think it’s just great.”
The 26-year-old Medvedev, the 2021 U.S. Open winner who was also the Australian Open runner-up in 2021, will become the 27th man to reach No. 1 and the first other than Djokovic, Roger Federer, Nadal or Andy Murray since Feb. 1, 2004. Djokovic, who has been No. 1 since Feb. 3, 2020, has spent 361 total weeks atop the rankings during his career, the most among male players since computerized rankings began in 1973.
Djokovic remains unvaccinated and has no plans to change that even if it jeopardizes his ability to enter tournaments, including the French Open and Wimbledon. He spoke this week about next month’s tournament in Indian Wells, Calif.
“I was never against vaccination,” Djokovic said. “I understand that globally, everyone is trying to put a big effort into handling this virus … but I’ve always represented and always supported the freedom to choose what you put into your body, and for me that is essential.”
It’s a belief that has come at a cost. Nadal’s victory in Australia broke what had been a tie with Djokovic and Federer for most career Grand Slam men’s singles championships, and Djokovic is prepared to miss other Grand Slam tournaments if vaccination requirements force him to do so.
And if that means missing the French Open, the next Grand Slam, he repeated: “That is the price that I am willing to pay.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Havana Rose Liu, left, in “No Exit.” (Kirsty Griffin/20th Century Studios)
A mysterious man (Andy Garcia) hires a struggling writer (Emory Cohen) to compose his biography in “Big Gold Brick,” the darkly comic feature debut of filmmaker Brian Pestos. According to Slant magazine, the writer-director’s flair for “go-for-broke zaniness transmutes what might otherwise have been a lump of self-indulgent cliches into gold.” Also starring Oscar Isaac, Megan Fox and Lucy Hale. Unrated. Available on demand. 132 minutes.
Based on a 2014 memoir, the biopic “Creation Stories” follows the rise and fall of Creation Records founder Alan McGee (Ewen Bremner of “Trainspotting”), from his impoverished upbringing in Glasgow to the discovery of the band Oasis. According to the New Musical Express, the entertaining narrative “jumps back and forth through time while weaving in the truly bizarre cast of characters that McGee encountered during his roller-coaster journey through ’80s and ’90s pop culture and politics.” The film was executive-produced by Danny Boyle and co-written by Irvine Welsh, who previously collaborated with Bremner on “Trainspotting” and its 2017 sequel. Unrated. Available on demand. 115 minutes.
Danny Boyle Q&A: The ‘Trainspotting’ junkies are back, but it’s more than drugs that are eating at them
Naomi Watts stars in “The Desperate Hour,” a thriller, unfolding in real time, about a mother who learns that an active shooter has attacked her son’s school. PG-13. Available on demand. Contains mature thematic material and some strong language.
Tom Berenger stars in “Desperate Riders,” a western thriller centering on the attempted rescue of a woman (Victoria Pratt) who has been kidnapped by an outlaw (country singer Trace Adkins) — but who may or may not want to be rescued. PG-13. Available on demand. Contains violence, including a brief sexual assault. 90 minutes.
“Gasoline Alley” is a thriller about two detectives (Bruce Willis and Luke Wilson) in pursuit of an ex-con (Devon Sawa) who is trying to clear his name after being accused of a murder. R. Available on Netflix. Contains violence, drug use, coarse language throughout and some sexual situations. 97 minutes.
“I’ll Find You” tells the story of star-crossed lovers (Adelaide Clemens and Leo Suter) whose romance is threatened by the tumult of World War II. Also starring Stellan Skarsgard, Connie Nielsen and Stephen Dorff. Unrated. Available on demand. 116 minutes.
The first installment of Tyler Perry’s popular “Madea” comedy franchise to appear on Netflix, “A Madea Homecoming” centers on the titular outspoken matriarch (Perry) and her attempt to keep family drama from spoiling her great-grandson’s college graduation celebration. TV-MA. Available on Netflix. 107 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
I quit breastfeeding to take ADHD meds. Here’s why I’m glad I did.
(iStock/Stock)
By Rebecca Phillips Epstein
“How committed are you to breastfeeding?”
I stared back at my psychiatrist on the Zoom screen.
It was June 2020, and while everyone else was figuring out what to do with all that extra sourdough starter, I was trying to figure out how it took so long to realize that I have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
According to my psychiatrist, I am the “textbook example of how ADHD gets missed in high-achieving girls,” and over the years, I’d become so adept at masking my symptoms that no one but me ever suspected there was a problem. My diagnosis at age 35 was an enormous relief, and I hoped that medication would give me a shot at finally feeling normal.
But if I wanted to keep nursing my 6-month-old baby, “normal” might have to wait.
What it’s like parenting with ADHD symptoms: ‘It felt like my head was going to explode’
There are no controlled studies of stimulants during pregnancy and lactation, my psychiatrist explained, so while there’s no evidence that they’re harmful, there’s no proof that they’re safe, either. Thomas Hale, head of the InfantRisk Center at Texas Tech University, places stimulants in the category of drugs that should be taken “only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the infant.”
As I understood it, I had two options: I could quit breastfeeding and take medication, or continue breastfeeding and delay treatment. Neither was ideal. On one hand, I’d made it this far without meds, so what was another six months? On the other, hadn’t I suffered enough?
Later that day, after my Google searches for “breastfeeding adderall baby side effects terrible mother?” came up empty, I did what any responsible millennial parent would do: I emailed Emily Oster for help. Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University, and her books offer a data-driven approach to pregnancy and parenting that I find both liberating and deeply reassuring. If there was more evidence to consider, hopefully she could help me find it.
She wrote back, directing me to a 2015 paper on the use of methylphenidate (a.k.a. Ritalin) in breastfeeding patients with narcolepsy. The researchers found that the relative infant dose, which estimates drug exposure in breast milk relative to the parent’s dose, was less than 1 percent, with no adverse reactions reported in the babies. (A relative infant dose of under 10 percent is generally considered acceptable.) While that wasn’t much to go on, Oster said, “There’s no reason to think there’s a problem.”
With the green light from my son’s pediatrician, my psychiatrist prescribed an immediate-release stimulant I could try on an “as-needed” basis. I would nurse and pump beforehand, and bottle feed while the meds were in my system. She also recommended I “pump and dump” after each dose to further minimize exposure. This is what pediatrician Ann Kellams would call “creative problem solving.” Kellams is the president of the Board of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia. “You take the information you have, and then you figure out what will work best, and minimize the risk as much as possible for you to get to the place you feel comfortable.”
A few days later, I stood in my kitchen, staring down at a small blue pill in the palm of my hand. A wave of guilt washed over me. Was I doing the right thing? Would it even make a difference?
Turns out, the difference was enormous. When the meds kicked in, it felt like someone had slipped a pair of noise-canceling headphones onto my brain. I had no idea how loud it was in there until suddenly it was quiet. I knew I couldn’t go back to the way things were before. I also knew that spending most of those clearheaded hours attached to a pump was a waste of time — and milk.
I managed to keep up the routine for a few more weeks, until I found myself on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., stuck inside pumping five to six times a day only to produce about as many ounces of “clean” milk, and missing out on all the fun with my kids. As my supply and my resolve dwindled in equal measure, I was ready to be done. So I hung up my nursing bras for good, and I’ve never once regretted it.
Rethinking the risk-benefit analysis
In situations like mine, the “risk-benefit analysis” paradigm is fundamentally flawed. By presuming that the needs of parent and child are in opposition, it fails to account for the risks of untreated ADHD, or the needs of other children in the family unit, or the benefits of formula feeding (which, I discovered, are many). “I don’t think of it as a risk-benefit analysis,” says Vivien Burt, a clinical psychiatrist in Los Angeles who specializes in maternal mental health. “I think of it more as a risk-risk evaluation.” Instead of asking only about the risks to an infant, she says, we should be asking, “What are the risks if a mother is not on her medication?”
Untreated postpartum anxiety and depression can lead to a variety of behavioral issues in their children, so it stands to reason that ADHD in parents, if not well managed, might have negative consequences for kids, as well. “Babies’ development depends on having parents who can tune in to them,” says Kellams. A distracted, disorganized or easily overwhelmed parent can find it difficult to connect with and care for young children, she says.
Further complicating the issue is that some people — including some doctors — still don’t see ADHD as a real diagnosis, even though it’s one that affects millions of people. “It’s only been for about 25 or 30 years that people have admitted that ADHD even occurs in adults,” explains James McGough, co-director of the ADHD Clinic at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a professor of clinical psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Many ADHD symptoms may not seem like a big deal, which makes the disorder hard to diagnose and easy to dismiss.
Activists with ADHD push for a world more friendly to those with the disorder
For example, I can be absent-minded and easily distracted, which sounds cute when I’m telling a story about the time I lost my house keys and later found them in the refrigerator. Less cute? The times (yes, plural) I forgot to buckle my newborn into his car seat before backing out of the driveway. Surely that’s a much more serious risk than trace amounts of medication in my breast milk.
Treatment for ADHD can be life-changing, says McGough, but he stressed that medication is not the only effective option: “Cognitive behavioral therapy is a skill-based, time-limited intervention of 10 to 15 weeks that really has dramatic benefits.” For many people, therapy and lifestyle adjustments may be enough, but I was quarantined with two young children, and I was unraveling. I needed relief, and I needed it now, not in 10 to 15 weeks.
Gathering data and making decisions
When I spoke to Oster again recently, she explained that making good decisions depends a lot on asking the right question. Rather than asking how “committed” to breastfeeding I was, she said, a better question to ask myself would have been “What are my actual options?” With all the options on the table, you then go about gathering data. “When I talk about fact-finding,” she explained, “particularly in these places where it’s a data-poor environment, you want to collect all of the information.” That includes what we know about breastfeeding in general, my experiences with and without medication, my priorities and my personal risk tolerance.
In the absence of clinical trial data, Kellams urges doctors to consult resources like LactMed, the drugs and lactation database, and the reference manual “Hale’s Medications & Mothers’ Milk,” both of which compile the most recent anecdotal and case-based published reports on medication safety and lactation. “Everyone deserves to get all of that information,” Kellams says, “so they can arrive at the plan that’s best for them.”
So did I have to give up breastfeeding? Maybe not. But I can unequivocally say that taking medication for my ADHD has helped me be a better partner to my husband and a better mother to my children. Switching to formula gave me and my doctor the flexibility to find the right medication without worrying about putting my baby at risk. It also gave me more freedom to choose how I spent my time — including with my pandemic-scarred 5-year-old, who was gearing up for a year in Zoom kindergarten.
In the end, prioritizing my own mental health wasn’t selfish — it was the best parenting decision I’ve ever made. Not because it was the “right” thing to do, or even the only thing to do, but because it was absolutely the right choice for my family.
Rebecca Phillips Epstein is a screenwriter and essayist based in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @thephillistein. | null | null | null | null | null |
Trendy IV vitamin infusions don’t work — and might be unsafe. Experts explain why.
IV infusions can be administered in “drip bars” or at home. (iStock)
In the past few years, intravenous vitamin treatments have exploded in popularity. Rundown customers are finding them as spalike “drip bars,” or are booking house calls by concierge services. In either case, after an initial consultation, they’ll be settled in a comfy chair with an IV line pumping the intravenous vitamin cocktail of their choice into their veins.
More recently, concentrated vitamin infusions have been popularized by celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen and Gwyneth Paltrow. The dubious claims are that they can cure hangovers, boost energy, “recharge your body’s defenses” or “turn back the hands of time.” Some clinics go further by falsely saying that IV therapy can alleviate symptoms of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and various neurodegenerative disorders.
Vitamin supplementation is not inherently harmful and can be lifesaving for babies born prematurely or people with known deficiencies. But our bodies need them in only trace amounts — often just a few milligrams — which can be easily attained from a balanced diet. Water-soluble vitamins — i.e., vitamin C and the B-vitamin family — are unable to be stored in our bodies and even slight excesses will come out in our urine. The fat-soluble vitamins — i.e., vitamins A, D, E and K — can be stored in our liver, fatty tissues, and muscles, and can be dangerous in excess.
Experts say no. Here’s why.
Take the common claim that vitamin C supplements prevent us from coming down with colds and other infections. “Large-scale trials have repeatedly shown that there is no evidence to support this,” said Ariel Igal, a professor at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University. Studies looking at high-dose vitamin C supplementation in alleviating covid-19 symptoms have also come out empty-handed.
So where does this mind-set come from? “Mostly from deficiency studies,” Igal said. “There is some literature showing associations between vitamin C deficiency and greater susceptibility to illness. People have extrapolated these data to believe that the opposite must also be true. But so far, that just hasn’t been the case.”
“People need to realize that these massive doses are not stored in your body for prolonged immunity,” Igal said. “Your body is just like a gas tank. When you pump in more than the tank can hold, it doesn’t make the car work any better or faster — the extra gas just leaks out.”
Claims that drips dispensing the vitamin B3-associated molecule NAD+ can fight again are similarly bogus. While there is some evidence that low NAD+ levels may be implicated in brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease, there are no clinical trials that convincingly show that the opposite is also true — i.e., that repleting NAD+ can put the brakes on our naturally occurring aging processes. This comes as no surprise because NAD+ is only one of hundreds of molecules impacted in aging and supplementing one won’t budge the others.
“I frequently have patients who’ll say they heard from a friend about some new antioxidant, or some other mood-boosting IV supplement, and ask if I recommend it,” said Zachary Mulvihill, an integrative physician at Weill Cornell Medicine. “I don’t recommend it to anyone unless there’s a medical necessity — such as if someone has trouble with absorption from the stomach.”
Mulvihill’s typical approach involves focusing on diet and lifestyle. “You want antioxidants? Have a cup of blueberries. You want glutathione? Have cruciferous vegetables like kale and broccoli. There’s a lot we can do more naturally that can improve your health and won’t require sticking a needle in you,” he said.
Drip bars also tout their products’ ability to improve heart disease — the leading cause of death in America. But Tracy K. Paul, a preventive cardiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, is skeptical. “There is no strong evidence in peer-reviewed literature that antioxidant, vitamin C, selenium and all these infusions are successful in preventing the development or worsening of heart disease,” she said.
The Federal Trade Commission is aware of IV clinics’ deceptive marketing. In 2018, it took its first action against such businesses, by charging a Texas-based IV drip company for making false claims about treating serious illnesses with unproven infusion cocktails. When clinics started advertising that their immunity-boosting cocktails could protect against infection from covid 19, the FTC issued warnings about those claims, as well.
But what about people who swear by the benefits of IV hydration? “The placebo effect can do wonders for your mind,” Igal said. “If you’re dehydrated and getting a saline drip, then sure, you’re going to feel better.”
Current regulations allow only a select group of health-care providers to give IV infusions. This includes medical doctors, RNs, PAs, NPs, and licensed practical nurses (LPN) with special certification, making it important for drip bar customers to check the company’s licensing. In 2015, the Florida Department of Health took action against a number of IV clinics where nonlicensed personnel were giving IV treatments.
Another huge concern is sanitation of the area where the IV cocktails are mixed. “We have absolutely no idea if these infusion suites are using sterile compounding and storage techniques before putting it into people’s veins,” said Adina Hirsch, a board-certified nutrition support pharmacist in Atlanta specializing in IV nutrition.
“There are so many things happening behind the scenes in these unregulated businesses that the FDA is only now starting to find out about,” Hirsch said. “I just hope people will maintain caution before buying into these things.”
“We are experiencing critical supply shortages to a point where even neonates in ICUs whose lives depend solely on IV nutrition are unable to get multivitamin products,” Hirsch said. “But irrespective of whether the patient is a neonate, kid or an adult, diversion of ingredients has unfortunately forced many health care providers to ration supplies.”
“Pandemic-related shortages have really pushed us over the edge,” Hirsch said. “For some products — such as multivitamin formulations — we are down to only one manufacturer for the entire country’s needs. This is completely unsustainable, and the impact on our most vulnerable patient populations is profound.”
Lala Tanmoy Das is an MD-PhD student in New York City doing research in molecular cardiology. Follow him on Twitter @TanmoyDasLala | null | null | null | null | null |
An abandoned shop is seen in the Chernobyl zone close to the Ukraine-Belarus border crossing Feb. 13 in Vilcha, Ukraine. (Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images)
There was no immediate way to confirm what Russian forces were doing in the zone, located about 80 miles north of Kyiv and 12 miles from the border with Belarus. Russia massed forces in Belarus in the weeks leading up to Thursday’s attack on Ukraine.
In April 1986, core explosions and fires broke out at the Chernobyl plant, then under the control of the Soviet Union. Two workers died from the explosions. Large quantities of radioactive material contaminated the surrounding land, and a nearby city was evacuated. Vast swaths of Europe were affected, and a radioactive cloud spread as far away as Norway. | null | null | null | null | null |
Smoke is seen from the Russian airstrikes in Kharkiv, Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
On Thursday, Russia launched an attack on major cities and military installations across Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians are fleeing the country; some are walking miles to the Polish border to escape Russia’s assault.
The Russian assault has hit Ukrainian towns and cities across the country. Ukrainian officials say Russian troops are closing in on Kyiv. Washington Post journalists are reporting on the ground in Ukraine. Here are their dispatches from Thursday, Feb. 24.
Video: Chaos at Kyiv train station as Ukrainians attempt to flee
By Whitney Shefte and Alexa Juliana Ard | 1:28 p.m. ET
Ukrainians walk for miles to Polish border in search of safety
By Loveday Morris | 12:26 a.m. ET
MEDYKA-SHEHYNI CROSSING, Ukraine — Carrying children on their shoulders, dragging suitcases and the little they could carry, Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s assault on their country walked for miles to border crossings with Poland on Thursday, seeking safety outside their homeland.
Lines of barely moving cars stretched at least five miles into Ukraine from the Medyka-Shehyni border point, prompting some frustrated passengers to abandon their vehicles and continue on foot. Some said they woke up to the sound of rockets and decided it was finally time to flee.
Traffic was jammed in both directions at points. One farmer, apparently irked at people fleeing the country instead of staying put, drove a tractor and trailer across the road to block cars from exiting. Some people said they would just be in Poland long enough to assess the situation. Others, especially foreign residents, questioned whether they would ever be back.
They said they were heading to countries across Europe, from Germany to France and Finland — wherever they had a network to rely on. But many said they would stay in Poland, already home to as many as 2 million Ukrainians. Officials in Warsaw have said authorities were preparing for the arrival of as many as a million Ukrainians.
Vitalii Koval, 50, who was crossing into Poland with his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 5, said he left his home in Kyiv for the western city of Lviv around 10 days ago. But after Thursday’s early-morning attack, they decided it was time to leave Ukraine.
“It’s just terrible, unbelievable,” he said, turning away to stop the tears. “It’s the 21st century. Why?”
Ivan Yurochko, 24, an engineer, was leaving on foot with nothing but a small backpack. “I didn’t have time to pack,” he said. He said he planned to stay with colleagues in a town on the border, but his mother and other family members had chosen to remain in the country.
Many people don’t have the financial means to leave, he said. “Sometimes I just have this emotional breakdown, just crying,” Yurochko said. “I don’t know if I’ll come back to Ukraine.”
By Chloe Coleman | 11:12 a.m. ET
By Mary Ilyushina | 9:40 a.m. ET
Armored Russian vehicles were seen near the Senkovka checkpoint of Ukraine's Chernigov region on Feb. 24. (The Washington Post)
Ukraine says Russian forces suffering casualties
By David L. Stern | 9:09 a.m. ET
LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Thursday that Russian forces have suffered significant losses in their attack on Ukraine.
“Tens, if not hundreds, of bodies are returning to Russia,” he said in a video message from Kyiv without disclosing evidence for the claim. He asserted that the Ukrainian army has destroyed six planes, two helicopters and five tanks.
Reznikov also urged all Ukrainians who are “ready to take up arms” to enlist in the armed forces. Authorities have simplified procedures for enlisting, he noted. “Take only your passport,” he said.
According to Ukraine’s border guard force, Russia is attacking in multiple regions. It said the border guards, along with the armed forces of Ukraine and other security and defense forces, continue to defend Ukraine.
The Border Guard Service said Russian forces invaded from many directions and fired on the border units and checkpoints with artillery and aircraft. “In particular, Russian aggression took place within the Luhansk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Kherson, Odessa regions, Zminy Island and in the JFO zone,” it said, referring to the Joint Forces Operation area in eastern Ukraine where government forces have been battling Moscow-backed separatists.
A spokesman for the Border Guards later said Russian troops have entered the Chernobyl zone.
In Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces have destroyed 74 “objects of aboveground military infrastructure” in Ukraine, including 11 airfields, three command centers and a naval base, state media reported.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, also said that “18 radio-locating stations for S-300 and Buk-M1 antiaircraft missile systems” were hit, and that a Ukrainian “combat helicopter and four Bayraktar TB2 attack drones were shot down.”
By Robyn Dixon | 7:42 a.m. ET
MOSCOW — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russian attacks on Ukraine were “a special operation,” not a war, carried out in the interests of Russia.
“Ukraine should ideally be freed, cleansed of Nazis,” Peskov said. He acknowledged that President Vladimir Putin’s move against Ukraine was “quite worrisome” for Russians.
“But as the president explained in the address to Russians, this is all truly dictated by our national interests and dictated by care for the future of our country,” he said during a daily press call with journalists.
Peskov said Russia would stop only after achieving its goals — the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine — adding that such a decision would be made by Putin.
He said Russia was not happy about Western calls for punitive sanctions but added, “Let us analyze events and consider our next moves as these problems arise.”
Several protests against the war broke out in Moscow and eight other cities. At least 26 people were arrested, including 13 in Moscow, according to rights monitor OVD-Info, which was declared a foreign agent by Russian authorities last year.
After police cordons went up around Red Square, Peskov said that there was a need for “higher vigilance and caution.”
Lines at border crossings as Ukrainians flee to Poland
MEDYKA, Poland — Lines formed at border crossings from Ukraine to Poland on Thursday as Ukrainians sought safety across the border.
He said that others who had left later were stuck on the roads. “I’m shocked,” said his wife, Oleksandra, adding that it had not sunk in yet. They planned to leave to stay with friends in Cyprus.
Ivan Yurochko, 24, was leaving on foot with nothing but a small backpack. He had left the city of Lviv at around 3 a.m. “I didn’t have time to pack,” he said. “It feels super unsafe and uncomfortable and right now just completely unknown.”
He planned to stay with colleagues in a town on the border; his mother and other family members chose to remain in Ukraine. Many people don’t have the financial means to leave, he said. “I do have an option,” he said. “Thank God.”
“Sometimes I just have this emotional breakdown, just crying,” he added. “I don’t know if I’ll come back to Ukraine.”
The Washington Post's Loveday Morris is at the Ukrainian-Polish border Feb. 24, where a steady stream of people head toward Poland as Russia attacks Ukraine. (Loveday Morris/The Washington Post)
Police will issue weapons to veterans ‘who are ready to protect Ukraine’
By Sudarsan Raghavan | 6:38 a.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — Weapons are to be issued to veterans of the police and other internal security services willing to fight Russian forces and maintain order, the country’s national police announced hours into the attack on Ukraine orchestrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The weapons, according to a statement posted on the national police’s Facebook page, will be given to those veterans “who are ready to protect Ukraine,” and the process of acquiring the weapons “will be simplified to the maximum due to the aggression” of Russia.
The issuance of weapons also “aims to strengthen the activity of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies,” the statement continued.
The weapons are expected to be handed out Thursday in Kyiv and in Kharkiv, where numerous explosions have taken place and concern is growing over Russian ground troops entering the city in the coming hours. The weapons distributions will probably also take place in other areas under pressure from Russian forces.
Police are urging citizens to report any suspicious people and objects in their areas and have set up a dedicated phone line for such reports.
Traffic stretches for miles as many flee Kyiv, others take shelter
By Siobhán O’Grady and Jennifer Hassan | 6:20 a.m. ET
KYIV — Main roads out of the Ukrainian capital were blocked with heavy traffic Thursday as people attempted to flee the capital, with ride-sharing app Uber telling its users that the service would “be available where possible” despite the threat of more explosions.
“Remember that you can cancel a trip anytime if you feel conditions are unsafe to ride,” Uber said Thursday in an email to users that advised them to follow official guidance in case of emergency.
Others tried to obtain bus and rail tickets at the city’s main train station — some to destinations they were not even familiar with — as they desperately sought safety.
Governments including those of the United States and Ireland urged their citizens in Ukraine to “shelter in place,” with the Irish Foreign Ministry instructing those there not to “move around the country in the coming hours.”
Russia’s military claims videos of civilian casualties in Ukrainian cities ‘staged’
MOSCOW — Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed Thursday that videos of civilian casualties in Ukraine during Russian attacks were “staged.”
“Their goal is to accuse Russia of supposedly indiscriminate and disproportionate strikes to intimidate the civilian population and broadcast on Western television channels,” Konashenkov said.
Russia’s military has a history of indiscriminate military strikes on civilian areas, notably in the 1994-96 war against Chechnya, when the military bombed the region’s capital, Grozny, and many towns and villages, causing massive casualties.
In the Syrian civil war, rights group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, reported that Russian airstrikes caused thousands of civilian casualties after Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in 2015 answering at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Russia’s military claimed Thursday that it was targeting military infrastructure, not civilians.
‘You need to get up, the war has started’ — voices from Kharkiv
KHARKIV, Ukraine — After the early-morning sounds of explosions on the city’s outskirts, Kharkiv residents, until now skeptical of Western claims that a Russian attack would come to their homes, turned to the tasks they had been putting off.
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, morning light on Feb. 24 brought residents to gas stations to fill up after Russian forces launched military actions. (Whitney Leaming, Lee Powell/The Washington Post)
“My boyfriend had called me right before that and said, ‘You need to get up, the war has started,’ ” said 18-year-old Kristina Nimenko. “Now we’ve come to get gas just to be ready for everything.”
“We just want peace,” she added.
“I’m upset that the government is saying nothing,” Emile said. Agniia and her daughter, Emily Grace, planned to fly on Friday morning but are unsure of what they’ll do now that airspace is closed.
Nimenko said she plans to meet family Thursday to discuss plans, but, “in any case, we will stay in Ukraine.”
“We will stay at home because we are from Ukraine,” she said.
Video: Fear and confusion in eastern Ukraine after Russian attacks
By Whitney Leaming and Erin Patrick O’Connor | 4:25 a.m. ET
Following a night of explosions in Kharkiv, a family with a 5-month-old baby wondered what they should do next, and where they could go to find safety. (Whitney Leaming, Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
Russian military says airstrikes hit Ukrainian military targets only
MOSCOW — As Moscow launched massive airstrikes on Ukraine early Thursday, Russia’s military said its armed forces were targeting military infrastructure.
The military said the civilian population and members of the military who surrendered were not being targeted, claims for which it offered no evidence.
The military made its first statement after President Vladimir Putin’s early-morning address announcing the assault, claiming that Ukraine was a threat to Russia.
“High-precision weapons disable only military infrastructure, air defense facilities, military airfields, aviation of the armed forces of Ukraine,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Russia made similar claims during its 1994-96 military operation in Chechnya when it bombed cities and villages to quash a separatist uprising.
Also on Thursday, a Russian-backed militia leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic claimed to have taken control of two Ukrainian villages, Viktorivka and Bohdanivka, south of Donetsk.
KYIV, Ukraine — By 9 a.m. Thursday, roughly four hours after launching their attack on Ukraine, Russian forces had targeted Ukrainian military sites across the Texas-size country, according to Ukraine’s defense forces.
In a second statement, the military said its air force repelled a Russian attack, shooting down five Russian aircraft and a helicopter in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine, one of the primary theaters of the spreading conflict.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported several Russian attacks far from the disputed eastern regions, including the shelling of an airfield in the northwestern city of Lutsk, fire engulfing military warehouses in a central part of the country, and the shelling of a military unit in the village of Kamenka Buzhskaya, in the western Lviv region.
Sun coming up in Kharkiv. How many people are going to be waking up horrified and scared soon? pic.twitter.com/pbseWnPCJR
Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden says Russia’s aggression against Ukraine ‘cannot go unanswered’ | null | null | null | null | null |
Grambling State University hired Art Briles as its offensive coordinator, a Grambling spokesperson confirmed Thursday, bringing the former Baylor head coach back into the college coaching ranks for the first time since he was fired by Baylor for his handling of sexual assault allegations filed against his players.
Briles joins the staff of former Cleveland Browns coach Hue Jackson, who took over the Grambling program in December. Offensive coordinator Ted White left the Tigers this month to become the quarterbacks coach for the Houston Texans.
Briles was fired by Baylor in May 2016 after an external investigation into accusations of sexual assault found that school and football program administrators failed to adequately handle those allegations.
A “finding of fact” report by the law firm Pepper Hamilton found that “in some cases, the University failed to take action to identify and eliminate a potential hostile environment, prevent its recurrence, or address its effects for individual complainants or the broader campus community.” The report found that 17 women reported incidents of sexual assault or sexual violence involving 19 football players, and that Briles was informed of at least one of them but failed to report it to the local authorities, as did other administrators.
In 2017, Briles denied that he covered up sexual violence while he was head of the Baylor program. Briles wrote in an open letter to Baylor fans that he would do anything in his power to prevent harm in any form.
“Let me be clear: I did not cover-up any sexual violence,” Briles wrote then. “I had no contact with anyone that claimed to be a victim of sexual or domestic assault. Anyone well-versed in my work as a coach knows that I strove to promote excellence, but never at the sacrifice of safety for anyone.”
In August of last year, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions said it could not conclude that Baylor violated NCAA rules for its actions regarding the sexual assault allegations, but it gave Baylor four years’ probation among other punishments for other violations that occurred between 2011 and 2016, including recruiting violations and impermissible benefits provided to a football player.
Briles, 66, compiled a 65-37 record over eight seasons at Baylor and led the program to two Big 12 championships. In 2017, he was almost named an assistant head coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, before the league stepped in and the team reversed course. The University of Southern Mississippi attempted to hire him as its football program’s offensive coordinator in 2019 before school administrators overruled the decision because of public backlash.
After spending a year coaching in Italy, Briles took a head coaching job at Mount Vernon High in Texas, serving as head coach in 2019 and 2020. At the time of Briles’s hiring, the superintendent of the Mount Vernon Independent School District said Briles had been vetted, but that process didn’t include speaking to any of the victims at Baylor or to any NCAA officials. Instead, school officials opted to speak with people “who know him personally.”
Briles was the head coach at the University of Houston from 2003 to 2007 before taking over at Baylor in 2008. Jackson and Briles do have a brief history — Jackson brought Briles in as a guest to help the Browns’ offensive coaching staff in 2016 a few months after he had been fired by Baylor.
“I’m rooted in fact,” Grambling State Athletic Director Trayvean Scott told ESPN on Thursday. “I know a lot of things are said and done. We felt it [was appropriate] to give him a chance to really redeem himself after understanding where the facts lie.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma will take on an increased scoring role in the final 24 games of the season. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
“If you look at our season, it’s been a roller coaster,” Kuzma said. “A pretty deep roller coaster. Starting out 10-3, I think that we might have got ahead of ourselves a little bit in the first group that we had here. We were rolling and felt really, really good. Obviously, had a lot of buzz. And then we just took our foot off the gas a little bit and I think our record kind of really reflects that. We went through some things, went through some injuries, went through covid, just like anybody else in the NBA. Once it kind of went left, it was hard to get it back right and, obviously, needed some changes. For us after the deadline, this is all we got. We know the cards that we’ve been dealt.
“You have to understand that we have enough. … So I believe that we can do it and I believe why not us? So that’s kind of our mind-set.”
The new-look Wizards still haven’t gotten to see the fruits of the trade-deadline deal that sent Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans to Dallas for Kristaps Porzingis. The former all-star has yet to play due to a bone bruise in his knee and Coach Wes Unseld Jr. said he is still considered day-to-day. The hope was to have him in games before the break, but that didn’t happen. Unseld said he’s doing one-on-one drills and will need to progress to three-on-three and then five-on-five. He hasn’t been ruled out of the back-to-back against the Spurs and at Cleveland on Friday and Saturday, but Porzingis would need to make significant strides quickly.
“The ball movement, guys are playing for each other,” Unseld said. “I think that's important. We have to continue with that spirit.”
The biggest concern is on defense. That’s what the Wizards hung their hats on early in the season during that 10-3 start and that’s what Unseld is known for. The team is 21st in defensive rating and is allowing 109.8 points per game. The 113-108 loss to the Pacers on Feb. 16 was a lowlight as Indiana scored 74 points in the paint. The return of Daniel Gafford will help the interior defense, but that’s a priority if the postseason is going to be attainable.
“We have to do a better job defensively,” Unseld said. “The last few games, we've seen some of that. But once again, we have to be consistent in that area. If we're really serious with the remaining 24 games, that has to be part of our identity.
“That's quite dense,” Unseld said. “When you think about leading up to the break, we had seven back-to-backs on the season. So the games are going to come fast and furious. We can't afford, once again, to try to ease our way into this. We have to come out of the break and put the feet on the ground hopefully with a little bit of momentum. | null | null | null | null | null |
Susan Welsh, USDA officer
Susan Welsh, 76, an official of the Department of Agriculture who retired in 2011 after 38 years of service to the agency, died Dec. 23 at a hospital in Rockville, Md. The cause was pneumonia, said a son-in-law, Deke Shipp.
Dr. Welsh, a resident of Germantown, Md., was born Susan Sanzo in Brooklyn. At the USDA, her work included directorship of the nutrition education division of the Food and Nutrition Service and national program leader for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Dorcas 'Randy' Gracey, commandant's wife
Dorcas “Randy” Gracey, 93, the widow of U.S. Coast Guard Commandant James S. Gracey, died Dec. 28 at a hospital in Falls Church, Va. The cause was a pulmonary infection, said a son, Kevin Gracey.
Mrs. Gracey was born Dorcas Neal in Boston. She accompanied Adm. Gracey to duty stations before settling in Arlington, Va., more than 30 years ago, after his retirement as commandant in 1986. He died in 2020.
When her husband was commandant, Mrs. Gracey published a monthly newsletter for Coast Guard spouses offering advice and encouragement for life in the service. For 20 years after he retired, she taught a course at the National Defense University on obligations and what to expect as spouses of Coast Guard officers.
Mary Lou Hayes, bank executive
Mary Lou Hayes, 94, a vice president and corporate secretary of the old Chevy Chase Bank who retired in 2009 around the time the bank was acquired by Capital One, died Dec. 26 at a health-care facility in Bethesda, Md. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a daughter, Carol Hayes.
Mrs. Hayes, a Bethesda resident, was born Mary Lou Randolph in Wilsonburg, W.Va. She was office administrator from 1964 to 1972 at the private Bullis School (then in Silver Spring, Md., and now in Potomac, Md.). She then joined Government Services Savings and Loan, which later became Chevy Chase Bank. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Sean Penn arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “Flag Day” in Los Angeles on Aug. 11, 2021. Penn is in Ukraine to continue work on a documentary about the country’s conflict with Russia. The Office of the President wrote in a Facebook post Thursday that Penn attended press briefings, met with Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk and spoke to journalists and military about the Russian invasion. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Shakhtar’s Marlon, center, tries to go past Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema, left and Vinicius Junior, during a Group D Champions League soccer match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid Spain, Nov. 3, 2021. The Brazilian soccer player from one of Ukraine’s biggest clubs issued an appeal to the Brazilian government on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, saying they are trapped by the Russian military attack on Ukraine. The Ukrainian league was suspended indefinitely Thursday after martial law was declared in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Metro technicians demonstrate how the wheelset on the 7000 series is measured as officials hold a news conference in November 2021 to demonstrate the inspection process on the troubled cars. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Multiple factors are likely causing the wheels of Metro’s 7000-series rail cars to push outward, putting trains at risk for derailment, according to an analysis by Metro engineers and consultants that was outlined Thursday.
Metro is testing out its theories, looking for solutions to resolve a defect found in wheels and axles of several of the series’ cars, Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld told Metro board members. He did not elaborate on the suspected factors causing the malfunction, and also did not provide an estimate for when the rail cars might return to service.
Transit officials say they hope the discovery could be the means to end Metro’s longest and most extensive crisis in at least seven years. The cars, which make up nearly 60 percent of Metro’s fleet, have been out of service since mid-October, forcing the transit system to rely on a limited number of older cars. The train shortage has prompted four months of service reductions at a time when Metro needs fare-paying customers as more commuter return to offices.
“We have collected and analyzed sufficient data to identify probable root causes and will now proceed with finalization of dynamic testing in order to validate or reject the theories,” Wiedefeld said.
The Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, the rail system’s regulatory agency, suspended the cars after a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into an October derailment revealed that the defect that pushed a train off the tracks had been found in more than two dozen cars over four years. The suspension was briefly lifted in December after Metro presented the commission with a plan to screen the cars daily, but it was soon reimposed after safety inspectors said Metro was deviating from its inspection guidelines.
On Jan. 13, Wiedefeld said Metro would take 90 days to search for the cause of the defect — which the NTSB investigation has not determined — while also testing more efficient and automated methods to inspect car wheels.
“The work is on schedule,” he told board members Thursday.
Wiedefeld said the transit agency’s consultant, Colorado-based Transportation Technology Center, told him it was “very likely” a combination of factors were at fault, “which tells me that the mitigations obviously will have to be varied, as well.”
“In this testing phase, we expect to learn what factors are ruled out and we will continue to update the board, the [safety commission], the NTSB and other stakeholders when we can isolate those root causes, and what that tells us about the timeline to return the rail cars,” he said.
Metro headquarters to transform into a modern commercial office building
Wiedefeld also said Thursday that Metro has started moving out of its aging Judiciary Square headquarters and into a new home at L’Enfant Plaza. The move has been expected since the transit system reached a deal in February 2020 to lease its Jackson Graham Building headquarters across from Capital One Arena to a development company that plans to renovate the 48-year-old building into a commercial and retail center.
Stonebridge, a regional development group, and Rockefeller Group, which has built office buildings in New York, D.C. and Tysons, are planning to add three floors, transform the facade and turn the building’s entrances into walkways that lead to retail stores on the ground floor.
Metro projects the move will save $130 million over 20 years, consolidating its office workforce that is currently spread out in multiple locations. Two other new Metro buildings are under construction in Maryland and Virginia, which Wiedefeld said should open in the next year.
About 1,100 Metro employees worked in the Jackson Graham building before the pandemic.
Wiedefeld said the headquarters will include a retail space and office floors it will rent out, providing the transit agency with additional revenue.
“In addition to providing a safe and modern experience, the new headquarters building at L’Enfant Plaza will also help advance recent revitalization efforts in the Southwest Waterfront area,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Willis Wendler demonstrates against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine outside of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Washington on Thursday.
Dozens of demonstrators converged outside the Russian Embassy early Thursday as Russia began its military assault on their native country — a precursor to a larger demonstration planned outside the White House this afternoon.
“I was in shock, and we were very much afraid,” said Nadiya Shaporynska, who was one of the demonstration’s organizers and is from the Ukrainian city Dnipro, in an interview Thursday. “I had the feeling that we should do something. We came to Russia’s embassy to show our protest and to say, ‘Hands off Ukraine. Stop the war in Ukraine.’ ”
Russia launched the assault on Ukraine from multiple directions early Thursday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin undeterred by world condemnation of the attack and sanctions that the United States and European allies levied this week.
Ukrainians like Shaporynska watching from Washington feared for family and friends who still live in the country. By sunup, after the overnight demonstration died down, a steady stream of demonstrators remained outside the embassy.
Around 1:30 p.m., outside the Russian Embassy in a normally quiet corner of Northwest Washington, about 20 protesters gathered in the rain as temperatures hovered above freezing. Standing across from Boris Nemstov Plaza — a street named for a slain Russian dissident — they waved blue-and-yellow balloons to honor Ukraine’s flag and held signs that read “Stop Putin Now,” the letters streaking in the rain. Some passing drivers on Wisconsin Avenue honked their car horns in support.
Valerie Hovetter, walking into Wisconsin Avenue traffic with her sign, said she spent four years working as a researcher in Ukraine. She said that Putin is “killing people to feed his own ego.”
“I think most people know it is wrong,” she said.
Leonid Shumilo, a doctoral student who came to the University of Maryland in 2021, shouted obscenities in Ukrainian at the guards in front of the embassy, between sips of Red Bull. He said his sister spent the night in a bunker in Kyiv as bombs fell last night.
“I want to see all the people around the world united against war,” he said.
Shumilo described Putin as a modern-day Hitler, poised to bring fascism to Europe. He recounted the many other countries that would be in danger if Ukraine was taken: Lithuania, Belarus, Poland. A lot of people were dying, he said, and the world must act now.
“If not right now, when?” he said.
Police made at least one arrest outside the embassy Thursday morning. A D.C. police spokesman said officers Thursday morning saw a woman trying to spray-paint something on a sidewalk outside the embassy and disrupted her activity. Police could not confirm what was spray-painted, though eyewitnesses at the scene said the word “murder” had been painted in red. Around noon workers already were pressure-washing the graffiti away.
U.S. Secret Service patrol, which handles security outside the foreign embassies in D.C., took the woman into custody over the defacing of property, a spokesperson for the U.S. Secret Service said. The identity of the woman was not immediately released pending charges being filed.
Over in D.C.'s Kalorama neighborhood, Aaron McGovern, the co-owner of the Russia House restaurant, said he took down the Russian flag hanging outside, fearing that his restaurant may become a target for vandalism as well. “I took it down not as a political statement in any way. I did it to protect my property,” he said. His fellow co-owner, Arturas Vorobjovas, has family in Ukraine and had been calling to check on them, McGovern said.
Late last night, as she saw reports of explosions Shaporynska was rushing to do the same, fearing for the safety of her father and her husband’s parents who still live in the country. They said people were emptying the shelves at grocery stores,.rushing to the banks to withdraw money. | null | null | null | null | null |
If you’ve ever been to Utqiagvik, Alaska, formerly known as Barrow, odds are you weren’t expecting a tropical paradise. The nation’s northernmost town, Utqiagvik is home to about 4,700 people and is situated on Alaska’s North Slope, about 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Winters are long, brutally cold and unforgiving — not to mention the fact that “polar night” brings 66 straight days of darkness in Utqiagvik. Blizzards happen every couple of weeks during the cold season.
A winter storm warning is issued when snow or mixed precipitation accumulates to a certain threshold. In parts of the Northeast, for example, the threshold is 6 or more inches in a 12-hour period, or 8 inches in a 24-hour window. In South Florida, 0.5 inches of snow would trigger warnings.
Blizzard warnings involve snow, but the snow doesn’t have to be falling — there just has to be enough “blowing or drifting snow” to limit visibility to a quarter-mile or below for three consecutive hours. That comes with sustained winds or frequent gusts over 35 mph.
Utqiagvik only averages 5.39 inches of precipitation annually. Technically speaking, any place that sees fewer than 10 inches is classified as a desert. Deserts don’t have to feature sand, heat or cactuses. In fact, polar deserts are often drier than their mid-latitude counterparts.
We can review a plot showing roughly five years’ worth of data from January 2017 to January 2022. It depicts the number of blizzard warnings issued by every National Weather Service forecast office in the country.
During that window, the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, which forecasts for Utqiagvik, issued 144 blizzard warnings for its CWA, or county warning area. The most issued for any CWA in the Lower 48 during that same time frame was two dozen, which came from the Weather Service in Grand Forks, N.D.
Of course, you’re never going to wind up with a 4-foot snowfall in Utqiagvik. If you’re looking for blizzard conditions and extreme snow, try the Sierra Nevada or east of Lakes Erie or Ontario. Southeast New England tends to get whopping snowstorms too, as was the case just a few weeks ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
“We fear it’s Russian,” said Ludmila, 56,
By Thursday, the fears of a nation could be seen in the long queues at ATMS, gas stations and grocery stores to stock up on food and necessities. The fears could be seen in the massive traffic jams of cars filled with families desperately trying to leave the city. And they could be seen at the bus station, where passengers, carrying what little they could stuff in small suitcases, waited in snaking lines.
In the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest and a mere 25 miles from the Russian border, hundreds of residents, huddled together in underground metro stations. Russian artillery sporadically thundered above.
Inside one subway station, people lined the walls and sat along the stairwell. Trains sat on both sides of the platform with the doors open. People unrolled yoga mats and blankets on the floor. Children played games on phones while adults refreshed the latest news. Some people had strollers, suitcases, and pets with them. Others had very few belongings.
They said there willing to take “any option” to leave the city and head west. “Of course, our parents are very worried,” Mrita said.
At a four-way traffic stop outside the historic Kyiv opera house, lanes that are typically crammed with cars were empty and silent. Only a handful of pedestrians passed by. Most appeared to be in a hurry.
Khurshudyan reported from Kharkiv, Ukraine and Morris from Shehyni, Ukraine. Whitney Shefte and Kostiantyn Khudov contributed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ivanka Trump, we have now learned, is in active talks with the House select committee examining the Jan. 6 insurrection to offer voluntary testimony about what she saw and heard before, during, and after that day.
We don’t know if Ivanka Trump is really serious about cooperating. The Times piece reports that she “would be unlikely to take any step that Mr. Trump did not know about and approve of.”
It’s in that linkage where some of Trump’s most serious culpability may lie.
What’s at issue is what Trump did and said during the more than two hours that took place as he watched the violence unfold before issuing a statement on it. This wouldn’t just illuminate how sociopathic Trump’s conduct was as he enjoyed the spectacle of his rampaging supporters on TV.
The letter adds that the committee is “particularly interested” in discussions that took place before and after Trump sent a tweet at 2:24 p.m., in which he informed supporters that “Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” Some in the rampaging crowd took that as a call to escalation and stormed the Capitol, according to indictments against the rioters cited by the committee.
But all this leads to another question: Whether Donald Trump is on the hook for criminality. In a detailed memo arguing that Trump may have committed crimes, law professor and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade suggests, among other things, that this wide ranging plot to subvert the count of electors might have constituted obstruction of an official proceeding.
For this to be criminal, it would not necessarily require that Trump came to see the violence as a weapon to accomplish that outcome. But if so, that could certainly add to the case, and at any rate, it’s something we need to know to fully understand what happened. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: St. John’s should let female student wrestle
St. John's wrestling coach Michael Sprague watches a match at the Landon School in Bethesda on Feb. 12. (Greg Fiume/For The Washington Post)
As parents of both a current student and a recent graduate of St. John’s College High School, both champion varsity athletes, we were disappointed to learn in the Feb. 19 Sports article “St. John’s leaders keep a girl off the mat” that the school’s president and athletic director denied a female student membership on the wrestling team.
We chose St. John’s, established in 1851 and coed since 1991, because it teaches in the Roman Catholic Lasallian tradition. The school’s handbook says such an education espouses “respect for all persons,” “integrity and character,” “building inclusive communities” both in the class and on the athletic fields, and “fortitude to make ethical decisions.” The handbook also states that the school does not discriminate based on race, sex, color, nationality or ethnic origin in its educational, admission, hiring, athletic or school administrative policies. The administration’s decision does not exemplify Lasallian values.
Female athletes have played on male high school and college teams in the United States for years.
The administration’s decision was shortsighted and unenlightened; its prioritization of alpha-male athletes over aspiring and capable female athletes is troubling. The decision only propagates the patriarchal hierarchy that has characterized the Roman Catholic Church and our society for centuries, causing irreparable harm to many, including men.
In strong support of coach Michael Sprague and his team, we respectfully ask the president and athletic director to seek input from an inclusive group of St. John’s male and female coaches, teachers and students to reconsider this decision.
The female wrestler clearly merits a spot on the mat: She attended roughly 90 percent of preseason workouts, demonstrating commitment, ambition, bravery and confidence.
Susan Rzemien and Bob Angevine, Washington | null | null | null | null | null |
Leader will bar foreign funds for civil society
Tunisia’s President Kais Saied said Thursday that he will outlaw foreign funding for civil society organizations as he tries to remake the country’s politics after establishing one-man rule.
“Non-governmental organizations must be prevented from accessing external funds . . . and we will do that,” Saied said, adding that the change was needed to stop foreign interference in the country.
This month, he also moved against the country’s judiciary, seen as the last significant Tunisian institution of state still able to act as a check on his power, by dissolving the top judicial council.
Court rejects house arrest for ex-president
Honduras’s Supreme Court of Justice on Thursday denied the appeal of former president Juan Orlando Hernández to be held under house arrest during his extradition process.
A judge ruled Feb. 16 that Hernández be held at a National Police special forces base in the capital pending the outcome of the extradition process.
But his attorneys appealed, and Thursday the full Supreme Court of Justice convened and voted 14 to 1 to deny his appeal for home confinement.
Hernández has vehemently denied the accusations. He said traffickers he helped capture and extradite are seeking revenge by making up stories. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man slain in Langley Park area, police say
A 21-year-old man was fatally stabbed Monday night in the Langley Park area, Prince George’s County police said.
Officers responded to the 7300 block of 17th Avenue about 11:15 p.m. for a reported stabbing, police said. They found the man with multiple stab wounds, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police have not yet identified the man pending notification of his family, police said. Detectives have not yet determined a suspect or a motive. | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet even the apparent sameness of so many disclosures and admissions, over so many years, should not blunt the importance of a recent report that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as archbishop of the German cities of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, failed to discipline abusive priests and enabled them to maintain their roles in ministry.
The new report, commissioned by the German Catholic church and conducted by a law firm, is based on the church’s own documents and accounts from witnesses. “In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct,” Martin Pusch, one of the authors, said in a news conference in January at the report’s unveiling. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ivanka Trump, we have now learned, is in active talks with the House select committee examining the Jan. 6 insurrection to offer voluntary testimony about what she saw and heard before, during and after that day.
We don’t know whether Ivanka Trump is really serious about cooperating. The Times piece reports that she “would be unlikely to take any step that Mr. Trump did not know about and approve of.”
It’s in that linkage where some of the former president’s most serious culpability may lie.
What’s at issue is what Trump did and said during the more than two hours that took place as he watched the violence unfold before issuing a statement on it. This wouldn’t just illuminate how sociopathic his conduct was as he enjoyed the spectacle of his rampaging supporters on TV.
The letter says that the committee is “particularly interested” in discussions that took place before and after Trump sent a tweet at 2:24 p.m., in which he informed supporters that “Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” Some in the rampaging crowd took that as a call to escalation and stormed the Capitol, according to indictments against the rioters cited by the committee.
But all this leads to another question: Whether Donald Trump is on the hook for criminality. In a detailed memo arguing that Trump may have committed crimes, law professor and former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade suggests, among other things, that this wide-ranging plot to subvert the count of electors might have constituted obstruction of an official proceeding.
For this to be criminal, it would not necessarily require that Trump came to see the violence as a weapon to accomplish that outcome. But if so, that could certainly add to the case, and, at any rate, it’s something we need to know to fully understand what happened. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hundreds of people take shelter Feb. 24 inside a metro station in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, as explosions rock the city. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Ukrainians in cities and towns across the country woke up to the sound of explosions early Thursday morning as Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine.
On Thursday afternoon, President Biden announced further sanctions against Russia, saying, “We have no intention of fighting Russia. We want to send an unmistakable message, though, that the United States, together with our Allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
But will those sanctions make any difference?
“I don't see any sanctions that are going to, especially at this point, prevent him from trying to execute his plan,” reporter Paul Sonne said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He added: “This is a horrific turn of events in world history. Russia is an incredibly powerful military, and it's unleashing its full military might against a neighboring, much less powerful state. And we're witnessing that in real time.
“We're seeing Ukrainians suffering deeply, fearing for their lives, fleeing their cities, moving their children into bomb shelters. And because Russia is a nuclear power, people in the United States and in Europe are feeling quite powerless to do anything about it.”
We also hear from our reporters on the ground in Ukraine about what these early days of attacks feel like for the people caught in the crossfire.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the assault on Ukraine here. | null | null | null | null | null |
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