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But instead of a gradual climb, now those changes will come all at once: Starting this year, eligible workers will be provided with 12 weeks of paid parental leave, family and medical leave — with a cap of 12 weeks in a year, according to a letter from then-acting chief financial officer Fitzroy Lee. It represents a sharp increase from the current benefit of eight weeks of parental leave, six weeks of family leave and six weeks of personal leave, for a maximum of eight weeks per year. Private-sector workers are also guaranteed two weeks of paid prenatal leave.
Lee noted in his letter that the Department of Employment Services (DOES), which administers the program, is figuring out how quickly it can implement the new changes, which could be as soon as July 1.
In a statement Wednesday, the DC Paid Leave Campaign, which represents a coalition of local businesses that advocated for strong paid leave programs in the District, cited January 2021 data from the DOES that shows 80 percent of workers who applied for medical and family caregiving leave in the program’s first six months were either Black, Hispanic, Asian or multiracial — and that 40 percent of people who applied for such leave have incomes under $50,000.
“The expansion of the DC Paid Family Leave program represents a concrete step towards addressing longstanding racial, economic and health disparities that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic,” the statement said. “We are deeply gratified by this announcement today.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Fitzroy Lee as acting chief financial officer for D.C. He was acting chief financial officer at the time he wrote a letter about paid family leave but has since been made permanent chief financial officer. The article has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
The first 2022 primaries in the nation happened Tuesday in Texas.
The results can help us interpret the state of the Republican Party one year into full Democratic control in Washington, given how red Texas is. But Democrats also flexed their muscles. Here are four big moments that could signal broader trends, if they continue in other primaries.
This felt like one of the most telling moments of the primary. Rep. Van Taylor (R) represents the Dallas suburbs, and unlike most of his Texas Republican colleagues, he voted to certify the 2020 election results rather than challenge them. He also voted, alongside some other Republicans, to create a bipartisan commission outside of Congress to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. (That effort failed, and Democrats in Congress are leading the investigative effort, which Taylor opposed.)
Former president Donald Trump wouldn’t endorse Taylor, and he got four primary challengers, each declaring him a traitor to the party. And now he’s the only Republican incumbent member of Congress in Texas who won less than 50 percent of the vote on primary night, meaning he has to go through a runoff in May.
That’s despite, as the Dallas Morning News reports, Taylor championed how conservative he is. He campaigned as “one of just six House members with a 100% score from Heritage Action and “A” grades from the NRA and National Right to Life.” He aired an ad of himself alongside Trump at a border wall.
Taylor is still well-positioned to keep his seat. He won 48.7 percent of the vote; he’ll be facing former local judge Keith Self, who won 26.5 percent of the vote.
But his runoff underscores that devoted Republican voters who feel that someone has crossed Trump do not forget easily.
That’s Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). But the rest of Trump’s statewide loyalists — Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (R) — did just fine.
Paxton got 43 percent of the vote, which means he will be in a runoff with the No. 2 in the primary, George P. Bush. (Yes, of that Bush family. His dad was governor of Florida; his uncle and grandfather were both presidents.)
Bush has been the state land commissioner, an elective office in Texas, and he decided to challenge Paxton, who has spent the past few years mired in serious scandal.
Paxton is facing a federal investigation, and he has been indicted by a state grand jury on felony charges of securities fraud. His top aides have accused him of abuse of office and bribery; he fired whistleblowers in his office; the top U.S. Senate Republican in Texas, John Cornyn, said he is “troubled” by the allegations.
But Paxton made national news when he led an outlandish, long-shot lawsuit to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in four states. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly rejected it, but more than half of House Republicans supported it.
Bush, aware of the Trump-ification of his party, has been trying to step away from his family name — “Texans know me as my own man,” he told The Washington Post’s Dan Balz. But the runoff inevitably will be framed as a Trump-endorsed loyalist and a Republican establishment figure.
Immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros challenged him from the left, and she had the support of liberal heavyweights including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who all traveled to Texas to campaign with Cisneros.
Democrats also were divided on the best approach to take in a potentially competitive congressional district in South Texas. On the Democratic side, the race will go to a runoff between more-moderate Army veteran Ruben Ramirez and liberal activist Michelle Vallejo.
They did so by nearly 2 to 1 at the top of the ticket, notes the University of Virginia’s Kyle Kondik.
What does that mean for the biggest race in Texas this fall, the governor’s race? The biggest name on the Democratic side was Beto O’Rourke. The former presidential candidate, Senate nominee and congressman was persuaded by national Democrats to run for governor. He easily won his primary.
Democrats contend that new, more-restrictive voting rules made it harder to vote. The new law makes it harder for older people to vote by mail (which could hurt Republicans in Texas) and took away some voting methods popular with people of color (which could hurt Democrats and Republicans alike).
And they say they’ll be ready in November to show that Texas continues to march toward blue, if slowly. On the state legislative level, Democrats characterized many Republicans who won their primaries as extremist: One, state Sen. Angela Paxton (whose husband is the attorney general), attended a Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 in Washington.
But Republicans, buoyed by a national environment favoring them, are feeling pretty good about the first state primaries of the season. They keep outvoting Democrats and using the tools they have, such as redistricting, to draw them out of power. “The EPA should be down here protecting Democrats as an endangered species,” Republican consultant David M. Carney told The Post’s David Weigel. | null | null | null | null | null |
The 2022 UEFA Champions League Final banner on display in September at Krestovsky Stadium in St. Petersburg. (Anatoly Maltsev/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Sports federations and leagues have moved aggressively to sideline Russia’s teams and athletes since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Those efforts picked up the pace Monday after the International Olympic Committee recommended that international sports federations refrain from allowing or inviting Russian or Belarusian athletes and officials to participate in competitions, “to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, announced Monday that it was suspending all Russian teams, both national and club squads, from international competition until further notice. In a joint statement by FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations, which oversees the game in Europe, the groups said they hoped “the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people.”
Multiple international sports federations have relocated major sporting events from Russian cities. The first major decision came from the UEFA, which moved the Champions League final, scheduled for May 28, from Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg to the Stade de France in Paris.
Also on Friday, the International Chess Federation said it will not hold its annual congress or the 44th Chess Olympiad in Moscow, and put out a call for bids from possible replacement host cities. And the International Automobile Federation, which puts on Formula 1, canceled its Russian Grand Prix, scheduled for September.
Meanwhile, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee urged national sports federations to “relocate or cancel” any sporting event scheduled to take place in Russia or Belarus.
The National Hockey League said it was not considering Russia as a location for future events and that it was pausing relationships with business partners in Russia, while expressing sympathy for Russian players in the league. “We understand they and their families are being placed in an extremely difficult position.”
The International Paralympic Committee said it would not hold events in either Belarus or Russia, but stopped short of banning both countries from competing in the games, which start Friday.
Boycotts have also reached Russia’s cultural and entertainment industry. In a statement released Tuesday, the organizers of the Cannes festival, whose 2022 edition is slated to take place on May 17, said Russian official delegations and anyone linked to the Russian government will not be welcomed to the event, unless the Russian invasion ends “under conditions that satisfy the Ukrainian people.”
At the same time, the organizers saluted Russians protesting the invasion and showed support to Russian filmmakers and artists who have stood up against Putin. The organizers didn’t comment on whether individual films will be banned from the official selection, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Tech giants have moved swiftly to limit the reach of Russian state-owned news outlets RT and Sputnik. Nick Clegg, president of Global Affairs at Meta, formerly Facebook, said in a tweet Monday that the company was moving to restrict access across the European Union to RT and Sputnik. The move follows a ban announced Saturday by the company that prohibits Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on the Meta platform.
“This builds on our indefinite pause of monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms, meaning media outlets such as RT are not allowed to monetize their content or advertise on our platforms,” the statement says.
TikTok will follow suit and also ban Sputnik and RT and their affiliates in Europe, according to Insider. Twitter announced it will start flagging to users tweets that link to Russian state-affiliated media websites and that the company is taking steps to “significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter,” said in a tweet Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity.
The streaming-giant Netflix said Monday it will not air any Russian channels on its platform in Russia, defying a new regulation that requires services with over 100,000 subscribers to carry a number of local Russian channels, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Russia’s deputy head of the Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, Oleg Gavrilov, said Tuesday that Google and Meta allow anti-Russian propaganda while blocking Russian news websites, according to Russian news agency Tass.
“Hostile propaganda activities are being carried out openly on their social platforms,” he said, and called for a system “to bring foreign warmongers to responsibility.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Tim Kaine, still experiencing long covid, introduces bill to research and combat it
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), departs after a vote on Capitol Hill in December. Kaine is introducing a bill to address the effects of long covid, something he says he's experienced as well. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Sen. Tim Kaine got covid-19 in the spring of 2020 — and nearly two years later he still has mild symptoms.
The Virginia Democrat is one of untold thousands or even millions of Americans who could have long covid, the little-understood phenomenon in which symptoms linger for weeks or months after a coronavirus infection. There is no agreed-upon understanding of its root causes, or even its official name, making treatment of the long-term symptoms difficult — including for Kaine.
That’s why on Wednesday, Kaine joined Sens. Ed. Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) in introducing a bill to fund research into the long-term effects of the disease and expand treatment resources for people experiencing them.
“That’s going to put a burden on our health care system,” Kaine said, “and it’s also going to require some research and some understanding, compassion, for people dealing with these symptoms — adjustments and accommodations in the workplace. There’s going to be a lot of consequences of this.”
Kaine developed flu-like symptoms in March 2020 in the earliest wave of the pandemic in the United States, when coronavirus tests were not even widely available, and then tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in May 2020. Most of his symptoms, “very mild,” went away in a matter of weeks. But the nerve tingling never stopped.
He went to see a neurologist and got an MRI, but the doctor told him everything looked fine. In a way Kaine was relieved — but left baffled. “I know how my body felt before I got covid, I know how it felt when I got covid, and it’s not gone back to where it was before,” he said. "That gives me an understanding for people who talk about these long covid symptoms.”
Numerous studies have been underway to try to understand the phenomenon, and the bill from Kaine, Markey and Duckworth seeks to accelerate and centralize the research. The National Institutes of Health launched a research initiative studying the consequences of a coronavirus infection, which includes an examination of long covid.
"If we get the funding from Congress, we will launch new centers of excellence in communities across the country to provide high quality care to individuals experiencing long covid and to better understand the symptoms they’re facing,” Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary, said Wednesday upon the release of the Biden administration’s pandemic road map. | null | null | null | null | null |
The dust storm formed as a storm complex kicked up a wall of smoke, ash and dirt
A pedestrian gestures while crossing the street during a sand and dust storm, in San Antonio, Paraguay Monday. (Cesar Olmedo/Reuters)
Residents of southern Paraguay experienced an apocalyptic scene on Monday when a mile-tall wall of smoke, ash and dust descended on the landscape. Day turned to night around dinnertime as the smoke blotted out the sun, extinguishing the formerly partly-cloudy skies as strong winds surged through the region.
The smoke, originating from wildfires in Argentina, was enough to cause streetlights to turn on and pose a respiratory danger. Residents’ eyes also likely stung from the ash and fine particulates.
Videos posted to social media, namely Twitter, on Monday revealed a towering wall of dark particles in Ayolas, Paraguay, a city of 65,000 in the department of Misiones on the Argentine border.
In Corrientes Province, Argentina, two years of drought have brewed conditions ripe for massive wildfires that, as of late February, had torched nearly 2 million acres. That’s about ten percent of the province. Among the areas impacted were Iberá National Park and the Iberá Wetlands, where 60 percent of the landscape has burned.
Several videos showing the haboob rolling over beaches were shot on the northern shores of the Paraná River, which is about ten miles wide to the east of Ayolas. | null | null | null | null | null |
The company has spent billions of dollars on office space in the last several years
Google was one of the first major U.S. companies to send workers home in March 2020 and is seen as a corporate leader when it comes to workplace policies. The model of three days in-office and two days at home has been adopted by many other companies. Google has spent billions before and during the pandemic on massive offices in New York, London and Silicon Valley. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - American aviatrix Amelia Earhart poses for photos as she arrives in Southampton, England, after her transatlantic flight on the “Friendship” from Burry Point, Wales, June 26, 1928. A leather helmet that Amelia Earhart wore on a flight across the Atlantic in 1928 and later lost in a crowd of fans in Cleveland, sold at auction for $825,000, Heritage Auctions said. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A pro-life spring arrives in Virginia
By Marjorie Dannenfelser
Freshmen students from Oakcrest School in Vienna secure a front-row position by the stage during the March For Life anti-abortion rally Jan. 21 in D.C. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.
On a cold February day in 2019, hundreds of Virginians turned out to protest abortion extremism. In Virginia and states such as New York, Democratic legislators were pushing to expand abortion up to the moment of birth. In an even colder interview, then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) not only defended those efforts but went even further — describing how infants who survive abortion attempts could be left to die.
What a difference an election makes.
In November, Virginia voters made it clear that, on many levels, they’d had enough of radical Democrats’ agenda — including Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe’s support for abortion on demand, which he touted frequently on the campaign trail and in millions of dollars’ worth of ads. Pro-life voters turned out in numbers great enough to deliver the margin of victory, with exit polls showing 8 percent of voters named abortion as their top issue, and those voters swung toward Republican Glenn Youngkin by 17 points.
It took persistence, but the commonwealth finally has pro-life leadership in Richmond. Now-Gov. Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares are wasting no time getting to work for Virginia’s women and children.
In stark contrast to his predecessor Northam, who spent Good Friday of all days signing legislation to expand abortion, roll back informed consent protections for women and even allow personnel who aren’t doctors to carry out abortions, Youngkin has outlined his pro-life policy commitments — including advocating legislation to limit late-term abortions when unborn children can feel pain and working to stop taxpayer-funded abortions — and will draw upon faith, science and public consensus to safeguard the vulnerable.
Before even setting foot in the governor’s residence, Youngkin brought longtime pro-life leader Kay Coles James, a native Virginian who previously served as president of the Heritage Foundation, onto his transition team. And in one of his first acts as governor, Youngkin appointed Angela Sailor chief diversity, opportunity and inclusion officer. Among the responsibilities of the office, she is tasked with working to eliminate disparities in prenatal care and being “an ambassador for unborn children.”
It’s not surprising that this historically diverse administration would prioritize inclusivity for all Virginians, born and unborn. Diversity has been a hallmark of the pro-life movement from the beginning — when it was led by courageous pioneers such as Mildred Jefferson, the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School — to today, when the sea of faces flooding the nation’s capital each year for the March for Life includes thousands of people of all ages and every race and creed from all over the country. Fittingly, Youngkin, Miyares and Earle-Sears all tweeted their messages of support for the pro-life movement the day of the march, the largest annual demonstration in the United States for the human rights cause that unites us.
That same day, Miyares filed a motion urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion limit and return the right to set abortion policy to the people of each state and their elected representatives. The motion reverses the Northam administration’s stance in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case in which the court will address the constitutionality of pre-viability limits on abortion.
The significance is enormous. The court’s prior rulings put us in the company of a small handful of nations like China and North Korea that allow late-term abortion up to birth, well after unborn children feel pain. That status quo and the Democratic Party agenda are at odds with the views of 71 percent of Americans who want limits on abortion.
Now the court could finally remove itself from policymaking decisions about abortion that rightly belong in the arena of democracy. Every state and Congress would then be able to proceed with a debate that the court froze in time 50 years ago, to find consensus and to allow the will of the people to enter the law.
Our commonwealth should be no exception. The voters who decisively rejected late-term abortion in the last election deserve to have their voices heard again and again during the messy but vital consensus-building process that lies ahead. Under the pro-life Youngkin administration, it looks like spring has arrived in Virginia. I hope lawmakers and aspiring candidates nationwide will take note of their leadership and successes so far. | null | null | null | null | null |
During a question-and-answer session Wednesday, Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, “why on earth” the Chelsea owner wasn’t on the sanctions list.
“You’re talking about more sanctions, prime minister. But Roman Abramovich is not sanctioned. He is in London. His children are not in the bombardments. His children are there, in London,” Kaleniuk said. The exchange went viral. | null | null | null | null | null |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jordyn Cambridge had the first triple-double in school history, Iyana Moore scored 14 of her 18 points in the first quarter and Vanderbilt beat Texas A&M 85-69 in the opening game of the Southeastern Conference Tournament on Wednesday, bringing the coaching career of Hall of Famer Gary Blair to an end. | null | null | null | null | null |
The haboob formed as a storm complex kicked up a wall of smoke, ash and dirt.
A pedestrian gestures while crossing the street during a sand and dust storm in San Antonio, Paraguay, on Monday. (Cesar Olmedo/Reuters)
Residents of southern Paraguay experienced an apocalyptic-looking scene Monday when a mile-tall wall of smoke, ash and dust descended on the landscape. Day turned to night around dinnertime as the smoke blotted out the sun, extinguishing the formerly partly cloudy skies as strong winds surged through the region.
The smoke, originating from wildfires in Argentina, was enough to cause streetlights to turn on and pose a respiratory danger. Residents’ eyes also probably stung from the ash and fine particulates.
Videos posted Monday to social media, namely Twitter, revealed a towering wall of dark particles in Ayolas, Paraguay, a city of 65,000 in the department of Misiones on the Argentine border.
In Corrientes Province, Argentina, two years of drought have brewed conditions ripe for massive wildfires that, as of late February, had torched nearly 2 million acres. That’s about 10 percent of the province. Among the areas impacted were Iberá National Park and the Iberá Wetlands, where 60 percent of the landscape has burned.
Several videos showing the haboob rolling over beaches were shot on the northern shores of the Paraná River, which is about 10 miles wide, to the east of Ayolas. | null | null | null | null | null |
The 2022 UEFA Champions League Final banner on display in September at Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg. (Anatoly Maltsev/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Sports federations and leagues have moved aggressively to sideline Russia’s teams and athletes since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The pace of those efforts picked up Monday after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended that international sports federations refrain from allowing or inviting Russian or Belarusian athletes and officials to participate in competitions, “to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, announced Monday that it was suspending all Russian teams — national and club squads — from international competition until further notice. In a joint statement from FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations, which oversees the game in Europe, the groups said they hoped “the situation in Ukraine will improve significantly and rapidly so that football can again be a vector for unity and peace amongst people.”
Multiple international sports federations have relocated major sporting events from Russian cities. The first major decision came Friday from UEFA, which moved the Champions League final, scheduled for May 28, from Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg to the Stade de France in Paris.
Also on Friday, the International Chess Federation said it will not hold its annual congress or the 44th Chess Olympiad in Moscow, and it put out a call for bids from possible replacement host cities. And the International Automobile Federation, which puts on Formula One, canceled its Russian Grand Prix, scheduled for September.
Meanwhile, the executive board of the IOC urged national sports federations to “relocate or cancel” any sporting event scheduled to take place in Russia or Belarus.
The National Hockey League said that it was not considering Russia as a location for future events and that it was pausing relationships with business partners in Russia, while expressing sympathy for Russian players in the league: “We understand they and their families are being placed in an extremely difficult position.”
The International Paralympic Committee said it would not hold events in Belarus or Russia but stopped short of banning both countries from competing in Winter Paralympics, which start Friday in Beijing.
Boycotts have also reached Russia’s cultural and entertainment industry. In a statement released Tuesday, the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival, slated to take place in May, said official Russian delegations and anyone linked to the Russian government will not be welcomed to the event, unless the Russian invasion ends “under conditions that satisfy the Ukrainian people.”
At the same time, the organizers saluted Russians protesting the invasion and showed support to Russian filmmakers and artists who have stood up against Putin. The organizers did not comment on whether individual films will be banned from the official selection, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Tech giants have moved swiftly to limit the reach of Russian state-owned news outlets RT and Sputnik. Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in a tweet Monday that the company was moving to restrict access across the European Union to RT and Sputnik. The move follows a ban announced Saturday by the company that prohibits Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on Meta platforms.
“This builds on our indefinite pause of monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms, meaning media outlets such as RT are not allowed to monetize their content or advertise on our platforms,” the statement said.
TikTok will follow suit and also ban Sputnik and RT and their affiliates in Europe, according to Insider. Twitter announced that it will start flagging to users tweets that link to Russian state-affiliated media websites and that the company is taking steps to “significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter,” tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity.
The streaming giant Netflix said Monday it will not air any Russian channels on its platform in Russia, defying a new regulation that requires services with over 100,000 subscribers to carry a number of local Russian channels, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Oleg Gavrilov, deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, said Tuesday that Google and Meta allow anti-Russian propaganda while blocking Russian news websites, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“Hostile propaganda activities are being carried out openly on their social platforms,” he said, calling called for a system “to bring foreign warmongers to responsibility.” | null | null | null | null | null |
When we look back on this period in conservative politics, two things are likely to stand out: culture war grievances turned up to a fever pitch and a newly unrestrained use of power, with Republican politicians everywhere inventing novel ways to target enemies and accomplish their goals.
In the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds touted “the pro-parent, pro-family revolution that Republicans are leading.”
Recently, state Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion stating that various types of gender-affirming care for transgender children “can legally constitute child abuse” under the Texas Family Code. That includes puberty blockers.
Paxton also stated that among others, “teachers, nurses, doctors, day-care employees, employees of a clinic or health care facility that provides reproductive services” have a duty to report to the state any child they think is receiving such care. He added: “A failure to report under these circumstances is a criminal offense.”
Voices Across America: Texas officials are spreading blatant falsehoods about medical care for transgender kids
These Republicans conflate permanent surgical interventions that are seldom performed on minors with common and reversible therapies, such as puberty blockers. So if you’re a teacher with a trans student whose family is supporting them, you’d better report them to the state government.
The investigations have begun; one of the first was of a child protective servicesemployee who asked her supervisor what to do about the fact that her own daughter is trans. The employee was placed on leave, and then investigators showed up at her family’s door demanding her daughter’s medical records.
This has terrified families with trans kids around Texas, as The 19th a news organization focused on gender, politics, and policy, reports:
The American Civil Liberties Union has already filed suit against the governor and the head of Texas’s child protective services to stop the investigations. Even if we’ve seen only a small number of investigations so far, this amounts to a campaign of terror against these families, precisely because they’re giving their kids the love and support they need to navigate an emotionally difficult process.
It’s no surprise that Paxton is the one spearheading this crackdown. Paxton is an especially repugnant figure; he was a high-profile attendee of Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, he was indicted on securities fraud charges, and he was accused by his own aides of bribery and abuse of office.
Voices Across America: I’m the mother of a trans son in Texas — and no, I’m not a ‘child abuser’
You don’t like Roe v. Wade? Why not essentially outlaw abortion in your state by creating a vigilante system to use against providers? Turns out the Supreme Court will give you the thumbs-up. Mad that liberal protesters stopped traffic for an hour? Pass a law granting civil immunity to people who run over protesters with their cars. Pine for the days when textbooks said enslaved people were happy and well-fed? Make it illegal for teachers to tell students hard truths about race.
One day, Republicans might move beyond what they’re doing now, just as they prefer not to talk about their opposition to marriage equality. But in the meantime, they’re going to victimize a lot of people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska was formally subjected to sanctions by the U.S. government in 2018, and two mansions he is linked to in the United States were searched by the FBI last year.
But officially, the two properties — including a 23,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom mansion in Washington’s swanky Embassy Row neighborhood — are held in the names of anonymous limited liability corporations. And a Deripaska spokeswoman insisted last year that they are owned by relatives of the aluminum magnate, not the billionaire facing sanctions.
Experts say it is not yet clear whether the sweeping punitive financial measures imposed by the United States and other Western leaders in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will have significant effects on Russian money held in the United States. Some said they believed Putin’s closest allies have largely avoided U.S. markets in recent years as tensions have risen between the United States and Russia — and, like Deripaska, have particularly avoided holding assets in their own names that would make identification and seizure easy.
“The Deripaska case illustrates how Russian oligarchs can evade sanctions and law enforcement by using shell companies and family members to control assets in the West,” said Nate Sibley, a research fellow at Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative.
In other ways, the punishing financial measures being imposed by Western leaders on Russia — which have already devastated the Russian economy — could have rippling effects through the United States.
Washington’s influence industry has also been affected. Several prominent Washington lobbying and law firms that represented Russian banks and companies targeted with sanctions have terminated their contracts — in some cases because the law requires it, unless a special license is granted by federal regulators.
For example, the lobbying firm BGR Government Affairs announced it was ending its work with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which is controlled in part by Russian energy corporation Gazprom, which President Biden subjected to sanctions. The exit of BGR and other firms working on the pipeline was first reported by Politico. On Tuesday, BGR’s Jeffrey Birnbaum issued a statement confirming that “BGR is ending its engagement with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project in compliance with economic and trade sanctions announced by the U.S. government.”
Even American businesses with only symbolic ties to Russia took pains to distance themselves from Putin’s Ukraine offensive. A restaurant owner in Texas told the Austin American-Statesman that she was changing the name of her business from The Russia House to The House in solidarity with Ukrainians. “I am doing this for the people of Ukraine, because the name is painful,” owner Varda Monamour told the Austin paper.
Deripaska was among seven Russian oligarchs targeted with sanctions in 2018 by the U.S. Treasury Department, which at the time cited Russia’s worldwide “malign activity,” including its interference in the American presidential election in 2016 and other cyberattacks. | null | null | null | null | null |
During a question-and-answer session Wednesday, Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader, asked “why on earth” the Chelsea owner wasn’t on the sanctions list.
“You’re talking about more sanctions, prime minister. But Roman Abramovich is not sanctioned. He is in London. His children are not in the bombardments. His children are there, in London,” Daria Kaleniuk said. The exchange went viral. | null | null | null | null | null |
School received $12.8 million to design a facility to test structures’ ability to withstand 200 mph winds and a 20-foot ocean surge
The massive cyclone narrowly avoided Florida but compelled scientists there to consider the scenario of a Dorian-like storm hitting home, especially in a world in which such storms are becoming more intense because of climate change.
“Dorian, for us, was a near miss from which we should be learning” said Richard Olson, head of FIU’s Extreme Events Institute.
In January, FIU was the recipient a four-year, $12.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to design a facility that will subject makeshift homes and other structures to winds of 200 mph and a storm surge of 20 feet. The surge is the storm-driven rise in ocean water above normally dry land at the coast.
The array of fans will sit at one end of a 200-foot-long wave basin, with a test structure resting on a turntable at the opposite end. Fans will produce high-powered winds, like those seen in a hurricane, thunderstorm or tornado, while paddles or pistons will generate waves. Pressure sensors, accelerometers, strain gauges and other instruments will measure the impact of wind and water on the test structure. “We want to see how much it can withstand before it breaks up,” Chowdhury said.
NICHE will build on research conducted using FIU’s Wall of Wind, a set of fans that can pelt solar panels, traffic lights, small buildings and other test objects with winds up to 157 mph — the minimum speed of a Category 5 cyclone. The Wall of Wind was built to simulate the power of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, which inflicted $27 billion in damages in South Florida and killed 65 people. The Wall of Wind can’t, however, replicate the winds or floods associated with a new generation of Dorian-like storms.
“We have facilities that can look at the impact of wind loads on structures. We have facilities that can look at the impact of store surge and waves on structures,” said Joy Pauschke, NSF program director in the division of civil, mechanical and manufacturing innovation. “But we don’t have a facility that can look at the coupled interaction of having both the wind loads and the wave loads on structures.”
Existing testing sites can test these elements only in isolation and accommodate only relatively small test objects. FIU’s Wall of Wind is about 20 feet wide and 14 feet high, large enough to overwhelm a low-rise building with powerful gales, but too small to test a multistory home. The Large Wave Flume at Oregon State University can test storm surges by sending powerful waves down a narrow channel to crash into barriers on the other end, but like the Wall of Wind, it is limited in scale.
“Eventually the research finds its way, for example, into building codes,” Pauschke said. An NSF-funded shake table at the University of California at San Diego, for instance, has been rattling structures up to five stories tall to test their fitness for earthquakes, with the results informing new construction technologies and design codes.
Olson said NICHE will involve disaster specialists including experts from the University of Florida, Oregon State, Stanford, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Colorado State and Wayne State, as well as Aerolab, a manufacturer of wind tunnels.
Scientists will first produce a prototype that will consist, perhaps, of just two fans overlooking a small reservoir. They will then use the data collected from this prototype, as well as from computer models and real-life storms, to create their final design. “You need this team, because this expertise just doesn’t come from one university,” Chowdhury said. | null | null | null | null | null |
That should be a lesson for officials at all levels in Washington, Virginia and Maryland. Law enforcement was caught unprepared for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, despite an avalanche of advance warnings. No one will be in a forgiving mood if truckers or others manage to cause chaos in the District or its suburbs. That includes on the Beltway, which some convoy organizers have suggested they may target. | null | null | null | null | null |
At a meeting Tuesday night, the Fairfax County Redistricting Advisory Committee recommended that the names of the county’s Lee and Sully districts be changed, though it didn’t suggest alternatives. The county’s Board of Supervisors will begin formally considering the recommendations next week.
Formed initially as a county township in the late 1800s, the Lee District was named after either Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee or one of his family members who enslaved people, the committee concluded after reviewing local history and hearing testimony from county residents.
The Sully District was created after the 1990 Census reflected a need for better representation in the fast-growing western portions of Fairfax. It was named after the site of a slavery plantation owned by Richard Bland Lee, an uncle of Robert E. Lee who served as Northern Virginia’s first member of Congress during the late 1700s, the committee found.
The conversations around the Lee and Sully districts became part of the county’s decennial redistricting process, in which local election maps have been redrawn to better match changes in population and area demographics.
Lusk noted that a high school in his district that bore Lee’s name was recently renamed John R. Lewis High School, after the late U.S. congressman and civil rights icon.
Jeffrey Parnes, the president of the Sully District Council of Citizens Associations, argued that the name has ties to France, where there is a village of Sully and a town of Sully. Moreover, Parnes told the committee, it wouldn’t make sense to change the Sully name while keeping the names of districts like Mount Vernon, which was George Washington’s plantation and a home to enslaved people.
“Many things in former slave states have those connotations,” he said, arguing that those places and names have since developed new meaning to their surrounding communities.
With local Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) and some residents lobbying hard against a name change, the committee decided in a 12-5 straw vote vote last month that there wasn’t a compelling enough reason to recommend that the district be renamed. | null | null | null | null | null |
If Putin escalates the war in Ukraine, here’s what could be next.
By Daniel McDowell
A man walks along a street in Moscow. (Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
When the Biden administration announced its first round of financial sanctions targeting Russia last week for its invasion of Ukraine, it described them as “unprecedented” measures. In the days since the initial announcement, the United States and its allies have substantially increased the pressure on Russia, broadening the scope of the sanctions and bringing in additional partners to intensify the multilateral squeeze.
The speed with which the current suite of measures has been arranged is impressive. They are already inflicting real damage on the Russian economy. Most costly are the sanctions targeting the Russian central bank.
But calling the sanctions unprecedented is an exaggeration. The scope of the initial round, while severe, fell short of sanctions previously imposed on countries like Iran and Venezuela. The United States and its allies could apply still more economic pressure down the line.
The Russia sanctions package is severe
At first, Western sanctions targeted two major Russian financial institutions and a number of oligarchs closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin. These banks and individuals were immediately barred from cross-border financial exchanges with any bank that has U.S. or European operations.
While the level of U.S. cooperation with Europe was notable, these measures were otherwise in keeping with past measures targeting banks and oligarchs in Russia.
However, within days, the United States and allies increased the measures’ severity. Within a week, they’d sanctioned Putin himself. Select Russian banks had been cut off from SWIFT, the messaging system by which banks communicate to transfer funds around the world. This week, the United States added the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) to the target list.
Blacklisting CBR is the most significant punishment the West has undertaken yet. The United States rarely sanctions a foreign central bank, although it’s not unprecedented. The U.S. Treasury currently blacklists, or “designates,” thousands of individuals and entities but only a few are monetary authorities — and those are in a Who’s Who of pariah states: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela.
Targeting CBR therefore seriously escalates the economic pressure on the Russians. The European Union, Japan, and even historically neutral Switzerland have all joined in isolating CBR, which further intensifies Moscow’s pain.
Why incapacitating Russia’s central bank matters
Sanctioning the central bank move has two key consequences. First, CBR can’t access its hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves, which it holds in accounts in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Ordinarily if investors were selling Russian assets and exchanging rubles for dollars, CBR could tap its foreign exchange reserves, using the dollars and euros it has saved to buy rubles being dumped by investors. Such a move could prevent a major depreciation of the ruble, which would likely lead to financial panic in Russia.
But the sanctions mean that most of Russia’s reserves are frozen, rendering them useless for currency defense. The Russian ruble lost a third of its value on Monday, absent CBR support.
Second, the central bank sanctions effectively block CBR from transacting business with any entity or individual in the sanctioning countries. Why does this matter? About 20 percent of Russian reserves are held in physical gold, equal to roughly $130 billion. Much of this is believed to be held in Russian vaults. These assets cannot be frozen by sanctions measures.
In normal circumstances, Russia could sell this bullion in global gold markets for hard currency, which it could then turn around and use to support the ruble. Now, Russia will have a much harder time finding buyers for its gold.
More important, any dollars CBR acquires will be useless for foreign exchange intervention since it can’t do business with banks and enterprises in the sanctioning countries. In sum, even assets held on Russian soil cannot be used to defend Russia’s currency.
But the sanctions could go much further
Despite these sanctions’ severity, they fall short of past measures used to target other regimes, in two main ways.
First, so far, the United States has not resorted to so-called “secondary sanctions,” used to great effect against Iran. When enforced, secondary sanctions mean that any bank that wishes to continue doing business in the United States must refrain from conducting business on behalf of sanctioned entities — and must also end all business relationships with third-party financial institutions doing business on behalf of the targeted entity.
Put differently, any bank, anywhere in the world, found to conduct financial business on behalf of targeted Russian oligarchs, banks, and CBR, would immediately find itself blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury as well.
Secondary sanctions would force banks in countries like China, which have not joined the multilateral sanctions effort, to choose between Russia or the United States. Since the U.S. financial system is central to world business, most Chinese banks would likely pull back from providing financial services to Russian partners, as they did with their Iranian partners in the past.
Second, the United States and its partners could end the energy carve-outs in the current sanctions. What does that mean? Right now, most payments for Russian energy are allowed to continue. The world can continue to buy Russian gas and oil, allowing Russia to earn euros and dollars in exchange. While the CBR sanctions mean those earnings cannot be used to support the ruble, they can pay for imports. That’s a vital lifeline for the Russian economy.
Contrast this with how the United States has dealt with Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. In 2019, the U.S. sanctioned PDVSA, the state-owned oil company responsible for the majority of the Venezuela’s export earnings.
If they chose, the United States and its partners could add oil payments to their sanctions, treating Russian energy giants like Rosneft and Gazprom as they’ve treated PDVSA. While this would drive up energy prices in Europe and the U.S., it would have an even more devastating impact on the Russian economy.
Russia and Ukraine are key food and energy exporters. Will global prices spike?
In other words, if Putin further escalates in Ukraine, the West could retaliate by significantly escalating sanctions. Should that happen, it would be fair to describe the measures as “unprecedented.”
Daniel McDowell (@daniel_mcdowell) is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ewing took over as coach in 2017-18 and has had one winning season. The highlight was a storybook run to the Big East tournament title last season when the Hoyas won four games in as many days as the No. 8 seed, dismantling second seed Creighton in the championship game, 73-48. | null | null | null | null | null |
At a meeting Tuesday night, the Fairfax County Redistricting Advisory Committee recommended that the names of the Lee and Sully districts be changed, though it didn’t suggest alternatives. The county’s Board of Supervisors will begin formally considering the recommendations next week.
Formed initially as a county township in the late 1800s, the Lee District was named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee or one of his family members who enslaved people, the committee concluded after reviewing local history and hearing testimony from county residents.
The Sully District was created after the 1990 Census reflected a need for better representation in the fast-growing western portions of Fairfax. It was named after the site of a slavery plantation owned by Richard Bland Lee, an uncle of Robert E. Lee’s who served as Northern Virginia’s first member of Congress during the late 1700s, the committee found.
The conversations around the Lee and Sully districts became part of the county’s decennial redistricting process, in which local election maps have been redrawn to better match changes in population and demographics.
Lusk noted that a high school in his district that bore Lee’s name was recently renamed John R. Lewis High School, after the late congressman and civil rights icon.
Jeffrey Parnes, the president of the Sully District Council of Citizens Associations, argued that the name has ties to France, where there is a village of Sully and a town of Sully. Moreover, Parnes told the committee, it wouldn’t make sense to change the Sully name while keeping the names of districts such as Mount Vernon, which was George Washington’s plantation and a home to enslaved people.
“Many things in former slave states have those connotations,” he said, arguing that those places and names have since developed new meaning to their communities.
With Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) and some residents lobbying hard against a name change, the committee decided in a 12-to-5 straw vote last month that there wasn’t a compelling enough reason to recommend that the district be renamed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kaine introduces bill to research and combat long covid, after suffering it himself
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), departs after a vote on Capitol Hill in December. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Sen. Tim Kaine got covid-19 in the spring of 2020, and nearly two years later he still has mild symptoms.
The Virginia Democrat is one of the thousands or even millions of Americans who could have long covid, the little-understood phenomenon in which symptoms linger for weeks or months after a coronavirus infection. There is no agreed-upon understanding of its root causes, or even its official name, making treatment of the long-term symptoms difficult — including for Kaine.
That’s why on Wednesday, Kaine joined Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) in introducing a bill to fund research into the long-term effects of the disease and expand treatment resources for people experiencing them.
Kaine developed flu-like symptoms in March 2020 in the earliest wave of the pandemic in the United States, when coronavirus tests were not even widely available, and then tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in May 2020. Most of his symptoms, “very mild,” went away within weeks. But the nerve tingling never stopped.
He went to see a neurologist and got an MRI, but the doctor told him everything looked fine. In a way, Kaine was relieved — but left baffled. “I know how my body felt before I got covid, I know how it felt when I got covid, and it’s not gone back to where it was before,” he said. “That gives me an understanding for people who talk about these long covid symptoms.”
Numerous studies are underway to try to understand the phenomenon, and the bill from Kaine, Markey and Duckworth seeks to accelerate and centralize the research. The National Institutes of Health launched a research initiative studying the consequences of a coronavirus infection, which includes an examination of long covid.
“If we get the funding from Congress, we will launch new centers of excellence in communities across the country to provide high quality care to individuals experiencing long covid and to better understand the symptoms they’re facing,” Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary, said Wednesday upon the release of the Biden administration’s pandemic road map. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ewing took over as coach in 2017 and has had one winning season. The highlight was a storybook run to the Big East tournament title last season when the Hoyas won four games in as many days as the No. 8 seed, dismantling second seed Creighton in the championship game, 73-48. | null | null | null | null | null |
A “Masks Required” sign outside a bookstore in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. States and cities are dropping masking requirements. Federal officials say covid is moving out of the crisis phase. But many people across the U.S. say that for them, the emergency continues. Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)
Peter Gaynor, president of the condo board in a 153-unit Arlington building, said residents were weighing whether to mask in common spaces, the gym and mailboxe area, given the changes happening across the river. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The state of our union’s health care won’t be fixed by Biden’s proposals
First lady Jill Biden reaches out to Joshua Davis, a 13-year-old diabetes patient who was a guest of the president at the State of the Union address March 1. (Evelyn Hockstein/Bloomberg News)
In his first State of the Union address, President Biden touted the temporary expanded subsidies for people receiving insurance via the Affordable Care Act. He reminded everyone that Americans pay more than people in any other country for prescription drugs, and demanded, once again, that Congress pass legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate their cost. Introducing a boy with Type 1 diabetes, he declared that Americans should have to pay no more than $35 a month for insulin. “Drug companies will still do very well,” he said.
All excellent actions, and observations. But the problem of out-of-control health-care costs is a lot more complicated than these fairly brief references in an hour-long speech. Americans are swamped — not simply by the high cost of pharmaceuticals but also by a costly, impenetrable and often all but unnavigable health-care bureaucracy that views them as just another source of funds.
The same day as Biden’s speech, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report showing medical debt is the leading cause of unpaid bills that get sent to collection agencies. This past year the Census Bureau reported that just shy of 20 percent of American households owed money for medical reasons. Recent surveys by health-care researchers at the Commonwealth Fund and Healthcare.com, an online insurance comparison site, indicate that close to one-third of all U.S. adults have medical debt.
It’s all but impossible to keep up with the myriad ways things can go financially wrong for the patient in the American health-care system. Medical care, as I and others are forever pointing out, is rarely a planned-for expense that one can comparison-shop for in advance. For Americans with employer-based health insurance, the typical per-person deductible is in excess of $1,000 — a sum many families cannot afford. Co-pays multiply. Patients often receive multiple bills from different parties for the same event. Authorization for treatments can be denied not just before, but after the fact.
In the endless quest to make someone come up with the money, the patient — the most powerless entity — is all too often the ultimate source. “When it comes to medical bills, Americans are often caught in a doom loop between their medical provider and the insurance company,” CFPB head Rohit Chopra said in prepared remarks released with the survey.
Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor of politics at Oberlin College whose field of study is, of all things, health insurance claim denials, recently ended up with a medical bill of more than $5,000 getting sent to collection, after an insurance premium payment went astray. And she’s an expert in all this.
Even the well-insured may spend significant sums of money out-of-pocket. Sarah Wald, a professor of environmental studies and English at the University of Oregon with metastatic breast cancer, told me she spent about $20,000 this past year on medical bills ranging from pharmaceutical co-pays to acupuncture to help her body handle the side effects of her medication.
Little wonder that, as covid-19 recedes, the issue of our unaffordable health-care bills is reemerging with a vengeance. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in January found it was second only to economic concerns as an issue voters said they wanted Biden and Congress to tackle this year.
If Biden is serious, he needs to take on not just Republicans but also his own party. Democratic pols — many flush with campaign donations from big pharma — have stepped in time and time again to stop systemic efforts to address the high cost of prescription meds, so much so that the Build Back Better legislation that got approved by the Democrat-controlled House (only to run into the solid roadblock of the split Senate) permitted Medicare to negotiate prices only for a handful of drugs.
It’s Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) who says we can’t afford to add dental care coverage to Medicare – something an all but overwhelming number of Americans want.
And it’s the Biden administration that’s allowing one of Donald Trump’s few achievements in the area of medical costs — a requirement that hospitals post all their negotiated prices with insurers and employers, as well as the cash price they offer up — to languish all but unenforced. A report released earlier this year by Patient Rights Advocate.org found only 14 percent of hospitals they surveyed were in full compliance with the law. (Conversely, the administration is enabling a Trump-era backdoor scheme to semi-privatize Medicare, one so sneaky that many patients enrolled in the initiative are unaware of it.)
Even if Biden got all of what he says he wants in the area of medical care in the United States, it won’t be enough. It will still leave all too many battling the high cost of necessary treatment. For individuals, it’s not just a financial burden. It’s often a matter of life or death. No wonder they consider tackling it such a high priority. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dozens arrested in global abuse inquiry
A long-running global investigation into child abuse images shared online has led to the arrest of dozens of suspects in New Zealand and the safeguarding of 146 children around the world, New Zealand officials and the E.U. police agency Europol said Wednesday.
New Zealand officials said the material “is some of the most egregious investigators have been exposed to. Many of the children featured in the images and videos were just infants who were exposed to obvious and intentional pain and suffering.”
The country’s Interior Ministry said “Operation H” was launched in October 2019 by its child exploitation team after a service provider found thousands of users of an online platform sharing what it called “some of the most horrific and devastating child sexual abuse material online.”
Investigators identified some 90,000 online accounts that had possessed or traded the abuse images, authorities said.
New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs reached out to law enforcement agencies around the world to coordinate its investigation, including the FBI, Europol, Interpol and police in Canada and Australia.
Fraud probes dropped against Juan Carlos
Spain’s national prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that it has dropped two probes into alleged fraud in former King Juan Carlos’s business dealings after failing to find sufficient evidence of criminal activity.
Juan Carlos, 84, who left Spain for the United Arab Emirates under a cloud of scandal in August 2020, has been the subject of money-laundering probes by Spanish and Swiss authorities for two years.
Spain’s decision to close the two probes, linked to payments allegedly received over a high-speed train contract in Saudi Arabia and an offshore account in Jersey, follows a similar move by Swiss prosecutors last year.
Juan Carlos has paid about $5.6 million in back taxes as a result of the investigations, the prosecutor’s office said.
Juan Carlos came to the throne in 1975 after the death of Gen. Francisco Franco and was widely respected for his role in helping guide Spain from dictatorship to democracy. But his popularity sank in later years over several scandals, prompting him to step down in 2014.
Bomb blast kills 3, wounds 27 in Pakistan: A bomb exploded near a police van in southwest Pakistan, killing an officer and two other people and wounding 27, mostly passersby, police said. The attack took place in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, on a road running through a bazaar, said a senior police officer. No one immediately claimed the bombing, but previous such attacks have been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban and various militant groups. Baluchistan has been the scene of a long-running insurgency by Baluch secessionist groups.
France upholds court ban on barristers wearing hijab: France's highest court upheld a ban on barristers wearing the hijab and other religious symbols in Lille law courts, a judgment that could set a precedent for the rest of the country. The case was brought by Sarah Asmeta, 30, a hijab-wearing Syrian French lawyer. She challenged a rule set by the Bar Council of Lille banning religious and political markers in courtrooms on the grounds that it was discriminatory.
Turkey softens mask mandate: Turkey relaxed its mandate for coronavirus masks, allowing people to go without them in open-air spaces and in places with sufficient ventilation and where social distancing can be maintained. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said people would be required to continue wearing masks in planes, buses, theaters, cinemas, hospitals and classrooms. In other steps, Turkey will no longer close down classes where two or more students have tested positive for the virus, Koca said.
South African court rules on Zulu succession: A new Zulu king can be crowned in South Africa after a court settled a dispute over whether the prince named as heir to the throne last year had a rightful claim. A KwaZulu-Natal High Court judge ruled that Prince Misuzulu KaZwelithini, the eldest surviving son of King Goodwill Zwelithini, is the "undisputed successor." The king's will named one of his wives as queen regent, but she died a month after he did, leaving her son Misuzulu to be named the king in waiting. Two Zulu princesses said the will had been forged and went to court to stop the coronation. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nearly 900,000 people have fled Ukraine for safety. On today’s show, the refugees of the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainians and others fleeing Russia’s invasion as they cross the border into Poland. (Kasia Strek for The Washington Post)
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have left Ukraine for neighboring countries, and many are now waiting in holding centers across the region. Many are women and children; Ukrainian authorities have told men ages 18 to 60 to stay in the country to fight the invasion.
Almost 900,000 people have fled Ukraine and are looking to places like Poland, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary for safety. Traffic data shows severe backups at nearly every border crossing over the weekend, particularly at crossings into Poland. Officials warn that the flow of refugees is likely to escalate into a full-blown humanitarian crisis.
Today on the show, the refugees fleeing Ukraine to escape the war.
Katya Merezhinsky is one of those people. She was in Lviv when the war began, and she recounts her harrowing journey out of Ukraine.
Foreign correspondent and Berlin bureau chief Loveday Morris reports on the ground from the Ukraine-Poland border, where busloads of refugees are arriving in Poland. She says, “Hordes of people are [arriving] with real tales of horror.”
Video journalist Jon Gerberg is also on the Ukraine-Poland border and reports on the discrimination some refugees of color have faced as they’ve tried to cross it.
“What starts on paper as a policy of national priority in the end effectively translates into a two-class process,” Gerberg says.
Follow our coverage on the war in Ukraine here. | null | null | null | null | null |
Moscow has seen little support this week from these countries.
By Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili
People walk past a giant Kazakhstan flag in Astana, Kazakhstan, March 5, 2019. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)
To the east of the current conflict in Ukraine, none of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia has jumped to support Moscow’s decision to invade. Although far from the fighting, these countries have a lot to lose economically — and may have concerns that Russia might seek to undermine their sovereignty.
Unlike Ukraine, which was able to reorient its economy away from Russia, these countries remain deeply interdependent on Moscow. This means Western sanctions, and a sinking ruble, will have devastating effects on the people of Central Asia.
Russia has found little support from Central Asia
Despite close economic ties with Russia, not a single Central Asian country has endorsed President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Uzbekistan is “neutral,” a government spokesman said, and Uzbekistani president Shavkat Mirziyoyev urged a peaceful resolution of the conflict according to international law. There has been radio silence from the leaders of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry quickly said it would not recognize the independent republics of Luhansk and Donetsk after Russia declared them to be independent republics, and this week reportedly refused Russia’s request to send troops to Ukraine. This rejection of Moscow’s request was surprising, coming just a month after the government invited Russian troops, under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), to shore up the rule of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev after violent protests swept the country.
In Kyrgyzstan, however, President Sadyr Japarov commented that the invasion may have been necessary “to protect the peaceful population of the territories of Donbas.” That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to recall Ukraine’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan to protest the country’s statement “justifying the aggression against Ukraine.”
Central Asian countries worry they might be next
This lack of solidarity may be surprising, given the high level of economic interdependence with Russia. But Central Asian leaders have been wary about resurgent Russian expansionism.
In his speech last week, Putin called Ukrainian statehood a fiction. Putin in 2014 said similar things about Kazakhstan, claiming “Kazakhs never had any statehood” while lauding former president Nursultan Nazarbayev for “creating a state in a territory that never had a state before.” He concluded by encouraging the Kazakh people to “remain in the greater Russian world.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused fears of conquest to resurface. In Uzbekistan, bloggers close to the government circulated a 1995 video of then-president Islam Karimov warning of a “danger ahead” for his country. Karimov claimed that different forces “want to restore Greater Russian on the borders constituting the former USSR … This means a complete transfer of Soviet authority to Russia.”
Putin is surprisingly popular in Central Asia, however, and this personal popularity may temper sovereignty concerns. In Tajikistan he had higher approval ratings than in Russia.
But nationalism within the region is on the rise. In Uzbekistan, for example, linguistic nationalism drove a rare public pushback against a parliamentary proposal to join the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russian-led trading bloc that seeks to be an alternative to the European Union.
Economic integration leaves Central Asia vulnerable
As the United States and Europe continue to add sanctions against Russia, Central Asian countries face reminders of how dependent their economies and societies are on Moscow. When Western sanctions hit Russia in 2014, Central Asian governments grappled with the fallout. In a single day known as “Black Tuesday” in 2014, Kazakhstan’s currency — the tenge — lost 20 percent of its value. Inflation and unemployment followed.
A primary reason for Central Asia’s dependence on Russia is remittances from migrant labor. According to the Russian government, there were 4.5 million workers from Uzbekistan, 2.4 million from Tajikistan, and 920,000 from Kyrgyzstan working in Russia in 2021. Remittances from work abroad, mostly from Russia, account for 30 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP and 28 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP.
Financial stability within Central Asia is also closely linked to Russia. On Monday, as the Russian ruble plummeted, so too did Central Asian currencies. Trading of the Kazakh tenge was halted on Monday after it fell almost 20 percent compared to levels it was at one week ago. This was after the Kazakhstan National Bank poured $98.1 million to preserve the currency. Uzbekistan’s currency fell more than 9 percent that day, and Kyrgyzstan saw similar slides.
This economic hit comes at crucial time for Kazakhstan, which is trying to recover investor confidence after political unrest shook the country in January, leaving more than 150 dead. The government is now seeking to reboot the economy. It will be hard pressed to find foreign investors, given its close alliance with Russia.
Trade is another area where Central Asia remains dependent upon Russia. In Uzbekistan, for example, Russia has overtaken China as the leading trading partner. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are also heavily dependent on trade to Russia as they share membership in the Eurasian Economic Union.
To be sure, Central Asian countries understand the risks of dependence on Russia. They experienced a huge blow from 2014 sanctions. When the global economy came to a halt during the covid-19 pandemic, migrant laborers in Russia headed home. In response, leaders looked to diversify from dependence on migration and remittances. But as economies in the region bounced back, labor migrants headed right back to Russia.
Last week Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said, “As the world becomes more dangerous by the hour … we must work to strengthen our economy, our defense, and with confidence raise the power of our motherland.” This was a hint, no doubt, about the need to bolster his country’s economic strength and independence from foreign powers.
But calls for diversification won’t shield Central Asia from the effects of Western sanctions on Russia. Governments in the region will face enormous pressure from inflation and unemployment — and social unrest may follow. Russia’s military adventures in Ukraine are likely to have destabilizing consequences in this region for years to come.
Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili (@jmurtazashvili) is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Center for Governance and Markets. Her research focuses on political economy and security in Central Eurasia. She is currently the president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. | null | null | null | null | null |
“The team game sort of got out of sync with guys going in and out of the lineup, lineups changing and then we kind of lost our rhythm, lost our way,” MacLellan said, referencing Washington’s myriad injury woes. “I think there’s a number of different things that have gone on.”
Both have shown flashes, but MacLellan acknowledged they have looked fairly average during 5-on-5 play.
“It’s got to be an obvious upgrade for us for it to make sense [to get another goaltender] or otherwise we go with our guys,” MacLellan said. “Is this going to get us over a hump on the goaltending side? I don’t know if there’s that many guys that are out that are quality, you know, there might be one or two.”
“He’s looking better every day … he’s had another good practice and he’s looked really strong out there,” Laviolette said.
The Capitals said Samsonov was still being evaluated after practice and had no further updates. A similar incident with occurred Saturday during warm-ups in Philadelphia. Samsonov took a puck up high, went to the locker room in pain, was subsequently cleared and started the game as scheduled. | null | null | null | null | null |
Eastman has so far submitted roughly 8,000 pages of emails to committee investigators but is withholding approximately 11,000 documents, citing attorney-client privilege. Last month, a U.S. district judge in California ordered an expedited schedule to review Eastman’s bid to shield emails sent between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7.
To help make its case, the committee is expected to include in the filing details about Eastman’s efforts to pressure Pence, referencing testimony from two of Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The Pence aides explained in detail to the committee that Eastman led a pressure campaign against Pence, which they believed he was doing at Trump’s behest, the people said. Short, Pence’s chief of staff, along with Jacob, Pence’s counsel, were with the vice president during the assault on the Capitol. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rep. Van Taylor (R-Tex.) listens during a hearing on Sept. 22, 2020. (Caroline Brehman/AP)
News of Taylor’s affair with Tania Joya, a former Islamist militant who now works to “reprogram” other extremists, had circulated on conservative websites in the days leading up to the primary. Joya told the Dallas Morning News that she and Taylor had had an affair from October 2020 to June 2021.
A Taylor spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Taylor also voted, with several other Republicans, to create an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Senate Republicans later blocked that effort, and House Democrats instead created a bipartisan committee to probe the insurrection. | null | null | null | null | null |
“The team game sort of got out of sync with guys going in and out of the lineup, lineups changing, and then we kind of lost our rhythm, lost our way,” MacLellan said, referencing Washington’s myriad injury woes. “I think there’s a number of different things that have gone on.”
Both have shown flashes, but MacLellan acknowledged they have looked fairly average during five-on-five play.
“It’s got to be an obvious upgrade for us for it to make sense [to get another goaltender] or otherwise we go with our guys,” MacLellan said. “Is this going to get us over a hump on the goaltending side? I don’t know if there’s that many guys that are out that are quality, you know; there might be one or two.”
“He’s looking better every day … he’s had another good practice, and he’s looked really strong out there,” Laviolette said.
The Capitals said Samsonov was still being evaluated after practice, and they had no further updates. A similar incident with occurred Saturday during warm-ups in Philadelphia. Samsonov took a puck up high, went to the locker room in pain, was subsequently cleared and started the game as scheduled. | null | null | null | null | null |
White House unveils pandemic ‘reset’ plan, says shutdowns, school closures ...
Opinion: Biden’s State of the Union was a visual representation of his new pandemic plan
President Biden, center, greets attendees after his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on March 1. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
One day after President Biden’s State of the Union address, his administration released a 96-page plan to address the covid-19 pandemic. To understand the essence of the plan, one needs only to consider the setting for Biden’s speech.
Contrast this visual with Biden’s April 2021 address to a joint session of Congress. Only about 200 people were present in the 1,600-person-capacity space. Attendees were asked not to make physical contact, and multiple spaces were left empty between seats. Masks were required, and everyone wore them. Some even wore two.
If last year’s speech symbolized that we were in the midst of a public health emergency, this year’s shows that pre-pandemic normalcy is possible now that we have the right tools.
Most members of Congress are vaccinated, with a 100 percent vaccination rate among Democratic lawmakers. Biden is vaccinated and boosted, and likely many other attendees are too. In lieu of mandatory masks and distancing, testing was required. At least six legislators tested positive and therefore did not attend.
Presumably, all attendees will monitor for symptoms in the coming days. If they show any, they’ll get tested. If they are found to have the coronavirus and are deemed medically vulnerable, they can receive treatments that reduce their likelihood of progressing to severe illness — such as the antiviral pill Paxlovid, which reduces the risk of hospitalization by around 90 percent.
These measures are what has helped turn covid-19 from a deadly disease into a far more manageable one. If individuals want additional protection, they can mask; some at the State of the Union did. If people still deem an event too high-risk, they could choose not to attend. The new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show D.C. to be “low” risk, which means that even without testing, the State of the Union could have taken place without required masks.
The precautions that allowed Tuesday’s high-profile gathering form the crux of Biden’s new pandemic plan. Vaccines protect against the coronavirus, and treatments can help those who still become infected. Tests are also a key tool that, in my view, can replace the need for masks, even in crowded settings where vaccination is not required. All of these tools together can prevent future shutdowns of businesses and schools. They make it possible for most Americans to resume the activities they value while the federal government increases production of treatments for the most vulnerable, prepares for new threats and helps to vaccinate the world.
There are three components of the plan that I particularly like. First, the federal government is launching a “test to treat” one-stop program so people can visit easy-to-access locations such as pharmacies to get tested. Immediately upon receiving a positive result, they’d receive take-home antiviral pills at no cost. This dramatically simplifies existing processes and will help individuals access treatment quickly, which is essential because these oral antivirals work only if administered early in the course of illness.
Second, the administration aims to stockpile tests, pills and high-quality masks in preparation for a future surge, which could well happen if new variants emerge or existing immunity wanes. Third, the government is setting up early-warning systems such as virus detection in communal wastewater and streamlining processes to approve new vaccines faster. Lack of tests and delayed responses were major problems that exacerbated the delta and omicron surges, and it’s clear the administration has learned these lessons.
Perhaps the most revealing part of Biden’s covid-19 playbook is the following sentence: “Make no mistake, President Biden will not accept ‘living with covid’ any more than we accept ‘living with’ cancer, Alzheimer’s, or AIDS.”
This line was probably meant to convey that the president thinks the level of suffering and death still being caused by the coronavirus is unacceptable. But I think it’s telling that the administration is putting covid-19 into the same category as other diseases that Americans understand to be part of our existence. Yes, we need to work to prevent them and improve treatments, but we also recognize that we can’t let these diseases dominate our lives.
The threat of covid-19 is far from over, but it’s possible — and necessary — to proceed with pre-pandemic living. Large, maskless events such as the State of the Union aren’t displaying callousness or capitulation but, rather, reflect a new understanding of where our country stands in the pandemic and on the path ahead. | null | null | null | null | null |
At Berlin's central station, Hauptbahnhof, passengers exit a platform where a train carrying refugees from the Ukrainian-Polish border arrived on Wednesday. (Clemens Bilan/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The European Union is opening its doors to Svitlyk and hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians. Under new rules expected to be adopted Thursday, Ukrainian nationals will be eligible for “temporary protection” within the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, depending partly on conditions in Ukraine.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel offered them a chance to live and work in Germany. Other countries were far more resistant to taking people in. Eventually, political backlash led Germany, too, to take a harder line.
But Russia’s assault on Ukraine has led to an outpouring of support for Ukrainians desperate to leave. Ukrainian nationals will be granted residence and work permits within the bloc, and they will have access to housing, schools and medical coverage.
More than 934,000 people have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, according to the UNHCR, mostly traveling overland to neighboring countries in eastern Europe. The U.N. refugee agency estimates that up to 4 million people may leave Ukraine if the violence continues.
“At this rate, the situation looks set to become Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century,” Shabia Mantoo, a UNHCR spokeswoman said Tuesday in Geneva.
Most are crossing into Poland, as well as Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova. Some will to stay in eastern Europe, others will continue westward to cities such as Berlin.
“All those fleeing Putin’s bombs are welcome in Europe,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said in a statement Wednesday. “We will provide protection to those seeking shelter and we will help those looking for a safe way home.”
To handle the historic influx, the E.U. is turning to a special procedure called the Temporary Protection Directive, which was first developed in 2001. The measure allows the E.U. to “provide immediate and temporary protection to displaced persons from non-EU countries and those unable to return to their country of origin.”
While Europe is relatively united in its desire to help Ukrainians, some have questioned why Temporary Protection was not offered to fleeing Afghans, for instance, or to assist other asylum seekers reaching Europe’s shores.
In 2015 and 2016, some 2 million people, many of them Syrians fleeing war, sought refuge in Europe. Some of the central and eastern European governments who were most strongly opposed to letting in asylum seekers then are now leading the charge to welcome Ukrainians.
The family’s breadwinner, Oleksiy Piliahin, 42, was part of a painter’s union in Ukraine, with a long list of clients whose walls he’d redo, or tables he’d varnish. Now, he, Mariya and their three sons were stripped of nearly all their possessions, at the mercy of forces beyond their control.
“European generosity is making us feel as though we are equals,” said Piliahin, who has a disability that exempted him from a rule banning men from ages 18 to 60 from leaving Ukraine. “I do not want to be a burden. I want to continue earning my living, so I can contribute money to the war effort, and eventually rebuild my life in Ukraine.”
He reserved special gratitude for Poland, which has mounted a massive humanitarian drive at community, federal and military levels to meet the needs of the new arrivals. At the nearby border crossing in the town of Kroscienko, bleary-eyed Ukrainian families were greeted by a sign welcoming them not just into Poland, but into the E.U.
Sitting on a bench in the corner of Berlin’s central station Wednesday, Olivier Mani and Blanche Bikie, from Cameroon, and Keita Sekou, from Côte d’Ivoire, described their arduous days-long journeys from Kyiv, where they were attending university. | null | null | null | null | null |
Empathy is often based on proximity. But when it comes to Ukraine, recent weeks have seen people act in ways that go beyond geography.
Children walk past a storefront blocked by sandbags at a mall in Dnipro, Ukraine, on March 2. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
An 11-year-old was killed in America.
An 11-year-old was killed on the East Coast.
An 11-year-old was killed in the nation’s capital.
Those three sentences are about the same child who met the same fate, and yet our minds react to them differently. Each hits with a different force.
As someone who has written hundreds of stories about people after they’ve died — and recently found myself writing about someone as they died — I’ve long been fascinated with the power of proximity when it comes to empathy.
Should I mention a person’s hometown in the first paragraph? Should I weave it into the fifth? These are the types of questions I ask myself when chronicling someone’s life, knowing that we, as humans, are programmed to care more about a stranger if they lived near us. It’s easy to ache for someone’s loss if they came from our home state, and it’s even easier if they came from our neighborhood.
But that makes the opposite also true. Physical distance allows for emotional distance. Consider the photos U.S. media outlets publish of the dead or dying. Most show horrors that occurred in other countries. On the rare occasions that those photos have shown domestic incidents, it was only because what happened was so awful that words and non-graphic photos alone couldn’t convey that. One example is the “falling man” photo that shows a person jumping from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Publications across the country ran it and then faced the task of defending their reasons for doing so to people who were upset at seeing such a disturbing image.
Years ago when I spoke to Nardyne Jefferies, she described people also turning away from a photo of her daughter. The D.C. teenager was killed in the South Capitol Street massacre, a shooting that saw nine people injured and three fatally wounded. Afterward, Jefferies didn’t want people to see her beautiful 16-year-old’s smiling face and move on. She wanted them to see what she saw after that shooting and take action. She placed her daughter’s post-autopsy picture on a poster board and shoved it in front of politicians, hoping it would show them what gun violence really looks like and compel them to do something about it.
This mother wants you to see a disturbing photo of her fatally shot daughter. Maybe it’s time we look.
“She was trying to show us it isn’t all flowers and balloons and sidewalks streaked with wax from candlelight vigils,” I wrote at the time. “It also isn’t what we see next to many victims’ profiles: smiling faces, selfies in front of scenic vacation spots and photos of families with arms interlocked. Those images show life and happiness. They show moments when goals were still being set, futures still being imagined and petty fights still being held because how could anyone know how quickly it was all going to be swiped away.”
Jefferies knew that photo of her daughter was unsettling.
She also believed people needed to feel unsettled.
I have been thinking a lot about Jefferies lately, and not just because 12 years after her daughter’s death, gun violence in the city has only gotten more deadly.
I have been thinking about her because we are in a moment when it is impossible to look online and not feel unsettled.
Like many people, I’ve found myself doom-scrolling day after day lately. I go from reading one painful account of what’s happening in Ukraine to diving deep into another. Because I live in the D.C. region, I also spend time reading social media posts about the many carjackings and homicides that have been occurring.
If you have also been doom-scrolling lately, maybe you feel guilty about it. Maybe you’ve even seen warnings telling you to stop. On those social media platforms, there are plenty of posts from well-intentioned people advising you to close your computer and take a break.
“Empathy starts with yourself,” reads one of those posts.
“Doomscrolling checkpoint: hi, if you’re reading this, and you’ve been seeing bad news all day, remember — you can be informed, but if it’s too much, you can always stop,” reads another.
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s 1000% okay to log off during times of trauma,” reads yet another. “You aren’t an awful person for wanting to avoid images of horror and uninformed people arguing about them.”
That last one comes from the Twitter account of David Nuñez, the director of technology and digital strategy at the MIT Museum. In a thread of tweets, he makes several strong points about the dangers of doom-scrolling that are worth reading, including this one: “Since your brain thinks all those explosions are happening right inside your smartphone, doom-scrolling causes your body to produce stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Your brain is screaming ‘fight or flight’ over a bunch of pixels on your screen.”
During normal times, I would agree with all those warnings. Seeking out disturbing content for the sake of simply seeing it benefits no one. It can erode a person’s mental health and view of the world. It also does not honor the subjects of that content.
But when the doom is real and the stakes are high, as they are now, I think it’s worth acknowledging that some good can come of doom-scrolling. That’s not a popular opinion, I know, and I respect the reasons people might disagree. I also think that if someone has experienced mental health struggles, they should give themselves permission to look away. But I agree with Jefferies — sometimes we need to look at things that disturb us and let ourselves feel unsettled. Good things can come from people seeing awful things, and we are witnessing that happen right now with Ukraine.
People are going on hunger strikes in support of Ukrainians. People are donating to organizations and individuals who are providing direct aid to Ukrainians. People are displaying flags outside their homes that represent children and adults who live in a place nowhere near them. They are showing empathy that is not based on proximity.
Here's how Americans can help people in Ukraine
I have seen people in my life who have rarely talked about international events, scrolling and scrolling, and then taking action. That has been incredible to witness.
I have also, as a journalist, seen the opposite. I have seen people scroll past stories and posts about other life-or-death issues and do nothing, or too little, to bring about change.
That 11-year-old I told you about was real. His name was Davon McNeal, and he was killed on the Fourth of July in the nation’s capital during an anti-violence cookout in 2020. He is one of at least five children the District has lost to gun violence since 2018, years that have seen the city’s annual homicide totals nearly double. | null | null | null | null | null |
In a matter of days, the tone has changed. Since the invasion began last week, Russia, facing a flurry of sanctions, has become an economic pariah. Even Putin’s defenders among European businesses, , especially in Italy and Germany, have rallied behind what France’s finance minister this week called an “all-out economic and financial war” against Russia, the European Union’s fifth-biggest trading partner. (He later apologized for saying “war.”)
Some see nuclear energy as a possible lifeboat. The crisis has reawakened one of the country’s most divisive debates — and one that appeared to have been settled, with all remaining nuclear power plants set to be taken off the grid this year. But speaking on Sunday, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, whose Green Party is rooted in the country’s anti-nuclear movement, was no longer willing to rule out an extension. “Nothing is a taboo,” he said, also raising the possibility of more reliance on coal.. | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON — A half-dozen U.S. lobbying firms have severed ties with Russian-linked businesses over the past week. It represents a dramatic pullback for an industry that typically has few qualms about representing controversial interests. Records show that firms including McLarty Associates, BGR Government Affairs and Venable LLP abruptly canceled contracts that have yielded millions of dollars in lobbying fees in recent years. Among their now former clients are the now-canceled Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was supposed to deliver Russian gas to Germany, as well as Russian state-controlled banks. The rush to cancel offers a measure of the potency of the Biden administration’s new sanctions.
WASHINGTON — Chair Jerome Powell said he supports a traditional quarter-point increase in the Federal Reserve’s benchmark short-term interest rate when the Fed meets later this month, rather than a larger increase that some of its policymakers have proposed. But Powell did open the door to a bigger hike in the event that inflation, which has reached a four-decade high, doesn’t noticeably decline this year, as the Fed expects it to. Higher Fed rates typically lead, in turn, to higher rates for consumers and businesses, including for homes and auto loans and credit cards.
WASHINGTON — Moscow’s war on Ukraine and the ferocious financial backlash it’s unleashed are not only inflicting an economic catastrophe on President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The repercussions are also menacing the global economy, shaking financial markets and making life more perilous for everyone from Uzbek migrant workers to European consumers to hungry Yemeni families. Even before Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine, the global economy was straining under a range of burdens: Surging inflation. Tangled supply chains. Tumbling stock prices. The Ukraine crisis both magnified each threat and complicated the potential solutions.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and U.S. allies in a matter of days have weaponized the global economy against Russia for invading Ukraine. The resulting destruction has been devastatingly fast. The sanctions almost instantly put Russian President Vladimir Putin on the defensive against skyrocketing inflation. Russia’s central bank was left unable to tap foreign reserves and is trying to use what resources it has to slow the ruble’s steep decline. The sanctions reflect a massive change in how conflicts can be waged in a world that’s globalized, digital and highly dependent on accessing money. Ukrainian parliament member Oleksandra Ustinova met with U.S. senators on Tuesday to advocate for more sanctions.
NEW YORK — Wall Street took another sharp swing Wednesday, this time back to rally mode, as stocks and Treasury yields rose even as oil prices continued to climb. The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, putting it back into the green for the week, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he supports a more modest rise in interest rates this month than some investors had been fearing. Other markets were also showing less fear than a day earlier. Treasury yields recovered some of their sharp losses and gold receded. U.S. crude oil climbed to $110.60 per barrel, the highest level in more than a decade.
NEW YORK — Amazon is closing all of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, as well as its 4-star shops and pop up locations. The closures come as the online behemoth reworks its physical footprint. The move affects 66 stores in the U.S. and two in the United Kingdom. The Seattle-based company said Wednesday that it will now be able to concentrate its efforts on Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, its convenience concept called Amazon Go and its upcoming Amazon Style stores. Amazon Style is set to open later this year selling fashion and accessories. Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in 2015, two decades after it began selling books online and helped drive a number of shops out of business.
SILVER SPRING, Md. — Bitcoin prices have surged as investors again appear to view the volatile cryptocurrency as a safe haven for their money and Russians and Ukrainians seek alternatives to their country’s financial institutions. After initially falling to around $34,000 following Russia’s advance into Ukraine last week, bitcoin pushed about 10% higher on Monday and is now up more than 25% in the past week, to $43,900 Wednesday afternoon. Russians are exchanging their rapidly declining rubles for bitcoin to try and mitigate the impact of recent economic sanctions. Ukrainians, with the government limiting their ability to conduct electronic fund transactions, are also turning to cryptocurrencies.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Republican elected officials across the U.S. are criticizing President Joe Biden over his energy policies and want to ramp up domestic production as a way to help wean the nation and its allies off oil from Russia. Governors, senators and state attorneys general from oil- and gas-producing states such as Oklahoma and Louisiana urged his administration to do more to boost production, which actually increased during Biden’s first year in office. The sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies on Russia for its war with Ukraine so far do not include oil and gas exports from the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
Watch Florida Gov. DeSantis mock students for wearing masks: ‘It’s ridiculous’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) speaks during a news conference after announcing a $20 million dollar program to create cybersecurity opportunities through the Florida Center for Cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa on Wednesday. (AP photo by Chris O'meara)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was all set on Wednesday to start a news conference when he noticed that high school students standing there to serve as a backdrop to his remarks were all wearing masks. He immediately mocked them, telling them to remove the masks because it’s "ridiculous” to wear them and it was nothing more than “covid theater.”
DeSantis was at the University of South Florida to announce a $20 million cybersecurity education initiative, with students from Middleton High School in Hillsborough County Public Schools taking part in the announcement.
“You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said in video taken by WFLA News Channel 8, Tampa’s NBC station. “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this covid theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”
A few students removed their masks while others left them on, the video shows.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased recommendations on mask-wearing for much of the country in an attempt to allow individuals to assess personal risk based on their health status and conditions in their community, including case counts and hospital admissions and capacity. The goal is to protect people from severe illness and to prevent health-care systems from being overwhelmed. — a move that arrives as many state and local officials had already taken such steps.
What you need to know about CDC new mask recommendations
Hillsborough County, according to the county covid-19 dashboard, has a coronavirus positivity rate of 6.8 percent. Public health experts say that high-quality masks do, in fact, provide significant protection against contracting the coronavirus despite the Harvard-educated DeSantis’s claim that masks don’t do “anything.”
DeSantis’s comments were immediately spread on social media — millions of people viewed a video on Twitter — and were met with withering criticism. Critics on Twitter noted that it was hypocritical for DeSantis to push students to take off their masks when he prides himself on supporting “choice” and being the governor of the “freedom state.”
Michelle Todd, host of the “He Said, She Said” podcast and a self-declared moderate, tweeted: “This should’ve been an exciting day for these high schoolers. No hello, nice to meet you from the Governor. Instead a lecture because his props for his announcement didn’t look how he wanted them to.”
Addison Davis, superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools, issued a more subtle statement saying that the district was “excited” that Middleton students were highlighted as part of the cybersecurity education initiative. Then he said this: "As always, our students should be valued and celebrated. It is a student and parent’s choice to protect their health in a way they feel most appropriate. We are proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves and our school district.”
DeSantis has been decidedly anti-mask for much of the pandemic, taking steps last year to block school districts from issuing mask mandates and going so far as to withholding state funds from districts that defied his orders not to impose masking requirements. He recently said that parents should be given the power to sue school districts if their child was “illegally forced-masked this year.” | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump’s outspoken regard for Vladimir Putin and his shakedown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to his first impeachment, took Republicans down some very bad roads with Ukrainian American voters. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is Polish but has been one of Ukraine’s biggest champions on Capitol Hill for decades. She is co-chair of the congressional Ukraine Caucus while Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is a co-chair of its Senate counterpart. Both of them spoke during a rally on Sunday at St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland and one of the biggest Ukrainian communities in the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington Commanders General Manager Martin Mayhew speaks to reporters during a news conference at the NFL football scouting combine Wednesday. (Michael Conroy/AP)
INDIANAPOLIS — While the Washington Commanders wait for the quarterback dominoes to fall, the team’s front office is using the NFL scouting combine to lay groundwork for moves at other positions.
General Manager Martin Mayhew said Wednesday that the team has met or would meet with the agents of three impending free agents: running back J.D. McKissic, safety Bobby McCain and wide receiver Cam Sims. Mayhew said the team would also meet the agents of players still under contract — including safety Landon Collins and wide receiver Terry McLaurin — but the most pressing are with those with clients set to hit the market when free agency officially opens March 16.
Washington hasn’t made contract offers to McKissic, McCain and others, Mayhew said, because it is waiting for the quarterback market to take shape. Washington has the ninth-most salary cap space in the league at $31.9 million, according to OverTheCap.com, but how it’d make use of that space would drastically differ if it traded for a star veteran or signed a mid-tier free agent.
“When the negotiation period begins [March 14], [free agents will] have the opportunity to go out and talk to other teams, and we want them to keep us informed as to where they are contractually and what kind of offers they’re looking at,” Mayhew said. “That’s what our purpose here is, to express that we want those guys back.”
For now, the NFL’s entire quarterback market appears stuck in limbo with Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers undecided on his future and Houston’s Deshaun Watson still mired in lawsuits. There may be movement in the next two weeks — Rodgers is expected to make his decision soon, and teams will want to know their budgets when free agency opens — and Mayhew said Washington has developed several plans it can implement for downstream roster moves depending on which quarterback it acquires, if any.
In the meantime, the franchise’s brain trust, including Mayhew and Coach Ron Rivera, will try to refine the margins of the roster. The Commanders are planning to exercise the fifth-year contract option of defensive end Montez Sweat, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. The salary, projected to be around $10.5 million for 2023, will be fully guaranteed immediately once exercised.
The only potential free agent the team locked up after the season was left tackle Charles Leno, Jr., who signed a three-year, $37.5 million extension. Mayhew was asked what differentiated Leno from the others who went unsigned.
“Well, we talked to a lot of people at the end of the season,” Mayhew said. “There were multiple guys we talked to about extending, and Charles was the one we were able to get done. And so, we did it.”
One of the most difficult decisions may be with Collins, who played well in a smaller role last season but has cap charges of $16 million, $17.2 million and $15.2 million over the next three seasons.
When asked whether Collins could return on his current contract, Mayhew said, “Time will tell.”
“There are a number of players who are under contract right now that may be looked at, that may need to renegotiate those,” he added. “I'm not even saying Landon is one of those. But those situations are all individual situations.”
J.D. McKissic waited years for his chance, then ran with it in Washington
Conversely, Washington will have to prepare to give McLaurin a lot more money. The 2019 third-round pick from Ohio State has been one of the league’s best bargains over the past three years as he’s posted 222 catches, 3,090 yards and 16 touchdowns while earning $2.8 million total. Mayhew said the team plans to meet with McLaurin’s agent Buddy Baker and, according to a person familiar with the plans, the sides will convene Friday.
Baker also represents wide receiver DeAndre Carter, who is also set to hit the free agent market this month.
Mayhew was asked if Washington might want to sign McLaurin sooner rather than later because the 2019 draft class is full of star wide receivers — Tennessee’s A.J. Brown, Seattle’s D.K. Metcalf, San Francisco’s Deebo Samuel, among them — who may drive each other’s value higher and higher with each subsequent contract.
“I don't want to get into all that,” Mayhew said. “But like I said, Terry's been great; we love having him; he's been kind of a face-of-the-program type of guy for us. He's very good out in the community and good teammate and leader for us. And he made a ton of plays for us. So, he's important to us.”
There seemed to be little optimism about re-signing all-pro right guard Brandon Scherff, who was franchise-tagged twice and has long seemed destined for free agency. At a news conference in January, Mayhew said that, before the 2021 season, the team offered to make Scherff the highest-paid guard in NFL history. But on Wednesday, Mayhew said his comments might have “crossed a line” by negotiating through the media.
“I felt like, in that situation, that needed to be said because what I sensed was, from the media, the fans and things that I was reading, was that we weren't doing enough to try to get that deal done,” he said. “And that's why I made the comment that I made. But I don't plan on making any real comments about it. I'm planning to work with him and his agent in the way it should be done.”
After he finished speaking to reporters Wednesday, Mayhew walked out of the convention center ballroom, back toward the meetings where he’d try to configure all the pieces and reshape the roster. The most pressing moves? Mayhew pointed to McKissic, Sims and McCain.
“They were really important to what we did last year; we’d love to have 'em for this year,” he said. “The important thing is going to be, can we come up with the number that makes sense for everybody involved and how does that fit into the puzzle of putting our football team together?”
Nicki Jhabvala contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: “Capehart” with Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.)
MR. CAPEHART: Good afternoon, and welcome to the “Capehart” podcast and Washington Post Live. I am Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post.
Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida, was first elected to Congress in 2016, and she is busy. She is a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, she'll have her eyes on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and as a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol--yes, that is the official title--she will soon be part of nationally televised hearings that will bring the Select Committee's findings to light.
But late last year, Congresswoman Murphy announced she would not seek a fourth term. Why? Let's find out.
Joining me now is Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy of Florida. Welcome to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.
REP. MURPHY: It's so great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
MR. CAPEHART: Sure. So since late last month, Congresswoman, we've watched Russia invade Ukraine, sending hundreds of thousands of people streaming into neighboring countries to flee the violence. I would love your reflections on what you're seeing, not only as a member of Congress, member of the Armed Services Committee, but also as a refugee yourself. You grew up here in the Washington area, but your parents fled Vietnam in the late '70s when you were six months old, just six months old. The boat you all were on ran out of fuel, but you were rescued by a U.S. Navy vessel. Do I have that right? And I will--and talk about what your story--how that informs what you're watching and how you're responding to what's happening in Ukraine.
REP. MURPHY: Yeah, so let me just first say that my heart is just breaking for the Ukrainian people, and I am also just incredibly inspired by their courage. It's not the exact same kind of parallel, because I came from a country--Vietnam was, you know, not overrun by outside invaders the way that Ukraine is facing an unprovoked--a aggression by Russia. But when I look at these images of women and children and families fleeing violence, it reminds me of the stories that I grew up with in my own home, of my parents talking about living in a war-torn country and worrying about the future for their children, wanting what we as all parents want, which is simply for our children to have a better life than the one that we had. Because they didn't feel like they could have that in Vietnam as a communist government was taking over and persecuting its own people, my parents decided that they’d take their chances at sea rather than to live on in darkness in this country where they were being oppressed and that their children wouldn't have a bright future.
And so you're correct. We set off by boat when I was just six months old and ran out of fuel, and there we were dangerously adrift when the U.S. Navy came upon our ship and refueled us, resupplied us, and allowed us to make it to a Malaysian refugee camp. And then from there, the Lutheran Church relocated us to Virginia.
And so as I watch these images, it resonates deeply with me from a personal perspective. But from a professional perspective, I think it's so important that America stand up and stand beside these freedom-loving people who are trying to defend their country against this naked aggression. And you know, they have a right to their sovereignty and their territorial integrity. And I just voted here in Congress on a resolution in support of Ukraine, and I look forward to voting for resources to back up our commitment to help the Ukrainian people.
MR. CAPEHART: Is there more the United States should be doing or could be doing to help the Ukrainians, the government and the Ukrainian people? There are a lot of people who talk about, oh, the United States--I think President Zelensky wants there to be a no-fly zone. The president is--doesn't want to do it, doesn't say that that's the right move. Your view on that?
REP. MURPHY: Well, a no-fly zone gets very complicated because the president has made clear he does not want U.S. troops facing off with Russian troops. And if you implement a no-fly zone, what that means is that you are going to have to enforce it, and that would put U.S. forces face to face with Russian forces. And that's not something that we're looking at right now.
What I do think that we need to look at is to impose costs in all manners possible--diplomatic, military, and economic. And from a diplomatic perspective, I think we're doing a good job working with our allies, coordinating and standing strong and united as NATO against this aggression and supporting Ukraine.
From a military perspective, we continue to provide supplies and military assets for the Ukrainians to be able to try to defend themselves and counter this aggression.
And then from the economic perspective, we need to impose costs on the Russian economy, and we are already seeing good progress on really trying to bring the Russian economy to its knees.
And then from a social perspective as well, I advocated to, you know, kick them out of the World Cup competition. It may seem like a small thing, but Russia and its people need to understand that they will be a pariah if they continue to advance this invasion of Ukraine. And so we're working on a lot of different fronts where we can work together with our allies to impose costs on Russia for its violation of international norms.
MR. CAPEHART: You know, one of the criticisms of President Biden's State of the Union address that I heard was that there was a lot of tough talk about Russia, punishing Russia, making sure Russia pays for its invasion of Ukraine, and no reaching out to the Russian people and saying to the Russian people--you know, making a distinction between the Russian people and the Russian government. Do you think--do you think that the president should have extended that kind of rhetorical branch to the Russian people, or was that not necessary?
REP. MURPHY: I think some of the imposing the cost, the Russian people will be impacted by that cost. But they also--it's part of the pressure campaign, that the pressure needs to come from the outside and the inside on Putin to rethink this miscalculation of invading Ukraine. And if the oligarchs and the people of Russia allow their government to invade Ukraine without any consequences, they won't speak up. They need to feel the impacts of their government's decisions, and then choose to make their own choices about what they say and what they do within their own country. The pressure needs to come from the inside and the outside.
MR. CAPEHART: Are you surprised by the incredible unity that we have seen within NATO, within the European Union, the United Kingdom, the West, against Russian President Vladimir Putin? Because the conventional wisdom is Putin thought that the alliance was fractured, and that the alliance wouldn't come together in the way that it has so quickly against him. Are you surprised by just how resolute the Western alliance has been against Putin?
REP. MURPHY: I am heartened. I worked at the Department of Defense in the early 2000s at a time when NATO was trying to figure out what its purpose was. They--you know, the threat wasn't as imminent as it was when they were established. And they were casting about, you know, lots of conversation about what was the purpose of NATO. And I think in one fell swoop, Putin has managed to accomplish the absolute opposite of what he wanted. He wanted to push the U.S. out of Europe. And instead, the U.S. is deploying thousands of troops to Europe to deter further aggression, and basically reassure our NATO allies. You know, he wanted to divide the NATO alliance and fracture U.S.-EU relations. And instead, as you said, he has unified these countries in an unpredictable and unprecedented way. He wanted to quickly defeat Ukraine on the battlefield. And look, he is facing the kind of courageous resistance of freedom-loving people who are fighting to defend their country. They are putting up such a fierce fight, and they're inflicting heavy damage on Russian forces, and also exposing for our purposes the shortcomings in the Russian military and their logistics challenges and other weaknesses that is important for us to know.
And you know, at the end of the day, I think Putin wanted to show that Russia was a global power, and he wanted to reclaim something that never really was there for them. And instead, what he has done is he's made Russia a pariah nation, and he's also deeply damaged the Russian economy. So, I am heartened and encouraged by how our allies have pulled together and freedom-loving people around the world have showed up to provide support for the Ukrainian people.
MR. CAPEHART: I'm going to get you one more question on this because I've got two big chunks of this interview that--two other topics that I want to get to. But, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you were a national security specialist at the Department of Defense back in the day before you were a member of Congress. And I'm curious, how much damage did the previous administration do to the Western alliance by downplaying and bad-mouthing NATO, by not actively saying that it would support Article 5 of the NATO--the NATO charter? Did that give, you think, President Putin a false sense of security that when push came to shove, the NATO alliance would not come together and respond in the way that it has?
REP. MURPHY: I certainly don't think that the last administration's coddling of Russia was helpful on many fronts. But what I would say is that this administration stands in stark contrast to the last administration. Last night, we heard the president on the State of the Union affirm our commitment to Article 5. While there will not be troops deployed into Ukraine, he has made it very clear that we will defend every piece of territory under our NATO Alliance, and we are sending forces there to make sure that Putin understands that we are serious about our commitment.
I also think that this administration has done a good job diplomatically corralling all of our allies and leading. I'm somebody who believes that American leadership is so critically important in this world. And it's really heartening to see a change of pace.
And I'll add that the last administration isn't done undermining our efforts to stand together in this moment of crisis in Europe. It is stunning to imagine that a former president would admire President Putin and Putin's aggression against another nation in the aftermath of the invasion, when we look at the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding there and these people fighting for their democracy. How can you stand on the side of Putin?
MR. CAPEHART: Well, let's keep talking about him, meaning the former president of the United States, and bring it closer to home, and that is the work that you're doing as a member of the January 6th Select Committee. There were reports or talks that both Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump's personal attorney, and Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump's daughter, had been in touch with the committee about impending testimony or about whether they're going to testify. One, do you have any news on that? And two, do you really think that they'll actually come in voluntarily and testify?
REP. MURPHY: Well, I really appreciate your question as it is among the questions all over D.C. media: Can you give me the dirt on what's going on with the committee, and the answers is I really can’t.
MR. CAPEHART: I don’t want dirt. I just--I’m just looking for answers.
REP. MURPHY: Yeah, well, we really need to protect the integrity of the investigation that we are conducting, because it matters whether or not somebody who's coming before our committee knows what we know. And so, we are being very deliberate about it.
What I will say, though, is that January 6th isn't too far afield from what we're talking about in Ukraine. Autocratic forces are on the march in the world today. And as Americans, we need to stand up and defend democracy, whether that is overseas or here at home. And a core tenant of our democracy here at home is a free and fair election and the ability for people to accept the results after they have exhausted the constitutionally accepted process.
When we got to January 6th, the courts had already settled the cases. We cannot find ourselves in a situation where elected leaders find whatever loophole they can to try to hold onto power, because that makes us no better than any autocracy in this world. And so what is at stake is democracy. And that's why it's so important as a member of the Select Committee that we protect the integrity of the investigation and not really comment on some of your questions.
MR. CAPEHART: Okay. But that doesn't mean I have--don't have another question.
REP. MURPHY: That’s okay.
MR. CAPEHART: So, Chairman, Bennie Thompson was here. I interviewed him and I asked him, you know, would there be televised hearings? He said yes, and that they would be in primetime. My question to you is when.
REP. MURPHY: We are still deep in the process of collecting the information and doing the investigation. But we also realize that we have the obligation and the opportunity to share the information that we have collected with the American people in a way that is consumable. I think too often up here in Washington we talk in terms of reports, dense reports, and you know, legislative language, and we don't tell enough of the story. And so as a committee, we're committed to telling the story of how we found ourselves on the precipice, how we found our democracy on the precipice on January 6th, and how we can fix some of the weaknesses within our democracy. After all, we're ever evolving. And it is incumbent upon one generation after the next to reinforce our democracy and to ensure that no one strong man or one strong person can corrupt our Constitution and undermine our democracy.
MR. CAPEHART: As a member of the Select Committee, have you learned things? I'm not asking for specifics. But have you learned things that just made your jaw drop, things that we don't--we in the in the general public don't know about? But you were there on January 6th. You're a--you're a member of Congress. Did you--have you learned things that you didn't even know had happened, or were happening, and you were--when you were living it in real time?
REP. MURPHY: I absolutely have learned things that are shocking and deeply, deeply disturbing. You have to understand that I came from a country that was a democracy until it wasn't. And when I was at the Department of Defense, I worked with countries around the world that were fledgling democracies, who had situations like coups and had to work on bolstering their democracy. So, I understand the fragility of our democracy. I don't take it for granted any day that I'm here that I have the greatest privilege to live in the greatest country in the world, but that it is part of my responsibility to ensure that our next generation benefits from our economic system as well as our governance system if we can protect it.
And so I do--I have learned some shocking things, because we're looking at not just what happened on that day and of the people who are household names and their roles in this incident. We are also looking at the organizations and folks at the local and state level who had a role in trying to overturn a free and fair election. We're looking at where the money is going. We're looking at how disinformation played a part in this, setting up the scene for what happened on January 6th. There's a lot that we have learned through the tens of thousands of documents that we have received, as well as the folks who have come before us and have been willing to provide testimony.
MR. CAPEHART: Man, if you are shocked, then I am really--I'm a nerd. So I was already looking forward to the televised hearings. But now I'm really interested. So, no matter--no matter what happens in the midterms, one of the--one of the big concerns is will the committee wrap up its investigations and everything in time for the midterms, and I’ll leave that to the side. But no matter what happens in the midterms, you will not be coming back to Congress. You are considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. So why did you decide not to run for reelection?
REP. MURPHY: Well, I am a working parent, just like anybody else who's a working parent, and my husband works as well. And we have a 7- and an 11-year-old. And you know, working parents sometimes have to make a decision between their professional ambitions and their personal responsibilities. And my kids are going through a stage that I really want to be there. I want to drive carpool. I want to know who their friends are. And that's really hard to do as a member who represents a swing district and, in the House, where you're in cycle pretty much all the time. So, I'm taking a beat. But I'm young enough, I think, by political terms, to not rule out, you know, some future at a later date when it makes more sense for my family.
MR. CAPEHART: Senate? Governor?
REP. MURPHY: Well, I'll just say that Senate and governor isn't on the same two-year hamster wheel cycle, and it does provide a bit more stability than the swing district in the U.S. House. But who knows? I left the Department of Defense in 2008 with no real vision for how I would continue in public service and I found my way back anyways. I owe this country a lot. So, who knows?
MR. CAPEHART: You--twice you've talked about the fact that you represent a swing district. How much of the fact that it is a swing district did you look at, you know, the impending campaign and think, in this swing district, the district is going to swing away from me and so why go through that if I see that I won't win reelection anyway.
REP. MURPHY: No, I honestly didn't. This really is about personal decision. You know, I ran a race, my first race, what people told me was an impossible race. I launched a four-month campaign against a 24-year Republican incumbent who had been the chair of a big committee and everybody, including the Democrats in my region, told me there was no way you're going to win. And yet we pulled it off anyways. And I've run tough races since, and I always overperform Democrats. And so I wasn't really worried about going into this cycle, because I know that I work hard in my district and my brand is strong and I don't go by way of national trends.
MR. CAPEHART: Okay, so since you're leaving, that means you can--you can talk, you know, real talk here.
REP. MURPHY: Okay.
MR. CAPEHART: Right now, you are a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition--translation, centrists, not, you know, the progressive end, not the conservative end, but right in the middle. Do you believe that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has taken control of the party's agenda to the detriment of the Democratic Party?
REP. MURPHY: You know, I worry about moderates on both sides of the aisle in the next Congress. Both the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party have forces on the far left and the far right, that are trying to co-op the broad part of their party. Instead of launching a third party, they figured it was just easier to take over the conventional one.
And so there are a lot of resources that are applied to ensure party unity. Just look at the 13 Republicans who dared to vote for clean water and safe roads and bridges. They receive so much incoming from their own party, and they are now being primaried like there's no tomorrow. And then on the Democratic side, we're not immune from having outside groups come after the moderates. I'm worried that in the next Congress, these forces will make it impossible for the shrinking number of moderates to reach across the aisle and work together.
But as the president noted last night, a lot of his major achievements were led and pushed across the finish line by moderates and were bipartisan bills. Just take the infrastructure bill, for example. He lauded the impact that that bill has been having on districts all across this country. Well, that bill wouldn’t have gotten across the finish line but for moderates and people working in a bipartisan way to craft legislation that can improve the lives of American people. So, I think post-redistricting and some of these outside forces might degrade Congress's ability to serve this country. And for that, I'm really worried.
MR. CAPEHART: What do you say to the progressives who say, you know, all we're trying to do-- back then--is protect and push forward the president's agenda as it was described then under Build Back Better? During the during the State of the Union address, the president didn't use the words "Build Back Better," but he talked about the individual pieces of what used to be Build Back Better. Do you think that the president and that the Democratic Party should go at it again by trying to get bits and pieces of what was known as Build Back Better, like the child income tax credit or health--childcare, health care, and things like that, get those done individually?
REP. MURPHY: I would say that I shared the same goal as my progressive colleagues and the White House, which is to get a bill across the finish line that--or bills across the finish line that had components of the president's priorities.
I, however, have a very pragmatic approach to legislating in Congress. And what I look at is, what is the broadest set of common ground that we have that has 218 in the House and that can pass an evenly divided Senate. And, and if we have to scope our expectations to what has the votes, we should do that, because at least then you would have a bill for the president to sign and actually do something that impacts the lives of the American people. And so we shared the same goal. I think we just had different approaches and different expectations as to what could successfully get done.
What I'm hopeful about, because in the president's State of the Union he mentioned a number of things that I think would have bipartisan support, or at least be able to receive the 218 and make it through the Senate that we should move forward. I'm particularly pleased that he mentioned the prescription drug piece that I worked hard on with a handful of other moderates to craft to a place that we thought would not only allow Medicare to negotiate, but also cap insulin at $35. And that's something we should look at.
MR. CAPEHART: What's your advice to the White House and the House Democrats if they want to hang on to the majority in the midterms?
REP. MURPHY: Stop showing up at an emotional, you know, painful conversation with constituents with data to try to convince them that what they're feeling isn't true. You know, whether it was inflation or the cost of gas, or the rising cost of food or supply chain shortages that are impacting their ability to buy their kid the cleats they need to play soccer, whatever it is, we have to acknowledge that this is what the American people are going through, and then work together to figure out ways to actually solve that problem instead of trying to convince them that it's not really happening.
And I saw a bit of that last night. The administration is acknowledging that infrastructure isn't--I'm sorry, inflation is an issue. And the president laid out some ways in which he thought he could address it. And reasonable people can have debates about how we do that. But we had to, in borrowing some--a prior politicians’ words--feel people's pain, and then work from there.
MR. CAPEHART: In the, I think, minute that we have left, so then does that--do I take from what you just said that you think that President Biden has his finger now on the pulse of the country, and that his State of the Union address demonstrated that he understands the pain that they're feeling at the kitchen table level?
REP. MURPHY: I was grateful to see that his State of the Union reflected a more pragmatic approach than the joint address from a year ago, and we're headed in the right direction. And he needs to know that he has allies here in Congress, moderates, progressives, Democrats, Republicans alike, willing to help him help the American people.
MR. CAPEHART: Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy of Florida, thank you so much for coming to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.
REP. MURPHY: Great to be with you.
MR. CAPEHART: And thank you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com. Once again, I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Thanks for watching “Capehart” on Washington Post Live. | null | null | null | null | null |
The European Union is opening its doors to Svitlyk and hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians. Under rules expected to be adopted Thursday, Ukrainian nationals will be eligible for “temporary protection” within the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, depending partly on conditions in Ukraine.
More than 934,000 people have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), mostly traveling overland to neighboring countries in Eastern Europe. The United Nations refugee agency estimates that up to 4 million people may leave Ukraine if the violence continues. | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia Republicans kill bill giving Indian tribes role in reviewing development on ancestral lands
The measure had cleared the Senate on a unanimous vote of 40-0 and had bipartisan support in the House, but a subcommittee rejected it Wednesday and urged bringing it back next year for consideration.
Former governor Ralph Northam (D) issued an executive order last fall, shortly before leaving office, that required state agencies to notify the state’s seven federally recognized tribes when considering projects that affect their traditional lands. Advocates for the indigenous tribes had hoped to codify the order to ensure that the practice would continue.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), would not give tribes veto power over most development projects, but would require the state to give them an opportunity to comment as part of any permitting process. The one exception would be projects that involve relocating burials, in which case tribes would have to sign off on appropriate methods for relocating human remains.
The bill failed in the subcommittee on a 5-5 vote, with one Republican joining all four Democrats in supporting it. A similar bill in the House, sponsored by Del. Paul E. Krizek (D-Fairfax), failed before the same subcommittee in early February. Del. Lee Ware (R-Powhatan), the committee chairman, at that time questioned the impact of the bill.
While Werkheiser said she was disappointed by Wednesday’s outcome, she noted that two other bills supported by Virginia’s native tribes are advancing through the General Assembly. One — House Bill 1136 — would set up a commission to update state code to reflect federal recognition of Virginia’s tribes. That bill cleared the House and is slated to come before the Senate by the end of the week.
Another — Senate Bill 31 — would make the tribes eligible for grants from the Virginia Land Conservation Fund. | null | null | null | null | null |
Woods shared an image Wednesday of a Mickelson Twitter post from December, in which Mickelson thanked “all the crazies (and real supporters too) for … Helping me win the PiP!!”
The Player Impact Program (PIP) is not necessarily related to a given player’s performance on the Tour, which was never more clear than when Woods topped last year’s list. He was sidelined for almost all of 2021 after suffering major injuries in a February car crash, and he only returned to competitive golf in mid-December’s PNC Championship, a relatively low-key, unofficial event that features former major winners partnering with family members.
Mickelson, however, played in 19 Tour events in 2021, and made a huge splash with a PGA Championship victory that made him the oldest man to win a golf major. While he didn’t have any other top-10 finishes last year, Mickelson placed a solid 21st at the Masters and generated buzz with another appearance in “The Match,” which saw him paired up with Tom Brady against Bryson DeChambeau and Aaron Rodgers.
Despite his absence from golf courses for most of the year, Woods would have generated an enormous amount of news articles and Internet searches in the wake of his crash. In addition, his participation at the PNC Championship alongside his 12-year-old son Charlie stirred plenty of interest.
The PIP was initiated as a means of rewarding the PGA Tour’s most popular players and to reportedly provide them with some extra incentive not to be lured away by lucrative offers from other golf entities. Foremost among any potential threats to the PGA Tour has been a proposed Saudi-backed venture unofficially referred to by many as the Super Golf League (SGL).
Mickelson, who has been outspoken recently in his criticism of what he has described as the PGA Tour’s “obnoxious greed,” appeared to do enormous damage to the SGL and his own image when comments he provided in November to a golf journalist were made public last month. In those remarks, he asserted that he was willing to overlook the Saudi government’s “horrible record on human rights” to gain leverage against the PGA Tour. After Mickelson experienced a massive backlash, both from within the Tour and elsewhere, he issued a lengthy apology and indicated he was taking a break from competition.
In the meantime, he has yet another setback to deal with — albeit one that comes with a $6 million consolation prize — and another reminder that on the PGA Tour, there is Woods and then there is everyone else. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Marilyn Manson attends the 9th annual “Home for the Holidays” benefit concert on Dec. 10, 2019, in Los Angeles. Manson sued his former fiancee, “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, over her allegations that he sexually and physically abused her during their relationship. Wood and Manson broke up in 2010. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia Republicans kill bill giving Indian tribes a role in reviewing development on ancestral lands
The measure had cleared the Senate on a unanimous vote of 40 to 0 and had bipartisan support in the House, but a subcommittee rejected it Wednesday and urged bringing it back next year for consideration.
Former governor Ralph Northam (D) issued an executive order last fall, shortly before leaving office, that required state agencies to notify the state’s seven federally recognized tribes when considering projects that affect their traditional lands. Advocates for the Indigenous tribes had hoped to codify the order to ensure the practice would continue.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond), would not give tribes veto power over most development projects but would require the state to give them an opportunity to comment as part of any permitting process. The one exception would be projects that involve relocating burials, in which case tribes would have to sign off on appropriate methods for relocating human remains.
The bill failed in the subcommittee on a 5 to 5 vote, with one Republican joining all four Democrats in supporting it. A similar bill in the House, sponsored by Del. Paul E. Krizek (D-Fairfax), failed before the same subcommittee in early February. Del. Lee Ware (R-Powhatan), the committee chairman, at that time questioned the impact of the bill.
While Werkheiser said she was disappointed by Wednesday’s outcome, she noted that two other bills supported by Virginia’s native tribes are advancing through the General Assembly. One — H.B. 1136 — would set up a commission to update state code to reflect federal recognition of Virginia’s tribes. That bill cleared the House and is slated to come before the Senate by the end of the week.
Another — S.B. 31 — would make the tribes eligible for grants from the Virginia Land Conservation Fund. | null | null | null | null | null |
Woods shared an image Wednesday of a Mickelson Twitter post from December in which Mickelson thanked “all the crazies (and real supporters too) for … Helping me win the PiP!!”
The Player Impact Program is not necessarily related to a given player’s performance on the Tour, which was never more clear than when Woods topped last year’s list. He was sidelined for almost all of 2021 after suffering major injuries in a February car crash, and he only returned to competitive golf in mid-December’s PNC Championship, a low-key, unofficial event that features former major winners partnering with family members.
Mickelson, however, played in 19 Tour events in 2021 and made a huge splash with a PGA Championship victory that made him the oldest man to win a golf major. While he didn’t have any other top-10 finishes last year, Mickelson placed a solid 21st at the Masters and generated buzz with another appearance in “The Match,” which saw him paired up with Tom Brady against Bryson DeChambeau and Aaron Rodgers.
Despite his absence from golf courses for most of the year, Woods would have generated an enormous amount of news articles and Internet searches in the wake of his crash. In addition, his participation at the PNC Championship alongside his son, Charlie, stirred plenty of interest.
The PIP was initiated as a means of rewarding the PGA Tour’s most popular players and to reportedly provide them with extra incentive not to be lured away by lucrative offers from other golf entities. Foremost among any potential threats to the PGA Tour has been a proposed Saudi-backed venture unofficially referred to by many as the Super Golf League (SGL).
Mickelson, who has been outspoken recently in his criticism of what he has described as the PGA Tour’s “obnoxious greed,” appeared to do enormous damage to the SGL and his own image when comments he provided in November to a golf journalist were made public last month. In those remarks, he asserted that he was willing to overlook the Saudi government’s “horrible record on human rights” to gain leverage against the PGA Tour. After Mickelson experienced a massive backlash, both from within the Tour and elsewhere, he issued an apology and indicated he was taking a break from competition.
In the meantime, he has another setback to deal with — albeit one that comes with a $6 million consolation prize — and another reminder that, on the PGA Tour, there is Tiger Woods and then there is everyone else. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man found slain in Vienna, police say
Police said the killing does not appear to be random.
A man was found fatally stabbed at a home in Vienna, Va., Wednesday night, Fairfax County police said.
Officers responded to the 9800 block of Palace Green Way about 5:30 p.m., police said. The man was found dead inside the home.
Police said a man is in custody and the killing appears to be domestic related. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rosalind S. Helderman
Lawyers for the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol said in a court filing Wednesday that former president Donald Trump and key allies engaged in potential crimes during their effort to overturn the election: conspiring to defraud the United States and obstructing an official congressional proceeding — the counting of electoral votes.
The alleged criminal acts were raised by the committee in a California federal court filing challenging conservative lawyer John Eastman’s refusal to turn over thousands of emails the panel has requested related to his role in trying to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors from states won by Joe Biden. Eastman has cited attorney-client privilege as a shield against turning over the documents.
The committee argued in that filing that Eastman’s claim of privilege was potentially voided by the “crime/fraud exception” to the confidentiality usually accorded attorneys and their clients, which holds that communications need not be kept confidential if an attorney is found to be assisting their client in the commission of a crime. They asked the judge deciding whether to release Eastman’s emails to privately review evidence the committee has so far gathered to see if he believes it establishes that Eastman was assisting Trump in criminal acts.
The committee has no authority to initiate criminal proceedings, and the fact that potential criminal law violations were mentioned in a court filing by the panel does not provide any indication that the Justice Department will consider any prosecutions. Nor does it mean that the lawyer-client protection asserted by Eastman will not be upheld.
But it underscores the committee’s aggressive approach and effort to hold Trump and his allies accountable for both their actions before Jan. 6, 2021, and on that day, which the panel’s members have charged were an assault on American democracy.
Lawyers for the committee argued that the evidence it has gathered so far led to a “good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts” and that Eastman was “used in furtherance of those activities.” They argued that the judge should review the documents the panel has obtained privately to determine whether he agreed they included evidence of illegal acts that would pierce the attorney-client privilege.
The filing is intended to challenge Eastman’s claim that he should not be required to turn over thousands of emails the committee has requested — and it attempts to show that Eastman directly encouraged people in the government to not follow the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law governing the congressional certification process.
Eastman has so far submitted roughly 8,000 pages of emails to committee investigators but is withholding about 11,000 documents, citing attorney-client privilege. Last month, a U.S. district judge in California ordered an expedited schedule to review Eastman’s bid to shield emails sent between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7.
The argument by Eastman and some other Trump allies ahead of Jan. 6 was that Pence could choose not to recognize the slate of electors from some states that Biden won and instead decide to recognize an alternate slate of electors who would support Trump for president. Many legal scholars said this was a gross misreading of the law. Pence and his staff said publicly ahead of the certification process that they had studied the argument pushed by Eastman and rejected his premise that the vice president had the power to reject electors, infuriating Trump and his allies.
The brief not only makes the case against Eastman’s claim of lawyer client privilege, but it also provides a review of the committee’s findings to date, including the panel’s belief that Trump and his advisers may have been involved in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Eastman also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The filing claims that documents may show that Eastman “provided advice to advance an agreement to impede the transfer of power to the President elect and the Vice President elect.” In addition, the filing says that the documents “may show that Plaintiff provided advice to advance efforts to obstruct, impede, or influence the counting of electoral college ballots before a Joint Session of Congress.” It also suggests that Trump and others “may have been involved in common law fraud in connections with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”
Despite being told that the allegations of fraud were not supported by evidence, the brief notes that Trump continued to push the stolen election thesis publicly.
“The President nevertheless continued to insist falsely through January that he had ‘won the election in a landslide,’” the brief said. “And despite being repeatedly told that his allegations of campaign fraud were false, the President continued to feature those same false allegations in ads seen by millions of Americans. (The Select Committee will address these issues in detail in hearings later this year.)”
To help make its case, the committee included in the filing details about Eastman’s efforts to pressure Pence, referencing testimony from two of Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The Pence aides explained in detail to the committee that Eastman led a pressure campaign against Pence, which they believed he was doing at Trump’s behest, the people said. Short, Pence’s chief of staff, along with Jacob, Pence’s counsel, were with the vice president during the assault on the Capitol.
Among the revelations in the filing is that after the violent pro-Trump mob left the Capitol and Congress reconvened to finish certifying Joe Biden’s victory, Eastman made a last-ditch effort in an email to Jacob to get the vice president to change his mind and not certify the results by committing a violation of the Electoral Count Act.
The emails included in the filing also show Eastman laying blame for the riot at the feet of Pence and his team, as The Washington Post has previously reported, and repeatedly inveighing against the certification of the election as required by law. Emails obtained by the panel show Jacob at one point rebuking Eastman and some of his associates for spreading misinformation to the president about what Pence could legally do, as rioters were still in the Capitol.
The email correspondence referenced in the filing was part of a longer battle between Jacob and Eastman over what Pence should do in response to Trump’s false claims the election was stolen.
Other new details about Eastman’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election have been released via court filings in recent weeks. An appeal filed by the States United Democracy Center last month revealed a new memo written authored by Eastman that he sent to a state legislator in Wisconsin. The memo falsely asserts that the Wisconsin Legislature “has the constitutional authority to decertify previously certified electoral votes for a candidate.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Video shows large explosion near Kyiv overnight as Russian troops step up assault
By Atthar Mirza and Amy Cheng1:30 a.m.
Video taken on March 2 shows a large explosion near Ukraine’s capital (The Washington Post)
A large explosion lit up the night sky in Ukraine’s capital in the early hours of Thursday, local time, according to video footage verified by The Washington Post.
The blast, which was captured by a camera in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods, took place in a region to the west of Kyiv and appeared to have struck an area far from the city center.
Between late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, air raid sirens have sounded at least six times, urging residents to take shelter, according to messages in the official municipal government Telegram channel.
Russian forces remain stalled on the outskirts of the capital. Unable to substantially push through Kyiv’s defense in the north, they have moved westward to further encircle the city. But a senior U.S. defense official warned that these troops also have accelerated the pace of missile and artillery attacks targeting the capital. | null | null | null | null | null |
Campbell Fighting Camels (16-12, 8-8 Big South) vs. Gardner-Webb Runnin’ Bulldogs (17-12, 11-5 Big South)
BOTTOM LINE: Gardner-Webb faces the Campbell Fighting Camels after D’Maurian Williams scored 24 points in Gardner-Webb’s 72-70 loss to the South Carolina Upstate Spartans.
The Runnin’ Bulldogs have gone 11-3 at home. Gardner-Webb scores 70.1 points while outscoring opponents by six points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Williams is shooting 38.6% from beyond the arc with 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Runnin’ Bulldogs, while averaging 14.4 points. Lance Terry is averaging 14.9 points over the past 10 games for Gardner-Webb.
LAST 10 GAMES: Runnin’ Bulldogs: 8-2, averaging 67.1 points, 34.3 rebounds, 12.9 assists, 7.9 steals and four blocks per game while shooting 43.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 60.6 points per game. | null | null | null | null | null |
Utah State Aggies (16-14, 7-10 MWC) at San Jose State Spartans (8-21, 1-16 MWC)
San Jose, California; Friday, 11 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Utah State will aim to end its three-game road slide when the Aggies visit San Jose State.
The Spartans have gone 7-8 in home games. San Jose State has a 2-1 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Aggies are 7-10 in conference matchups. Utah State leads the MWC with 17.8 assists. Rylan Jones leads the Aggies with 4.5.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. Utah State won the last meeting 78-62 on Feb. 4. Brandon Horvath scored 19 points to help lead the Aggies to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Trey Smith is shooting 32.9% from beyond the arc with 2.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Spartans, while averaging 8.8 points. Omari Moore is averaging 8.1 points over the past 10 games for San Jose State.
Justin Bean is shooting 55.2% and averaging 17.7 points for the Aggies. Horvath is averaging 10.5 points over the last 10 games for Utah State.
LAST 10 GAMES: Spartans: 1-9, averaging 59.1 points, 31.1 rebounds, 9.8 assists, 6.1 steals and 5.2 blocks per game while shooting 43.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 66 points per game.
Aggies: 5-5, averaging 63.5 points, 31 rebounds, 17.3 assists, 6.5 steals and 3.6 blocks per game while shooting 45.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 64.5 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
LONDON — Faced with the threat of financial sanctions targeting Russians, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich announced Wednesday he is trying to sell the Premier League club that became trophy-winning machine thanks to his lavish investment.
TEMPE, Ariz. — The Arizona Cardinals signed coach Kliff Kingsbury and general manager Steve Keim to extensions on Thursday that keep them under contract with the team through 2027.
NEW YORK — The New York Liberty were fined a WNBA record $500,000 for chartering flights to away games during the second half of the season last year and for other league rules violations, according to a person familiar with the fine. | null | null | null | null | null |
An “overwhelming” response from Paralympians forced the International Paralympic Committee on Thursday to reverse its previous position and bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in the Beijing Winter Games over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a news conference in Beijing on Thursday, IPC spokesman Craig Spence said there had been a huge change since the initial decision was made, with national Olympic committees not only calling for a ban but also saying they would not compete unless athletes from Russia and Belarus were excluded. “That threatens the viability of this event,” he said. “If we don’t act on that, then we are crazy, so we have.”
During the Olympics, Russia was under scrutiny over a doping scandal involving 15-year-old figure skating star Kamila Valieva as well as a high-profile visit by Putin to Beijing where he and Chinese President Xi Jinping used the occasion to announce their joint opposition to NATO.
China used its platform as host to rebuff criticism about human rights abuses in Xinjiang and to restate its claims over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy, but most Olympians heeded the International Olympic Committee’s warnings to keep politics out of sport. One exception was Ukrainian skeleton rider Vladyslav Heraskevych who flashed a sign saying, “no war in Ukraine.”
In his statement, Parson apologized to the affected athletes for the effects of their countries’ action. | null | null | null | null | null |
The day before Loznitsa left for Poland, he resigned from the European Film Academy, chastising the organization for not taking a stronger stand in supporting Ukraine. (On Feb. 24, EFA president Matthijs Wouter Knol issued a statement saying the Russian invasion was “heavily worrying to us.”) He supports the decision of Disney, Warner Bros. and other Hollywood studios to cancel distribution for movies such as “Turning Red” and “The Batman” in Russia. (“If you’re dealing with barbarians, these barbarians should be cut out of civilization.”) But Loznitsa opposes efforts to boycott Russian filmmakers from the festival circuit and theatrical marketplace. | null | null | null | null | null |
Highlights across the country include Mark Morris, Lil Buck, American Ballet Theatre and “Reframing the Narrative” at the Kennedy Center
Black ballet dancers will be celebrated in a six-day series at the Kennedy Center called “Reframing the Narrative,” which includes performances by Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballethnic Dance Company, out of East Point, Ga., and Memphis’s Collage Dance Collective, along with other Black-identifying ballet dancers from across the country. The series is curated by Theresa Ruth Howard, formerly of Dance Theatre of Harlem and Armitage Gone Dance and the founder of the Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet website. | null | null | null | null | null |
The country has been a key destination for African students for decades. Now, students are reporting racism at the border as they flee.
By Nana Osei-Opare
Thom Loyd
People wait to go to Poland at the Shehyni Ukrainian border post on March 1. (Emmanuel Duparcq/AFP/Getty Images)
Amid the unfolding tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, anti-Black racism is creating tiers of sympathy and exclusion over who is permitted to receive Western and global sympathy and escape the crisis.
Nearly 1 million people have fled Ukraine in recent days. But reports on social media and videos have emerged of African students and residents of Ukraine saying they are being prevented from boarding trains and buses as they attempt to escape the violence, while others say that they have been stopped at border crossings. Some observers have seemed surprised that there are any Black people in Ukraine. But there is a long history of African students and others spending time in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, including during the Soviet era. There is also a long history of anti-Blackness in these places, and those legacies are playing out today in troubling ways.
In the late 19th century, European empires colonized large parts of Africa primarily through violence and destruction. Many Africans resisted and fought against European colonization and laws, but European empires hardened. After World War I, while the Western world accepted President Woodrow Wilson’s ideals of self-determination, this was not extended to Africans.
Inspired by the Soviet Union’s forcefully anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist attitudes and calls, the first wave of Africans who went to the U.S.S.R. to study in the 1920s were Communists, anti-colonialists or pan-Africanists. To get to Moscow and avoid colonial detection, these individuals forged documents, employed pseudonyms and used circuitous routes. In Moscow, they learned about Marxism-Leninism and met other anti-colonialists from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. These interactions helped spur common global anti-colonial and anti-imperial collaborations. But this honeymoon period quickly collapsed.
Stalin’s stranglehold on power, pivot from internationalism, reported atrocities of the Soviet gulags and his support for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia — a global symbol of African independence and Black liberation — sparked disillusionment with the Soviets in the 1930s and 1940s. Only after Stalin’s death and Nikita Khrushchev’s recalibration of Soviet policy and attitudes toward Africans in the 1950s did Africans begin to view the Soviets positively again.
By the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War had carved the world into two opposing camps. During this period, many African colonies had either become independent or were in the process of throwing off the yoke of colonialism, threatening the established international order. In both Moscow and Washington, political leaders looked to education to tie the nascent African postcolonial elite to their own respective systems. Newly independent nations encouraged education abroad as an expedient way to “Africanize” their governments and build human capital, a civil service and an industrial economy. To curry favor, the Soviets offered scholarships to young Africans from newly independent states such as Ghana and Senegal as well as countries like Angola and Mozambique, which were still struggling against colonial rule.
The Africans who went to study in the Soviet Union in the 1960s were nonideological, scientific-technical-medical students or military trainees.
One-third of African students in the U.S.S.R. studied in Ukraine — in the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Lviv and Odessa. Many vacationed in Crimea and along the coast of the Black Sea. By the end of the 1960s, several thousand students from across Africa were studying in the Soviet Union each year.
Ukraine was a Soviet showcase. To highlight the successes of the socialist economic model, Soviet authorities routinely showed African delegations and dignitaries Ukraine's industrial success and beauty.
Yet many African students had difficulty adjusting to life in Ukraine. They complained about cold weather, the monotony of life, lack of access to familiar foods and routine violence inflicted upon them. A deadly and bloody violent clash between Ghanaians and Ukrainians in Kherson in 1964 characterized these fears.
In 1964, a Ukrainian accosted a Ghanaian student who was smoking a cigarette. A massive brawl between Ukrainians and the Ghanaians ensued. The melee resulted in the Soviets suffering several “casualties,” while Ghanaians “sustained considerable physical injury.”
Before the unprovoked attack, Kherson residents had threatened the principal at the Ghanaians’ school “that they would molest the trainees of the school.” Soviet authorities turned a blind eye.
In the 1960s, the Soviets often blamed Ghanaians themselves for the attacks they suffered, accusing them of “disturbing the peace.” They even expelled and deported at least a few Ghanaian students in Kharkiv and Kyiv for alleged “bad conduct” and “hooligan behavior.”
The anti-Black racism they encountered deeply troubled the Africans in Ukraine, and Africans often protested their treatment. In 1975, protests in Lviv and Kyiv focused on racist representations of Africans in the Soviet media, for example. As in the West, Africa was often presented as a backward continent completely untouched by the trappings of modernity.
Protesters also criticized the Soviet government’s indifference to racist violence. Such violence was dismissed as the work of, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, “bad apples,” rather than a systemic problem.
The relationship between African students and Ukrainian citizens was further complicated by their differing experiences of imperial rule. For some Ukrainians, the growing number of African students in their towns and cities was a reminder of their subservient position within the Soviet Union. Without their input, the Soviet government in Moscow encouraged these exchanges. That African students often referred to the Soviet Union generally as “Russia” exacerbated the feeling of some Ukrainians that African students were a tool of their own colonial subjection.
To serve their Cold War goals, Western governments were eager to report instances of anti-African sentiment among Soviet citizens. Western media became key outlets for stories of racist violence in the Soviet Union, just as Soviet media loudly decried racism in the United States and South Africa.
Yet, foreign governments often proved more interested in showcasing Soviet malfeasance than supporting African students. A British Foreign Office memo written in 1963 remarked: “Rather than do anything to alleviate the discomforts of [African] students behind the Iron Curtain, [we] would prefer to see them increased.”
As the battle for the hearts and minds of Africa lost steam in the 1970s and 1980s, so too did Western coverage of Soviet racism against its African population. But African students continued to arrive in the Soviet Union through government cultural agreements.
Despite an epidemic of racist violence in the 1990s, African students continued to travel to the former Soviet republics after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. because it is where their parents studied and remains a more affordable option than Western Europe or the United States.
Today’s African students in Ukraine are banding together in difficult times and are pleading with their national governments for support. Unfortunately, like many African governments of the past, many present African governments are unable to protect their citizens as Russia’s tanks, bombs and bullets rip through Ukraine.
While nearby countries are opening their borders and hearts to the Ukrainians who have fled, African citizens have faced much narrower, if not closed, doors and hearts. Alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine, European border policies essentially barring most Africans also demand strict scrutiny. The European Union has even paid for secret prisons to hold escaping Africans.
Despite outpourings of support for the Ukrainian people among Americans, the United States has yet to extend immigration relief for Ukrainians — though a bipartisan group of senators is pushing to do so. Moreover, the United States has continued to deport Black immigrants fleeing crisis and persecution, including from Haiti and Cameroon.
Anti-Blackness has suffused most media coverage of recent events. For example, under the guise of fighting Putin’s tyranny, the Western media has simultaneously played down and erased Alexei Navalny’s history of expressing xenophobic views.
Moreover, the Western media has largely portrayed the war between moral binaries — good against evil, autocracy against democracy and the free-loving peoples of the world against those who seek a different global order. Yet, anti-Black racism upends these convenient narratives and binaries, as it did during the Cold War. It has only been under a wave of negative press and condemnation by the African Union that the U.S. government publicly urged neighboring European countries to accept Africans.
Suffering is not zero-sum, and to show solidarity for Ukraine and Ukrainians needn’t mean forgetting those with whom Ukrainians have been living for more than 60 years. African people have become part of the fabric of life in Eastern Europe. They have made homes, started families and profoundly shaped the towns and cities in which they live. | null | null | null | null | null |
The trucker ‘convoys’ have roiled politics in Canada — and the U.S. Why that’s rare.
Nineteenth-century Canadians built their government to avoid the downside of American politics.
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy is an associate teaching professor of American Studies at Miami University in Ohio and the author of “Between Empire and Republic: America in the Canadian Colonial Imagination”
Truckers and their supporters form a convoy bound for Washington to protest coronavirus mandates on Feb. 23 in Adelanto, Calif. (Gene Blevins/Reuters)
For weeks, reports about the Canadian truckers’ occupation of Ottawa generated headlines, alongside stories about the support they enjoyed in the United States and Justin Trudeau’s controversial decision to end the protest. The trucker protests in Canada reflected a sense of anti-government popularism that emerged under Trump in the United States. Yet they were unpopular among most Canadians.
Right-wing commentators encouraged American truckers to stage similar protests in the United States. Some have headed for Washington, though so far they have not drawn many people or much attention.
It is rare for Canadian politics to spill over so concretely into the United States, just as U.S. politics typically has little impact in Canada. But American and Canadian politics used to be far more intertwined.
In the 19th century, political trends in the United States often made their way northward as American groups worked to influence political movements in Canada. These situations usually resulted in violence and fueled Canadian fears of annexation before, and even after, the 1867 Confederation, when Canada achieved self-government within the framework of the British Commonwealth. The intermingling died down as the establishment of the Confederation installed at the root of Canadian politics a philosophy of improving upon the flaws Canadians saw in the early U.S. republic — one antithetical to some American ideals of liberty.
On a cold December day in 1837, on Navy Island in the Niagara River — which separates the United States from Canada — a group of revolutionaries proclaimed the Republic of Canada. In a symbolic gesture, their leader, politician and journalist William Lyon Mackenzie, raised the flag of the new country, independent from Britain. It was a blue flag with two stars, one for Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), the other for Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).
During the following months these revolutionaries shook Canada with guerrilla attacks, particularly in the south. Canadians organized these strikes with the support of American enthusiasts. Together with Canadian sympathizers, the Americans brought supplies to the rebels in an American-owned ship, the Caroline.
British forces crossed into U.S. territory to pursue them, set fire to the ship and hurled it, all ablaze, over Niagara Falls. Several people on both sides of the skirmish were injured and one died.
The entire incident occurred on American soil and caused a decade-long diplomatic embarrassment for both countries. The leaders of the rebellion, including Mackenzie himself, fled to the United States. In January 1838, President Martin Van Buren took steps to ensure the United States’ official neutrality in the Canadian rebellions and avoid a war with Britain.
But the protests simmered on. Groups of American supporters of Canadian independence organized in a secret network known as the Hunters’ Lodges, headquartered in Cleveland. The organization swelled over the following year, with estimates ranging from 15,000 to 200,000 members. They were popular especially in Northern border areas, from Maine to Wisconsin. But the groups organized as far south as Kentucky, and they also grew in British North America. The lodges launched two more failed attacks into Canada, in November and December 1838, when hundreds of Americans crossed into Canada only to be pushed out again by local militias with the help of a few regular troops.
The Canadian rebellions and the border conflicts that followed them were a local manifestation of larger continental and transatlantic upheavals. Jacksonian democracy had swept the United States. Broader economic shocks, including the Panic of 1837, caused anxiety and hardship in both the United States and Canada. Borders were in flux. Texas had seceded from Mexico in 1836 and stood poised to join the United States, and the unsettled Maine-Canada border created territorial tensions to the north.
To Mackenzie’s American supporters, the conflict in Canada was simply a movement for self-government and a conflict between autocracy and liberty. They saw their involvement as a natural continuation of the anti-colonial struggle that had birthed the American republic in 1776.
But, republican enthusiasms in Canada had a very different root. Those advocating for change usually expressed frustrations with Britain’s colonial policies rather than admiration of American models. Canada’s imperial and monarchical allegiances actually remained strong. The chaos of American politics in the 1830s and 1840s, punctuated by street riots and recurrent violence, tarnished the appeal of republicanism and American-style federalism. To most Canadian colonists, the American experiment in democracy was a cautionary tale of weak central government and mob rule, and pointed clearly to the value of remaining part of the British Empire.
American style-republicanism also struggled to catch on in Canada, because Canadians had fundamentally different visions of community, law and freedom. Historian Michel Ducharme explains that an understanding of liberty that located government legitimacy solely in the popular will guided American political institutions. By contrast, similar to the British, colonial Canadians favored an understanding of liberty as the sum of individual rights that a state had the duty to guarantee to all its citizens. This interpretation did not assume direct political participation for everyone, nor did it legitimize revolution and rebellion whenever the government lost popular support.
Ideological debates over monarchy and republicanism suffused colonial Canadian culture, from journalism to literature. But Canadians came to a very different conclusion than their neighbors to the south. While by the 1840s most Canadians believed that they should have a say in their government, they favored gradual reform within the parameters of the constitutional monarchy and the British Empire rather than a radical break and American-style republicanism.
Because it lacked the expected popular support from within, Canadian and British forces defeated Mackenzie’s revolutionary movement. Even though political conversations about republicanism and annexation to the United States continued on and off for another 100 years, as historian David Smith argues, republicanism never acquired widespread traction across the provinces, and the monarchy never faced another serious challenge in Canada again.
In 1867, one of the founding fathers of the Canadian Confederation, Georges-Etienne Cartier, summed up the American influence on the formation of Canadian parliamentary democracy. Canadians had 80 years to “contemplate republicanism in action” in the United States. Seeing its defects convinced them “that purely democratic institutions could not be conducive to the peace and prosperity of nations.”
The Canadian experiment instead intended to avoid the mistakes of the United States. The British North America Act that marked the creation of the Confederation of Canada as a parliamentary liberal democracy under the British Crown included the phrase “Peace, order and good government” to describe the lawmaking powers of the Parliament. Over the years, the phrase has become the Canadian counterpart to the American “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This fundamental difference explains why it’s so rare for political movements to cross the northern border of the United States in the 21st century. Though they are in some ways similar and exist as neighbors, American and Canadian politics have fundamentally different philosophies at their root. | null | null | null | null | null |
New offerings include ‘A Strange Loop’ on Broadway, National Capital New Play Festival, ‘Drumfolk’ at Arena and ‘Grace’ at Ford’s Theatre.
For those who (like me) were not wild about the Coen Brothers’ emotionally static “The Tragedy of Macbeth” with Denzel Washington and Francis McDormand, Broadway is offering an alternative that just may outdo it for Shakespearean muscularity: a “Macbeth” with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga as the overreaching thane and his Lady M. Craig is back under the guidance of director Sam Gold, who staged a riveting “Othello” in 2016 with Craig and David Oyelowo, and followed a year later with a fourth-wall-shattering “Hamlet” starring Oscar Isaac. | null | null | null | null | null |
The federation, which considers itself “the United Nations of Cat Federations,” said in a statement that it was “shocked and horrified” that Russian forces had invaded Ukraine and “started a war.” Known as FIFe (for its French name Fédération Internationale Féline), it said that the new measures were decided Tuesday and that officials could not “witness atrocities and do nothing.”
Explosions continue to rock Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where air raid sirens blare into the night. Fierce battles are raging across the country, and a United Nations agency says 1 million people have been displaced. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pedestrian dies after he was hit by a driver in Maryland
A man died after he was struck by a vehicle on Good Luck Road in Prince George's County, police said. (iStock)
A pedestrian was struck and killed Wednesday by a vehicle in Maryland.
The incident happened about 6 a.m. along the 7100 block of Good Luck Road near the Capital Beltway in the Lanham area, according to Prince George’s County police. When officers arrived they found a man in the road. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Police did not release his identity, pending the notification of his family. The incident remains under investigation. | null | null | null | null | null |
U-Md. breaks ground on memorial to honor Bowie State student killed on campus
The memorial, slated for completion in May, will be built near the site where Lt. Richard Collins III was fatally stabbed
A rendering depicts the site of a memorial on the University of Maryland's campus to honor Bowie State student, Lt. Richard Collins III, who was fatally stabbed in 2017 at a bus stop on the campus. (University of Maryland)
The University of Maryland will start construction Thursday on a memorial to honor Lt. Richard Collins III near the site of his 2017 murder on the campus, officials announced.
Collins, a 23-year-old Black student at Bowie State University, was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the U.S. Army when he was fatally stabbed at a College Park bus stop in May 2017. His killer, a White student formerly enrolled at U-Md., was convicted of first-degree murder two years later.
Students and other members of both universities for years have called on U-Md. to honor Collins’s life with a physical memorial. Darryll J. Pines, the university’s president, outlined plans to build one on campus during a social justice symposium in April 2021.
Officials, including Pines, Bowie State President Aminta H. Breaux and the Collins family, held a private ceremony on Wednesday to break ground on the project. The memorial — which will be spread across a plaza and feature a fountain, laser-engraved granite plaque and mural — will be located near Montgomery and Annapolis halls on the southern part of campus and not far from the bus stop where Collins was killed.
Site selected for permanent memorial to honor Bowie State student Lt. Richard Collins III
The Collins memorial is designed to be a place of reflection and bring positive energy to a part of campus marked by tragedy, Pines said. The memorial will have two entryways, meant to welcome the community inside.
“It is to invite the community in to, first, learn about Lieutenant Richard Collins III, but also to reflect about how each individual can contribute in a positive way to social justice issues locally, nationally, in the state of Maryland or just in their community,” Pines said in an interview.
The plaza is expected to be finished in May, in time for the fifth anniversary of Collins’s death.
Collins was visiting friends on U-Md.'s campus when he was attacked the morning of May 20, 2017.
Sean Urbanski was convicted of first-degree murder in 2019 in Collins’s death. A judge dismissed a hate-crime charge against Urbanski, ruling that prosecutors had not proved Collins’s race was the sole reason he was murdered — despite racist content Urbanski had on his phone and his membership in the Facebook group “Alt-Reich: Nation.”
Urbanski was sentenced to life in prison in early 2021.
Days after Collins’s death, a black graduation gown was draped over an empty chair at what would have been his graduation ceremony. He was posthumously promoted to first lieutenant.
Salutes and a folded flag at funeral for Bowie State student killed in possible hate crime
Collins’s mother, Dawn Collins, said she hopes her son’s memorial will be a symbolic place that “repudiates all forms of hate and bigotry.”
“We wanted a place that reflects the best of us,” Dawn Collins said at the Wednesday groundbreaking. “When you visit the plaza, meditate on your hopes and your dreams. Draw on the spirit of my son, his patriotism, his dedication to his career in the military and his passion for pursuing his dreams.”
Breaux also shared remarks.
“My hope is that each person who sees this plaza will think about the legacy left to us by Lieutenant Collins and will be reminded of the charge we have as members of the greater community to take personal responsibility against the issues negatively impacting our society and demand change,” she said in a statement.
In 2020, U-Md. and Bowie State unveiled a partnership to promote social justice, honor Collins’s life and further research about racism and injustice. The BSU-UMD Social Justice Alliance also hosts symposiums and has an event planned in April. | null | null | null | null | null |
Can realism explain the war in Ukraine?
When an elegant theory collides with a messy reality
A demonstrator with Ukrainian flag colors and a peace symbol painted on her face takes part in an antiwar protest outside the European Parliament in Brussels on March 2, 2022. (Yves Herman/Reuters)
The war in Ukraine has produced an awful lot of collateral schadenfreude. Many liberal internationalists are bemused that the accurate U.S. warnings about Russian intentions in Ukraine left traditional critics of U.S. foreign policy looking very, very foolish. Many Never Trumpers have exulted in watching folks like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson scramble to walk away from things they said barely a week ago.
Within the foreign policy community, however, never underestimate the magnitude of realist schadenfreude. No other school of thought delights as much in standing back and claiming they saw this coming all along.
The realist position on Ukraine has been straightforward: To explain what is happening now, you have to go back to the U.S. move to expand NATO that began in the 1990s. In expanding that alliance and offering countries like Georgia and Ukraine the theoretical chance to join NATO, realists claim that the United States triggered a security dilemma with Russia that led to its invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
Like all grand paradigms in international relations, there is some explanatory value to this argument but also some contradictory information. This argument rests on the premise that in the 1990s, Russia just wanted to strike a bargain with NATO and had no ambitions to reconstitute and expand its sphere of influence. That’s just not true. From 1992 onward, Russia economically coerced its near abroad all the time. A counterfactual in which Russia would not have expanded its sphere of influence in the absence of NATO expansion seems risible.
Still, realists like John Mearsheimer have cast blame on the United States for the post-2014 situation, and there are ways in which Mearsheimer’s warnings seem prescient given the current conflict. Russian government sources have amplified his warnings, leading to some nasty accusations on social media. But as someone who has also found his work embraced by unsavory global actors, I know this isn’t Mearsheimer’s fault. Mike Mazarr is correct to note, “What is sad is that essays on basic principles of IR [international relations] are weaponized by autocratic and criminal regimes — and then the authors condemned for disloyalty.”
It is also worth asking, however, whether the conflict has falsified some of realism’s assumptions. The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner interviewed Mearsheimer this week. He claims in the interview that “[Putin] understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. He can’t do that.” That does not necessarily jibe with what Putin was saying either last summer or in the week before the conflict.
More significantly, from a purely realpolitik perspective, the war in Ukraine has gone extremely well for the United States and extremely poorly for Russia. As previously noted in this space, Putin’s Russia is weaker now than it was before the invasion. Hopes for absorbing or neutralizing Ukraine and extinguishing Ukrainian nationalism have been dashed. Its reputation for the competent projection of power has been tarnished. Sanctions will badly damage the Russian economy. Realists predicted none of this.
Do not take my word for this, take Lawrence Freedman’s words. He noted that Russia’s assumptions about how the war would play out have been dashed. Therefore, “this is a war that Vladimir Putin cannot win, however long it lasts and however cruel his methods.” While this is a lose-lose conflict, it sure seems like Russia is losing more than the United States.
Mearsheimer thinks this is a strategic mistake. He tells Chotiner:
We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laserlike fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians. The Russians are part of our balancing coalition against China. If you live in a world where there are three great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—and one of those great powers, China, is a peer competitor, what you want to do if you’re the United States is have Russia on your side of the ledger. Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.
As per usual, Mearsheimer undersells the importance of Europe and oversells the importance of Russia. To put it another way: European and Pacific Rim allies are far more important than Russia as components of any balancing coalition against China. The response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is more likely to foster cooperation against China as well.
Realism has some useful things to say about Russia and Ukraine. But it is far from clairvoyant. As Mearsheimer himself acknowledged to Chotiner, “Do I know what’s going to happen? No, none of us know what’s going to happen.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Like fellow populists Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, Putin is talking about an illiberal vision of a people united by common values, beliefs and history
By Roland Paris
A Russian soldier points a gun from a military helicopter as it flies over an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been widely decried as a violation of that country’s territorial sovereignty. It also reeks of hypocrisy: Putin has long championed the principle of noninterference in countries’ internal affairs.
But this is only part of the story. While the invasion clearly violated Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, it also conformed with a very different understanding of sovereignty that Putin has advanced in recent years, one that animates far-right populism beyond the current conflict.
Putin is redefining sovereignty
For most people — including most national leaders — sovereignty has a clear meaning: Nations are legally equal in international affairs, their borders are inviolable and they have exclusive authority within these borders. Putin has been a vocal defender of this version of sovereignty.
But in recent years the Russian leader has characterized sovereignty in less familiar ways. Alongside conventional references to the concept, he has increasingly used the term as a metaphor for what he calls the “inner energy” of a people united by common values, beliefs and history.
When, for instance, Putin told the Russian Federal Assembly in 2014 that Russia must “remain a sovereign nation,” he did not simply mean that the country must defend itself against perceived foreign influences. He described a “truly” sovereign state, such as Russia, as one possessing the self-confidence and collective will to “achieve every goal.”
Putin argued that Russia’s sovereign ambitions should be based, in part, on a shared awareness of the “indivisibility and integrity” of Russia’s “thousand-year long history” and the “powerful spiritual unifying force” of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Without the inner force of this “true sovereignty,” he warned, Russia would “dissolve without a trace and lose our identity.”
It’s not just a Putin problem. The world’s autocrats are behind much of the world’s bad behavior.
Putin’s vision of sovereignty leaves no room for Ukraine to exist as a nation
Putin reprised these themes last week when he justified his invasion by claiming that Ukraine was not a “real” state. On Feb. 21, the day Putin recognized two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine as independent entities and then ordered Russian troops there to “maintain peace,” he accused Ukrainian leaders of having “replaced the real cultural, economic and social interests of the people and Ukraine’s true sovereignty” with a corrupt and “corroded Ukrainian statehood.”
Since Ukraine lacks genuine sovereignty, as Putin has redefined the term, it apparently does not deserve the protections of legal sovereignty, including the right not to be invaded. According to that same logic, the very existence of an independent Ukraine has weakened Russia’s own unity and strength — its “sovereignty” — because of the historical connection between the two peoples. The current Ukrainian state, Putin complained last week, is built “on the negation of everything that united us.”
This is not simply a nationalist or irredentist claim to Russian ownership of Ukraine. As I explained in a recent article in International Organization, Putin’s redefinition of sovereignty has revived older understandings of the term, including the idea that sovereignty represents the animating spirit of a state — the power of the body politic itself. Thomas Hobbes, for instance, called sovereignty the “soul” of a political community, “giving life and motion to the whole body.”
Right-wing populists are embracing this new vision of sovereignty
Right-wing European populists have been talking about sovereignty in similar ways for the last decade. My research in the forthcoming issue of International Affairs shows how populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has, at least since 2014, been using the concept not just in its conventional sense, but also to denote the inner force of a confident, unified and notably Christian society. When Donald Trump was U.S. president, speaking at the United Nations and in Warsaw, he also described “sovereign” societies as those with “strong families and strong values” and “patriots” willing to “sacrifice” to uphold their “culture, faith and tradition,” or else face “decay, domination, and defeat.”
For Orbán, Trump and Putin, in other words, sovereignty is not just about strong borders, the right of nations to govern themselves, or their ability to resist outside influences. It is also a euphemism for the indomitable power of a society united by ethnicity, religion and race — and a strong leader. Societies lacking such unity are weak, degenerate and worthy of contempt. They may even deserve to be dominated.
The troubling implications of this new use of “sovereignty”
Such reinterpretations of sovereignty could be dismissed as mere rhetoric were it not for the concept’s importance in international politics. The right of countries to political independence and territorial integrity — the core legal protection of modern sovereignty — is hard enough to uphold even when there is widespread agreement on the meaning of the term.
Recasting it as a metaphor for societal power and purity risks making this task even harder. Worse, it may offer a license for powerful states to withhold sovereignty’s legal rights from other countries that, in their view, lack the attributes of “real” sovereignty.
There is more at stake in Russia’s invasion than the survival of Ukraine as an independent, democratic state. This is also a war over the definition of sovereignty itself.
Roland Paris (@Roland Paris) is professor of international affairs and director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and an associate fellow of Chatham House. | null | null | null | null | null |
ROME — Pope Francis is planning to visit Congo and South Sudan in July, fulfilling a wish to minister to the faithful in the countries that have sizeable Catholic populations and long histories of conflict. The Archbishop of Canterbury will join him for the South Sudan leg in the latest ecumenical effort to solidify peace in the country, officials said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Change is afoot in College Park, and while the Terrapins can feel good about their 84-73 victory over Minnesota that closed the home portion of the schedule — not to mention four wins in their last five games — the reality is results at this point don’t much matter. Manning is the interim coach who took over for the ousted Mark Turgeon in December. The NCAA tournament — what once seemed a birthright around here — is a colossal long shot. What’s certain: The Terrapins will now look for their third full-time coach in the past 34 years.
History, though, isn’t making this hire. Present circumstances are more important. This isn’t an ACC job. It’s a Big Ten job. We can, have and will debate the contours of that change. But it makes the process different than when Turgeon took over for the retiring Gary Williams. That history that Manning points to, part of what makes the job attractive? It’s in a league in which the new coach will never compete.
Rick Pitino’s name will come up — has come up already — because there’s no more accomplished (or dangerous) possibility out there. If injecting energy into the program and the fan base is a priority — and it has to be — there’s no better option than the Hall of Famer who’s serving a rehab stint at Iona. He has warts. He can coach.
But let’s not let this train leave the station. Pitino would be 70 before he coaches his first game in College Park. Shoot, Pitino coached conference games against Williams — in the Big East when Pitino was at Providence and Williams at Boston College. The year? 1986! The next coaching search would have to start almost as soon as the old one ended. I’d rather see Gary, a Hall of Famer himself, come out of retirement and run that flex offense for a couple of seasons.
Even if there are factions of Maryland decision-makers and boosters who would like to pursue Pitino, the entire operation seems too risk-averse to end up with a septuagenarian coach whose most recent NCAA championship — 2013 at Louisville — was vacated following a tawdry scandal that involved escorts on campus. A gunslinger might make that hire, PR hit be damned. Does Maryland’s current administration sling guns? Should it? | null | null | null | null | null |
Lillie Lainoff at East City Books: Lillie Lainoff’s newest book “One for All” is a gender-bent version of “The Three Musketeers,” focusing on a girl named Tania who trains to be a musketeer, despite her own chronic illness. Lainoff’s debut novel is not all adventure — at one point Tania meets her target, a kind, charming guy with information about her father — but leans into the importance of a found family and fighting for what you love and believe in. The reading takes place at the Yard, a co-working space a block from the bookstore. 7 p.m. Free-$20.13.
Anacostia Community Museum reopens: The Anacostia Community Museum, one of the three Smithsonian museums that have remained closed since January, is ready to open its doors again. “Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington” looks at issues of food justice, including food deserts, diversity in the industry, and community organizations that work with underserved populations. Open Wednesday through Saturday. Free.
Pink Siifu at Songbyrd: When Pink Siifu released “Negro” in April 2020, he couldn’t have known that, just weeks later, yet another Black man would be murdered by police, sparking protests against racist violence and police brutality across the United States and the world. In that way, the album — an avant-garde dispatch informed by everything from free jazz to hardcore punk to rap — and its cathartic attack on police, politicians and all agents of American racism proved timely and not just timeless. That iconoclasm continues on the sprawling “Gumbo’!”, on which the Alabama-born, Cincinnati-raised, Los Angeles-based artist adds ingredients like cooking its titular stew. Less noisy and more rap-focused than its predecessor, the album forgoes samples of Malcolm X and police reports for DMX and church sermons, tapping Dungeon Family legend Big Rube to inscribe the name Pink Siifu on the lineage of Black American music. 7 p.m. $20.
Curator’s Perspective: Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period (1901-04) and the Legacy of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: “Picasso: Painting the Blue Period,” which opened Feb. 26 at the Phillips Collection, is an extensive dive into Pablo Picasso’s early work, his compositional process — including hidden images — and the artists who influenced him. Join exhibition co-curators Susan Behrends Frank of the Phillips Collection and Kenneth Brummel of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and historian Aimée Brown Price of the New York Studio School for an online discussion about the exhibit, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, one of the most important artists of late 19th-century France. 6:30 p.m. Free.
‘Nomad with Carlton McCoy’ at Sixth & I: In Carlton McCoy’s forthcoming CNN series “Nomad,” the sommelier and chef travels the globe to find places where food, music, art and culture intersect. McCoy grew up in Southeast D.C., and one of the episodes in the first series finds him returning home to connect with friends and family and relive memories of his youth. This advance screening of D.C. episode is followed by an in-person conversation between McCoy and CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates. 7 p.m. Free. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lillie Lainoff at East City Bookshop: Lillie Lainoff’s newest book “One for All” is a gender-bent version of “The Three Musketeers,” focusing on a girl named Tania who trains to be a musketeer, despite her own chronic illness. Lainoff’s debut novel is not all adventure — at one point Tania meets her target, a kind, charming guy with information about her father — but leans into the importance of a found family and fighting for what you love and believe in. The reading takes place at the Yard, a co-working space a block from the bookstore. 7 p.m. Free-$20.13.
Anacostia Community Museum reopens: The Anacostia Community Museum, one of the three Smithsonian museums that have remained closed since January, is ready to open its doors again. “Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington” looks at issues of food justice, including food deserts, diversity in the industry and community organizations that work with underserved populations. Open Wednesday through Saturday. Free.
Pink Siifu at Songbyrd: When Pink Siifu released “Negro” in April 2020, he couldn’t have known that, just weeks later, yet another Black man would be murdered by police, sparking protests over racial violence and police brutality across the United States and the world. In that way, the album — an avant-garde dispatch informed by everything from free jazz to hardcore punk to rap — and its cathartic attack on police, politicians and all agents of American racism proved timely and not just timeless. That iconoclasm continues on the sprawling “Gumbo’!”, on which the Alabama-born, Cincinnati-raised, Los Angeles-based artist adds ingredients like cooking its titular stew. Less noisy and more rap-focused than its predecessor, the album forgoes samples of Malcolm X and police reports for DMX and church sermons, tapping Dungeon Family legend Big Rube to inscribe the name Pink Siifu on the lineage of Black American music. 7 p.m. $20.
Curator’s Perspective: Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period (1901-04) and the Legacy of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: “Picasso: Painting the Blue Period,” which opened Feb. 26 at the Phillips Collection, is an extensive dive into Pablo Picasso’s early work, his compositional process — including hidden images — and the artists who influenced him. Join exhibition co-curators Susan Behrends Frank of the Phillips Collection, Kenneth Brummel of the Art Gallery of Ontario and historian Aimée Brown Price of the New York Studio School for an online discussion about the exhibit, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, one of the most important artists of late 19th-century France. 6:30 p.m. Free.
‘Nomad with Carlton McCoy’ at Sixth & I: In Carlton McCoy’s forthcoming CNN series “Nomad,” the sommelier and chef travels the globe to find places where food, music, art and culture intersect. McCoy grew up in Southeast D.C., and one of the episodes in the first series finds him returning home to connect with friends and family and relive memories of his youth. This advance screening of the D.C. episode is followed by an in-person conversation between McCoy and CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates. 7 p.m. Free. | null | null | null | null | null |
Want to make your home more energy efficient? An architect takes your questions.
(Mary Dorn Photography)
Wayne Turett is the founder of the Turett Collaborative, an architecture and interior design firm based in New York. Turett, who founded the firm in 1991, has led initiatives to use energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive materials without sacrificing sustainability or style. The firm does new construction as well as renovation and restoration. Turett’s family has a carbon-neutral, passive house on Long Island designed by his firm. The passive house movement seeks to minimize carbon emissions and create buildings that use little energy for heating and cooling while improving indoor air quality and comfort. | null | null | null | null | null |
Incandescent lightbulbs are on the way out. Here’s how to shop for more efficient replacements.
“Ten years ago this product was not purchasable on the market, and now they’re available everywhere,” Zarker said. “It’s very exciting.”
But not all Energy Star LED lightbulbs are the same; there are other factors to consider, as well. Some of the choices are fairly intuitive. “If you have a dimmable switch, you certainly want the bulb that works with dimmable,” Zarker said. But other variables can be more complex, such as the color tones that the bulb emits.
“You almost think it’s an incandescent,” DenBaars said.
Nonetheless, there are pitfalls to watch out for even with LEDs. DenBaars said that installing efficient bulbs can sometimes lead to complacency, in which people are less attentive to turning off lights that aren’t in use. “The other problem is that people put in more lights,” he said. In either case, it can eat into the savings that LEDs offer.
But Narendran said moving to LEDs makes nearly universal sense, and switching from incandescent lights can pay back in lower electricity costs in a matter of months. | null | null | null | null | null |
Make the recipe: Fried Chicken or Mushroom Sandwiches With Hot Honey and Slaw
After Thornton Prince died in 1970, his brother Will ran the place. In 1980, having never operated a restaurant before, but with a keen desire to keep something of the family’s legacy alive, Prince Jeffries took over the BBQ Chicken Shack. She promptly renamed it Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack — “it never sold barbecue,” she notes — and expanded the menu to include multiple levels of heat, from plain to extra-extra-extra hot. Not long after, it moved to 123 Ewing Drive in East Nashville.
Sietsema lived to tell the tale, of course, and joined the hundreds of thousands of other lifelong fans.
For those who haven’t experienced the unique flavor of herbs and fruits in the capsicum family, the spicy heat of chiles varies widely. Its long been used medicinally — effectively and ineffectively — and to this day, the compounds found in chiles are used to treat pain. Its culinary applications are well documented, particularly in Central and South American foodways. Roasting and drying fresh chiles can intensify their flavor and physical and psychological effects, which vary from person to person but usually include sweating, watery eyes, respiratory distress, hives, skin irritation, heart palpitations, pain and its inverse, pleasure. It’s a combination of the suspense, a dare devil-like desire, and the titillating sensation of pleasure that, for some people, follows the pain that keeps people coming back for more.
“It’s true that people use it as an aphrodisiac,” Prince Jeffries says of her family’s chicken recipe, chuckling, noting that she likes it mild. “And it’s always women who order it hot and come back for more heat — the men think they can handle it, but they usually can’t.”
In 2019, the Prince sisters opened Hotville Chicken in Los Angeles’s Baldwin Hills neighborhood, using the family recipe. “It’s the only place outside of Nashville where you can get Prince’s hot chicken,” Kim Prince says.
But Kim Prince, who’s almost always at Hotville, chatting up regulars and keeping an eye on the chicken as it comes out of the fryer, rarely orders a sandwich. She likes the pieces, just like her father and great-great-uncle. And she agrees with her great-aunt on preferring the mild. “I don’t have all day to spend dealing with this chicken,” Prince says with a laugh. “We have a business to run!” | null | null | null | null | null |
BALTIMORE — A Nigerian national has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for his part in a mail fraud scheme in which he and another man stole bank checks and credit and debit cards and conducted transactions based on what they stole, a federal prosecutor in Maryland said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Formula One ends contract for future Grand Prix races in Russia
The Russian Grand Prix has always been closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen here congratulating 2017 winner Valtteri Bottas, right, of Finland and second-place finisher Sebastian Vettel of Germany. (Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin via REUTERS) (Sputnik Photo Agency/Reuters)
Formula One announced Thursday that it is terminating a contract with the Russian Grand Prix because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The decision follows cancellation of this year’s Russian Grand Prix, scheduled for Sept. 25 in Sochi, and ends a contract that was to have run until 2025.
“Formula One can confirm it has terminated its contract with the Russian Grand Prix,” the organization said in a statement. “Russia will not have a race in the future.”
Paralympics reverses course, bars Russian and Belarusian athletes following outcry
The race, which is one of the most lucrative on the sport’s calendar and had also been scheduled to take place in 2023 in St. Petersburg, has been closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was influential in establishing it in 2014. He has a palace in Sochi and is from St. Petersburg.
The motorsports organization had faced pressure from some of its top drivers to take action after the attack on Ukraine began. Sebastian Vettel, a four-time champion, was a leading voice among drivers who said he would not race in Russia had this year’s race taken place there.
“For myself, my opinion is I should not go, I will not go,” the German driver said last week. “I’m just really shocked and sad to see what’s going on. We will see going forward, but I think my decision is already made.”
Max Verstappen, the Belgian-Dutch driver who is the reigning world champion, agreed. “When a country is at war,” he said last week, “it’s not correct to race there, that’s for sure.”
Lewis Hamilton, the five-time winner of the Russian Grand Prix, became the first Formula One driver to reach 100 victories with his win last year in Sochi. Last week, he expressed support for “the courageous people of Ukraine who are facing such terrible attacks for simply choosing a better future and I stand with the many Russian citizens who oppose this violence and seek peace, often at risk to their own freedom. Please stay safe everyone. We are praying for you.”
Russian and Belarusian drivers, including Russia’s Nikita Mazepin, were barred Wednesday from competing in the July 3 British Grand Prix, Motorsport UK announced.
“The entire Motorsport UK community condemns the acts of war by Russia and Belarus in Ukraine and expresses its solidarity and support towards all those affected by the ongoing conflict.” Motorsports UK chairman David Richards said. | null | null | null | null | null |
The day before Loznitsa left for Poland, he resigned from the European Film Academy, chastising the organization for not taking a stronger stand in supporting Ukraine. (On Feb. 24, EFA president Matthijs Wouter Knol issued a statement saying the Russian invasion was “heavily worrying to us.”In the wake of Loznitsa’s withdrawal, the EFA issued a more strongly-worded statement on Tuesday, condemning the invasion and calling it “atrocious and totally unacceptable.”) He supports the decision of Disney, Warner Bros. and other Hollywood studios to cancel distribution for movies such as “Turning Red” and “The Batman” in Russia. (“If you’re dealing with barbarians, these barbarians should be cut out of civilization.”) But Loznitsa opposes efforts to boycott Russian filmmakers from the festival circuit and theatrical marketplace. | null | null | null | null | null |
The women portrayed in “The Tinder Swindler,” however, were in their 20s and 30s. Erika Kaplan, a senior matchmaker and vice president of membership at Three Day Rule, says it’s easy to fall for these scams in part because so many people on dating apps are passive. It’s common to get matches that lead to no conversation, or conversations that never lead to in-person meetings. So if a dater finds someone who comes on strong and acts like they want them in their life, “it’s really in stark contrast to what you’re used to,” Kaplan says. Instead of assuming this interaction is fake, “you want to believe that you manifested it,” Kaplan says. “You want to believe so badly that you found the diamond in the rough.”
Before lending money to someone, get it in writing and request collateral. | null | null | null | null | null |
That should be a lesson for officials at all levels in Washington, Virginia and Maryland. Law enforcement was caught unprepared for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, despite an avalanche of advance warnings. No one will be in a forgiving mood if truckers or others manage to cause chaos in the District or its suburbs. That includes on the Beltway, which some convoy organizers have suggested they might target. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump’s outspoken regard for Vladimir Putin and his shakedown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to his first impeachment, took Republicans down some very bad roads with Ukrainian American voters. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is Polish but has been one of Ukraine’s biggest champions on Capitol Hill for decades. She is co-chair of the congressional Ukraine Caucus, while Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is a co-chair of its Senate counterpart. Both of them spoke during a rally on Sunday at St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland and one of the biggest Ukrainian communities in the country. | null | null | null | null | null |
Polish volunteers are working with the national railways department in Brzegi Dolne, Poland, on March 2, 2022, help to restore a rail line between Poland and Ukraine that has not been used in years. (Kasia Strek for The Washington Post)
Over the past three days, Polish volunteers working along with the national railways department have restored them as the country frantically seeks new humanitarian corridors to facilitate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, many of whom are now waiting in days-long lines at Poland’s borders.
His and other teams have worked along dozens of miles of track from sunup to sundown over the past three days, repairing steel ties and shoveling dirt off the tracks, and they said they didn’t expect to be paid. Miroslaw Siemieniec, a spokesman for Poland’s national rail operator, said at least six trains a day would be able take refugees from the border to towns throughout the country once the lines are ready.
He was eager to join the volunteer effort and drove the gurgling, steaming contraption that he lovingly called “Mercedes Original” up toward the tracks.
Motyka’s wife, Boguslawa, was all for helping but said she was too consumed by fear to do much. It wasn’t so much the influx of refugees, surely both good and bad people, she said, as the prospect of the war reaching Poland, that made it difficult to concentrate.
Her adult daughter, Justyna, rolled her eyes and told her mother she was watching too much TV and believing too much of what she read on Facebook. Boguslawa gave her a stern look. | null | null | null | null | null |
For months, former president Donald Trump has publicly criticized Ducey, who recognized Joe Biden’s win in Arizona in 2020 and has rejected the former president’s baseless claims of election fraud.
“MAGA will never accept RINO Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona running for the U.S. Senate—So save your time, money, and energy, Mitch!” Trump said in a statement last month, using an acronym for “Republican in Name Only.” Trump appeared to be responding to a New York Times report detailing efforts by McConnell, former president George W. Bush and others to encourage Ducey to run against Kelly.
The Arizona Senate race is one of the most closely-watched in the country. Democrats control the 50-50 Senate by the thinnest of margins, with Vice President Harris serving as the tiebreaker.
Two other Republican governors have rebuffed McConnell and the GOP in their recruitment for the Senate. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said he would seek reelection rather than pursue a challenge to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D). Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said he had no interest in running for the Senate against Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D). | null | null | null | null | null |
Police: Man's body found in Virginia reservoir
CHESTERFIELD, Va. — A man’s body was found in a Virginia reservoir on Wednesday, police said.
Chesterfield County police are investigating the death of the man found in the Swift Creek Reservoir, news outlets report. The man hasn’t been identified.
Officers were called to Village Square Place on Wednesday afternoon after two people in a boat saw the body in the reservoir, police said. The man’s body was recovered with the assistance of Chesterfield County Fire & EMS. The remains were transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for identification and determination of cause of death.
There are no signs of foul play at this time, police said. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Police and search dogs are on the scene at the JCC, (Jewish Community Campus) after a reported shooting on Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022, in Indianapolis. A 19-year-old man has been arrested, Wednesday, March 2, in connection with a shooting that wounded two men at the community center during an apparent dispute over a basketball game, police said. (Michelle Pemberton /The Indianapolis Star via AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
What’s happening in Ukraine? Our reporters are answering your questions about the Russian invasion.
Olena, 42, who works as a lawyer and is one of the female members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense unit, together with Оksana, 52, a graphic designer, as they guard a neighborhood in Kyiv on Feb. 28. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Russian forces have been continuing their deadly assault on Ukrainian cities. They appeared to escalate their attacks on residential areas, with videos and social media posts documenting the devastation and fierce fighting. A 40-mile-long convoy of tanks, troop carriers and artillery is idling just 20 miles north of central Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where residents are bracing for an all-out assault by Russian forces.
Military analysts have said Russia underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to fight and the extent of local resistance. For the first time, Moscow conceded the war’s high toll, announcing Wednesday that 498 service members have died and 1,597 have been wounded in the week of fighting. The United Nations has recorded the deaths of more than 130 civilians, including 13 children — though the actual toll is probably far higher, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said.
More than 870,000 Ukrainians have fled the country since the start of the invasion, the United Nations reported.
Post reporters Michael Birnbaum and Karoun Demirjian are hosting this live Q&A now, starting at 11 a.m. Eastern. Other reporters — including several on the ground in Ukraine — are answering your questions then too. | null | null | null | null | null |
Paramedics move a wounded person into an ambulance in Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine, on March 2, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Farther north, Russian forces have unleashed a barrage of air and artillery assaults on urban centers. The capital city, Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, as well as the northern city of Chernihiv, have come under fierce attack but remain in Ukrainian hands, according to local officials and assessments from Britain, which defense analysts say has substantial intelligence capabilities in the region.
The blast, which was captured by a camera in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods, took place in a region to the west of Kyiv, apparently striking an area far from the city center. Between late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, air raid sirens have sounded at least six times, spurring residents to take shelter, according to messages in the official municipal government Telegram channel.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Thursday morning that a massive convoy of Russian troops and battle tanks poised north of the Ukrainian capital remains more than 18 miles away from Kyiv’s center. The ministry said delays stemmed in part from “Ukrainian resistance, mechanical breakdown and congestions,” with the column having made “little discernible progress over three days.”
The line of armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery had been wending its way closer to Kyiv, drawing within 20 miles of the city center on Monday, satellite images showed. The column stretched for some 40 miles, according to U.S. firm Maxar Technologies, which captured the photos Monday.
Ukrainian and U.S. officials have described Russian forces as bogged down in many parts of the country, facing fuel and food shortages, apart from the substantial advances in the south. “They have lost a sense of momentum,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. But U.S. officials have cautioned that Moscow probably would bounce back from early setbacks and have said it continued to maintain the upper hand against Ukraine’s outgunned and less-experienced military.
The Russian government said Wednesday that 498 service members have died in the Ukraine war and 1,597 have been wounded, conceding for the first time the high death toll of just a week’s fighting. There was no way to verify the toll, and Russian officials often understate casualty figures. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said 572 service members have been captured.
“They impede the supply of food, create a blockade for us,” Vadym Boychenko, said in a Telegram post from the city council. He said people could not leave the city because of the damage to trains and bridges.
Mariupol was still under Ukrainian control, but Russian troops had encircled it, the deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, said in a television interview. “The situation is quite critical,” he said, adding that it was difficult to estimate how many people had been killed in hours of shelling and air raids because it was impossible to collect all the bodies.
Over a crackling phone line, Petro Andryuschenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor’s office, said the port city was completely surrounded. “There’s no electricity, no heating. We haven’t got water,” he said. That’s because Russia has bombed all critical infrastructure, he said. Three water towers have been targeted as well as electricity substations. He said that at least 10 people had been killed in the past two days, with at least 150 injured in the city’s one functioning hospital, but city officials have no reliable estimate of the true toll.
“The last day and a half they’ve been bombing all the time. We can’t even go outside to assess,” Andryuschenko said. The working hospital has electricity from a backup generator, he said, but he’s not sure how long the fuel supply will last. He said the Greek Consulate in Mariupol had managed to organize the evacuation of some of its diplomats Wednesday. Communications have largely been cut. “There are some points in the city where we have a weak connection,” he said, before the telephone connection failed.
The most easterly side of the city is in ruins, he had reported. “A region with 150,000 people completely bombed,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said that 16,000 foreigners had volunteered to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
In an emotional video posted to his Telegram channel, Zelensky referred to the “international legion” of foreign volunteers he sought to defend Ukraine. Earlier this week, Ukraine temporarily lifted visa requirements for foreign volunteers who wish to enter the country and join the fight against Russian forces.
More than 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, seeking safety in neighboring countries including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sign up for Today’s WorldView, The Washington Post’s global affairs email newsletter, for our best analysis and updates.
The newsletter is adopting a new war footing. For the time being, we will focus on the Russian invasion and its vast ramifications, both inside and far beyond the conflict zone.
Now, with the broader country at risk of falling to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine has become a global flash point and backdrop for human drama. The nation of 44 million is a tableau of war, rife with images of city sieges and refugees desperately streaming west.
The conflict is already changing the course of history, sparking a once-unthinkable defense buildup in Germany, a fortification of the NATO alliance and reassessments of Putin’s mental state and further capacity for aggression. The ultimate outcome could determine the balance of power in Europe and the West for decades. | null | null | null | null | null |
Multiple injuries in explosion, fire in apartment building in Montgomery County, Md.
Several people were hurt in an explosion at a building in Silver Spring, Md., police said. (Image: iStock)
Several people were hurt in an explosion and fire at an apartment building in the Silver Spring area of Maryland just north of D.C.
Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, said in several Twitter messages that there were “multiple injuries/casualties” at the four-story residential building, called the Claridge House, in the 2400 block of Laytonsville Road near Michigan Avenue.
He said an initial report referred to a fire on the first floor of the building. | null | null | null | null | null |
A traffic sign at left and large truck to the right were put in place to deter traffic on Feb. 23 amid heightened security on Capitol Hill. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
What is the “People’s Convoy,” and when are they coming?
The convoy is on Day 9 of their 11-day journey, traveling from Monrovia, In., to Lore City, Oh. Supporters from other states, including the Northeast region, have posted their own routes on social media in hopes of meeting up with the group when they arrive to the D.C. region.
Virginia State Police (VSP) said the agency is monitoring and preparing for “potential commercial and passenger vehicle convoys affecting traffic” this weekend, calling it a “still-fluid situation.”
As VSP prepares for this weekend, the agency said in a news release that people can expect to see a larger presence of Virginia troopers and other safety teams.
“These efforts are to mitigate the impact of additional traffic volume on already congested roadways and Northern Virginia communities,” VSP said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pandya and other experts said vaccine mandates still make sense because research shows the virus can spread easily in crowded indoor settings. Even though shots aren’t a foolproof shield against infection, unvaccinated people were still three times more likely to contract the virus during the omicron surge, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Since the city lifted the mandate, Styer is no requiring vaccination cards at the posh restaurant he opened in South Philadelphia in late February. And vaccinated customers didn’t seem to mind.
“I never want to put something in place that limits what people can do unless there’s a very good societal reason to do it,” Arwady said. “If you just keep things in place indefinitely without being clear about when you are lifting them, you have the potential of losing the trust of the public, to have people thinking this will never go away or we are just doing it for a power trip. None of that is true.”
“You are now essentially asking individuals who have been underserved by the health-care system to now trust the health-care system and take a vaccine just so they can go back to doing what they want to do,” Limaye said. “It’s such a terrible way to get people to comply. It reduces trust.”
In Philadelphia, the racial disparities in vaccination are not as pronounced as in other cities, with the gap narrowing to 73 percent of Whites fully vaccinated compared with 68 percent of African Americans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) speaks during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on children's online safety and mental health, on Sept. 30, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Luján’s return comes as a personal relief to his colleagues, but also as a political relief to Democrats, who were faced with the prospect of a long-term absence when news broke of his Jan. 27 stroke. Neurological issues had sidelined two other senators in recent memory — Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) in 2006 and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in 2012 — for year-long stretches.
Lujan said it was no mistake that he made sure to show up for Thursday’s Commerce vote, citing his long commitment to improving rural broadband communications in his own state and others. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump speaks during a “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6, 2021, near the White House. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)
For eight months the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol has been interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence. On Wednesday night, we got the first formal indication of their primary target: establishing that former president Donald Trump committed two federal crimes in his efforts to retain power despite losing the 2020 presidential election.
Part of the argument against cooperating is that he was acting as Trump’s attorney and is therefore subject to attorney-client privilege. But that privilege doesn’t apply if the discussions between an attorney and a client were related to commission of a crime — what’s known as a the crime-fraud exception. And so the committee delineated the crimes it believes Trump committed in concert with Eastman, hoping to convince the court to review material that can then be shared with investigators.
The Jan. 6 committee’s allegation
Both of those allegations center on the congressional counting of electoral votes that was underway at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That count was a “official proceeding” and “lawful government function” that Trump attempted to obstruct. There’s no real question that Trump made such an attempt, though it’s worth walking through how the court filing documents that effort — and other, less-dramatic attempts to interfere with the government’s procedures.
As the riot was underway at the Capitol, Trump made no effort to intervene for hours, despite the rioters obviously acting on his behalf. It’s not included in this week’s filing, but the committee has numerous messages sent to Trump’s team as the riot was going on that called for the president to intervene, understanding that people believing themselves to be effecting Trump’s will would likely be responsive if he asked them to stop. He didn’t. In fact, the filing claims, Trump was aware of the violence underway at the Capitol when he tweeted an excoriation of Pence, who was still in the building.
Pence did ask permission, including from the Senate parliamentarian, and didn’t receive it. On Jan. 4, Pence told Trump that he’s been advised he couldn’t simply reject electors — but Trump and Eastman, as articulated in the filing, continued to insist that he could. Eastman also spoke from the Ellipse; he and Trump both insisted that Pence could do something that Eastman later “admitted that not a single Justice of the Supreme Court” would validate, according to the filing.
That apparently comes from testimony provided by Gregory Jacob, Pence’s attorney. Eastman has repeatedly tried to argue that he was advocating for something short of simply rejecting electors, despite that being the initial focus of the first of the two memos he filed. According to Jacobs’s testimony, Eastman on Jan. 5 “came into the meeting saying, ‘What I’m here to ask you to do is to reject the electors.’" As Trump had endorsed.
The filing notes other points at which Trump tried to obstruct lawful functions, as when he contemplated overhauling the Justice Department in order to potentially provide a stamp of authority on his claims about rampant fraud. There were also those alternate slates of electors that Trump’s team encouraged to meet in mid-December, hoping to provide a pretext under which Congress could pretend to be considering two different submissions from states. One can understand how these might fold into a claim that Trump and his allies (including Eastman, who the filing says was aware of the alternate slates plan) were attempting to derail government functions.
The committee’s filling spends a good deal of time offering evidence that Trump and his allies should certainly have not believed that the election was stolen. For example:
“President Trump’s legal team and his supporters took their [fraud] allegations to the courts, ultimately litigating and losing more than 60 challenges to the election results in seven States”
In a Dec. 27, 2020 call, a senior Justice Department official told Trump “in very clear terms” that “the major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed” after investigating several swing states.
This is simply the official documentation of why Trump should have known his claims didn’t hold water. There was a widespread public conversation adjudicating the claims in the media, revealing quickly that none of his assertions about rampant fraud were valid. Officials in targeted states repeatedly offered evidence undercutting Trump’s assertions, evidence that received no response from Trump or his allies. The filling focuses on Trump’s claims about the election in Georgia.
On Jan. 3, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and outlined a number of unfounded claims about fraud as he asked the state “find” enough votes to declare him the victor. The next day, a staffer from Raffensperger’s office held a lengthy news conference, rebutting the claims one by one. During his speech at the Capitol on Jan. 6, though, Trump continued to make those debunked claims.
One of the fundamental question of the Trump era in politics has been the extent to which he believes the false claims he makes. When he would tweet debunked nonsense as president, for example, observers would quickly point out that it had been debunked. Trump so frequently repeated long-debunked claims that The Post’s fact-checking team invented a new category of falsehood to capture those events.
Should charges be brought against Trump, this will likely be a central question. Trump was told repeatedly by experts and government officials and the media that what he was saying was false. But Trump also repeatedly ignored and derided the opinions of experts and government officials and the media and may have come to believe the assertions that he was making. If he tried to steal power out of a sincere delusion that it was warranted, is that a sufficient condition for innocence?
Last month, D.C. District Judge Amit Mehta published a remarkable opinion in which he allowed several civil lawsuits against Trump to move forward. In it, he noted that there was evidence that Trump had engaged in a civil conspiracy — that is, not necessarily a criminal one — with far-right extremists groups like the Oath Keepers that on Jan. 6 aimed to block the finalization of the election. The bar is lower here, with participants in the conspiracy needing only to have “a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan” — like blocking the counting of electoral votes — “[the] general scope of which were known to each person who is to be held responsible for its consequences,” though not necessarily the details.
There was a less-noticed development on Wednesday that adds another complicating layer to the question of how Trump might have been more intertwined in the actions that unfolded on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. In a plea agreement with the federal government, an Oath Keeper named Joshua James pleaded guilty not only to obstructing an official proceeding — the charge floated by the Jan. 6 committee as potentially applying to Trump — but also to “seditious conspiracy.”
But James’s role on Jan. 6 is interesting for another reason, as journalist Marcy Wheeler notes. That morning, before he breached the Capitol, he was part of a security detail that shuttled longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone around Washington, apparently including to the Willard Hotel, where Trump’s allies were trying to convince members of Congress to block the counting of electors. In his opinion on the civil suits, Mehta noted that Stone’s involvement with the Oath Keepers “might prove … to be important.” James suggests one way that could be the case. | null | null | null | null | null |
Proposed USWNT match at Audi Field falls through; game goes to Columbus
The U.S. team won the SheBelieves Cup on Feb. 23 in Frisco, Tex. (Jeffrey McWhorter/Associated Press)
The U.S. Soccer Federation and D.C. United failed to reach a deal for the women’s national soccer team to play at Audi Field next month, and so the four-time world champions will play in Columbus, Ohio, instead.
The federation announced Thursday the top-ranked national team will face No. 45 Uzbekistan on April 9 in the Ohio capital and again three days later in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester, Pa.
United’s 20,000-seat stadium was the preferred venue for the first match, which will be carried by Fox’s national TV network. But according to people close to the situation, the sides couldn’t agree on financial terms.
With the game dates approaching, the USSF turned to a reliable partner, Columbus, a city where many men’s and women’s matches have been staged over the last 20 years.
Neither the USSF nor United wanted to comment on the talks.
The U.S. women’s squad has yet to appear at Audi Field, which opened in July 2018, and hasn’t played in Washington since March 2017 against France at RFK Stadium.
The men’s team has played there twice: a friendly in June 2019 against Jamaica and a Nations League game in October 2019 against Cuba.
The women’s matches in April are part of preparations for the Concacaf W Championship in July in Monterrey, Mexico, an eight-team tournament that will decide berths in the 2023 World Cup and 2024 Olympics.
Since November, Coach Vlatko Andonovski has been testing many young and inexperienced players before reintegrating some veterans, such as Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Christen Press.
Uzbekistan does not provide much competition, but because many countries are locked into World Cup qualifiers during the April window, the USSF did not have a lot of options.
A good Asian team made a tentative commitment to play, then withdrew from consideration because of pandemic travel issues, two people familiar with the talks said.
Uzbekistan has never qualified for the World Cup or Olympics and hasn’t played in the Asian Cup since 2003. Last month at the Turkish Women’s Cup, it defeated No. 102 Lithuania, 1-0, lost to No. 35 Ukraine, 2-0, and tied No. 52 Venezuela, 0-0.
The games against Uzbekistan continue a trend of unfancied U.S. opponents. At the SheBelieves Cup last month, the United States settled for a 0-0 draw with No. 24 Czech Republic, before routing No. 22 New Zealand and No. 16 Iceland, both 5-0.
Since the Olympics, the Americans will have played only two of 11 matches against a major opponent (Australia twice in November). They’ve never before faced Uzbekistan.
The USSF is in the process of lining up two home friendlies in the June 20-28 FIFA window, the final tests before the W Championship. | null | null | null | null | null |
World Stage: Ukraine with German Ambassador to the United States Emily Haber
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a massive, unified, economic and diplomatic response from the United States and Europe. On Thursday, March 10 at 9:00 a.m. ET, Emily Haber, the German Ambassador to the United States, joins Washington Post Live to discuss Germany’s perspective on the unprecedented sanctions package, her nation’s defense budget and the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.
Emily Haber
German Ambassador to the United States | null | null | null | null | null |
Sign up for Today’s WorldView, The Washington Post’s global affairs email newsletter, for our best analysis and reporting from nearly a dozen journalists on the ground.
The newsletter is adopting a new war footing. For the time being, we will focus on the Russian invasion and its ramifications, both inside and far beyond the conflict zone.
Now, with the broader country at risk of falling to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine has become a global flash point. The nation of 44 million is a tableau of war, rife with images of city sieges and refugees desperately streaming west.
The conflict is already changing the course of history, sparking a once-unthinkable defense buildup in Germany, a fortification of the NATO alliance, and reassessments of Putin’s mental state and further capacity for aggression. The ultimate outcome could determine the balance of power in Europe and the West for decades. | null | null | null | null | null |
My fellow Americans, as we gather in this chamber, war is raging in Europe — and brave Ukrainians are risking their lives to defend their country. So, tonight, I want to speak with you about what is at stake in this struggle. We have just witnessed the worst act of unprovoked aggression in Europe since World War II. This is a threat not just to Ukraine, but it is also a threat to the peace and security of the entire free world. If Vladimir Putin is allowed to conquer his neighbor, then tyrants from Asia to the Middle East will be emboldened to do the same. If a nation that gave up its nuclear weapons based in part on U.S. security guarantees is subjugated, then the United States’ credibility will lie in tatters — and more nations will seek the world’s most dangerous weapons. And if Putin is allowed to swallow up Ukraine’s young democracy, make no mistake — he will not stop in Kyiv.
Studios are right to shun Russia. But festivals shouldn’t shun Russian filmmakers.
We need a more realistic strategy for the post-Cold War era | null | null | null | null | null |
Demonstrators gather as trucks blow their horns and rev their engines ahead of a People's Convoy “Freedom and Accountability” rally Wednesday in Monrovia, Indiana. (Cheney Orr/Bloomberg)
What is the ‘People’s Convoy,’ and when are they coming?
The convoy is on Day 9 of its 11-day journey, traveling from Monrovia, Indiana, to Lore City, Ohio. Supporters from other states, including the Northeast region, have posted their own routes on social media in hopes of meeting up with the group when they arrive to the D.C. region.
D.C. police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said the department’s posture has not changed since additional security was ramped up in the days ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, and the Civil Disturbance Unit remains activated as a precautionary measure.
Police officers from New York City, who came to assist U.S. Capitol police for the State of the Union, remain in the District, a spokesman for that agency said. He would not say when they are scheduled to depart.
Sternbeck said D.C. officers remain stationed along highway entrances to the District and some exit ramps, along with trucks from the Department of Public Works, in case roadways need to be blocked or traffic diverted.
Police declined to say specifically what they might do should the convoy or try to enter the District. “It is fair to say we would explore all mitigation options,” Sternbeck said.
Authorities note that large trucks are barred from many D.C. streets, with regulations restricting where they can park and how long they can idle.
“There are a number of options in place that can be used to minimize disruptions,” Sternbeck said. He said rules and regulations would be enforced fairly, “while also allowing these people to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
Virginia State Police said they are monitoring and preparing for “potential commercial and passenger vehicle convoys affecting traffic” this weekend, calling it a “still-fluid situation.” As they prepare for this weekend, the agency said in a news release that people can expect to see a larger presence of Virginia troopers and other safety teams.
Though temporary fencing around the U.S. Capitol returned last weekend ahead of the State of the Union address, Capitol Police spokesman Tim Barber said Thursday that authorities began removing it overnight. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pandya and other experts said vaccine mandates still make sense to reduce transmission because research shows the virus can spread easily in crowded indoor settings. Even though shots aren’t a foolproof shield against infection, unvaccinated people were still three times more likely to contract the virus during the omicron surge, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Because the city lifted the mandate, Styer is no requiring vaccination cards at the posh restaurant he opened in South Philadelphia in late February. And vaccinated customers didn’t seem to mind.
“I never want to put something in place that limits what people can do unless there’s a very good societal reason to do it,” Arwady said.
“If you just keep things in place indefinitely without being clear about when you are lifting them, you have the potential of losing the trust of the public, to have people thinking this will never go away or we are just doing it for a power trip,” Arwady said. “None of that is true.”
“You are now essentially asking individuals who have been underserved by the health-care system to now trust the health-care system and take a vaccine just so they can go back to doing what they want to do,” Limaye said.
“It’s such a terrible way to get people to comply. It reduces trust.”
In Philadelphia, the racial disparities in vaccination are not as pronounced as in other cities because the gap has been narrowing, to 73 percent of Whites fully vaccinated compared with 68 percent of African Americans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Part of the argument against cooperating is that he was acting as Trump’s attorney and is therefore subject to attorney-client privilege. But that privilege doesn’t apply if the discussions between an attorney and a client were related to commission of a crime — what’s known as the crime-fraud exception. And so the committee delineated the crimes it believes Trump committed in concert with Eastman, hoping to convince the court to review material that can then be shared with investigators.
As the riot was underway at the Capitol, Trump made no effort to intervene for hours, despite the rioters obviously acting on his behalf. It’s not included in this week’s filing, but the committee has numerous messages sent to Trump’s team as the riot was going on that called for the president to intervene, understanding that people believing themselves to be effecting Trump’s will would probably be responsive if he asked them to stop. He didn’t. In fact, the filing claims, Trump was aware of the violence underway at the Capitol when he tweeted an excoriation of Pence, who was still in the building.
Pence did ask permission, including from the Senate parliamentarian, and didn’t receive it. On Jan. 4, Pence told Trump that he’d been advised he couldn’t simply reject electors — but Trump and Eastman, as articulated in the filing, continued to insist that he could. Eastman also spoke from the Ellipse; he and Trump both insisted that Pence could do something that Eastman later “admitted that not a single Justice of the Supreme Court” would validate, according to the filing.
Last month, D.C. District Judge Amit Mehta published a remarkable opinion in which he allowed several civil lawsuits against Trump to move forward. In it, he noted that there was evidence that Trump had engaged in a civil conspiracy — that is, not necessarily a criminal one — with far-right extremist groups like the Oath Keepers that on Jan. 6 aimed to block the finalization of the election. The bar is lower here, with participants in the conspiracy needing only to have “a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan” — like blocking the counting of electoral votes — “[the] general scope of which were known to each person who is to be held responsible for its consequences,” though not necessarily the details. | null | null | null | null | null |
BERLIN — Anna Svitlyk arrived at Berlin’s central station thirsty and exhausted after four days fleeing the Russian invasion with her five kids.
Under rules announced Thursday, Ukrainian nationals will be eligible for “temporary protection” within the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, depending partly on conditions in Ukraine.
Local residents offered accommodation for refugees who arrived at Berlin's central train station on March 2, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters)
More than 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), mostly traveling overland to neighboring countries in Eastern Europe. The United Nations refugee agency estimates that up to 4 million people may leave Ukraine if the violence continues.
“Every European country gave us free food, free shelter. We owe them so much and are so grateful,” she said. “But we want to go home." | null | null | null | null | null |
A man walks past an apartment building on March 2 that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
“They impede the supply of food, create a blockade for us,” Vadym Boichenko, the mayor of Mariupol, wrote in a Telegram message. As workers waited for a respite from the barrage to begin restoring electricity, the city council said it would try to negotiate a cease-fire and a safe corridor to bring in supplies and evacuate civilians.
“We again have no light, water and heat,” Boichenko said. “We are being destroyed as a nation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Alan Ladd Jr., Oscar-winning producer who greenlit ‘Star Wars,’ dies at 84
The son of “Shane” star Alan Ladd, he won an Academy Award for producing the Mel Gibson epic “Braveheart”
Producer Alan Ladd Jr., left, won the Academy Award for best picture as a producer of the 1995 historical epic “Braveheart.” (Eric Draper/AP)
Alan Ladd Jr., a Hollywood producer and executive who greenlit “Star Wars” at Twentieth Century Fox, stood by the film even as the studio wavered and later won an Oscar for producing “Braveheart,” a late-career triumph that came after he was ousted by MGM, died March 2. He was 84.
His daughter Amanda Ladd-Jones, who directed the documentary “Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies,” announced his death on Facebook. Additional details were not immediately available.
Mr. Ladd started in the film business as a stuntman for his father, “Shane” star Alan Ladd, but rose to become one of the industry’s leading — and most liked — executives.
As studio head at Fox and MGM, Mr. Ladd was involved in more than a dozen best-picture nominees and worked on a slew of hits and cultural touchstones, including “Young Frankenstein” (1974), “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975), “Norma Rae” (1979), “Chariots of Fire” (1981) and “Blade Runner” (1982). As an independent producer, he helped steer films including “The Right Stuff” (1983), “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) and “Gone Baby Gone” (2007).
All told, Mr. Ladd produced or greenlit movies that received more than 50 Academy Awards and 150 nominations. And he did so with an easygoing, tight-lipped manner — Esquire magazine put Mr. Ladd on the cover in 1978 with the headline, “Triumph of the Laid-Back Style” — that made him widely admired by stars and filmmakers.
“There are snakes in this business,” his friend the director Richard Donner once said, “and then there’s Alan Ladd Jr.”
Alan Walbridge Ladd Jr. was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 22, 1937. His parents divorced when he was 2, and he lived with his mother, who suffered health problems, before returning to his father, who was often away making movies. He later described their relationship as “basically nonexistent.”
Mr. Ladd worked as a talent agent for stars including Robert Redford and Judy Garland, and was an independent producer in London before joining Twentieth Century Fox in 1973, later rising to become president. There, he greenlit a $10 million science fiction film directed by George Lucas — an early draft of the script was titled “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as Taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga 1: Star Wars” — when few in Hollywood saw any potential in it.
Lucas once recalled his meeting with Mr. Ladd, whose faith in the filmmaker began with a screening of Lucas’s 1973 coming-of-age movie “American Graffiti” before it was released.
“The only reason it got off the ground was that Alan liked ‘American Graffiti’ and said, ‘I don’t understand this movie, I don’t get it at all, but I think you’re a talented guy and I want you to make this movie,’ ” Lucas said in an interview for Tom Shone’s 2004 book “Blockbuster.”
Even when the studio’s confidence faltered, Mr. Ladd kept his trust in “Star Wars,” which became one of the highest-grossing films ever made. His only false move may have been granting Lucas merchandising rights rather than a raise when “American Graffiti” became a hit.
“My biggest contribution to ‘Star Wars’ was keeping my mouth shut and standing by the picture,” Mr. Ladd told Variety.
“Star Wars” wasn’t the only classic sci-fi film he greenlit at Fox; Mr. Ladd also backed “Alien,” starring Sigourney Weaver. But the same year that 1979 film opened, after clashing with Fox chairman Dennis Stanfill, Mr. Ladd left to form the independent production company Ladd Co., which presented movies including the erotic thriller “Body Heat” (1981) and the hit comedy “Police Academy” (1984).
The company struggled to be profitable, weighed down by some disappointments and hefty budgets for films such as “The Right Stuff,” based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the launch of the U.S. space program. In the mid-1980s, Mr. Ladd moved to MGM, which he would eventually lead. His two stints at the studio were less successful than his time at Fox, but under his direction MGM made critically acclaimed movies including “Moonstruck” (1987), “Rain Man” (1988), “A Fish Called Wanda” (1988) and “Thelma & Louise” (1991).
When a loan default put MGM in the hands of Crédit Lyonnais, the French bank booted Mr. Ladd, who was eventually given $10 million to sever his contract and two projects to take with him to Paramount.
He picked a comedy called “Bounty Hunter,” which landed in turnaround. The other film was “Braveheart” (1995). When the Mel Gibson epic won five Academy Awards, including for best picture, some saw it as Mr. Ladd getting the last laugh.
“I guess it is kind of a sweet justice,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “If I was more eloquent, I would have thanked Crédit Lyonnais [at the Oscars] for treating me shabbily as studio chief and allowing me to take this project with me. In fairness, MGM couldn’t have afforded to make this film at the time. Paramount could.”
Mr. Ladd was never known for his loquaciousness, though. When he, as one of three producers, accepted the Oscar, his entire speech was: “I’d like to thank my family. Thank you.”
Survivors include his wife, the former Cindra Pincock; three children, Kelliann, Tracy and Amanda, from an earlier marriage to Patricia Ann Beazley; a half brother; a half sister; and a stepsister. Another daughter, Chelsea, died last year at age 34. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The Justice Dept. and the Jan. 6 inquiry make moves to snare Trump
Attorney General Merrick Garland attends the State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington on March 1. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Bloomberg)
Those criticizing Attorney General Merrick Garland for not moving expeditiously against former president Donald Trump for an attempted coup should take heart.
On Wednesday, we saw a matter-of-fact announcement from the Justice Department: “A regional leader of the Oath Keepers pleaded guilty today to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding for his actions before, during and after the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His and others’ actions disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the presidential election.” The announcement continued: “Joshua James, 34, of Arab, Alabama, pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol breach. As part of the plea agreement, James has agreed to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation.”
The definitions of his crimes (seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding) are precisely the ones that may best fit Trump’s behavior both before and on Jan. 6.
Also on Wednesday, the House Select Committee filed a brief in a court case disputing the attorney-client privilege raised in response to a subpoena by John Eastman, the lawyer who authored the infamous memo explaining how Trump could ignore the electoral count in President Biden’s favor. In a written statement the committee revealed, “The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”
In a filing in U.S. District Court in California seeking to enforce the subpoena, the committee states:
The evidence detailed above provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated section 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). The elements of the offense under 1512(c)(2) are: (1) the defendant obstructed, influenced or impeded, or attempted to obstruct, influence or impede, (2) an official proceeding of the United States, and (3) that the defendant did so corruptly. . . . The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.
Attached excerpts from interviews with witnesses before the committee set forth in granular detail conversations with Trump in which lawyers repeatedly told him that there was no evidence of fraud but he wanted to press ahead regardless.
Likewise, James’s plea bargain affirms that these crimes — seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding — apply to the events of Jan. 6. Now the question turns to who else was involved in the conspiracy and who else directly or indirectly participated in obstruction.
A conspiracy to impede the transfer of power could include, for example, promulgating the big lie, strong-arming Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to flip the state, pressuring Michigan election officials not to certify the vote for Biden, organizing fake electors, cajoling Vice President Mike Pence to disregard the electoral count, badgering the Justice Department to declare the election “corrupt,” working with congressmen to raise baseless objections to the electoral votes — and, ultimately, exhorting a mob to march on the Capitol when Congress was tabulating the electoral votes. Critical to that conspiracy was obstructing the congressional proceedings that officially would have announced Biden’s victory.
The committee and the Justice Department are essentially working from both ends of possible conspiracy and obstruction charges. The Justice Department is working from the bottom up, as it would in an investigation of organized crime. Here the innocuous announcement that James “has agreed to cooperate” should serve as a flashing red light to Trump and his cronies, especially those aides who allegedly staked out a “command center” at the Willard hotel on Jan. 6. Knitting together the leaders of the mob on the Mall with the Trump cohorts involved in a “corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power,” as the Jan. 6 committee put it, will be critical to tying Trump to the violent insurrection.
In a speech a year after the attack on the Capitol, Garland tried to assure the public that the Justice Department was neither dragging its feet nor ruling out prosecution of Trump. “In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses. This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence,” he said. “The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last. The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” He added, “We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
From the committee’s statements, the latest plea deal and the other seditious conspiracy charges, we see signs that the House and the Justice Department are proceeding along common legal theories that they both agree fit the general fact pattern. If the facts necessary to implicate Trump and his top advisers emerge, the Justice Department will be hard pressed to decline to prosecute. | null | null | null | null | null |
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