Washigton Post - 17 December 2023

mEmORy INC. nICK hAGen FOR The WAShInGTOn POST a resident walked out ofasecured dementia unit of Franklin terrace, outside of detroit, and was found dead in a river in 2019. Standards for assisted-living facilities vary by state |irteen states and d.C. have none of the safety requirements the Post tracked, such as minimum staf-to-resident ratios or mandated dementia training. Fewer regulations More regulations assisted-living standards pressure on profits: Senior homes are left dangerously understaffed amid boom. a14 Choosing a facility: What to look for, some questions to ask and pointers on safety. a15 No federal oversight: See how your state regulates assisted-living facilities. a16 BY MICHAEL SCHERER, HANNAH KNOWLES AND JOSH DAWSEY Florida Gov. Ron Desantis entered the Republican presidential race with an unmatched war chest and a $269 million plan to change how campaigns are usually funded. His first campaign manager, Generra Peck, developed the strategy and selected the leadership to lead a massive new super PAC called never Back Down. Lawyer-supervised meetings between the campaign-in-waiting and the super PAC9s team finetuned the mission 4 setting the stage for a historic paid doorknocking effort in early states. Under campaign finance rules, the two operations could not privately coordinate most of their spending. But they aimed to function as an integrated whole 4 built with the candidate9s approval, advised by a single law firm, overseen by a board that included Desantis confidants and seeded with $82.5 million that Desantis had raised for his gubernatorial reelection. It was the first time a major campaign ceded so much of its operations to an entity it could not legally control. With just weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the experiment is now in tatters. The super PAC that funded almost all of the Desantis advertising and field programs and much of the candidate9s travel and events has been sidelined by the people that created it. on saturday evening, about four hours after this story first published online, Jeff Roe 4 a key architect of never Back Down9s strategy4joinedastring of departures, announcing he was resigning and further deepening the group9s tumult. He said sEE dESantiS on a6 DeSantis9s funding experiment is in tatters Super PAC collapsing just weeks before the critical Iowa caucuses BY KAREN DEYOUNG When President Biden cautioned Israel last week that it was losing international support due to the war inGaza, he could just as well have been warning that his own administration also hasalot to lose. Elected three years ago as the self-described most experienced foreign policy president in history, Biden promised to reclaim the mantle of global leadership as <a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress and security.= Following the isolationist Trump years, he proclaimed, <America is back.= There have beenups anddowns since then, from the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco to the return to primacy at nATo,a successful mobilization of aid for Ukraine and a jittery coexistence with China. now, there is acknowledgment within Biden9s administration that his unwavering support for Israel9s right to destroy Hamas 4 even as he acknowledges Israeli excesses and presses the government of Prime Minister Benjamin netanyahu to be more protective of innocent Palestinian lives 4 could impose a price on the president9s standing at home and abroad. <Diplomatic cost can be an intangible thing,=asenior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. <on balance, you want countries to look favorably on the United states, to be willing to support it, to want to cooperate.= But <when public opinion in so many countries is hostile, it makes it harder to win support on issues we care about.= <This administration has prided itself on repairing ties across the world and working with allies and partners. It9s not something you want to see, being isolated in sEE dipLOmaCy on a26 Allies bristle at policy in Gaza israel support may fray relationships Biden risks paying price at home and abroad BY SARAH DADOUCH Ghassan Abu sitta, a British Palestinian doctor, spent 43 days tending to the wounded in Gaza City before he left 4 exhausted and carryingafeeling of guilt that he could have done more. A reconstructive plastic surgeon in London, he arrived to volunteer with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza on oct. 9, in the window after the Hamas assault on Israel and before the Israeli invasion. As Israeli airstrikes were hitting Gaza City, hundreds of wounded were being brought to al-Ahli and al-shifa hospitals, where Abu sitta worked roundthe-clock. The bombing seemed to come closer and closer. <Everything thatIhad done in my life had led me to this point, and this is where I was meant to be,= Abu sitta said. <There were several evenings that I went to sleep thinking it was going to be the end of us.= Those 43 days were among the most challenging and gruesome sEE dOCtOR on a23 Agony, humanity: A doctor9s 43 days in Gaza JAMeS FORde FOR The WAShInGTOn POST ghassan abu Sitta,adoctors Without borders volunteer, at his home in East London this month after several weeks in gaza hospitals treating casualties of war. Sleep is a problem now, he says. Story by Christopher Rowland, Todd C. Frankel, Yeganeh Torbati, Julie Zauzmer Weil, Peter Whoriskey and Steven Rich Assisted-living residents die after wandering off Every day, patients exit unnoticed from senior-care facilities paid to protect them Jack Tribble was found dead 14 days after a video caught him wandering into the south Carolina woods. Hazel Place was found dead six hours after wandering into a sunblasted Colorado courtyard. Kathleen <Kitty= Kinkel was found dead six hours after wandering into a snowy Illinois field. since 2018, more than 2,000 people have wandered away from assisted-living and memory-care facilities unnoticed or been left unattended for hours outside. nearly 100 have died, and state inspectors frequently found evidence of neglect. The alarms went off at 9:34 p.m. inside Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing, an assisted-living facility near Des Moines catering to people with dementia. A resident had wandered through an exit door, a routine event in America9s growing senior assisted-living industry. Automated texts pinged the iPads of the two caretakers working the night shift, and the phones of an on-call nurse and the facility9s director. The warnings repeated every few minutes. Though local temperatures were plunging toward minus-11, no one responded. The on-call nurse told investigators she ignored the door alerts because she was with her family. The caretakers said they didn9t see them on their iPads. And they never followed through with hourly safety checks on memory-care residents. At 6 a.m. 4 more than eight hours later 4 staff finally went looking for Lynne stewart, a 77- year-old Alzheimer9s patient with a history of wandering. They found her collapsed on the frozen ground near the exit, ice covering her body. she soon died at a nearby hospital from prolonged exposure. <The thing I grieve the most is I tried everything I could for her to be safe,= said stewart9s granddaughter, Kaylynne Van Rooy. <That9s why she was there.= stewart9s death in January 2022 was not an isolated tragedy. sEE aSSiStEd Living on a12 BY MICHAEL KRANISH OXFORD, Miss. 4 Richard <Dickie= scruggs,afamed Mississippi trial attorney, was tantalizingly close to a historic deal to force tobacco companies to pay billions of dollars 4 but there was one last hurdle. A divided Congress had to sign off. And scruggs had identified one of the most skeptical senators, Joe Biden, as a key to winning the vote. scruggs turned to Biden9s younger brother James, an old acquaintance who ran a D.C. consulting firm with his wife, sara. scruggs paid the firm $100,000 in 1998 for advice on passing the bill, scruggs said in an interview at his office here 4 the first time he has disclosed the amount. <I probably wouldn9t have hired him if he wasn9t the senator9s brother,= scruggs said. Biden eventually backed the bill, which ultimately failed to pass Congress. <Jim was never untoward about his influence,= scruggs said. <He didn9t brag about it or talk about it. He didn9t have to. He was the man9s brother.= scruggs9s deal with James Biden highlights how President Biden9s brother has for decades benefited financially from his proximity to his powerful sibling, a relationship that is newly relevant today as congressional Republicans investigate whether President Biden assisted his family members9 business deals. During Joe Biden9s 36 years in the senate, eight years as vice president and now three years as president, James Biden9s private sEE JamES bidEn on a18 James Biden9s dealmaking highlighted in his Miss. ties President9s brother is on FBI tapes in unrelated 2007 bribery probe aRTS&STyLE ø From Gawker blogger to Oscar contender, the rise of Cord Jefferson. bOOk wORLd Claire Keegan9s tales of misogyny offer valuable perspective and solace. buSINESS ø how to say <happy holidays= with a small gift 4 or none at all. TRaVEL After last year9s woes, nine ways to prepare for a holiday travel tailspin. mETRO Race to replace Jennifer Wexton in northern Virginia gets crowded. SpORTS In search for new home, Commanders encounter an unexpected twist. Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. ABCDEM2 V1 V2 V3 V4 Rain 55/51 " Tomorrow: Morning rain 55/34 C10 Democracy Dies in Darkness sunday, december 17, 2023 . $5 CONTENT © 2023 7The Washington Post / Year 147, No. 53702 ELECTION 2024 Friendly fire: Slain hostages were holding a makeshift white ûag. a23 Lawsuit: CPAC accused of knowing of past claims of misconduct. a3 Florida: Sex scandal tarnishes a GOP power couple and the party. a3 COmICS......................................................INSERT OpINION pagES...............................................a27 ObITuaRIES.......................................................C5 wORLd NEwS..................................................a22

A2 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 cORREcTIONS The Washington Post is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper. Those interested in contacting the paper for that purpose can: Email: [email protected]. call: 202-334-6000, and ask to be connected to the desk involved 4 National, Foreign, Metro, Style, Sports, Business or any of the weekly sections. Comments can be directed to The Post9s reader advocate, who can be reached at 202-334-7582 or [email protected]. KLMNO NEWSPAPER DELIVERY For home delivery comments or concerns contact us at washingtonpost.com/subscriberservices or send us an email at [email protected] or call 202-334-6100 or 800-477-4679 TO SUBScRIBE 800-753-POST (7678) TO ADVERTISE washingtonpost.com/mediakit Classified: 202-334-6200 Display: 202-334-7642 MAIN PHONE NUMBER 202-334-6000 TO REAcH THE NEWSROOM Metro: 202-334-7300; [email protected] National: 202-334-7410; [email protected] Business: 202-334-7320; [email protected] Sports: 202-334-7350; [email protected] Investigative: 202-334-6179; [email protected] Style: 202-334-7535; [email protected] TO REAcH THE OPINION PAGES Letters to the editor: [email protected] or call 202-334-6215 Opinion: [email protected] Young voters helped power President Biden and the Democrats to victory in 2020 and were an integral part of the party9s success in preventing a red wave for Republicans in 2022. Right now, it9s questionable whether they will do the same in 2024. Biden9s reelection hopes depend on his ability to reassemble the coalition that elected him in 2020. Through much of 2023, however, that coalition has been splintering, and it faces new strains over immigration and the war in the Middle East. Young voters 4 especially young Black and Hispanic Americans 4 have shown signs of unease toward Biden. Maybe this is a transitory phenomenon, one that as the election approaches will begin to fade as these voters, alarmed at the possibility of another Trump presidency, return to the Democratic fold. But nothing is assured. The number of young people who turn out in 2024 4 and the number of them who support Biden over the former president, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee 4 will help decide the overall outcome. In states such as Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona, which in 2020 were decided by only a few thousand votes, young voters are critically important to Biden9s hopes of carrying them again. Doug Sosnik,aveteran Democratic strategist who served in the Clinton administration, made an observation recently in his year-end analysis of the political landscape. Biden, he wrote, was the first president since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to win election <without a political base of his own.= Sosnik based this assertion on the fact that, among those voters in 2020 who said they had cast a vote for their candidate, Trump led Biden by 19 points, according to exit polls by AP VoteCast. But among those who voted against someone, Biden led by 44 points. Biden, in other words, benefited enormously from hostility toward Trump. It9s not that Biden truly has no base. Black voters saved his candidacy in South Carolina during the 2020 primaries, and they and some other groups have been loyal and essential to Democratic success. But Sosnik is correct that fear of Trump more than affection for Biden was the key to what happened in 2020. The same can be said about the Democrats9 victory in the 2018 midterms and their successes in avoiding a drubbing in 2022. Signs of disaffection among younger voters have been showing up through the later part of 2023 in a variety of surveys. The most recent Harvard Youth Poll, conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, offered several warning signs for the president and his reelection team, along with an occasional bright spot. (Full disclosure: I am a senior fellow at the Institute of Politics.) Among the bright spots is that the more likely they are to vote, the more young people say they support Biden over Trump. Among all young people, Biden leads Trump by 11 percentage points. Among young likely voters, the margin in the survey is 24 points. But 69 percent said they were supporting Biden to oppose Trump, while 65 percent of those backing Trump said it reflected support for the former president and his positions on issues. Another warning sign: The survey found that the percentage of people ages 18-29 who said they definitely plan to vote in 2024 is lower than in 2020. One possible comfort to the Democrats is that there is greater falloff in voting intentions among young people who identify as Republicans or independents than among those who say they are Democrats. But much else in the poll should be of concern to Democrats. Across racial groups, the drop in voting intentions is most pronounced among young Black and young Hispanic voters. At this point in 2019, 50 percent of young Black Americans said they intended to vote; this year it9s 38 percent. Among young Hispanic Americans, the drop-off is larger, from 56 percent saying they intended to vote at this point in 2019 to 40 percent today. John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Institute of Politics, who works with students on projects, said that what is most notable to him in the recent survey is the growing tendency of young Black Americans and young Hispanic Americans to dissociate themselves from the Democratic Party. In 2019, 64 percent of young Black Americans said they considered themselves Democrats. By this past spring, that number had fallen to 49 percent, with the bulk going to independents and a fraction to Republicans. Among young Hispanic Americans, the falloff is less significant but still moving in the wrong direction for Democrats. Identification with Democrats among these young Hispanics is down 6 points, while Republican identification is up 4 points. <The Biden team should be most concerned about the growing number of young progressive people4especially young POC [people of color] 4 who are disassociating with the Dem party and choosing independent status, despite largely agreeing with the party9s ideology, priorities and platform,= Della Volpe wrote in an email. Part of this may reflect growing disillusionment with the capacity of the political system to address problems that are especially important to younger people, such as gun laws or climate or immigration. Among Black Americans ages 18-29, the percentage who say <politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing= has risen from 36 percent in late 2019 to 52 percent as of this past spring. Among young Hispanics, the number has grown from 43 percent to 56 percent. Della Volpe pointed out that part of the problem is that, like voters of all ages, younger voters are not aware of things Biden has done that benefit them, from student debt relief to investments in climate initiatives. What might have been an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to expand the youthful coalition has been going in the opposite direction. Cornell Belcher,aDemocratic pollster who was part of Barack Obama9s 2008 campaign team, said that, in thinking about younger Americans of color, Democrats are dealing with what he called <the Obama continuum.= That 2008 campaign, he said, attracted many younger voters who were not necessarily Democrats but were better described as Obama voters. Like Della Volpe, he sees them as particularly dissatisfied with politics and not seeing leaders fighting effectively for change. He said Biden has a good story to tell about his accomplishments, even if the president and his allies have been singularly unsuccessful in selling that to voters of all ages. But many young voters also find it difficult to connect personally with the 81-year-old president and aren9t sure he9s up to the fight ahead. <Likability is really, really important in politics and even when they were not happy with something Obama did, they still liked him and had his back,= Belcher wrote in the email. He added that the challenge for Biden is to find a way to sell his accomplishments <to soften some of the anger and disillusionment and perhaps inoculate some of the more personal questions about him being a fighter up to the job.= At the same time, he said, the president must persuade these younger voters to pivot away from seeing the election strictly in those terms and to focus instead on Trump and the threat he poses to their communities. <Look, these young voters are not happy with Dems and Biden but Trump and the GOP are fundamentally mispositioned to win them over,= he wrote. Young voters are just one of the constituencies Biden must mobilize in the coming year. But he and they are both in different places than they were four years ago, and that represents the challenge for the president. Young voters lack enthusiasm for Biden, but he will need them Dan Balz The Sunday Take Download The Washington Post app Stay informed with award-winning national and international news, PLUS complete local news coverage of the D.C. metro area. Create customized news alerts, save articles for offline reading in My Post, browse the daily print edition and scroll through our the Discover tab to find stories that interest you. Free to download on the App Store and Play Store, subscribers enjoy unlimited access. BY EMMANUEL FELTON Quaker Oats has announced a recall for dozens of popular granola bars and cereals over concerns that the products could be contaminated with salmonella. Among the products being recalled are Big Chewy Bars, Chewy Dipps bars and Simply Granola Oats cereals. According to the announcement, which includes a list of the product brands being recalled, the potentially contaminated products were sold in all 50 states as well as the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and Saipan. The announcement did not include the total number of units being recalled. According to industry data, Quaker Oats is the secondlargest seller of granola bars in the United States. Neither Quaker Oats nor the Food and Drug Administration immediately responded to The Washington Post9s request for comment. In a recall announcement posted on the FDA9s website, but not vetted by the agency, the company said that it doesn9t know of any confirmed reports of illness caused by the products being recalled. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people affected by a salmonella infection usually start to experience symptoms between six hours and six days after coming into contact with the bacteria. Those symptoms, which can include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps, most often clear up without antibiotics after four to seven days. For most cases, the CDC recommends that people with salmonella infections drink extra fluids for as long as they9re experiencing diarrhea. But more severe cases may require hospitalization and antibiotic treatments. Children under the age of 5, adults over the age of 65, as well as people with weakened immune systems due to medical conditions such as diabetes, liver or kidney disease, and cancer, are at elevated risk for severe infections, according to the CDC. In its recall announcement, Quaker Oats warns that in rare cases, salmonella infections can get into the bloodstream and cause more severe illnesses like infected aneurysms, endocarditis and arthritis. The company advises customers who think they might have the products to compare the expiration dates on the products they have with the list of products being recalled. 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sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re A3 Politics & the Nation BY LORI ROZSA As 2023 began, it looked as though Christian and Bridget Ziegler had a golden year ahead. And it was so 4 for 11 months. He was elected chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, its most important position and one that was particularly crucial given that the two leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination were Florida men. He would be in charge of fundraising and spending millions of dollars for party candidates going into 2024. She was starting her third and final term on the Sarasota County School Board, having been reelected while running on a slate of <anti-woke= policies she had adopted as co-founder of Moms for Liberty. She was also six months into another job: training conservative parents and others around the country to run for school board seats, a key goal of the Virginiabased Leadership Institute, which hired her to help <stop the left9s terrible indoctrination.= The couple9s income was on the rise and their political influence was spreading well beyond state lines. Then on Nov. 30, the nonprofit Florida Center for Government Accountability published a Sarasota police search warrant detailing allegations that Christian Ziegler had raped a woman with whom he and his wife had previously had a three-way sexual encounter. According to the affidavit, Ziegler told detectives that his separate encounter with the woman in early October was consensual and that he had recorded it. Calls for him to step down as state GOP chair sounded almost immediately, and by Friday was a chorus of Republican outrage that included Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida9s U.S. senators, prominent state legislators and other party members. With Ziegler refusing to resign to the consternation of allies and opponents, the party will meet in Orlando on Sunday to try to force him out. Though she is not part of the ongoing criminal investigation, Bridget Ziegler has also faced calls to give up her seat on both the school board and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board, which governs the property around Disney World. On Tuesday, she weathered a heated school board meeting at which dozens of residents accused her of hypocrisy and her colleagues voted to ask her to quit. No matter what happens from here, political analyst Susan MacManus says the Florida GOP has taken a reputational hit. <The bottom line is that it9s very difficult for you making the argument that you9re all about traditional family values when there9s that sort of sexual accusation,= said MacManus, a retired University of South Florida political science professor. <And while it9s true that you9re innocent until you9re proven guilty, the admission of participation in a threesome was all a lot of people needed to hear.= When Christian Ziegler met his wife a decade ago, their lives were on very different tracks. He was a Florida transplant, raised outside of Atlanta by his mother, who had jumped right into state Republican politics after earning a bachelor9s degree in political science and criminology from Florida State University. He campaigned in 2006 for Vern Buchanan, who was elected to Congress and hired him as a legislative assistant. In 2012, Ziegler was elected to a position on the party9s state committee. In 2016 he founded a digital marketing company in Sarasota called MicroTargetedMedia. Two years later, as Republicans began to overtake Democrats in voter registration, he won a seat on the Sarasota County Commission. Bridget also was a transplant, who followed her parents from Illinois to Miami and attended Florida International University for several years. When they moved to Sarasota, she again followed them and got a job at an insurance company. She has talked about her life with her husband on various podcasts. From the time they met, she recounted on <Joyful Warriors,= a Moms for Liberty podcast episode released in October, his political aspirations were no surprise. <One of our first dates, no kidding, was [a Republican Executive Committee] meeting,= she said, explaining that he had to stop in to get the attendance. <It was kind of a smart idea, because it was all these lovely retired older ladies who were loving Christian, like, 8Oh, he9s so cute.9= On a Bloomberg podcast, one of the many on which she promoted her training for the Leadership Institute, she described the whirlwind that 2014 was for them as a young couple. <We got married, had a baby, bought a house, and then I ran for [school board] office all like in one year, all in a span of 12 months,= she said. <I was 31 at the time. It was a wild year.= She would often share how she went from being relatively apolitical to <jumping off the ledge= and running for office: She was on the floor of their home playing with the baby when Christian came home from work. <Literally the first thing he said= was <there9s a vacancy on the school board and you should run,= she said. <I was like, what? You9re insane.= Yet after thinking it over for <24 to 48 hours,= she said yes, deciding that she wanted to <be able to influence that kind of learning environment= for their child. And she was not dissuaded when her father warned her that she would be opening herself up to public scrutiny. <Nah, it9ll be fine,= she replied. In the end, then-Gov. Rick Scott (R) appointed her to the vacant seat instead of leaving it open for several months. By her own admission, she was an unpopular outsider. That fall and again four years later, she barely won election on her own. But 2018 was also when DeSantis won the governor9s race. Soon after, she and DeSantis and other conservative policymakers in Florida began a push for parental rights in schools that resulted in sweeping changes to education in the state. Their efforts accelerated during the pandemic, which is when she joined two other parents to found Moms for Liberty. Together they helped to craft the legislation that eventually became the Parental Rights in Education law. Commonly known as <don9t say gay,= it prohibits discussion of gender issues in classroom instruction. DeSantis signed the bill last year, with Bridget Ziegler standing on stage behind him, along with other supporters. A few months later, the governor took the unusual step of endorsing candidates for school board races, which the state constitution requires to be nonpartisan. At the top of his list: Bridget Ziegler. <You should have her in every county,= DeSantis declared. She breezed to victory in 2022, winning by more than 12 points. As a sign of her influence, she was asked last fall to host the governor9s wife, Casey DeSantis, for a <Mamas for DeSantis= rally in Sarasota. She pulled in 300 supporters and donors from five counties. With the state becoming ever redder 4 <The work is not done until there are no more Democrats in Florida,= Christian Ziegler posted online 4 the couple made a powerful team. Bridget Ziegler was arguably more prominent, especially nationally, for her efforts to restrict which books and subjects can be taught in schools and her attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. <They used the LGBTQ, trans in specific, or marginalized populations as they9ll call it, to get into people9s psyche, and pull at their emotional heartstrings, to create this division and this narrative [that] school is safe, home is dangerous,= she said on the <Daily Signal= podcast, referring to policies preventing school staff from identifying LGBTQ+ youths to their families. At the same time, she was encouraged by what she saw around the country during her training sessions for people who wanted to run for school boards, even in <communist California,= where she said <people are fighting with everything they9ve got.= Her husband echoed her <warrior cry,= saying on his LinkedIn page that he is about <Promoting The Right and battling The Left in order to leave a better World for my 3 daughters.= Much, if not all, of their work is now on the line because of the rape allegation and admission of a three-way sexual encounter. Bridget Ziegler, 41, is no longer affiliated with the Leadership Institute, though it is unclear whether she resigned or was asked to leave. Her future on the Sarasota County School Board, a position that pays $34,000 a year, depends on DeSantis. He is the only one who can remove her, and he has not indicated publicly whether he is considering doing so. Christian Ziegler, 40, could be fired by Sunday night from his $120,000-a-year job as the state9s GOP chairman. That would leave him with his business, which helps candidates run political campaigns. He seems ready to go out fighting. In an email to the party membership two days after news broke of the police investigation, he was defiant. <We have a country to save,= he said, <and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up.= Florida sex scandal tarnishes GOP power couple and party9s credibility PhoToS by ThoMaS SiMoneTTi for The WaShingTon PoST Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler is embroiled in controversy with her state Republican Party chairman husband. A rally before a Sarasota County School Board meeting calls for the resignation of Bridget Ziegler. She and her husband, Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler, have their jobs and reputations on the line because of an admitted three-way sexual encounter and a rape allegation being investigated by police. BY BETH REINHARD AND ISAAC ARNSDORF Officials overseeing the Conservative Political Action Conference knew about past accusations of sexual misconduct by chairman Matt Schlapp but failed to investigate or remove him from his powerful post, an amended sexual battery and defamation lawsuit claims. In one alleged incident, during a fundraising trip to South Florida in early 2022, Schlapp was accused of stripping to his underwear and rubbing against another person without his consent, according to the filing. In 2017, at a CPAC after-party, Schlapp attempted to kiss an employee against his wishes, the lawsuit claims. In both cases, according to the suit, the alleged victims reported the unwanted advances to staffers at CPAC9s parent organization, the American Conservative Union, but no action was taken against Schlapp, a longtime Republican power broker and prominent backer of former president Donald Trump. The new allegations were added one week ago to a lawsuit filed in January by a former Republican campaign staffer, Carlton Huffman, who accused Schlapp of groping him in October 2022. The alleged additional victims are not identified and are not joining the suit; the court filing says their allegations were obtained through the discovery process. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Schlapp, on Friday disputed the claims and attacked Huffman9s credibility. <These demonstrably false allegations are a continuation of transparent and desperate tactics,= he said, adding that Huffman is trying <to bolster his spurious claims and taint potential jurors.= An ACU spokesperson referred to Corallo for comment. Schlapp9s attorney, Benjamin Chew, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. The amended lawsuit adds to the financial and political pressures on the ACU, a standardbearer of the conservative movement that has endured an exodus of board members, staffers and corporate sponsors amid mounting concerns about Schlapp9s leadership and financial stewardship. Schlapp and the ACU have not responded to the amended complaint in court yet. <ACU previously was notified and aware of Matthew Schlapp9s propensity for unlawful sexual assault and battery, including at least two prior incidents of similar conduct,= the filing says. <ACU was negligent in its continued employment of Matthew Schlapp in a prominent leadership role.= The new complaint in Alexandria Circuit Court adds the American Conservative Union as a defendant and asks for an additional $3.7 million in punitive damages and costs. Previously, only Schlapp and his wife were named as defendants in the $9.4 million suit. ACU had paid more than $1 million in legal fees as of August, as the discovery process was in the early stages, according to a former board member9s resignation letter. The two prior allegations against Schlapp were previously reported by The Washington Post. Five board members have left the ACU and its foundation arm in recent months, as well as more than half the staff since 2021. Some former officials have called for Schlapp9s resignation to protect the reputation of CPAC, which draws thousands of conservative activists from around the country to an annual gathering in the D.C. area and showcases GOP politicians seeking higher office. Schlapp and his allies have attributed the criticism to <those with an ax to grind.= Current board members who have remained loyal to Schlapp say he has put the organization on a more solid financial footing and raised its profile since he was elected chairman in 2014. The lawsuit began in January when Huffman, a staffer on Herschel Walker9s U.S. Senate campaign in Georgia, alleged that Schlapp groped his crotch during a campaign trip to Atlanta last fall. Call logs, texts and videos provided by Huffman and his confidants to The Post and in his lawsuit broadly matched his account of quickly sharing the allegation with six family members and friends, and three Walker campaign officials confirmed to The Post that he told them about the alleged incident that night or the next day. The suit also accuses Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, a CPAC senior fellow and former Trump administration adviser, of defamation, which she denied. Schlapp, 55, has acknowledged going to two bars with Huffman that night but has denied any wrongdoing. Huffman initially filed the suit anonymously, and Schlapp9s allies accused him of trying to avoid scrutiny of his own record, which includes expressing extremist views on a white-supremacist blog and radio show more than a decade ago. In March, Huffman, 39, was ordered by a judge to stay away for one year from a Raleigh, N.C., housemate who alleged he performed unwanted sex acts on her and another woman, according to court documents filed in Wake County, N.C. Huffman has denied wrongdoing, and no criminal charges were filed. A trial in Huffman9s lawsuit against the Schlapps and ACU is scheduled for June 2024. Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. Lawsuit says CPAC knew of past allegations of sexual misconduct Amended claims allege that Matt Schlapp made advances on two men Tysons Corner Center Lower Level near Macy9s, 703-893-4803 NaHoku.com Maile Leaf Pendant with Abalone Inlay and Diamonds in 14K Yellow, White or Rose Gold from $979 Chain additional Matching Earrings available A gift she9ll treasure.

A4 Ez rE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 about Hunter Biden9s business practices. Three years later, however, Biden9s assertions were directly rebutted by Hunter himself. In court testimony, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China 4 the first official confirmation that this was the case. After accounting for expenses, Hunter Biden reported nearly $2.4 million in income in 2017 and $2.2 million in income in 2018 4 most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests. <BlackRock + State Street + Vanguard are robbing Americans of the ability to own homes.= 4 Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sept. 3 Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent, is best known these days for spreading conspiracy theories, such as this one 4 that evil institutional investors are driving up home prices. But his critique, a key part of his campaign message, is totally off base. The three companies he attacks are not even in the business of buying single-family homes. They are index-fund managers that mainly make passive investments. And the apparent target4a company called Blackstone, not BlackRock 4 doesn9t buy enough homes to have much effect on the market. <I stand with our veterans and I9m going to donate every dime I make when I9m in Washington, D.C., to the veterans of the state of Alabama.= 4 Sen. Tommy Tuberville (RAla.), while running for Senate When he ran for Senate in 2020, Tuberville 4 who in 2023 stalled the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers in a dispute over Defense Department abortion policies 4 pledged that he would <donate every dime= he made in Washington to Alabama veterans. Tuberville, a former college football coach, has an estimated $20 million net worth. Yet no contributions could be found after he had served 21/2 years as a senator, even though he had earned $437,000 in salary at the point. in economics, at a community college, and received a C. The Fact Checker dug into his business past and found more fishy claims. In a 2009 résumé submitted for a job, he claimed numerous roles with businesses and on boards of organizations that were exaggerated or could not be corroborated. A consulting firm he claimed to have run from 2003 to 2010 cannot be found in Tennessee corporate records. At a time he was supposedly saving Merrill Lynch millions of dollars through consulting work, he was also briefly a stockbroker there and co-owned a doughnut shop. (Ogles voted against expelling Santos.) <Each day it becomes clearer that Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family are corrupt and significant threats to national security.= 4 Rep. Elise Stefanik (RN.Y.), Jan. 21 Stefanik tweeted this over a post byaBreitbart reporter who had latched onto a wild conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden in 2018 paid $49,000 in rent to his father 4 who did not report it on his tax return. (This had all started with a tweet on Jan. 12 by an anonymous account 4 a photo of a rental application by Hunter Biden, plucked from the hard drive of his laptop left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019.) Then-Fox News host Carlson devoted his whole show to the subject. Other Fox News personalities touted the story. Comer suggested that the <rent= might be akin to money laundering. But then some basic reporting showed the rental application had been misinterpreted. Reports in the conservative media were quietly updated 4 or, in the case of the Daily Caller, retracted. <My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.= 4 Biden, while running for president in 2020 The president made this comment in a contentious exchange with Trump during a 2020 presidential debate amid a fire hose of accusations 4 many fabricated 4 that Trump made Biden9s tall tales President Biden, like many politicians, likes to tell stories 4 stories in which he tries to connect his own life with his audiences9, and that make up an essential part of his persona. But throughout his career, Biden9s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life have led to doubts about his truthfulness. That hasn9t changed in his third year as president. He repeatedly exaggerated the extent of a fire that occurred at his house in 2004. He often told a heartwarming but implausible story about an Amtrak conductor who congratulated him for traveling more on Amtrak than he had on Air Force planes as vice president. And several times when discussing gay issues, he offered another implausible tale about words his father supposedly spoke after a teenage Biden saw two welldressed men in suits kiss each other in downtown Wilmington in the early 1960s. Hyperbolic China claims In the battle between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to be the main alternative to Trump in the Republican presidential primary race, the two candidates and their allies have lobbed absurd claims about each other regarding relations with China. Trump has also gotten into the act with jingoistic claims. A pro-Haley group falsely charged that DeSantis, as a member of Congress, voted to <fast-track Obama9s Chinese trade deals.= Not so. A proDeSantis group absurdly claimed that Haley made a serious national security blunder when as governor she welcomed a Chinese fiberglass factory to her state. Meanwhile, when DeSantis still seemed to be Trump9s main threat, the former president conjured up an imaginary dispute over tariffs on imports from China. <8DeSanctis9 sided with the communists in China. I sided with the farmers of America,= Trump claimed at a campaign rally. In reality, DeSantis did not oppose Trump9s tariffs on China or aid to farmers 4 and did not take any steps to block either program. Iran <hit one of our drones and I hit them. & They called us to tell us that we9re going to hit back. Here9s the target, but we9re not going to hit the target.= 4 Trump, Nov. 10 Donald Trump could easily fill this list all by himself, as he did often during his presidency. But this claim stood out from among many. In Trump9s telling, he struck back against Iran and then Iran was so chastened that officials called him and said Iran would deliberately miss a military base with its next strike. In reality, Trump canceled the original retaliatory strike, to the shock of his aides. And Iran did not warn Trump or miss the base. Most of the missiles hit the The biggest Pinocchios of 2023 The Fact Checker Glenn Kessler It9s time for our roundup of the biggest Pinocchios of the year. False claims made by President Biden and conspiracy theories about the president yet again dominate the list. Former president 4 and 2024 presidential hopeful 4 Donald Trump features on this list for the ninth straight year. As usual with Trump, it9s hard to isolate a particular falsehood. We focused on invented stories he told about his dealings with Iran, as well as his claims about a top rival in the GOP primary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, regarding tariffs on imports from China. Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News this year, makes the list for the third straight year. This list has no particular order. JoNaThaN NEWToN/ThE WashiNgToN PosT Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talk over each other during the Republican presidential debate in Miami on Nov. 8. The two candidates and their allies have made absurd claims about each other regarding relations with China. Hunter Biden9s business dealings when his father was vice president. So far, Comer and his congressional allies have turned up little evidence of nefarious doings by the president, although that has not stopped the House from launching an impeachment inquiry. In August, Comer made a serious misstep when he pointed to an email in which he claimed that Joe Biden was sending a secret message to his son indicating that he was about to push for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor 4 a move that supposedly would have furthered his son9s business interests. Here9s the problem: The email is dated May 26, 2016. The prosecutor in question had been dismissed by the Ukrainian parliament two months earlier. <As a matter of fact, my first two years in office I9ve lowered the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion.= 4 Biden, April 25 When we awarded Biden a Bottomless Pinocchio for this statement back in April, we noted that at least 30 times he had falsely taken credit for reducing the budget deficit by $1.7 trillion. Well, that didn9t seem to bother him. Since April, he9s made the claim nearly 30 more times. Biden gets his $1.7 trillion figure by comparing the deficit in fiscal 2020 ($3.132 trillion) with the deficit in fiscal 2022 ($1.375 trillion). The deficit was always expected to fall with the end of the pandemic. But Biden9s policies increased the national debt about $850 billion more than originally projected. So the deficit picture has worsened under Biden, and he9s seizing on a technicality to claim otherwise. <If you don9t have the integrity to just be you and run on what you9ve done, then I don9t want you in Congress.= 4Rep. Andrew Ogles (RTenn.), when he was running for Congress last year Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) lied about so many things about his past that he was ousted from Congress. Ogles received less attention, although he also had problems with résumé enhancement. When he arrived in Washington, he claimed he was <an economist,= but it turned out he had taken only one course riCky CarioTi/ThE WashiNgToN PosT President Biden has for decades demonstrated a propensity to exaggerate or embellish, and he persisted in that practice this year. JaBiN BoTsFord/ThE WashiNgToN PosT No contributions to Alabama veterans by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) could be found, despite an unequivocal promise he made. base. No one was killed, but that was more a result of a wellplanned evacuation than Iranian targeting. <Biden is giving each illegal family $2,200 per month plus a free plane ticket and free medical care.= 4 Rep. Lauren Boebert (RColo.), Sept. 8 Boebert made this claim in a tweet that drew nearly 2.5 million views. What9s noteworthy is not that this is false (it is), but that Boebert was repeating a zombie claim that actually started in Canada 17 years ago. Her source was the Gateway Pundit, which is notorious for spreading false information. An interview conducted by Tucker Carlson on social media also amplified this claim. Undocumented immigrants 4 those Boebert refers to as illegal 4 do not receive monthly checks. Under a 1980 law, refugees 4 people who have documented that they are fleeing a war or persecution 4 may receive a one-time resettlement payment for items such as food, clothing, transportation or rent. Then they may qualify for cash assistance for a period of time not more than one year, with the amount varying by size of family. <This was Joe Biden9s way of copying Hunter Biden to say, okay, send it to the Burisma owners and tell them help is on the way, and five days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine to begin the process of firing the prosecutor in exchange for America tax dollars in the form of foreign aid.= 4 Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), Aug. 29 Comer is leading the congressional investigation into ElizaBETh FraNTz For ThE WashiNgToN PosT Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) imagined benefits for migrants.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re A5 procedural move needed to start debate, leading McCarthy to rely on Democrats to advance the bill in a very rare manner. Those far-right Republicans then shut the House down for more than a week in June, vowing to block legislation from advancing on the House floor. And they blocked many of the government funding bills coming out of the Appropriations Committee. And a few threatened to force the motion to vacate the speakership, so McCarthy kept making concessions. It9s almost been forgotten by history as so much happened in the past three months, but McCarthy9s original plan was to shut the government down. By late September, McCarthy decided to attach a very conservative border security bill 4 that had no chance of passing the Senate 4 to the government funding legislation. The border crisis had grown so dire, with Republicans holding the upper hand on public opinion, that McCarthy9s allies declared that the shutdown would be worth it. <This is something I would shut down the government over,= Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) told reporters in late September. But 21 Republicans wouldn9t vote even for six weeks of government funding in exchange for a potential border win, tanking the legislation in the House on Sept. 29. The next morning, with just hours to spare to avoid a shutdown and no negotiating leverage, McCarthy folded his cards. He put the <clean CR= on the House floor, and it drew 209 Democratic votes and just 126 Republican votes. As The Washington Post reported later, McCarthy thought his seven years of publicly it 58-1 in their panel, but then the hard-liners went to McCarthy and forced a broad rewriting of the bill that loaded it up with conservative culture-war riders. It barely passed, and the House eventually gave in to much of the bipartisan bill drafted in the Senate, which eventually passed the House on Thursday. McCarthy9s biggest legislative play came in debt limit negotiation in the spring as he deputized a couple of his closest friends to negotiate with top Biden advisers. Since 1960, Congress had increased the borrowing limit more than 65 times, and this time, McCarthy9s allies did get some conservative wins: limits on federal agency spending for the next two years, expanded work requirements for some entitlement programs and reduced funding for the IRS. But, in a near mirror image of the vote on the 2011 debt limit deal, a third of House Republicans opposed this year9s bill 4 some vehemently enough that they voted against a and, to this day, is not associated with a single area of policy expertise. McCarthy always seemed a good fit to be the guy behind <The Guy,= a tactical strategist not meant to be fully in charge. But once Boehner, Cantor and Ryan departed the scene 4 all driven into early retirement by far-right forces 4 McCarthy became House minority leader in January 2019. His greatest political feat probably came in 2020, when Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million but McCarthy9s diverse crop of candidates produced a historic gain of more than 10 seats for House Republicans. Friends and foes cite McCarthy9s political work, not legislative wins, when they discuss his accomplishments. <Kevin McCarthy had an unequaled impact on this institution. I mean, look at how he rose to leadership so quickly once he got in here, because of his ability to build relationships, his leadership skills,= said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of House Republicans9 campaign arm. <Look, I think he helped bring us back into the majority, actually, twice. So I thank him for that. That9s it,= said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. The 2022 midterms, which handed the GOP the majority, actually served as a disappointment. McCarthy9s side gained just nine seats, bringing such a narrow majority that it emboldened the most conservative wing of his conference to wreak havoc. In one of many examples, the House Armed Services Committee negotiated a popular Pentagon policy bill and passed Trump, and many of his supporters. In terms of his legacy 4 tangible policy achievements 4 McCarthy has little to show. By some measures, this has been the least productive Congress since the Hoover administration. McCarthy talks about his fateful decision Sept. 30 to pass a simple resolution funding the government for 47 days, without any political ransom for conservatives, as if he passed Ronald Reagan9s 1981 tax cuts. He knew ahead of time, as he recounted during Thursday9s farewell address, that relying on Democratic support to keep the government open would prompt far-right lawmakers to call the vote to expel him and that they would be likely to succeed. <Do it anyway,= McCarthy said in his speech, growing defiant. <I would do it all again.= All he did was pass a <continuing resolution= to fund government for a little more than six weeks, a legal maneuver Congress had previously done 200 times since 1977. It is shocking, in retrospect, to hear McCarthy talk about that simple move as his own political raison d9être 4 and it is baffling to think such a standardoperating-procedure move led to his downfall. During his first job in House Republican leadership in 2011, then-Majority Whip McCarthy played the affable understudy to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) and then-Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who chaired the Budget Committee. Those leaders came up with the first hostage strategy, prompting a spring and summer negotiation over the nation9s debt limit that ended with $2 trillion of cuts and savings 4 a policy win for Republicans. Still, a third of the most conservative lawmakers voted against it. By the fall of 2013, the most conservative antagonists essentially took charge of the Republican conference and forced Boehner9s leadership team into a government shutdown over their attempt to defund the implementation of President Barack Obama9s Affordable Care Act. It ended terribly, with no concessions, and almost twothirds of Republicans voted against the leadership team9s bill to reopen government. From then on 4 whether it was Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan or, eventually, Speaker McCarthy 4 the tail of the House GOP regularly wagged the dogs of leadership. Of the self-branded <Young Guns,= Cantor and Ryan fashioned themselves as the policy experts while McCarthy focused on politics, recruiting candidates and raising money. He never served anywhere near the top of a legislative committee Rep. Kevin McCarthy (RCalif.) had assembled a photo line Thursday morning just off the House floor for anyone who wanted a picture with the exspeaker before he cast his last votes. But after a few minutes, one of the House9s far-right conservatives forced a vote on a procedural motion designed to try to block a defense policy bill. The ex-speaker had to rush on to the floor to help tamp down another mini-rebellion. It was a fitting end to McCarthy9s career, a 17-year arc that traced House Republicans9 path in helping the GOP move away from its conservative policy roots to instead focus on political stunts. Rather than trying to work on policy through congressional committees and winning political support, they would find some looming fiscal deadline and threaten calamity unless their conservative demands were met. For 13 years, the House GOP has cycled between a far-right group of about 15 to 30 conservatives first holding things hostage, and then the leadership team getting ahead of the next hostage-taking by declaring that that was the preferred strategy. They held the Treasury9s borrowing limit hostage in 2011, threatening default and causing the lowering of the federal government9s credit rating. They held the nation9s tax system hostage in 2012 and nearly forced a massive tax hike on nearly every worker. They held the federal workforce hostage and shut down the government (in 2013 and late 2018-early 2019). They started this year off by holding McCarthy himself hostage, refusing to give him enough votes to become speaker until he made so many concessions that he lacked the power of previous speakers. They, again, held Treasury9s debt limit hostage in the spring and helped cause another credit downgrade. In October, after voting to expel McCarthy as speaker, House Republicans did something even more jawdropping: They held themselves hostage for three weeks, unable to elect a successor and leaving the House unable to function. And now, as McCarthy heads for the exit, House Republicans are the driving force in another legislative hostage-taking. This time, following the lead of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the House GOP is holding hostage a $110 billion national security package to help defend Israel and Ukraine, fearing support for Ukraine would draw the ire of their leading political figure, ex-president Donald Kevin McCarthy9s exit changes little: House Republicans are still lost @PKCapitol Paul Kane bowing to Trump would have resulted in the former president9s calling the group of GOP rebels and telling them to stand down when days later they moved to remove McCarthy as speaker. Trump didn9t and, instead, in a phone call questioned McCarthy9s loyalty. The exspeaker later told people he then cursed at the ex-president. The eventual election of Johnson 4 a much more conservative speaker than his three GOP predecessors 4 has helped the legislative morass only on the margins. The appropriations funding bills ran into the same dead end. Far-right Republicans sometimes block the procedural rules votes. And, just a few weeks into the job, Johnson had to pass another <clean CR,= just as McCarthy did, to keep agencies running deep into the winter. Those Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy aren9t happy with Johnson, yet they have set the expectations bar quite low. <Well, he didn9t lie to me,= Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told reporters outside the Capitol on Thursday. The House closed later that afternoon for the holiday season and will not return until Jan. 9 4 10 days before the first of two funding deadlines. The federal workforce will again be held hostage. But Kevin McCarthy won9t be in the middle of it. As he finished up his speech Thursday, McCarthy again returned to his Sept. 30 decision 4 to approve the 201st <CR= since 1977 4 and encouraged others to follow his lead. What happens if a vote is the right thing but might cost your job? <Do it anyway,= McCarthy said. <Because it9s the right thing to do.= JaBin BoTsFord/THe WasHingTon PosT Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was ousted from the post of House speaker in October and is formally leaving Congress at the end of the month, greets House staffers and members on Thursday, effectively his final day as a representative on Capitol Hill after 17 years. <Look, I think he helped bring us back into the majority, actually, twice. So I thank him for that. That9s it.= Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, on McCarthy Prepare to be impressed.# Schedule Your FREE In-Home Consultation Today! 202-996-3561 DC 301-264-8319 MD 703-552-4050 VA MHIC#28743 District of Columbia Basic Business License #420214000004 Virginia Class A Contractor9s License #2705152898 Revitalize Your Kitchen Affordably: Kitchen Saver9s Custom Cabinet Refacing Delivers Quality & Savings! Coupon must be presented at the time of estimate. Offer cannot be combined with any other discounts. Subject to credit approval. 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A6 eZ M2 the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 ELECTION 2024 8an underdog9s chance9 As DeSantis fell in the polls, the tensions only ramped up. DeSantis operatives and the governor himself were especially frustrated by a roe strategy memo, posted on Axiom9s website, that laid out advice for DeSantis ahead of the first GoP presidential debate and was leaked to the media, drawing ridicule. At the super PAC, there were some concerns that someone in DeSantis9s immediate orbit was trying to embarrass either roe or Never Back Down. Campaign leadership, meanwhile, suspected upset Never Back Down officials of trying to hurt them. By the fall, many of the initial assumptions of the DeSantis operation had failed to materialize. Trump had grown stronger on the back of being indicted in four separate cases, despite his avoidance of the debates. And the money that Never Back Down had expected to flood in as the nominating contests approached also became a problem, as some donors began turning elsewhere. In mid-November, tempers flared the day of a strategy session at Never Back Down9s offices in Atlanta, the first such series of meeting where members of the board and a former DeSantis attorney named David Dewhirst, a close ally of Uthmeier, were present. At one point after Dewhirst had left the room, multiple people familiar with the events said that roe confronted Wagner about the Building America9s future prospecting program, which may have diverted potential money for Never Back Down, a clash someone described to NBC News. others disputed that was the topic of discussion. Jankowski, the CEo, resigned days later after finding out that Dewhirst had incorporated a group in Tallahassee 4 called fight right 4 that some on the board wanted to use to pay for ads attacking Haley. In a statement released amid public reporting over the internal discord, Jankowski said that his concerns with the group9s direction went <well beyond a difference of strategic opinion.= Another board member, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, wrote an email for the record that was leaked to NBC News, describing the <manner in which the Haley hit and its funding appears to be proceeding is exceedingly objectionable to me.= Less than two weeks later, the board chairman, former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt, who had often aligned himself with Cuccinelli, resigned, citing family obligations. Laxalt declined to comment through a spokesperson, and Cuccinelli did not respond to requests for comment. By the time of Laxalt9s departure, Uthmeier had written a public memo on behalf of the campaign embracing fight right for future television ads and describing Never Back Down as a field operation, even though the group at that point had spent more in advertising than any other campaign or group this cycle, according to AdImpact. By the end of November, the three supervisors overseeing most of the group9s staff 4 interim CEo Kristin Davison, communications director Erin Perrine and matthew Palmisano, who oversaw the group9s advance operation 4 were fired by the board. <Things have changed with new leadership and the DeSantis mantra of 8head down, do the work,9 is winning out at the PAC,= said the person with knowledge of the DeSantis campaign9s thinking. Another said logistics and events are <better than ever.= That is not the consensus view. <morale at the PAC is low. No one knows who is in charge. People are just trying to get through,= said another person with knowledge of the situation. <I thought they9d run a lean, mean, caucus-going machine,= said Justin Clark, the deputy Trump 2020 campaign manager. <It hasn9t been a strong machine.= Still, some in DeSantis9s orbit are holding out hope for a comeback. During his first campaign for governor, DeSantis won despite shaking up his team late in the race. <Clearly, we are underperforming. Clearly we haven9t lived up to the billing. But I do think this adaptive behavior is going to produce better results in the end,= said Dan Eberhart, a DeSantis donor. <Clearly, Haley has some momentum nationally. Clearly, Trump is lapping the field. But I think he9s got an underdog9s chance at pulling off a humongous upset.= unreimbursed expenses.) The scope of the group9s field operation 4 originally designed to include Super Tuesday states like California and Texas 4 was eventually narrowed to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A firm controlled by roe did the door-knocking in Iowa, while a firm affiliated with Cox, a longtime adviser to DeSantis, took on the contracts in New Hampshire and South Carolina. The two operations sought other ways to offset costs for the campaign. A company was founded, N2024D LLC, with help from attorneys for the campaign and Never Back Down to pay for a lease of the private plane DeSantis used to travel to events. People close to DeSantis also made other efforts to use unregulated money, further expanding the complicated and secretive web of groups revolving around the DeSantis campaign. one project raised money through a nonprofit group controlled by Wagner, faithful and Strong, which does not disclose its donors and had become a major contributor to Never Back Down. The money was then sent to another nonprofit, Building America9s future, which according to tax filings had previously been run by Peck, who was a former business partner of Cox. That group spent the money at ImGE 4 a firm that lists Cox as chairman and DeSantis deputy campaign manager Ethan Eilon as president 4 to search for potential small-dollar donors. The data that resulted from that effort was controlled in part by ImGE and could then be used by other clients, like the DeSantis campaign, to raise money for the governor directly. <We don9t discuss vendor contracts, but it is misleading to frame a contract with ImGE as producing data that 8could be shared9 with the DeSantis campaign. The reality is that ImGE is a business that sells and rents lists to a wide variety of campaigns and organizations,= said a person familiar with BAf9s role in the arrangement. faithful and Strong9s contributions to BAf were designated in legal documents as nonpolitical, according to another person familiar with the arrangement. Wagner has denied any improper coordination between groups. Ad strategy was a source of friction between the campaign and the super PAC as Tallahassee made instructions explicit. An unsigned memo on July 6, published by NBC News, contained sentences in bold that Never Back Down interpreted as marching orders. The memo urged more ad spending in New Hampshire, and a pullback in spending in the Super Tuesday states until a reevaluation of strategy in the fall. Never Back Down staff, who had been watching Sen. Tim Scott (r-S.C.) and his allies pour millions into early television advertising with little impact, spoke about spending money in August in the expensive Boston media market as being comparable to lighting the funds on fire for media attention. But the spending went ahead anyway. The group spent $2.5 million on Boston television from late July through September. Campaign officials, on the other hand, came to believe Never Back Down9s TV strategy wasn9t effective, according to another person familiar with the campaign9s thinking, worrying that ads were not running enough to <burn in.= They also thought the super PAC wasn9t doing enough negative ads as DeSantis came under fire from Trump and Haley. Trump and businessman Vivek ramaswamy, agreed to sign on with DeSantis and not to let parts of his firm work for any other presidential candidates. Chris Jankowski, a republican strategist brought in to helm Never Back Down, was given the task of hiring the rest of the team and he later hired a number of other Axiom consultants. Peck did not want Axiom to become the dominant force in Never Back Down, the people said. Some in DeSantis9s orbit questioned in particular how roe 4 a larger-than-life political figure who often drew media attention 4 would mesh with the governor9s operation. The structure created separation between the two teams. As DeSantis struggled, people around DeSantis soon began to blame Never Back Down for the larger problems. <The team in Tallahassee could not understand how NBD9s staff could not forfeit their own brand and desire for control. It was like men are from mars, women are from Venus during the first months of the campaign,= said a person with knowledge of the campaign9s thinking. Another person close to the campaign suggested the problem was not the super PAC model itself but divisions among operatives who don9t all <wear the same jersey.= The Never Back Down team 4 which had been told by roe to not wear Axiom-branded apparel around the office 4 came to believe they were being blamed for the campaign9s failures, both in budgeting and the candidate9s message. Suggestions by some in the DeSantis orbit that they were cashing in on the race also stung, according to people familiar with Never Back Down, as the early margins for roe and his Axiom colleagues had been kept low, according to people familiar with the super PAC. By the end of June, roe had taken a personal loss on the project, though his firms were expected to make money in the second half of the year. (In federal filings, he reported a $409,000 in-kind donation to Never Back Down for ing some who believed there appeared to be numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information, NBD and some senior officials parted ways. = A representative for the three former employees declined to comment Saturday. Three people familiar with the super PAC9s decision-making described reasons for suspecting the three fired officials of wrongdoing, but the organization did not provide clear evidence implicating them. Two other people familiar with the inner workings of the group said they are not aware of proof. 8don9t wear the same jersey9 few candidates had appeared better positioned for a presidential campaign than DeSantis was after the 2022 midterm elections. He had won reelection in a once-purple state by 19 points, even as candidates backed by his chief rival, Trump, lost statewide races around the country. DeSantis9s reelection had been managed by Peck, who had retained tens of millions in unspent campaign funds that could not be directly used by a federal candidate. In the weeks that followed, she set about building an operation that could leverage that money and millions more that they believed donors would fork over to the DeSantis effort. Peck was among those who supported hiring roe, the chairman of the largest republican consulting firm, Axiom, to run the super PAC in part because of his experience in Iowa, according to people with knowledge of her thinking. roe had overseen Texas Sen. Ted Cruz9s 2016 Iowa caucuses victory and was working for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, DeSantis9s potential rival for the 2024 nomination. roe, who had auditioned for other candidates including confidants,= said one person familiar with the effort who was not directly involved with either camp. The person added that people in DeSantis9s inner circle want to <go into the final fight with people who are close to [Uthmeier] and closer to the governor.= Never Back Down is still full of campaign veterans, with Phil Cox 4 a longtime adviser to DeSantis 4 rejoining as a senior adviser and others taking on heightened roles. Campaign officials and attorneys have repeatedly said they have adhered to campaign finance laws and have said it is normal for a candidate9s supporters and loyalists to run independent organizations supporting them. <We9re not going to be distracted by more false narratives coming from unknown sources with harmful agendas,= said DeSantis campaign communications director Andrew romeo, adding: <We appreciate the independent efforts of our outside partners at NBD as they are building a historic ground game for the fight ahead.= on Saturday, a top official at Never Back Down elaborated on the firings in a statement that for the first time publicly suggested their rationale. <following mismanagement and conduct issues, including numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information, senior officials were terminated,= said Never Back Down chairman Scott Wagner. <We don9t have time to indulge false narratives from those with ulterior motives.= The Post asked employees for a response. A lawyer for the employees then contacted Wagner claiming his assertions were categorically false and he revised his statement, replacing the first sentence with: <following some opinions regarding mismanagement and conduct issues, includhe <cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in the Washington Post today.= <They are not true and an unwanted distraction at a critical time for Governor DeSantis. I am resigning my position effective immediately,= he wrote. <Governor DeSantis has been an exceptional governor and I hope he will be the 47th President of the United States. I wish the Governor, first Lady, and their entire team the best through the rest of the campaign.= five senior officials have left Never Back Down since late November. Three officials with roe9s firm were fired, and the board chairman and the founding chief executive both resigned, amid internal concerns about legal compliance. A verbal conflict from inside the group9s Atlanta offices became public, as did DeSantis9s own misgivings about the outside group9s leadership. The governor and his campaign staff have been frustrated by reporting on the drama around Never Back Down and critical of the group9s ad strategy, with DeSantis9s second campaign manager, James Uthmeier, publicly instructing donors to give elsewhere for TV ads. rather than a new playbook for presidential campaigns, the broader DeSantis project has exposed the dangers of depending on emerging loopholes in campaign finance law that allow candidates to turn over traditional election efforts to groups that can take donations of any size from corporations or individuals. <The super PAC model of winning a presidential primary, I think, is staggering, if not on the ropes,= said one DeSantis donor. <And if you9re going to have a successful presidential primary campaign you need to be able to raise hard dollars.= DeSantis 4 who has sometimes been criticized as awkward in his public appearances and has struggled to win over new voters all year 4 is still polling in second place in Iowa, and Never Back Down is running a formidable ground operation in the early states that could provide for a surprisingly strong finish. But he now finds himself in an uphill struggle against the recent momentum of former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and the continued dominance of former president Donald Trump. This account of the struggles of DeSantis and the super PAC supporting him is based on interviews with 22 people involved in the effort, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and wanted to describe private events. Some described a troubled structure that allowed people close to the governor to shift the major strategic decisions of the super PAC, often over the objections of the group9s staff. At the same time, others close to DeSantis in Tallahassee blamed the failure of the broader effort on the team of strategists and vendors who had been hired to run Never Back Down. Ultimately, they said, those closest to DeSantis drove the effort to revamp the independent group. <The professionals are out and DeSantis wants to go into the home stretch with his closest deSaNtIS from a1 Never Back Down super PAC leadership is backing down sergio flores for the Washington Post Florida Gov. Ron deSantis arrives at an Iowa county fair in July. He is in second place there, and Never Back down is running a ground operation in the early states that could provide a strong finish. *Excludes repairs. Not valid on previous orders or in combination with other oû ers, orders or discounts. Some exclusions apply. Residential installed sales only. Expires 12/31/23. longfence.com 1-800-601-9096 Schedule a FREE at-home estimate today and receive 25% oû .* Founded in 1945, Long® Fence is the leader in the residential fence industry. We9ve helped thousands of residential homeowners improve the security, use and beauty of their property. Financing Available for qualiû ed buyers. 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sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE A7 PAID CONTENT In 1955, Fairfax County, VA, was in need of a hospital. Taking matters into their own hands, a group of Fairfax residents planned their ûrst community hospital around a kitchen table. Today, almost 70 years later, what began as a modest regional hospital has ûourished into a collaborative ecosystem of healthcare centers, hospitals and outpatient services known as Inova. Together, the Inova system serves the diverse health needs of the Northern Virginia community and beyond, and is consistently ranked and recognized as a national healthcare leader in safety, quality and patient experience. For the past ûve years, the healthcare system has focused on expanding, streamlining and integrating its patient services. Most recently, Inova unveiled a sophisticated new visual identity to match its stellar reputation. Inova9s care and cultural transformation journey Since joining Inova ûve years ago, J. Stephen Jones, MD, FACS, the president and CEO of Inova as well as a board-certiûed practicing urological surgeon and Professor of Urology at the University of Virginia, has furthered several initiatives to prioritize patient experience and expand services. <We9re focused on consistently living the health system9s mission to engage team members in meaningful work.= 3 J. Stephen Jones, CEO of Inova <Inova has been on a ûve-year care and cultural transformation journey,= Dr. Jones said. <We9re focused on consistently living the health system9s mission to engage team members in meaningful work, promoting access to quality care and prioritizing the patient experience.= Dr. Jones said he9s particularly proud of the expansion of services and facilities at Inova in just the past two years including the integration of telemedicine and virtual health. |ese technologies allow patients to schedule appointments more conveniently and consult with their provider remotely, increasing access to care and eliminating the need for transportation. Expansion for the community, supported by the community Since the pandemic, the United States has seen a sharp increase in the need for behavioral health services including treatments for anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions. In May 2023, Inova Mount Vernon Hospital expanded its behavioral health unit, adding 20 additional beds and private rooms. |e addition makes Inova the largest private provider of inpatient behavioral health services in Northern Virginia. In addition, Inova9s emergency Departments treat nearly 1,200 behavioral health patients each month. <|e critical need for behavioral health services in our community and beyond has never been more apparent than it is today, and the opening of the Veatch Behavioral Health Unit at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital is a vital step toward meeting that need,= said Steve Motew, MD, MHA, FACS, Chief, Clinical Enterprise, Inova. Inova has also implemented depression screening at all patient visits, no matter the CONTENT FROM INOVA Inova celebrates five years of transformation with a new brand. How a patient-centered approach led to expansion of world-class services CONTENT IS DEVELOPED AND PAID FOR BY INOVA. THE WASHINGTON POST NEWSROOM IS NOT INVOLVED IN THE CREATION OF THIS CONTENT. Read more at wapo.st/inova-celebrates-ad reason for the appointment, addressing one of the most prevalent conditions in the Northern Virginia community. Since this has been integrated, more than 4,000 patients mentioned self-harm during these screenings, allowing for interventions in cases that might have otherwise been missed. |e same month, Inova also launched Inova Select Specialty Hospital, the region9s first critical illness recovery hospital designed for patients who no longer require intensive care, but do need an extended hospital stay with specialized clinical support. <Inova Select Specialty Hospital allows us to ûll a market need and provide a much-needed service for Northern Virginia patients and families,= said Dr. Motew. <|is specialized postacute service was not previously ofered in this region, requiring patients to be transferred to facilities in Charlottesville, Richmond or out of state. I9m thrilled that Inova is continuing to ûnd innovative ways to deliver seamless care for patients.= Inova9s recent growth is due in part to generous donors such as Northern Virginia community members Dwight and Martha Schar, whose philanthropic giv allowed for the expansion of Inova Schar Heart and Vascular. |e Schars have challenged the community to join them in matching their generosity, as they believe every giv to Inova is a giv to the community. <Community donors support our mission and vision for providing world-class healthcare,= said Dr. Jones. <Their contributions are revolutionizing healthcare in our community, and we are grateful for their conûdence in Inova.= Making the grade with Inova9s patient-focused approach In the midst of these developments, Inova has achieved new heights as a health system. In August 2023, U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Rankings recognized Inova Fairfax Hospital as the number one hospital in Virginia and the Washington, DC, metropolitan area for the third consecutive year. All ûve Inova hospitals also received A grades in hospital safety from |e Leapfrog Group, an independent organization that evaluates nearly 3,000 hospitals across the country on how well they keep patients safe from harm. <They are clearly among the leaders in the country on delivering safe care to their patients and putting the patients ûrst.= 3 Leah Binder, CEO of Leapfrog Group Leah Binder, CEO of Leapfrog Group, said ofering these grades publicly can help patients make informed decisions about what hospitals they choose. <|e third leading cause of death is preventable errors or accidents in hospitals,= said Binder. <Leapfrog hires teams of researchers and experts on patient safety who look at the available data from hospitals around 30 measures of safety, ranging from infection rates to surgical problems and complications.= Patients can find these safety grades at HospitalSafetyGrade.org, where they9ll find that Inova performs far better than the national average when it comes to avoiding harmful events such as postsurgical infections and medication errors. <What I see with Inova is a system where there are no compromises around patients,= said Binder. <|ey are clearly among the leaders in the country on delivering safe care to their patients and putting the patients ûrst.= A new brand and a nod to the future To build on the success of the past ûve years, Dr. Jones worked with Tracey Schroeder, the Chief Communications and External Afairs Oïcer for Inova, to develop a new look that better represents the brand and elevates consumer understanding of the excellence of care that patients can expect. <As we reached this pivotal point in our journey, we recognized that now is the time to launch the new brand as a visible signal of our transformation,= said Jones. Schroeder said the new logo, which depicts two ûgures coming together, represents the fact that <every step of the healthcare journey is taken together, whether it9s a provider comforting a patient, a doctor collaborating with a nurse or family member supporting a loved one.= <We preserved the recognizable blue in the new brand to build on strong brand equity,= said Schroeder. <But we also updated the full color palette to include vibrant new colors that signal Inova9s new direction as a modern health system that continues to bring innovation and expert care to every patient in every community we serve.= |e rebrand comes as Inova continues to expand and build new care sites to meet the growing healthcare needs of the area, including its eastern region development plan for Alexandria, Mount Vernon and Franconia-Springûeld. <|e brand refresh is a signal to the community of what they can expect from Inova now and into the future: the rare combination of clinical excellence and compassionate care,= said Schroeder. <Quality care, exceptional health outcomes and a caring patient experience are what our patients value and depend on.= Learn more about Inova: Inova.org ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT

A8 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 BY JUSTINE MCDANIEL AND ADELA SULIMAN Homelessness in the United States soared by a record 12 percent between January 2022 and January 2023 as emergency coronavirus pandemic assistance decreased, an estimate published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows. The annual assessment provides a snapshot of the number of people living in shelters, in temporary housing and on the streets. It found that more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022 and the highest number of people recorded as experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007. The rise returns the United States to a <pre-pandemic trend= of growth between 2016 and 2020, HUD said in a statement about the data. After rising each of those years, reaching about 580,000 people in 2020, homelessness dropped in 2021 and 2022, when the government put emergency pandemic measures in place. The agency said many of those covid-era <resources have now expired or wound down, which has contributed to the increase in homelessness.= Advocates said the data confirmed a disheartening increase and demonstrated the consequences of a lack of fresh funding from Congress, particularly as housing costs rise and incomes can9t keep up. The data also showed that the increase was <largely due to a sharp rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time,= probably due to higher rental prices, fewer pandemic protections and a housing shortage, the report found. Of these recorded in the January survey, about 6 in 10 were in an emergency shelter, transitional housing or a safe-haven program, the report found. The remaining 4 in 10 were experiencing homelessness in <places not meant for human habitation.= <Homelessness is solvable and should not exist in the United States,= Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia L. Fudge said in a statement. <This data underscores the urgent need for support for proven solutions and strategies that help people quickly exit homelessness and that prevent homelessness in the first place.= The numbers recorded in the annual one-night count are a stark undercount of all people experiencing homelessness, so they cannot be used as a census, said Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. <You want to think of this as useful and a report that drives action,= he told The Washington Post. <It is a way to plan, it9s a way to look at trends.= The covid-era funds, distributed through the American Rescue Plan Act, allowed for <significant innovations,= including sheltering people in hotels and converting temporary spaces into permanent housing, said Whitehead, who was one of the HUD report9s reviewers. It also showed that a significant increase in public investment can help prevent homelessness 4 something that has made it all the more frustrating for advocates to see the funding end without a replacement by Congress. Homeless-service providers were disappointed by a lack of funding for housing issues in the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping economic package passed in August 2022. Don Gardner, 66, of D.C., was among those who benefited from the federal government9s pandemic-era aid after losing his income and housing in 2020. He now has an apartment and employment, but he wishes the same opportunities were available to the homeless people he now works with. <This country could end homelessness overnight,= Gardner said, <but it9s all systemic, and it9s political and it9s a money thing.= The overall population of homeless people is similar to the United States9 population, Whitehead said 4 including children, families and seniors 4 but people of color, particularly Black, Indigenous and Hispanic people, experience it at a disproportionately high rate. Homelessness among families with children rose by 16 percent, the HUD report said, while the number of homeless veterans rose by 7 percent compared with 20229s numbers. There was a 40 percent increase in Asian and Asian Americans experiencing homelessness, the largest of any demographic. The Latino and Hispanic population saw the largest number increase, with more than 39,000 more people homeless in January 2023 than the prior year, according to the report. More seniors are becoming homeless for the first time, Whitehead said, and other people are unable to withstand rising housing costs. About two-thirds of people identified in the snapshot did not report having experienced chronic homelessness. Median rents in the United States increased by 25 percent between January 2021 and June 2022, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported in its 2023 report on housing costs. On average, a full-time worker must make nearly $24 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment, a wage many Americans are not reaching. In many states, the average wage needed is much higher 4 in 10 states and the District of Columbia, the figures are all higher than $30 an hour. Gardner, the D.C. resident, said he lost his work as a cobbler during the pandemic shutdown, then lost his housing when the relative he was living with died in 2020. In 2021, he was awarded an emergency housing voucher and found an apartment. Two years later, he is living in Washington9s Navy Yard neighborhood. He works for the National Coalition for the Homeless and contracts through HUD as someone with lived experience 4 and he9s back to work as a footwear specialist. Still, he sees the lingering effects of the pandemic every week. <The pandemic has caused a different type of homelessness,= he said. <I really feel bad for that group, and I feel bad for anybody who doesn9t have a place to call home.= Homelessness has soared as covid assistance ends, HUD says The Shops at Fairfax Square 8075 Leesburg Pike " Vienna, Virginia 703-749-1200

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE A9 SCAN CODE COM-US--2300088 11/23 © 2023 Novavax, Inc. Novavax is committed to helping ensure vaccine access in the U.S. LEARN MORE AT WWW.NOVAVAX.COM ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT

A10 ez re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 BY ISAAC ARNSDORF DURHAM, N.H. 4 Republican poll leader donald trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir putin of Russia and Viktor orban of Hungary, part of an ongoing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarms about eroding democracy against president Biden. His speech at a presidential campaign rally here on Saturday also reprised dehumanizing language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to adolf Hitler9s fixation on blood purity. and he used the term <hostages= to describe people charged with violent crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the u.S. capitol. the comments came as experts, historians and political opponents have voiced growing alarm about trump9s rhetoric, ideas and emerging plans for a second term, pointing to parallels to past and present authoritarian leaders. trump quoted putin, the dictatorial Russia president who invaded neighboring ukraine, criticizing the criminal charges against trump, who is accused in four separate cases of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme, mishandling classified documents, and trying to overturn the 2020 election results. in the quotation, putin agreed with trump9s own attempts to portray the prosecutions as politically motivated. <it shows the rottenness of the american political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,= trump quoted putin saying in the speech. trump added: <they9re all laughing at us.= He went on to align himself with orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country9s constitution. orban has presented his leadership as a model of an <illiberal= state and has opposed immigration for leading to <mixed race= europeans. democratic world leaders have sought to isolate orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with putin. But trump called him <highly respected= and welcomed his praise as <the man who can save the Western world.= in the speech, trump also repeated his own inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of <poisoning the blood of our country= 4 a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent as Hitler in his book <Mein Kampf,= in which he told germans to <care for the purity of their own blood= by eliminating Jews. the crowd of thousands in a college arena cheered trump9s recitation of an anti-immigrant poem called <the Snake= that he has repeated on the campaign trail and popularized since the 2016 campaign. and approaching the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, trump came to the defense of alleged violent offenders who have been detained awaiting trial on the order of judges. <i don9t call them prisoners, i call them hostages,= he said. <they9re hostages.= the speech drew renewed criticism from democrats. <donald trump is campaigning on an extreme Maga agenda that would rip away hard-won freedoms from americans 4 it9s as simple as that,= democratic national committee press secretary Sarafina chitika said in a statement. <if he takes power, trump will waste no time implementing his dangerous vision for america.= trump9s speech began with an economic focus, with a new tagline of <Better off with trump= and a recitation of statistics comparing affordability under his presidency to now. But trump became more animated as he returned to his material on immigration and the charges again him. trump spokesman Steven cheung said that trump <gave a great speech and knocked it out of the park= in front of a large crowd. in a move that experts said could have the effect of confusing voters about the true dangers to democracy, trump has begun deflecting from reports that he would seek revenge on his critics in a second term, accusing Biden of acting like a dictator because of the prosecutions against trump. two of the cases were brought by local prosecutors, and the two federal cases are being handled by a special counsel acting independently of the White House in accordance with Justice department rules. Without evidence, trump is portrayed all four cases as a coordinated persecution against him because of his lead in primary and general-election polls. as he pushed that theme on Saturday, the slogan <Biden attacKS deMocRacY= flashed across the screen above him. the speech ended with an instrumental track that trump has continued using at rallies despite becoming associated with the Qanon online extremist movement. Trump quotes Putin condemning U.S. democracy, praises Hungary9s Orban BY NATE JONES if government officials refuse to release public records, they can be sued in court to force disclosure 4 and even ordered to pay the legal fees of the requester. that recently happened after a Washington post reporter requested the disciplinary records of a prominent d.c. police officer. district officials denied the requests. But the post sued in d.c. Superior court, and a judge determined that city officials had violated the d.c. Freedom of information act. He ordered the city to disclose the records and pay the post9s reasonable attorneys9 fees and costs, as required by the d.c. Foia statute. that reimbursement eventually totaled $70,347.48, as disclosed in a public court filing. enterprise reporter Jessica contrera had requested the records of officer Brett parson, who was nationally known for his leadership of the d.c. police gay and Lesbian Liaison unit, now known as the Lesbian, gay, Bisexual and transgender Liaison unit. contrera made the request after parson was charged in February 2022 in Broward county, Fla., with two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. parson pleaded not guilty, and in March, Florida prosecutors dropped the charges due to <lack of the victim9s cooperation.= parson had been widely praised by the LgBtQ+ community for his work with the unit, and in 2019 he was lauded as a <living legend= by the capital pride alliance, which advocates for the LgBtQ+ community and coordinates the annual capital pride festival. contrera wanted to know more about parson9s record, including whether this was the first time he had been accused of misconduct. So i helped her file three public records requests in June 2022 for any police disciplinary records for parson, who had retired from the d.c. police force in 2020 and was a member of the d.c. police reserve force when he was arrested. after his arrest, he was terminated from the reserve force. d.c. police denied the initial requests. We appealed, but the Mayor9s office of Legal counsel upheld the denials because, the office said, the post had <not articulated a cognizable public interest= in any disciplinary records for parson. contrera published her investigation without the records, but the post continued fighting for their release. parson did not respond to phone messages or texts requesting a comment on the charges or his disciplinary record. His attorney in Broward county, Fla., Michael dutko, also did not respond to phone messages or emails. in March 2023, after the charges were dropped, dutko told the post: <From the outset, it was our position that things weren9t as they appeared. & Brett parson was not some predator in search of a child or young person. He did nothing but go onto an adult site looking for companionship.= nationwide, local and state police records are some of the most difficult for members of the public to obtain. although each state has its own public records law 4 D.C. police tried to withhold records. The Post sued, but the public paid. most of which were modeled after the federal Freedom of information act 4 state legislatures have carved out strong exemptions that block public access to many law enforcement records. departments often refuse to release records based on exemptions for <investigatory records= or <personnel files.= even when states have changed laws to make specific types of police records available, as in california, new York, Maryland and Virginia, officials have resisted. Last year, d.c.9s elected leaders took their own steps to ensure public access to police disciplinary records. the d.c. council passed the comprehensive policing and Justice Reform amendment act last december, and it became law in May after president Biden vetoed congressional efforts to block it. the law includes a provision that <disciplinary records shall not be categorically denied or redacted on the basis that it constitutes an unwarranted invasion of a personal privacy for officers within the continued on next page Carol guzy/the Washington Post Brett Parson of the D.C. police9s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit teaches at the police academy in 2005. Documents show Parson was investigated for 12 allegations of misconduct from 2003 to 2017. 12 NO INTEREST NO PAYMENTS *On Approved Credit* MONTH Call for Your FREE Design Consultation (703) 258-1750 *Limit one ofer per household. Must purchase 5+ Classic/Designer Glide-Out Shelves. EXP 12/31/23. 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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2023 . THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A11 garding the tone and tenor of your interaction with superior officials,” Lanier wrote to Parson explaining her decision. D.C. police referred The Post to the D.C. Office of Attorney General. The office declined to comment. Ryan Bos, the executive director of Capital Pride Alliance, told The Post, “In light of the information that the report contains, it would have been better to have known about Brett Parson’s full disciplinary record before we made the decision to include him in that section of the 2019 Pride Guide, which included existing leaders of the LGBTQ+ community.” Thanks to the D.C. Freedom of Information Act — and Judge Ross’s willingness to enforce it — the public now has fuller knowledge of Parson’s history as an officer, as well as how the department handled his misconduct. In his ruling, Ross ordered the city to pay The Post’s attorneys’ fees and court costs for the litigation. He based this on a provision in D.C. FOIA law called “fee shifting” that can place the financial burden of litigating open records disputes on the party that loses the case. Similar provisions exist in many states and under federal law. Attorneys for The Post and the city negotiated a $70,347.48 settlement. This sum is hardly a number to scoff at, but it also does not cover all the costs that The Post incurred paying their lawyers (and reporters and editors) to fight for and win these records. It’s great to be mailed checks along with records, but the primary reason that The Post seeks fees in this and other cases is to make government officials understand that there are consequences for improperly withholding important records from the public. In the end, the city’s refusal to comply with the law not only delayed the public’s access to these records — it also passed along the costs to taxpayers. Jessica Contrera and Monika Mathur contributed to this report. Revealing Records is a periodic column by Nate Jones about his work obtaining public records for The Washington Post. Do you have a question, comment or FOIA idea? Email me at [email protected]. ordered the documents released within 15 days, by Sept. 29. In more than 600 pages, the records revealed that Parson had been investigated for 12 allegations of misconduct from 2003 to 2017. The allegations included the use of excessive force, inappropriate language — including while in court — missed administrative deadlines, the loss of police ammunition and three “preventable” car accidents. All but one of the allegations were sustained. (The Post is making the full disciplinary file available to read online. Personal identification information was redacted before it was shared with The Post. Some of the documents have profane language, including a racial slur.) In one case from 2014, Parson told a teenage girl who was under arrest that if she resisted, she would “go down those stairs head first.” Parson admitted he “should have used more articulate language” but said he had used “verbal judo” in an attempt to avoid physical force. The allegations that Parson had used “harsh” and “inappropriate” language were sustained. He received a deferred, one-day suspension. In another case from 2008, records show that Parson was investigated after he detained a man he believed was involved in a drug transaction outside a D.C. nightclub and the man’s “body was thrown through a plate-glass window” as Parson attempted to handcuff him. Parson said he “did not realize the glass was so close” and denied throwing the man. The department found that Parson’s actions were justified, but the city later settled a lawsuit with the man for $17,500. Parson’s most severe discipline was a 10-day suspension handed down for being “negligent in his duties” and “insubordinate” in 2009 after he failed to conduct a proper investigation into another officer’s actions. Parson said that a superior officer disciplined him because the investigation did not reach his superior’s desired conclusion. Initially, he was suspended 20 days, but Cathy L. Lanier, the chief at the time, reduced it by half. “While it is true you have high achievements on the department … you also have a documented history of inefficient supervision and profane/inappropriate conduct toward a prosecutor. … You were repeatedly counseled reMetropolitan Police Department.” Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, opposed the provision. He wrote a letter to Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warning that the provision requiring the release of disciplinary records would “include personally identifiable information — placing these officers in jeopardy.” Yoes did not respond to a request for comment. D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who drafted the provision, told me in an interview that revealing police “misconduct fundamentally gets at the core of policing powers,” and public access to officers’ disciplinary records will contribute to “rebuilding and sustaining and protecting trust between community and police.” Despite the new law, Steven Rubenstein, an attorney for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, argued in court in August that Parson’s disciplinary records should remain secret. While acknowledging that the law would someday require disciplinary records to be made public, he argued that a requirement that the provision be funded allowed police to ignore it until then. The District’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer estimated that the entire Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act will cost $1.23 million in fiscal year 2023. Rubenstein also contended that the D.C. FOIA law required the records to be withheld because Parson’s right to privacy outweighed the public interest in his disciplinary files. Judge Maurice Ross did not buy these arguments. “You have a pre-George Floyd view of FOIA,” he told Rubenstein at an August hearing, referring to the lawyer’s justification for why the records should not be released. The judge added that it was “somewhat tone-deaf” to make an argument that had “been repudiated by recent legislative action and a whole mood change within the city and the country.” Ross later acknowledged in his Sept. 14 ruling that the police reform act would not take effect until it was funded. But he said it was a “good law” that lent weight to his conclusion that the public interest in Parson’s disciplinary records outweighed the private interest. He FROM PREVIOUS PAGE 20 23 YEAR END SAVINGS EVENT Expires December 31st, 2023. Call to claim our BEST OFFERS OF THE YEAR! OR SPECIAL SAVINGS SPECIAL SAVINGS BUY ONE, GET ONE $1000 OFF Valid on Solutions 3, 4 & 5, must purchase two. Limit one coupon offer per patient at the promotional price during event dates only. Not valid with any other discount or offer. Does not apply to prior purchases. Expires 12/31/2023. 50% GENIUS TECHNOLOGY OFF GENIUS TECHNOLOGY One coupon per purchase. Discount does not apply to prior sales. Offer valid on ME Level 2 Solutions when first aid is purchased at regular list price, excluding rechargeable products. Cannot combine with other offers. Expires 12/31/2023. SPECIAL SAVINGS $ PRESCRIPTION HEARING AID 495 One coupon per purchase. Available on MEMINI Solution 1 only, one aid only. 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A12 eZ Re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 memory inc. ing federal oversight politically challenging, according to experts and academics. Without the threat of withholding payments, <there9s no hook= for it, said mark miller, a lawyer at Legal Counsel for the Elderly, an affiliate of AArP. <families fall into a trap,= said Eilon Caspi, an assistant research professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in long-term care. <They are paying a lot of money for peace of mind. When they get the phone call that their loved one is horribly injured or has died, they are shocked.= 8didn9t tell me the truth9 regulation of assisted-living facilities has been left to the states, which have struggled to enforce improvements, even at facilities with multiple walkaways. In florida, state reports show five residents have walked away from Woodmont Senior Living in Tallahassee since october 2020. one man crawled out a window and was found walking along a highway, injured. Another was missing for more than 24 hours before being found <just down the road from the facility= washing himself in a park. Yet another was found by police at a bus station. When authorities called Woodmont hours later, staff didn9t know he was gone. on Christmas morning 2020, 100-year-old Annie Lois Hanna was discovered dead on the ground outside Woodmont. A fire crew responding to a different emergency found her next to her walker and a blue pillow decorated with stars. Staff thought she was in her room. The cause of death was hypothermia, an autopsy found. Kelvin Jefferson knew nothing about these incidents when he moved his 68-year-old mother, Bennie mcGlockton, into Woodmont9s memory-care unit in April 2022. Jefferson said he hadn9t the faintest idea how to research the facility or that the state posted inspection reports online. He wasn9t aware that state health authorities had threatened to strip Woodmont9s license after Hanna9s death. Woodmont appealed the case, pausing state action as it worked its way through administrative courts. The company said it had retrained its staff to avoid a repeat. In January 2023, two years after Hanna9s death, staff called Jefferson to tell him that his mother had fallen and was in the emergency room. As he waited for a doctor, Jefferson said he pulled dirt and grass from his mother9s mouth. Her dementia had progressed too far for her to tell him what had happened, he said. Weeks later, Jefferson learned from a state report that the facility9s door alarms were not working and that staff had not noticed his mother walking outside the night before. She was discovered the next morning near an air-conditioning unit by another resident peering out a window, according to the report. Woodmont <didn9t tell me the truth,= Jefferson said. When the hospital released his mother, he did not take her back to Woodmont. Woodmont also didn9t report mcGlockton9s elopement immediately to the state, as required by law, according to the state report, <because the incident was not considered something the facility could have prevented.= Two weeks after the incident, Woodmont struck a deal with state regulators, agreeing to pay $61,500 in fines. The facility was allowed to operate under a provisional license briefly until the property owner, Pacifica Senior Living, switched operators, according to state records. Pacifica, one of the largest assisted-living chains in the country, declined to comment. 8a whole system9 failed State oversight of assisted living is often weak in several critical areas. only 13 states require a minimum number of on-duty caretakers per resident. only nine require caretakers to obtain at least six hours of training in dealing with dementia patients, the minimum recommended by the Alzheimer9s Association for workers at assisted-living facilities. And 21 states provide incomplete or no information online about violations. In South Carolina, for instance, anyone considering the Palmettos of Bluffton near Hilton Head wouldn9t know that Tribble, a retired merck patent lawyer, had walked off undetected, apdistribute crucial information to the public, including facility staffing and quality measures. <We wanted to get away from the chandelier effect, which basically is that customers are driven by what a place looks like. And if a place has better chandeliers and better furnishings, therefore it must be better,= said Deb Potter, a statistician at HHS, now retired, who led the group. <There9s a whole body of research says it9s not true.= The effort proved fruitless because of a lack of consensus. <Assisted living is the rock we don9t want to look under,= said Catherine Hawes, a professor emeritus at Texas A&m University who has studied assisted-living quality for the federal government. Bethea, of NCAL, said federal regulations would result in <rigid, national standards= that treat <every instance of dementia, and every person who lives with it, the same.= <Because each individual and each assisted-living community is unique,= she added, <we believe regulation at the state level can better support person-centered care.= federal lawmakers did pass one bill related to the industry, in 2008: It allows the tax-sheltered real estate companies that own some of the buildings to also profit from and make decisions related to operations. Nursing homes are regulated as medical facilities, paid for mostly by medicare and medicaid. The assisted-living industry argues that it does not need to be as heavily regulated because it primarily offers housing and meals, along with a menu of personal services such as help showering and toileting and frequent monitoring. residents and their relatives almost always foot the bill, makstates and the District of Columbia. The bulk of the official records came from 29 states that make current reports public online. Two additional states said they had no incidents; 10 did not provide records nor do they make them available online; some provided only partial records. As a result, The Post9s accounting is incomplete for about 40 percent of the assisted-living population. In some states, such as florida, records don9t always indicate whether a person died. NCAL and its parent organization, the American Health Care Association, purchase data on safety and violations from consulting group NIC mAP Vision, which gathers information from the states. None make the data public nor would they provide it to The Post. There is no national repository for government reports on assisted-living facilities, though the federal government has been aware of problems for decades. In 1999, a report by the Government Accountability office documented safety problems 4 including a resident who climbed out a window of a supposedly secure Alzheimer9s unit in oregon and died from exposure. The agency reviewed two years of inspection records in four states, finding that more than a quarter of facilities had been cited for at least five quality-of-care violations, most frequently inadequate care, medication errors, low staffing and poor training. In florida, the GAo found, deficiencies had been documented in 40 percent of facilities. But the federal government has never implemented any standards or reporting requirements. Instead, Congress has created <work groups= with industry representatives to study the issues. one deliberated for six years about how to standardize and <To be clear, we have no tolerance for bad care,= said Katie Smith Sloan, president and chief executive officer of LeadingAge, a Washington lobbying association for nonprofit senior-care operators. <Any incidents where a resident was injured or worse are truly tragic, and we encourage assisted-living communities to have policies and procedures in place to help prevent and address these rare occasions,= agreed LaShuan Bethea, executive director of the National Center for Assisted Living. <If staff do not adhere to those policies and procedures, they should be held accountable.= She said companies must also consider the desires of residents and families 4 as well as firesafety regulations 4 regarding door locks and other security measures. In a further written statement, NCAL spokeswoman rachel reeves said elopements are <rare= and for many the consequences are minor. But for families paying to ensure a loved one9s safety, even brief moments of inattention can have devastating consequences. <The one thing that my sister and I wanted was for our mom to be kept safe and for the facility to do what they promised and were paid to do,= said Susan Hoffer, whose mother, Lois Kathryn Cary, 82, died after wandering into a michigan snowstorm two days before Christmas 2022. <They failed,= Hoffer said, <and it cost our mom her life.= no federal oversight To determine the frequency and consequences of elderly residents walking away from assisted-living facilities in America, The Post searched local media reports and filed public records requests with regulators in all 50 nature in the past five years. In a fifth case, they charged a line supervisor for ignoring alerts. facilities and senior managers largely have not faced serious consequences, The Post found. regulatory fines seldom exceed $10,000, the equivalent of about two months rent. When Arizona regulators determined that neglected resident checks led to the death of Ina rose Jenkins, 88, in 104-degree heat in an irrigation ditch, the state said it fined chain-owned Silver Creek Inn the most it could: $500. In three states 4 Connecticut, South Dakota and Wyoming 4 regulators have no power to levy fines at all. The biggest financial risk facilities face usually comes from lawsuits. Those are typically covered by operators9 insurance and settled for an average of about $350,000 for a fatal elopement, according to an insurance company that underwrites them. most facilities declined to comment about incidents involving their residents. Leaders of the industry9s top lobbying groups did not dispute that residents with dementia sometimes exit facilities and die but said it9s a tiny proportion of the millions of assisted-living residents since 2018. <While any fatal elopement is one too many, the issue should be considered within the context of the total number of residents served,= michael Keegan, a spokesman for industry group Argentum, said in an email. The group noted a difference between dementia-care units and other assisted-living units, which are less secure and allow many residents to come and go unsupervised. State regulators have cited both types of facilities for failures when residents suffering from dementia have walked away unnoticed. Patients with Alzheimer9s disease and other cognitive problems walk away from assisted-living facilities just about every day in America, a pattern of neglect by an industry that charges families an average of $6,000 a month for the explicit promise of safeguarding their loved ones, a Washington Post investigation has found. Since 2018, more than 2,000 people have wandered away from assisted-living and dementiacare units or been left unattended outside, according to The Post9s exhaustive search of inspection results, incident reports and media accounts nationwide. Nearly 100 people died 4 though the exact number is unknowable because no one is counting. for many, the difference between life and death was simply the weather. In cases where a cause of death could be determined, The Post found that 61 percent died after exposure to extreme heat or cold. others died after wandering into ditches, drowning in nearby bodies of water or being hit by cars. Joseph matthews, 77, perished from multiple organ failure after being found covered in fire ants and yellow jacket stings 20 hours after walking away from his North Carolina facility, his second disappearance. Jack Tribble, 79, wandered the woods near his South Carolina facility for nearly two weeks before dying in a pool of shallow water, according to a coroner9s report provided to his widow. The federal government does not regulate the nation9s roughly 30,000 assisted-care facilities, as it does nursing homes. Instead, regulation falls to individual states, few of which have adopted strong staffing and training requirements even as the industry estimates residents nationwide have climbed to more than 1 million, approaching the nursing home population of 1.2 million. recent growth in the $34 billion industry has been driven in large part by demand for secure housing for the growing number of people suffering from dementia, a fragile population that now accounts for almost half of all residents in assisted living. These are also the residents at greatest risk of walking away: They can be confused but highly mobile, and some object to living in an institutional setting. many live in pricey <memorycare= units that pledge in marketing materials to maintain <safety systems and a well-trained staff= for <peace of mind=; <engaging programming= that <eliminates the desire to wander=; and staff <specifically trained to deal with this disease.= But state inspectors reviewing walkaway deaths have repeatedly found failures by administrators and front-line caregivers. In case after case examined by The Post, inspectors cited evidence of too few people on duty to care for the number of residents, of staff ignoring alarms, of skipped bed checks and staff sleeping on the job, of general neglect and, in a few cases, falsified records. These <elopements,= the industry term for when a resident leaves unnoticed and unsupervised, were repeated events at even some of the most luxurious facilities and continued to happen even after residents died or suffered catastrophic injuries. relatives of the dead and injured said they were unaware of the problem and had no idea how to investigate the safety records of individual facilities. only 29 states make complete and up-todate inspection and violation reports available online, often on websites that are hard to find and difficult to use. In other states, residents seeking safety records have to file a public records request or contact the state9s long-term care ombudsman. Some families were not told the truth about what happened to their own relatives, according to authorities and interviews. After Hazel Place, 86, was ignored for six hours in a sweltering Colorado courtyard in June 2021, for example, police records show her family was told she had <passed outside watching the sun set, an activity that she loved.= most states require facilities to report missing residents and preventable deaths, according to a Post review of records and state regulations. But regulators have cited facilities more than 200 times since 2018 for failing to properly report missing residents 4 that9s 1 in 10 of the walkaways identified by The Post. Authorities have charged lower-level staff with criminal neglect or falsifying records in at least four fatal incidents of this aSSISTEd LIvInG from a1 Walkaway deaths reûect pattern of neglect in assisted care obTained by The WashingTon PosT Jack Tribble, 79, was found dead two weeks after a video caught him wandering into the woods near his South Carolina facility. He died in a pool of shallow water less than half a mile away, according to a coroner9s report provided to his widow. Family PhoTo obTained by The WashingTon PosT On LEFT: dementia patient Lois Kathryn Cary, 82, died after wandering into a Michigan snowstorm two days before Christmas 2022. On RIGHT: Hazel Place, 86, died after sitting in extreme heat for hours before staff at her memory-care facility noticed.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ Re A13 charged one staffer with a felony count of vulnerable adult abuse, saying the staffer <recklessly failed to act= to prevent Cary from going outside in the storm. She pleaded not guilty. Vista Springs did not respond to requests for comment. <We don9t know what they were doing with the amount of money our mom was paying,= Hoffer told The Post. The fee was $6,200 a month. Falsified records In at least three incidents examined by The Post, family members said facility staff initially did not tell them the truth about what happened to their relatives. In at least two, authorities found that records were falsified. When Hazel Place died in June 2021 at the Cappella of Grand Junction, Colo., a hospice nurse informed her family that Place had <passed outside watching the sun set,= according to a hospice death report quoted in police case notes. Initially, police were not informed of the death. In the days that followed, however, a former staff member called police, and Place9s family told local reporters that they received a phone call urging them to ask for surveillance video 4 and an autopsy. The surveillance video, which was obtained by The Post through a public records request, shows Place entering Cappella9s unshaded internal courtyard shortly after 2 p.m. on June 14, strolling to a love seat and sitting down. Within minutes, she was slumped over in obvious distress. After two hours, Place stopped moving. The sun had pushed temperatures to 100 that afternoon. Cappella expected staff members to check on residents in the courtyard, the facility administrator told state regulators, and Place9s care plan required staff members to check on her every hour. Instead, Place languished in the courtyard for six hours until another resident9s husband spotted her and alerted staff. Staff falsely wrote in internal records that they checked on Place and applied medicinal cream on her legs as she sat alone, according to an investigation by the Colorado attorney general. Christian Living Communities, the nonprofit chain that operates Cappella, declined to make an executive available for an interview. <We continue to hold Ms. Place9s family in our thoughts and prayers and sincerely regret this unfortunate incident,= spokeswoman Pam Sullivan said in an emailed statement. She said the facility <immediately placed on administrative leave= two employees who falsely claimed to have checked on Place and <added additional safety measures to ensure the well-being and safety of the older adults we have the privilege to serve.= Through their attorney, Place9s children declined to comment. <The family9s claims against the facility have been fully resolved and at this time we9re no longer able to discuss this matter,= lawyer Chadwick McGrady said. Two lower-level employees later pleaded guilty to charges related to neglect and received mostly probation. A third was acquitted. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued nine citations against Cappella, and imposed a $2,000 fine 4 the maximum allowed at the time. That equals about a week of Place9s care fees, which were $7,600 per month, her family9s lawyer told local media. Last year, the state legislature increased the maximum fine to $10,000 per violation, with higher fines possible for deaths or serious injuries. A week before she died, Place had been found alone in distress in the same courtyard, according to the attorney general investigation and LaDona Luque, the former Cappella caretaker who said she found her. Luque, who is related to Place by marriage, said Place was confused, sweating and hot to the touch. Luque said she brought her inside, gave her water and warned the two caretakers on duty to keep a closer eye on Place. The next day, Luque said she urged senior management to lock the courtyard door. Sullivan said via email that <there was no evidence or documentation of Ms. Luque9s claim of a previous incident= but did not directly deny that it happened. <They knew the dangers of that door being unlocked. They knew,= Luque said. <That9s probably the most infuriating for me.= <It was just a simple act of locking the door would have saved her life.= Federica Cocco, alice Crites and douglas macmilan also contributed to this report. parently following a construction worker, according to state records. His body was found 14 days later less than a half-mile from the facility, lying in a swamp next to a pond. Tribble9s wife, Margaret, told police she paid for her husband of 51 years to live at the Palmettos because he suffered from auditory hallucinations and dementia. The facility is operated by National HealthCare, which did not respond to requests for comment. In interviews, Margaret Tribble said a coroner9s report indicated her husband had wandered alone for 12 days, dying two days before he was found. <I9m so angry,= she said. <What I have found so very difficult is the way he died & which I think could have been and should have been avoided.= In an email, a South Carolina health department spokesperson said anyone can request facility inspection reports through the agency9s Freedom of Information Office. The agency charged $324 upfront for records for two facilities. The documents took eight weeks to arrive. Prosecutors have pressed criminal charges against staff in some of the more egregious walkaway deaths, including Stewart9s in Iowa, where staff knew she was prone to wandering. Just a few months before her death, she was found in the parking lot and a <wander guard= was attached to her ankle. The device was supposed to set off an alarm if she walked outside again. On the night Stewart died, Catherine Forkpa was tasked with overseeing the 11 residents of the facility9s memory-care unit. Internal policy required her to check hourly on Stewart and others with severe cognitive issues, but Forkpa told state investigators she instead spent most of her shift dealing with an unruly male tenant. It is unclear how long Stewart was outside in the freezing night. An alarm and texts signaling that her room door was open started going off at 4:23 p.m., about five hours before the exit door alarm was triggered. Forkpa was fired and charged with second-degree murder. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced last month to two years probation. Her attorney declined to comment. Polk County prosecutor Kimberly Graham said in a statement that she wanted to pursue charges against others at Courtyard Estates, but state law made it difficult. <Our office continues to look into all possible avenues to hold others accountable, and we will advocate for stronger and more effective laws involving abuse and neglect of dependent adults,= she said. Van Rooy, Stewart9s granddaughter, said it didn9t make sense to blame just one person: <A whole system= failed, she said. Stewart wasn9t the first person to wander away from Courtyard Estates. In 2016, a 92-year-old man was discovered lying in the grass several hours after leaving. He survived. The state fined the facility $3,250. And in December 2021, six weeks before Stewart9s death, a memory-care patient died at another Iowa facility run by the same company, Jaybird Senior Living. Elaine Creasey, 95, who had Alzheimer9s and used a walker, wandered away from Keelson Harbour, according to a state investigation, and died of hypothermia after nine hours in subfreezing temperatures. Six days after Stewart died the same way, Keelson Harbour paid the state a $6,500 fine for Creasey9s case 4 reduced from $10,000, which state officials said is the standard discount for facilities that don9t fight citations. The state later fined Courtyard Estates $6,500 for Stewart9s death 4 $800 more than Stewart9s monthly fee to stay there. In March, Iowa authorities cited another Jaybird facility, this one in Dubuque, after a resident wandered outside and suffered frostbite. The fine was $4,000. Jaybird operates 67 assistedliving facilities around the country. Each generates about $2 million in annual revenue, according to documents and interviews. Jaybird chief operating officer Justin Wray said the company takes elopements <very seriously.= <The challenge is that you have people taking care of people,= Wray said, <and at times individuals didn9t follow the policies or the procedures set forth.= Nationwide, front-line assisted-living staff made $15.39 an hour on average in 2022, according to labor think tank PHI, about the same as an entry-level retail job. Turnover is steep. In dozens of interviews, staffers and former staffers said they were routinely stretched too thin. Fire codes and ethical conmemory inc. incident where a resident was locked out. Lois Cary9s daughters put her in Vista Springs in 2021 because the widow was suffering from dementia and could no longer live alone in her Sturgis, Mich., farmhouse. At the facility, Cary9s condition worsened in ways that Vista Springs should have addressed, a state inspector later found. Five days before Christmas 2022, Cary left her room at midnight, telling a staff member she wanted breakfast, an indication of confusion, the state inspector said. Two days before Christmas, she tried to walk out an exit door at 3 a.m. <to get a bird= in a raging Michigan snowstorm, according to a police account quoted by the state. A staffer redirected Cary to her room, but she emerged again 15 minutes later and was put back in her room a second time. Staff didn9t notice the third time she wandered from her room. Four hours later, a snowplow driver alerted the facility that someone was lying in the snowcovered parking lot. The temperature was 7 degrees. Staff found Cary near death, her fingers barely moving, according to the inspection report. A police report said her coat and clothing were soaked. Hoffer, her daughter, said in an interview that Cary was covered in snow and ice. After staff carried her inside, she was taken to the hospital, where she died. The state investigative report listed multiple violations: Staff failed to conduct a routine bed check between 3:15 and 7 a.m. The facility did not update Cary9s care plan to reflect a change in sleep pattern and worsening confusion. And records for an unidentified staff member who had contact with Cary lacked evidence of training. Despite the failures, six days after Cary9s death the Michigan state investigator recommended that Vista Springs retain its license. Last month, prosecutors ry Affairs. <Most people just assume those places are licensed and have no idea they may not be,= said Alison E. Hirschel, director and managing attorney of the Michigan Elder Justice Initiative. After Brunsden9s death, Michigan Adult Protective Services asked the state licensing division to consider revoking Franklin Terrace9s exemption, but the agency declined. <Although there was a death that could have been prevented, there is no continuing risk to the health and safety of current residents,= a state inspector wrote, noting that the facility had switched care providers. Brunsden9s family settled its lawsuit against Franklin Terrace for undisclosed terms, and both declined to comment. No Michigan lawmaker has proposed to eliminate the loophole. Its sponsor, former Republican state senator Marty Knollenberg of suburban Detroit, did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, lawmakers are debating whether to establish a system of fines of up to $5,000 for Michigan assisted-living facilities of 20 beds or fewer. The measure would for the first time require caretakers at these facilities to receive dementia training. The bill9s sponsor, Detroit Democrat Stephanie Young, said she was ambushed this summer by a team of lobbyists and industry representatives on the porch of a luxury resort on Mackinac Island, where lawmakers were attending a policy retreat. <They said, 8We really don9t like this legislation.9 And I said, 8I just bet you don9t because it9s about accountability and transparency,9= Young said in an interview. Even licensed facilities in Michigan have been allowed to continue operating after repeated problems. Vista Springs Timber Ridge Village in East Lansing is still in business despite being cited 40 times in the past two years, including multiple findings of inadequate staff and an tections for residents. And it is currently fighting a package of proposed regulations in Michigan that would increase oversight for smaller facilities, which make up the bulk of senior assisted living in the state. Long-term care ombudsman Camille Russell said she was surprised when the Kansas bill <died overnight,= calling it <indicative of what happens when you have a well-connected industry to our leadership.= The industry said every state9s political debates are unique. <There are many factors as to why pieces of legislation sometimes don9t make it through state legislative bodies,= Reeves, the NCAL spokeswoman, said in an email. Michigan offers a case study in how the industry has avoided oversight. In 2017, the state adopted a measure that exempted some facilities from the state9s assisted-living licensing requirements if they paid an unrelated company to provide resident care. Industry representatives argued that such facilities shouldn9t be regulated if they provided only meals and housing. One problem: The agencies providing resident care also are not required to have a license in Michigan. In September 2019, Army veteran Robert Brunsden Sr., 88, left the secured dementia unit of Franklin Terrace, an exempted facility outside Detroit. Staff didn9t notice for two hours. Twenty-nine days later, a search dog named Serenade prowling a brushy stretch of the Rouge River behind a nearby AutoZone caught the smell of decay. Two firefighters in a boat pulled a body from beneath a pile of debris. They identified Brunsden because his son had written his name inside his coat in case he got lost. Because Franklin Terrace is not licensed, potential clients would not learn about Brunsden9s disappearance and death on the website of the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatocerns make it difficult to keep doors locked, so staff must be scrupulous about heeding door alarms and doing head counts. Facility policies typically require staff to fully investigate when a door triggers an alarm 4 including looking outside, according to a sampling of inspection reports. In many deaths examined by The Post, that didn9t happen. In Uniontown, Pa., where a 65-year-old woman died after wandering away and being hit by a car, employees told regulators they often ignored door alarms, assuming they were caused by employees entering the building. In an Arizona facility, inspectors reported that staff had covered the door alarm speaker and controls with masking tape. In Troy, Ill., regulators said staff responded within three minutes to a 2 a.m. alarm, but the view from the window showed no footprints in the snow. The next morning, Kathleen <Kitty= Kinkel, 77, was found dead from the cold in a nearby field. Surveillance video shows chairs blocking the facility9s exit door. Similar workarounds were noted in inspection reports in other states. In one California facility, staff tried to secure a broken door with trash bags and a tin can. A report by insurer CNA in 2016 attributed elopement fatalities and injuries to a lack of vigilance, inadequate training and inaccurate risk assessments. No license required The elder-care industry has spent at least $51 million lobbying state officials since 2017, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks such spending in the 19 states that report it electronically. That does not include campaign contributions to elected state officials. This year alone, the industry stifled proposed legislation to increase oversight of assisted-living facilities in Kansas and Delaware. It opposes a Massachusetts bill seeking new consumer proobTained by The WashingTon PosT Hazel Place, 86, was ignored for six hours in this sweltering Colorado courtyard in June 2021. After her death, police records show that her family was told she had <passed outside watching the sun set, an activity that she loved.= Family PhoTo Family PhoTo ON LEFT: Alzheimer9s patient Lynne Stewart, 77, died of prolonged exposure after wandering away from her assisted-care facility near Des Moines. ON RIGHT: Kelvin Jefferson at his 2002 college graduation with his mother, Bennie McGlockton.

A14 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 public offerings. Wall Street investors were attracted by the growing sector, which promised to explode as baby boomers retired. <We had people who didn9t understand the business getting into it,= said Pat Sprigg, who spent three decades as chief executive of a nonprofit facility in North Carolina. <They understood there were boomers on the horizon and their approach was: 8Let9s just warehouse them. Let9s do the brass-and-glass game and attract people into these beautiful places, and then neglect to train staff and neglect to pay them a fair wage.9= The financiers included private-equity firms 4 investors who manage giant pools of money on behalf of even larger investors such as pension funds and endowments. These firms typically try to boost the value of assets and sell them after five to 10 years, providing returns to themselves and their outside investors. Some senior homes were also bought by real estate investment trusts, or REITs, an investment class created by Congress in the 1960s to give stock market investors the ability to buy and sell shares in real estate. REITs pay no corporate income tax and distribute dividends to shareholders. Nearly half of Americans 4 around 45 percent of U.S. households 4 are invested in some type of commercial real estate REIT through retirement funds or pensions, according to industry group Nareit. Congress gave these businesses a boost in 2008 with a new law allowing senior-housing REITs to share in the profits from operations, rather than act as passive landlords. This corporate structure, also common in hotels, incentivizes REIT investors to replace management teams that fail to generate expected profits. <They hold the hammer,= said David Kingsley, a researcher with the nonprofit Center for Health Information & Policy. Welltower, the biggest owner of senior homes in the country, distributes more than $1 billion in dividends to shareholders annually, including mutual fund giants Vanguard and BlackRock and the pension fund of Norway. Other senior-housing investors have collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars for public pension plans in Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas and other states, investor filings show. Kramer said the industry has never strayed from its mission of providing quality care, but that also requires a careful focus on costs and profit margins. <If you don9t have a margin, you can9t pursue a mission,= he said. <If you don9t have a mission, you9re also not going to produce a margin.= Balfour rode the early wave of enthusiasm for assisted living. Its founder, Michael Schonbrun, envisioned a <Four Seasons experience,= building a series of Colorado facilities that reflect local culture. There9s an equestrianthemed community in the gold rush town of Littleton and a glitzy seniors home developed from a historic train station in downtown Denver. A former health-care executive, Schonbrun initially funded his business through bank loans and individual investors. But in 2014, he sold all three of Balfour9s buildings to AEW, a Boston-based private-equity firm. Some senior homes are left hobbled by private-equity ownership, according to interviews and records. Brookdale is the nation9s largest operator of senior-living homes. After it was acquired by private equity in 2000, it sold many of its buildings to investment firms to pay down debt, corporate filings show, which then locked Brookdale into costly long-term leases with the new owners. Despite collecting more than $1 billion in rent from residents and other fees each of the past 17 years, Brookdale lost money in all of those years except 2020. Its stock price, which peaked at $53 a share in 2006, has dwindled to $5. Cost cutting Meanwhile, eight residents filed a lawsuit in 2017 claiming that Brookdale systemically understaffed its facilities to boost profits. More than 80 residents and their relatives described in legal declarations how short staffing led to falls, diaper rashes, urinary tract infections, broken bones and residents waiting hours for their call pendant buttons to be answered, but a federal judge rejected a motion to elevate the case to a class action. The case is set for trial next year. BY DOUGLAS MACMILLAN AND CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND loUISVIllE, Colo. 4 Lavender Farms, an upscale assisted-living facility in the Boulder suburbs, promised <24/7 on-site care= in its marketing materials. But managers at its operating company, Balfour Senior Living, worried deeply about their ability to care for the elderly residents who roamed the farmhouse-chic corridors at odd hours and sometimes wandered outside unnoticed, documents and interviews show. Balfour managers proposed raising wages to hire and retain more and better caregivers to improve resident safety. But to do that, the managers said, Balfour needed the approval of Welltower, the $40 billion investment firm that owned Lavender Farms. Executives at Welltower balked. <Their position was: We are trying to increase our profitability,= said one former Balfour executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. <Care is an ancillary part of the conversation.= For two decades, Balfour has been a star of the senior-housing industry, marketing its properties like boutique hotels, replete with high-end furnishings, fine dining and concierge services. But as Welltower and other professional investors have acquired the buildings where Balfour operates, waves of cost cutting have left it unable to meet the basic needs of many residents, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, resident Mary Jo Staub, 97, died after banging repeatedly on the locked doors of Lavender Farms in subfreezing temperatures. Her death was among at least 20 incidents of neglect, missing people or avoidable deaths cited by state inspectors at Balfour9s Colorado facilities since its founding in 1997. Since Balfour sold its properties to corporate investors in 2014, the vast majority of citations have indicated problems with staff. Failures at Balfour facilities are symptoms of deeper problems in the $34 billion market for assisted living and memory care, a growing industry that now provides care and housing for more than a million Americans, according to industry estimates. Conceived about 40 years ago to give seniors more freedom in their final years of life, the assisted-living industry has been reshaped by real estate speculators looking to cash in on an aging nation. They were aided by Congress in 2008, when a new law gave certain investors the ability to hold senior-housing properties tax-free while also taking a slice of their annual income. As a result, many facilities across the nation are now held by investors under pressure to produce profits for shareholders. In some places, a bare-bones approach to staffing and pay has produced a chaotic environment where medications are missed, falls and bed sores go unnoticed, residents are abused, and confused seniors wander away undetected, according to a review of 160,000 state inspection reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former employees of assisted-living businesses and relatives of current and former residents. In the past five years alone, nearly 100 residents have died after wandering away from these facilities or being left unattended outside, a Post investigation found. State regulators investigating these deaths frequently cited limited staff, poor training or neglect. Business leaders acknowledge struggling to find workers, a problem they blame on a nationwide labor shortage that worsened during the pandemic. Companies have had to adjust by <asking current staff to work extra shifts, hiring agency staff, or limiting new admissions because they refuse to compromise care,= Rachel Reeves, a spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living, an industry lobbying group, said in an email. 8I am exhausted9 But data and interviews suggest these facilities are losing staff because they don9t pay a competitive wage. Nationally, assisted-living aides make an average of $15 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 4 less than most Starbucks baristas. Yet these employees are tasked with bathing, toileting, medicating and safeguarding a population Senior homes left understabed amid assisted-living boom Surveillance video captured a 97-year-old woman9s death outside the locked doors of a high-end Colo. home, a symptom of deeper problems in the industry growing increasingly frail and likely to suffer from dementia or Alzheimer9s. When staff is limited, one caregiver may assume responsibility for two dozen residents. Last year, in a national survey of 120 facilities by the National Center for Assisted Living, 98 percent said they asked staff to work extra shifts to make up for staffing shortages. <Of course the care is going to suffer. Because I am exhausted,= said Amanda Matthews, 46, a longtime caregiver and manager of memory-care facilities in Colorado. Neither Balfour nor Kisco Senior Living, the Carlsbad, Calif.-based company that combined with Balfour in October, responded to numerous requests for comment. A Lavender Farms manager declined to answer questions from a reporter who visited the facility. A Welltower spokesperson also declined to comment. Even as workers struggle and some residents suffer, many businesses are thriving. Long-term investors in senior home real estate, which includes assisted living, receive returns of nearly 9 percent a year on average 4 more than double the yield for offices and hotels, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries. Investors prefer to buy the buildings that house senior homes 4 instead of buying equity in the businesses 4 because they gain rental income and valuable property portfolios without being directly exposed to the legal risks of caring for a fragile population. Typically, a real estate owner will approve a detailed business plan that sets out budgets for labor and care, and pay a management company a fee to run the facility according to plan. Residents may never know the names of the investment firms that own their buildings, but these firms typically collect about 30 percent of their monthly rent checks, according to commercial real estate researcher Green Street. In a typical arrangement, about 65 percent of income goes to cover costs such as labor, marketing and supplies, while 5 percent goes to a management company, such as Balfour. Locked out The night of Feb. 25, 2022 4 long after Lavender Farms manPhotos By chet strange for the Washington Post room when they were supposed to be checking on Staub, who had been flagged for close monitoring because of confusion and hallucinations. Near 6 a.m., one of the women finally found Staub outside, unresponsive on the pavement. Her walker was stuck in the snow and a trail of blood traced her path to the door she had desperately tried to reenter, according to videos, photos and records provided by police. Balfour notified residents that someone died <after leaving the building on her own and experiencing a fall outside.= The compaagers had raised concerns to Balfour executives about wandering residents 4 Mary Jo Staub left the facility wearing pajamas and a robe in 15-degree weather. After breaking her ankle and realizing she was locked out, she used a broom to bang on a door next to the nurse9s station for 30 minutes, according to security-camera footage obtained by The Post through an open records request. No one came to help. A lawsuit brought by Staub9s family alleged that the two staff members on duty 4 women who made around $20 an hour 4 had been in the third-floor theater Real estate owners make more money than share of senior housing income in a typical arrangement operating costs Property owner Management company 65% 30 5 source: green street Photo courtesy of haiLey | hart PLLc. Mary Jo Staub, a mother of three daughters, died in 2022. memory inc. ny has repeatedly declined to comment to media about Staub9s death. In legal filings, Balfour9s lawyers denied claims by Staub9s family that the company9s negligence resulted in her death, and that its marketing of exceptional care and safety amounted to fraudulent misrepresentation. Staub9s death shocked relatives of Lavender Farms residents who demanded to know why the facility had not hired more staff or done more to ensure that nighttime caregivers were monitoring the exits. <How did this happen?= said Shari Edelstein, whose mother lived in Lavender Farms until her death earlier this year. <This is one of the most expensive facilities in Boulder.= But to people who have worked in assisted living, Staub9s death was another data point in a pattern that has unfolded across the industry. Hundreds of properties change corporate owners every year, and staffing and pay are often the first expenses trimmed by investors focused on profits, according to interviews with industry experts and current and former employees at multiple companies. <These companies come in and purchase communities and say they are going to make everything better,= said Matthews, who has worked for several senior-care companies, including Balfour. <The reality is, being somebody in the trenches, it doesn9t get better. The pay doesn9t change. The expectations are: 8Now you are going to do more, for the same amount of money or less.9= Assisted living got its start in the 1980s, when pioneers drew inspiration from nonprofit and faith-based <board and care= homes to develop for-profit options for older adults who needed help with daily activities but were not sick enough for nursing homes. These businesses arrived as women increasingly entered the workforce, leaving two-income families in a quandary over how to care for elderly parents. <Along came assisted living, in a Victorian mansion, with a chandelier and a curved staircase,= said Bob Kramer, who co-founded the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, or NIC, a nonprofit research group, in 1991. Early success led to rapid construction through the 1990s, with several chains launching initial TOP: Balfour at Lavender Farms in Louisville, Colo., where resident Mary Jo Staub, 97, died last year after banging on its locked doors in subfreezing temperatures. Her death was among at least 20 incidents of neglect, missing people or avoidable deaths cited by state inspectors at Balfour9s Colorado facilities since its founding in 1997. LEFT: Amanda Matthews, who managed the memorycare unit in one of Balfour9s Denver facilities, said threequarters of her front-line staff relied on some form of government assistance. Nationally, assisted-living aides make an average of $15 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 4 less than most Starbucks baristas.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re A15 With the facility: are public areas and residents9 rooms clean? is there a secure outdoor area where residents can get fresh air without leaving the facility? Can staff easily keep an eye on residents while they9re outside? do the facilities allow for short-term stays of a few days or weeks? this can be costly, but it may be worth a try to see how you or your loved one enjoy living there day-to-day. What should I ask about memory care? if your family member has dementia or other memory issues, you may be especially worried about a facility9s ability to prevent wandering and keep your relative safe. some questions to ask: l What kind of cognitive assessment does the facility do on admission? Can family members be involved in making a care plan? they should be, according to experts. l are there door alarms? if so, how are staff required to respond? are they required to look outside if an alarm is triggered on an exit door? try to get a sense of whether the facility takes door alarms seriously or views them as an annoyance. l What is the typical ratio of staff to residents? how many aides are awake at night, and how often do they check on residents? the Post9s investigation found that many residents who walked away unnoticed from a facility do so at night. l do all staffers get at least six hours of training to care for people with dementia? is there any kind of test? how often are staff expected to train? l give examples of difficult behavior you may have observed in your family member and ask how the staff would handle them. l What changes in health status would require you or your relative to move out of the facility or trigger an increase in your monthly fees? What if my relative is already at a facility? Visit often, at different times of the day and week. Keep aware of your relative9s physical condition. if you see drastic changes in weight or overall health, ask the staff what9s going on. get to know the staff. if a problem arises, you can file a complaint with your state ombudsman or regulatory authorities. if you suspect neglect or abuse, a complaint can trigger an investigation by state authorities, which could reveal violations and result in a fine or corrective action. at the very least, it helps to establish a record, which can help inform other families looking for a facility. Where should I start? Unlike with nursing homes, there is no government website that reviews the quality of assisted-living facilities. experts say to ask for recommendations from people you trust, such as doctors, friends, relatives and members of support groups for the elderly or people with memory loss. if your state makes inspection reports available online, you can look up information about each facility on one of these websites. the sites are not always easy to navigate, but the reports often provide details about consumer complaints and other problems at a facility, including whether residents have wandered away, experienced repeated falls or found unsanitary conditions. if your state doesn9t post this information, you can always ask facility managers to provide their latest inspection report. their response may offer useful information, whether they provide the report or not. you can also contact your state9s long-term care ombudsman, who can sometimes share complaints about facilities. Be careful about using referral websites you find online. these websites often earn fees for referring you to the facility. online reviews can also be skewed negative or positive, and they may not offer accurate information about the quality of a facility. if you have time, make unannounced visits to facilities at busy times of the day, typically the morning and mealtimes. feel free to visit repeatedly, including on weekends, and ask for a tour. What should I look for? With staff: observe how they9re interacting with residents. do they seem frustrated or shorthanded? do they speak to residents by name and interact with them as individuals? ask if they feel burned out or understaffed, and whether they feel able to raise concerns about safety. try to speak with the administrator. one former administrator said it9s a good sign if the administrator knows most of the residents by name. Ultimately, this person is responsible for what happens at the facility. ask the facility if they can arrange introductions to family members of current residents. if the facility refuses, that may be a sign that you should keep looking. With residents: observe their activity level. are they busy or left on their own? do they seem happy? ask if they feel safe and cared for. if relatives are visiting, ask about their experiences with the facility. the Post9s review included both general assisted-living facilities and the more secure dementia-care units. Many states have different names in their regulations for these facilities. the Post used a review from the national Center for assisted Living to determine the different titles for assisted-living complexes. the Post counted the death when a resident with alzheimer9s disease or other cognitive impairment got outside or was unsupervised outside and died. that includes people left in vehicles. in one case, a resident was found in a stairwell. in another, the facility placed the resident in independent living although his contract required assisted-living oversight. the Post review was not limited to instances where state authorities cited facilities, but in 9 out of 10 cases where a resident died, inspectors issued citations. to examine states9 oversight of assisted-living facilities, reporters gathered regulations regarding staffing levels, training and reporting requirements from each state. the Post then categorized each state into a tier of regulatory oversight based on these benchmarks suggested by experts. finally, reporters used data from the american seniors housing association ranking the 50 largest senior-housing owners. reporters classified the companies on asha9s list into general categories of ownership, to understand the business models underlying the assisted-living sector. the Post examined facility inspection data and incident reports from twothirds of states and collected news reports from across the country, the first time a news organization has attempted to determine the national scope of wandering incidents and deaths among people living with dementia and other cognitive impairments in assisted-living facilities. Because 19 states do not allow reports to be downloaded by the public, and nebraska and d.C. have not released new reports in recent years, the data presented by the Post is certainly an undercount. to collect its data, the Post wrote computer programs to pull facility rosters and the number of beds available in every state, and to gather more than 160,000 available individual inspection reports since 2018 from the states that posted those reports online. Using key phrases such as <elope,= <wander= and <missing,= reporters searched for cases where residents had left the facility without staff9s knowledge or had been left outside unattended. they expanded their review into states without online inspection portals by scouring media reports and lawsuits and by filing public information requests with state agencies and local police departments. a second and third round of media searches were done by researchers and reporters to try to provide the public with the most complete accounting of walkaways and walkaway deaths. Methodology In 2020, three residents of Brookdale facilities 4 in Arizona, Delaware and Florida 4 died after leaving the buildings unsupervised, according to reports by state regulators. Jackie Dickson, a spokeswoman for Brookdale, denied allegations of understaffing. Despite the <significant negative financial impact= of the pandemic, Brookdale has continued to invest in the growth and development of its workforce, she said. She declined to comment on the three deaths, but said the well-being of residents <always has been our top priority.= Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for the American Investment Council, a private-equity industry group, said that healthcare facilities in general face workforce shortages. <When private-equity firms invest in facilities, their focus is delivering highquality care and improving patient outcomes,= she said. After AEW acquired Balfour9s buildings, it expanded to several new locations. But it also looked for ways to cut costs, according to a former senior manager. While Balfour still advertised food rivaling <Colorado9s best restaurants,= fresh menu items were replaced with fried foods and processed meals, causing problems for some residents who required low-sodium diets, said Mary Shomaker, who moved her father to a different facility. <We tried to get them to see that this was a big mistake,= she said. AEW spokeswoman Maureen Richardson declined to comment. Meanwhile, cuts to the nursing staff made it difficult for Balfour to make good on its marketing promise of <24-hour on-site nursing,= said a former executive who supervised nursing. On Christmas Eve 2018, the day nurse at Balfour9s downtown Denver facility ended her shift at 8 p.m., and the night nurse came on at 10 p.m. During that twohour gap, a male resident in his 70s with Type 1 diabetes was not given his required insulin injection, state records show. Around 3 a.m., a staff member discovered the mistake and gave him the drug. But the man was dead by 7 a.m. Christmas morning. Balfour reported these events to state inspectors. The death certificate said the man died from a <probable cardiac event and complications from diabetes mellitus,= state records show. Balfour told authorities it would not have any future gaps in nursing coverage <when there are insulins scheduled.= A few months later, AEW sold Balfour9s buildings to Welltower for $300 million. AEW9s biggest outside investor in the fund that bought and sold the buildings, the Texas teacher pension fund, made at least $30 million on its investment, according to Rob Maxwell, a spokesman for the pension fund. He declined to comment on its investment strategy. Low pay, low quality The investment frenzy over senior housing was on full display at NIC9s fall 2022 industry conference in Washington, D.C., which featured a mock version of the <Deal or No Deal= game show. Investors fired fake money from toy handguns labeled <MAKE IT RAIN= when contestants pitched a senior home concept with promise. The gathering this October in Chicago was more sober, with experts bemoaning high interest rates and a shortage of low-cost labor. Welltower chief executive Shankh Mitra acknowledged that wages matter but said businesses also need to make jobs more appealing, for example, by using technology to reduce the time workers spend on administrative tasks. <We have to double down on employee experience,= Mitra said during an onstage interview. <The turnover in our business needs to go down. We can create real career tracks for people.= Welltower owns about 95,000 senior-home units, from apartment-like <independent-living= dwellings to secure memory-care units. Its top rival, Ventas, owns about 68,000. Together, the two REITs own more senior-home units than the next nine biggest players combined, according to data from the American Seniors Housing Association. Assisted-living businesses strive for operating profit margins of 20 to 30 percent 4 on par with software and pharmaceutical companies. Welltower touts its partnerships with operators who push margins even higher. In 2021, it removed Sunrise Senior Living as manager of six properties in California and replaced it with Oakmont Senior Living, which moved in more residents and raised rates by about 10 percent, increasing annual operating income from $600,000 to $14 signed to the nearest empty bed, the former employees said. In November 2021, Staub was transferred to a nursing home after falling and fracturing her pelvis. Two months later, Balfour encouraged Staub to return to Lavender Farms, agreeing to place her on a higher level of care with more frequent checks for $1,500 a month on top of standard monthly fees, which are currently advertised as starting at $6,800. A nurse practitioner who assessed Staub at the time wrote that she <had a history of weakness and episodes of confusion= and should be monitored <throughout the night for sleep walking,= according to the Staub family lawsuit against Balfour, Schonbrun and the two night staffers. The case settled last month for an undisclosed amount. After Staub9s body was discovered, a Lavender Farms manager called Staub9s daughter to say her mother had <hurt her ankle= and was being taken to the hospital, according to the legal complaint. The daughter learned of her mother9s death and nightlong ordeal only after <she arrived at the hospital and was asked to identify Mary Jo9s body under a bloodsoaked sheet,= the lawsuit said. In police interviews, the two caregivers tasked with monitoring residents that night said they had checked on Staub around midnight; she was spotted on surveillance cameras at 12:41 a.m. However, they did not record any checks in Lavender Farms9 records. One of the women left the building shortly before midnight, security-camera footage shows. The other had previously been reported to management for sleeping during night shifts and letting resident calls go unanswered for hours, said a former employee who witnessed and reported this behavior but was not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters. Sarah Krus, a facility administrator, told police that Staub had instructed staff months earlier to reduce nightly checks to avoid waking her up, but she said the facility had no written record of the request. Balfour administrators did not answer The Post9s questions about why no one came to open the doors; they told police the doors were locked at night in response to <numerous instances of homeless individuals and others on the property after hours.= In their report on the incident, state inspectors said Lavender Farms had created <an immediate jeopardy risk of injury or death= to everyone who lived there. Regulators fined the facility $1,500 and required improvements to resident safety. Local authorities declined to bring criminal charges. Balfour told state regulators it would reassess residents who were known to wander and initiate nightly sweeps of the building. A woman who had been locked outside for an hour the same night Staub died was moved out shortly afterward. In May 2022, Colorado lawmakers passed new regulations requiring stricter background checks for employees and minimum levels of experience for managers at assisted-living facilities. The new law 4 enacted after a spate of preventable deaths 4 also allowed regulators to impose stiffer fines, which had previously been capped at $2,000 per facility per year. Meanwhile, Balfour executives quietly ordered security cameras to be permanently removed from Lavender Farms, according to a person who was briefed on the matter. The reason, the person said, was <to minimize liability.= yeganeh torbati, todd C. frankel, Julie Z. Weil, Joy sharon yi and alice Crites contributed to this report. Some businesses offered pay raises of $1 or $2 an hour during the pandemic, but stopped short of boosting wages enough to make the jobs sustainable for most people, said Melissa Unger, executive director of SEIU Local 503 in Oregon. Residential-care aides, including those who work in assisted living, are 85 percent female and disproportionately people of color and immigrants, according to research aggregated by labor advocacy group PHI. Matthews, who managed the memory-care wing in one of Balfour9s Denver facilities from 2016 through 2019, said three-quarters of her front-line staff relied on some form of government assistance. Welltower9s Mitra, on the other hand, has risen to become one of the highest-paid executives in the country. Last year, his pay package totaled $38 million, including equity grants that Mitra forfeits if Welltower does not hit certain growth targets in the next four years. That made him the 13th highest-paid CEO on the S&P 500 stock index, among those who have been in their jobs for at least two years, according to compensation researcher Equilar 4 close behind the heads of Netflix, American Express and Morgan Stanley. Welltower9s board of directors defended the pay package in its annual proxy statement to investors, saying the company has outperformed rivals during Mitra9s tenure. Mounting problems Staub, a mother of three daughters who earned a private pilot9s license and started her own sewing business later in life, moved into Lavender Farms in 2019, after her husband died. In the months before her death, problems were mounting at the facility. A King Soopers manager said she repeatedly called to report wandering seniors who did not know their names or where they lived. An administrator told state inspectors that installing an exit door alarm was <considered but not implemented.= An employee interviewed by inspectors said there was <only so much we can do= to keep track of residents. Some Balfour residents probably should have been in a dedicated dementia facility, where doors are alarmed and often locked, former employees said. But the company allowed its sales and marketing team to assess new residents 4 sometimes without input from medical staff 4 and some were improperly asmillion, according to a corporate filing. When Welltower bought Balfour9s properties in 2019, it began holding regular calls with Balfour management geared toward reining in spending, several former managers said. Balfour was allowed to continue spending on aesthetic renovations, even some that compromised resident safety. For example, executives insisted on placing an ottoman in the center of a common area though it caused frail residents to trip and fall, former managers said. And apartment doors in a memory-care facility were painted black though clinicians warned that some residents suffering from dementia would see them as black holes. But Welltower pushed back when managers asked for more money to address growing problems with the quality of Balfour9s workforce. Former employees say they saw workers sleeping on the job, watching movies in the theater room and spending hours vaping in the kitchen. Some staffers felt uncomfortable administering certain drugs, such as vaginal suppositories, so they simply didn9t. <They will just hire anyone who is willing to learn,= said Josie Charron, who worked as a medical technician at Lavender Farms until leaving in 2021 to become a journalist. In a 2020 interview published on Balfour9s website, Schonbrun acknowledged that the company struggled with <painful personnel issues= as Balfour expanded to nine facilities. <In some cases people deselected themselves, moved on to other opportunities,= Schonbrun said. <In other cases, we had to give them a nudge out the door and then reassure the people who stayed behind that the fundamentals of the culture were going to stay in place.= About 43 percent of assistedliving workers, excluding new hires, left their jobs in 2022, according to a survey by industry researcher Hospital & Healthcare Compensation Service. Workers say they can make more money at easier jobs in restaurants or retail. King Soopers, the grocery store across the street from Lavender Farms, paid higher wages than the senior home. <When you see how much work you do at the end of the day and you get paid that amount? It9s insane,= said Culix Wibonele, a certified nursing assistant who earns $16 an hour at an assistedliving facility in Atlanta. sydney a. foster for the Washington Post Culix Wibonele, a certified nursing assistant in Atlanta, earns $16 an hour. <When you see how much work you do at the end of the day and you get paid that amount? It9s insane,= she said. Real estate investment trusts dominate the senior housing market 10 largest owners of senior homes by number of units REIT Welltower Ventas american healthcare reit PUBLIC COMPANY Brookdale PRIVATELY OWNED harrison street Kayne anderson greystar real estate Partners erickson senior Living NONPROFIT national senior Communities 95K 68K 25K 17K 30K 25K 13K 12K 11K 13K as of June 1. includes assisted living, memory care, independent living, agerestricted apartments and only skilled nursing beds that make up 30% or fewer units of a facility. source: american seniors housing association BY YEGANEH TORBATI AND JULIE ZAUZMER WEIL Choosing an assisted-living facility for yourself or a loved one can feel overwhelming. In many states, it9s difficult to find reliable information about a facility9s practices and track record for resident safety. The choice matters, especially if you need care for someone with memory problems or dementia: Residents with memory problems wander away from assisted-living facilities unnoticed just about every day in America, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. Since 2018, nearly 100 have died. These incidents occurred even at some facilities that charged families more for extra vigilance. Based on recommendations from advocacy groups and interviews with former staff at assisted-living facilities, The Post has compiled a short guide to getting the information you need to find a home for yourself or a loved one. Questions to ask before choosing an assisted-living facility memory inc.

A16 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 Alabama 310 facilities with about 11,150 beds. Requires mandatory staff ratios and six hours of training on dementia for workers in assisted-living facilities licensed to house people with dementia. The public can look up annual inspection reports and complaints. Alaska 710 facilities with about 4,840 beds. Requires no specified number of hours of training before assistedliving staff can start work; a state spokesperson noted that workers must be supervised for their first three days on the job and are required to get 12 hours of continuing education each year. No required staff-to-resident ratio, and no requirement that all direct-care workers participate in training on dementia. The public cannot look up complaints or inspection reports online. Arizona 1,900 facilities with about 42,120 beds. Requires 62 hours of training for assisted-living workers, including four hours on dementia. No mandatory staff-to-resident ratio. The public can look up complaints and inspections. Arkansas 110 facilities with about 7,010 beds. Mandates staff-to-resident ratios, which vary based on the time of day. Workers must participate in 30 hours of training. A law passed this year requires four hours of dementia training. The public cannot look up complaints or inspections online. California 7,910 facilities with about 178,320 beds. Requires workers to participate in 40 hours of initial training and 20 hours of training on an annual basis, including 12 hours of initial training on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and the results of inspections. Colorado 710 facilities with about 25,400 beds. Requires all direct-care workers to participate in four hours of initial training on dementia and an unspecified number of hours on other topics. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up inspections and complaints. Connecticut 120 facilities with about 8,000 beds. Requires workers to participate in 10 hours of initial training and another six hours of training each year. No specific requirement that a certain number of those hours focus on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Delaware 30 facilities with about 2,630 beds. Requires workers who provide direct care to participate in 12 hours of ongoing education each year. No specific number of hours for dementia training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. District of Columbia 20 facilities with about 1,200 beds. Requires 40 hours of training for new workers in assisted-living facilities who do not already have medical training. A 2020 law requires eight hours of training focused on dementia, but it has not yet gone into effect. The District used to post inspection reports online but has not posted new reports for several years. Florida 2,940 facilities with about 112,490 beds. Requires new workers to participate in 12 hours of training, including four hours on dementia. Requires facilities to have enough staff to work a certain number of hours per week, based on the number of residents. The public can look up complaints and the reports from annual inspections. Georgia 1,680 facilities with about 43,530 beds. Requires mandatory staff-toresident ratios and 24 hours of training for new care workers in their first year on the job. Workers in memory care units must spend eight hours of that training learning about dementia. The public can read complaints and inspection reports online. Hawaii 20 facilities with about 2,600 beds. No specific requirements for the number of hours of initial training or training on dementia. Requires six hours of ongoing education each year for direct-care workers. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up inspection reports. Idaho 260 facilities with about 10,480 beds. Requires direct-care workers to participate in 16 hours of training before they start work and eight hours of ongoing education each year. No specific number of hours of training on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and the results of annual inspections. Illinois 520 facilities with about 28,350 beds. Requires eight hours of ongoing education each year for direct-care workers. Training on dementia is only required for workers in memory care units. No mandated staff-toresident ratios. The public cannot look up complaints or inspection reports online. Indiana 370 facilities with about 32,630 beds. Requires a minimum ratio of nurses on duty to residents who require care from nurses. Requires all new direct-care workers to participate in six hours of training on dementia and an unspecified number of hours on other topics. The public can look up complaints and the results of inspections. Iowa 500 facilities with about 28,040 beds. Requires two hours of dementia training and an unspecified number of hours of training on other topics for new care workers. Workers in memory care units must have an additional six hours of dementia training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and the results of inspections. Kansas 480 facilities with about 14,850 beds. Requires 90 hours of training for workers who start in assisted-living facilities without prior medical training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Kentucky 110 facilities with about 5,400 beds. Does not specify how many hours of training workers must receive. Requires workers in memory care units to receive eight hours of training on dementia. No mandated staff-to-resident ratios. There are no inspection reports online. Louisiana 160 facilities with about 9,110 beds. Requires new care workers to participate in two hours of training on dementia, part of an unspecified number of hours of initial training, plus 12 hours of ongoing education each year. Requires direct-care workers in memory care units to Requires minimum staff-to-resident ratios and at least 16 hours of training for new direct-care workers, including four hours of training on dementia. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. New York 560 facilities with about 51,890 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in 40 hours of training, plus 12 hours of ongoing training each year. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up citations of assisted-living facilities, though full inspection reports are not available online. North Carolina 580 facilities with about 37,150 beds. Mandates staff-to-resident ratios. Requires 80 hours of training for most direct-care workers. Requires workers in memory care units to train for six hours on dementia initially, and another 20 hours in the next six months. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. North Dakota 140 facilities with about 5,280 beds. Requires workers in one of two categories of assisted-living homes to participate in eight hours of training on dementia. No mandatory staffing ratios. Requires a public records request to access information about complaints. Ohio 800 facilities with about 68,000 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in four hours of training on dementia and an unspecified number of hours of training on other topics. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. Oklahoma 190 facilities with about 12,050 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in 75 hours of initial training, including 10 hours on dementia, and an additional 24 hours of ongoing education each year. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. Oregon 580 facilities with about 30,000 beds. Does not require a specific number of hours of initial training; requires 12 hours of ongoing education each year for direct-care workers. No mandated staffing ratio but a recent law requires the state to approve each facility9s level of staffing. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Pennsylvania 1,050 facilities with about 63,320 beds. Requires 18 hours of training for new direct-care workers, including four hours on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Rhode Island 60 facilities with about 4,950 beds. Requires 10 hours of training for new direct-care workers. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. South Carolina 460 facilities with about 22,100 beds. Mandates staff-to-resident ratios. Does not require a specific number of hours of training for workers, either initially or on an annual basis. Inspection reports and complaints are not online and require a public records request, which costs more than $100 per facility and takes about six weeks. South Dakota 160 facilities with about 5,160 beds. Does not set staffing ratios. Does not require a specific number of hours of training for workers, either initially or on an annual basis. Inspection reports and complaints are not online; they require a public records request. Tennessee 380 facilities with about 23,990 beds. Requires staff in memory care units to have some training on dementia but requires no other training for assisted-living workers. No required staffing ratio. Inspection reports are available only on a limited basis. Texas 2,000 facilities with about 81,320 beds. Requires 20 hours of training for new direct-care workers. Requires four hours of training on dementia for workers in memory care units. No required staffing ratios. Inspection reports and complaints are not available online. Utah 220 facilities with about 12,250 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in 16 hours of training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public cannot look up complaints or inspections online; a state spokeswoman said the state would publish the reports <in the very near future.= Vermont 120 facilities with about 3,340 beds. Requires no staffing ratio. Requires no specific hours of initial training, but requires 12 hours of ongoing education each year for direct-care workers. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. Virginia 570 facilities with about 38,270 beds. Requires direct-care workers to participate in at least 14 hours of initial training, including six hours on dementia. Mandates staffing ratios for memory care units. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. Washington 550 facilities with about 37,910 beds. Requires direct-care workers to participate in 12 hours of training each year. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. West Virginia 90 facilities with about 3,580 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in two hours of training on dementia, plus an unspecified number of hours on other topics. The public can look up complaints and annual inspection reports. Wisconsin 4,030 facilities with about 60,160 beds. Training requirements vary based on the regulatory category of the facility. All workers must be trained, but some must participate in 15 hours of initial training, while some need an unspecified number of hours of training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports online. Wyoming 30 facilities with about 1,660 beds. Does not specify the number of hours of training that new workers must participate in. Requires 12 hours of ongoing education each year, with workers in memory care units required to focus on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and the results of inspections. memory inc. BY JULIE ZAUZMER WEIL AND STEVEN RICH The federal government does not regulate the nation9s roughly 30,000 assisted-living facilities. Instead, oversight is left to the states, where a patchwork of rules often falls far short of expert recommendations, a Washington Post analysis has found. Advocates point to three requirements that could improve safety and transparency: ¶ Mandating a minimum number of on-duty staffers for each resident. ¶ Requiring that all caretakers receive at least six hours of training on dementia. ¶ Providing online access to complaints and inspection reports for families trying to choose a facility. How your state regulates assisted-living facilities Only two states 4 Alabama and Indiana 4 impose all three requirements, according to The Post9s analysis. Thirteen states and D.C. 4 home to more than 1 in 5 assisted living beds 4 require none of them. Over the past five years, more than 2,000 elderly residents have walked away from assisted-living facilities in America or been left unattended outside, according to a Post investigation; nearly 100 have died. <The top recommendation for patient safety would be to have better regulations,= said Helena Temkin-Greener, a public health scientist at the University of Rochester who has studied patient safety in assisted-living facilities (though not specifically the problem of walkaways, which are known in the industry as <elopements=). Research suggests that mandatory staffing ratios could improve resident outcomes. But staff-to-resident ratios are rare across America. Most states simply mandate that assisted-living facilities have <sufficient= staff working at any given time, without saying what that means. Almost half of states require training but do not mandate how many hours. Tennessee requires no training at all, except for staff working in memory care units. Many states require workers in specialized memory care units to get training about dementia, but just nine states require all workers to get at least six hours of dementia training, the minimum recommended by the Alzheimer9s Association. Experts say such training is important because not all residents with dementia live in specialized memory care units. Transparency also is inconsistent from state to state. In 29 states, residents can look up recent inspection reports and complaints about assisted-living facilities online. New Hampshire does not release complaint investigations at all. When inspections uncover problems, the level of enforcement varies, as do potential fines. In three states 4 Connecticut, South Dakota and Wyoming 4 inspectors cannot issue fines. Here is a summary of key assisted-living rules in each state, along with the approximate number of assisted-living facilities, licensed bed capacity and the number of walkaway deaths The Post was able to identify. Depending on the state, some facilities may house adults other than seniors, and regulations may call the facility something other than assisted living. In most states, officials confirmed that these rules were accurate at the time of publication. Six states did not respond. receive six additional hours of training on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. The public cannot look up complaints and inspection reports without submitting a public records request. Maine 1,100 facilities with about 9,870 beds. Sets mandatory staff-to-resident ratios based on the time of day. Requires 16 hours of training on dementia for workers in dementia units, not for all direct-care workers. Does not publish complaints or inspection reports online; a state spokesperson said that a website with that information is coming <in the future.= Maryland 1,820 facilities with about 26,160 beds. Requires new workers to participate in five hours of training on dementia and an unspecified number of hours on other topics. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Massachusetts 270 facilities with about 19,790 beds. Requires 61 hours of training for new direct-care workers who do not already have medical training, including two hours of training on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. Requires a public records request to release inspection reports or complaints. Michigan 4,020 facilities with about 54,770 beds. Requires some regulated assistedliving facilities to maintain specific staff ratios, but not all facilities must be regulated. Does not specify the number of hours of training for new workers. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports for regulated facilities. Minnesota 2,220 facilities with about 62,840 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in eight hours of training on dementia and an unspecified number of hours of training on other topics. No mandated staffing ratios. Residents can look up complaints and the results of annual inspections. Mississippi 200 facilities with about 8,430 beds. Mandates staff-to-resident ratios. Does not specify the number of hours of training that workers must receive, initially or on an annual basis. Members of the public must submit a public records request to view inspection reports or complaints. Missouri 630 facilities with about 28,090 beds. Mandates staff-to-resident ratios. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in three hours of training on dementia and at least two hours of training on other topics. The public can look up complaints and inspection reports. Montana 210 facilities with about 5,730 beds. Requires two hours of training on dementia for new workers; does not specify how many hours of training workers must receive on other topics. No mandated staffing ratios. Limited information on inspections and complaints can be found online. Nebraska 280 facilities with about 13,830 beds. Does not specify how many hours of training workers must participate in before they start caring for assistedliving residents, nor require a specific number of hours of initial training on dementia. Requires 12 hours of ongoing education each year for direct-care workers. No mandated staffing ratios. Some information on inspections and complaints can be found online, but new reports have not been posted in recent years. Nevada 400 facilities with about 9,410 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in eight hours of training on dementia. Requires a ratio of 1 worker to every 6 residents in memory care units during daytime hours. The public can look up limited information about facilities. New Hampshire 140 facilities with about 6,750 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in six hours of training on dementia. No mandated staffing ratios. While some inspections are online, a state spokesperson said that complaints are <confidential= and not released to the public. New Jersey 290 facilities with about 26,680 beds. Requires new direct-care workers to participate in 16 hours of training. No mandated staffing ratios. The public can look up complaints and the results of annual inspections. New Mexico 230 facilities with about 6,170 beds. Required training hours vary widely by state Many workers get more training to cover all required topics 0 90 hours States in gray do not specify a minimum number of training hours. Only Tennessee requires no training at all.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ rE A17 BY MAEGAN VAZQUEZ Congress last week approved a measure aimed at preventing any U.S. president from unilaterally withdrawing the United States from NATO without congressional approval. Passage came amid long-standing concerns that Donald Trump may try to exit the alliance if he returns to office. The provision was included in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill detailing defense policy, which was passed by the House on Thursday and is awaiting the signature of President Biden. Under the measure, advocated by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the president would be prohibited from withdrawing from NATO without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate or separate legislation passed by Congress. Kaine and Rubio had tried to advance similar measures since 2021. Passage of the defense policy bill last week marked the first time the House had embraced the tactic. The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee did not respond to questions about why the chamber accepted the provision. The office of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declined to comment. The bipartisan attempt to add checks and balances highlights the lengths Congress is willing to go to protect the U.S.-NATO relationship amid ongoing Russian aggression and following years of criticism of the military alliance during Trump9s presidential tenure. President Biden has sought to reassert the leadership role of the United States in global diplomacy, helping galvanize NATO member countries in support of Ukraine following Russia9s invasion and encouraging efforts to expand the alliance to include Finland and Sweden. During his presidency, Trump frequently lambasted the alliance, accusing its members of being <delinquents= and questioning the wisdom of NATO9s collective defense clause. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which formed the legal basis for NATO, states that an armed attack on one member of the alliance will be viewed as an attack on all of them, and that they will defend one other. In 2018, Trump publicly mused about why the United States might come to the aid of NATO member Monte negro, saying that sending troops from the alliance to defend an <aggressive= ally could result in World War III. Former Trump aides, including former national security adviser John Bolton, have said they feared at times that Trump could pull the United States out of the alliance. But Trump and his allies argue that his tough approach to NATO pushed member states to boost their defense spending obligations and strengthened the alliance. Kaine, in a statement, said the provision in the defense policy bill affirmed <U.S. support for this crucial alliance= and sent <a strong message to authoritarians around the world that the free world remains united.= Rubio said in a statement: <The Senate should maintain oversight on whether or not our nation withdraws from NATO. We must ensure we are protecting our national interests and protecting the security of our democratic allies.= While the defense policy bill is set to be signed into law by Biden, it9s unclear how exactly a scenario might play out in which the president and Congress are at odds over NATO membership. Michael E. O9Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that there is precedent for presidents withdrawing unilaterally from treaties without consulting Congress. A chief executive conceivably could push back on efforts to restrict that 4 particularly if the treaty addresses the United States9 defense posture abroad. A <future president might challenge such an effort and invoke the president9s authorities as commander in chief under Article 2 of the Constitution,= O9Hanlon said in an email. <It would, I think, be uncharted territory if this issue were forced to a confrontation.= A Kaine aide said that while the Constitution is clear about the process to enter a treaty 4 including ratification by the Senate 4 it is silent on withdrawal. The provision offered by Kaine and Rubio was an attempt to offer specific guidance about the process, said the aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the legislation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. If a president violates the law, Congress can seek recourse in the courts, the aide said. Congress approves bill to prevent any U.S. president from leaving NATO FiliP singEr/EPA-EFE/shuttErstock From left, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, President Biden, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. MASSIVE INVENTORY SELL-OFF MASSIVE INVENTORY SELL-OFF YOU9LL SAVE ON "FINE FURNITURE Sofas " Loveseats " Chairs " Recliners Sectionals " Reclining Furniture " Dining Rooms Bedrooms " Mattresses " Accent Tables, more "CHANDELIERS Crystal " Elegant Glass " Sculptured, more "FINE AREA RUGS Handmade Designs from around the World "ACCESSORIES collected from craftsmen all over the World. "ART Beautiful One-of-a-kind Paintings " Statuary *Discounts are off original and regular prices which may or may not have resulted in prior sales. ALL SALES ARE FINAL. All merchandise sold <as-is=. Quantities are limited. First come, orst to save. All prior sales and previous discounts excluded. 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A18 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 of their siblings were killed in a car accident in 1972. James Biden became one of his brother9s key fundraisers 4 in some cases because he was willing to take money from donors when his brother was wary. When Joe Biden first ran for the Senate, in 1972, James Biden pleaded for money from a top union official, who agreed to give $5,000 on condition that he could meet Joe Biden. As James Biden later recalled 4 as quoted in his brother9s autobiography 4 Joe Biden believed the union official wanted a promise for a certain vote in exchange for the contribution. James Biden recalled that he felt like fredo Corleone in <The Godfather,= the fictional son of mafia don Vito Corleone and younger brother of Sonny Corleone. The union leader handed the check to Joe Biden, who refused it. That left the handoff to James, who said, <I had to take it,= according to his brother9s autobiography. Long before Biden9s son Hunter became known for benefiting from the family name, James Biden also undertook a number of business ventures that created headaches for his brother. At one point in the 1970s, when James Biden faced significant debt from a nightclub business, Joe Biden said he shouldn9t be tarred by his brother9s problems, saying, <Don9t bring my name into it,= according to the Dallas morning News. Patterson said that in the early 1990s he introduced Scruggs to James Biden, who hoped to work on the trial lawyer9s lucrative cases against asbestos manufacturers accused of causing lung disease. Scruggs said in an interview that he took James Biden, along with Patterson, on a 50-foot Hatteras boat to an island off the mississippi coast. A partnership on asbestos cases did not materialize, but an even more enticing possibility soon emerged. Scruggs sued cigarette manufacturers, alleging that they had cost states hundreds of billions of dollars through medicaid, citing insider information showing the companies knew their product was addictive and hid that fact for decades. (The events were later dramatized in the 1999 movie aide named Steve Patterson, who became chairman of the mississippi Democratic Party and eventually coordinated the Southern operation of Biden9s short-lived 1988 presidential campaign. <Biden wouldn9t have known anybody in mississippi if not for me. That9s just a fact. I take ownership of that,= Patterson said in an interview, recalling how Biden would respond to his many requests to come to the state for fundraisers and ole miss football games. <Biden loved mississippi.= Patterson, who was elected state auditor in 1991, had also gotten to know James Biden, known widely by his nickname Jimmy. Joe Biden9s 74-year-old brother has played a vital role in his personal and political life. He helped care for Joe Biden9s children after their mother and one legal thriller by John Grisham 4 who, like the novelist William faulkner, once lived in oxford. It is, at its heart, a tale of the bond between the Biden brothers 4 one that is now being tested anew amid a flurry of subpoenas issued by republican lawmakers. The tobacco deal Shortly after arriving in the Senate in 1973, Joe Biden began one of the most unlikely friendships of his career 4 one that would lead to an equally unlikely connection to the Deep South. After delivering a maiden speech that focused on civil rights, Biden received a note from Sen. John Stennis (D-miss.), who had been an ardent segregationist, saluting his courage and saying he respected him despite their disagreements. Biden later became friends with a Stennis ethical or illegal behavior= by the associates. much of the material related to James Biden in the mississippi case is not available in court files, but the recordings, transcripts and other material were collected by Curtis Wilkie, who wrote a 2010 book about Scruggs, <The fall of the House of Zeus,= which reported a number of details about the Biden connections. Wilkie granted permission for The Post to review his archives at the University of mississippi, including fBI recordings of James Biden. In addition, The Post reviewed thousands of pages of court records and other material and interviewed key participants. What emerges is a tale of money, politics and influence, stretching from mississippi to the corridors of power in Washington, one that has echoes of a Scruggs and his associates over a plan to deliver $40,000 in bribes to a local judge, they also secretly recorded conversations with James Biden 4 who, at the same time, was trying to create a consulting firm with the Scruggs partners. Neither James Biden nor his brother was charged or accused of wrongdoing in the case, which led to prison for Scruggs and several of his associates, including James Biden9s would-be partners. fishman, asked about this case, responded by email that <more than fifteen years ago, Jim and Sara Biden had serious discussions= with Scruggs9s associates in mississippi <about starting a firm that would provide legal and consulting services. That venture never got off the ground. Jim and Sara were not aware of or involved in any unbusiness work 4 as a consultant for hire and behind-the-scenes political fixer 4 has often intersected with his brother9s public responsibilities. for months, that probe has focused on the president9s son Hunter Biden, but the House oversight Committee recently issued subpoenas for James and Sara Biden to testify, drawing attention to James Biden9s unique role in his brother9s life and career. James and Sara Biden9s company Lion Hall, to which Scruggs paid $100,000, also is cited in one of the subpoenas as central to the probe. Scruggs said he did not know whether James Biden had talked to his brother about his vote, <but I hope he did.= Paul J. fishman, a lawyer for James and Sara Biden, said in an email that neither had talked to Joe Biden about the tobacco settlement bill. <Jim Biden9s consulting work has never involved speaking with or providing access to his brother for this or any other client,= fishman said. The White House did not respond to a list of questions from The Washington Post about President Biden9s action on the tobacco legislation and, more broadly, on his relationship with his brother and whether he has ever used his public position to help him financially. The deal with Lion Hall also illuminates the Bidens9 decadeslong relationship with Scruggs, once one of the country9s most powerful trial lawyers, who made his fortune taking on corporate interests and making friends in politics. Scruggs took James Biden on a boat trip while discussing a potential partnership on asbestos lawsuits; flew Joe Biden on his private plane to a fundraiser; and met with Biden family members at a University of mississippi football game, Scruggs and his associates said in interviews. But James and Sara Biden9s ties to Scruggs also later brought them to the periphery of a sweeping federal investigation, one that eventually led to the trial lawyer9s epic downfall in 2008 over a bribery scheme. As fBI agents circled in on JAMeS BiDen from A1 For years, president9s brother has beneûted from connection andrea Morales for the Washington Post Richard <Dickie= Scruggs at his office in Oxford, Miss. Scruggs, who was once one of the nation9s most successful trial lawyers, had worked closely with President Biden9s brother James. Later, Scruggs served about five years in prison for his role in the bribery of a judge. BEFORE AFTER Affordable Price Lifetime Warranties Locally Owned & Operated Top Industry Certiûcations A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE PROTECTING YOUR HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS? PURE GENIUS! CALL TODAY TO SCHEDULE A FREE INSPECTION ROOFING " SIDING " WINDOWS " DOORS " GUTTERS " INSULATION Lifetime Warranties SCHEDULE A FREE INSPECTION TODAY! Winter SALE 50% MATERIALS OFF PA NO YMENTS UNTIL 2025* 0% INTEREST ZERO DOWN* *With approved credit. Terms & Conditions apply, see website for full details. HGE is fully licensed and insured. 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sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re A19 also would have the involvement of James Biden and Hunter Biden, the senator9s son. <i told him we had formalized our relationship with you guys,= Balducci told James Biden, according to the FBi recording reviewed by the post. <i told him about the real Washington presence, that this was not going to be a bullshit, you know, a shingle hung somewhere in the window. that this was a real deal, that Sara was coming on, you know, as a named partner, an equity share in the venture, that we were changing the name of the firm to include her. & Hunter was going to be involved, and you were going to be involved.= Balducci told James Biden that Scruggs was enthusiastic, quoting the trial lawyer as saying, <With the political connections you guys are putting together now, i know you9re going to do really, really well.= in another call later that day, James Biden told Balducci that he had just concluded a <great conversation= with Scruggs. Biden said he told Scruggs that he was <really excited= that Scruggs was involved, and recounted that the trial lawyer told him, <i think you can make a lot of money.= Scruggs said in the interview with the the post that while he agreed to speak positively about the venture to help give it a boost, he never planned to be part of it or invest in it. a lawyer for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment. Lackey, the judge, has since died, but patterson said in an interview that he did not think Lackey <could have conceivably known= about Balducci9s interactions with James Biden. James Biden can be heard on subsequent tapes discussing a number of possible deals. one idea was to work for the chief of the Mississippi Band of choctaw indians, which had filed an application with the federal Bureau of indian affairs to use 100 acres for a $375 million casino, which needed state and federal approval. James Biden said it seemed to be an ideal opportunity. <You know my hesitancy to be a, you know, an opportunist if everybody is jumping on him,= James Biden said on tape on oct. 15, 2007, referring to the tribal leader. <there9s nothing wrong with opportunist. Sara just rolled her eyes at me. So, but being a whore about it, okay, you know, continUeD on next paGe Firm through his family name and his resemblance to his brother.= Barrack claimed Lion Hill never delivered and sought damages. Sara Biden countersued, and the matter was settled confidentially. Barrack did not respond to a request for comment. Scruggs had no such complaints. He said he was satisfied with the work done by James and Sara Biden. <Jim was a help, and Joe gave us some good advice,= he said. after the tobacco legislation died in the Senate, Scruggs and other lawyers made separate deals in the states for a $248 billion settlement that Scruggs said netted his firm between $300 million and $400 million. Scruggs9s influence had reached new heights by the time Joe Biden arrived in oxford around 2000, joining Scruggs and patterson on the Grove at ole Miss before heading to a skybox to watch a football game, Scruggs said. Months later, Scruggs picked Joe Biden up in his Falcon 10 jet in Fort Lauderdale and flew with him to Jackson, Miss., for a fundraiser. Scruggs said that when Biden saw that the pilot had blond dreadlocks, he said, <if i had hair like that, i can be president of the United States!= The firm Seven years later, after Biden launched his second bid for the presidency, he once again headed to Mississippi for a fundraiser, arriving in oxford with James at his side in august 2007. He gave a talk about his just-released memoir, <promises to Keep,= at a bookstore around the corner from Scruggs9s law firm. then Biden traveled to the nearby University club for a presidential campaign fundraiser, which brought in $70,000, according to media reports at the time. Behind the scenes, James Biden was focused on another deal with some key players at the fundraiser 4 including patterson, who had resigned in 1996 as state auditor after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor tax charge, and a lawyer named tim Balducci. patterson, Balducci and James Biden had for weeks been discussing their plan: an influential new consulting firm with offices on the oxford town square and in Washington. the firm would be called patterson, Balducci & Biden, pLLc Law Group, accord- <the insider,= filmed partly at Scruggs9s pascagoula home.) Scruggs eventually oversaw a case in which he believed that the companies would have to pay $368 billion. But members of congress were divided about the settlement, which required federal legislation to waive antitrust provisions, according to their statements and hearing transcripts from the time. that concerned Biden, then the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary committee, who said in a 1997 news release that he was <not yet convinced that this settlement is a good deal= for the american people. a few days later, Biden said at a hearing that if the deal wasn9t improved, it would go <down the tubes.= Scruggs was at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees without a deal. Scruggs said patterson urged him to talk to Joe Biden, so he went to Washington in mid-1997 and met with the senator for the first time, as well as with other lawmakers he considered to be potential roadblocks. He said he realized he needed more help winning over the senator from Delaware and other members of congress. that is when he turned to James and his wife, Sara, a former congressional aide. Starting on april 9, 1998, Scruggs made a series of $10,000 payments to their firm, Lion Hall, during a year-long period. those payments totaled $100,000, according to records that Scruggs provided to the post. When a larger version of the tobacco settlement finally reached the Senate floor in June 1998, Biden had gone from being one of its biggest critics to becoming one of its leading defenders 4 a significant victory for Scruggs. Biden9s support wasn9t enough. after the vote, Biden said Republicans, who had largely opposed the legislation, had been swayed by an intensive tobacco industry advertising blitz. at the time, little was known about Lion Hall. But one lawsuit at the time alleged that James and Sara Biden openly sought to benefit from their connection to Joe Biden. Filed by the firm of the lawyer Leonard Barrack, who hired Lion Hall during the same period it worked for Scruggs, it alleged that James had provided assurances that he would <generate business for the Barrack Law <Lord have mercy,= said the judge, Henry Lackey, as he took the envelope, according to court records. Balducci did not know that Lackey was working with the FBi. Weeks earlier, Balducci had floated the idea of Lackey9s being hired after retirement as <of counsel= to Balducci9s law firm, according to the judge9s statement to federal officials. Lackey viewed that offer as a quid pro quo to get him to favorably settle the Scruggs suit, leading him to contact the FBi and the U.S. attorney9s office, according to court records. the tip led the FBi to begin recording Balducci9s phone calls, including some with James Biden; the tapes provide insight into how James and his wife explored business opportunities. after handing off the cash, Balducci drove to Scruggs9s office, where he sought support from the trial lawyer for the new consulting firm Balducci was trying to form with patterson and Sara Biden. afterward, Balducci called James Biden to say how well the meeting with Scruggs had gone, laying out how the consulting firm would have not only Sara Biden as a named partner, but ing to a 24-page promotional booklet, a copy of which can be found in the University of Mississippi archives, with Sara as the named partner because of her background as a lawyer. the marketing pitch noted Sara Biden9s extensive Washington experience and added, <in 1995, Sara married Jim Biden, brother of Senator Joe Biden (D) Delaware.= patterson, who was designated as the firm9s president, said in an interview that having the Biden name on the cover was <important but it9s not the end-all.= He said the partners understood they would need <to stand on their own two feet.= The tapes Five weeks after the oxford fundraiser, James Biden was on the phone with Balducci discussing the final details about the firm9s creation, according to court records. that same day, Balducci had handed an envelope containing the first of two $20,000 payments to a Mississippi judge who was slated to rule in a case involving Scruggs, according to court records. the filings say $26.5 million in legal fees was at stake, and Scruggs wanted the judge to give him a favorable settlement. rICk FrIedman/CorBIs/getty Images Joe and James Biden during the Democratic National Convention in 2008. The House Oversight Committee recently issued subpoenas for James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden, to testify. <Jim was never untoward about his influence. He didn9t brag about it or talk about it. He didn9t have to. He was the man9s brother.= Richard <Dickie= Scruggs, speaking about President Biden9s brother James

A20 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 tion about a number of ventures, including more recent activities of Lion Hall. republicans on the committee have sought to link Chinese money to funds that were deposited into the Lion Hall account, alleging a money trail that they say ended with a $40,000 check from Joe and sara Biden to Joe Biden and labeled <loan repayment.= These allegations do not prove any wrongdoing, nor that Joe Biden knew about the alleged money trail. Nonetheless, oversight Chairman James Comer (r-Ky.) has said that <laundered Chinese money landed in Joe Biden9s bank account.= fishman said that the committee9s <desperate search= to find financial transactions between James and Joe Biden has come up empty, saying that the panel has resorted to criticizing two loans James received when Joe was not in public office and that were repaid within weeks. <There is nothing more to those transactions, and there is nothing wrong with them,= fishman said. <and Jim Biden has never involved his brother in his business dealings.= The White House also has dismissed Comer9s claims. scruggs, asked whether he thinks James and Hunter Biden went too far or tried to profit off the family name, said he empathized about what they are facing in the congressional investigation. as he said this, he gestured down the hall to where Zach was working. He takes responsibility for his son9s role in the case, which resulted in a misdemeanor plea of failing to report knowledge of a felony and about five months9 imprisonment despite the prosecutor9s recommendation of probation. Zach scruggs declined to comment. <i have some empathy with Jim and Hunter Biden and, i hate to say it, even the Trump kids,= scruggs said. <it9s really difficult for the close relative or particularly the sons of prominent men to make it on their own. anything they do on their own, people say, 8Well, it9s because their daddy helped them.9 my own son, for example, had to live in my shadow, for better or worse, and it got him in trouble. so i9m a little empathetic with the sons and daughters of prominent people. They have a cross to bear that nobody else has.= alice Crites contributed to this report. like everybody just jumping in, like, 8Let me do your insurance, let me do your legal.9= He said the tribe had been <used and abused,= and the <beauty= of his proposed arrangement was that he could work through people who are <not scumbags= and who would vouch for him. fishman, the lawyer for James Biden, said his client <was discussing a potential opportunity to sell insurance to the Choctaw tribe, but he never pursued that business.= Just as the plan for the patterson, Balducci and Biden firm was about to be publicly unveiled, Balducci was confronted by the fBi about the payment to the judge. He promptly agreed to flip, according to court records. The fBi sent Balducci, wearing a wire, to scruggs9s office, where their conversations were recorded. a few weeks later, the fBi raided scruggs9s office and seized some computer hard drives. The next day, scruggs and his son, Zach, agreed to surrender at the federal courthouse, just a few blocks away. By mid-2008, weeks before Biden was nominated to be vice president, the key players had all pleaded guilty to various charges related to the effort. Dickie scruggs ultimately served about five years in prison for his role in the Lackey case and for another conviction. patterson, who was sentenced to two years in prison on a charge of seeking to corruptly influence a judge, said he had not spoken publicly about most of the case and his relationship with the Bidens until his interview with The post. since being released, he said, he <has tried to make a living any way i can. frankly, it9s been a real struggle. There9s not a big market for a washed-out old politician with a felony conviction.= Nonetheless, he said, he has maintained good relations with Joe Biden; attended the funeral of Biden9s son Beau; spoke to Joe Biden a couple of times during the 2020 campaign; and he said of the Biden family, <i love them.= Balducci declined to comment on the specifics of the case. instead, he said via text message: <Those events don9t define me, yet i accept them as part of what makes me who i am today. i am blessed to have been redeemed from those dark days and i have from previous paGe town square, diners filled the elegant City Grocery restaurant, and shoppers browsed at square Books, with its shelves of faulkner and Grisham titles. The once-prominent scruggs firm overlooking the square had closed, and Dickie and Zach scruggs now were located a few block away in a modest office, where since shortly after being released from prison they have run a nonprofit called 2ndChancems helping mississippi residents get adult education. Dickie scruggs said he has not spoken to Joe Biden for years and last talked to James Biden in 2015. He said that he still admires and supports Joe Biden, but he said that as he watched events unfold in Washington, the mississippi story is a cautionary tale about what can happen for family members of prominent individuals. The House oversight Committee has issued subpoenas to James and sara Biden as well as Hunter Biden seeking informaToday in Oxford and Congress on a recent day, the clock tower chimed at the 1872-era white courthouse in oxford9s ticket 4 at the time, the existence of the fBi tapes of James Biden were not publicly known, and little attention had been paid to his business ventures. been granted a second chance for which i am very grateful.= The fall of Dickie scruggs from his perch as one of the nation9s most successful and wealthiest trial lawyers became a national story. prosecutors never questioned James Biden, according to a former federal official familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition to discuss the investigation. But the financial connection of key players in the case to Joe Biden9s campaign was widely noted in media reports at the time, and Joe Biden gave to charities $11,500 in campaign contributions that he had received from scruggs, patterson, Balducci and other associates. The year after the arrests, Joe Biden dropped his presidential bid and Barack obama picked him as a running mate. it9s not clear whether the case or James Biden9s other business ventures were discussed during the vetting process to add Joe Biden to the aNDrea moraleS for the WaShiNgtoN poSt The town square in Oxford, Miss. Richard <Dickie= Scruggs9s law firm overlooking the square has closed, and he and his son, Zach, now have an office a few block away where they run a nonprofit helping Mississippi residents get adult education. C. toDD ShermaN/NortheaSt miSSiSSippi Daily JourNal/ap Dickie Scruggs is escorted by U.S. marshals after an appearance in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen, Miss., in 2009. 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sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE A21 A public service initiative from |e Washington Post to promote press freedom worldwide. washingtonpost.com/pressfreedom #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME #BRINGAUSTINHOME <|ere is no higher priority in my administration than the recovery and return of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.= 3 PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, AUGUST 10, 2022 Freelance journalist Austin Tice was abducted in 2012 while covering the ongoing conûict in Syria. He has not been heard from since. |e U.S. government has pledged to make Austin's safe return a priority, and must pursue the sustained diplomatic engagement needed to bring Austin home. Learn more about Austin's case at wapo.st/bringaustinhome. P0745 6x21

A22 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 The World iRAQ Iraqis vote for first time in a decade Iraqis began voting for the first time in a decade Saturday to select new provincial council members, who in turn will appoint governors, with the outcome seen as a bellwether for the parliamentary elections due to take place in 2025. Saturday9s vote was restricted to military and security personnel and internally displaced people living in camps, with the main polling set to take place on Monday. Results are expected to be announced Tuesday. Concerns were raised about low voter turnout and potential violence spreading in the longawaited polls in the country9s 18 provinces. The powerful Shiite cleric and political leader Moqtada al-Sadr 4 who officially resigned from politics in 2022 amid a lengthy deadlock over cabinet formation 4 has called on his supporters to boycott the provincial elections, saying that their participation would reinforce the dominance of a corrupt political class. A widespread boycott would <reduce the legitimacy of the elections internationally and internally,= Sadr said in a statement. In some areas, Sadr9s supporters ripped down electoral posters, and several political campaign offices were vandalized. In the southern city of Najaf 4 a bastion of Sadr support 4 thousands marched on Thursday to urge a boycott of the elections. Activists who staged mass anti-government protests in 2019 and are opposed to all the ruling parties also widely vowed to sit out the polls. Other potential voters are seen as apathetic. Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst and fellow at the nonpartisan Century Foundation think tank, pointed out that millions of eligible voters are not even registered and that low turnout has been a trend since 2005. 4 Associated Press FRANCe Notre Dame Cathedral topped by new rooster Notre Dame Cathedral got its rooster back Saturday, in a pivotal moment in the restoration of the Paris landmark. The installation by a crane of a new golden rooster, reimagined as a dramatic phoenix with flamelike feathers, goes beyond being just a weather vane atop the cathedral spire. It symbolizes resilience amid destruction after the devastating April 2019 fire, restoration officials said. The officials also announced the installation of an anti-fire misting system beneath the cathedral9s roof. Chief architect Philippe Villeneuve, who designed the new rooster, said the original rooster9s survival 4 it was found dented after the fire 4 signified a ray of light in the catastrophe. <That there was hope, that not everything was lost. The beauty of the [old] battered rooster & expressed the cry of the cathedral suffering in flames,= Villeneuve said. He described the new work of art, about 20 inches long and gleaming in the December sun, as his <phoenix.= 4 Associated Press Sudan9s paramilitary RSF presses attack that opens new front: Sudan9s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces battled the army outside the central city of Wad Madani on Saturday, pressing an attack that has opened a new front in the eightmonth-old war and forced thousands to flee, witnesses said. Crowds of people 4 many of whom had taken refuge in the city from violence in the capital, Khartoum 4 could be seen packing up their belongings and leaving on foot in video posted on social media. <The war has followed us to Madani, so I am looking for a bus so me and my family can flee,= 45-year-old Ahmed Salih told Reuters by phone. <We are living in hell and there is no one to help us.= He planned to head south to Sennar. The United Nations said 14,000 people had fled the area so far and that a few thousand had already reached other cities. The fighting has raised fears for other army-held cities in southern and eastern Sudan where tens of thousands of people have been sheltering. Kuwait9s ruling emir dies at 86: Nawaf Ahmed al-Sabah, Kuwait9s ruling emir, died on Saturday after a three-year, low-key reign focused on trying to resolve the tiny, oil-rich nation9s internal political disputes. He was 86. Kuwait state television broke into programming with Quranic verses just before an official made the announcement. Authorities gave no cause of death. Kuwait9s deputy ruler and Nawaf9s half brother, Meshal Ahmed al-Jaber, 83, had been the world9s oldest crown prince. The state-run Kuwait News Agency, KUNA, said Meshal, a longtime leader in the country9s security services, was named emir Saturday afternoon, making him one of the last octogenarian leaders in the Persian Gulf countries. In late November, Nawaf was rushed to a hospital because of an unspecified illness. 4 From wire services Digest BY SAMANTHA SCHMIDT C hileans will vote Sunday on a proposed constitution that contains echoes of U.S. conservatism: the right to religious objections, the right to home-school, language that may be interpreted as suggesting personhood for fetuses. The document, written in large part by members of Chile9s right-wing Republican Party, is in many aspects more conservative than the 1980 dictatorship-era constitution it seeks to replace. And its connection to current trends in U.S. conservatism isn9t coincidental. One of its key architects comes out of an influential group of conservative Catholic legal thinkers at the University of Notre Dame. <This constitution brings all of the most conservative agenda of the right wing in the United States,= said Francisco Cox, a prominent human rights lawyer in Chile. He compared the charter9s protection of <conscientious objection= to the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The parallels between the movements in the two countries underscore the wide reach and growing global influence of religious conservatives in the United States 4 and of the U.S. Supreme Court. Sunday9s referendum is taking place just one year after Chileans rejected an entirely different constitution 4 a charter considered one of the world9s most progressive, with sweeping rights for women, Indigenous communities, nature and even animals. The effort to replace the constitution first written by the authoritarian regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet had begun as a negotiated solution to massive protests over widespread inequality in the country. A majority of Chileans supported the idea. But last year9s 388-article document 4 backed by the leftist president, Gabriel Boric, and drafted by an elected assembly dominated by leftists 4 faced criticism that it was too long, too left-leaning and too radical, especially in its structural changes to the country9s political and judicial system. So this year, Chile tried again 4 this time with an elected constitutional assembly dominated by the country9s far-right Republican Party. The resulting document does little to address inequalities, its critics say. Once again, polls suggest Chileans will reject it. The involvement of U.S. conservative players was not direct, according to Jorge Barrera- Rojas, a Chilean lawyer who served as chief counsel for the constitutional assembly9s Republicans and is also a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. <We are facing similar debates at the global level,= Barrera-Rojas said. <Debates around the protection of religious freedom and educational freedoms, the right to life and to understand whether we are facing a human being or not, with respect to the unborn.= Barrera-Rojas said that while the constitutional council did not consult with any U.S. groups or experts, his experiences and mentors at Notre Dame 4 where Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett went to law school and was on faculty for nearly two decades 4 informed his approach to Chile9s constitution. One of the Notre Dame law professors he admires is Nicole Stelle Garnett, who has frequently argued in favor of publicly funded religious charter schools. Barrera also served as a judicial <extern= with Thomas L. Kirsch II, the judge nominated by thenPresident Donald Trump to fill Barrett9s seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Barrera-Rojas said he is in close touch with 4 though not a member of 4 the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian conservative organization behind many landmark Supreme Court cases, including this year9s case that won Christian vendors the right to reject gay weddings. Barrera-Rojas maintains he did not cite specific U.S. cases in his work advising the constitutional council. But speaking to The Washington Post, he mentioned one Supreme Court case that captures, as he put it, a global debate about discrimination on the basis of religion 4 the case in which the high court ruled that a school board in Washington state discriminated against a football coach when it disciplined him for postgame prayers at midfield. Another case captured the attention of Chilean conservatives: The 2014 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the craft chain Hobby Lobby, saying private, for-profit companies can be exempt from regulations if their owners have a religious objection. Luis Silva, a Republican politician and the most-voted member of this year9s constitutional council, wrote a 2016 article in a Chilean law review about the Hobby Lobby case9s importance to Chile, arguing it <represents a source for useful and tested arguments for the local debate.= The proposed constitution guarantees the freedom to <adopt, live in accordance with and transmit the religion or belief= of choice and includes <conscientious objection.= It grants families the right to <institute educational projects, and educational communities have the right to preserve the integrity and identity of their respective projects in accordance with their moral and religious convictions.= If approved, Barrera-Rojas said, it would be the <constitution with the greatest protections for parental choice in the world.= The inclusion of articles protecting parents9 rights to choose how to educate their children or <to teach them for themselves= has baffled many Chileans. <Home schooling has never been a topic. It9s not part of our tradition,= said Verónica Undurraga, a Chilean law professor. <This is a direct importation from conservative U.S. activism. & In Chile, that discussion didn9t exist.= Critics of the proposed constitution have argued, too, that it will send the country backward on abortion rights. In 2017, Chile legalized abortion in cases of rape, when the mother9s life is at risk or when the fetus is not viable. But while the current constitution protects the <life of that which is to be born,= the proposed constitution would use language saying the <life of who is to be born= 4 a small change that some argue attaches personhood to the fetus. <We are going to have to fight all of the battles we9ve had to fight so far all over again if it gets approved,= said Julián Ortiz, a constitutional lawyer and adviser to members of the Socialist Party in the constitutional council. <This constitution is like going back 20 years.= Silva, the Republican, pointed out that the proposed constitution guarantees gender balance, <something which doesn9t have a precedent in Chile9s history.= The charter enshrines <balanced access= between men and women for elected candidacies and in the composition of collegiate bodies. It also prohibits pay discrimination between men and women for work of equal value. Compared with last year9s proposed constitution, Silva said, this year9s <is much more moderate in its expectations. It is respectful of our more than 200 years of constitutional history. This proposal takes this experience into account, but it also takes responsibility for the challenges Chile faces today, such as illegal immigration, security, the environment and the participation of women.= Even if the constitution fails to pass, Barrera-Rojas said, its ideas will remain in the political debate in Chile. The country, he argued, is living through a <conservative wave= with a <high respect for educational and religious liberties.= If the charter gets voted down Sunday, Boric has said the country will not hold another constitutional council during his presidency. Its failure would reflect just how polarized Chilean society has become, said José Miguel Vivanco, a senior fellow for human rights at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Chilean lawyer. <This sense of common ground or public good is very precarious in Chile,= said Vivanco, who opposed last year9s proposed charter as well as this year9s. Both assemblies failed to produce a constitution with a broad <umbrella framework,= he said. <That is the whole point of a constitution,= he said. <It9s not to define public policy and to secure your interests & and make sure that future governments run the country with a straitjacket.= Many Chileans feel disillusioned by both attempts. But others, like Claudio Sandóval, still believe the experiment has been worthwhile. Sandóval, a 52-year-old in Santiago, plans to vote against the proposed charter 4 but hopes that someday the country will rewrite Pinochet9s Magna Carta. <It has been worth the effort,= Sandóval said. <It9s a shame we haven9t got a new constitution out of it, but we need change, and we have a clearer idea now of what that should look like.= John bartlett in santiago, Chile, and michelle boorstein in Washington contributed to this report. Chileans to vote on draft constitution inûuenced by American conservatism One of the proposed charter9s key architects is part of an inûuential group of scholars at Notre Dame estebAn FelIx/AP Workers prepare the former Mapocho train station in Santiago, Chile, to be used as a polling station in Sunday9s constitutional referendum. The vote comes just a year after Chileans rejected a leftist constitution. Polls suggest this proposal also will fail. PAblo VerA/AFP/getty ImAges ABOVE: Chilean politician Fanny Pollarolo (left) and another opponent of the proposed constitution demonstrate in Santiago last week. BELOW: Supporters of the draft constitution hold a campaign event in Santiago. The draft would replace Chile9s 1980 dictatorship-era constitution. estebAn FelIx/AP

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re A23 tor] asked me what was happening, and I said I9m waiting for someone to come and do an ultrasound on his abdomen. The doctor fell on his knees when he saw him and then started washing [the boy9s] face. I remember [the doctor] said something about <they hit our house.= And then he left. He realized that if [his nephew9s] here, then there could be others from the family. A life is born in the midst of death There was a woman who had a penetrating shrapnel in her abdomen and she was pregnant. A general surgeon that we had found said, <I can do this but I9m afraid that if there was a complication I would have to take the uterus out, and it9s a 19-year-old woman.= So we managed to [find] an obstetrician from the areas surrounding us; someone knew him and we called him and he came in and he did a Caesarean section. Suddenly, after all that death, to hear a child! You kind of just feel the sound of life for the first time in 40 days of death. You feel the sound of life. Making peace with dying one really distinctive night the bombing was so close and the building was shaking so violently, that was the night I kind of just sat down on my own and I just made peace with the idea that I wasn9t going to [survive]. It was extremely, it was extremely therapeutic. I was no longer anxious. I was at peace with myself and my choices in life. There was sadness, especially toward my youngest. I would send audio messages to [my] boys. Just to make sure that they heard my voice on the day that I die, as morbid as that [sounds]. But they weren9t morbid messages. They were just fun messages: I miss you! I love you! deciding to leave Gaza We finished operations around 5 a.m. and the anesthesiologist told us there was no more anesthetic left. And there is nothing else we could do. And that9s when I made the decision, literally made the decision around 6 o9clock, 7 o9clock in the morning, and we were out at 9. People, some carrying a wounded [person] in a wheelchair, to someone trying to drag a suitcase and then they give up on the suitcase and leave it. families with kids carrying 40 nylon bags trying to carry their belongings in them. It really was a kind of horrific scene. Life outside of Gaza I wake up around 3 a.m. Sleep is a problem now. There are days when you think you should be there. And there are days when, depending on the story, when there9s a story about the European hospital and the fact that they9ve run out of medication and their operating rooms aren9t running. And then you kind of think, things haven9t gotten that much different from when you were there, in terms of your ability to have stayed, if it would9ve made a difference. All the time you9re kind of second-guessing if I should have left. you back. the injured are the families of doctors I remember this kid whose face was just so covered with mud. I was looking after him because I was trying to stabilize and resuscitate, and this doctor, all he was trying to do was wash the mud off the face so that he could just see if it9s his nephew or not his nephew. Because the area that had been struck was their area. [The boy] was about 4 or 5 years old. He had limb injuries, he had open fractures in both legs. I9m on my knees, and doing all of this and I remember [the docwent to one of the rooms on the top floors of al-Ahli, which was partly destroyed. We all sat waiting for our turn in front of the mirror and he cut our hair and shaved our beards. He had brought his whole gear with him. And suddenly, everybody9s mood is picked up by this act of great generosity. Suddenly, the conversation flowed. We started talking about normal things and cracking jokes and making fun of, you know, the cut or the hair or the ones who have gray hairs and those who don9t. All of this. Suddenly there9s this oasis of normalcy that you find yourself in, that kind of takes old turning into the man of the house, the adult of the house. And because he9s the eldest of his siblings, and his mom is injured, he9s doing the errands and keeping them and taking them to the bathroom and talking to us to help get stuff for them. And you can see the kid trying to become a man. Finding moments of levity one day there was a barber around al-Ahli, lovely guy who ended up staying and helping out, just as a health-care assistant. He came to us and said he wanted to shave everyone, because we were all turning into cave men. We Dr. medhat Saidam. He was a plastic surgeon. His sister came with her children to the hospital because she had to evacuate her own home. So he decided to take her to his house because his sisters and brothers were at his house, and he thought he was in a safer neighborhood. A few hours later, the house was bombed. We knew that he was killed, and [thought] everybody else had been killed. And then a day later they [rescued] his wife and his three children. And the wife was injured in her foot. Eventually, we managed to get them to stay in an office in our department in the burns unit. You see [his] 12-yearperiods in the 54-year-old9s medical career, he said. But they were also marked by scenes of humanity and love and 4 in certain moments 4 unexpected levity. The Washington Post interviewed Abu Sitta over several hours about his experiences. He described the events that stayed with him during his time at alShifa and al-Ahli hospitals. His words have been lightly edited for clarity. there were days of hopelessness Do you know when you9re in the sea and a wave comes and covers you and for that split second, you9re trying to get your head above the water but you can9t because the wave is higher than you? It felt like that. You operate and you think you9ve done a good job, you9ve managed to get through 12 patients, but you know that in the last half-hour there was an air raid that brought in 70 or 80 [more] wounded and that you9ve done very little. There was this little girl, I think she was 8 or 9 years old, the daughter of a doctor at al-Shifa Hospital. The doctor was killed and her two [other] kids were killed, and [the girl was] alone. Half of her face was missing. Half her nose, her eyelids had been ripped from the bone and had moved sideways. When you start out those cases, you have to clean them, because it9s all dirt and dust and gravel in the wound. And I9m cleaning the face and I9m cleaning the hair to make sure there aren9t any injuries underneath the hair. And then suddenly you see the braids. And you see the hairband, the little plastic hairband, in the shape of a flower. And it9s that, that kind of just, you just, you lose your breath. You9re completely disarmed by it. You9re completely devastated by it. This is a beautiful little girl. Witnessing acts of love There were horrors, but at the same time there were acts of love. I was saying to somebody what happens when you live in the death world is that people start resisting the death world through acts of love. They become acts of resistance. There was a little boy, he was 3 years old, we didn9t know his name at al-Ahli. I amputated his leg and his arm. And the following day when I went to check up on him, the woman whose son was wounded in the bed next to him had him on her lap and was feeding him and her son, because he had no family. We didn9t even know his name because he was so young. These acts of love, these acts of kindness, people taking in people and even letting them stay in their houses for the whole war because they9d lost their homes. There was kind of almost a dissolution of individualism, and a return to old communal life, that everything gets shared. food gets shared. medication gets shared. Houses get shared, and that kind of dissolution is amazing. It9s amazing. When boys have to turn into men We lost one of our colleagues, dOCtOr from A1 israel-gaza war Harrowing, heartening, haunting days for Doctors Without Borders volunteer JAMeS forde for The WAShInGTon PoST Ghassan Abu Sitta and his wife, deema, at their home in London, where he is a reconstructive plastic surgeon. His weeks working at hospitals in the Gaza Strip as war raged there were among the most challenging and gruesome of his medical career, the 54-year-old said. LoAy AyyouB for The WAShInGTon PoST A seriously injured child is rushed into al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, one of the medical centers where Abu Sitta worked, on Oct. 11. GhASSAn ABu SITTA An operating room at al-Shifa. Abu Sitta, a British Palestinian, said he at one point made peace with the idea that he would not survive. BY LOVEDAY MORRIS AND RUBY MELLEN JERUSALEM 4 The three hostages who were accidentally shot dead by Israeli forces inside Gaza were holding a makeshift white flag when they were killed, a senior Israeli military official said Saturday. The account, provided in a briefing to reporters, compounded growing concerns over Israel9s lax regard for human life in Gaza as it wages a punishing war against Hamas militants. The hostages, all of whom were civilians, probably had either escaped or were abandoned by their captors before they tried to make their way toward an Israel Defense forces position in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya on friday, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with the rules of the briefing. They emerged <tens of meters= from where Israeli troops were stationed, he said. <They are all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it,= the official explained, adding that a soldier <felt threatened= and opened fire. The deaths have underscored the perilous risks for civilians in Gaza, including Palestinian residents and the more than 100 hostages believed to be still alive inside the territory. They also raise questions about the conduct of Israeli ground forces now operating across much of Gaza, a densely packed enclave where the population is hemmed in and has no safe place to run, the United Nations says. The United States is among several countries that have publicly urged Israel to scale back its military operations over fears of widespread harm to civilians. The offensive in Gaza has killed more than 18,700 people, according to the Gaza Health ministry, and the vast majority of residents have been displaced, often multiple times. The Israeli military official stressed that the incident on friday broke the IDf9s <rules of engagement,= directives issued to soldiers outlining when, where and how they can use force or enter combat. The IDf declined to answer questions about the rules. But critics say that the killings fit a pattern of excessive force the IDf has used against Palestinians for years, both in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, including during the current conflict. Avner Gvaryahu is a former IDf sergeant and director of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli nonprofit that gathers testimony from soldiers who have served in the Palestinian territories. He said Saturday that the risks to civilians come from the rules themselves, not from Israeli troops violating the directives. Gvaryahu pointed to the military9s tendency to unilaterally declare cities or entire regions combat zones as an example. <The structural rule that once you drop leaflets and you warn the population, you can treat these areas afterward as free fire zones,= Gvaryahu said, <is part of the reason we9ve seen such high levels of civilian deaths.= In some of the leaflets the military dropped in Gaza City, it warned any residents who remain that they will be considered <partners= to a terrorist organization, referring to Hamas. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 war in Gaza criticized the IDf for treating entire neighborhoods like <sterile= combat zones. <Those civilians choosing not to heed a warning do not lose the protection granted by their status,= the commission wrote. one Israeli soldier who fought in that war told Breaking the Silence that there were no rules of engagement, while another said that the rules were <very, very lax.= <most of the rules of engagement are given verbally,= said Gvaryahu. <It9s interpreted by the commander and the low-ranking officer, who add to that their own ideology and real sense of fear.= The IDf identified the dead hostages as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz of Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Samer Al-Talalka of Kibbutz Nir Am 4 all kidnapped on oct. 7 when Hamas led a shock attack inside Israel, killing at least 1,200 people. Two of the hostages were killed immediately when the soldier opened fire friday, the military official said, while one was injured and ran inside a building. As soldiers entered it, <a cry for help= was heard in Hebrew and the battalion commander issued an order to cease fire, the official said. But there was <another burst of fire= and the third hostage was killed. on Saturday, Israeli Defense minister Yoav Gallant said at a news conference that <the entire nation of Israel shares in the pain and grieves the loss endured by the families= of the hostages. <The price of war is a heavy one 4 we pay it every day,= he said, adding that the military was <willing to keep going= until Hamas was eliminated and the hostages <returned home to their families.= But the hostage deaths prompted an outpouring of anger among the families of the remaining captives. Thousands of people, including relatives of some of the people still held in Gaza, assembled for a rally on Saturday where they called for Israel to negotiate for the release of all the hostages. Lior Peri, the son of Haim Peri, a 79-year-old being held captive, said at the rally that the news of the three hostages killed by IDf soldiers was <highly devastating and extremely hard.= The only way to bring the hostages home, Peri said, is for the Israeli government to negotiate for their release. The government is not doing that, he said. Instead, it is <prioritizing the war= over freeing the hostages, he said. <That means a death sentence to my father= and his fellow hostages, Peri said. <Every day there is like a year for them.= family members have expressed concern that the campaign 4 including air and ground assaults 4 could endanger the hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups, as the whereabouts of many, if not all, of the captives remain unknown. At an anti-government protest, Eran Etzion, former deputy head of Israel9s National Security Council linked the killing of the hostages to inflammatory rhetoric used by members of the most far-right government in Israel9s history. That can have an <indirect effect and in some cases a direct effect on the behavior of civilians, sometimes of people in police uniform, sometimes on people with IDf uniforms,= he said. on Saturday, an Al Jazeera journalist who was wounded in a drone strike that also killed his cameraman said the Israeli military had approved their trip to the site that was subsequently struck in the southern city of Khan Younis. Speaking live on the network, Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh said he and his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, had traveled with civil defense rescuers on friday to visit a school that had come under attack. Still wearing bandages over his wounds, Dahdouh said that once their position was hit, he could hear Abu Daqqa screaming but could not help him because of his own injuries and returned to the ambulance to raise the alarm. He was then taken to the Nasser Hospital in central Khan Younis, Dahdouh said. Al Jazeera on friday blamed the casualties on an Israeli drone strike and said IDf troops prevented rescuers from reaching Abu Daqqa, who was <left to bleed to death for over five hours,= the network said. The Qatar-based channel said it <holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families= 4 a charge the IDf denied. <The IDf takes all operationally feasible measures to protect both civilians and journalists. The IDf has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,= it said in a statement Saturday. Mellen reported from Tel Aviv. Bryan Pietsch in Washington, Victoria Bisset in London, Andrew Jeong in Seoul, Miriam Berger in Jerusalem and Itay Stern in Tel Aviv contributed to this report. Three hostages killed by Israeli military were holding a white ûag

A24 eZ Re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 other journalists is very deliberate to tell every single person in Hong Kong: We won9t tell you where the line is, but if you even get close to it, the same thing will happen to you,= said Sebastien Lai, Jimmy Lai9s 29-year-old son. Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a professor of political science at University of Notre Dame, agreed the authorities were making an example of Lai. <It would not be an overstatement to say that the national security law was made for Jimmy,= she said. What is Lai charged with? Lai has been charged under the national security law with colluding with foreign forces, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Under a holdover law from the period when Hong Kong was a British colony that BY MEAGHAN TOBIN Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai will on Monday appear in court for a long-awaited trial that is emblematic of Beijing9s efforts to silence critics after the prodemocracy protests of 2019. Lai, the 76-year-old former publisher of the once-popular but now closed newspaper Apple Daily, has been imprisoned for more than three years. His trial will be held under the sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed in 2020 and effectively criminalizes dissent in the city. China has used the threat of punishment under the draconian law to further cement its grip on Hong Kong, including by muzzling media outlets over vaguely defined crimes such as <inciting subversion= and <collusion.= So far, every person tried under the new law has been convicted. Even among his most fervent supporters, there is little hope that Lai9s case will be any different. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Here9s what to know about the highly anticipated trial. Who is Jimmy Lai? Lai9s rags-to-riches story is the stuff of legend in Hong Kong: He arrived from China as a child stowaway on a Chinese fishing boat, worked in a factory, then became a multimillionaire businessman. He made his fortune during years when Hong Kong served as a crucial bridge between China9s growing economy and the wider world. After Beijing9s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Lai turned his attention to media and founded Next Digital, which published Apple Daily for nearly three decades. Lai devoted his fortune to backing the pro-democracy movement and became one of its most globally recognizable figures 4 and one of the Chinese Communist Party9s most outspoken critics. <There was nothing quite like Apple Daily in Hong Kong for all those years,= said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University. It was known for its raucous political coverage and gossip pages. <It was like if the New York Post had a strong pro-democracy message and was also willing to take on powerful voices,= Kellogg said. What happened to Apple Daily? Apple Daily was distinguished among other Chinese-language outlets for its support for Hong Kong9s pro-democracy movement, including the protests known as the <umbrella movement= that swept the city in 2014. Beijing imposed the national security law after millions of Hong Kongers took to the streets in a wave of protests in 2019 and 2020, putting Lai, with his track record of criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, squarely in its crosshairs. Lai was among the first people arrested under the new law. Police paraded him handcuffed through the Apple Daily newsroom. Within a year, its assets frozen and top editors detained, the publication shut down. Other independent Hong Kong media outlets such as Stand News were also soon targeted. <What they9re doing to my dad and what they9re doing to all the authorities have in recent years used to silence dissent, he also faces charges of sedition. Lai has already been imprisoned for more than three years 4 much of it in solitary confinement 4 while awaiting this trial. In the meantime, he has been convicted on multiple other charges, including for allegedly flouting the terms of Apple Daily9s office lease and for publicly commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. <What Beijing is trying to do with Jimmy Lai is really set an example,= said Lokman Tsui, a research fellow at the University of Toronto9s Citizen Lab. <Here is this person who had the audacity to stand up to Beijing and criticize the government, backed by his own money 4 for Beijing, it was paramount that he be controlled.= Controversy has stalked Lai9s national security trial, and it has been delayed multiple times. He has been denied bail while he waits. Tim Owen, a British lawyer specializing in criminal law and human rights, was barred from representing Lai on the grounds that foreign lawyers should not be able to argue a national security case. The procedural difficulties and delays have been interpreted as signs that the Hong Kong judges are taking their direction from Beijing. <To call it a trial is really a farce,= Tsui said. <This is part of a worldwide trend toward authoritarianism 4 Beijing has been leading that development, and this case in Hong Kong is a really clear example.= What is at stake in the trial? Lai9s treatment has served as a stark indicator of the Hong Kong government9s outlook on free expression under the national security law. Rights groups say Lai9s trajectory parallels that of Hong Kong itself 4 and points to just how much the freedoms that previously distinguished the city from China have been eroded. Under the <one country, two systems= arrangement Beijing made when it gained control of the former British colony in 1997, Hong Kong citizens9 rights and freedoms were meant to be protected for the next 50 years. The city was known for its democratic politics, vibrant civil society and freewheeling media. <Those were the things that defined Hong Kong, and to see all those things instead used to persecute Lai deepens the distrust and hostility many people in Hong Kong have toward the Chinese government,= said Maya Wang, associate director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch. <Lai9s trial really represents a failure on Beijing9s part,= she said. <People welcomed the handover, but all that goodwill was squandered.= Hong Kong9s reputation for strong rule of law made the city into a hub for international companies with business in China through the 1990s and into the 2000s. But the ambiguity of the national security law, and the fact that it has been applied to activities that predated it, have made Hong Kong a less predictable business environment. <This is really creating an ongoing public relations and reputational difficulty for Hong Kong,= said Kellogg at Georgetown. Has the United States taken a position? A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month proposed sanctioning 49 Hong Kong officials, judges and lawyers involved in persecuting pro-democracy activists under the national security law. The officials included the secretary of justice and the chief of police. <The national security law imposed by the People9s Republic of China in 2020 delivered a body blow to human rights and democracy in Hong Kong,= said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in a statement about the proposed bill. In 2020, the Trump administration ended Hong Kong9s preferential trade status just weeks after the national security law took effect, pledging to treat the city the same as China. It also sanctioned officials in Beijing and Hong Kong it said were responsible for oppression in the city, including Chief Executive John Lee. Lai9s case is just the latest example of the effort, said Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) in the same statement. What to know about Hong Kong media mogul9s national security trial VIncent yu/aP Former publisher Jimmy Lai leaves Hong Kong9s Court of Final Appeal in February 2021 after he was charged with violating Hong Kong9s national security law in 2020. DanIel suen/aFP/getty Images An Apple Daily journalist holds freshly-printed copies of the newspaper9s last edition June 24, 2021, in Hong Kong. YOUR HOUSE IS A POWER PLANT. Powered by Green Brillance DC#410513000232, MHIC#139934, VA#2705120410 When you generate your own energy, you no longer have to pay those high electricity bills. Even if you need to supplement your electricity from the local utility, you will be purchasing a lot less and seeing much lower bills. For pricing, visit www.SunburstSolarEnergy.com or call 301-246-8824

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post ez re A25 During his time in that post, the secretariat invested in a luxury building on London9s fashionable Sloane Avenue through an Italian financier, Raffaele Mincione. The property once served as warehouses for the Harrods department store. With upgrades, the Vatican was supposed to make a mint. Instead, it turned out that the property had been radically overvalued. It was sold last year at a $175 million loss. But before that, attempts by the secretariat to refinance a loan through the Vatican bank set off alarm bells that got back to the pope and triggered the broader investigation. During the trial, Becciu decried his transformation from pious cleric to <monster.= Behind the scenes, he set out to prove his innocence. In 2021, he wrote letters to Francis, urging the pope to confirm he had knowledge of, and even supported, the London deal. Becciu also asked Francis to admit he had prior knowledge of the agreement with Marogna, the woman with the Slovenian charity who was paid a fee for unclear services. Becciu has said he believed the money was going to assist the liberation of Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez, a Colombian nun kidnapped in 2017 in Mali. Marogna was convicted of embezzlement Saturday and sentenced to three years and nine months. Becciu secretly recorded a phone call in which Francis appeared sympathetic to his plight. But a follow-up letter in which he asked for the pope9s support against the charges drew a frosty response in legalese, in which Francis expressed his <surprise= at Becciu9s request and said he could not help him. <I regret to inform you that I cannot comply with your request,= the pope wrote. The prosecutors9 case rested in part on the testimony of Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a Vatican official who signed contracts related to a London property in 2018. Perlasca, initially a target of the investigation, altered his testimony and became a witness for the prosecution against Becciu. Former Vatican official Francesca Chaouqui 4 jailed for 10 months in connection to the Vatileaks scandal, which was seen as helping prompt Pope Benedict XVI9s resignation 4 later testified that she had sought to influence Perlasca after blaming Becciu for playing a role in her downfall. BY ANTHONY FAIOLA AND STEFANO PITRELLI VATICAN CITY 4 Inside the high walls of the Holy See, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu 4 former head of the office of <miracles= that minted saints 4 was considered papabile, a possible next pope. Then his career collided with church prosecutors, who charged the 75-year-old Italian and nine other officials with corruption, setting up the Vatican9s trial of the century. On Saturday, Becciu 4 the first cardinal to be tried by the Vatican9s little-known criminal court 4 was found guilty of three counts of embezzlement and sentenced to five years and six months in a verdict read out in a converted quarter of the museum that houses the Sistine Chapel. He was acquitted of charges of money laundering, abuse of office and influencing a witness. Becciu9s lawyers said they would appeal the decision. But the ruling put the cardinal closer to one of Vatican City9s handful of jail cells 4 a result that amounts to both an affirmation of accountability and an embarrassment for an institution that has struggled for decades to root out corruption. Becciu was barred from holding any Vatican office and fined 8,000 euros (around $8,700). The trial, a hodgepodge of charges heard over a marathon of 86 courtroom hearings, offered an unusual glimpse into the murky world of Vatican finances and Pope Francis9s campaign for accountability 4 even, critics argued, at the cost of due process. Eight of Becciu9s co-defendants 4 Vatican officials, Italian business executives, consultants and brokers 4 were found guilty of financial crimes or abuse of office. A ninth was acquitted of all charges. But the star defendant was Becciu, a papal confidant before a surprise 2020 meeting during which Francis dramatically confronted him with the accusations against him. In response, Becciu resigned as head of the Vatican department that leads the canonization process. Francis stripped him of his privileges as cardinal before any finding of guilt. Later, some of those rights were unofficially reinstated. The court ordered the guilty to pay the Vatican more than $200 million in restitution. The Vatican, however, also emerges worse for wear, with new questions raised about the effectiveness and fairness of its legal system. The prosecution, portrayed by church leaders as an exercise in transparency, appeared to backfire in key ways, bringing unwanted attention to the intrigue, infighting and ineptitude at heart of the Holy See. <The pope ended up kicking a hornets9 nest,= said Giovanni Maria Vian, a former editor of the Vatican newspaper. The sweeping investigation was prompted by a bad Vatican investment in a tony London property that led to massive losses. As prosecutors dug, they discovered transfers of 200 million euros approved by Becciu in 2013 and 2014 and wired in connection to the London deal. The court found that the transactions were embezzlement. Other senior Vatican officials who signed off on the London deal were never indicted, and the pope had been apprised of it. Becciu was also found guilty of illegally funneling 125,000 euros (about $136,400) to a Sardinian charity run by his brother and transferring 570,000 euros (about $622,000) to Cecilia Marogna, a Sardinian woman with a humanitarian organization in Slovenia who, Becciu said, was supposed to help free a kidnapped nun. A lawyer for Becciu rejected the verdict. <We9re certain that the proceedings have proven the cardinal9s innocence,= attorney Fabio Viglione said. Viglione said Becciu was <embittered= by the verdict and insisted he had always acted in <agreement with his superiors.= Vatican 8trial of the century9 ûnds cardinal guilty of embezzlement up during the past decade, a process begun under Pope Benedict XVI and accelerated under Francis. Francis has also required Vatican officials to sign pledges declaring that they have no assets in tax havens and banned employees from accepting gifts worth more than $50. The Becciu case <says a lot about the pope9s will 4 theatrical and spectacular 4 to clean house,= said the Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, a noted Vatican watcher. <Becciu became a sort of symbol, or a scapegoat & of a system that had to be dealt with at last.= Diddi sought prison sentences between four and 13 years for the defendants, as well as nearly 500 million euros in restitution. Becciu maintained his <absolute innocence= and contended he did not steal <a single euro.= Some questioned why the Vatican sought to prosecute the complicated case that ran from Britain to Slovenia to Italy in the first place, rather than turn it over to better-equipped Italian authorities. Becciu, who served at one time as de facto chief of staff of the Vatican9s secretariat of state, traveled frequently with Francis and was seen as one of the few men within the Holy See who could knock freely on the pope9s door. aLberto PIzzoLI/aFP/getty Images Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu attends a Vatican consistory for the creation of new cardinals in 2022 at St. Peter9s Basilica. He was sentenced in the Vatican9s court to five years and six months. <We aren9t giving up,= Viglione said. Before the trial, Francis approved secret edicts aimed at empowering prosecutors, including one that allowed investigators to engage in wiretapping. Supporters said the pope was increasing transparency; critics called it overreach by a man who rules Vatican City as an absolute monarch. Vatican prosecutors were plagued by setbacks, including questions about the credibility of their star witness and revelations that he had been coached by a Becciu adversary. But the verdict, they said, vindicated them. <We were told we were incompetent and ignorant,= said Alessandro Diddi, who led the prosecution. <They said all sorts of things. But in reality, the end result proved us right.= A pope elected with a mandate to reform the Roman Curia 4 the opaque bureaucracy that runs Vatican City 4 was seen as having made strides toward improving financial transparency. The Vatican bank, long tainted by secretive accounting and money-laundering scandals, underwent a cleanDanIeL LeaL/aFP/getty Images The trial included Becciu9s involvement with the Vatican9s purchase of this London building, which was sold at a $175 million loss.

A26 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 insistence that Israel needed to show not just the intent, but the actions necessary to protect civilians. Vice President Harris, after meetings in Dubai with Arab leaders earlier this month said that <As Israel defends itself, it matters how. The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.= Last week, Biden warned that Israel was <starting to lose [international] support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place,= and intimated that a change in Netanyahu9s extreme right-wing government might prove the answer. The president9s comments brought a flood of questions as to whether Biden was accusing Israel of war crimes, or perhaps misspoke. <I don9t think Biden made a mistake,= Daalder said. <I think he believes this. & He9s been quite clear that he is absolutely fed up with the Israeli government.= <The question for Biden is at what point do you say 8enough?9= he added. The European diplomat put it another way. <I think Biden has probably been listened to more than one might have expected. Which isn9t to say Netanyahu is listening to him a lot.= Netanyahu has not hesitated in the past to thumb his nose at U.S. presidents, most memorably when he addressed a joint session of Congress in 2015. The appearance had been arranged by the republican House leadership without the knowledge of the obama administration, and republican lawmakers applauded loudly as Netanyahu denounced U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, a major foreign policy initiative of President Barack obama. Some regional experts and former U.S. foreign policy officials have urged the president to be more bold in showing the rest of the world that he can follow words with actions where the Palestinians are concerned. As a longtime supporter of Israel, <I don9t think he has to be on the defensive about this,= Daalder said of Biden. <He9s earned his stripes.= Missy Ryan contributed to this report. Israel9s right to continue its siege of Gaza has set it apart from partner countries. But they insist they have not seen any nations halt cooperation or change their stances on unrelated matters. They acknowledge that such spillover effects could occur as the conflict deepens, but cite a potential positive effect: that America is showing its resolve to stand by friends, even when it is unpopular. And they attribute much of the Arab criticism to those governments9 need to placate their own citizens9 anger with vocal support for the plight of Palestinians. But key partners in the region are deeply unhappy, potentially scuttling a path forward. foreign minister Ayman Safadi of Jordan, a critical ally in Washington9s goal of building a longterm peace between Israelis and Palestinians, has been among the most publicly outspoken. <How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression is over?= Safadi told a conference in Bahrain. <People are being killed day in and day out,= he said. <And then we9re supposed to come and clean the mess after Israel. That9s not going to happen.= The administration9s position, while holding fast to its insistence that Israel no lasting peace would come to Gaza until Hamas is militarily destroyed, has steadily evolved since the oct. 7 attacks. <The instinct on day one was to be very clear about Israel9s right to self-defense,= the senior administration official said. <[B]ut even from the start, we took the position that when Israel responded= it must do so <consistent with the rules of war, allowing humanitarian assistance in and doing as much as possible to limit civilian casualties.= The latter message became even more pronounced <as conditions deteriorated= and Gaza came under withering Israel air and ground attacks, with a rising civilian death toll and the enclave increasingly turned to rubble. Washington began <hearing complaints and criticism, not just from friends, but all over the world. Not just internationally, but domestically,= the official said. In visits to the region, Blinken was increasingly outspoken in his what Israel is doing in Gaza.= <It makes the argument harder to maintain,= he said. <Even war has rules,= said U.N. General Assembly President Dennis francis, of Trinidad and Tobago, in opening last week9s session on a cease-fire resolution, <and it is imperative that we prevent any deviation from these principles and values, the validity of which resides in their universal application.= Some of the harshest words have come from close U.S. partners in the middle East. It was <a despicable sign of double standards,= Egypt9s U.N. Ambassador osama Abdelkhalek told the assembly, when those who call for ending aggression and occupation and <for respecting international humanitarian law in specific cases & unfortunately and shamelessly, they turn their backs on & other situations, especially when concerning Palestinians.= U.S. officials acknowledge that the administration9s support for They9re small things; it would be much better if there were more things and bigger things.= It is not just friendly foreign partners who are urging the Biden administration to do more. Some White House, State Department and U.S. aid officials have now gone public with their objections to Biden9s unwavering support for Israel, arguing that the Gaza conflict could have larger ramifications for U.S. leadership. In its efforts to woo the Global South away from moscow and China, Washington has called russia9s invasion of Ukraine a colonial war of aggression. Yet for many, Israel9s war on Gaza looks virtually the same. <Israel was attacked, and it has a right to self-defense,= Daalder said. <But it is doing so in a territory it occupies, and which the entire world thinks is occupied territory. on the one hand, we9re trying to get other countries to oppose what russia is doing in Ukraine, while on the other hand we9re trying to have them support NATo. Since the early 1970s, the United States has vetoed dozens of resolutions deemed critical of Israel. massive Israeli retaliation for attacks by militant Islamists is also well-trodden ground. <Although the scale of the Hamas attack= on oct. 7, when 1,200 Israelis were brutally killed and about 240 hostages were taken, <was more awful than anything Israel has ever seen, the pattern whereby Israel reacts and keeps on reacting even though we all ask them to stop, that9s not new,= said a senior European diplomat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity about the ongoing conflict. <I don9t think they9ve lost credibility,= the diplomat said of the Biden administration. <The Israelis didn9t want to do the pauses,= in combat operations that ultimately allowed many of the hostages to be freed, or <to let aid in= to suffering Gaza civilians. <[Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and Biden got them to do so. & the region and elsewhere,= the official said. <That9s part of the message to Israel 4 it9s not even helpful to them if we are feeling such pressure. Which we are.= The most obvious isolation is in international forums such as the United Nations, where the United States has been virtually alone in opposing Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Last week, as the 193-member General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a similar measure, the administration was joined by just nine other countries 4 including only Czechia among NATo members 4 in voting no. Being in a small U.N. minority, especially where Israel is concerned, is nothing new for Washington. <on this issue, the United States stands pretty much alone, and has for a very long time,= said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to diplomAcy from A1 U.S. support of Israel comes at a cost as allies bristle, tensions rise ON HOLIDAY These Sunday sections will be taking a brief break during the next few weeks. Book World will not publish on Sunday, December 24. It will return the following week, Sunday, December 31. Travel will not run on Sunday, December 31. Look for its return on January 7, 2024. N0693 2x10.5 Our commitment to providing a safe, healthy, and respectful worksite and experience. ® Balance. Harmony. Gratitude. CaseDesign.com 844.831.5966 4From our home to yours, we wish you and your loved ones a safe and joyous holiday. MD MHIC #1176 | VA # 2701039723 | DC # 2242

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re a27 For all the social-media-driven craze over Ozempic and other weight-loss medications, for all the speculation about whether Kim Kardashian jabbed her way into a vintage Marilyn Monroe dress for last year9s Met Gala, this is a significant moment, and a welcome one, in the never-ending debate about obesity, responsibility and blame. Because Winfrey is America9s national scale. Even as some of us 4 most of us 4 have struggled with weight in private, we have witnessed her excruciatingly public ups and downs with an unattractive blend of judgment, horror and schadenfreude. <It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,= she said. <I have been blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself." A decade ago, the American Medical Association declared obesity a chronic disease requiring medical attention. But only since the recent recognition that Ozempic and other diabetes medications could be used for weight loss has the debate started to shift from seeing weight as a test of self-discipline and personal responsibility for poor choices to understanding it as a mixture of contributing factors: genetic predisposition, brain chemistry and environmental influences. O h-oh-oh-oh-Oprah! Oh, yes. The world9s most famous yo-yo dieter has revealed: She, too, is on the drug known as Ozempic or one of its weight-loss cousins. Winfrey has liquid-dieted, losing 67 pounds only to gain most of it back. She has counted WeightWatchers points. She has lamented feeling <like a cow.= She has spent, she wrote in 2017, <literally years on more diets than I care to count,= and claimed she was done with dieting. Earlier this year, she seemed to resist resorting to weight-loss drugs. As she pondered whether to use medication, Winfrey said, <I felt, 8I9ve got to do this on my own. I9ve got to do this on my own.9 Because if I take the drug, that9s the easy way out.= Reader, she took it 4 and good for her and for her decision to go public about that choice. From a self-reported high of 237 pounds, she is a svelte, stunning 167, just seven pounds over her goal weight. <The fact that there9s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier . . . feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,= Winfrey told People magazine. <I realized I9d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control,= said Winfrey, who turns 70 next month. <Obesity is a disease. It9s not about willpower 4 it9s about the brain.= As someone who has struggled with weight throughout my adult life 4 never quite reaching the technical marker of obesity but rarely at a weight that felt comfortable or healthy 4 I get this. With the help of Ozempic, I9ve lost, and kept off, more than 40 pounds in the past two years. It took me months to get past Winfrey9s initial reaction 4 that relying on medication was <the easy way out= 4 and to be straightforward about my Ozempic use. But it9s also important to recognize that the experience of individuals who are overweight or obese encompasses a spectrum of needs. We are only at the early stages of figuring out what role medication should play, for what populations, and how it can be made affordable for patients and insurers. To channel Oprah, a regime of <You get a jab!= and <You get a jab!= and <You get a jab!= isn9t economically sustainable. The experience of WeightWatchers, where Winfrey has an ownership stake and sits on the board, helps illustrate the new world that has been ushered in by the availability of this growing class of drugs, which include Ozempic and its weightloss twin, Wegovy, and Mounjaro and its newly approved equivalent, Zepbound. Recognizing the changed landscape, WeightWatchers has adopted the if-youcan9t-beat-9em-acquire-9em approach: It bought a telehealth company that connects patients with physicians who can prescribe weight-loss medication. (It might not be a coincidence that Winfrey9s disclosure came the day before WeightWatchers rolled out its new WeightWatchers Clinic service incorporating the new prescription program. WeightWatchers9 stock dropped 15 percent after her previous comments calling the drugs an <easy way out,= comments that Winfrey said were misconstrued. The stock rose more than 6 percent Thursday.) WeightWatchers9 new, tech-savvy CEO, Sima Sistani, has apologized to members for its previous stance that willpower would suffice. <Unknowingly, we introduced the shame for people [for whom] diet and exercise were not enough,= Sistani said on the panel with Winfrey. <We want to be the first to say where we got it wrong.= But how to get it right with the availability of these new medications? The Food and Drug Administration has said they are appropriate for patients with a body mass index of 30 or greater or a BMI of 27 plus a weight-related medical issue. BMI, though, is an imperfect measure of obesity. In many cases, it matters where your fat is located. Some ethnic groups tend to carry a higher fat mass than others; for them, even a lower BMI could be problematic. And what of someone who is chronically 20 pounds overweight but doesn9t cross the established limits? Is she consigned to fruitless efforts at summoning the willpower to lose that weight and keep it off, while others are eligible for medical intervention? Does she have to gain more weight before being allowed access to the medication that will enable her to lose it? Where is the right place to draw the line? How to know? There aren9t simple answers here. But Winfrey9s wise words 4 that the availability of this medication feels like <like redemption, like a gift= 4 offer a jumping-off point for some honest talk about how to handle this wonderful new opportunity that science has brought us. ruth Marcus Weight-loss drugs now have Oprah9s seal of approval. I still have questions. sending arms to help Ukraine fight off Russia9s invasion while also toughening U.S. border policies. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pleaded with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to keep his chamber in session so that the emergency spending package could be passed before year9s end. Johnson refused 4 prompting Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to say it would be <practically impossible= to pass the desperately needed bill. Likewise, Johnson, who, as Punchbowl News noted, has proved to be <unwilling or unable to make tough decisions,= couldn9t decide which of two competing bills the House should pass to reauthorize a program known as Section 702 that falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is vital to national security. So he scheduled House votes on both of them 4 which caused the House Republican caucus to devolve Monday night into yet another round of bickering, with Rep. Warren Davidson (Ohio) accusing Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner of <f---ing lying.= Once again paralyzed, House GOP leaders yanked both bills from consideration on the floor. Instead, they moved on to the Duck Stamp Modernization Act of 2023 4 no doubt a matter of great importance to waterfowl hunters. The dysfunction shows every sign that it will continue in the new year. The House Freedom Caucus, whose members routinely kneecapped Republican leaders and derailed proceedings in the House in 2023, just elected as their new leader Rep. Bob Good (Va.), one of the most doctrinaire members of the caucus and one of the eight Republicans who ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Davidson, in a letter to colleagues intercepted by Axios9s Juliegrace Brufke, alluded to Good9s bomb-throwing tendencies and asked that the group <prayerfully consider electing someone else.= They went with the legislative terrorist anyway. As a holiday gift, Freedom Caucus members lobbed one more bomb on the final day of the session. They were furious that their various attempts to ignite culture wars over abortion policy and LGBTQ+ rights had been stripped from the annual National Defense Authorization Act in negotiations with the Senate. So Chip Roy (Tex.) and 22 other Republicans delayed its passage by forcing a vote to adjourn. The bill passed anyway 4 as usual, with mostly Democratic votes. As the year ends, Ukraine will have to wait for more ammo. The federal government will have to wait for its 2024 funding to be settled. But there was one priority so urgent that it absolutely could not wait until after vacation, and it united every single Republican in the caucus. The day before skipping town, they voted in a party-line vote of 221-212 to put the House on an all- but-inevitable course toward impeaching Biden for the high crime and misdemeanor of having a drug-addicted son. A mere six weeks ago, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.) said he would be bringing in the remaining witnesses in his impeachment probe, including Hunter Biden, <for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose.= On Wednesday morning, Hunter Biden pulled into the Capitol driveway and stood on a patio called the Senate Swamp. <Here I am, Mr. Chairman, taking up your offer, when you said we can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose,= the president9s son said in front of the cameras. <Well, I9ve chosen. I am here to testify at a public hearing.= But Comer had changed his mind. Now he would allow the younger Biden only to appear in a secret deposition from which the chairman could cherry-pick. <The president9s son does not get to set the rules,= Comer complained to reporters after Biden9s remarks. Soon thereafter, Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan announced <contempt of Congress proceedings= against Biden for the offense of insisting that his testimony A year ago, I assigned myself to the Capitol to cover the new House Republican majority, suspecting that this erratic crowd of lawmakers would provide some lively material. They did not disappoint. What I could not have known then, however, was that this would turn out to be the most ineffective session of Congress in nearly a century 4 and quite possibly in all of American history. The year began with chaos and incompetence. It ended with chaos and incompetence. In between were self-created crises and shocking moments of fratricide 4 interspersed with more chaos and incompetence. <This will go down as . . . the least productive Congress since the Great Depression,= Rep. Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado, observed this past week as the Rules Committee marked up plans for an impeachment inquiry into President Biden for imaginary crimes. Neguse almost certainly understates the case. While it9s true, as HuffPost9s Jonathan Nicholson pointed out, that Congress got even less done in 1931, this is only because it didn9t start its session that year until December. It seems probable that no Congress in American history has spent so much time accomplishing so little as this one. What do House Republicans have to show the voters for their year in power? A bipartisan debt deal (on which they promptly reneged) to avoid a default crisis that they themselves created. A pair of temporary spending bills (both passed with mostly Democratic votes) to avert a government-shutdown crisis that they themselves created. The ouster of their speaker, nearly a month-long shutdown of the chamber as they sought another, and the expulsion of one of their members, who is now negotiating himself a plea deal. Among the 22 bills in 2023 that became law as of this past week was landmark legislation such as: H.R. 3672, <To designate the clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Indian River, Michigan, as the 8Pfc. Justin T. Paton Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic.9 = Also, H.R. 5110, the <Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act,= which authorizes federal education funds <to purchase or use dangerous weapons= for instruction. On Thursday, the House, exhausted from its labors, recessed for a three-week vacation, leaving behind a pile of urgent, unfinished business, including funds to arm Ukraine and fortify the southern border. When the lawmakers return, they will have just eight legislative days to pass something to avoid the latest government shutdown 4 on which they have made no progress so far. But before rushing home for the holidays, Republicans did manage to approve, in a partyline vote, a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden for imaginary crimes that even they could not identify. <I t9s been an up-and-down year,= Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana said in a year-end news conference. (He was half right.) <I know for those of you in the press, there9s never been a week where it was boring for you.= (This was true.) <Next year is going to be just as busy,= he went on. (That shouldn9t be hard.) He acknowledged, <There9s talk about how hard it9s been,= but he blamed the Democratic Senate for the inaction. Nice try. This Senate, with a similar majority, was highly productive in the last Congress. And Congress, even under divided government, has routinely found ways to function 4 until this gang took over the House. The final week was typical. In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans feverishly negotiated a compromise that would allow the United States to keep be in public. What were they trying to prevent Americans from seeing? That <my father was not financially involved in my business,= as Hunter Biden declared outside the Capitol? That <MAGA Republicans= have taken <the light of my dad9s love for me and presented it as darkness=? The perpetually paranoid Jordan found even those words to be evidence of guilt. <He said his father was not financially involved in the business, and I think that qualifier, the word 8financially,9 is important,= Jordan said, conspiratorially. Did Jordan suppose the elder Biden was romantically involved in his son9s businesses? Emotionally involved? IMPEACH! As for his insistence that Hunter Biden testify in secret, Comer said, <This has been, I think, the most transparent, political 4 er, congressional investigation.= Nothing says <transparent= quite like a closed-door deposition. <On this show, we9ve been calling for Hunter to go and sit in a chair on Capitol Hill in front of the TV cameras for the last year,= co-host Steve Doocy said on <Fox & Friends= last week. <Now, Hunter9s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, says he will do that, but Comer and Jim Jordan say, no, it9s not negotiable, he9s got to be in private.= That9s not all the normally MAGAfriendly host had to say. <It looks like they9ve got the goods on Hunter Biden, but the Republicans have not made the case yet where Joe Biden profited from it,= he told Fox News viewers. <They haven9t explained how it implicates Joe,= he added, and <they have not shown Joe Biden did anything illegal.= S everal Senate Republicans share those doubts about the House race to impeach. <I don9t see the grounds,= Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) told Politico9s Anthony Adragna. <There9s been no evidence provided to the public yet or certainly to me to suggest an impeachment inquiry or impeachment itself is justified,= said Mitt Romney (Utah). <You9re not going to have this president impeached based on the evidence that we9ve seen,= offered Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Chuck Grassley of Iowa told CNN9s Manu Raju on Wednesday that <the facts haven9t taken me to that point where I can say the president is guilty of anything.= In their candid moments, House Republicans admit as much. Just a month ago, Johnson told his caucus that there wasn9t sufficient evidence to start formal impeachment proceedings. Reps. Ken Buck (Colo.), Mike McCaul (Tex.), Don Bacon (Neb.), Lisa C. McClain (Mich.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), John Curtis (Utah), Dusty Johnson (S.D.) and others also had doubts about the evidence produced 4 but every one of them voted for the impeachment circus to proceed. They had no choice. Donald Trump ordered it. <Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!= he ordered them in August. He made it explicit in September that impeaching Biden was about nothing more than revenge: <Had they not done it to me,= then <perhaps you wouldn9t have it being done to them.= Republicans from competitive districts tripped over themselves to say they were not voting for impeachment. But they were very likely teeing up at least a House vote to impeach Biden, because hard-liners aren9t about to shut down their impeachment inquiry empty- handed. At Tuesday9s debate on the impeachment resolution before the Rules Committee, Democrats exhausted their thesauruses in denouncing the move: sham, stunt, ludicrous, lie, pathetic joke, colossal waste of time. <We are here because Donald Trump ordered you to be here,= said the ranking Democrat, Jim McGovern (Mass.). Republicans didn9t really try to conceal that they were acting out of vengeance for Trump9s impeachments. <You can9t say that what was good enough for President Trump is no longer good enough for President Biden,= said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.). <So the Democrats shifted the standard. Frankly, now, impeachment 4 you could view it as almost a political exercise.= He later elaborated: <Now we have a situation where impeachment, the standard of impeachment has been lowered to such a degree that, again, it9s merely, at this point, a political exercise. Not that this is a political exercise.= Of course not! P ressed by Neguse to say which specific crime the Biden inquiry was investigating, Reschenthaler had no answer. Members of the majority on the panel made their case with a series of out-ofcontext insinuations. They pointed out that Joe Biden met his son9s business partners 4 while omitting that, according to testimony, they exchanged only pleasantries. They condemned Biden for using an email <pseudonym= 4 ignoring that this is a common, fully regulated practice in the White House to avoid spam that would be sent to obvious email addresses such as, say, [email protected]. They tut-tutted about the $14 million from foreign interests they said Biden family members received 4 while neglecting to mention the billions of foreign dollars that similarly flowed to Trump family members. To this, the Republicans added extraneous insults. Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) alleged that Biden is <cognitively gone,= saying, <The man is not there. . . . He doesn9t know where he is.= And yet at the same time Republicans allege that he is the mastermind of the greatest political scandal in U.S. history. The debate on the House floor was no more illuminating. Comer, keeping his place in his speech with his finger, prattled on about <schemes= and <shell companies.= Norman offered a novel twist on the whole innocent-until-proven-guilty concept. <You cannot, just not, uh, say you are innocent and not have to prove it,= he told the House. Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) spoke about Jill and Joe Biden trying to help Hunter with his drug addiction, such as with payments for his truck. <Shame on my colleagues for politicizing a parent9s pain,= she said. On the Republican side, Norman, Erin Houchin (Ind.) and Byron Donalds (Fla.) all laughed out loud at this. And, as usual, the Republicans cited the sins of the son as justification for impeaching the father. <The son of the president of the United States is a tax cheat!= Donalds thundered. The Congressional Record from Wednesday9s debate contained 61 mentions of Hunter by name. <You9ll notice,= McGovern responded, <my Republican friends never talk about Joe Biden. It9s all Hunter Biden.= Donalds, ignoring House rules, heckled McGovern, shouting, <Didn9t I just say Joe Biden?= The presiding officer did nothing. Democrat Eric Swalwell (Calif.) congratulated Republicans for their dogged pursuit of the president9s son. <I want to give James Comer some credit,= he told the House, <because after 50,000 pages of depositions and secret hearings and closed hearings, I think if we give him enough time, he is going to prove that Hunter Biden is Joe Biden9s son.= After the do-nothingest congressional session in U.S. history, that might go down as their most notable achievement. Dana Milbank Worst. Congress. Ever. JaBin BoTsford/The WashingTon PosT House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is flanked by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Nov. 29. The dysfunction shows every sign that it will continue in the new year. sunday opinion

A28 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 opinion INTRODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATTEO PERICOLI I n 2004, as my wife and I were moving out of our New York City apartment, I was overtaken by a rush of panic. I was leaving behind something important: the view from our window. My attempts to photograph it failed. The photos were too literal, showing either a bunch of buildings or a window frame. What I was looking for was a mix of objective substance and intangible reality, of concreteness and memory. So, I decided to draw the view on a piece of brown paper 4 almost as large as the window itself. Once finished, I rolled it up and took it with me to our new home. I9ve been drawing window views ever since, and over the years, I9ve come to realize that looking out a window doesn9t just reveal a cityscape or landscape 4 it can prompt you to reflect inward, compel you to retrace the steps that have brought you to that particular threshold at that precise moment in your life. In 2017, I met Bill Shipsey, founder of Art for Human Rights (formerly Art for Amnesty), an artist-engagement program he created to support Amnesty International. Together we conceived <Windows on Elsewhere: 60 Refugees, 60 Views,= a project in which we would collect window views from a diverse range of refugees from around the world. The drawings I9d make from their photographs would depict their views from <elsewhere,= the places they had moved to. Their accompanying essays would reflect on their journeys, on stories left behind. Past would fuse with present. We looked for refugee contributors from around the world, people who had been in exile for long and short periods of time. The process started with their sending me many photographs, which helped me reconstruct the views in my mind and feel as though I was standing in front of their windows. After I completed the drawings, we shared them with the contributors 4 and the subsequent stories they sent back would explode in my mind, inevitably blending with and informing, almost impossibly after the fact, the very lines I had already drawn. Seeing is not a straightforward process. Memory and our experiences actively affect what we perceive and how we perceive it. A window frame offers an objective point of view of a physical place and a metaphorical <frame= of a moment in time. For people who have been displaced, who left their homes involuntarily, this has special resonance. As the accompanying texts make clear, a refugee9s inner journey never ends. The emotional mark left by the original impulse to flee continuously shapes how they see their world. Matteo Pericoli is an architect, illustrator and writer. He was born in Milan, lived in New York from 1995 to 2008 and lives in Turin, Italy. These drawings and essays are taken from <Windows on Elsewhere: 60 Refugees, 60 Views,= a project he conceived and executed with Bill Shipsey between 2018 and 2021. The essays were edited for style and clarity. Windows on exile Refugees share their views 4 and peer beyond Viet Thanh Nguyen T his is the most beautiful view from a home that I have ever had. It far surpasses the worst view 4 from my childhood window 4 of the highway entrance ramp that soared over our backyard in San Jose, Calif. I gazed often out that window, wondering where those cars were going, wanting with all my being to one day go somewhere far from home. And yet the room I gazed from was the master bedroom, which my parents had given to me. They worked constantly and perhaps felt they would make little use of a large bedroom. And maybe they felt that this room, where I could play and fantasize about all kinds of scenarios, might make up for the time they could not spend with me. But they never said these things, even after I left home. These were the costs and trade-offs of refugee life, of inarticulate silences and articulate sacrifices. This history frames my current window, overlooking a Los Angeles garden as it frames any view and any observer. The window is in the second home I have owned. My parents helped me buy my first house, where the master bedroom overlooked downtown Los Angeles, although I wrote <The Sympathizer= in the back bedroom, facing a wall. The novel9s success allowed me to sell that first house and buy the second. It was my own achievement, but would that achievement have been possible without the sacrifice and love of my parents? I look through this window from my writing office, the first one I ever had. I was not yet used to writing here, gazing out this window, when my mother died. Now, sitting here and looking at the garden, pondering the beauty and my good fortune, I think inevitably of my mother and how she never had a view as serene as this one. Her grave is under the shade of a pine tree, in the middle of a park where deer roam. The last time I visited her I lay down next to her plot, listening to birdsong and staring at the clear blue sky. The grass was warm under my neck as I shared, for a few moments, her view. Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, <The Sympathizer,= and, most recently, of <A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial.= Born in Buon Ma Thuot, Vietnam, in 1971, he fled to the United States with his family after the fall of Saigon. Jimmy Javier Gómez Rivera M y window faces a quiet and empty street in a Spanish city in Andalusia that opened its doors to me. From this window, I remember the view I left behind which faced a quiet street where carefree children played, and which also saw me grow into an adult. I always thought I would grow to see a free country, but that wasn9t the case. Today I am here, with that dream of freedom still tucked away among the scarce belongings that I packed as I fled into exile. The books I read as a child always seemed epic to me, with heroic characters who embarked on great journeys to reach promised lands. I never imagined that one day I would embark on my own odyssey. Now I see that those fictional journeys were not extraordinary at all 4 they were the stories of so many of us. The authors had found a way to embody the feelings of angst, despair and hope that mark every refugee9s path. What they didn9t write about was the aftermath, the routine that takes form after the dust has settled. This routine splits you in half and forces you to live two concurrent lives. The first exists beyond your new window and is waiting for you to step outside. The other is the life you left behind and the landscape you once took for granted. The daily struggle of holding on to the life that was taken away from you while trying to dig roots in new soil is exhausting. We try to weave the dreams we packed with threads that seem foreign. We try to adjust our sight to this new landscape, knowing that 4 at least for some time 4 we will feel immensely misplaced. Therein lies the challenge 4 finding a balance between adapting to your new reality, while still looking over your shoulder to recapture a sense of belonging. I hope that someday I will open this window and feel that this view also belongs to me. Jimmy Javier Gomez Rivera is a social anthropologist and activist born in Nicaragua. As a result of his involvement in social, educational and intercultural programs as well as the civil protests of 2018, he and his family were forced to flee and seek asylum in Spain.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE K A29 opinion Sepideh Jodeyri S ometimes the window talks to you but you cannot talk back to it. I mean it can talk to you about the people whom you meet every day in the streets of the country that is now your new home. But how can you talk about how much you miss your homeland to people who don9t know where Iran is or what it looks like? This itself is a source of pain. But you cannot talk about such pain to people who think that it is a privilege for you to have the amazing opportunity to live in the United States. I love living in Washington, D.C., I love its people. I cannot deny that. But it has not been an amazing opportunity for me to live so far away from my homeland. I love Washington but not in the same way that I love my Tehran. The window here talks to me about city life. And I love city life because I used to live in Tehran. But in Tehran, everyone was speaking in my mother tongue 4 and that is not the only thing I miss about my country. I miss every single memory and connection I made with the places, with my friends, even with strangers. I miss the whole country, except for the government that forced me to flee my beloved homeland and become an involuntary exile. One thing I love about Washington is that the people here consider me a local as they themselves are, though I still cannot consider myself anything other than an exile. This is the way I miss my country; it is not the fault of the Washingtonians. Sepideh Jodeyri is an Iranian poet, literary critic, translator and journalist. She won the 2015 Jovellanos International Poetry Prize for <best poem in the world= for her poem <Chck.= Her translations of foreign poetry books into Persian resulted in the ban of her work in Iran, forcing her to flee first to the Czech Republic and then to the United States. Rahi Al Suhail H ere I am, overlooking Brussels, the base of the European Union, through a window in the skyscraper where I work. These skyscrapers once represented the <dream.= Being a young refugee in a foreign country, all I wanted was to end up in a skyscraper one day. I remember looking through the window in the plane on my way to Belgium, confused about where this journey would take me. As an Iraqi refugee in Jordan, I had initially figured Amman would be my new home. A place where people looked like me and understood my language. And yet, there I was, 6 years old and queuing to be accepted into a country that felt so foreign. In my life, I9ve looked through many windows, reflecting on what the future would hold for me. And here I am today, in a city I once hated because it reminded me of a forced new home, of queues and uncertainties. Twenty-five years later, it has become the city where I managed to turn my mother tongue into my occupation. As a translator, I now encounter many refugees going through the same struggles I once did, hoping to call this place their home. Coincidentally, from my present-day window I can see those very immigration queues I used to dread. It is as if my past is constantly being played out right in front of me. However, when I look at these people now, I can see their future. I know that they will be able to turn their current struggles into their blessings, and their past into their story. They will find a house and will eventually be able to nest into their second home 4 hopefully with windows that will allow them to reflect, as I have the privilege of doing now. Rahi Al Suhail was born in 1989 in Baghdad. After the Hussein regime placed a death order on his father, his family obtained political asylum in Belgium in 1996. He works as a freelance interpreter for the Belgian Federal Judicial Police. k Zlata Filipovic k I was born into a home with a view of a park. It had the most lush trees, seesaws and a slide. I went to play there with friends from my neighborhood in the center of Sarajevo nearly every day. But then the war came. The glass on our windows was broken, replaced by plastic sheeting provided by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees through which I could hardly catch a view of the park. In any case, getting close to the window always risked exposure to stray bullets and shrapnel, so I stayed back. One day, my friends went to the park to play. A shell fell straight into it and killed or wounded some of them. I narrowly missed being there. Then the lush trees were cut for firewood. The birds had nowhere to land. There was silence. Our window was now looking onto a carcass of a park, and the war went on. I was fortunate enough to survive and, eventually, escape that war. I moved to Dublin and into a new apartment that looked onto some newly planted trees. Twenty-four years later, the trees were full and lush. I could hear the birds. And now I have a daughter, whom I look forward to taking to play in this beautiful park. It has seesaws and slides. I wish for her a childhood never tainted by the sound of gunfire or the loss of those she loves and plays with. I wish for her views of beautiful trees and sounds of birdsong. I wish this for every child. May no child ever be forced to leave or lose the beautiful view out of their own window. Zlata Filipovic is a Bosnian writer and the author of <Zlata9s Diary,= which she wrote as she lived through the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. She and her family fled to Paris and from there to Dublin, where she now works as a documentary filmmaker.

A30 EZ RE K the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 opinion Suzanne Kanj I look out my New York window, I do not see only stars. I see the future, for I know that stars are nothing but a reflection from the past. I remember death, yet not any one death. I remember the demise of the stars. They leave behind them the most alluring view you could ever see. I imagine myself leaving an imprint the way the stars do, and I see myself shine like them. I see my own reflection from the past, and the evolution of the clouds that passed throughout my life and how the rain that they were holding bloomed all the dead flowers on my land in Syria. I look out my window, I do not see an ocean of possibilities, for oceans have limits 4 I see a universe full of possibilities. Suddenly, I remember each voice telling me, <You cannot do it. You are so dreamy.= Then I also remember those who said, <Humans cannot fly as the birds do, humans cannot dive inside of the oceans the way fish do, and humans cannot go to space, for Earth is our only home.= I then secretly laugh at them because I know that every single day Usumain Baraka T he tree outside my window in Israel reminds me of the big tamarind tree (koonjí in my language of Masalit) next to the house I grew up in. I loved sitting and playing in the tree9s shade, collecting its fruits to eat and give to the neighbors. I liked climbing it as well, and even fell a few times, but it never hurt much. When I would fall from other trees, it would always hurt a little more. The tree outside my window today varies with the seasons: In the spring and summer it is green, in the autumn its leaves begin to fall and in the winter it is bare. The koonjí instead was always green, and its leaves never seemed to fall. The koonjí reminds me of my mother; like her, it was there before I was born. When I look out the window today, my thoughts jump back to the koonjí. Why am I here? Why can9t I live there, by my tree? If I were still in my village, I would be looking out the window of a house I built myself, not this apartment I rent. All I want is to return to my country, to my land and to my tree. The koonjí raised me, and I yearn to return to sit in its Ma Jian L ooking out from my London study, I see the back garden that has healed the wounds of my exile. In spring, the branches of the tall poplar tree turn green, a few days after the large acacia behind it. The poplar is over 200 years old. Like me, all it wants is to extend its roots into the earth and survive. As the days grow warmer, the blue sky becomes shrouded by its green leaves and the white flowers of the acacia. When the wind blows, its heavy branches sway and rustle. But it is the acacia I love most, as it reminds me of the old locust tree that grew behind my one-room shack in Beijing. Last year, I built myself a wooden shed beneath the tree, just like that old shack in Beijing. At last I felt like a leaf returning to its roots. The view from my window gives me the sense of peace that I need to write and to search for words that might help others understand misfortune and find solace. Ma Jian was born in 1953 in China. He worked as a painter of propaganda boards and a photojournalist. The Chinese government eventually banned his works. He left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987 as a dissident but continued to travel to China. His support for the pro-democratic movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 forced him to flee to Germany and then the United Kingdom. shade and eat its fruits. When I look out the window, I remember my childhood and where I came from, but also of the long journey I endured and the journey that still lies ahead. Will I continue to remember my village from afar or will I fulfill my dream and return home, where I can build a window through which to look onto the koonjí? To achieve my dream, I must become a leader who looks far beyond the window and inspires others to fulfill their own goals. To do so, we must give each other small gifts of wide smiles. Smiles demand nothing in return, just as the koonjí tree gives us its fruits and its shade without expecting anything in return. Originally from Darfur, Sudan, Usumain Baraka fled to Israel in 2008 at age 14. He became the first Darfuri refugee to study in an Israeli university in Hebrew. He is a longtime activist for improving the lives of the African community living in Israel and refugees around the world. of my life I fly like birds when I see a child smiling, I dive in the oceans whenever I see lovers holding hands, and I go to space every single night when I hear the laughs of the people I love. Yes, I might sound very dreamy, but that is how I see life. In addition, I believe that I can make a change in this life 4 not because I was gifted. On the contrary, I do not believe in gifts. However, my past has polished me in a way that I could have never imagined; and not only that, every day and every minute refines me and shows me a new world of possibilities, a hope for a better world where there are no borders, just like the way the Earth looks from outer space, a blue and green planet in the middle of darkness. Suzanne Kanj is a Kurdish-Syrian refugee. In 2012, at age 17, she fled Syria with her mother and initially lived in Turkey before moving to the United States. She is a pre-med student and works as a medical assistant.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE a31 opinion E kram Quran stands on the roof of her house on the edge of Al-Bireh in the West Bank, pointing to the hill 100 yards away where she used to roam as a girl among fig and olive trees. <It was a place to breathe,= she remembers. Now, what she sees is a barbwire fence and, beyond, arrayed along the hilltop, the buildings of an Israeli settlement called Psagot. Four Israeli soldiers arrive aboutfive minutes after we descend from the roof. They demand to see Quran9s papers and mine, for <security.= After checking our names, they return the documents and retreat to their post at the settlement gate. We were lucky. Quran says that late last month,a20-year-old Palestinian manwas shot and killed on the street next to her house during a demonstration. <It is injustice,= Quran says when the soldiers are gone. Her family built this home in 1961. The Israelis began constructing their settlement 20 years later, after they seizedthe West Bank inthe 1967war. Today, she is powerless on her own property, which lies in a sliver ofwhatis known as Area C, the 60 percentof the West Bank that is under total Israeli control. The devastating war in Gaza was happening just 50 miles away as we spoke.But Quran, like most West Bank Palestinians I met over the past week, doesn9t speak much about the violence. They are angry but also frightened. Quran runs a graphic design business in Ramallah. She wants to keep working and survive. Her tone isn9t militant rage but, rather, a sorrow verging on despair. F or three days this past week, Itraveled the West Bank, from the arid hills below Hebron in the south to the chalky heights of Nablus in the north. What I saw was a pattern ofIsraeli domination and occasional abuse that makes daily life a humiliation for many Palestinians 4 and could obstruct the peaceful future that Israelis andPalestinians both say they want. Driving the roads ofthe West Bank is 4 forgive the term 4a<two-plate= solution. Israeli settlers with yellow license plates zoom along on a well-guarded superhighway called Route 60. Palestinians with white plates navigate small, bumpy roads. Since Oct. 7, many of the entrances to their villages have often been closed. Traveling in an Israeli taxi with a Palestinian driver, I saw some of both worlds. I watched backups at Israeli checkpoints near Bethlehem and Nablus that were over a half-mile long and could require waits of more than two hours. The delays, indignities and outright assaults on Palestinians have become a grim routine. <If I9m in a yellow-plate car, does that change my blood?= asked Samer Shalabi, the Palestinian who was my guide in the Nablus area. My tour of the West Bank wasareality check about what9s possible <the day after= the Gaza war ends. President Biden and other world leaders speak hopefully about creating a Palestinian state onceHamas is defeated. I9d love to see that happen, too. But people need to get real about the obstacles that are in front of our eyes. On the ground, amid the grinding daily pressure of Israeli occupation, the shared hope for a Palestinian state can seem likeafairy tale4soothing to hear butaversion of magical thinking. Standing in the way are the Israeli settlements and outposts laid across the hilltops of theWestBank, their high fences and concrete walls symbolizing their apparent immovability. <T he settlements were put there to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state,= argued Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who is perhaps the country9s leading critic of the settler movement. He offered a guided tour of settlement issues for me and two State Department officials Monday, explaining the patchwork of the West Bank from the heights of Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. Here9s how the math would work for the <deoccupation= that Seidemann says would be necessary for a viable Palestinian state. More than 700,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, and at least 200,000 would have to leave, he estimates. Some settlers would resist.<There is a significant possibility of a civil war between the state of Israel and the settler state of Judea and Samaria,= he warned, using the settlers9 biblical terms for the areas of the West Bank. <If it9s not painful, it won9t be significant,= Seidemann concluded. For settlers, obstructing Palestinian statehood is part of the mission, Yehuda Shaul,aleading Israeli expert on settlements, told me. He noted that back in 1980, Matityahu Drobles, who was then head of the World Zionist Organization9s settlements department, stated his goal bluntly inabroad plan. <Being cut off by Jewish settlements, the minority [Arab] population will find it difficult to formaterritorial and political continuity,= he wrote at the time. <The best and most effective way of removing every shadow of a doubt about our intention to hold on to Judea and Samaria forever is by speeding up the settlement momentum in these territories.= Biden is the latest president to confront the reality that addressing the Palestinian issue means confronting Israel 4 especially over settlements. The number of official settlements and unrecognized but pervasive <outposts= keeps growing.Agroup called Peace Now says this year marked the biggestincrease since the group started tracking settlements in 2012. And in recent years, there has been a frightening increase in violence by settlers against Palestinians, in what human rights advocates say are deliberate efforts to frighten them off land that the settlers believe God gave to Israel. Settler violence has surged since Hamas9s Oct. 7 terrorist assault, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. Since then, there have been 343 settler attacks against Palestinians, according to the United Nations Office for theCoordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least 143 Palestinian households, with 1,026 people (including 396 children), have been displaced by violence. Settlers have killed eight Palestinians and injured 85, the U.N. organization says. The violent settlers almost always go unpunished. From 2005 to 2022, 93 percent of the 1,597 investigations opened by the Israeli police into cases where Israelis were said to have harmed Palestinians were closed without indictment, according to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din; only about3percent led to convictions. The threat to Palestinians is especially severe in Area C, where Israelis outnumber Palestinians by more than 400,000 to 300,000. The Israeli military severely restricts travel by Palestinians there, and settlers regularly attack villages and Bedouin camps. A last word about settlements before I describe details of my trip. I have some close Israeli friends who live in settlements, and they are decent, principled people. Many of them would probably move if the Israeli government decided that a two-state solution required it. The violence comes from extremist settlers 4 and the danger is that they seem to have support from members of the Netanyahu government. One sign that the Biden administration might be taking the settlement issue more seriously was the announcement this month that settlers believed to have been involved in violent attacks against Palestinians may be denied visas toenter theUnited States, along with their family members. That9s not a solution to this big problem, but it9s a start. L et9s begin our tour at the southern edge of the West Bank, in the dry hills south of Hebron. Israeli settlements have expanded in this region. A new wrinkle here is the fight over <herding outposts,= where Israelifarmers have triedtodrive off Bedouin shepherds who have been grazing this land foracentury. Saleh Abu Awad, one of those Bedouin shepherds, met me Monday by the side of a rocky field sprouting with green shoots in the mild December weather. He is thin, with aweathered face and trim beard, andwas wearing a dusty sweatshirt emblazoned with a faded Emporio Armani logo. Nearby is the Israeli settlement of Meitarim, along Route 317, and an outpost known as Asa9el. You can watch a video in which an Israeli family at Asa9el celebrates the joys offarming this land, with children doing cartwheels on bales of hay. A haggard Abu Awad said that on July 13, he was attacked by settlers while he was grazing his sheep. <This is our land. You should not be here,= one of the settlers told him. Abu Awad told me his family has been grazing its sheep nearby since the time of his great-grandfather. But the settlers were intent. Abu Awad said a group came back later and burned six of his tents and drove off 130 of his sheep, which he estimates were worth nearly $50,000. Abu Awad didn9t bother complaining to the Palestinian Authority. <They don9t have any power,= he said. The settlers have continued raids in the area. I9ve watched nearly a dozen instances of harassment captured on videos by Palestinian activists. In this area, known as Masafer Yatta, settlers have forcibly displaced the residents of a number of entire communities since Oct. 7, according to human rights organization B9Tselem. The settlers came back as recently as last Sunday, the day before I talked with Abu Awad. Many Bedouins have fled these grazing lands in fear, but Abu Awad said he is staying. <I don9t have any other place to go,= he said. <We9re not the [Israelis9] enemies.We just want themto leave us alone.= For those Israeli settlers who hope to drive Palestinians from Area C, the farmer-outpost strategy seems to be working. A settler leader named Ze9ev <Zambish= Hever explained the strategy tohisorganization, Amana, the main construction company for the settler movement, in February 2021. <The shepherding farms which have increased ... today they cover close to twice the land that thebuilt-upcommunities [settlements] cover,= Hever said. <If it9s a war, if there9s a battle for Area C, [local settler leaders] should behave like it9sawar.= We drove north, along settler superhighway Route 60. We entered Hebron, a dusty industrial town that for 40 years has been skirmishing with a settlement called Kiryat Arba, planted near the heart of the city. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, one of the far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu9s coalition,lives in Kiryat Arba.InAugust, he told a journalist: <My right, and my wife9s and my children9s right, to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs.= Road closures make travel a nightmare for Arabs. We passed the entrances to a string of Palestinian towns and villages traveling north; most have been blocked by the Israeli military with big piles of dirt or metal gates. Palestinians who want to travel outside their villages in Area C must pass through checkpoints staffed by often capricious Israeli soldiers. You can see the toll of this harassment in the terraces of derelict olive trees along the road north, near Hebron. Palestinian farmers have been afraid to pick their olives4or have been physically prevented from doing so. A Western diplomat told me olive oil production in the West Bank might be 35 percent below average this year as a result. J erusalemis the jewel in the centerofthis land.It9s also the most volatile battleground between settlers and Israelis 4 and the place where the United States will have the biggest challenge in framing a compromise. Seidemann showed the two State Department officials and me how this sacred battleground looks. His worries are summed up in the title of a study he prepared this year for political andreligious leaders aroundtheworld:<The Strategic Encirclement of Jerusalem9s Old City.= From Mount Scopus, in East Jerusalem, Seidemannpointed across the hills towarda big settlement called Ma9ale Adumim, which houses some 40,000 people. For several decades, Israeli leaders have hoped to vastly expand it with a project known as E1. Seidemann calls that a <doomsday land bridge= that would cut any future Palestinian state in half, separating south from north. Seidemann took us southeast to the Mount of Olives andaview of Jerusalem9s Old City, which is sacred to three religions. We saw the golden Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosques revered by Muslims; the Garden of Gethsemane andotherChristian holy sites; and beyond the Temple Mount where the mosques are located, the Western Wall 4 the <Wailing Wall= 4 that9s sacred for Jews. Inside the Old City,Ivisited with young protesters who are trying to block construction of a new luxury hotel inside the city walls in the Armenian Quarter, on a parking lot and adjoining ground leased by the Armenian patriarch to an Australian Israeli developer. The patriarch has since filed papers with Israeli authorities withdrawing consent for the lease, but the bulldozers have tried to enforce it nonetheless. They have been blocked so far by a round-the-clock sit-in by Armenians, explained their leader, Hagop Djernazian. N orth of Jerusalem is Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority9s seat of power. It9s a tight, almost claustrophobic center for residents of Area A, which makes up 18 percent of the West Bank and is nominally controlled by the Palestinians. But even here, their writ is limited. On the morning I visited, Israeli soldiers swept in and arrested two young Palestinians in front of a little shop called the Olive Market. I visited Sabri Saidam, a member of the Fatah Central Committee that was long the dominant political group in the West Bank but is challenged increasingly byHamas.Hewas dressedall in black,in an office decorated with images of Yasser Arafat, the iconic leader of thePalestine LiberationOrganization and the first president of the Palestinian Authority. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are said to have prepared a <vision statement= about what comes after the war, and they claim to have as many as 40,000 Fatah members in Gaza who could be reactivated for security duties. Maybe the Palestinian Authority could be revitalized for this role, as the Biden administration hopes. But right now, they aren9t doing a very good job even of controlling the fragments of the West Bank that are their responsibility. Traveling north from Ramallah is like slicing through a layer cake. You pass a Palestinian village, thenahilltop settlement, then another village, then anunofficial outpost,mile aftermile.InFebruary, the Netanyahu government embraced nine of those outposts and made them official settlements. This checkerboard landscape is bound to produce tension, and I saw the aftermath of two vicious examples on the road north toward Nablus 4 where settlers and Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinian villages in what they said was revenge for terrorist attacks. The State Department decried one such assault, in which soldiers destroyed a family9s home to punish a 13-year-old, tweeting: <An entire family should not lose their home because of the actions of one individual.= About 200 <rampaging settlers,= as Israeli publication Ynet called them, attacked the village of Turmus Ayya on June 21. Many came fromaneighboring settlement called Shiloh, and some were masked. According to Ynet, they burned approximately 30homes and60cars. OnePalestinian was killed, and 12 were hurt. One Turmus Ayya resident told me that all his family could do was try to put out the fire before it destroyed their residence. At the western edge of town, facing the outskirts of the Shiloh settlement, four burned Palestinian cars have been stacked in a charred metal monument to the attack. The Turmus Ayya bloodshed shocked U.S. officials partly because a majority of the town9s residents hold U.S. passports. Andrew P. Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of state who monitors the region, visited the town in August to express condolences. F arther up the road, you come to the town of Huwara, which was attacked by nearby settlers on Feb. 26. According to evidence Yesh Din provided me, the settlers burned dozens of cars at a dealership, set fire to a house with its occupants inside and roamed about the town torching other cars and homes and attacking one car with an ax. Violence has continued in Huwara, which was oncea thriving commercial centerbut, when I visited, had only a trickle of traffic on the main street. Even funerals aren9t secure. Mourners gathered in Huwara after an Oct.6attack that resulted in the death of a 19-year-old Palestinian man who allegedly had thrown a brick at an Israeli vehicle. During the funeral that same day, settlers and troops attacked again, wounding 51 Palestinians, according to Reuters. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel9s finance minister and a leader of pro-settler groups, visited the town later and said Israel should take tougher action against Palestinian militants <to save lives and reinstate security.= The day I visited Huwara, the town was still shaken. Jassim Audi had just reopened his tiny coffee stall a few dozen yards from an Israeli army guard post. <As long as the army is protecting the settlers, I won9t have a normal life,= he told me. This army protection for settlers is one of the most dangerous 4 and puzzling 4 aspects of the settlement mess. Shaul, who runsagroup called Ofek: the Israeli Center for Public Affairs, explained that with the war in Gaza, West Bank duty has mostly been left to reservists, some of whom come from the settlements and serve in <regional defense units.= Some settlerswho once served inthe military simply put on their old uniforms when they go raiding, Shaul said. Drinking his morning coffee on the quiet, wary main street ofHuwara was AliHussein, who lives in a nearby village. He shook his head cynically as we discussed how to end the violence. <When we talk about a Palestinian state, it9s unreal,= he told me. <Most of the land has been taken by settlers.= The Biden administration9s promise ofahappier <day after= was likeadrug fix, he said. M y last day in the West Bank, I visited the Kashkeesh family.Imet them 41 years ago when I spent a week with them in Halhul, near Hebron. When I try to conjure the reality of Palestinian life,Ithink of them. Hammadeh, a stonecutter who was the patriarch of the family, died June 10 at 74. He didn9t live to see the Gaza war, which would have destroyed what shreds of hope he had left in the future. His wife, Antissar, still youthful at60, welcomed me along with her son Mouayed and several daughters. Like so many Palestinian families, this one has survived by working and studying hard, and staying out of trouble.I got a rundown on the two sons, one a mechanic in Minneapolis now and the other running an electronics store inHalhul, and the five daughters, who include a nurse,alaw student and a mathematics student. <Living intheWestBankhas become anightmare,= Mouayed told me.<You are under siege in your town. You can9t take your family anywhere. You live in cantons, separated from everyone. What you want in this moment is to survive, and not to lose anyone in your family.= Is there a happy ending to this story? Probably not, unless Biden can make a diplomatic push that we haven9t seen since the days of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But on my journey,Imet so many brave Israelis and Palestinians who are working together to document obstacles to peace that I can see a way forward 4 if America has the guts to help them. davId IgnatIus This is what I saw in the West Bank. Can the U.S. see it too? Tel Aviv Netanya Mediterranean Sea Jericho Ramallah Al-Bireh Mount of Olives Mount of Olives Mount Scopus Old City Psagot Turmus Ayya Shiloh Huwara Givat Ronen Yitzhar Bethlehem Halhul Kiryat Arba Hebron Meitarim Asa9el Masafer Yatta nablus 5 MILES Jenin ISRAEL J O R DA N Dead Sea W E S T B A N K Jerusalem 60 60 Israeli settlements in the West Bank ISRAEL GAZA STRIP GAZA STRIP WEST BANK WEST BANK Sources: West Bank Protection Consortium, B9Tselem THE WASHINGTON POST

a32 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 It was depressing and saddening to read the thorough and well-written Dec. 10 front-page article <Inside Ukraine9s fumbled campaign,= primarily because the situation was both predicted and, more important, preventable. It was impossible for Ukraine to win when forced to use World War I-era tactics (i.e., no air power or long-range missiles) against a much larger 21stcentury adversary. This was understood by Ukraine at the very outset of Russia9s full-scale invasion, but its repeated pleas for help went unanswered. This Ukraine: Too little, too late ABCDE PaTRicia Q. STOnESiFER chief Executive Officer nEWs SaLLY BuZBEE....................................Executive Editor JuSTin BanK ...................................... Managing Editor MaTEa GOLD.......................................Managing Editor KRiSSaH THOMPSOn.........................Managing Editor ScOTT vancE......................................Managing Editor ann GERHaRT.......................Deputy Managing Editor MOnica nORTOn .................. Deputy Managing Editor LiZ SEYMOuR.........................Deputy Managing Editor MaRK W. SMiTH.....................Deputy Managing Editor cRaiG TiMBERG.....................Deputy Managing Editor EdiTOriaL and OPiniOn DaviD SHiPLEY.......................................Opinion Editor MaRY DuEnWaLD.....................Deputy Opinion Editor cHaRLES LanE..........................Deputy Opinion Editor STEPHEn STROMBERG.............Deputy Opinion Editor DaviD vOn DREHLE..................Deputy Opinion Editor OfficErs KaTHY BaiRD.........................communications & Events L. WaYnE cOnnELL............................Human Resources KaTE M. DavEY.....................................Revenue Strategy GREGG J. FERnanDES.........customer care & Logistics STEPHEn P. GiBSOn.....................Finance & Operations JOHn B. KEnnEDY...................General counsel & Labor vinEET KHOSLa..................Technology, Product & Data MiKi TOLivER KinG..................................................arc XP aLEXanDRa MaccaLLuM...................................Revenue JOHanna MaYER-JOnES................................advertising vEnKaTESH vaRaLu..............................Data & analytics The Washington Post 1301 K St. nW, Washington, D.c. 20071 (202) 334-6000 ABCDE AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER I N THE throes of a bloody war, the latest eruption in a decades-long conflict that has defied generations of negotiators and in which both sides have made terrible mistakes, now might seem like the least opportune time to think of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Not a temporary cease-fire or another uneasy truce but a durable settlement. Yet Oct. 7 may be remembered as a hinge moment 4 such as 9/11 or Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine 4 in which an unspeakable tragedy first traumatizes but then allows people to look at the world with fresh eyes. Extremism and deadlock have failed both sides. By launching a horrific attack on Israeli civilians, Hamas provoked a crushing military response, knowing thousands of innocent Palestinians would die. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to protect Israelis from Hamas9s horrors. The United States and Arab nations should prepare now for the day 4 as well as the week, month, year, decade and century 4 after the shooting stops, laying the groundwork to restart the process of creating two states, Israel and Palestine, that are not locked in perpetual conflict. To his credit, President Biden has started, pushing Mr. Netanyahu in remarks Tuesday to accept a day-after plan that would put the Palestinian territories on a path to eventual statehood. Given his support for Israel9s military effort and the diplomatic cover he has given Mr. Netanyahu9s government, Mr. Biden has more pull in Jerusalem than any other world leader. Yet, on the same day, Mr. Netanyahu denounced the U.S. position, blasting the Oslo peace process under which the two sides had previously tried to negotiate a two-state deal. This rhetoric might play to his base of right-wing voters in the short run, but it proves, once again, that he plays politics with Israel9s long-term security interests and the prospects for peace. Historically, Israelis have responded to terrorist attacks by increasing their support of right-wing parties. But this time appears different. According to one November poll, if elections were held tomorrow, Netanyahu9s right-wing coalition would decline from 64 seats to just 45. Opposition parties would win 75 seats in the 120-seat chamber. Another survey found that optimism about Israel9s future has increased after the Oct. 7 attacks. This increase was most pronounced among left-wing Israelis, with 41 percent saying they were optimistic compared to only 21 percent in June. If these trends hold, the Biden administration will have more to work with than seemed possible just weeks ago. Israelis might, finally, move beyond the evasions and temporizing of the long Netanyahu era. Mr. Netanyahu, nicknamed <Mr. Security,= was not able to deliver on his core appeal. An Israeli commitment to a two-state solution, however, is only a precondition for progress. After Hamas, Gaza will need an administrator until elections can be held and to be a part of future talks with Israel. The best 4 really, the only 4 option is the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank. The group is, admittedly, unpopular among Palestinians and Israelis alike. But Arab nations have made clear that they will not play substitute for indigenous Palestinian rule. Though Palestinians9 support for Hamas has grown, the vast majority 4 under bombardment and in a time of war rife with misinformation 4 do not believe, or are not aware, that Hamas committed atrocities against Israeli civilians. When hostilities cease and Palestinians have the opportunity to take stock of what happened, a reckoning against a Hamas leadership that brought them to destruction might occur. Such a reckoning is more likely if Palestinians have reason to believe in a brighter future. The United States will need Arab nations9 help, both in rebuilding Gaza and in giving legitimacy to a refreshed Palestinian Authority. Mr. Biden9s <bear hug= approach to Israel enables him both to support Israel9s legitimate self-defense and pressure the government to pursue it within limits, somewhat at the expense of U.S. standing as a neutral arbiter. Others will have to provide funding, help force reform of an aging and corrupt Palestinian Authority and press for elections as soon as practicable, so whichever entity is negotiating on the Palestinian side can claim to speak for its people. All this will depend on movement in Israel. Gulf nations have indicated they will withhold reconstruction funds and financial support for any Gazan governing authority if Israel refuses to commit to a road map for a two-state solution. Mr. Biden should continue pressing Israel to conduct its Gaza military operations with maximal respect for civilian life, which has resulted in changes to Israeli tactics. He should also treat this moment as an unlikely opportunity, with care and caution 4 and a little bit of hope, too. Here9s what a 8day after9 in Gaza can look like Evan vucci/aP President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in October. EdiTOriaL Regarding the Dec. 14 front-page article <Deal would move Caps, Wizards to Virginia=: As a resident of Chinatown, I am deeply disappointed by the failures of the D.C. Council and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) resulting in Monumental Sports & Entertainment9s decision to relocate to Virginia. Monumental Sports owner Ted Leonsis has complained for years about the area around Capital One Arena. The D.C. Council and the mayor have stubbornly refused to address the blight of excessively amplified noise. They9ve also failed to effectively address rising crime around the arena and throughout the District. No wonder so many businesses and residents are leaving. Susan Prolman, Washington The owner of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals is hoping to move his teams to Virginia. The Virginia governor and business leaders joined him for a news conference. The D.C. mayor is trying to bring the Washington Commanders football team to D.C. from Prince George9s County. Both are losing propositions that will cost taxpayers a lot of money, with little to no benefit to the teams, the fans or the affected jurisdictions. These are negative economic development propositions and should be abandoned. Pradeep Ganguly, Herndon People need to stop complaining about the billionaire moving his sports teams to Virginia and start realizing what an opportunity this is for downtown D.C. Sports teams move all the time. Indeed, Potomac Yard will be the Bullets9/Wizards9 fifth home since the early 1960s, and the neighborhoods left in their wake seem to have done just fine. What doesn9t happen all the time is a chance to reimagine downtown as a year-round, nightly destination. Even with the Wizards and Capitals, the arena is dark many nights. We need to think about developing something that would be active all the time. How popular would MGM National Harbor be if six Metro lines went there? (Surely there9s a casino company that would like to find out.) Or a massive arts complex similar to South Bank in London. Or a downtown version of the D.C. Wharf. Any of these would enliven downtown. Instead of clinging to the suboptimal status quo, city residents and leaders should start working on a better future. Scot Stone, Washington In her Dec. 14 Sports column, <Ask D.C. what Leonsis9s promises are really worth,= Candace Buckner wrote of the <challenges= faced by the area surrounding Capital One Arena as if they were the result of some cosmic bad luck out of the city9s control. The office and business flight from the city is a direct result of the extreme and extended pandemic lockdowns embraced by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and other elected officials around the country. And the incredible rise in crime is a direct result of the mayor and D.C. Council diminishing the role of police and empowering criminals through laissezfaire law enforcement. Monumental Sports owner Ted Leonsis didn9t create these problems, and it certainly isn9t his responsibility to fix them. As a lifelong Washington Capitals fan and former Alexandria resident, I think the teams going across the river is the right move. Any finger-pointing should be directed at politicians who seem determined to run a great city into the ground. Brian O9Shea, Long Beach, Calif. A monumental shift in D.C. LETTErs TO ThE EdiTOr The Dec. 13 front-page article <Pharmacies give records to police with no warrant= highlighted the erosion of Americans9 Fourth Amendment rights. And the culprit here is the Supreme Court, which created the <third-party doctrine= in the 1970s. End the third-party doctrine plain fact is not understood at the White House or the Pentagon. Our NATO allies understood this when they were ready to provide MiG-29 aircraft last year, but the United States vetoed the plan. Eventually, NATO allies unilaterally initiated a plan to provide F-16 aircraft, and the United States has reluctantly agreed to provide pilot training. Thus far, there are no plans to provide additional U.S.-made F-16s. Had we at first initiated a speedy campaign to provide F-16s, long-range ATACMS missiles and MQ-9 drones (still in U.S. storage) when the invasion began, a far different outcome to a Ukraine counteroffensive would likely have resulted. At that time, the Russian military was demoralized and in disarray, and a decisive thrust could have achieved a major Ukraine victory. Sadly, Russia has had time to regroup, and that opportunity is gone. The road ahead is long and murky. This dilemma is not the result of faulty military tactics. It is a failure of the United States and NATO to provide Ukraine the means to win when the opportunity was there. Victory for Ukraine is possible, but it will require a different mind-set at the White House and Pentagon. R. Noel Longuemare, Silver Spring The writer is a former principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology and a retired executive of Westinghouse Electric. I was impressed by the article about the past year9s efforts by Ukrainian and U.S. defense officials to mount a plan to push Russian forces out of Ukraine. The long-standing controversy around the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine is especially concerning, as they represent a crucial element of the combinedarms strategy the United States recommended to the Ukrainians. This air-power element of the combinedarms strategy is still perhaps a year from delivery. Some critics think the war should have gone better last summer despite the lack of Ukrainian air power. I was a liaison officer for the State Department to an office in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I recall accompanying an Air Force brigadier general from the Joint Chiefs to the State Department to meet the directors of our office. In that meeting, a senior state official startled the general by saying he was a great believer in air power. The delighted general asked why. The official answered that it was because he had fought the Germans without air power in World War II at the battle of Kasserine Pass, which the Allies lost. Critics of Ukraine should take this bitter lesson from U.S. military history to heart when criticizing Ukrainian efforts to rid its country of Russian invaders. Alfred R. Barr, Washington Since the beginning of Ukraine9s counteroffensive against Russia, <failure= has been the constant characterization 4 that is, Ukraine9s failure to recapture territory over the summer and fall, and now President Volodymyr Zelensky9s failure to persuade Congress to approve additional aid. The real failure here, however, is Ukraine9s inability to continue to deliver miracles. This is unfair. Ukraine is fighting NATO9s war with one hand tied behind its back. If Ukraine had been given twice the amount of weaponry it was requesting last year instead of a fraction, the war would have been over already. Long-range missiles would have taken out some Russian missile sites and supply depots, and Russia would not have had time to build formidable defenses and carpet-mine occupied eastern Ukraine 4 reasons for Ukraine9s failed counteroffensive. It is time for U.S. lawmakers to invest a tiny but necessary portion of our defense budget in Ukraine for its existential battle against Russia. A victory for Ukraine would safeguard against astronomical costs, in blood and treasure, should the United States be forced to defend a NATO ally in the future. Larysa Kurylas, Washington I cannot think of a clearer lesson from history that applies to current circumstances than the beginning of World War II. If we do not support Ukraine in its war against Russia, it won9t be long before we will be sending our own troops to fend off the territorial ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Germans walked into Czechoslovakia because the conservative British government was unwilling to confront Hitler. The loss of life during the subsequent six years was horrendous. The GOP is showing its typical shortsightedness and lack of perspective. We don9t want to fight the Russians. Let the Ukrainians do it with all the help we can supply. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the American effort before Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941: It is good policy to lend your neighbor a hose to put out a house fire. The fact that many Republicans can9t see this fills me with dread. They aspire to run this country, but they are incompetent and narrow-minded. I fear for my grandchildren9s future if Republicans ever govern again. Mark Krushat, Severna Park Under it, people lose all constitutional protection in information they share with others, even incredibly sensitive information such as medical and pharmaceutical records. As technology advances, this problem will just get worse. It9s long past time to junk the third-party doctrine. After all, if I take my car to the mechanic, the government can9t march in and look under my hood. It should be the same with our information. If I confide in my doctors or pharmacies as part of getting medical care, and they promise to keep that information secure, that is a decision the Constitution should respect. Anything less leaves us looking over our shoulder, fearful of unwarranted government snooping. Robert Frommer, Arlington The writer is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice and director of its Project on the Fourth Amendment. Guest opinion submissions The Washington Post accepts opinion articles on any topic. We welcome submissions on local, national and international issues. We publish work that varies in length and format, including multimedia. Submit a guest opinion at [email protected] or read our guide to writing an opinion article at wapo.st/guestopinion. Letter submissions Letters can be sent to [email protected]. Submissions must be exclusive to The Post and should include the writer9s address and day and evening telephone numbers. Letters are subject to editing and abridgment. Please do not send letters as attachments. Because of the volume of material we receive, we are unable to acknowledge submissions; writers whose letters are under consideration for publication will be contacted. ann TELnaEs Ginni Thomas9s husband should recuse

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ Re a33 T he past year has seen a fundamental challenge to world order. The rules-based international system built by the United States and others over the decades is now under threat in three regions. In Europe, Russia9s war on Ukraine shatters the long-standing norm that borders should not be changed by force. In the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas threatens a dangerous radicalization of the region, with Iranian-backed militias fighting U.S.-backed allies from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq to Syria. And in Asia, China9s rise continues to unsettle the balance of power. Each of these challenges has its peculiarities, but they have in common the need for a sophisticated mixture of deterrence and diplomacy. The Biden administration has tackled them energetically, setting agendas, rallying allies and talking to adversaries. Success will depend on whether it can execute the policies it has adopted. Alas, that might depend on the United States9 domestic politics more than its grand strategies. In Europe, Washington has emphasized combating Russian aggression. This is easier said than done. Russia has an economy that was nine times the size of Ukraine9s before the war and a population today almost four times larger. That basic mismatch can only be addressed through continuous, large-scale Western assistance to Ukraine, coupled with pressure on Kyiv to develop a more manageable military strategy and to reform its politics and economics so that it can genuinely become a part of the West. In the Middle East, the challenge is more in the realm of diplomacy than deterrence. Israel has overwhelming power compared with Hamas; there really is no doubt that it will win in the narrow, military sense of the word. But to leave Israel more secure, with meaningful, new alliances with the Gulf Arab states, the United States must get Israel to address an underlying, unavoidable reality: about 5 million Palestinians live in lands occupied by Israel without political rights and without a state of their own. China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order 4 determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence. The strategy the Biden administration has adopted is nuanced, emphasizing competition and deterrence while also trying to build a working relationship with Beijing. During the past few months, that strategy seems to have yielded results, including a more conciliatory tone from the Chinese. The shift undoubtedly has much to do with Beijing9s economic troubles, as well as the realization that Xi Jinping9s <Wolf Warrior= diplomacy has backfired, producing animosity across Asia. But part of the credit goes to a U.S. policy that has pushed tough measures even as it has encouraged dialogue and diplomacy. Despite well-designed policy in each of these areas, the Biden administration confronts the reality that U.S. domestic politics could derail all progress. If U.S. support for Ukraine wavers, European resolve will also weaken, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will be confirmed in his prediction that he can outlast the West. Large constituencies in both America and Europe still support Ukraine, but the United States is experiencing growing opposition from a newly isolationist right. And the Republican Party is poised to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate, a man who has made no bones about his dislike of Ukraine and admiration for Putin. In the Middle East, President Biden faces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is highly adept at pocketing U.S. support and resisting all advice. Since the days of the Oslo accords in the 1990s, Netanyahu has found ways to feign support for a peace process while actually gutting it. The last time Washington tried to pressure him, he made an end run around President Barack Obama and mobilized support directly through Congress. Perhaps recognizing this, the Biden administration seems instead to be trying to marshal Arab states 4 chiefly Saudi Arabia 4 to influence Israel. With China, the Biden administration9s careful mix of deterrence and diplomacy can only work if domestic policy does not upend it. The politics of China policy remain overwhelmingly hawkish; there is no perceived downside to bashing Beijing. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party just recommended even more severe measures against China, including a slew of tariffs that would, according to an estimate by Oxford Economics, cost the U.S. economy up to $1.9 trillion over the next five years and could lead to a broad rupture in the global economy. As I recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, <the most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order does not come from China, Russia, or Iran. It comes from the United States.= If America retreats, in each of these three areas, aggression and disorder will rise. 2024 might be a year in which the ugly, polarized politics on Capitol Hill ends up shaping the world in which we will live for decades to come. Fareed Zakaria America9s 2024 will loom large in world history A lmost no one believes the world needs more jerks. A Google search for the phrase returns exactly 12 hits, all of them sarcastic. Which only makes sense. Who likes being around jerks? Almost no one, that9s who. You9d have to be a bit of a jerk to suggest that we ought to have more of them despoiling our homes, workplaces and social gatherings. Allow me to introduce myself, then, as the jerk who thinks we need more jerks, particularly in knowledge-making fields such as journalism and academia 4 or at least the kind of people who get called jerks for saying things their colleagues don9t want to hear. These professions used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of <jerks=: naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever they9ve been told not to. These character traits don9t make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom. Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening that kept social pressure from compressing the range of acceptable thought into an intellectual pancake: flat, uniform and not very interesting. These days, human resources departments have cracked down on all manner of jerk-ish behavior 4 including, of course, saying things that offend one9s colleagues. But if you9re in the truth business, all this niceness comes at a cost, as a perspective just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes clear. The paper9s multiple authors exhaustively categorize the rising pressures for, and tolerance of, academic censorship 4 including self-censorship. For example, they write, <a majority of eminent social psychologists reported that if science discovered a major genetic contribution to sex differences, widespread reporting of this finding would be bad.= Their paper challenges many of our common assumptions about censorship. First, that because it9s bad it must be done for bad reasons; and, second, that censorship is mostly a matter of outsiders tyrannizing truth-seekers. In fact, censorship is often done by scientists themselves 4 and often for reasons that suggest, well, an excess of niceness: fighting injustice, promoting equality, protecting the weak. And if they also want to stay on the good side of their colleagues, well, nice people usually do. Unfortunately, the universe isn9t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds. I think, for example, of my fellow Post columnist Lawrence H. Summers, who was forced out as president of Harvard several years ago after he speculated, at a small private seminar, that one possible reason for the underrepresentation of women in elite science and engineering programs might be that their ability was less variable than men9s. So while both sexes perform about as well on average, the women might tend to cluster near the middle, while the men are overrepresented at the bottom and the top 4 the latter being where elite programs draw from. Understandably, this caused hurt and outrage among many female academics. But things can be true even if they make us feel bad, and Summers9s speculation is at least compatible with what we know about sex differences in other animals. A truth- seeking institution would have set feelings aside and asked whether the hypothesis was right or wrong (as Summers himself said it might well be). Instead, Summers resigned. This was a watershed event that has influenced how university administrators are selected and how they behave 4 as we saw in this month9s congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, where three nice university presidents struggled to mount a coherent, and plausible, defense of free expression on campus. One reason they struggled was that campuses have in fact become more and more hostile to debate on issues of identity, as you will find extensively examined in <The Canceling of the American Mind,= a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. But it9s not just a problem of overzealous DEI bureaucracies; scholars are censoring each other 4 and themselves. One has only to look at the way some academic disciplines have veered into activism 4 unfortunately including public health during the pandemic. Or at the papers concerning sensitive issues like race and sexuality that were retracted under activist pressure. Or at recent editorial statements from the journal Nature suggesting that editors should vet papers not just for scientific accuracy but also for possible harm to marginalized communities. Undoubtedly, the folks who wrote that editorial thought they were helping make the world a better place. But, undoubtedly, so did the men who prosecuted Galileo. Niceness doesn9t prevent error 4 in fact, it may make mistakes more likely. Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, one of the authors of the paper, pointed out that research shows people who viewed themselves as strongly principled were actually more willing to tailor their findings to the wishes of their funders or distort their findings to advance noble goals. <In many cases, people9s perception that they are strongly committed to social justice and rigor actually makes them more susceptible to being corrupted,= he told me in an interview. Niceness also makes incidents of censorship harder to address. <If they were driven by bad people with bad motives, then the solution would be easy: Get rid of those people. But when it9s driven by people who are good, who are committed to doing good work and who are trying to do good through their work,then the solution becomes & more difficult.= It might be worse than that, I responded: By trying to get rid of bad people, you could make science worse, because the most likely targets might be the semi-antisocial folks who just said what they thought, even if it upset people. You know, the jerks. <I think this is true,= al-Gharbi said. <To the extent that we select for only the most pro-social people, we might actually be making science more vulnerable not just to censorship, but to some of these other problems like fraud and corruption as well.= They and we would be better off if they kept a few ruthless iconoclasts around to periodically jerk them out of that complacency. getty Images Megan Mcardle The world could use more jerks <Republicans struggle as they keep getting forced to talk about abortion= 4 Politico headline, Dec. 15 H uh! It turns out <Well, with luck, you probably won9t die being forced to give birth to a nonviable fetus over the objections of your doctor!= 4 even if you say it in a warm, human-sounding way 4 is not actually what people want to hear when deciding how to cast their votes. Fascinating! People keep hearing stories like that of Kate Cox, whose medically recommended abortion to end a nonviable pregnancy and preserve her fertility was shut down by the Texas Supreme Court, and saying, <Wait, is that actually your policy? Jesus!= and it turns out that <Yup!= or <Pretty much!= is not a winning answer. Also not great: <Please hold while the Supreme Court figures out if it wants to impose even more restrictions on what medical care you are allowed to receive!= <Nobody would wish this to happen on anybody,= Ron DeSantis said this past week during a CNN town hall 4 which is true, except in the strict, limited sense that policies the governor and presidential aspirant has signed into law in Florida have imposed that exact situation on people. I guess it9s the thought that counts! Maybe he imposed it, but he didn9t wish it. Nikki Haley said <we have to humanize the situation,= which, I guess, are words! <So, you want a 13-year-old to be forced to bear her rapist9s baby at tremendous physical and emotional cost?= has one easy answer: <No!= And if you aren9t allowed to say that, that9s a problem! A messaging problem, of course. <Wait, you seriously don9t want any exceptions, and you are going to weaponize government against people with reasonable medical needs?= is a question to which <Don9t worry your pretty little head about it= is not a great answer. Or maybe they could stop trying to dehumanize half the population? No. It9s the words. It9s got to be the words. There9s no changing the underlying policy. That9s out of the question! It9s just unfortunate that so many people see these stories of people struggling to get their abortions and say, <That could be me!= The time-tested Republican response of, <Nonsense! You don9t have a uterus!= only works about 50 percent of the time. If it fails, they are stuck saying things such as <Yikes!= and <Woof!= and <With a condition like that, are you sure you should be voting?= I wonder why this is so difficult to talk about! Maybe what Republicans need is a better slogan. <Sometimes, too many rights are actually a burden= and <Do you ever get tired of making decisions for yourself?= and <Relax: We9ve got it! But let us know if you think you9re bleeding to death= turn out not to be winners, as far as slogans go. Same for, <You Don9t Get a Say, and We Don9t Care if You Die,= even if you say it with a lot of warm eye contact. Also bad: <You Don9t Get a Say, We Will Laugh at What Your Doctor Says, and We Want You to Do Everything But Die.= Maybe they should add some exclamation points at the end to make it clear there are no hard feelings! Or try the TikTok approach of calling these <Girl Rights!= like <Girl Dinner!= but it9s a plate of just one or two rights, not enough to support a whole person? Hmm, what about this isn9t a winner? alexandra Petri GOP talking point: Let us relieve you of those burdensome rights

A34 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 Explore conversations with cultural trailblazers, acclaimed journalists, business executives, top policymakers and other leaders about the intersections of race, identity, representation and history. Catch up on conversations you may have missed and register for upcoming programs. Visit wapo.st/raceinamerica @POSTLIVE #POSTLIVE Listen wherever podcasts are available. Lily Gladstone Actor Colson Whitehead Author, <Crook Manifesto= Amna Nawaz Co-Anchor, PBS NewsHour Oscar Munoz Former CEO & Executive Chair, United Airlines and Author, <Turnaround Time= Drew Gilpin Faust Author, <Necessary Trouble= & Former President, Harvard University Morgan Freeman Executive Producer, <761st Tank Battalion: |e Original Black Panthers= Chris Paul NBA All-Star & Author, <Sixty-One= Oakland, Calif., Mayor Sheng |ao (D) Lisa Jackson Vice President, Environment, Policy & Social Initiatives, Apple iLe Grammy-winning Artist Sean Sherman Founder & CEO, |e Sioux Chef and Co-Owner, Owamni Michelle Ebanks President & CEO, |e Apollo Elizabeth Acevedo Author, <Family Lore= Jason Robertson NHL Player, Dallas Stars Cristina García Author, <Vanishing Maps= Poorna Jagannathan Actor, <Never Have I Ever= Cecilia Vega Correspondent, <60 Minutes= Atsuko Okatsuka Comedian Tim Ma Founder & CEO, Lucky Danger and Co-Founder, Chefs Stopping AAPI Hate Ned Blackhawk Author, <|e Rediscovery of America= and Professor, History & American Studies, Yale University

KLMNO S book unday, decemBer world 17, 2023 . Section B eZ ee bECCA ROTHFELD Why Renaissance women all wanted to look like venus. b2 RON CHARLES at our house, <the grinch= means a little bit more. b3 AUDIObOOKS Featuring Florence, Fiji and a massachusetts forest. b3 STAFF PICKS Book World9s most memorable reading of 2023. b8 BY JACK SHEEHAN Claire Keegan9s Moment The Irish writer9s tales of misogyny offer valuable perspective and surprising solace davId Levenson/getty Images 8You know what is at the heart of misogyny?= a character asks in the title story of Claire Keegan9s <so Late in the Day.= <It9s simply about not giving. & Whether it9s believing you should not give us the vote or not give help with the dishes.= The three pieces in Keegan9s latest collection, subtitled <stories of Women and Men,= revolve around uneasy, sometimes violent tension in loveless marriages, failed relationships and chance encounters alike. spanning 25 years of Keegan9s career, they trace a current of violent chauvinism from the subtle to the overt. Together they give an image of men defined by sickly hunger, brittle pride, and a growing rage at the slow waning of their social and political power. Keegan has already had a long and lauded career, especially in her home country, Ireland. But the adaptation of her novella <Foster= into the oscar-nominated <The Quiet Girl= in 2022, and the release of her exceptional follow-up, <small Things Like These,= the year before, have raised her profile enormously in the United states. The stories in <so Late in the Day= make for a compelling sample of the questions that have long powered her work. In this volume, male rage becomes more subtle as the stories go on, leaving the reader feeling as if they are burrowing through the muck from contemporary hate to its origins. Cathal, in the title story, whose fiancé has left him after many unforgivable acts of coldness, contemplates his mistakes and the legacy of his father, settling eventually into a curious mixture of regret and hatred. In <The Long and Painful Death,= a woman see Keegan on B7

B2 eZ ee the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 nonFiction The cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein once observed, <There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.= The kind of beauty she had in mind is an ambivalent gift. On the one hand, it is not confined to the biologically blessed but available to everyone; on the other, it is a hard-earned prize, a product of ritualistic and often painstaking devotions at the mirror. Is this sort of beauty worth pursuing? Some feminist thinkers have bashed it as a superficial distraction. <Taught from infancy that beauty is woman9s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison,= Mary Wollstonecraft wrote disdainfully in 1792. Yet there is a tinge of misogyny to the familiar accusation that cosmetic projects are fluffy trivialities. Perhaps there is more truth (and more respect) to be found in the view of the novelist Henry James, who once described a female character9s flair for fashion as a form of <genius.= Is beautification always a capitulation to sexist pressures? Or can it be a means of self-expression? These are the perennial questions that Jill Burke takes up in <How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity.= They were also subjects of heated debate during the Renaissance, when some women chastised their peers for vanity and others maintained that beautification practices allowed them a measure of agency. Burke, an art historian at the University of Edinburgh, is a veritable repository of arcane, entertaining information. Her diverting history touches on subjects from reconstructive surgery for noses slashed off in punitive rituals to wives who used toxic ingredients in their makeup to poison their husbands. If <How to Be a Renaissance Woman= never quite coalesces into a continuous narrative or mounts a clear argument, the disjointed anecdotes that make it up are nonetheless delightful and surprising. The Renaissance, which began around 1400 and ended around 1650, was a transitional and transformative era,atime of inventions and discoveries. The printing press allowed for the widespread dissemination of books and pamphlets, and explorers returned from trips across uncharted seas with news of a <world previously unknown to Europeans,= which they promptly proceeded to pillage. Meanwhile, the Scientific Revolution enabled a generation of enterprising scholars to manipulate the environment in ambitious and, until then, unimaginable ways. It was in the context of these dramatic reorientations 4 and of science9s staggering triumphs over nature 4 that Renaissance women were sometimes compelled and sometimes empowered to see the body not as a given but as a <canvas= (Burke9s word) ripe for reimagination. <Whether we look fat, thin, clear-skinned, healthy, exhausted is not related simply to our genes, but constituted by a complex to-ing and froing between inside and outside, between our bodies and our environment,= writes Burke of Renaissance women 4 and, I think, of us. Then, as now, technological changes drove shifts in both the understanding and the pursuit of beauty. <Before the sixteenth century,= Burke explains, <it was difficult for people to see themselves in their entirety from an exterior viewpoint.= When the full-length mirror appeared in the early 1500s, it enabled women to take stock of how their looks thwarted or satisfied the norms of the era. These norms, in turn, were popularized by a second spate of innovations. <The advent of the naturalistic nude and true-tolife portraiture,= two nascent yet increasingly ubiquitous genres of painting, yielded a relatively standardized model for women to emulate, in much the same way Becca Rothfeld that social media generates templates today. Titian9s <Venus of Urbino,= completed in 1538, provides a prime example of the Renaissance ideal. The voluptuous Venus in question has luxurious strawberry blonde hair, a strikingly fair complexion and what Burke describes as a <fleshy hourglass= form. Like Laura, the young beauty immortalized by Petrarch in his celebrated sonnets in the early 1300s, the seductress in Titian9s masterpiece boasts <golden hair, spacious forehead, benign eyes, rosy cheeks, ruby lips, sweet breath, white throat, apple breasts and white hands,= Burke writes. <White hands= 4 and pale skin more generally 4 would become ever more of an imperative for European women when enslaved Africans were kidnapped and hauled to the continent9s shores in the 1500s. European women achieved their icy whiteness figuratively, by insisting on their distance from the darker-skinned women they subjugated, and literally, by producing complex (and frequently toxic) ointments. One noblewoman9s unappetizing recipe called for <twelve lemons and twenty-five eggs, and a mixture of alum, asbestos, borax, camphor and mercury sublimate.= In addition to brewing these uninviting potions, Renaissance women bleached their hair into blondness and devised formulas for the removal of unwanted hair. Elaborate diet regimens, based on the byzantine medical theory that bodies were made up of four humors, were yet another staple. One rather sanguine 16th-century text recommended that women looking to gain weight consume <fresh eggs, wheat, rice, broad beans cooked with milk, cream cheese, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, walnuts, figs, grapes; fat capons, chickens, lamb, duck, pigeons, veal and meats of this type.= Then, it continues, <give yourself over to pleasant dances, games, songs and other pastimes, and spend three hours on things that delight you.=Amore scolding tract advised men who hoped to shed pounds to <have hot baths, do exercise such as horse riding, stay up at night studying, sleep onahard board and have little food but lots of sex,= per Burke9s summary. And for those loath to modify their bodies (or those whose bodies resisted modification), fashion presented a less invasive alternative. Burke explains that <undergarments were developed in the sixteenth century to give women9s torsos a more sculptural shape,= especially in the wake of childbirth. (After all, she reminds us, many Renaissance women <spent much of their time from the age of puberty to menopause pregnant,= which meant that cosmetics manuals often doubled as founts of information about menstruation, childbirth and even how to make abortifacients.) Garments such as busks, corset-like contraptions designed to flatten protruding stomachs, and <breast bags,= as early bras were called, helped women transform themselves, insofar as possible, into living Titians. It was not just rich women who could aspire to become works of art: <This was a world where even a peasant fruit seller would have been urged to emulate Venus,= Burke writes. The widespread distribution of reading matter had the unintended consequence of democratizing beauty secrets. The <earliest known printed book of beauty tips,=apamphlet first circulated in 1526, was marketed to an audience of aristocrats and peasants alike. For some women, beauty was a profession: In Italy, <maestras= <specialised in various aspects of maintaining and beautifying women9s bodies.= But even women who did not work in the formal cosmetics trade were forced to acknowledge that beauty was lucrative: It helped them secure desirable husbands or hock their wares in the marketplaces of newly bustling port cities, where men were no doubt more eager to buy from attractive vendors. Beauty was also work in another sense: It was nonoptional. <For some, a commitment to beautification was less a woman9s pleasure and more a household duty, alongside domestic cleanliness, care of the family9s health, and cookery,= Burke writes. Some argued that beautification amounted to a kind of deceptive falsification. <Many people assumed that beauty equated to good health and to a virtuous personality= 4aview that <was taken to its extreme by the widely influential Spanish celebrity doctor Juan Huarte (1529-88), who showed men how to evaluate women9s suitability as potential wives based on the principles of physiognomy.= From the perspective of Huarte and his followers, whose outlook is suspiciously similar to that of evolutionary psychologists today, makeup conceals women9s true appearance and therefore misleads suitors about their fertility. But even the likes of Huarte believed that women should work to become beautiful 4 not by employing deceptive cosmetic stratagems but by recognizing that <ugliness could be understood as a medical problem,= and undertaking the more sensible labor of healing, perhaps by ingesting purgatives or taking other measures to balance their humors. Sometimes, beautification could be a bane, and never more so than when it consigned women suffering from the disease of ungainliness to onerous Renaissance-era cures. But it could also be a boon. Women during the Renaissance exercised little control over their own lives, and the cosmetic domain was one of the few that permitted them a share of autonomy. It is not surprising that many women were vocal champions of beautification, going to great lengths to oppose sumptuary laws that restricted their choices and avowing that fashion was their realm of interest and expertise. The work of beauty can be arduous, and in the Renaissance, when it frequently involved the application of mercury and lead to the skin, it could even be fatal. Whether it is good work or bad work, art or exploitation, depends entirely on the conditions under which it is performed. But one thing is for sure: It is too often a matter of life or death to be a mere frivolity. Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post. heRItaGe ImaGes/Getty ImaGes ABOVE: <Venus With a Mirror,= c. 1555, by Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian. Such paintings set the beauty norms of the Renaissance. RIGHT: Author Jill Burke. Joe Rosenthal HoW To Be a RenaissanCe Woman The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity By Jill Burke Pegasus. 317 pp. $28.95 When women strove to become works of art Renaissance beauty, toxic and freeing <The advent of the naturalistic nude and true-to-life portraiture,= two nascent yet increasingly ubiquitous genres of painting, yielded a relatively standardized model for women to emulate, in much the same way that social media generates templates today.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ EE B3 Fiction Although I hold both figures in high regard,I9m embarrassed to say that I9ve read <How the Grinch Stole Christmas!= many more times than I9ve read the Gospel accounts of Jesus9 birth. Nothing against the Nativity story. With errant kings, angelic fireworks and a dynamite backstory, it9s got terrific elements, but 4 God forgive me4Dr. Seuss has got rhythm and rhyme. Those are saving graces in my family. My first daughter, Elissa, was born severely oxygen deprived.In those early moments after her arrival, one idyllic version of our future evaporated, and other possible futures started to form darkly in the dusk of our hopes. I realize, of course, that many parents must radically adjust their expectations. The picture that comes with the frame is not the image of anyone9s real family. But my wife and I felt particularly lost. The early diagnosis 4 cerebral palsy 4 was severe, devastating and terrifyingly vague. As other moms and dads cooed about their babies rolling over and waving bye-bye, we tried not to pay any attention to the typical developmental milestones. My wife and I struggled to maintain what order 4 and humor 4 we could manage. Because books were so important to us, we read them aloud without knowing if the joys of language would ever be part of Elissa9s life. Forawhile, frankly, it all felt like an exercise in false hope, but we developed a great fondness for hope of any species. We patted the bunny and fed a very hungry caterpillar and asked the brown bear what it saw. The earnest tones of our reading were peaceful. Andabit dull. But then, sometimes 4 look! there! 4 we started to catch signs of delight flashing across Elissa9s face when we were reading children9s books of a certain sort: stories that rhyme, lines that bounce, words that spark with onomatopoeia. Soon, it was obvious: Elissa adored hearing books of verse. My wife and I became Jack Prelutsky partisans and Shel Silverstein aficionados. But our most enduring love was for the zany sounds of Dr. Seuss. As he would say: <It Ron Charles started in low. Then it started to grow.= In those early dad days, every step I took around the house seemed to fall into the rhythm of<The Foot Book.=I moo9d with Mr. Brown. (Can you?) My wife and I learned that it was possible to carry on entire conversations in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there and everywhere. If it rained, we sat there, we two, and I said, <How I wish we had something to do!= We always found Thing One and Thing Two. But the Dr. Seuss story that burst into our home with particular vigor and has refused to leave was the book he published a few months after <The Cat in the Hat.= <How theGrinch Stole Christmas!= first appeared in the pages of Redbook magazine in late 1957. A bound version quickly followed. I knew the story well, not only from the book my parents read to me butfrom the TV adaptation that became a holiday favorite in 1966 and gave the world the first green version of the Grinch. But it wasn9t untilthe early 990s that I began reading <How theGrinch Stole Christmas!= enthusiastically all year round to a little girl who adored it. The Grinch not only stole Christmas, he stole my daughter9s heart. I make no claims to competing with the sonorous voice of Boris Karloff, but I developed a way of hooting on every Who down in Whoville that this toddler thought was particularly hilarious. Of course, the book9s appeal stems from more than justafew funny sounds. What makes the language of<How the Grinch Stole Christmas!= so delectable is the wild modulation of its tone4the way the Grinch undulates from disgruntlementto rage to Dr. sEuss EnTErPrisEs Ron Charles9s daughter connected with <How the Grinch Stole Christmas!= 8Three Fires,9 by Denise Mina Known chiefly as a writer of Tartan noir, Mina is also the author of short, punchy novellas on historical personages. The first, <Rizzio= (2021), chronicled the life and murder of David Rizzio, the presumed lover of Mary Queen of Scots. The second,<Three Fires,= looks atthe life of Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), scourge of the worldly, both lay and clerical, in 15th-century Florence. He railed powerfully against usury, gluttony, fornication, simony and luxury, and, more specifically, against women and homosexuality. The story of this committed killjoy ends on the scaffold and 4 be warned 4 includes scenes of massacre, torture and execution. The book proceeds at a fast clip, narrated by Rachael Beresford, whose precise English voice resembles that of a well-broughtup young woman, her elocutionary style possessing the cadence of a recitation. It is an approach that accords perfectly with Mina9s staccato prose and air of indictment.(Tantor, Unabridged, 4 hours) 8A Disappearance in Fiji,9 by Nilima Rao Rao, a Fijian Indian Australian, sets the AUDIOBOOKS by Katherine A. Powers devilish delight and beyond. His emotions are as naked and volcanic asachild9s. And like the best children9s books, Dr. Seuss9s work lures readers into the forbidden realm of wickedness. When theGrinch is caught stealing a Christmas tree by Little Cindy-Lou Who, who was not more than 2, we experience an essentialthrill of literature: the chance to be both 4 both the little girl so easily fooled and the furry unctuous liar who has no shame. That swirling solution of innocence and villainy is the elixir that keeps <How the Grinch Stole Christmas!= eternally young. It9s allowed the story to survive a Halloween prequel, a showdown with the Cat in the Hat, the creepy antics of Jim Carrey, a 3D animation, a musical stage adaptation, a horror knockoff and even, this year, a bland sequel called <How the Grinch Lost Christmas=that reads likeaMad Libs version of the original. The sturdy persistence of the Grinch may stem from how slowly he emerged from his cave with that sour, Grinchy frown. He slithered and slunk around Ted Geisel9s mind over several years and two earlier incarnations. In 1953, afterabitter experience in Hollywood,Geisel published <Scrambled Eggs Super!,= which includes a bird known as the Beagle-Beaked-Bald-Headed Grinch. Two years later, he wrote a satirical poem called <The Hoobub and the Grinch,= about a salesman peddling a short piece of green string. But after Christmas in 1956,Geisel9s longsimmering irritation with the commercialization of the holiday season finally crystallized. Then he got an idea! An awful idea! THE AUTHOR GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA! In Brian Jay Jones9s biography <Becoming Dr. Seuss,= Geisel is quoted saying,<I wrote the story & to see ifIcould rediscover something about Christmas that obviously I9d lost.= That makes <How the Grinch Stole Christmas!= sound like a tale about returning to the origins ofthe holiday. Butthat9s more the theme of<A Charlie Brown Christmas,= which is punctuated by Linus reciting verses from the Book of Luke.Geisel was after something more secular and ultimately more complex. According to Jones, he considered <thousands= of endings but rejected them all as too preachy and religious. We9ve come to think of theGrinch as a character who hated Christmas, but at the start of the book everything he hates about the holiday is, in fact, extraneous to its essential meaning. He hates the greedy obsession with presents, he hates the wildly elaborate meals, and he especially hates the saccharine music. <Oh, the noise!= he shudders. <Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!= If theGrinch had remained fixated on the true meaning ofChristmas, when he got 3,000 feet up to the top of Mt. Crumpit, he9d have dumped all those toys 4 along with the ribbons and wrappings4and then come down from the peak of his moral superiority to remind the Whos how to properly observe the holiday. But this is not a story about conversion or ideological purity.It9s a story aboutlearning to live with, even to appreciate and revel in, the traditions of others. Inaworld so divided by adamantine convictions about who9s right, who9s worthy and how we should behave, the Grinch9s great revelation, his heart-expanding compromise, isamodel for everyone in Whoville and beyond. Thirty years ago,Iwas justadesperate dad looking for a silly rhyming book to read to my daughter. NowIsee what a rich present it really is. Try the roast beast. It9s delicious. Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club newsletter for The Washington Post. events of her debut inawretched chapter of Britain9s colonial history. It is 1914 and Akal Singh, an Indian policeman, has been sent in disgrace by British authorities from his posting in Hong Kong to Fiji, considered an unappealing backwater. Thousands of destitute indentured Indians work grueling hours in the sugar cane fields providing the colony9s major export. One such person, Kunti, has gone missing. Some say she has run away, but Akal doesn9t buy it, as Kunti left her young daughter behind. Despite being warned off the investigation and raising the ire of the plantation owners, Akal persists, thereby providingastriking picture of the victims and beneficiaries of the colonial plantation system in Fiji. Alive with well-drawn characters and deftly plotted with a number of twists, the novel is further enhanced by Sid Sagar9s narration. He delivers the general narrative in a clear, mild, compassionate voice, but changes over wonderfully to tones of arrogant bluster for the plantation owner and his snippy wife, a consummate virago. (Recorded Books, Unabridged, 71/3 hours) 8North Woods,9 by Daniel Mason Mason9s ingenious fourth novel is set in western Massachusetts from the 17th century to the present day. Nature, its romance and drama, is its central focus, while historical events are only vaguely detectable. Instead, we experience the germination of a seed in a human corpse; the sexual passion of a bark beetle, bearer of Dutch elm disease; and the frenzy of the hurricane of 1938. Gesturing subtly at the biblical story of Eden and making occasional excursions into the paranormal, the novel also tells the story of a house and its successive inhabitants, each adding to its layered history. While the audiobook lacks the images of the printed version, there is compensation in the voices of 10 gifted narrators who amplify the novel9s emotional dimension. Mark Bramhall9s sandy, urgent voice carries the overarching narrative, while others deliver individual sections. Among them, Billie Fulford-Brown brings desperation to an account of an Indian raid on a European settlement, Mark Deakins infuses yearning into the letters of a wilderness painter, and Jason Culp delivers infectious gusto to a sensationalist truecrime reporter. (Random House, Unabridged, 11 hours) Katherine A. Powers reviews audiobooks every month for The Washington Post. How the Grinch stole my heart

b4 EZ EE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 Fiction BY JESS KEISER It9s not your imagination. Novels are getting weirder. Weird is the genre that ate the world. This is the sort of claim that might itself feel like a paranoid vision to the sort of reader who mainly consumes fiction featuring people with two eyes, conventional configurations of limbs and houses that are the same size on the inside as they would seem to be from without. But Marshall expertly demonstrates how the Weird has come to crop up in unexpected places. More a force, style or set of concerns than a boxed-off genre, the Weird, for Marshall, tends to invade and insinuate. Having escaped the pulpy backwaters of genre fiction, the Weird now spills into the groundwater nourishing all literature. It even makes itself felt in otherwise solidly realistic works, as if some evil genius grafted monstrous tendrils onto the stolid stock of realist literary fiction. It takes a mixed approach to genre, splicing 4 ILLUSTRATION By ALLA DREyVITSER/THE WASHINgTON POST; ISTOCK nOveLS by aLienS weird tales and the twenty-first century By Kate Marshall University of Chicago Press. 215 pp. $26, paperback weiRd fictiOn StORieS and nOveLS tO Read nOw sometimes subtly 4 the fantastic or cosmic into realist form. For example, Marilynne Robinson9s novel <Housekeeping= 4 a story of two sisters navigating bereavement and abandonment 4 could be described as <haunting,= given its gauzy, ethereal prose. But no one would normally characterize it as a horror novel, much less a Weird one: There is hardly a chthonic creature or Cyclopean ruin in sight. Nevertheless, Marshall teases out the work9s uncanny kinship to Blackwood and Lovecraft, a connection especially evident when Robinson9s <narrator takes on an alien perspective, voicing knowledge tonally marked as external to her experience.= Marshall is expert at tracking the work of the Weird as it warps and distends otherwise straightforward <mainstream= writing like Robinson9s. When the narrator of Teju Cole9s <Open City= <desperately seek[s] a cosmic vantage,= when one of Don DeLillo9s characters <aspires to be a rock,= when Richard Powers, in <The Overstory,= imagines <vast letters constructed from decaying trees viewable only from space,= the novels, otherwise safely anchored in the consensual hallucination we call reality, drift into stranger, more alien territory, like the travelers in Blackwood9s <Willows.= Why the Weird? Why now? At the start of <Novels by Aliens,= Marshall considers Amitav Ghosh9s despairing account of the contemporary novel in the time of climate change. For Ghosh, the novel, our best means of plumbing psychic interiority and mapping out social space, simply cannot measure up to the impersonal, extra-human forces cooking the globe. Marriage, war, memory, cities and existential despair fall neatly into the novel9s domain, but the extinction of species, the suffocating circulation of greenhouse gases, the violent extraction of fossil fuels and rare-earth minerals 4 such things exceed the novel9s grasp. For Ghosh, Marshall argues, the novel can witness those planet-sweeping developments only through the peephole of human perception. It necessarily stands at a remove from the true enormity of the global crisis. The problem with Ghosh9s argument, Marshall points out, is that it presumes the novel is a form smaller and more staid than it really is. Ghosh calls for a fiction of the future that will reach beyond the confines of the human point of view. Marshall maintains that such literature is already here in our <novels by aliens,= works that adapt the Weird innovations of genre fiction to our increasingly strange and unreal times. When the narrator of <The Willows= catches an unclear, impossible glimpse of the alien beings surrounding him, he exclaims, <I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed.= Marshall has shown that we could say the same of the contemporary <realist= novel: <The standard of reality had changed.= Such novels have become necessarily Weirder to meet the challenge of weirder times. Or, as Mark E. Smith, the lead singer of the Fall 4 a band steeped in Lovecraftian lore 4 once put it in a slyly allusive line: <You don9t have to be Weird to be weird.= Jess Keiser is an associate professor in the department of English at Tufts University and the author of <Nervous Fictions: Literary Form and the Enlightenment Origins of Neuroscience.= For Weird fiction novices, where to start? H.P. Lovecraft9s work probably best exemplifies the genre, but it is by no means the first or last word. Probably the single best introduction to the genre is Ann and Jeff VanderMeer9s anthology <The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories.= The book does a nice job surveying the canon, new and old. It contains writing that inspired or anticipated Lovecraft as well as work by contemporary practitioners 4 among them, China Miéville, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Brian Evenson and Jeff VanderMeer himself. Those brave enough to venture further into Weird territory might consider: <the town Manager= and <Our temporary Supervisor,= by thomas Ligotti, collected in <teatro Grottesco=: The single best living writer of the Weird is Thomas Ligotti, whose work owes as much to Lovecraft as to the uncategorizable, absurdist fantasies of early-20th-century writers such as Bruno Schulz and Franz Kafka. As with Kafka, Ligotti9s great obsessions are soul-sucking jobs, faceless bureaucracies, maddening paperwork and dehumanizing offices. Except in the case of stories like the two recommended here, the jobs are literally soul-sucking. <the Hospice,= by Robert aickman, collected in <cold Hand in Mind=: While Ligotti deals in the dread of office drudgery, Aickman 4 who produced a series of works he called simply <strange stories= 4 focuses on the horrors of tourism and travel. <The Hospice= features a lost, bedraggled traveler who gets exactly what he wants: a hotel with food and a bed. Except the sumptuous feast served by the unrelenting staff never seems to stop 4 and the other guests are chained to the dining table. <Picnic at Hanging Rock,= by Joan Lindsay: Peter Weir9s film adaptation of Lindsay9s novel is perhaps better known than its source material. The story of schoolgirls gone missing on a field trip, Weir9s vague, creepy, menacing film is a remarkably faithful adaptation of Lindsay9s extraordinary work. Sun-dappled but brimming with dread, both versions suggest that the schoolgirls inadvertently slipped into some nonhuman realm. <Solenoid,= by Mircea cartarescu: If Ligotti is the Kafka of Weird fiction, then the Romanian writer Cartarescu is its Proust. Cartarescu9s recently translated novel <Solenoid= is obsessed with memory and reverie. Set in Bucharest, it finds the unnamed narrator ruminating on his past, much of which involves that most Proustian of activities: reading in a childhood bedroom. But strangeness abounds. The buildings and facades of Bucharest conceal labyrinths and odd machinery; a local factory serves as a gateway to an alien (or perhaps microscopic) dimension, one bristling with many-limbed monstrosities; a cult stalks the city; and the narrator digs foreign objects from his body (the result of some half-remembered childhood surgery or experiment?). <the Passion according to G.H.,= by clarice Lispector: Where the classic ghost story makes our hair stand on end, the Weird sets out to drive us mad. The closest that Lispector9s novel comes to Lovecraftian tentacular terror is a cockroach, which is crushed in the opening pages. But what happens next is pure Weird. Fixated on the dead bug, the narrator finds her mind slowly unfurling as it moves from cockroach to cosmos. 4 Jess Keiser A lgernon Blackwood9s <The Willows= is arguably the scariest story ever written. It is certainly the weirdest. First published in 1907, <The Willows= begins in familiar territory as it tells the tale of two adventurers canoeing down the Danube. Our protagonists are warned against a vaguely evil spot by superstitious locals. Naturally, they ignore this advice and soon find themselves stranded on a diminishing sandy island, its banks crumbling amid ever-rising floodwaters, the only shelter a copse of uncannily animate willow trees. A terrifying presence soon makes itself felt 4 and here Blackwood9s story shifts from hoary Gothic clichés to something unaccountably new. Before Blackwood, horror stories most often centered on entities that are eerie because of their proximity to us. The revenant, the vampire, the doll-sprung-to-life and so on all reflect human ugliness back at us, as if from a warped and grimy mirror. <The Willows,= by contrast, looks elsewhere, outward. The beings that beset the adventurers are emphatically alien: unknowable, indescribable, unnamable. For all its singularity, <The Willows,= like all pieces of genius, has become exemplary. Having reworked old conventions into something startlingly new, Blackwood now stands at the head of a particular stream of horror writing often called simply <the Weird.= The name suggests the magazine Weird Tales, preferred venue for the genre9s foremost practitioner, H.P. Lovecraft. A devotee of <The Willows,= Lovecraft praised Blackwood for his ability to conjure <the idea of an unreal world constantly pressing upon ours.= He could have been describing his own stories or those of his many imitators. Creepy encounters with creatures far removed from familiar evolutionary pathways, vertiginous dives into the deep abysses of past time and possible futures, mad-making glimpses into realities where the rock-solid certainty of Euclidean geometry no longer holds sway 4 the Weird9s territory is, by definition, bigger than anything we can imagine. Yet, measured by the scarce attention it has received from academics, literary critics and general readers, the Weird can appear insignificant, especially relative to the sweeping, cosmic visions it offers. It is the aim of Kate Marshall9s excellent new book, <Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century,= to rectify this neglect. For Marshall, an English professor at the University of Notre Dame, the Weird, in its many manifestations, stands at the center of contemporary literary culture 4 so long as we know where and how to see it. As Marshall notes, a defining trait of much recent fiction is <the desire for nonhuman narration,= which is to say some sense of the forces that exceed our understanding but still shape our lives. It follows that the Weird, like the grasping tentacles many of its authors so obsessively describe, has slithered up from hidden depths and coiled itself around unsuspecting books, authors and readers. The

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ ee B5 Book World Restore ye olde holiday spirit with these olde mystery novels When all the Hallmark movies, yuletide carols and unrelenting family time begin to wear away your Christmas spirit, it9s time to retreat, if only forafew hours, to some quiet corner with a classic murder mystery. There9s nothing likeaGreat Detective, a seemingly impossible crime, an abundance of red herrings and some clever deduction to restore one to jolly, Santa-like bonhomie. Let me stress that now isn9t the time for nail-biting suspense or gritty slices of underworld life: Most modern crime fiction is liable to roil the emotions and leave one feeing drained or upset rather than rested and restored. Old tales are best for winter, especially when they appear in shiny and inviting new editions. For example, <The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries,= edited with commentary by Michael Sims, offers a selection of little-known whodunits, several of them published long before Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 18879s <A Study in Scarlet.= Only a few connoisseurs of crime are likely to have already read <The Hand and Word= by Gerald Griffin, <Negative Evidence= by Richard Dowling, <The Sheriff 9s Children= by Charles W. Chesnutt or <The Statement of Jared Johnson= by Geraldine Bonner. In effect, Sims is a kind of literary archaeologist, unearthing half-buried treasure. Consider <Hanged by the Neck: A Confession,= by Charles Martel (an obvious pseudonym), first published in 1860. It opens, <I am about to lift the veil of mystery which for ten years has shrouded the murder of Maria G---; and though I lay bare my own weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not shrink from the unveiling.= That Victorian diction is strangely enticing, even if the reason for the murder of a beautiful young dancer in her locked apartment turns out to be very peculiar indeed. Several female detectives appear in Sims9s anthology, notably Loveday Brooke in C.L. Pirkis9s <The Murder at Troyte9s Hill= and Violet Strange in Anna Katharine Green9s <An Intangible Clue.= Many others 4 Dorcas Dene, Lady Molly, Judith Lee 4 can be found in Sims9s <Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime,= which usefully augments Michele Slung9s pioneering <Crime on Her Mind= and the old Ellery Queen anthology <The Female of the Species: The Great Women Detectives and Criminals.= But if you are taken with 19th-century storytelling in general, be sure to check out the Westminster Detective Library, the online repository of detective fiction published in magazines during the preSherlockian era. It was co-founded by the late and much-missed LeRoy Lad Panek with its current editor Mary M. BendelSimso, both of nearby McDaniel College. During the heyday of Sherlock Holmes, many British writers created competing versions of the sleuth of Baker Street. But in America the most dazzling preWorld WarIdetective was Jacques Futrelle9s Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen, a.k.a. The Thinking Machine. Earlier this year, Library of Congress Crime Classics brought out a new selection of Futrelle9s stories, chosen and annotated by the series9s general editor, Leslie S. Klinger. Despite its uninvitingly anatomical cover, LCCC9s <The Thinking Michael Dirda Machine= offers a week9s worth of highly entertaining period pieces and one masterpiece. The latter is, of course, <The Problem of Cell 13,= Van Dusen9s triumphant demonstration that nothing is beyond the power of the human intellect. To prove this point, the professor allows himself to be confined to a maximum-security prison cell and vows to escape within a week. If you9ve never read this classic, you9re in for a treat. On the other side of the pond, British Library Crime Classics, overseen by the redoubtable Martin Edwards, continues its own highly successful program of paperback reprints. Having greatly enjoyed Christianna Brand9s <Green for Danger= last summer, I settled down a few days ago with the BL paperback of her even more intricate <Death of Jezebel.= Written with both humor and pathos, it9s set at a British pageant in which 11 knights ride their horses around a tower and pay homage to a beautiful princess, high up on a parapet. During the show, in view of the audience, a horrific murder is committed by one of those knights. But which one? In their armor, they all look alike. Or could it have been someone else entirely? I don9t want to say more about this tour de force, but an analogy may help convey something of its playful complexity: If the main elements of the case are designated with the letters S, P, T and O, should they be arranged to spell TOPS, OPTS, SPOT, POST or STOP? By the climax of <Death of Jezebel,= the reader9s head will be spinning as Brand presents alternative reconstructions of the murder until Inspector Cockrill, in a melodramatic finale, reveals exactly who did what, why and how. Brand unquestionably pulls out all the stops for <Death of Jezebel.= In a contribution to the online CrimeReads site, Tom Mead 4 author of <Death and the Conjurer= and <The Murder Wheel= 4 selected the novel as the third-greatest locked-room mystery, after John Dickson Carr9s <The Hollow Man= (a.k.a. <The Three Coffins=) and Hake Talbot9s <Rim of the Pit.= As it happens, American Mystery Classics recently issuedanew edition of Talbot9s novel, introduced by Rupert Holmes. Set inasnowbound vacation cabin, it blends the murderous with the seemingly supernatural 4 and just when you think it9s over, it isn9t. Because I9d read the Talbotafew years ago, I decided that I9d rather spend a couple of evenings with the new AMC edition of <The Adventures of Ellery Queen.= Over the years, the imprint has reissued a half-dozen of the early Queen novels, including the notoriously clever <The Chinese Orange Mystery,= but only this fall did it get round to what Otto Penzler calls <the finest collection of Golden Age mysteries by an American.= Written in the early 1930s, the 11 stories blend the hothouse artificiality characteristic of S.S. Van Dine9s novels featuring his supercilious detective, Philo Vance, with something of the madcap zinginess of <The Thin Man= movies. A dandy with an eye for the ladies andatendency to self-pity, Ellery Queen is nonetheless as shrewdly observant as Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown. In <The Bearded Lady,= an artist 4 knowing he is about to be killed 4 paints a goatee on the woman in his latest picture. Why? I guessed the solution to this one right away, andIsuspect you will too, but it9s still fun to read. Better still is the book9s final and most famous story, <The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party.= With clues from Lewis Carroll9s <Alice= novels, it investsacountry-house mystery, involvingaclosed circle of suspects, with an unnervingly absurdist atmosphere. Crippen & Landru publishes only short-story collections, but it does this exceedingly well. In <The Killer Everyone Knew,= Roland Lacourbe assembles the best of Edward D. Hoch9s Captain Leopold investigations. Has anybody ever written so many consistently first-rate impossible crime stories as Hoch? If you9re already a fan of Hoch9s Dr. Sam Hawthorne, the maguslike Simon Ark or the thief Nick Velvet, you won9t want to miss these Captain Leopold puzzlers. They aren9t quite as dazzling, to my mind, yet who wouldn9t want to kick back with a story titled <The Retired Magician= or <The Mystery That Wouldn9t Stay Solved?= This fall, Crippen & Landru has also published <School of Hard Knox: Stories That Break Father Ronald Knox9s Ten Commandments for Crime Fiction,= edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren and Art Taylor. In 1928 Knox, half facetiously, proposed various <rules= for the authors of mysteries: Avoid the use of twins, deadly gases unknown to science, secret passages, characters who are Chinese and so forth. But this new anthology undermines all those commandments. For example, in S.J. Rozan9s <Chin Yan Yun Goes to Church,= an elderly Chinese woman 4 the mother of Rozan9s regular detective Lydia Chin 4 takes on a larcenous priest named & Father Knox. Sometimes, though, it9s hard to determine which rule is being flouted, as in Daniel Stashower9s <The Forlorn Penguin.= Here the contributor to a mystery magazine conceals breathless love notes to his adulterous beloved in the texts of his Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I dislike the term <cozies= 4 it sounds derogatory 4 but I do gravitate to OldTime Detection. If you do too, you9ll enjoy the excellent magazine of that name edited by Arthur Vidro. One of its regular columnists is no less than John Curran, our greatest authority on Agatha Christie. Devotees of classic sleuthing should also be aware of Tony Medawar9s ongoing series <Bodies From the Library: Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense From the Golden Age of Detection.= Volume 6 appeared this fall and features, among much else, work by Christianna Brand, Cyril Hare and Margery Allingham, a Detection Club radio play, and a round-robin thriller with contributions from Geoffrey Household (<Rogue Male=) and Dennis Wheatley (<The Devil Rides Out=). Not least, Medawar reprints <Greedy Night,= that affectionate parody of Dorothy L. Sayers9s Peter Wimsey mysteries, written by her friend E.C. Bentley, author of the immortal <Trent9s Last Case.= Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Book World and the author of the memoir <an open Book= and of four collections of essays: <readings,= <Bound to Please,= <Book by Book= and <Classics for Pleasure.= BY RON CHARLES F ifty years after David Macaulay9s <Cathedral= reframed children9s literature, the celebrated illustrator is still drawing us in. This month he9s creating a room in an extraordinary upcoming exhibit called <Building Stories= at the National Building Museum in Washington. It9s a show meant to <call attention to the built environment9s role as an important, and often overlooked, character in children9s literature,= the museum says. The official opening isn9t until Jan. 21, but I recently had a chance to step through the exhibit-in-progress as extension cords snaked across the floor and electric saws roared. The Building Museum plans to maintain this installation 4 its most ambitious and expensive ever 4 for at least 10 years. The exhibit will include four galleries that integrate huge playful structures such as a wooden forest with striking linguistic imagery of letters and words. Rare books, books to read and reading nooks will be sprinkled throughout. Even the floor is covered with designs, including an image of Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. It9s nowhere near done yet, but already the exhibit feels like falling down a rabbit hole, bounding through <Chicka Chicka Boom Boom= and landing in the Hundred Acre Wood. The experience brings to life what every kid knows: Books transport us to constructed spaces 4 from Willy Wonka9s chocolate factory to Max9s forest bedroom to Milo9s phantom tollbooth. But Macaulay9s special genius is understanding that children are equally entranced by physical buildings in the real world. From the start, the designers of <Building Stories= knew they wanted to include Macaulay. The exhibit9s curator, children9s literature expert Leonard Marcus, told me: <I think of David as a village explainer. He9s someone who knows how to takeacompliCreating a children9s book: This exhibit shows how it works cated body of knowledge or information and distill it into a story that even the youngest or the least educated person can immediately grasp and relate to. It9s a wonderful talent.= What no one at the museum expected, though, was how generously Macaulay would respond to their invitation. The MacArthur <genius= and Caldecott Medal winner is now constructing the most complete and revelatory demonstration of his creative process that he9s ever provided. One whole room 4 starting with a mammoth archway that he9s hand painting 4 is devoted to the creation of his 1997 book, <Rome Antics,= based on his love for the Italian capital. The room is a kind of artist9s workshop suspended in amber. It contains hundreds of Macaulay9s rough illustrations, along with dummy booklets he made as he tried and failed and tried again. <Every one of the booklets has a different title,= Macaulay told me, <which just shows you how confusedIwas for much of this process.= At one point, he says, <I switched my thinking to packaging. If you have nothing to say, concentrate on packaging, and you probably will get away with it. This is how tortured the process was. New heights of inefficiency were reached in the creation of this book.= That self-deprecating humor informs his entire installation, which does to his work what his books do to buildings: peels back the surface and lets us see how things work. <The important thing about it,= Macaulay said, <is you don9t have to know where you9re going. You just have to want to get somewhere.= The humble, rudimentary nature of the early sketches on display is entirely intentional. <I want a 5-year-old to say: 8He draws like that? I can do that! And if I can do that, then gradually, with a little practice, I can do some pictures.9 I understood very early that I am, in fact, a kid, and I just had to follow my own instincts and my own curiosity. It all bubbles up in no order whatsoever, except I feel like making a drawing of this one day, and then I think, 8How do I turn the corner to show that there9s a piazza behind it?9= The moment we finished talking, Macaulay, who turned 77 this month, climbed up on a motorized scaffold, buzzed back and forth somewhat erratically and then soared toward the ceiling to finish painting his Roman archway. this article was excerpted from our free Book Club newsletter. to subscribe, visit wapo.st/ booknewsletter. ron Charles/the Washington Post Author and illustrator David Macaulay paints a Roman archway for the <Building Stories= exhibit opening at the National Building Museum in January. Old tales are best for winter, especially when they appear in shiny and inviting new editions.

B6 eZ ee the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 fICTION 1 ALL THe LIGHT We CANNOT see (Scribner, $18.99). By anthony Doerr. the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows the parallel lives of a blind French girl and an orphaned german boy during World War II. 2 A COURT Of THORNs AND ROses (Bloomsbury, $19). By Sarah J. maas. a threat is growing over a magical land where a huntress is being held captive. 3 TRUsT (riverhead, $17). By Hernan Diaz. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, an excessively wealthy family with a secret is the catalyst for examining how stories can shape the truth. 4 THe THURsDAY MURDeR CLUB (Penguin, $18). By richard osman. Four septuagenarians join forces to catch a killer. 5 THe MIDNIGHT LIBRARY (Penguin, $18). By matt Haig. a regretful woman lands in a library where she gets to play out her life had she made different choices. 6 THe seVeN HUsBANDs Of eVeLYN HUGO (Washington Square, $17). By taylor Jenkins reid. a Hollywood icon recounts the story of her glamorous life to a young reporter, and both discover the cost of fame. 7 BOOksHOPs & BONeDUsT (tor, $17.99). By travis Baldree. this installment of the legends & lattes series follows a convalescent soldier of fortune who finds refuge in a smalltown bookstore. 8 BABeL (Harper Voyager, $20). By r.F. Kuang. a Chinese orphan, who is in regency-era london for his magical education, feels torn between two cultures. 9 NeVeR WHIsTLe AT NIGHT (Vintage, $17). edited by Shane Hawk and theodore C. Van alst Jr. an anthology of dark fiction by Indigenous authors includes stories by tommy orange, rebecca roanhorse and David Heska Wanbli Weiden. 10 THe BesT AMeRICAN sHORT sTORIes 2023 (mariner, $18.99). edited by min Jin lee and Heidi Pitlor. a collection of short stories curated by <Pachinko= author lee. NONfICTION 1 kILLeRs Of THe fLOWeR MOON (Vintage, $18). David grann. a look at the FBI9s investigation of native american deaths in 1920s oklahoma. 2 BRAIDING sWeeTGRAss (milkweed, $20). By robin Wall Kimmerer. essays by an Indigenous scientist offer lessons in reciprocal awareness between people and plants. 3 THe HUNDReD YeARs9 WAR ON PALesTINe (Picador, $19.99). By rashid Khalidi. a historian of the middle east traces events from 1917 to 2017 to argue that the conflict between Israel and gaza is a war of colonial conquest. 4 THe sTORYTeLLeR (Dey Street Books, $21.99). By Dave grohl. the musician reflects on his life and career. 5 AN IMMeNse WORLD (random House, $20). By ed yong. a science writer describes different ways sensory perception can be experienced in animals, including humans. 6 ALL ABOUT LOVe (morrow, $16.99). By bell hooks. the first volume in the feminist9s <love Song to the nation= trilogy considers compassion as a form of love. 7 THe LYRICs (liveright, $30). By Paul mcCartney. the former Beatle shares his personal archives, annotated with details from his life and musical career. 8 THe BODY keePs THe sCORe (Penguin, $19). By Bessel van der Kolk. a scientific look at how trauma can reshape a person9s body and brain. 9 THe 2024 OLD fARMeR9s ALMANAC (old Farmer9s almanac, $9.95). the classic reference guide forecasts culture, weather and trends. 10 CRYING IN H MART (Vintage, $17). By michelle Zauner. a Korean american indie rock star chronicles her relationship with her mother and their shared culture. rankings reflect sales for the week ended Dec. 10. the charts may not be reproduced without permission from the american Booksellers association, the trade association for independent bookstores in the United States, and indiebound.org. Copyright 2023 american Booksellers association. (the bestseller lists alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.) Washington Post Paperback Bestsellers CoUrteSy oF tHe amerICan BooKSellerS aSSoCIatIon Book World BY MYTHILI G. RAO T here are two things the Grinch 4 and here I mean the Grinch as voiced by Boris Karloff in the 1966 CBS special; the only real Grinch, as far as I9m concerned 4 hates most about Christmas. The first is the noise, noise, noise issued by the jing-tinglers, floo-floobers and tar-tinkers that the Hoo girls and boys unwrap on Christmas morning. The second is the sound of the Hoos, hand in hand, singing their hearts out 4 until, of course, that very song wins him over. What is it about sound 4 screeching noise and mellifluous music and everything in between 4 that gets so completely under our skin? Two ambitious new books by British writers set out to explore the magnetic pull of the aural world. The Dutch-born novelist Michel Faber bills <Listen: On Music, Sound and Us,= his first book-length work of nonfiction, as a kind of anti-music book, one that <will not do for you what other books about music will do for you.= Still, he sets his sights high: <I9m not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop,= he writes. <I9m here to change your mind about your mind.= It9s the book he9s wanted to write his whole life, he says. In <A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous,= the journalist Caspar Henderson takes a more eclectic and encyclopedic approach, presenting 48 short entries on noise broken into four categories: geophony (the earthy sounds of volcanoes and thunder), biophony (noises issued by the body, and by plants and animals), anthropophony (language and music) and cosmophony (celestial noise). His aim is to stir in readers a <sense of aliveness= and a desire to pay attention to the <revelations in sound= that might astonish and nourish our souls. For Henderson, there is something elemental and profound in sound. <Touch is often regarded as the most primal sense,= he writes, <but hearing begins before we are able to touch and be touched by the world.= Henderson is enamored with these kinds of small miracles. He notes the way orbital resonances correspond with intervals of minor sixths, perfect fifths and perfect fourths, and marvels at the noise made by the corona discharge from the aurora borealis 4 <crackles and muffled bangs= that fall in the same decibel range as a human whisper. He explains that the syrinx is the avian equivalent of the larynx and that a songbird9s ears are capable of perceiving sounds that last as little as one millisecond. Readers are treated to the story of the time Charles Darwin played a bassoon to a mimosa flower (<He wondered if it might respond by closing its leaves, just as it does when gently touched,= but he concluded it was a <fool9s experiment=) and the time the Italian biologist and priest Lazzaro Spallanzani surgically removed the eyeballs of a bat to figure out how it was finding its way in the dark (yet The noises we hear, the music we make as when he complains about the <elitism= of classical music 4 a genre he dismisses as being merely for musicians with <conformist skills.= (<When a government department or hospital switchboard plays you a loop of Vivaldi9s 8Four Seasons9 while you wait on the phone, you and the institution both understand that nobody respects this music.=) What about more contemporary fare? Faber takes issue with Beyoncé lip-syncing high-stakes live performances (such as President Barack Obama9s 2013 inauguration) when she is a <perfectly capable= vocalist. <Whatever Beyoncé is, she is not a singer in [the] old-fashioned sense,= he writes. Oh, dear. The book truly flounders when Faber tries to demonstrate an earnest engagement with non-White perspectives, awkwardly stuffing a chapter titled <Different Strokes for Different Folks= with interviews with Black and South Asian composers, DJs and broadcasters. Each is asked nearly identical questions: What do they think of the Beatles9 <Revolver=? Bob Dylan9s <Highway 61 Revisited=? What about the Beach Boys9 <Pet Sounds,= and the origins of <Sloop John B= as a folk song from the Bahamas? Their answers are printed in Q&A form. It9s as excruciating as it sounds. Perhaps the most remarkable and admirable thing about <Listen= is that it exists at all. After Faber9s wife, Eva, died in 2014, the grief-stricken writer declared the end of his career. <History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway,= he said at the time. <That9s very likely to happen to my books.= Reading <Listen,= I found myself thinking of the voice of another eccentric British writer who swore off writing in her prime. Rosemary Tonks briefly worked for the BBC in her youth, and Min, the protagonist of her novel <The Bloater= (1968), is a sound engineer who argues archly with her colleagues about the finer points of tone and taste as they score an experimental radio broadcast of a Greek poem about Orestes: <This time the treble is expertly removed, some echo is added, and the voice is twice as hammy as before but somehow convincing. Obviously it9s no good being slightly vulgar; you must be absolutely vulgar. Taste in the arts and theater should never be confused with 8good taste,9 which is static and middleclass. It9s evident that we9re treating this voice like a loaf of bread, first the crust off, then the foot, and now we9re going to cut it into slices & with any luck. Ah, no 4= Tonks went one step further than Faber when she decided her literary career was over: She burned all her old manuscripts. This self-erasure was so successful that her work was largely lost until publishers began reissuing it after her death in 2014. Faber, on the other hand, was able to stumble his way back into the world of words in his own lifetime. <Here I am, singing,= he writes, <and you9re listening.= Mythili G. Rao is an audio journalist and book critic in london. melanIe BUSSIere/getty ImageS/IStoCKPHoto Fran monKS Caspar Henderson, left, and Michel Faber take different approaches to the subject of sound. KrIStIna VaraKSIna A BOOk Of NOIses Notes on the Auraculous By Caspar Henderson University of Chicago Press. 352 pp. $24 LIsTeN On Music, sound and Us By michel Faber Hanover Square. 448 pp. $30 another inconclusive experiment). Stacking fact on fact, <A Book of Noises= sometimes gets weighed down by its commitment to trivia. The book is at its best when Henderson loses himself in the fun of it all, like when he considers the parasaurolophus, a <duckbill= dinosaur, and how it made noise 4 through a <hollow bony tube on its head= that resembled a <slightly flaccid upside down didgeridoo.= In the 1990s, scientists in New Mexico re-created a full-size replica of the tube on the head of what became known as the <trombone dinosaur.= Henderson listens and reports back that the timbre of the 30-hertz tone it emits is <a splendid noise,= falling a little lower than the lowest note of a piano: <To my ears, there9s a dash of French horn or sousaphone and a hint of creaking metal door in there too.= Here a long-lost noise dislodged from our planet9s Cretaceous past is familiar but new, ordinary but wondrous. Henderson has great faith in the power of sound to transform. He writes of a campaign to have music therapy prescribed by Britain9s National Health Service for wellness, for example, an idea Faber is taken with, too. But the books9 similarities end there. <Listen= is a far more idiosyncratic and freewheeling work. Faber is largely fixated on the social capital that music offers 4 how one9s record collection is <part of the artillery with which you announce yourself to the world,= as Peter Gabriel put it in a 1987 interview in Rolling Stone. <There9s nothing more self-absorbed and tribal than music,= Faber writes; we certainly can9t escape that <music is a commodity,= he says 4 or that music appreciation tends to be a very <blokey= pastime. And he is all too aware that music is <tremendously overhyped=: <This book will not add more hype to the landfill,= he writes. There are some promising strands of thinking to follow here about music and cultural identity, but Faber leaves many broad ideas floating (<society, like music, needs dynamics=). He has a tendency, too, to riff unchecked,

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ ee B7 Book World trying to enjoy a writer9s retreat is bothered and eventually berated by an odd man who <could neither create conversation nor respond nor be content to have none.= The protagonist of <Antarctica,= looking for a one-night stand, finds instead a desperate and dangerous man. Each story balances somewhere between the frustration and fear of lonely men and the way their greed and hunger grow in the dark. miserliness 4 not just of money, but also of love and kindness 4 has always partly animated Keegan9s characters. one of them is a young girl <whose father has never given her so much as a tender word.= Another remembers how she never saw her parents touch, and a third languishes in a crowded, loveless home before she is sent away to live with relatives. It is no surprise that the new volume begins with an epigraph by Philip Larkin, as here baleful traits are passed again and again from father to son. Cathal, in his glum reverie, recalls a moment when his father, for no reason other than his own amusement, pulled a chair from under his wife as she finally sat down to eat after a day spent taking care of others. Cathal had laughed along at his mother9s humiliation. <Small Things Like These,= which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022, lays credible claim in less than 150 pages to being the best Irish book of the 21st century. There is hardly a word misspent in its story of conformity and resistance. Still, it was not obviously primed for American success. Set in the southeast of Ireland in 1982, the book exhibits an uncompromising verisimilitude. full of specificity, it doesn9t stop to explain its small details, from the scraps of Irish language that crop up to its mention of the Texaco Prize or the social Keegan fRom B1 Masterful stories of violence and male rage protection offered by being a part of the Protestant world. Keegan trusts the reader to interpret the signs: the nuns talking only to the better-off parents, a poor child drinking milk from a cat9s saucer. Using deft strokes, she builds the Ireland of the early 980s, superficially modernized but gripped by severe economic distress and a reactionary alliance of church and state, exhibiting the trademark violence of the powerful under threat. Across her oeuvre, Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone, avoiding easy didacticism. She pulls apart the strands of misogyny in individuals and institutions, diagnosing the same problem in both. She connects the violence of the past to that of the present, and domestic violence to state violence. In <Small Things Like These,= Ireland is a jail, one where the prisoners are also the guards, gleefully gossiping, kowtowing and reporting one another for perceived indiscretions. The whole country is like a small town, obsessed with minor scandals while major ones go unheralded and unpunished. obvious poverty is explained away, with characters observing that <some of [them] bring hardship on themselves.= And near the convent, where nuns live in comfort, is a prison for young girls dressed up as a refuge, a magdalene laundry. Here Keegan refocuses the abuse away from pious morality and toward its true commercial heart: the laundry is used by every local business; they depend on the slave labor of the girls to keep going. The nuns control not only the laundry but also the <good= school, and by extension the power to determine what is and is not a <good= family. This is not an aberration; it is the system. Such social control works best in parlous times. Keegan9s rising popularity in the United States serves as an interesting mirror for how Ireland is currently viewed by U.S. progressives. Long a conservative bastion, the country is now one of the few places in Europe moving leftward. first divorce was legalized, then same-sex marriage, then abortion. The church retains power in schools and other institutions, but has a severely diminished presence in Irish society. In this light, Keegan9s bracing stories of misogyny might offer some kind of solace for Americans who have just witnessed the sudden and brutal curtailment of rights once thought undeniable. Perhaps the fight isn9t lost, perhaps a stand isn9t futile. And for all its pinpoint diagnoses of male violence, Keegan9s work suggests that men, too, can free themselves. Her two novels contain decent men who stand outside of the cruelty of their fellows, aware of it, troubled by it. These are people who have responded to their good fortune and their social isolation by trying to protect those who are subject to all-encompassing violence. That Larkin epigraph, from <Aubade=: It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can9t escape, Yet can9t accept. One side will have to go. Throughout her career, Keegan seems to emphasize that we take nothing with us and that all that matters is what we give each other. Jack Sheehan is a writer, historian and photographer from Dublin. BY ANTHONY DOMESTICO I n <my Bright Abyss= (2013), his memoir about faith and living with a rare form of blood cancer, the poet and essayist Christian Wiman quotes from William Empson: <Imagine, then, by miracle, with me,/ (Ambiguous gifts, as what gods give must be)/ What could not possibly be there,/ And learn a style from a despair.= over the past decade, Wiman has become known for a certain kind of style 4 conflictedly Christian; sound-besotted but astringent in language 4 learned from a certain kind of despair. This hopelessness has arisen both from the body9s frailty and from the void that his soul frequently senses in the world, and in itself. As he has written, <I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, 8my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?9= Wiman is a Christian, in other words, because he believes, or hopes, that God is with him not despite but within his moments of despair. <my Bright Abyss,= mainly a book of prose, concludes with a short poem: <my God my bright abyss/ into which all my longing will not go/ once more I come to the edge of all I know/ and believing nothing believe in this.= No comma separates God from the abyss, the light from the dark. In some way, God is the abyss, that which language and desire gesture toward but never reach. one of Wiman9s touchstones, marilynne Robinson, put it perfectly in her novel <Housekeeping=: <To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow.= Despair for both writers might be understood not as the opposite of hope but as its very grounding; absence a deeper form of presence. Wiman9s new book, <Zero at the Bone: fifty Entries Against Despair,= forms a kind of trilogy with <my Bright Abyss= and <He Held Radical Light= (2018). Taken together, they offer what Wiman calls a <poetics of belief,= a wrestling with faith that seeks <a language capacious enough to include a mystery that, ultimately, defeats it.= for Wiman, to live a faithful life is to shuttle endlessly between belief and unbelief, meaning and unmeaning. It9s to be honest about, but never comfortable with, <this restlessness, this void that you can never quite fill, this tooth that will not stop nibbling at your soul.= In <Zero at the Bone,= he writes that <there are times in one9s life when form is a lapse of courage.= He means that to give certain experiences 4 the ache of grief or the ecstasy of love 4 a shape in language is to betray the very terrifying and exhilarating shapelessness that constitutes them. And yet Wiman has discovered a new and adequate form, one that embodies the abstractions of faith and finds music for the soul9s yearnings. Like the previous books, <Zero at the Bone= is difficult to categorize. It9s equal parts commonplace book (it includes quotes from Emily Dickinson, Lucille Clifton, Rowan Williams and many others) and theological exploration (Wiman offers thoughts on kenosis and theodicy). It is a poetry collection (verse sits alongside prose) and a memoir (it features a 20-page evocation of Wiman9s knotty relationship with his His faith encompasses belief 4 and its absence Christian Wiman mixes verse, memoir and theology to muse on God9s mysteries has it, while also acknowledging that it9s the background against which faith and art and life take shape? <Reality is always in excess of perception,= Wiman argues, <and any work (or life) that does not acknowledge this excess (and this splendid ignorance) is not only missing much of reality, but is itself unreal in the worst sense.= <Zero at the Bone= sees God as emptiness, but it also sees God as excess and abundance. Less perfect than the books that came before it, it9s also richer in tone and texture. Wiman, restless as always, has learned new styles from old despairs. anthony Domestico is the author of <Poetry and Theology in the modernist Period.= he teaches at SunY Purchase and is the books columnist for Commonweal magazine. DAnIeL LeAL/AfP/geTTY ImAgeS Claire Keegan holds a copy of <Small Things Like These= before the announcement of the 2022 Booker Prize in London; the book was shortlisted for the award. Her latest collection is <So Late in the Day.= ILLuSTrATIon BY YAnn KeBBI for The WAShIngTon PoST So LatE in thE Day Stories of Women and Men By Claire Keegan grove. 119 pp. $20 father and sister 4 one of the best bits of life writing I9ve read in years). Wiman has always been attracted to apophatic language, which approaches God through negation, and in this book he continues to clear away the insufficient words we use to describe the mysteries of both faith and poetry. Yet, as he writes, <you can make an idolatry of doubt. You can become so comfortable with God9s absence and distance that eventually your own unknowingness gives you a big fat apophatic hug.= <Zero at the Bone= is significantly longer than the previous books. It is as much about inclusion as it is about whittling away. Wiman quotes from, and thinks with, old standbys on the subject, like Simone Weil and George Herbert, and more surprising choices, like William Bronk and Gwendolyn Brooks. He tries more kinds of writing 4 a section about going to the gym; musings on quantum mechanics 4 and at greater length. Close readings that might have occupied a paragraph now last several pages; memories of the past are given more room to breathe. Near the end Wiman observes: <We say we are 8in9 despair but do we ever say we are 8out9 of it? Beyond? Above? Every preposition is slightly awry.= What does it mean to write against despair, as the book9s subtitle ZEro at thE BonE Fifty Entries against Despair By Christian Wiman farrar, Straus & giroux. 306 pp. $30

B8 ez ee the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 Book World BY WASHINGTON POST STAFF In Staff Picks, Book World editors and writers share what they9ve been reading off the clock. For this installment, we describe some of our best reading experiences from 2023. What Book World writers and editors treasured in 2023 8Night of the Living Rez9 by Morgan Talty (2022) Stephanie Merry, deputy editor Being in the book recommendation business requires a certain degree of comfort with failure; there are always gems slipping through the cracks. So it went with this debut story collection, which escaped my notice before its publication but couldn9t be ignored for long, what with all the awards and accolades. It turns out these 12 connected stories about life on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation in Maine are as striking as readers claimed. Tragedy is never far from the characters9 lives, whether it9s addiction or divorce, dementia or death, but the vibrant language and mordant humor soften the blow. While the stories hop around in time, the funny, frank narrator, David, remains a fixture. At the start, he9s a young man looking for weed when he happens upon his friend Fellis struggling to free himself from a frigid swamp where he had drunkenly dozed off. With Fellis9s long braid frozen to the earth, David is forced to lop off the hair with a pocketknife. Fellis9s mistake could have been fatal, but neither seems too bothered. <I never thought I9d scalp a fellow tribal member,= David deadpans. The misfortunes that befall David, his family and his friends can be hard to bear, but his voice, ever sardonic, keeps readers coming back for more. recommend most wholeheartedly. Seriously, catch up on classics that you somehow missed in high school! With some novels, it can seem like our culture has so thoroughly metabolized their insights, coinages and tropes that there9s not much left to discover. Life is short, and I snottily treated books like <1984= as if they were the Washington Monument of literature 4 just a part of the skyline, a tourist attraction that real locals may never get around to visiting. But it9s a special kind of pleasure to stumble on words and phrases like <memoryhole= or <a boot stamping on a human face forever= in their original context. (And the monument is lovely to look at, especially at night.) colonialism: Susumu Higa9s graphic novel <Okinawa.= In a series of short fictions, Higa examines the ramifications first of Japan9s control of the once-independent islands and then of the American military occupation, which continues to shape the region to this day. Avoiding easy vilification, Higa captures quiet moments of human connection, even as he unsparingly documents the ongoing loss of the islands9 Indigenous culture and the suffering of their people. limitations it imposed on her 4 and, later in life, to escape her fatal sickness, which experts now believe to have been Addison9s disease. It is a marvelously stylish investigation of how style serves as a welcome if always insufficient reprieve from bodies and their baggage. 8The Marriage Portrait9 by Maggie O9Farrell (2022) Becky Meloan, editorial aide Some of the books I9ve read this year have stayed fresh to me well past their library due dates 4 <Straw Dogs of the Universe,= by Ye Chun; <Demon Copperhead,= by Barbara Kingsolver; <In Memoriam,= by Alice Winn; <An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood,= by Jimmy Carter 4 and I always love spending time with books like these that immerse me in worlds different from my own. The latest and greatest book to sweep me away, <The Marriage Portrait,= takes place in lush palazzos, country estate gardens and imposing stone fortezzas during the Italian Renaissance. Maggie O9Farrell, adept at creating devastating narratives out of thin historical facts (see: <Hamnet=), turns her pen to Lucrezia, the daughter of Cosimo I de9 Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany; she was 15 when she married Alfonso II of Ferrara, and then died a year later. From this thread, O9Farrell spins a dramatic tale of a young woman fighting for survival after realizing her husband intends to kill her. Raised only to be advantageously married and to produce heirs for whichever nobleman her father has chosen, she is illequipped to protect herself from the whims of a man trained from birth to be a powerful ruler, and she must quickly learn who she can trust. iLLusTrATion By JAvi AznArez for THe WAsHingTon PosT 8Impossible Creatures9 by Katherine Rundell (2023) Ron Charles, fiction critic British bookseller Waterstones has crowned Rundell9s young-adult fantasy its Book of the Year. As I mentioned recently in the Book Club newsletter, I thought it was funny that Rundell has the same name as the author of <Super-Infinite,= a brilliant study of John Donne that I read last year. But it turns out these two Katherine Rundells are actually the same supernaturally talented person. Unwilling to wait till next year, when Random House will release <Impossible Creatures= in the United States, I got a copy from England and fell in love by the end of the first line: <It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him.= Rundell9s hero, Christopher, is a boy who discovers that his grandfather is the keeper of a watery portal between the ordinary world and a magical archipelago where classic mythological animals still roam. Just as he9s trying to make sense of that unsettling revelation, a girl named Mal pops through the portal looking for her missing griffin. But that9s the least of her problems: <I have to go back, right now,= she tells Christopher. <But & if I go back alone now, I9ll die.= How could he refuse to help Mal, not to mention her endangered realm of centaurs, manticores, unicorns and more? With an utterly charming combination of wit and peril, <Impossible Creatures= is a magical book you race to finish and then immediately want to read aloud to someone little. 8Little Failure9 by Gary Shteyngart (2014) Nora Krug, editor I was cleaning out my shelves a few months ago when I noticed two copies of Shteyngart9s memoir, <Little Failure.= I figured I ought to read one before I gave away the other. I9m glad I did. Among the many books I read this year, this one was, if not the best, the most memorable 4 and the one I most regretted not having picked up sooner. This is a coming-to-America-and-coming-of-age memoir, a now-popular genre that often flirts with predictability and sentiment. There9s nothing predictable or sentimental about Shteyngart9s book. <I am born,= he begins, as he launches into a tale that takes him from Leningrad to New York, where he spends most of his childhood, and most of the book, figuring out how to be American and how much of an American he wants to be. Shteyngart, whose fiction includes <Super Sad True Love Story= (2010) and <The Russian Debutante9s Handbook= (2002), is devilishly funny and self-deprecating, even when detailing terrible things: his deprived life in the Soviet Union, his father9s brutality, the shame he experienced trying to acclimate and more. How perfect that he dedicated the book to his parents and his psychiatrist. 819849 by George Orwell (1949) Sophia Nguyen, news and features writer I don9t know if George Orwell9s <1984= was actually the <best= book I read in 2023 4 the critics are right, the misogyny is comically distracting 4 but it9s the reading experience I Tin House Morgan Talty AP George Orwell 8Dune9 by Frank Herbert (1965) and 8Okinawa9 by Susumu Higa (2023) Jacob Brogan, editor I agree with Sophia: There9s a small class of books 4 <Emma,= <Moby-Dick= and yes, <1984= 4 so present in our culture that you feel as if you9ve read them long before you crack their spines. Even though I9m a lifelong science fiction nerd, <Dune= had always occupied that space on the shelf for me, so saturated was I with Frank Herbert9s neologisms, turns of phrase and otherworldly inventions. Even if I hadn9t seen the two film adaptations of the novel, I think I could have almost put together the whole story from the patchwork of references, winking nods and outright parodies in beloved cartoons, electronic anthems and more. Despite that, I was fully unprepared for what a treat it would be to read the actual book, which I finally did earlier this year, consuming it faster than a sandworm swallowing an ornithopter. Even after decades, the originality of Herbert9s galactic vision remains undeniable, but that might not matter if his storytelling weren9t so propulsive. It is the rare 900-page novel that could and should have been 2,000 pages longer. I9ll be taking on its controversial sequels next year 4 and looking forward to Denis Villeneuve9s adaptation of the second half of the story with great pleasure. Where Dune is a near-perfect fantasy of colonial resistance, I learned a great deal this year from a very different book that elegantly explores the painful realities of real-world AP Frank Herbert 8The Fifth Child9 by Doris Lessing (1988) and 8Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style9 by D.A. Miller (2005) Becca Rothfeld, nonfiction critic This year, I had ample occasion to reflect on the indignities and vexations of embodiment. First, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder that prevents my stomach from absorbing vitamin B12; then, I learned that my thyroid is brewing a possibly cancerous <prominence= and will have to be removed. I have no particular attachment to my thyroid 4 it9s a troublesome organ, and it can show itself out as far I9m concerned 4 but I remain disturbed at the prospect of harboring innards so evidently hostile to their host. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when I surveyed my year of reading, I found I had been gravitating toward writing about bodies and their intransigence all along. The two best books I read (besides Flaubert9s magnificent letters) are both about bodies, albeit in very different ways: The first is about their ability to betray us, the second about our desperation to escape them. Doris Lessing9s novel <The Fifth Child= (1988) follows Harriet, an inveterate traditionalist who yearns for a large family. She and her husband buy a ramshackle Victorian house and make a concerted and initially successful effort to be fruitful and multiply. Their first four children are appropriately adorable, but their fifth child is a violent oddball and possibly a changeling. Before the monster is born, the pregnancy itself is a kind of usurpation. Harriet feels that she is warring with her body, that it is now an alien thing she lives inside. The second book is a work of literary criticism that is, on the face of it, not much concerned with anatomy. But in <Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style,= the critic D.A. Miller argues that Austen9s magisterially impersonal style is in fact a feint, an attempt to escape her gender and the many Murdo MAcLeod Maggie O9Farrell 8The Book of Disquiet9 by Fernando Pessoa John Williams, Book World editor I didn9t have my most robust reading year, but one highlight was this classic, which I read in its entirety for the second time, a rarity for me. <The Book of Disquiet= held me rapt and entertained and enlightened, both times, from its first sentence: <I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it 4 without knowing why.= Pessoa wrote under many (many) pen names 4 he called them heteronyms, each one not just a false name but an author or character with his own imagined biography. <Disquiet,= which was discovered, like most of Pessoa9s work, after his death in 1935, was written, according to its title page, <by Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon.= The edition I read was translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith, author of a terrific biography of Pessoa. Told in 481 fragments, many of them a paragraph or two, <Disquiet= is clever, deeply felt, aphoristic, rambling, cranky, philosophical and enriching on every page. It9s a testament to (and interrogation of) the inner life: <What is there to confess that9s worthwhile or useful? What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it9s no novelty, and if only to us, then it won9t be understood. If I write what I feel, it9s to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant. I make landscapes out of what I feel. I make holidays of my sensations.= 8Journeys of the Mind9 by Peter Brown (2023) and 8Collected Poems of Anthony Hecht9 edited by Philip Hoy (2023) Michael Dirda, columnist Favorite book of the past year? Of those published in 2023, it9s a toss-up between Peter Brown9s autobiography <Journeys of the Mind= and <Collected Poems of Anthony Hecht,= edited by Philip Hoy. In the first, our greatest scholar of late antiquity recalls his early years in Ireland, his mentors at Oxford, the books that shaped his thinking, and an academic career spent in England, Europe, the Middle East and America. It9s an enthralling depiction of a life surrounded by books and learned, fascinating colleagues. What9s more, there9s the possibility of a sequel since it ends just as Brown is beginning his longtime professorship at Princeton. As for Anthony Hecht: Of the poets of his generation, only Philip Larkin means as much to me. <Collected Poems= includes everything Hecht published in his lifetime, but also substantial sections devoted to late and uncollected work. Witty and melancholy, erotic and shocking, replete with wordplay, this is poetry you9ll return to again and again.

KLMNO ME sunday, december TRO 17, 2023 eZ re C JOhn Kelly9s WashingtOn The Post9s tradition of a local, human-interest column began in 1947 with <The district line.= C3 retrOpOlis The special counsel and donald Trump9s attorneys are both citing rulings on richard M. Nixon. C2 Obituaries washington star journalist edwin M. yoder Jr., 89, won a Pulitzer Prize for 46 his erudite editorials. C5 ° 53° 54° 54° 8 a.m. noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m. High today at approx. 3 p.m. 55° Precip: 100% wind: e 7-14 mph PHoTos by robb Hill for THe wAsHiNgToN PosT BY ANTONIO OLIVO With the glare of the november elections fading, voters in northern Virginia9s 10th Congressional District are set to be flooded with campaign brochures, TV ads and knocks on their doors by candidates looking to discuss the 2024 race. so far, 11 Democrats and two Republicans are seeking their party9s nomination in June, hoping to succeed Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), who has announced that she is not seeking reelection for health reasons. The crowded field underscores the fact that the congressional district Wexton turned blue after defeating then-Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) in 2018 will again become competitive in what will be a highly charged 2024 presidential election, political analysts say. <Virginia 10 is a more competitive district than most and, as such, it represents a rare opportunity for both parties to challenge for a pivotal House seat in a pivotal state,= said stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. <The Washington area is full of highly political people who salivate at opportunities like this.= some of the contenders already have wide name recognition in the state, giving them an advantage in the nomination contests, for which early voting begins May 3. Among Democrats, former Virginia House speaker eileen FillerCorn and Del. Dan Helmer are both prodigious fundraisers from Fairfax County with powerful connections inside their party. The two Republican contenders, Brooke Taylor and Mike Clancy, both ran for Wexton9s seat in 2022, allowing them some familiarity with voters in the district, which is anchored in Loudoun County but stretches into Fairfax, Prince William, Fauquier and Rappahannock counties. others have a steeper path toward victory. Among them, Travis nembhard is the most recent see virgiNiA on C2 Crowded ûeld to replace Wexton More Than a dozen candidaTes in race N.Va.9s 10th District a 8pivotal9 House seat BY STEVE THOMPSON one man was caught on video starting a fire in his apartment building. Another punched an elderly woman in the face. Another was the target of a police raid, accused by officers of hosting a drug den. each has been the beneficiary of an apartment subsidized through D.C.9s permanent supportive housing program while their landlords spent months and months trying to evict them. The trouble, from a small minority of participants, is straining the long-standing program key to Mayor Muriel e. Bowser9s pledge to end chronic homelessness in the nation9s capital. Designed to usher unhoused people into mixed-income living with intensive services for problems such as mental illness and addiction, the initiative has struggled in recent years as the number of participants has doubled to more than 5,000, focusing public attention on the gap between the program9s ideals and what is happening on the ground. While advocates for the unhoused underscore that the program is among the city9s best solutions to a chronic, systemic challenge, landlords say insufficient support for participants with serious mental illness and other needs leaves them to face problems they are not equipped to solve, sometimes endangering other tenants. Backup has not often come from the D.C. Housing Authority, which administers the program9s vouchers and rarely enforces its own policies on serious lease violations, agency figures show. A backlogged eviction court, landlords say, leaves them and other tenants to navigate troubling or illegal behavior for often close to a year or more. <I9m paying my rent, and I9m a civically engaged citizen, and instead of giving me more protection, see teNANts on C4 Mental health troubles put strain on D.C.9s supportive housing Landlords struggle with minority of tenants who cause issues for others NATHAN HowArd/AP In honor and remembrance A visitor walks among the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday for Wreaths Across America Day. The annual ceremony is held at more than 4,000 cemeteries worldwide. teria for removal. The task will cost $3 million. These officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. They said that out of an abundance of caution, security at the cemetery would be enhanced when the work begins in coming days. Workers will remove the memorial9s bronze elements and leave its granite base in place to avoid damaging nearby gravesites, officials said. The Army is coordinating with the state of Virginia and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal agency, for its relocation. <We wantto make sure that it is situated within an appropriate historical context,= a senior Army official said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is disappointed by the monument9s removal, said Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson. Youngkin see memoriAl on C5 depictions of slavery.= This month, 44 Republican lawmakers cautioned Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, the first African American to hold the post, that the Pentagon would overstep its authority by removing the memorial, and they demanded that all efforts to do so stop until Congress works through next year9s appropriations bill. The memorial <commemorates reconciliation and national unity,= not the Confederacy per se, the group led by Rep. Andrew s. Clyde (Ga.) claimed. The Army, which operates Arlington Cemetery, informed lawmakers Friday that it would proceed with the monument9s removal, officials told The Washington Post, because it was required by the end of the year to comply with a law to identify and remove assets that commemorate the Confederacy. A congressional commission had previously decided the memorial met the criBY ALEX HORTON The U.s. Army intends to remove a Confederate memorial from Arlington national Cemetery this week as part of its ongoing work to rid Defense Department property of divisive rebel imagery, defying dozens of congressional Republicans who have vociferously protested the move. A woman representing the American south, standing atop a 32-foot pedestal, lords above most other monuments within America9s most revered resting place. It portrays, according to the cemetery9s website, a <mythologized vision ofthe Confederacy, including highly sanitized Army prepares for the removal of Confederate memorial in Arlington Some GOP members of Congress unsuccessfully tried to stall the move Noncitizen brings vision to community role As Abel Amene walks through his neighborhood in northwest D.C. on a recent afternoon, he stops in front of an abandoned home. The windows are covered with plywood and the yard is a towering tangle of yellow grass and weeds. <This one is not even trying,= he says, expressing his frustration at how houses that could allow more families to move into the neighborhood have been allowed to become blights. He keeps walking and stops atthe intersection of 5th and Kennedy streets. After a shooting several years ago, former D.C. police chief Peter newsham described that spot as <the most dangerous intersection= in the Fourth District. on the day Abel pauses to take in the scene, police cars sitin front of a carryout on one corner, and the remnants of a memorial occupy another. Wax covers the sidewalk around a religious candle labeled <guardian angel.= <This could be a 15-minute neighborhood,= Abel says, referring to an urban planning concept in which an area is designed to allow residents to get most of their daily needs see vArgAs on C3 Theresa Vargas Abel Amene, top, the newly elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for the 4D02 part of Ward 4 at the corner of 5th and Kennedy streets NW, above. Abel is the first noncitizen to hold public office in the District.

C2 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 BY GILLIAN BROCKELL The Supreme Court is weighing whether to fast-track arguments about presidential immunity relating to the indictment of former president Donald Trump over his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Special counsel Jack Smith has argued that Trump9s presidential immunity does not extend to the criminal justice system; Trump9s legal team, in a lower-court filing, has argued that it does. And both sides are citing richard m. Nixon. Smith and Trump9s lawyers have both referred to Supreme Court rulings concerning the 37th president to bolster their arguments. But they9re citing two very different cases with very different outcomes. The special counsel is pointing to the better-known of the two, United States v. Nixon, the 1974 decision requiring Nixon to comply with a criminal subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal. In April 1974, special counsel Leon Jaworski, charged with investigating the 1972 Watergate break-in, subpoenaed Nixon9s tapes and other documents, believing they could contain evidence against the seven men already indicted. Nixon stalled, then released heavily edited transcripts of the tapes. Jaworski said that wasn9t good enough, and a federal district court agreed. Both the special counsel and Nixon appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which heard their arguments on July 8, 1974. Nixon9s attorneys threw everything they could at the wall in the hopes something would stick. The Supreme Court didn9t even have jurisdiction, they claimed, because this was a dispute between two parties in the executive branch. Plus, there were two issues not spelled out but alluded to in the Constitution, those of executive privilege and presidential immunity. The former implied the president9s private communications in performance of his duties could not be made public, they said; the latter implied the president was immune from all judicial processes. The justices didn9t buy any of it. Two weeks later, they ruled against Nixon. <[A]n absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances= does not exist, the court ruled. Nixon handed over the tapes, which included damning evidence of his involvement in a coverup, and soon resigned. Trump9s legal team is invoking the lesser-known case of Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which in 1982 gave the president absolute immunity from at least one type of judicial process. It all started with a man named A. Ernest fitzgerald, an engineer working for the U.S. Air force. Though a World War II Navy veteran, he was a civilian in his Air force role, acting as something like an efficiency expert to improve workplace functions and keep spending under control. In 1968, when Lyndon B. Johnson was still president, fitzgerald testified before Congress 4 against the wishes of his Air force colleagues 4 to report rampant overspending on a transport plane program to the tune of $2 billion and the Pentagon9s efforts to hide it from the public. He testified again the next year, this time with Nixon as commander in chief. fitzgerald was fired in 1970. He sued and was eventually reinstated, a cycle he and the military would continue for decades. (His boss once called him <the most hated person in the Air force.=) Then, in 1978, tapes from Nixon9s time in the White House were released, revealing that the president himself had ordered fitzgerald9s firing, telling aides to <get rid of that son of a [expletive].= This time, fitzgerald sued Nixon personally. Nixon9s team argued that a sitting president was immune from personal damage lawsuits, the same way judges and prosecutors are. Judges and prosecutors can be punished for misconduct, but those are separate procedures from a civil suit filed by an aggrieved party. for example, an alleged crime victim cannot sue a prosecutor for declining to prosecute the crime9s alleged perpetrator. Even though Nixon settled with fitzgerald for $144,000, the issue of the president9s immunity in the case still made it to the Supreme Court. In 1982, the court agreed with Nixon in a 5-4 decision. <Because of the singular importance of the President9s duties, diversion of his energies by concern with private lawsuits would raise unique risks to the effective functioning of government,= the court ruled. If a president acting within the <outer perimeter= of his job description could get him sued by anyone at all 4 say, the mother of a U.S. soldier or a commercial pilot delayed by Air force one 4 then he would be hindered from carrying out his duties for fear of lawsuits. The Supreme Court narrowed the president9s absolute immunity in the 1990s, ruling in Clinton v. Jones that a sitting president could still be sued for alleged misconduct that occurred before he was president. But back to the Fitzgerald case. In its ruling, the court noted that, as with judges and prosecutors accused of misconduct, there are other methods to check a president9s power besides lawsuits. <There is no cause for concern that the President will be above the law, since impeachment and other processes impose checks on his powers,= the court ruled, citing other checks such as the press, the risk of being voted out of office and concern for his legacy. So do those <other processes= include the criminal justice system, as in this case against Trump? The Supreme Court has never ruled on this. If 4 and it9s a big if 4 the court9s comparisons to judges and prosecutors in the Fitzgerald case were extended to this question, the answer could be yes. In rare cases, judges and prosecutors have been jailed for crimes committed in the course of their job duties 4 for example, the two Pennsylvania judges involved in the <kids for cash= scandal in the 2000s, who handed down harsh sentences on thousands of children to boost the occupancy of a privately owned juvenile detention center nearby. The Constitution does actually comment on presidents and criminal liability, but it9s packed into one of those maddening, clauseheavy run-on sentences characteristic of the 18th century that leaves its true meaning up to debate. Here9s the passage: <Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.= The special counsel9s team argues this means presidents are absolutely subject to criminal prosecution as a separate proceeding from impeachment, which is only for removal and not punishment. Trump9s team argues this means presidents are only subject to criminal prosecution if they have been convicted and removed in an impeachment trial, which Trump has not. Trump is the first president to be indicted, but he is not the first to be arrested. Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872, while he was in office, for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage. According to press accounts, Grant was friendly with the officer 4 a Black veteran of the Civil War 4 and did not ask for any special treatment on account of his position. He also didn9t show up for court the next day. No further action was taken, leaving unanswered the question of a sitting president9s immunity to the law. rEtropoliS Trump, special counsel are both citing Nixon cases regarding immunity 1973 PhOTO By aP richard M. nixon lost a court challenge when he was president involving the release of tapes and other documents related to the Watergate break-in, but he prevailed in 1982 in a lawsuit filed by a onetime air Force whistleblower who was fired during his presidency. leaving room for another candidate with more extreme positions to squeeze through in a nomination contest, rozell said. <All one person has to do is get more votes than the second-place finisher,= he said. particularly among the crowded Democratic field, said mark J. rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George mason University. more mainstream candidates might split support from voters, ry mcAuliffe (D) over Gov. Glenn Youngkin (r) by 1.6 points and President Biden over former president Donald Trump by 19 points. With Wexton leaving, the race to replace her is more open, In 2022, after the 10th District was redrawn the year before to extend to the southwest, Wexton easily beat republican Hung Cao by 6.5 percentage points. Before that, voters in the district favored former governor Terhis opponents. Among other things, Qarni said, he intends to push for more federal educational funding to allow for universal prekindergarten programs, a universal school lunch program and a <more meaningful= student loan forgiveness program. <There are excellent candidates running in this district,= Qarni, 45, said. <I9m one individual that, to my knowledge, has actually represented the whole state.= The other Democrats in the race include state Sen. Jennifer B. Boysko, Dels. David A. reid, Suhas Subramanyam and michelle maldonado, George mason University librarian mark Leighton, Brandon Garay, a legislative affairs specialist at the Defense Department, and Krystle Kaul, founder of a defense technology company. Among the republicans, Clancy, an executive with oracle global technology company, has so far been the most active, holding fundraisers and posting on social media about his campaign to <restore America.= <We are losing our country. You know it, and I know it,= Clancy, whose campaign did not respond to an interview request, says in a campaign video announcing his candidacy. Highlighting his background as the son of a U.S. Air force sergeant who worked his way through college and law school, he says in the video: <Believe me when I say: I know what it9s like to struggle to make ends meet.= Taylor, whose campaign also did not respond to an interview request, has not been active so far. Her campaign website highlights her experience as a defense industry subcontractor. entry into the Democratic field. Nembhard announced his bid this month after losing a race for state delegate in November to republican Ian Lovejoy in what became one of the state9s most expensive contests, with Nembhard raising $2.4 million and Lovejoy $1.8 million. Nembhard, 35, said he intends to distinguish himself from his Democratic competitors by emphasizing his background as a son of Jamaican immigrants who, after graduating law school, worked the graveyard shift making doughnuts at Dunkin9 while volunteering as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York for eight months in 2013. <It wasn9t easy, but it was the one way I could afford to do what I love and that is helping to combat injustice and help everyday people,= said Nembhard, who is now the division chief for D.C.9s Department of for-Hire Vehicles. <It opened my eyes to having an unlivable wage. Even with a minimum wage, that wasn9t enough and I didn9t have kids back then.= If elected, Nembhard says, he plans to fight to codify abortion protections, strengthen policies combating climate change and expand gun-control laws. Atif Qarni, Virginia9s former education secretary, also has less name recognition than some of his competitors, despite the statewide office he held under former governor ralph Northam (D). Qarni, who now teaches a class on the politics of American education at George mason University, says the time he spent in that office touring every locality in the state gives him a deeper understanding of Virginia9s needs than Virginia from C1 Primary ûeld for Virginia9s 8pivotal9 10th District fills up aLex BranDOn/aP BiLL O9Leary/The WaShingTOn POST Former speaker of the Virginia House Eileen Filler-Corn, above, and Del. Dan Helmer, bottom left, are among 11 Democrats seeking their party9s nomination to replace rep. Jennifer Wexton. Wexton, above left, who flipped the competitive 10th Congressional District blue with her win in 2018, is not running for reelection due to health reasons. So far, two republicans have also entered the race. Dayna SmiTh fOr The WaShingTOn POST <Because of the singular importance of the President9s duties, diversion of his energies by concern with private lawsuits would raise unique risks to the effective functioning of government.= Excerpt from a 1982 Supreme Court ruling The Guide to Offers For your ears: Post Reports, a daily podcast from The Washington Post recent topics have included free speech, junk mail, gaza and winter depression. each Post Reports podcast gives you unparalleled reporting, expert insight and clear analysis 3 everything you9ve come to expect from The Washington Post. martine Powers and elahe izadi are your hosts, asking the questions you didn9t know you wanted answered. Podcasts are published weekdays by 5:00 p.m. eT. listen at washingtonpost.com/podcasts/.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ sU C3 4 and the most painfully patriarchal of Dad Jokes. <I think a murder mystery in a textile factory would make a good yarn,= wrote one Nate Leiderman, a frequent contributor to Gold9s column and the president of the District Line Association. Some of the things that bug me 4 bad grammar, bad signage 4 bugged Bill Gold, too. He once wrote: <The direction sign on the stairs at the National Theater points the way to the 8Ladies9 Lounge9 and the 8men9s Suite.9 But when you get to the top, you find them labeled: 8Ladies9 Suite9 and 8men9s Lounge.9 Things like that bother me.= <The District Line= could be personal and grass-roots in a way that, 70 years later, seems especially quaint and disturbingly trusting. Whenever Bill quoted someone, he included the person9s entire home address. He also used the column to advertise kittens and puppies that were available for adoption, complete with the phone number to call: Black kitten with just a trace of orange here and there (Shepherd 8082). Two male Maltese kittens (Woodley 3218). Three gray kittens; they9ll be 2 months old on Christmas Day (Atlantic 6153). Some readers tired of all the pet stuff, with one suggesting it might be better to direct people with unwanted kittens to a shelter that practiced painless euthanasia. <I suppose there9s a good bit of I don9t mean to suggest that <normal people= around here have no interest in politics or governance or bureaucracy. Those things provide a living for many readers of this column. And <The 1951 District Line Book=4a collection of items that had appeared in Bill9s column 4 is full of references to the local industry. There was, for example, a line overheard on the street: <Yes, I9m a staunch party man, but this year the staunch is pretty terrible.= or this description: <What a guy! He9s got the kind of head in which you9d expect to find microfilm.= That9s a nod to the spy Whittaker Chambers, who in 1948 hid secret documents in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his maryland farm 4 and who, in a roundabout way, contributed to the rise of the best thing to ever happen to The Washington Post: richard M. Nixon. The pamphlet was published by the District Line Association, which described itself as <a social group with a mutual human interest for anybody who had civic pride and a little printer9s ink in his blood.= It was available for a quarter at High9s ice cream stores or by mail for 35 cents. Proceeds benefited Children9s Hospital. Then as now, the column was the conduit by which The Post encouraged readers to donate to charity. Bill Gold depended on reader submissions for the column, just as Bob Levey did and just as I9ve done. Bill9s column included a mix of anecdotes, doggerel, puns Several years ago, a kind reader sent me a nifty little 66-page booklet titled <The 1951 District Line Book.= The cover notes that it9s the <1st Annual Edition,= but I9ve never seen another one. <The District Line= was the name of The Washington Post9s daily, local, human-interest column, created in 1947 by Bill gold. When Bill retired in 1981, the column became <Bob Levey9s Washington.= And when Bob left The Post in 2004, it became <John Kelly9s Washington.= That9s three different columnists, but it9s really one single column: an unbroken 76- year string of words about Washington. And what is Washington? Well, as Post reader Louise a. Baldwin put it in Bill Gold9s column in 1949: <Washington is a small town that got too big for its bridges.= That has always been the theme of this column, which every day has set out to prove that Washington 4 the Washington area 4 isn9t (or isn9t just) what people outside of Washington think it is. Washington isn9t just politicians. It isn9t just lobbyists. It isn9t just transplants. It9s mostly whatIlike to call <normal people.= And <normal people= are who this column is written for. or was written for. I9m taking The Post9s buyout. There are no plans to replace me. The lineage of this column began with Bill Gold9s 8The District Line9 in 1947 John Kelly's Washington adding a fundraiser for Camp moss Hollow over the summers. Today, our fundraising campaign is called The Washington Post Helping Hand. I9m encouraging readers to donate to three worthy local charities: Bread for the City, Friendship Place and Miriam9s Kitchen. Each of them works to end homelessness and hunger in Washington. To give online, visit posthelpinghand.com. route for ages and knew all their regular customers.= The column, Bob said, was a <human inbox,= a way to make The Post more accessible. That9s the value ofalocal column. It builds bridges, even in a city that9s outgrown them. Helping Hand Every holiday season, Bill Gold raised money for Children9s Hospital. So did Bob Levey, merit to the suggestions,= Bill wrote. <Yet I9m afraid that if I were a kitten, I9d rather live in an alley than not live at all.= When Bill retired, he handed the reins to Bob Levey. Bob had his own style, but he also promoted the idea of Washington as a hometown, a place, as he put it to me, <of high school sports rivalries, dug-in neighborhood restaurants, bus drivers who had driven the same ,JoHn Kelly/tHe WasHington Post Like current Post columnist John Kelly, Bill gold depended on reader submissions for his column. In 1951, some of the items that ran in <The District Line= were compiled into a fundraising booklet. nomics. Economics is one reason he gave for why immigrants deserve to vote in local elections. They pay taxes and should have a say in how public dollars are used, he said. They also have children in the schools and have a stake in public safety. <In a place like D.C.,the experience of immigrants is very relevant to almost every single decision,= he said. Houserepublicans and 42 Democrats tried to block the D.C. law, but the effort died in the Senate, allowing D.C.to join other jurisdictions, including Takoma Park, md., in permitting noncitizens to vote.A group of D.C. voters also filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation.APost article on the suit says it<argues the legislation 8dilutes9the votes of citizens and notes thatit permits noncitizens to be elected to public office, including as mayor.= Thatlawsuit was moved to federal court. on the dayAbel shows me his neighborhood, we meet at mita Cafe. The business is owned by a couple who is Japanese and Ethiopian, and the menu reflects that. A customer can get sushi and sambucas. In that way, it9s not hard to find examples that show the diversity of the neighborhood. on the side of one building, a large mural shows three people breaking chains and reads <Immigrant Day ofresilience.= As we walk outside,Abeltalks aboutthe concerns of his neighbors. He spoke to many when he went door-to-door to collect signatures, which he needed to fillthe vacancy that was left open midterm. He points out long-standing construction projects, a major street that poses safety issues and one-way roads that cars have been known to travel down the wrong way. AfterAbel worked on the noncitizen voting act, he received hateful and racist messages. He knows that stepping into office 4 and speaking aboutit publicly with me 4 could draw that again. He chose to talk anyway. <In some ways,= he says,<I want to get it out ofthe way, so I can get down to work.= grades and focus.Instead, he said, going from full-time toapart-time caused him to lose state and federal grants. He said he couldn9t enroll again until he paid a balance of about $10,000. <The lowest times I9ve ever had were immediately after dropping out of the university and not being able to register again,= he said.<I was going from job to job working in restaurants, and eventually, I came to the point where I couldn9t pay rent, so I ended up basically homeless around the campus.= Abel said ittook him more than 15 years, but he finally paid off that debt and enrolled in the university again this past fall. He is finishing the requirements he needed foradegree in physics and is also pursuing a degree in ecotered voter, which is how the noncitizen voting act opened that door for him. The position is unpaid, but the District9s agencies <are required to give the ANCs9 recommendations 8great weight,9 = the city9s website says. Abel9s swearing in is newsworthy because of his citizenship status, but he brings a unique perspective to the role that goes beyond that. He can speak as a renter. He can speak as someone who has experienced homelessness. He can speak as a college student who is finally finishing what he started years ago and had to abandon. After high school,Abel enrolled in the University of maryland. During his junior year, as he tells it, he reduced his workload,thinking it would help him improve his and other organizing efforts. <People were like, 8Wow, who is this person who is an extremely effective organizer who seems to be in allthese places at once and is not being paid by an organization to do that?9 = Eichner said. She said having someone like Abel hold a local office means having someone in that space <who knows what it really means to open the doors to D.C. politics to people who have been left out or faced barriers to their participation.= ANCs represent their neighborhoods and Abel is now the ANC of 4D02, which is a wonky way of describing a few blocks around 5th andKennedy. Abel said a requirement for him to qualify for the office was that he had to be a regisinterest or support, Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) told The Washington Postin an article that ran after the council voted on the issue. <This time around, itfelt like there were better organized efforts to help advocate for it,= Allen said then.<That made the difference.= Sarah Graham, a spokesperson for the D.C. Board of Elections, said that Abel was the first noncitizen to register to vote in the city and thatthree noncitizens have registered to vote so far. Alana Eichner, co-director of the D.C. chapter ofthe National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents many immigrant women of color, recalled watchingAbel work on that voting legislation met by traveling only a short distance. He explains that the neighborhood needsagrocery store andalibrary, and that the intersection would serve as the perfect location for those. <Puttingapublic library here would do more to improve public safety than any police. When people ask, 8How do we improve public safety?9It9s about land use.= Abel, an Ethiopian immigrant who prefers people call him by his first name because of cultural naming practices, was sworn in as a D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner on friday, making him the first noncitizen to hold public office in the nation9s capital. That designation 4 the first noncitizen 4 means something in a city that has increasingly seen immigrant communities organize to fight for more rights, including the ability to register to vote. But it also takes just spending an afternoon with Abel in his Ward 4 neighborhood to see that what concerns him are the same issues that concern many D.C. residents. Among them:traffic, housing, park space, public safety and public health. <This entire row of houses has lead pipes,= he says, passing another street. <I need to talk with them. They qualify for a free program and they don9t even know it.= Abel was born in Ethiopia and came to the United States as a teenager in 1999. The 38-year-old, whose family was granted asylum, is a Green Card holder, which makes him a permanent resident. more than 50,000 noncitizens are estimated to live in D.C., and Abel has spent the past several years working with different groups to advance their rights and opportunities. He served as a key organizer in the effort to get D.C. lawmakers to pass legislation last year that allowed noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in local races. for nearly a decade, council members tried to introduce similar legislation, but those efforts did not move forward because of a lack of vargaS from C1 TheResa VaRgas First noncitizen to hold public o>ce in D.C. hasavision for his community robb Hill for tHe WasHington Post a mural along Kennedy Street. abel amene was served as a key organizer in the effort to get D.C. lawmakers to pass legislation last year that allowed noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in local races. He was then the first noncitizen to register to vote. BY MARTIN WEIL Even places characterized by a high degree of entitlement may hesitate to demand two successive mid-December days in the dry and warm 60s, but friday and Saturday in Washington provided those pleasant and benign conditions. on friday, the high reached a well-above-average 61 in Washington, and perhaps a little more surprisingly, Saturday hit the same mark. Aside from bare branches, scarcely a hint of winter could be seen, and the sensation of an extended autumn, or a precocious spring could hardly be dismissed. Between the two days, Saturday9s warmth might be a slightly greater accomplishment. After all, Saturday came one day deeper into December, one day nearer to the solstice, and one day closer to the wintry conditions that seem almost certain to arrive fairly soon. friday seemed unusually bright for a December day, but Saturday, its near twin, seemed to possess more of the special qualities that characterize daylight in the season when daylight is notable for its brevity. on Saturday, in contrast to friday, a substantial cloud assortment striped much of the sky at many or most hours. Although by no means marked with the dark brooding quality of manyawinter sky, these clouds kept the sun from providing maximum thermal benevolence. The clouds seemed thin, gauzy and milky, andof a pale gray shade that blended with the pale blue of the uncovered portions of the sky. Accordingly, the light that shone on Washington on Saturday seemed often to be pale, and conveyed a sense of delicacy and fragility. As it shone on street and tree and building wall, it failed to create the stark contrasts often seen in winter, the clear confrontation between brilliance and blackness. rather it seemed to commit itself to a soft blending and merging of pallid light into gray shadow in a kind of quiet coexistence, perhaps even suggestive of the light at the bottom of a pond or pool. But to dwell upon the frequent pallor of Saturday9s sunlight required ignoring the central fact of Saturday9s weather: its warmth. At 61 degrees, friday9s high was 12 above average for Washington on Dec. 15. Saturday9s 61 scored the same dozen degrees above average, and perhaps deserved a bonus for being a little less expectedona day that started the second half of December. According to the Time andDate website, Saturday providedWashington with nine hours, 27 minutes and 13 seconds of daylight. on Thursday, Washington is to have 55 seconds less. The Region A pair of pale but springlike days, despite December9s waning sunlight

C4 eZ Re k the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 months from filing, court records show. Before the pandemic, that period was typically 28 to 75 days, D.C. courts spokesman Doug Buchanan said. He attributed the increased delay both to pandemic-related backlogs and changes the court has made to ensure fairness for tenants. Cases used to be called in person at 9 a.m., which created barriers to attendance that ultimately favored landlords, Buchanan said in an emailed statement. Now, the court offers virtual hearings scheduled in hour-long blocks throughout the day. <The improvements for access to justice have been staggering,= Buchanan said, as the default rate has dropped from about 20 percent to near zero. But the change has also backed up the system. To move things along faster, the court has devoted an additional judge and courtroom to landlord-tenant cases, Buchanan said. Beginning after Thanksgiving, the court would increase the number of hearings scheduled from eight per hour to 11. In addition to these changes, court administrators have added a box for landlords to check in cases of tenants accused of dangerous conduct. Buchanan said they will be scheduled for initial hearings roughly 35 to 50 days from filing. marian Siegel, executive director of Housing Counseling Services, which helps low-income residents find and maintain housing, raised a note of caution about the change. Before checking a box that would accelerate a case, she said, landlords need to distinguish between annoying behaviors and dangerous ones. <Just because you9re exhibiting certain behaviors that might be different, that doesn9t mean you9re dangerous,= she said. <Living around people who are mentally ill is a part of life, and I don9t think we can keep them away from housing. We can9t say they don9t have a right to a place to live.= Alexander rossello, a spokesman for the Apartment and office Building Association of metropolitan Washington, said the changes are a positive step for both landlords and renters. <They want to feel safe, and they want to be safe,= rossello said. <And the inability to take action in a lot of these situations, from a legal perspective, really leaves both parties in a no-win situation.= The duration and uncertainty of the eviction process has led some landlords to pursue additional legal measures. Last year, after a program participant in Chevy Chase Tower punched an elderly neighbor in the mouth, threw a lit cigarette at someone9s face and created other disturbances, police said, management company Alvin L. Aubinoe sought a court order barring him from the property, rather than waiting for his eviction case to unfold. The tenant, Eric reavis, had at least two previous assault convictions and a history of mental illness, court records show. <Chevy Chase Tower residents live in constant fear of mr. reavis9 escalating violence,= an Aubinoe filing in civil court said. The eviction suit was unlikely to come to trial before the following April, Aubinoe9s lawsuit said, adding that <Aubinoe and the Chevy Chase Tower residents cannot wait nine months for relief ending this ordeal.= In April, a judge lifted a temporary restraining order barring reavis from the property but ordered him to stay away from several people, including the woman he allegedly punched. The eviction case, in which reavis has received help from the Legal Aid Society of D.C., is still pending. <He is functioning, except for these unfortunate events,= said raymond Jones, a lawyer for reavis in his criminal case. He couldn9t speak to the District9s housing programs, he said, <but I guess you try to get the people as much help as you can.= The vast majority of eviction cases are for nonpayment of rent, rather than alleged lease violations, although the proportion of lease violation cases is growing. Last year, 7,709 nonpayment cases were filed in D.C., down steeply from about 30,000 in the years between 2012 and 2019. The drop was in part caused by statutory changes, including a new minimum of $600 in unpaid rent required before a case could be brought, court officials say. Alleged lease-violation cases, on the other hand, have risen. Last year, they totaled 1,897, a rise of more than 20 percent over pre-pandemic years, according to data provided to The Post by the court. The court does not keep data on how many cases involve tenants using subsidies. Initial hearings for eviction cases are scheduled three to four <Let9s say I have a 10-unit building, and I have one terrible tenant that9s destabilizing the other nine families,= he said. <The other nine families, they ask me a simple question: 8What are you going to do?9= M cmillan left his apartment after a blaze in June that Petra told the housing authority in an email was caused when he set fire to his couch. His landlord-tenant case dragged on, taking nearly 11 months from its December 2022 filing to reach a judgment, in which a judge set aside the arguments of mcmillan9s Howard University lawyers and granted Petra possession. Such lengthy landlord-tenant cases are the norm. Leon miller lives in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood in a one-bedroom apartment at a building called the madison. The apartment had been another chance for miller. A few months before signing the lease, he had received a year of probation for selling $30 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover officer. During the court process, he had attended a drug-treatment program. Last year, as the madison9s security cameras rolled, a stream of drug clients visited miller9s apartment, police allege. The landlord, Petra, had given officers direct access to the surveillance system. An officer who watched the footage one day saw two dozen people come and go, spending <anywhere from seconds to minutes inside,= according to a search warrant application. When officers executed the search, they came away with a small bag with two white rocks, a glass pipe and scales. miller, who declined to be interviewed by The Post, was arrested, then released the next day when the U.S. attorney9s office in D.C. declined to prosecute. Petra sued to evict miller in April. The initial hearing in D.C. Superior Court was not until September, four months later. robert Donahue, a lawyer for Petra, told the judge: <The conduct is ongoing. We still have a constant stream of traffic around the unit.= miller, who did not have a lawyer, shook his head. <There9s no traffic going on in my house,= he told the judge. The judge, Stephen rickard, set mediation for five months later, in february 2024, and a trial date for may. viders, according to principles recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That9s so the landlord can focus on housing concerns such as rent, maintenance and leases, while the service provider can focus on treatment planning and case management. While landlords cannot turn away renters because they use subsidies under D.C. law, landlords in practice must often be willing to accept government paperwork delays and make other accommodations to enable voucher holders to enter leases. City officials say there are not enough housing providers willing to do so. Some number of evictions are a predictable part of even wellfunctioning permanent supportive housing programs, where a new home may not go smoothly on the first try. <This person is doing illegal activities in the building 4 that would be to me grounds for eviction or arrest,= Sam Tsemberis, a social researcher credited with pioneering the housing-first model, told The Post. <That9s not a good outcome 4 for that person. But, you know, it protects other people in the community.= Under housing-first principles, an eviction does not mean an individual loses services, and the program will offer a participant who has lost their housing a new unit, depending on circumstances. frumin, the council member, said police visits have gone up steeply in recent years to buildings that have hosted an influx of program participants. one building along Connecticut Avenue saw the number of police calls for service 4 ranging from noise complaints to assaults 4 rise to more than 200 last year from fewer than 50 in 2018, dispatch data gathered by its tenant association show. During the same period, the building filled more than 50 of its 305 units with voucher holders, a portion of whom need intensive case management, according to data obtained by The Post. <one piece of it is that there are certain folks who could thrive if they got more services,= frumin said, <and that9s not always happening in the way that it should.= Craig London, a landlord who has leased multifamily buildings for nearly two decades, said the city needs more buildings with intensive case management onsite. croaches on their neighbors9 peace or safety. But during the past two years, the authority has terminated fewer than a dozen of more than 20,000 vouchers for such violations, its officials say. <our primary purpose is to house people,= the authority9s director of external affairs, Hammere Gebreyes, said in an interview. <That9s what we are in the business to do.= Several landlords interviewed for this story said that when they approach the D.C. Housing Authority about lease-breaking tenants, they are told to enforce the lease. Authority officials, in exchanges with The Washington Post, said much the same. <Landlords are responsible for lease enforcement, as DCHA is not a party to the lease,= rachel Joseph, the authority9s chief operating officer, said in an email. She said that when landlords advise the authority of lease violations, a mediation team attempts to resolve conflicts. She also noted that the termination of a voucher does not remove the tenant from a property; for that, eviction is still necessary. The D.C. mayor9s office says caseworkers try hard to allow program participants to maintain stable housing. <This often includes working directly with landlords to mediate challenging situations and supporting clients in avoiding evictions where possible,= said a statement sent by rebecca Dooley, a spokeswoman for the office of the D.C. Deputy mayor for Health and Human Services. <In the event an eviction is inevitable, the case manager will support the resident in identifying and moving into new housing.= The District9s permanent supportive housing program claims an approach known as <housing first= 4 immediate housing followed by intensive services to help people work toward goals like stability and sobriety. To be eligible, a participant must be chronically homeless and have a disabling condition such as addiction or mental illness. once participants are housed, caseworkers contracted by the city9s Department of Human Services are allowed to make as few as two contacts with them a month, the contracts show. There is no requirement that participants engage with any services. Ideally, in permanent supportive housing programs, landlords work separately from service proI feel more vulnerable, and it9s just not fair,= said reginald Black, a voucher holder who says his apartment building in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood has been overrun by drug sales. Two program participants there have been the subject of police drug raids and face months-old eviction cases 4 yet they are still there. Like many tenants, Black blames his landlord for not doing enough to stop the illegal activity. recognizing the issue, D.C. Superior Court administrators are making changes to expedite serious eviction claims, asking landlords to flag cases that involve alleged assault or other conduct that poses immediate dangers. The court is trying to reduce the delay between a landlord9s complaint and the initial hearing, now more than three months, to less than two months. Some affordable housing advocates do not welcome the change. <fast-tracking an eviction matter does not fix crime, poverty, a mental health system crisis or the decades of disinvestment in affordable housing and tenant support systems,= rebecca Lindhurst, managing attorney for Bread for the City9s housing practice, said in an email. Evictions, she said, <lead to homelessness resulting in even worse outcomes for those who are evicted, our communities and our city.= D.C. Council member matthew frumin (D-Ward 3), whose ward includes a stretch of Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington that is home to many program participants, encouraged the eviction court change and called it <a very big step= among many 4 such as more effective social services 4 needed to address how the city deals with chronic homelessness. frumin said the program has been a salvation for many, but <there are other people 4 it9s a smaller group of people 4 for whom independent living is not the right answer at this point for them. We need to have alternatives for those people,= he said, of participants with serious mental illness or ongoing drug problems. <And we shouldn9t put our hands over our eyes, and hands over our ears, and just drop them into an independent living setting and not acknowledge the consequences for them and for the people around them.= L ast october, firefighters responded to a report of smoke inside an apartment building in Northwest Washington along Wisconsin Avenue. Arson investigators soon arrived to find residents of the four-story building, called observatory Park, outside waiting to be told it was safe to return. Security cameras soon showed investigators what had happened. Building resident Chris mcmillan had carried his microwave down to the bottom-floor trash room, put a lithium battery inside and started it up, video shows. A month earlier, police had been summoned as mcmillan walked around the building with a stun gun and assaulted one of his neighbors with bear spray, records show. He pleaded guilty to an assault charge, was sentenced to time served in february and released from jail, where a court-appointed psychologist noted that he had exhibited <disorganized behaviors= but found him competent to stand trial. A lawyer for mcmillan, Quo Judkins of Howard University9s Clinical Law Center, declined to comment on his case. mcmillan9s landlord, Petra Development, emailed the D.C. Housing Authority the video of him starting the fire soon afterward, records show, before Petra sued to evict him. A year later, the housing authority was still paying his rent, a tenant ledger shows. federal regulations and housing authority policy prohibit housing voucher holders from committing serious or repeated lease violations, as well as from engaging in drug-related or violent criminal activity that enTeNaNTs from C1 D.C.9s supportive housing is vexed by problematic tenants sTeve ThomPson/The WashingTon PosT The building that houses the landlord and tenant branch of D.C. courts in Northwest Washington. Part of a pledge to help curb homelessness, the District9s permanent supportive housing program has struggled in recent years as the number of participants has doubled to more than 5,000 people. S0115-6x2.5 washingtonpost.com/recipes Tr Search our database of tested recipes by ingredient or name. y new foods

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post eZ re c5 The monument glorified the fight to protect slavery, they wrote. <Take it out of its honored spot in Arlington National Cemetery and put it in a museum that makes clear its oppressive history,= the family said. The memorial9s impending removal comes after the Army stripped the names of Confederate officers from nine installations, replacing them with several minority and female soldiers who have been unrepresented among celebrated troops for centuries. The facilities were previously named with the help of segregationists who held sway in the Jim Crow-era South and were all in states that joined the Confederacy. Hope Hodge Seck contributed to this report. cemetery9s staff will develop a plan for signage intended to address and contextualize the bare pedestal. other groups have tried unsuccessfully to keep the memorial at Arlington. A lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. military alleged that the decision to bring it down was made without sufficient public input. That suit was dismissed Tuesday, according to court filings. The Army said it did not anticipate another legal challenge before work begins this week. In 2017, after the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville that claimed the life of counterprotester Heather Heyer, descendants of the memorial9s sculptor, moses Jacob Ezekiel, told The Post they wanted the monument removed. an ode to reconciliation, it was installed in what was then a racially segregated cemetery and molded in celebration of an emerging racial police state in the South. <It9s incredibly ironic the party of Lincoln is the one doing this,= said Seidule, a historian and visiting professor at Hamilton College, describing the GoP effort to stop the marker9s removal. <It is the cruelest monument in the country because it is so clearly pro-slavery.= Workers will install safety fencing around the memorial before its removal begins, Army officials said. Protests are not permitted within Arlington Cemetery, and anyone who carries out such an action will be removed by law enforcement, they added. After the marker9s removal, the White officer, and a camp servant dutifully follows his enslaver toward battle. The memorial9s Latin inscription directly references the idealized mythology of the Lost Cause, the cemetery9s historians say, further underscoring the deliberate historical distortion. The marker was erected in 1914, part of a constellation of Confederate markers that rose throughout the early 1900s to cement the ideals of white supremacy as Black Americans demanded equal rights. That context must be understood, said Ty Seidule, a retired Army general who was the vice chair of the congressional commission that recommended the monument9s removal from Arlington. While republican lawmakers described the marker as The commission found about 1,100 assets that commemorate the Confederacy, including base names and street signs, and advised the Pentagon on what should be removed or changed. The memorial at Arlington was the last significant item on that list, Army officials said, and its ouster comes just before the Jan. 1 deadline set by Congress. A spokesperson for Clyde did not immediately return a request for comment. The Lost Cause movement, which recast rebel traitors as morally righteous warriors defending states9 rights and spread the false belief that slavery was benevolent, is evident in the memorial9s bronze panels. A weeping Black woman, described by cemetery historians as a stereotypical <mammy,= clutches the baby of a plans to relocate it New market Battlefield State Park, which would be a <fitting backdrop= for the memorial, Porter said. The site is about 100 miles west of Arlington. It is unclear when that process would happen, but Army officials said the memorial will be moved to a storage facility for some time. removal of the memorial was recommended by a bipartisan congressional commission appointed after the police murder of George floyd in 2020 was followed by a wide-scale reckoning with the nation9s history of racism, and it marks a significant moment in the Defense Department9s mission to cleanse the U.S. military of Confederate iconography. MEMorial from C1 Confederate monument to be removed despite GOP opposition BY KEITH L. ALEXANDER An 85-year-old man accused of killing his 81-year-old wife in their D.C. home last weekend told a homicide detective that he stabbed her with a carving knife during an argument over whether he should have pancakes for breakfast, according to a police affidavit. Steven Schwartz, who lived with his wife, Sharon Schwartz, in the 1300 block of Corcoran Street NW, said in a police interview that he had lost weight in recent months because of physical and psychiatric disorders and that his wife thought it would be good for him to eat more, according to the affidavit, filed in D.C. Superior Court. Speaking with Detective Jeffery Clay, Steven Schwartz <indicated that he lost 45-50lbs in the hospital and that his wife wanted him to get back to 180lbs,= the affidavit says. It says Schwartz told Clay that his wife <was a bit of a taskmaster, but she was doing it for his benefit.= Sharon Schwartz <loved him so much that [she] wanted him to be well and that she wanted her partner and protector back.= Sunday morning, when his wife <asked him if he was going to have breakfast,= according to the affidavit, Schwartz replied <that he had a quarter of a Krispy Kreme [doughnut] the day before.= He <indicated that he would try to eat a pancake with not too much syrup,= but he changed his mind, and an argument ensued. <The next thing [he] heard was a plate crashing against the wall,= the affidavit says, after which <he reached and grabbed a carving knife from a holder.= A neighbor heard a woman scream in the house and called for help, according to the affidavit. When police arrived, they found Sharon Schwartz9s body near the front door. She had been stabbed once in the back and, an autopsy later found, the blade had pierced her heart. Police said Steven Schwartz was clutching a knife and would not let go of it until an officer stunned him with a Taser. He was taken to a hospital with what police said was a self-inflicted stab wound. Schwartz, who said his mental problems include depression and paranoia, told Detective Clay that he <loved that woman for 40 years,= the affidavit says. Charged with second-degree murder, he appeared Thursday in Superior Court and was ordered held pending a Jan. 2 preliminary hearing. As his wife lay on the floor, Schwartz said in the police interview, he leaned down and kissed her,= calling it <the most beautiful kiss,= according to the affidavit. At the hospital, the affidavit says, he told medical workers: <She doesn9t deserve this. I deserve it. She does not. I killed her. oh, my Lord.= thE diStrict Police accuse 85-year-old of killing his wife in an argument over pancakes obituaries syndicated column for the next 15 years, filing <1,500 pieces and more than a million words of comment,= by his count, <on everything from Gorbachev to goobers.= While exploring questions of politics, education, literature and the law (the Supreme Court was a favorite topic, Justice Lewis f. Powell a regular lunch companion), mr. Yoder cited historians, novelists, scholars and other thinkers, including Proust, freud and faulkner. He also showed a fondness for experimentation. one of his early editorials was written in the style of the King James Bible (improbably, it was a response to Sen. Hubert Humphrey9s decision not to run for president in 1976), while another piece was structured as a <a self-interview= about Shakespeare9s work and legacy. It began: <Q. A self-interview about Shakespeare on his 415th birthday? What are your qualifications?= <A. only that I9m human and able to read; otherwise, meager.= mr. Yoder was a notable early champion of Bill Clinton, arguing in a September 1991 column 4 one month before the Arkansas governor announced his candidacy for president 4 that Clinton was <the most engaging extemporaneous speaker in American politics= and had <the heart, the talent and, yes, the vision for the job.= The two men had met four years earlier at a political conference in florence (mr. Yoder recalled that Clinton <played the shrewd ladies and gentlemen of the old world like a harp=) and developed a friendship through annual trips to renaissance Weekend, an off-the-record retreat in Hilton Head, S.C., where they connected over their shared background as moderate Southern Democrats and rhodes scholars. After the election, mr. Yoder accompanied the president BY HARRISON SMITH Edwin m. Yoder Jr., a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his stylish and erudite editorials at the now-defunct Washington Star and went on to become a columnist syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, died Nov. 30 at a retirement community in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 89. His daughter, Anne D. Yoder, confirmed the death but did not provide further details. By the time he retired from regular column-writing in 1996, mr. Yoder was <a certifiable journalistic fossil,= as he put it, <a survivor from the linear age whose tenure has extended into the garish and glamorous electronic era of television, talking heads, talk radio and the Internet.= mr. Yoder, a political moderate, got his start at newspapers in his home state of North Carolina, where he wrote editorials in support of the civil rights movement and evoked the region9s history and culture while channeling the work of W.J. Cash and C. Vann Woodward, two leading chroniclers of the South. His work attracted the attention of Texas financier Joe L. Allbritton, the new owner of the Star, who was seeking to rejuvenate the scrappy afternoon newspaper when he hired mr. Yoder in 1975 to oversee its editorial page. mr. Yoder joined a staff that included Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist mary mcGrory, and in 1979 he was awarded a Pulitzer of his own, hailed by the prize committee for writing about <current national events with the confident understanding of the political specialist, the objectivity of the historian, and with masterful literary grace.= That work included a piece grappling with russian novelist and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn9s critique of <Western decadence,= as well as editorials about Israeli Prime minister menachem Begin, the antismoking campaign of Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano and the retirement of segregationist Sen. James o. Eastland, the mississippi Democrat. <He was an elegant writer, as gifted as they come,= said Alan Shearer, who edited many of mr. Yoder9s columns in the 1990s as editorial director of The Post Writers Group. <Everything he wrote 4 a message, a letter, a column 4 was well crafted,= Shearer added in a phone interview. <You really couldn9t improve his prose.= mr. Yoder joined the Writers Group in 1981, when the Star folded under its latest owner, Time Inc. He wrote a nationally aboard Air force one and offered advice on dealing with the news media. At one point, he recalled, he wrote a memo arguing that it was <pointless to be irritated by reporters; they are like bird dogs, trained to point.= mr. Yoder could be incisive in his critiques of fellow pundits, especially in retirement. He published a wry memoir, <Telling others What to Think= (2004), lamenting the decline of daily newspapers and the rise of confrontational cable television shows, and later criticized the proliferation of <hearsay and rumor= online, where he saw few signs of civil discourse. <We have seen the future,= he said in a 2016 speech at the University of North Carolina, <and, alas, it is the Drudge report.= Edwin milton Yoder was born in Greensboro, N.C., on July 18, 1934, and grew up with a younger brother in nearby mebane. He shared the same first name and middle initial as his father, a high school principal, leading him to adopt <Jr.= as part of his byline. His mother was an elementary school teacher who, in college, had written poetry and edited a literary magazine. mr. Yoder said he decided to go into journalism at age 16, after spending a summer reporting and selling advertisements for a local paper. He went on to edit the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina, graduating with a bachelor9s degree in English in 1956, and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Jesus College at the University of oxford, receiving a second bachelor9s and a master9s degree in 1958. That same year, he married mary Jane Warwick, a classmate at UNC. She ran a ballet studio and became a clinical social worker and Jungian psychotherapist. She died in 2021. Survivors include a daughter, Anne; a son, Edwin <Teddy= Yoder; and three grandsons. mr. Yoder9s oxford credentials helped him get an unusually elevated appointment at the Charlotte News in 1958, when he began his journalism career as an editorial writer. He joined the Greensboro Daily News in 1961, took a year-long sabbatical to teach American history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and became the newspaper9s associate editor in 1965. In addition to his work as a columnist, mr. Yoder taught journalism at Washington and Lee University and wrote a half-dozen books, including <Joe Alsop9s Cold War: A Study of Journalistic Influence and Intrigue= (1995), about one of the most influential columnists of mid-century Washington. The two men became friends after mr. Yoder moved to Alexandria, Va., to work for the Star. <many of those who remember Alsop undoubtedly recall him primarily as an anticommunist ideologue and harsh defender of the Vietnam War,= historian Alan Brinkley wrote in a review for The Post. <Yoder makes clear that he was a much more complex, and much more interesting, figure than that.= In retirement, mr. Yoder turned to fiction, writing novels including <Lions at Lamb House= (2007), which imagined an encounter between freud and novelist Henry James, and <Vacancy= (2010), a political saga involving a familiar-sounding protagonist: a North Carolina graduate, rhodes scholar and retired journalist who, despite his lack of legal training, finds himself appointed to the Supreme Court. Edwin YodEr, 89 Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist wrote stylish and erudite editorials Anne d. Yoder Edwin M. Yoder Jr. and his wife in 2008. Mr. Yoder won a Pulitzer in 1979 as an editorial writer for the Washington Star and later was a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. <He was an elegant writer, as gifted as they come. Everything he wrote 4 a message, a letter, a column 4 was well crafted. You really couldn9t improve his prose.= Alan Shearer, former editorial director of The Post Writers Group LIMITED TIME OFFER $500 OFF* GET A FREE INSPECTION * Ten percent of any job over $2500 up to a max of $500. Coupon must be presented at time of inspection. Ofer may not be combined with any other ofer. Limit one per customer. Ask inspector for further details. Promo valid through 7/31/2023. HIC#410516000653 | 50637 | 69678 | WV027473 BECAUSE YOUR FOUNDATION IS CRACKED. LIMITED TIME OFFER $500 OFF* HIC#410516000653 | 50637 | 69678 | WV027473 BECAUSE YOUR FOUNDATION IS CRACKED. 1051600065 BE YO FOUNDATION AC LIMITED TIME OFFER $500 OFF LIMITED TIME OFFER FOUND $500 OFF YO ION AC LIMITED TIME OFFER FOUNDATION LIMITED TIME OFFER AT 27473 * LIMITED TIME OFFER CA $500 OFF USE CR LIMITED TIME OFFER BE YO FOUND $500 OFF D. 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C6 eZ re the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 OBITUARIES BY EMILY LANGER When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Guy Stern9s father grasped the danger that awaited Jewish families like theirs and offered his son an admonition. <You have to be like invisible ink,= he said. <You will leave traces of your existence when, in better times, the invisible ink will become visible again.= Dr. Stern was 15 when his parents sent him by himself to live with an uncle in the United States. They hoped to join him, and to bring their two younger children. But the <golden door was not wide open,= Dr. Stern later said, describing the reception that awaited many refugees during World War II. In the end, his family remained trapped in Germany, and Dr. Stern alone among them survived the Holocaust. He was 101 when he died on Dec. 7 at a hospital in West Bloomfield, Mich. He never forgot his father9s words about invisible ink. They were a warning, but also a promise 4 that <better times= would come, and that when they did, Dr. Stern would leave a mark. He did, first as one of the <Ritchie Boys= recruited to a secret U.S. military intelligence program that helped defeat Nazi Germany, and later, after the war, as a professor of German literature and culture, his attention ever tuned to the stories of exiles and immigrants. In recent decades, Dr. Stern drew the interest of historians, documentarians, students and scholars seeking to learn and preserve the history of the Holocaust. He appeared in the 2004 film <The Ritchie Boys,= a documentary about the men 4 and women 4 so named for their training at Camp Ritchie, Md. Of the 20,000 soldiers in their ranks, several thousand were Jewish refugees of Nazi Europe whose linguistic skills proved vital to U.S. interrogation and intelligence-gathering during the war. Dr. Stern also was featured prominently in <The U.S. and the Holocaust,= the three-part documentary directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein that aired last year on PBS. <We were at the tail end of the window of time,= Novick said in an interview, <when it would be possible to find people who remembered this history from living it.= Günther Stern was born on Jan. 14, 1922, in Hildesheim, in northern Germany. His father was a traveling textile salesman, and his mother assisted him in his work while raising Dr. Stern, his brother and his sister. Dr. Stern turned 11 two weeks before Hitler became chancellor in 1933. As the Nazi regime intensified its campaign of antisemitic persecution, his father lost much of his business, and Jewish students at Dr. Stern9s school were bullied and attacked. His parents resolved to leave Germany and decided that, as the oldest child, Dr. Stern would go first. With help from a Jewish aid group in the United States and an uncle in St. Louis, the family managed to arrange for him 4 but only him 4 to sail to America in 1937. Dr. Stern tried to raise the funds to bring his parents and siblings to the United States, but the bureaucratic morass proved impenetrable. The last letter he received from them, in 1942, informed him that they had been deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. He never learned if they died there or in a Nazi death camp. Dr. Stern completed high school in St. Louis and was drafted into the Army in 1943. He was chosen for the military intelligence school at Camp Ritchie because of his fluency in German. The <Ritchie Boys= 4 a name they acquired long after the war 4 trained in areas including interrogation, aerial reconnaissance, counterintelligence and psychological warfare. By the end of the war, more than 60 percent of the <actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield= was collected by their members, David Frey, the founding director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., told the CBS News program <60 Minutes= in 2021. <We were fighting an American war, and we were also fighting an intensely personal war,= Dr. Stern reflected years later. <We were in that war with every inch of our being.= Dr. Stern landed in Normandy three days after the D-Day invasion in June 1944. He served in France, Belgium and Germany and was credited with interrogating thousands of German prisoners during the war. Dr. Stern often teamed with a fellow soldier during interrogations in a good-cop-bad-cop routine. Playing the <bad cop,= Dr. Stern posed as a Soviet official 4 one Commissar Krukov, complete with uniform, medals and a convincing Russian accent 4 to stoke fears in tight-lipped POWs that they might be sent to a Soviet gulag if they failed to cooperate. Dr. Stern, who reached the rank of master sergeant, received the Bronze Star Medal for his service during the war, with a citation that credited him with providing information of <inestimable value.= In one instance, he interrogated a German corporal who revealed the deaths of two Americans POWs who had been selected by their Nazi captors for execution because they were Jewish refugees of Germany. Dr. Stern9s report on the interrogation helped lead to a war crimes investigation and the execution of the perpetrator soon after the war, according to Stephen Goodell, a retired director of exhibitions at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a scholar of the Ritchie Boys. Dr. Stern entered Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp in Germany, days after it was liberated by U.S. forces in April 1945. Gazing upon the skeletal survivors, he slipped a few paces behind a fellow soldier so that the man would not see him crying. But when that soldier looked back to find him, Dr. Stern saw that he, too, was weeping. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Stern returned to Hildesheim and found the city reduced to rubble. An old friend told him of his family9s deportation. <I felt as though an axe had severed me from my roots,= Dr. Stern later wrote. <My assumptions or dreams about my future life had been illusions. I held on to what little was left.= Dr. Stern said that throughout his life, he felt a responsibility to demonstrate that he had been worthy of survival. He studied Romance languages at Hofstra University on Long Island, from which he graduated in 1948. At Columbia University, he received a master9s degree in 1950 and a PhD in 1954, both in German. He taught at Denison University and the University of Cincinnati, both in Ohio, and at the University of Maryland before joining Wayne State University in 1978. During a quarter-century at the school, he served as provost, senior vice president for academic affairs, and professor of German literature and cultural history. He traced his interest in German literature to his parents, who had often taken him to the theater in Hildesheim. <My parents, had they been allowed to live, would have been elated by my choice of career and their catalytic role in it,= he wrote in his memoir, <Invisible Ink,= published in 2020. <That saddens me, of course, but that regret is as nothing compared to my torment when I imagine how they, lovers of the German language, probably heard it in its most debased form in the moments before their deaths at the hands of their murderers.= Citing the words of a friend, Dr. Stern wrote, <I hate the language that I love.= Dr. Stern9s marriage to Margith Langweiler ended in divorce. Their son, Mark Stern, died in 2006. Dr. Stern9s second wife, Judith Edelstein Owens, died in 2003 after 23 years of marriage. Susanna Piontek of West Bloomfield, Dr. Stern9s wife of 17 years, was his only immediate survivor. She confirmed his death but did not cite a cause. Dr. Stern worked for years with the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., where he was a member of the board and, until his death, director of the International Institute of the Righteous. He spoke frequently to the public about his time as a refugee, his inability to save his family and his service with the Ritchie Boys 4 memories, he once remarked, that had long been <sequestered in secret chambers of our hearts and minds.= <We have seen the nadir of human behavior, and we have no guarantee that it won9t recur,= Dr. Stern said in a closing sequence of <The U.S. and the Holocaust.= <If we can make that clear and graphic, and understandable, not as something to imitate, but as a warning of what can happen to human beings, then, perhaps, we have one shield against its recurrence.= guy stern, 101 Holocaust survivor later interrogated Nazi POWs CoUrteSy of Stern family Guy Stern, shown on top at right, was a refugee of the Holocaust who was recruited to be part of a secret U.S. military intelligence program that helped defeat Nazi Germany. After the war, he turned his attention to the stories of exiles and immigrants as a professor of German literature. Wayne State UniverSity PreSS Dr. Stern9s 2020 memoir. FUNERAL SERV ICES DIR E C T O R Y DC FUNERAL SERVICES Stewart Funeral Home Inc. 4001 Benning Road NE Washington, DC 20019 202-399-3600 www.stewartfuneralhome.com DC FUNERAL SERVICES 5130 Wisconsin Ave, NW Washington, DC 20016 Phone: (202)966-6400 Fax: (202)966-6186 www.josephgawlers.com MD FUNERAL SERVICES MD FUNERAL SERVICES FORT LINCOLN FUNERAL HOME 3401 Bladensburg Road Brentwood, MD 20722 Phone: (301) 864-5090 Fax: (301) 864-3277 www.fortlincolnfuneralhome.com MD FUNERAL SERVICES 1091 Rockville Pike Rockville, MD 20852* 519 Mabe Drive Woodbine, MD 21797 301.296.6864 410.442.3662 [email protected] *Restricted-operating out of Going Home Cremation & Funeral Care by Value Choice, P.A. Woodbine, MD (Rockville location only) ffifl   fl $1595 ffifl   ffl ffi (casket included) $3795  fl  fl $2195 (includes Just a Simple Cremation. Funeral home chapels add9l.)  flff ffi ffi  fl ffl  (casket or rental casket included) $6,195 EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE AFFORDABLE PRICES   fl $3095 Best Burial Value Best Cremation Value MD FUNERAL SERVICES 11800 New Hampshire Ave Silver Spring, MD 20904 Phone: (301)622-2290 Fax: (301)622-1254 www.hinesrinaldifuneralhome.com IN MEMORIAM FAUNTLEROY LINDA BUNDY FAUNTLEROY NINTEENTH Annual Dedication In Memory Sweetheart, Mom, Nana. Just a little message to let you know that we all love and miss you more each year that passes. 19 years ago today God called you to your eternal home. A beautiful day for Heaven, yet a sad but joyous day for us. The beauty and joy you gave while here still lives in our hearts and memory. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and the greatest mom to Trae and Heather, an awesome nana to PJ your Bootsey. We know you continue to watch over and guide us from above and we feel your grace and love which gives us joy and happiness each day. Merry Christmas Sweetheart, Mom and Nana. Your Loving Family, Trae, Heather, PJ/Bootsey, and Marvin DEATH NOTICE BAYNARD ELLEN WEBSTER BAYNARD (Age 92) On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, Ellen peacefully accepted her ûy away wings in her native Washington, DC. She is survived by daughter, Lynn B. Pittmon, son, Frank C. (Deadrine) Baynard, Jr as well as four grandsons, four granddaughters, four brothers, three sisters andahost of nephews, neices, cousins, in-laws and friends. Farewell ceremony will be held on Friday, December 22, 2023 at St. Stephen & Incarnation Episcopal Church 1525 Newton St., NW, Washington, DC. Visitation begins at 10 a.m. and Requiem Mass begins at 11 a.m. www.mcguire-services.com CANNADAY LAWRENCE ROBERT CANNADAY <Robbie= (Age 67) Lawrence Robert Cannaday, J.D., passed away suddenly December 1, 2023. A native Washingtonian, Rob attended St. John9s College High School, where he was a stand-out basketball player. He went on to play basketball and graduate from Colgate University and earned a law degree from Howard University. Rob is preceded in death by his parents, Helen Dibble Cannaday and Lawrence Roosevelt Cannaday, M.D.; and brother-in-law, Kirk Saulny. He is survived by siblings Michael D. Cannaday, M.D. (Tanya), Helen Cannaday Saulny, and Susan C Pulliam (Onzilo), two nephews, three nieces, extended family, and friends. Viewing/Visitation, Wednesday, December 20, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., McGuire Funeral Home, 7400 Georgia Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Interment Rock Creek Cemetery. www.mcguire-services.com COLE MARTIN JEROME COLE SR. Martin Jerome Cole, Sr. passed away peacefully on December 5, 2023. He was the loving son of Frederick Cole and Rosalind Cole (deceased) and loving brother of William, Audrey, Thelma, Richard, Donald, Melvin, and Nelly (deceased). He is survived by his son, Martin J. Cole II; granddaughter Maya Cole; and a host of nieces, nephews, and other relatives and friends. On Thursday December 21, friends may visit with the family from 10 a.m. until 12 noon at Stewart Funeral Home, Inc., 4001 Benning Road NE, Washington, DC 20019. Burial at Heritage Memorial Cemetery9s Garden of Memories immediately following: 13472 Poplar Hill Road, Waldorf, MD 20601. Please send condolences to either the funeral home or burial site, or to Martin J. Cole II directly at 1402 Dwight Way, Berkeley, California 94702. DEATH NOTICE COMBS JOHN GILES COMBS (Age 80) John Giles Combs, beloved husband of Margaret (Kammerer) Combs, passed away suddenly on December 13, 2023. John worked for several federal agencies. When he retired John was Director of Labor Relations and Employee Relations for U.S. Department of the Interior. He later became a consultant with other federal agencies on these issues. John earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Maryland and a Master of Public Administration from the American University. John wasaCertiûed Maryland Master Naturalist, a lifelong lover of nature, a dedicated conservationist, birder, and ûsherman. He was active in the Care for Creation Committee and other activities at St. James Episcopal Church. His brother James Combs predeceased him. He is survived by his wife Margaret, brother Edward Combs (Terri) of California, Meg Combs of England, and many nieces, nephews and friends. The graveside service will take place at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 21 at Serenity Ridge Natural Burial Cemetery, 2406 Ridge Road, Windsor Mill, MD. A celebration of life will be held atalater date at St. James Episcopal Church, Potomac, MD. www.SagelBloomûeld.com CROOKE SARAH CATHERINE CROOKE (Age 90) Sarah Catherine Crooke (Covington), passed away on December 10, 2023. She was predeceased by her husband Eric and siblings Peggy, Joe, Henry and Tom. She is survived by siblings Dolly, Mary, Charles and Alfred, sons John (Kendra) and Edward (Lauren), and grandchildren Evelyn, Eric and Owen. The family will receive visitors on Sunday, December 17, 4 p.m. to7p.m. at Borgwardt Funeral Home, 4400 Powder Mill Road, Beltsville, MD (full obit at borgwardtfuneralhome.com). A memorial service will be held Saturday, January 20, 2024, 11am at Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, Silver Spring, MD. (episcopalcos.org). www.borgwardtfuneralhome.com DAVENPORT OLIVER DONALD DAVENPORT Oliver Donald Davenport, passed away at 7:10 a.m. on Saturday, December 9, 2023, at Deanwood Rehabilitation Center in Northeast Washington, DC, at the age of ninety-ûve. He is survived by his wife, six children, several grandchildren and a great-grandchild. In keeping with his wishes a service will not be held. DORN ELIZABETH GRIGGS DORN <Gay= Elizabeth <Gay= Griggs Dorn, formerly of Rockville, died November 15, 2023. She was 93. Born September 30, 1930, she was daughter of Patty and Henry Day. She attended the Madeira School, graduating in 1948. She married John Dorn in 1955, and they lived in Rockville, MD from 1960 to 2015. Gay was a homemaker, worked in retail and volunteered with Meals on Wheels, the House of Mercy and the National Cathedral. She wasaresident of Nantucket, MA., from 2015 to 2022. She loved traveling, shopping, music and cats. John Dorn died in 2003. Gay is survived by her brother, James; her four daughters, Leslie Dorn, Comfort Dorn, Robin Taylor and Belinda Yancy; eight grandchildren and ûve great-grandchildren. Funeral services and interment will be held in summer 2024 on Nantucket.

sunday, december 17, 2023 . the washington post EZ RE C7 DEATH NOTICE FREEMAN CLYDE HENRY FREEMAN (Age 86) Clyde Henry Freeman of Bowie, Maryland, died on December 8, 2023. Clyde was born in Western Springs, Illinois and was a proud Eagle Scout. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Clyde joined NASA in 1959, working ûrst at the Washington Navy Yard and then the Goddard Space Flight Center where he worked as a computer engineer. Among the many contributions he made during his career at NASA, he assisted in the development of a technique for the determination of attitude of a spin-stabilized spacecraft and for differential correction methods in spacecraft attitude determination. He supported many early satellites, shuttle missions, until the loss of Challenger in 1986, and the International Space Station. He retired in 1993. His many other interests included folk dancing, road rallying, and volunteering as a research subject for scientiûc studies. He was survived by his wife, a daughter and a son, two brothers, and an extended family of nieces, nephews. No services are scheduled at this time. Online condolences may be made on www.robertevansfuneralhome.com GEOGHEGAN KEVIN CHRISTOPHER GEOGHEGAN Passed suddenly on December 13, 2023 of Rockville, MD. Born and raised in Rockville, MD. Graduate of Quince Orchard High School and University of Maryland. Kevin was an avid sports fan, movie lover and devoted family man. Kevin is survived by his son, Kai Adams Geoghegan; mother, Mary McGrew Geoghegan; Stepmother Gretchen Haynos Lord; siblings Joan Haynos Rambo (Mike), Robert Joseph Haynos (Kim), Kathleen Erin Geoghegan, Kathleen Haynos Hogan (Charles), Colleen Marie Geoghegan, Daniel Lanahan Haynos (Sydney); girlfriend Kerry Parker and numerous aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, and other family members and devoted friends. Visitation will be held on Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at Pumphrey Funeral Home, 300 W. Montgomery Ave., Rockville, MD from 4 to 7 p.m. Funeral Mass will be held on Thursday, December 21 at St. Mary9s Catholic Church in Rockville, MD at 2 p.m. In lieu of ûowers, donations can be made to the Boys & Girls Club of America. Please sign the family online guestbook at www.pumphreyfuneralhome.com GREER JOHN FRAZER GREER (Age 70) John Frazer Greer of Kettering, OH, formerly of McLean, VA, passed away Monday, December 4, 2023, predeceased by his parents, Ben and Betty Greer. Services will be held February 16, 2024 at St John9s the Beloved Catholic Church, McLean, VA at 10:30 a.m. For complete condolences and remembrances, and for the full obituary, please visit www.routsong.com HARDIE BRENDA M. HARDIE Brenda M. Hardie departed this life on December 6, 2023. She is survived by her beloved husband of 54 years, Kenneth <Kenny= Hardie; daughter, Anika Alvanzo (Neil); son Kenneth <Marco= Hardie (Alexis); mother, Neola Edwards; sister, Carolyn Perry; grandchildren, Nia Edwards, Skylar Alvanzo, Kenneth <Kenny= M. Hardie, II, Alexandra <Alex= Hardie; brother-in-law, Robert <Bobby= L. Hardie, Jr. (Penny); nephews, Dennis <Champ= Perry (Monica) and Robert <Levon= Hardie (Deneah); niece, Robin Hardie Hood (Tom); great-niece, Avery Perry; and a host of other family and friends. Celebration of Life will be held on December 21, 2023 at Grace United Methodist Church in Fort Washington, MD. Viewing at 10 a.m. followed by the celebration of life at 11 a.m. Interment at Lakemont Memorial Gardens. HEURTEMATTE JULIO ERNESTO HEURTEMATTE JR. Julio E. Heurtematte, Jr. of Washington, DC and Delray Beach, Florida on December 14, 2023. Beloved husband of the late Jeanne Connelly Heurtematte; father of Darcy Heurtematte Langdon, Douglas and Marc Heurtematte; grandfather of Berkes Langdon, Grace Langdon, and Justin Heurtematte, and great-grandfather of Davina Gray Heurtematte; brother of Edgar Heurtematte. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St Ann9s Catholic Church, 4001 Yuma Street, NW, Washington, DC, on Friday, December 22 at 10 a.m. In lieu of ûowers, donations may be made to the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing at wendtcenter.org. www.COLLINSFUNERALHOME.com HOLLERAN NANCY M. HOLLERAN (Age 89) Nancy M. Holleran of Vienna, Virginia, went to be with her Lord on December 4, 2023. Nancy was born on December 12, 1933 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the ûrst child of six for her late parents Harry K. Mallery, Sr. and Ethel Elizabeth Mallery (Seasoltz). In addition to her wonderful parents, Nancy was preceded in death by her loving husband James F. Holleran and treasured sisters Joan E. Holmwood, Mary Patricia Weld and Sandra E. Eggleston. Nancy is survived by her sons Timothy J. Holleran (Victoria) of Burke, Virginia, and Michael J. Holleran (Donna) of Herndon, Virginia in addition to brother Harry K. Mallery, Jr. (Renie) of Brookeville, Maryland, sister Dr. Susan R. Mallery of Columbus, Ohio, brother-in-law Richard Holmwood of Hopewell Junction, New York and brother and sister in laws Joseph and Virginia Holleran of Sarasota, Florida. A tremendous joy in Nancy9s life were her beloved grandchildren Andrew, Ian (Olivia), Keith (Schuyler), Mallery, Matthew (Julia) and Emma. She was a dedicated and well-regarded teacher for the Diocese of Arlington Catholic Schools for many years, ûrst at St. Agnes School in Arlington, Virginia and then at Our Lady of Counsel School in Vienna, Virginia. A wake will be held on Tuesday December 19, 2023 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Fairfax Memorial Park Funeral Home. A funeral Mass will be offered for Nancy at 1 p.m. on December 20, 2023 at St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax City, Virginia, with burial at Fairfax Memorial Park. In lieu of ûowers, the family asks that contributions be made in Nancy9s name to the Lupus Foundation of America or to Catholic Charities. DEATH NOTICE JONES EDWARD MAHLON JONES JR. Edward M. Jones, Jr. passed away peacefully on December 12, 2023, after a long illness. Ed was born in Bethesda, MD on May 24, 1950, grew up in Rockville, MD and lived his adult years in Columbia, MD. Divorced twice with no children, he leaves behind two sisters Susan Jones Garro Bissette (Bill) of Charleston, SC, and Margaret Jones Hoffman (Alan) of Ellicott City, MD; nieces Lisa Garro Strehmel, DVM (Greg) of Charleston, SC and Pilar Garro (Kathleen) of Salem, MA; nephew Tony Garro, MD of Washington, DC, and grand niece Isabella Vance of Charlston, SC. Ed attended the University of Maryland where he was very active with the University9s student radio station WMUC. Upon leaving college, Ed was among the ûrst hires at National Public Radio (NPR) in the early 70s where he worked as a telecommunications senior engineer until his retirement. Ed was always his own person and did many things <because he could.= He will be missed. May he rest in peace. A date for a remembrance of life will be announced after the new year. MOUSER JOHN MOUSER John Mouser of Fairfax, VA, beloved husband, father and grandfather, passed away peacefully at home on November 3, 2023. Born in Natchitoches, LA, John was the son of Cotys and Vestal Mouser. He is survived by his wife of 22 years, Susan (Godine) Mouser; his children Chris (and Denise) Mouser and Betsy (and Bob) Huffman; as well as ûve grandchildren and ûve great grandchildren. He was predeceased by his ûrst wife of 34 years, Kathy (Keefer) Mouser. John served in the US Navy, then had a long career at IBM, Kingston, NY. He volunteered as scoutmaster for many years. He enjoyed making and throwing boomerangs, and loved playing bridge. He was an avid and frequent golfer. A memorial service to celebrate John9s life will be held on January 13, 2 p.m., at The Woodlands Retirement Community in Fairfax, VA. In lieu of ûowers, donations may be made to Crystal Lakes Camps, Hughesville, PA 17737. John Mouser will be remembered for his unwavering kindness and generosity as well as his love for family. All who were fortunate enough to know John will recall his steadfast friendship and his wonderful smile. NUNZIATA SALVATORE W. NUNZIATA It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our beloved father, Salvatore W. Nunziata, on November 30, 2023. He was 91. He proudly served his country in the US Army for 20 years, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Family and friends can view the full obituary, express their condolences, and sign the guest book at www.fairfaxmemorialfuneralhome.com. Funeral services will be held at a later date at Arlington Cemetery. PALMER FRANCES ANN PALMER (Age 94) Passed away on December 5, 2023. Frances was preceded in death by her father, Issac Booth, and mother, Pauline Booth; her husband, Josh Palmer, brothers Issac <Pete= Booth and Donald Booth, sister Cecelia <Weezie= Martin; sons Garland Palmer and Anthony <Champ= Palmer, son-in-law Christopher Kirksey and grandson Daniel Miller. She is survived by her children, Linda Colvin (Larry Sr.), Joyce Palmer, Sharon Kirksey, Josh <Bug= Palmer (Mercedes), Gwendolyn Palmer-Wiggins, Kevin Palmer (Harriet), Christopher Palmer, and Sean Palmer; sister Hannah Booth; plus a host of grand, great, great-great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. A private memorial service for immediate family will be held at 1 p.m. on December 21, 2023 PENNY LOUIS ANDREW PENNY On Sunday morning, December I0, 2023, Louis Penny of Silver Spring, MD departed this life peacefully for his new home in Heaven. He is survived by his loving wife, Ava Penny, adored children: Son Reginald (Stacey) of Silver Spring, MD.; Daughter, Lori of Rural Hall, NC.; Granddaughters, (who were the light of his life) Meiko and Sydney, and a host of caring relatives and friends. Viewing will be held on Thursday, December 21, 2023 at McGuire Funeral Home: 7400 Georgia Avenue N.W., Washington DC 20012; 10 a.m. wake; 11 a.m. service. Internment; Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery at a later date. www.mcguire-services.com DEATH NOTICE RAVENSCROFT LORETTA RAVENSCROFT (Age 93) On Wednesday, December 13, 2023 of College Park, MD. Loretta is survived by granddaughter, Julia Mayotte (husband, JB), grandsons, David and Matthew Dwyer. Predeceased by her husband, Robert Ravenscroft and daughter, Barbara Dwyer. She enjoyed spending time in her hometown in Northern Neck, VA. She was thoughtful, charismatic, and had a great sense of humor, and she will be dearly missed. Funeral service and interment in Fort Lincoln Cemetery, Brentwood, MD will be private. www.borgwardtfuneralhome.com SIMS BETTY PRINTZ SIMS Died at 104 years old on December 4, 2023. She was an Iowan who graduated from Grinnell College, served as a US Marine in WWII and spent her life as a music educator and a valued community member. Printzy lived in Bergen County, NJ, Leisure World in Maryland, and Knollwood in Washington, DC. She is survived by her daughters, Sarah Romano (Dan), Rebekah Sims (Jeff Jacobson) and many family members. Her Memorial Service will be on January 14, 2024 at 2 p.m. at Knollwood in Washington DC. Funeral arrangments at Arlington National Cemetery are pending. SMITH FLOYD SMITH Entered into eternal rest on Friday, December 1, 2023. He is survived by his wife, Raquel Smith; two daughters, Michelle Smith and Tyrina Hinkle; son Bryan Morgan (Rayna); Three grandchildren, Lowell Blackmon III, Jerome Hinkle Jr. and Camilla Morgan; Sister, Ruth Hazzard and a host of other relatives and friends. Mr. Smith will lie in state at St. Lucille AME Zion Church, 5100 Astor Pl. SE, Washington, DC on Monday, December 18 from 9 a.m. until service at 11 a.m. Interment at Harmony Memorial Park. STEVENS CHARLES ROLAND STEVENS On December 4, 2023. Family will welcome guests December 18, 2023 at Bethlehem Church of God Holiness, 5898 Eastern Ave, NE. Visitation 10 a.m.; Funeral 11 a.m. www.johnsonandjenkinsfh.com VIRTS HENRY ALAN VIRTS <Bud= 11/10/1932 - 12/13/2023 Dr. Henry Alan <Bud= Virts, 91 of Mechanicsville, MD passed away December 13, 2023, at his home with his loving family at his side. Family will receive friends on December 20, 2023, from 4 to 8 p.m. with prayers at 7:30 p.m. at Brinsûeld Funeral Home, 30195 Three Notch Road, Charlotte Hall, MD 20622. A Funeral Service will be celebrated on Saturday, December 30, 2023, at 1:30 p.m. at All Faith Episcopal Church, 38885 New Market Turner Road, Mechanicsville, MD 20659. Interment will be private. Condolences may be made to the family at www.brinsûeldfuneral.com YANCHULIS BETTY ROSE YANCHULIS On Wednesday, December 13, 2023. Beloved wife of the late Anthony <Tony= Yanchulis for 60 years; Loving Mom of Elizabeth (Jimmy), Anthony III (Kathy), Suzanne, Christopher (Mack), and Mark (Sue); Devoted Mom-Mom of Tim (Sarah), Tyler, Christine, Brieann (Lawrence), Noah (Isabelle), Riley, Cooper, and Jimmy Jr. (Nikki); Great-MomMom of Tyler, Brandon, Cole, Luke, Abby, Lauren, Cole, Rylie, and Sullivan. Relatives and friends may call at Borgwardt Funeral Home, 4400 Powder Mill Rd., Beltsville, MD Wednesday December 20, from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Mass of Christian burial will be held at Holy Redeemer Church 4902 Berwyn Rd, College Park, MD Thursday, December 21 at 10 a.m. Interment Gate of Heaven Cemetery Silver Spring, MD. Memorial contributions may be made to Casey House Rockville, MD. View an appreciation of Betty9s life at www.borgwardtfuneralhome.com GATTI RICHARD STEPHEN GATTI JR. (Age 83) Richard Stephen Gatti, Jr. of Rockville, Maryland passed away peacefully December 9 at Suburban Hospital.He was born September 24, 1940 to Henrietta and Richard Gatti, deceased. He is survived by his loving wife of almost 62 years Eileen Gatti and their three children, Richard III (Eileen), Linda, and Mary Snodderly (Mike), blessed with ûve grandchildren, Meagan Kistler (Hobart), Erin Wimmer (Jacob) and Matthew Gatti, Michael Snodderly, and Joey Snodderly (Livvy). Three beautiful great granddaughters, Lily and Mara Wimmer, an Elizabeth Kistler. Rich was a 1958 graduate of St Johns College High School, and a 1962 graduate of American University. He was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. Rich was a self employed Real Estate Investor Manager for almost 60 years. He was a beloved boys and girls soccer, basketball, and baseball coach for many years with the Farmland Athletic Association. He loved his more than 50 years as a summer resident of Bethany Beach, DE. He was an avid tennis player, and enjoyed his yearly tennis parties giving out joke gifts. Rich was an ardent New England Patriot fan for many years-through thick and thin. He will be remembered as a wonderful husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, a good man, provider, and jokester. Friends may call at St Elizabeth9s Catholic Church, Montrose Rd., Rockville, MD on Wednesday December 27, 2023 from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. where a Mass of Christian Burial will be at 10 a.m. Interment will take place at Gate of Heaven Cemetery following the Mass. Donations in Rich9s memory may be made to Humane Rescue Alliance, Central Union Mission, or charity of your choice. Please sign family guest book at: www.DeVolFuneralHome.com HAMILTON MICKEY JOANN WILSON HAMILTON Mickey Joann Wilson Hamilton, of Silver Spring, MD passed away on Saturday, December 9, 2023. Mickey was born December 27, 1933 in Phenix City, Alabama to the late Evelyn Naomi (Posey) and James C. Kendrick. Beloved wife of the late Gordon R. Hamilton and the late Howard E. <Pete= Wilson; devoted mother of Gil Wilson (Kathleen), Pamela Davis (Marc) and the late Steven W. Wilson; cherished grandmother of Kendrick Wilson, Monica Davis, Kathryn Ulman (Clay), and Evelyn Wilson; great grandmother of Chase and Zoey Ulman, and Stephan Fait; and loving sister to Dale Sheaffer. She was predeceased by her sister Mary Ellen and brother James Kendrick. Mickey was an extraordinary woman whose kindness, warmth and resilience touched the lives of all who knew her. She was ûercely independent, resourceful, and strong. She had an enduring grace that imparted timeless wisdom and nurturing love. She was an avid gardener who loved to dance, read, and cheer on the Commanders. She will be deeply missed, may her gentle soul rest in peace. A memorial service will be held at PUMPHREY9S COLONIAL FUNERAL HOME, 300 W. Montgomery Ave., Rockville, MD on Thursday, December 28, 2023 at 10 a.m. Interment at George Washington Cemetery will be private. In lieu of ûowers please consider donating to the Sandy Spring Volunteer Fire Department (https://www.ssvfd.org/) Please view and sign the family guest book at: www.PumphreyFuneralHome.com DEATH NOTICE YOUNG GEORGE FRANCIS YOUNG SR. On Saturday, December 9, 2023, George departed this life at the age of 82 and entered into eternal rest. He was the youngest of three sons born to the late Martha Reed Young and Edward Thomas Young. He had a wonderful career in the transportation industry. After 33 years of service, George, also called <Sugar Bear,= retired from Metro (WMATA) in 2003. He was preceded in death by his brothers, Roger and Leotis. Left to cherish his memories are his loving and devoted wife of 61 years, Betty; three sons: George, Jr. (Karen), Anthony (Darlene), Keith (Monica); four grandchildren: DarShayla (James) Price, Aulan Young, Blaine Young, Novae Young; six great grandchildren: Bailey Price, Suniah Young, Jace Price, Dakahri Sweet, Syren Young, Reagen Young; and, a host of loving nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends. Family and friends are invited to celebrate the life of George on Wednesday, December 20, 2023, at Pope Funeral Home, 5538 Marlboro Pike, District Heights, MD. Visitation 10 a.m. until the Service at 11: a.m. Interment-Fort Lincoln Cemetery, 3401 Bladensburg Road, Brentwood, MD. PAID DEATH NOTICES HOLIDAY HOURS Saturday, December 23, 2023 11 a.m. ~3p.m. Sunday, December 24, 2023 11 a.m. ~3p.m. Monday, December 25, 2023 11 a.m. ~3p.m. & Saturday, December 30, 2023 11 a.m. ~3p.m. Sunday, December 31, 2023 11 a.m. ~3p.m. Monday, January 1, 2024 11 a.m. ~3p.m. Photo Deadline: 1 p.m. NO EXCEPTIONS To place a notice, call: 202-334-4122 800-627-1150 Ext. 4-4122 [email protected] DEATH NOTICE DEATH NOTICE DUNNE CAROL ANN DUNNE Carol Ann (Lucas) Dunne, age 86 of Rockville, Maryland passed away on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 in the comfort of her home. Born on June 1, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, she was a daughter of the late Joseph and Margaret Lucas. Carol attended Aquinas High School in Chicago, Illinois, received her Bachelor9s Degree in Education from St. Mary9s College in South Bend, Indiana, and earned her Master9s Degree in Educational Leadership from Trinity College in Washington, DC. Carol dedicated over three decades of her life to teaching at Holy Cross Elementary in Garrett Park, Maryland, where she was twice recognized as Teacher of the Year by the Archdiocese of Washington. She was a passionate and dedicated educator who had a special gift for making learning an enjoyable and enriching experience for the hundreds of children she taught over the years. In 1960, Carol married her beloved husband, Thomas Patrick Dunne and moved to Maryland in 1969. Carol was proud of her Irish heritage, enjoyed dance and musical theater, loved to cook, was an avid reader, a sports enthusiast, and had an unwavering dedication to her faith. Her greatest joy was spending time with her family; attending their sporting events, nurturing genuine friendships with each of her grandchildren, making every holiday season special, and creating traditions that will keep her family forever bonded. Carol was preceded in death by her loving husband of 61 years, Tom. She is survived by her four children, Jeanne Olding (Pete), Peter Dunne (Amy), Sharon Winesett (Archie), and Susan Lozupone (Joe), her 14 grandchildren: Tom, Kate, Maggie, and Patrick Olding, Finn, Kevin, Brennan, and Bridie Dunne, Archie, Meghan, and Erin Winesett, Joseph, Brendan, and Conor Lozupone, and her siblings, Jeanne Ambrose and Bob Lucas. A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at Holy Cross Parish, 4900 Strathmore Avenue, Garrett Park, Maryland on Wednesday, December 27, 2023 at 11 a.m. In lieu of ûowers, the family kindly requests that contributions be made in her name to the Little Sisters of the Poor, 4200 Harewood Road NE, Washington, DC 20017. Please sign the family guestbook at: www.DeVolFuneralHome.com DURMER KRIS EDWIN DURMER Kris Edwin Durmer, 73, passed away peacefully on December 9, 2023, at his home in Washington, DC afteracourageous battle with cancer. Kris is survived by the love of his life and wife of 52 ½ years, Lynda Lee Durmer; his children, Karis Durmer of Greenwich, CT (Greg Thomaier), Ashley Durmer of Washington, DC (TJ Leonard), and Taylor Durmer of St. Louis, MO; his grandchildren, Iris and Holden Leonard and Agnes and Graham Thomaier; his siblings, Erik Durmer of Fitzwilliam, NH and Karyl Durmer of Bedford, NH; and nieces and nephews. Kris was born on December 16, 1949, to the late Virginia Mae and Roy Madsen Durmer in Framingham, Massachusetts. The family moved to Goffstown, New Hampshire shortly after, and it was there the foundations of his character, commitment to family, and strong sense of civic responsibility became indelibly ingrained, leading to his lifelong pursuit to serve the public. Kris graduated from Goffstown High School (867) and from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) (871). While at UNH, he participated in the University Senate, was a member of the varsity soccer team, and spent his summers interning at Sanders Associates as a member of the Saturn V rocket program team that helped launch Apollo 11. It was there he met Lynda; they married on June 19, 1971, and spent the next half century together, raising their three children and becoming grandparents to four. Kris9 work ethic and commitment to serving others were central in all he did. His ûrst job in public service was as a Special Assistant to the late Senator Thomas J. McIntyre (DNH), who encouraged him to pursue a law degree. Continuing his work with the Senator, he earned his Juris Doctor from the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law (878), being named the Supreme Court Editor for the <1978 Annual Survey of New Hampshire Law.= Kris also served his country as an Artillery Surveyor, Staff Sergeant in the New Hampshire Army National Guard from 1971- 1977. His legal career took root in Nashua, NH, where he became an expert litigator in state and federal courts, and eventually, co-founded the ûrm of Smith-Weiss, Shepard & Durmer, PC. His strong sense of civic duty and obligation to help make the political system work for all established him as a leader in the NH Democratic party. For over three-decades, he provided counsel to elected ofûcials, as well as local and national candidates, and he mentored the next generation of organizers and activists. He valued participation at all levels; he held signs, knocked on doors, and hosted numerous presidential candidates in his home. In 1994, his exemplary legal skills and civic engagement led to an appointment by President William J. Clinton to the Board of Directors of Sallie Mae, where he served as both Vice Chair and Acting Chair. His dedication to community was also evident through his 18- year tenure as a Commissioner of the Nashua Housing Authority and his service on the Board of Trustees of Sacred Heart University, the Board of the Nashua Home Health and Hospice Care Agency, and the Board of the UNH Alumni Association. The culmination of his career came with his appointment by President Barack Obama to serve as General Counsel of the General Services Administration (GSA) in 2009. He served in this role through 2017, providing legal guidance on a national scale and earningareputation for integrity and expertise in his management. Despite his professional achievements, he was foremost a family man. Kris found joy in simple pleasures, moments spent talking with family at his Nashua gazebo or on his terrace in Washington, DC. He and Lynda were known for their hospitality, hosting numerous dinners and celebrations, and they cherished their travels to over 20 countries during retirement. Kris9 story is one of dedication and service. His impact on the legal ûeld, contributions to his community, and love for his wife and family will be remembered and celebrated by all who knew him. SERVICES: Family and friends are invited to a memorial service for Kris at The First Church of Nashua, 1 Concord Street, Nashua, NH 03064 on Thursday, December 21 at 10 a.m. Burial to follow at Edgewood Cemetery, 107 Amherst Street, Nashua, NH 03064. In lieu of ûowers, the family has requested donations be made in his name to either the American Cancer Society to further support the work to end cancer or to the Humane Society of Greater Nashua, the local chapter of an organization whose mission he supported throughout his life. LASSILA GREGORY D. LASSILA CAPT. U. S. Aûr Force (Ret.) In Loving Memory of Gregory D. Lassila: 1958-2023 With great sadness we announce the loss of a brother, friend, veteran, and community volunteer, Gregory Dale Lassila, Captain, USAF, Retired. Born December 15, 1958, in Richmond, KY, Greg passed away Sunday, November 19, 2023, in Olympia, WA. He grew up in Inkster, MI, graduated Robichaud High School, 1977, enlisted in the USAF the same year, served in intelligence and security (U.S., UK, Germany, South Korea). Commissioned in 1986, he served with the Defense Intelligence College and in Turkey, Scott AFB, DIA, and NSA, retiring in 1998, then as a security consultant, retiring fully in 2012. In 2013, he began volunteering at the Veterans Memorial Museum, Chehalis, as a docent, receptionist, and on the board of directors, and in 2023 until his death, on the Lewis County Veterans Advisory Board and with Hope for Heroes, Tenino, WA. He was passionate about veterans and history, especially his Finnish and Scottish heritage, and about his horse, Dragoon, and his cats. He was A Master Food Preserver in Washington State University9s extension program. Greg is preceded in death by parents Eino and Sally Lassila, eldest brother Wendell Johnson and is survived byasister, Karen Lassila, a brother, John Lassila, a niece, Allison Hayost, and nephews, Warren and Stuart Johnson, and James and Keith Bradybaugh, and ex-wife Quahlee (Hughes) Lassila. A memorial service, with full military honors, was held at his beloved Veterans Memorial Museum, Chehalis, on December 2, 2023. Greg will be interred at a later date in the Tahoma National Cemetery, Kent, WA. In lieu of ûowers, his family requests donations in his memory be made to the Veterans Memorial Museum, Chehalis. SMITH LOLA SMITH Local author, former Peace Corps wife, Library of Congress docent dies at 95. Born Cleo Chadwick on November 13, 1928, in Greenûeld, Iowa and raised in Anita, Iowa, the family called her <Lola= after a family friend. She married World War II veteran John Guy Smith in 1949 when the two attended Iowa State University. From there, over the next two decades, they lived and worked ûrst in Micronesia, then on a family farm in Minnesota, moving to Ecuador and then Dominican Republic to serve in the Peace Corps. Moving to Washington, DC in 1968, Lola and John started a company, Básico, Inc., which ran a Peace Corps training center in Costa Rica and established an export venture of honey dew melons and okra in Guatemala. After Básico, John worked with agriculture in Latin America and Lola continued her freelance writing. A proliûc and award-winning author, she wrote three published Regency Romances in the early 890s. Lola9s writing about her Peace-Corps-wife years, including a diary of events during the 1965 revolution in the Dominican Republic, are now included in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Archives. Never one to shy away from controversy, she wrote extensively on the importance of family farming and, more recently, challenging the widely-accepted reasons for the burning of Washington, DC by the British in the War of 1812. Before retiring to assisted living, she gardened furiously, supported a speech-reading group, and served until 2018 as a docent at the Library of Congress. Lola died on December 7, 2023 of complications with a broken arm and dementia. Predeceased in death by her husband and true partner in life, John (d. 1997), Lola, a fun, engaged and always-interested-in-others mother and grandmother, is survived by her children, Jessica Smith (m. Paul Krupa), Zack Smith and Abigail Smith, daughter-in-law, Tina Gantz Smith and ûve grandchildren Zoe Krupa (m. Mike Viney), Tyler Smith, Samantha Smith, Tucker Smith, and Cleo Krupa. In lieu of ûowers, the family asks that you donate to Farm Aid at https://give.farmaid. org in memory of Lola Smith. The Website allows for a note to be sent to the family. To do so use the e-mail address: [email protected]. Or donate to the Anita, Iowa library. Checks can be sent to Anita Public Library; PO Box 366; Anita, Iowa 50020. There will be a celebration of Lola9s life on December 20, 2023, at 1 p.m. at Green Spring Gardens, 4603 Green Spring Road, Alexandria, VA 22312. POST YOUR CONDOLENCES Now death notices on washingtonpost.com/obituaries allow you to express your sympathy with greater ease. Visit today. GHI DEATH NOTICE

C8 EZ RE the washington post . sunday, december 17, 2023 DEATH NOTICE CRADDOCK KENNETH RAY CRADDOCK SR, Kenneth Ray Craddock, Sr. of Springûeld, VA, a dedicated father, family man, and public servant, departed this life on December 8, 2023, at the age of 83. He is survived by his children, Margaret Jezior (Stan) of Ashburn, VA, Katherine Calloway of Reston, VA, Kenneth R. Craddock, Jr. (Kathryn) of Leesburg, VA; grandsons Wyatt and Garrett Perrin, Charles Calloway, Jonathan and Joseph Isquith; his youngest brother Phillip Craddock, Sr. (Sharon) of Pinetops, NC, Sister-in-law Jennifer Van Landingham (Michael) of Leesburg, VA, along with many loved nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his parents Ira and Margaret Craddock as well as his brothers Richard Craddock and Michael Craddock. After service in the U.S. Navy, Mr. Craddock enjoyed a successful career as an Architect that spanned both private and public sectors including 28 years of distinguished service for the General Services Administration. Among his many roles and duties over the years, Mr. Craddock was the direct liaison for all design and construction projects for the White House complex, Old and New Executive Ofûce Buildings, President9s Guest House (Blair-Lee) and the Winder Building. Additionally, Mr. Craddock was the ofûcial liaison to the Executive Protection Service and Secret Service for coordinating security measures for the Presidents9 and Vice Presidents9 personal residencies. His service spanned seven administrations from President Johnson to President Clinton. Mr. Craddock retired from the Federal Government in 1994. Mr. Craddock was a lifelong supporter of many charities with special emphasis on the welfare and protection of animals. In lieu of ûowers, the family requests donations be made to the Humane Society of Fairfax County or the ASPCA. Funeral services will be held at a later time. For information please go to www.loudounfuneralchapel.com DODSON JONATHAN BOYD DODSON COLONEL, U.S. ARMY (RET.) Jonathan B. Dodson died at his home December 7, 2023 after a long illness. He was a highly decorated Army veteran of 30 years, from his enlistment just out of high school to his retirement in 1997. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1968 and served in Vietnam, where he was gravely injured, as well as multiple tours in Germany, Korea, and in the USA. An athlete until his Vietnam injuries stopped him, he was an assistant coach of the Army swimming team and taught organizational leadership at USMA, coached the Frankfurt American swim team in the Federal Republic of Germany and served in command and with Army Senior leadership in several positions. He continued to serve after retirement as an active volunteer mentor in the Wounded Warrior Mentor Program at various military installations in the DC area. Col Dodson was born in Alexandria, Louisiana and grew up in Texas, Hawaii, and Japan as his family moved with his military father. He is survived by two sisters; wife, Alicejean (AJ); son Richard, daughter Jackie Jacoby, step-son Aric Olsen, and their spouses; grandchildren Nicholas, Julien, Katie Rose, and two great-grandchildren, Allysa, and Emma. He was Opa Jon to his family, the Grand-Neighbor to his neighbors, and Jon or LT to the many with whom he served. Memorial Service December 19 at 2 p.m. at St. Christophers Episcopal Church, Hanover Avenue in Springûeld, burial at a later date at Arlington National Cemetery. HORN MARY FITZPATRICK HORN Mary Fitzpatrick Horn, 91, of Richmond, VA, went to be with the Lord on December 14, 2023. She is preceded in death by her parents, Arthur Francis Fitzpatrick and Elsie Krings Fitzpatrick. Mary is survived by her beloved husband, Robert Charles Horn; children, Christopher Charles Horn (Mimi), Andrew Francis Horn (Heather), and Kathleen Horn Guarnieri; grandchildren, Kaitlyn Horn, Colin Horn, Anna Horn, Christine Guarnieri and Vincent Guarnieri; sister, Eileen Fitzpatrick Nack, and brother, Francis 8Fitz9 Fitzpatrick. Mary grew up in Ossining, NY with her sister Eileen and brother Fitz. She graduated from Ossining High School in 1950, Hunter College in 1954 and earned a Masters degree from Columbia University in 1961. All of this helped her on her way to dedicating her career to teaching young children a love of school and learning by her many, many years as a Kindergarten and 1st grade teacher. Everywhere she went you could usually hear a child saying <Hello Mrs. Horn!=. In 1959 she met a man, Robert Horn, whom she ûrst described as a wise guy but quickly became the love of her life and husband of 64 years. They were married after only three weeks together on Halloween of all days. She just knew he was the one for her 3 and boy was she right! She spent many happy years traveling the globe with him as an Army wife and then mother of three. She loved getting to visit the many places they were stationed including Korea, Belgium, Germany and her favorite Peru. Mary enjoyed reading 3 especially mystery books and People magazine. She also enjoyed keeping up with her daily soaps, and no magazine she read would ever have an empty crossword puzzle. Her love of children and gifts of nurturing extended to her own and then her grandchildren. She was such a loving and patient Mom and a fun and generous Gram. She was truly a gift to all she met and had a way of making those around her smile just by being with her. A true angel. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 10:30 a.m., Monday, December 18, at Saint Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, 4491 Springûeld Road, Glen Allen,VA, 23060. The family will receive friends one hour prior. Interment in Arlington National Cemetery to follow at a later date. For condolences, see www.blileys.com KING PATRICIA A. AND ROBERT S. KING On Sunday, December 10, 2023, Robert King peacefully passed away and joined his beloved wife Patricia in eternal rest. The couple were married almost 50 years before Patricia9s passing on August 17, 2021. Born in Woburn, Massachusetts on September 6, 1930, Bob served as a Naval Reservist and later graduated from the Massachusetts School of Pharmacy, going on to enjoy a successful career as a pharmacy executive. In the summer of 1971, while working as a pharmacist in Kansas City, Bob met the love of his life, Patricia, at a dinner party. A few months later the couple married and were inseparable ever after. Pat and Bob ultimately settled in Alexandria, Virginia, where Pat owned her own clothing boutique and later the Lady Hamilton bridal shop, while Bob served as an executive with AARP. After retiring, Pat became a watercolor artist, and Bob enjoyed golf and bridge with friends. Pat and Bob were devoted to each other, as well as to their son, Patrick, and their two grandchildren. They adored their whippets, Thanksgiving, and terrible puns and dad jokes, which never failed to trigger Pat9s unstoppable, contagious laughter. At the age of 91, Bob fulûlled a lifelong dream by completing the ûnal Boy Scout merit badge he needed to earn an honorary (though unofûcial) Eagle Scout award. The Kings touched many lives and will be dearly missed. In accordance with the couple9s wishes, no services are planned. KRIGBAUM DONALD ALLEN KRIGBAUM Donald Allen Krigbaum <Don=, 85, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family, in Erie, PA on December 8, 2023. Don is survived by his wife Linda Fay (Krogstad) Krigbaum; daughter Kimberly Smrcka, son Dr. Michael Krigbaum (Rev. Anna Golladay); and grandchildren: Trevor Hamilton, Frank Smrcka, Grace Smrcka, and Hannah Smrcka. Brothers Francis Krigbaum and Carl Krigbaum are deceased. He leaves behind many cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends from across the country. Don was born on June 8, 1938, in Rensselaer, Missouri to Everett and Viva Krigbaum. Don married Linda on September 3, 1966, in Richland Missouri at First Baptist Church. He receivedabachelor9s degree from Drury University in Springûeld, Missouri, and later a master9s degree in Government Management from George Washington University in Washington, DC. Don spent his career in human resources for the United States federal government, remaining proud of his long service and many accolades. He served several agencies during his more than ûve decades of employment 3 43 years as a federal employee and another 11 as a contractor. He had a deep afûnity for the history of the U.S. government and could often be counted on for trivia answers long forgotten by many. The majority of his adult life was spent living in Brunswick, Maryland. During retirement, he and Linda made a home in both Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Corry, Pennsylvania. Don9s commitment to civic contribution extended to the Brunswick City Planning Commission, as president of Brunswick High School Band Boosters, and involvement with the Brunswick Heritage (Railroad) Museum. He was selûess in his service to the First United Methodist Church of Brunswick, serving in several roles and chairperson-ships, and asavolunteer at Frederick Memorial Hospital. It has become difûcult to summarize the impact of Don9s life on those who loved him. He was a man of deep Christian faith and found joy in the arts 3 especially music, ûne arts, and theater. Don enjoyed watching his children and grandchildren excel in the arts. Retirement offered Don time to travel, reminiscing regularly about a recent trip to Hawaii with all of his children and grandchildren. Don loved experiencing the holidays from the creativity of Halloween costumes, to an impactful Easter sermon, to colorful Christmas decorations. He enjoyed discussing all matters of intellectual importance 3 politics, foreign policy, religion, and more. More than anything, Don will be remembered as a loving husband, father, grandfather, and friend. His gentle smile and spirit made him slow to anger. He was thoughtful in his responses and provided insight and advice that will live with his children and grandchildren forever. Above all, he wrote the book on what it meant to beaman of character and integrity. He will be missed greatly, but he was loved more. Arrangements are being handled by Dusckas-Martin Funeral Home and Crematory, Inc. in Erie, PA. Burial will be in Missouri at a later date. A memorial service will be held in Brunswick, Maryland in 2024. Memorial contributions can be made to the Corry Area School District or Corry Oncology Clinic at Corry Memorial Hospital. POST YOUR CONDOLENCES Now death notices on washingtonpost.com/obituaries allow you to express your sympathy with greater ease. Visit today. GHI DEATH NOTICE DEATH NOTICE BYRNE DONALD PATRICK BYRNE (Age 80) Donald Patrick Byrne, 80, died peacefully on Saturday, December 9, 2023, at Suburban Hospital following open heart surgery. Born in Rochester, New York, on August 20, 1943, the son of Donald J. and Isabelle Culhane Byrne. He was also predeceased by Herbert Bloomer, his stepfather. He received his Bachelor9s degree from Marquette University and his J.D. from the University of Kentucky. Don had a 36-year career at the Federal Aviation Administration retiring as Assistant Chief Counsel for Regulations. Don is survived by his wife of 57 years, Ann (Harrington) Byrne; his daughter, Deidre (Arturo Poveda) and son, David (Karen Trimmer); four grandchildren: Julia, Lillian, Bridget and Ann-Marie. He is also survived by Culhane and Byrne cousins, and many second cousins. Don was an avid photographer, especially of the natural world, and enjoyed travel, looking forward to yearly trips to Ireland where he maintained a home. In his retirement, he enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren, and for many years, volunteered at Crossway Community where his quiet presence, kindness and spirit of generosity was felt each day by so many. A viewing will be held at St. John the Evangelist Church, 10103 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD on Wednesday, December 27, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. followed by Mass of Christian Burial at 11:30 a.m. In lieu of ûowers, contributions may be made to Crossway Community at www. crossway-community.org. www.COLLINSFUNERALHOME.com CARR MARGARET P. CARR <Peggy= (Age 87) Peggy passed away peacefully on December 1, 2023 at her home community of Artis Potomac Senior Living with people who loved her nearby, including her devoted husband of 62 years, William P. Carr, Jr. (Bill). Peggy will always be remembered as a good friend to many. She and Bill traveled to more than 30 countries within Europe, the Middle East, Turkey and India. They traveled on their own, <off tour= with small packs wearing friendliness, often walking from town to town or traveling by local bus into their 809s! They never had a negative encounter over the years of their humble travels. She and Bill also made many friends through their shared great love of Opera. In their home sometimes the house would vibrate with beautiful opera music. Peggy cared deeply about Justice and Equality for all people; wanting everyone in our Country and the World to have the opportunity to liveagood life, free of poverty and violence. She was especially concerned about refugees and migrants and she dedicatingly supported the work of the International Rescue Committee. Peggy grew up in Ohio and loved spending time at her Grandparent9s Greenhouse on Benore Rd, West of Toledo. The Ohio family had a multi-generational reverence for nature, gardening, exquisite home cooking and crafting. Peggy was valedictorian of her high school class. She went to Wellesley College and made many lifelong friends. She went on to get a Master9s at University of California Berkeley in Political Science. She ended up in Washington, DC where she met her future husband Bill. Peggy decided to carry out her political and worldly citizen activities from home while raising their children, Peter and Molly. She was a life time member of the League of Women Voters who advocate for Voting Rights in ALL Communities across the U.S. She volunteered for National Public Radio (NPR). She loved the in-depth, multi-perspective often investigative reporting of NPR. Peggy9s penultimate endeavor was her 32 years as a vital pro-bono person/asset at Ashoka, the world9s largest association of social entrepreneurs/leaders, those inspired to bring new solutions to the world9s most intractable problems. Joining Ashoka in 1987, Peggy helped establish a resource center for Ashoka Fellows, who now lead over 4000 innovative projects around the world. Along the way she made many life long friends, introducing them, along with her beloved husband Bill, to kayaking, knitting, world history, archeology, great reads, and adventurous travel. She was generous and kind to all and will always be remembered for her candidness and genuine interest in the lives of her Ashoka family. According to Ashoka9s founder and CEO, Bill Drayton, <Peggy Carr was an extraordinary moving force that helped Ashoka grow from its earliest, tiny, infant days. She created a system of services that helped thousands of the world9s leading social entrepreneurs in countless but highly systematized and effective ways. She was also someone who helped deûne Ashoka9s culture, and, in so doing, providing all of us with a standard of colleagueship and friendship to hold as a model.= Peggy was cared for in these past two years by a family team which included her son Peter Carr and his wife Susan Carr and Peggy9s daughter Molly Carr and Molly9s husband Daniel Thornton (Mac) and Peggy9s very loving and devoted husband Bill along with Peggy9s sweet kitty Alex. During these two years there were beautiful visits with old friends and all four grandchildren (Kat, Antonia, Elena and Andre), and other special extended family (John Woodworth, Lisa Tomasi, Caren and Peter Sjostrom from Sweden, Carr Robertson and Debbie Soldwish) and many precious moments with very kind and compassionate caregivers from Artis Potomac and Always Best Care Home Care Agency in Rockville. Donations may be made in Peggy9s honor to either the International Rescue Committee or Ashoka. No service planned at this time. Online condolences may be expressed at www.PumphreyFuneralHome.com NAVARRO PILAR DEL CARMEN NAVARRO Pilar del Carmen Navarro passed away in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, December 9, 2023. She was born on April 20, 1944, in Brooklyn, New York, to Peter Navarro and Teresa Magrina Navarro. Pilar (affectionately known as <Pili=) grew up in Brooklyn Heights and spent her childhood exploring New York with her little sister <Tessie= by her side. Pilar graduated from New York University in 1967 and went on to obtainaMaster of Science in Urban and Bilingual Education in 1974. Pilar dedicated her 30-year career as a New York City teacher to buildingabetter future for her students and her community. As a child of immigrants herself, Pilar taught in immigrant communities because she believed in the promise of an American education. She delighted in her role not only as a teacher, but as a mentor, advisor, and leader. She retired as Career Counselor at New York9s Leadership Secondary High School. In addition to her career as an educator, Pilar volunteered for the Junior League of Brooklyn for over 30 years, served on the League9s Board of Directors, and was recognized as the League9s Volunteer of the Year. Additionally, she was a member of the New York State Association for Bilingual Education. Pilar lived her life in celebration. She was a lifelong learner, world traveler, and culinary enthusiast. She spoke four languages, traveled to 51 countries, and spent her early 20s living in Angola. Her ancestral home of Santander, Spain was her favorite place to spend her summers. She loved a fabulous party and laughed easily and often. She was always scheming up her next adventure and recruiting others to join her cause. Her fun-loving nature was complimented by her determination, independence, and courage. As she faced her ûnal days, she exempliûed these qualities along with her characteristic grace. Pilar will always be remembered as someone who loved deeply and was deeply loved. She was a devoted sister, a proud Aunt and godmother, and a loyal friend. She lived a remarkably happy life and will be forever missed. She is survived by her niece, Alexandra Navarro Harper; her grandnephews, Thornton and Woods Harper; and a community of loving extended family and friends around the world. A celebration of life service will be held in New York in 2024 to honor Pilar. SCHNEIDER FREDERICK HENRY SCHNEIDER JR., MAJ. U.S. Marine Corpts (Ret.) Major Frederick H. Schneider, Jr, USMC Retired, 73, died peacefully surrounded by his family on December 3, 2023. His long and successful career in the Marine Corps and in commercial aviation took him around the world both in peace and in war. Major Frederick Schneider, Jr, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii at Tripler Army Hospital to Admiral Frederick H. Schneider, USN and Marion S.D. Schneider. He graduated from Georgetown Preparatory School in 1968 and then attended the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York and graduated on June 7, 1972. Major Schneider9s dream was to ûy in a military setting. He entered the United Staes Marine Corps and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and sent to Pensacola, Florida where he graduated as a Naval Aviator. As a Lieutenant, he served with distinction during the <Fall of Saigon= by ûying a Marine helicopter into Saigon to bring Vietnamese civilians out of Vietnam and on to US Naval ships to save their lives. Major Schneider transitioned into KC-1309s mid-way in his career and spent his next eleven years moving Marines, and valuable cargo needed for Marine Corps units world-wide. Upon his retirement from the Marine Corps in 1992, his second career was in commercial aviation, ûying CR-J9s, for both Independence Air and Air Wisconsin. Upon retirement, Captain Schneider, continued his aviation career as an instructor for Air Wisconsin. In February, 1982, Major Schneider married Major Merle Quigley, USMC in Northern Virginia. They spent the majority of the second half of their Marine Corps careers serving in Okinawa, Japan. Upon retirement, they remained in the Northern Virgina area working in their second careers. Upon both their second retirements, the Schneider9s spent their time between Northern Michigan and Arlington, Virginia. A memorial service at the Old Post Chapel on Ft. Myer will take place at a later date, immediately followed by interment at Arlington National Cemetery. For more information and to leave condolences for Major Schneider9s family, please visit: www.murphyfuneralhomes.com When the need arises, let families ond you in the Funeral Services Directory. To be seen in the Funeral Services Directory, please call paid Death Notices at 202-334-4122. DEATH NOTICE DEATH NOTICE OSIUS RICHARD JOHN OSIUS Richard J. Osius passed away on December 2, 2023, surrounded by those he loved most 3 his wife (Catherine), son (Matthew), and daughter (Lizzie). He was born August 15, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan to Eugene and Elsbeth Osius, younger brother to George. After earning his BA from the University of Michigan (including a year abroad in Munich, Germany) and an MBA from the University of Chicago, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and served as a squadron commander of a USAF hospital in Japan duringathree-year tour. Richard began his career in ûnance upon returning stateside, working in New York City, San Francisco, and a year in Paris. After three years at the IFC, he became the CEO and Managing Director of the World Bank Credit Union (Bank-Fund Staff Federal Credit Union) in Washington, DC, a position he cherished for 26 years. Richard (or Dickie) was an ardent cellist, meeting on the weekends with his string quartet for over two decades. He was a master on the grill during all four seasons, even braving the snow when necessary. He was a world traveler, most frequently visiting Australia to take his wife and children to spend time with his large family of in-laws. He was quick to laugh (quite loudly, at times) and could take a joke at his own expense as well as he could deliver the many he held in his repertoire. He had a heart of gold and a twinkle in his eye. He was an unbelievably devoted husband and father, as well as <Opa= (to his four grandchildren), son, brother, cousin, uncle, father-in-law and friend. He will be dearly missed forever. A Celebration of his Life will be held on Saturday, January 20, 2024, 2 to 5 p.m. in Washington, DC. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to [email protected] for further details. SMITH TIMOTHY DUNHAM SMITH Timothy Dunham Smith, 71, of Richmond, VA, died December 2, 2023. Tim created landmarks in the Washington, DC area including the United States Patent and Trademark Ofûce and numerous residential multifamily projects. One of his proudest accomplishments was building The Oyster School (Oyster-Adams), the ûrst new public school built in Washington, DC in over 20 years. Born to Robin Dunham Smith, a musically gifted copywriter, and Thomas Johnston Smith, an advertising executive and WWII Naval Commander, and raised in Wilton, CT, Tim made his ûrst television appearance on Merv Grifûn9s <Play Your Hunch= and later interviewed Nelson Rockefeller on the 6 O9Clock news before his twelfth birthday. A graduate of Phillips Academy, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University Graduate School of Business, Tim was a lifelong entrepreneur. As an adolescent, Tim created <The Wiltonian=, a weekly newspaper for which he interviewed luminaries including Cornelius Ryan. Tim and his brother Toby founded Rafter-Johnston, a residential design-build ûrm that Paul Goldberger described as builders for those <who instinctively sense that they want something better.= Tim, a gifted swimmer and collegiate rower, also found joy in music, theater, and literature. He was a member of Belle Haven Country Club and the Country Club of Virginia. Tim leaves behind wife Mary Ellen Pauli; children Tyler Johnston Pauli Smith and Sarah Elizabeth Pauli Smith, MD (David Ryan Akihira Ikeda, MD); and granddaughter, Sophie Pauli Ikeda; brothers Thomas Smith (Chris Smith) and Andrew Smith (Jennifer Aaker); and friend Jordan Valentine. A Celebration of Tim9s life will be held at 2 p.m. on January 26, 2024, at Trinity United Methodist Church in Richmond, VA. STEWART MARK R. B. STEWART Mark R. B. Stewart of Washington, DC died on November 24, 2023 after a short illness. As he wasayoung and handsome 67, he leaves behind many grieving family members and friends. His loving wife, Jeannine H. Turenne, is shattered by his loss. Mark loved <my J= and always kept her laughing. He also leaves behind his dear son, Matthew C. Jones, of Gainesville, Florida. Additionally, he leaves three heartbroken sisters, Catherine, Claire (Emil), and Susan (John). His niece, Renée and nephew, Dean will miss their funny, generous uncle. Mark leaves 20 wonderful ûrst cousins, an aunt, Rogette Gerstle, and an uncle, Fred Pepper. His extended family is tearful. Mark kept some treasured longtime friends from the old days, including his closest buddy David Martin of Staten Island, NY and very good friend Kate Ryan of New York, NY, both of whom miss him so much. Mark grew up in North Creek, NY, with his late parents, Ed and Joan Stewart, and three domineering and highly critical older sisters. We never knew that he was in dire need of glasses until his sister, Cathy, tried to teach him how to play baseball, and the ball just kept hitting him in the forehead. He was a quiet boy, understandably, and with his best friend, Ernie Beaudet, would play in his room for hours. Due to lack of photos of Mark and the fact that his sisters never noticed him until he was about four years old and able to walk and talk, they were sure he was adopted. They kept this up for years, and probably it will continue. Mark loved comic books and had an extraordinary collection until one of his sisters decided to clean out the closet after he had left for college. After graduating from Johnsburg Central School, he attended college for one year, and then entered the U.S. Navy. After being honorably discharged, he returned to college and then earned a juris doctor degree from the University of Miami School of Law. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard and proudly served his country for 20 more years. After retiring as a Lieutenant Commander in 2003, he began a civilian government career at the U.S. Ofûce of Government Ethics in Washington, DC. He made many warm, close friendships there, as well as elsewhere in D.C. and Virginia. Mark was beloved for his sharp, clever wit; he frequently doled out zingers, sarcastic one-liners and hilarious emails. He enjoyed a good party, a funny joke, and ruining family pictures with bunny ears. He taught his wife how to solve crossword puzzles, and thoroughly enjoyed ûxing her mistakes. He was always ready to lend a hand, and many times his house, and was a ûrm believer in paying it forward. We all will miss him, especially during summers at Garnet Lake, NY. We will continue to tease him, talk about him, and love him forever. Mark9s family will hold a memorial at their convenience. TANOUS MAXINE RIZIK TANOUS BETHESDA, MD -- Maxine Rizik Tanous, 95, of Bethesda, Maryland, died peacefully of natural causes surrounded by family on December 13, 2023. Maxine was born in Washington, DC on March 28, 1928, to Ayoub and Soraya Rizik. She graduated from Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School and Marymount College, Tarrytown. The ûfth of seven children, Maxine devoted her career to Rizik Brothers, Washington9s upscale women9s fashion boutique founded in 1908 by her father and uncle, who emigrated from Lebanon. Rizik9s catered to ûrst ladies, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, members of Congress, network correspondents, business leaders and area socialites with the ûnest evening wear, wedding dresses, sportswear fashions and accessories. Founded during Teddy Roosevelt9s presidency, Rizik9s was proûled in an August 2017 feature story in The Washington Post with Maxine recounting details of the store9s 109 year history. Rizik9s closed in 2021 after 113 years in business. In 1954, Maxine wed Col. Peter S. Tanous, West Point (1941) of Lawrence, New York, a White House military aide under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Early in their marriage, they lived in Ft Leavenworth, Kansas, West Point, New York and Bonn, Germany, where Peter was stationed as a military diplomat before settling in Bethesda to raise their three children. Maxine was a dedicated businesswoman who, along with her sister Renée and brother Michel, regularly visited New York City9s fashion district to discover new and unique designers. Along with her siblings, she oversaw all aspects of Rizik9s business, from merchandising to marketing and back-end operations. The store remained family-owned and operated throughout its 113-year history making it one of the District9s oldest family businesses. A devout Catholic, Maxine was a longtime member of St. Bartholomew Catholic Church, where she served as a Eucharist Minister. A Washingtonian in every way, she was an avid Commanders fan and a steadfast newspaper and non-ûction reader who enjoyed biographies and history, especially books authored by the celebrated historian David McCullough. She relished socializing at Congressional Country Club and relaxing at her home in the historic town of Irvington, VA, tending her Gardenia trees, picking fresh ûgs and pruning her ûowers. Maxine is predeceased by her husband Peter and her siblings Madeleine Cury, Denyse Malouf, Michel Rizik, and Jacqueline Rizik. She is survived by her sister Renée Kalil of Bethesda, her brother Philip Rizik of Washington, her son Bruce Tanous (Lori) of McLean, Virginia, her daughters Jacqueline Jacobson (Paul) of Morrison, Colorado and Joan Tanous of Boulder, Colorado along with ûve grandchildren: Shelby Barton (Tyler) of New York City; Schuyler Tanous of Sydney, Australia; Louis Tanous and Theodore Tanous of Arlington, Virginia; and Ruby Walker of Los Angeles. Services will be held at St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Bethesda, Maryland, on Wednesday, December 20 at 3 p.m. Maxine will be buried beside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date. Following Maxine9s wishes, in lieu of ûowers, the family requests that donations be made in the memory of Maxine Tanous to St. Bartholomew Catholic Church, 6900 River Road, Bethesda, Maryland or St. Jude Children9s Research Hospital. POST YOUR CONDOLENCES Now death notices on washingtonpost.com/obituaries allow you to express your sympathy with greater ease. Visit today. GHI DEATH NOTICE