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- Trump barred from primary ballot in Maine

- Apple’s hacking alerts anger Modi government

- Young journalist captured Gaza’s beauty, then its ruin

- A Michigan community, torn apart by a job dispute

Donald Trump removed from Maine primary ballot by secretary of state

Patrick Marley

6:29AM, 29 Dec, 2023

Former president Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 17 (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Maine barred Donald Trump from the primary ballot Thursday, becoming the second state to block the former president from running again because of his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) is sure to be appealed. The Colorado Supreme Court last week found Trump could not appear on the ballot in that state under a part of the U.S. Constitution that prevents insurrectionists from holding office. The Colorado Republican Party has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, which could resolve for all states whether Trump can run again.

Both states have temporarily put their decisions on hold so Trump can pursue appeals.

In 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the United States adopted the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to provide legal protections to those who had formerly been enslaved. Section 3 of the amendment barred those who had sworn an oath to the Constitution from holding office if they engaged in insurrection. That provision was used at the time to keep former Confederates out of office but has rarely been mentioned in recent decades.

Trump’s critics cited that section of the Constitution after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, arguing Trump had incited and participated in an insurrection through his actions before and during the riot. They submitted challenges to his candidacy around the country.

So far, only Colorado and Maine have sided with those challenging his ability to run again. Trump, for the time being, is slated to appear on their primary ballots because those decisions are temporarily on hold.

“The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic,” Bellows wrote in Thursday’s decision. “They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and [Maine law] requires me to act in response.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump would quickly appeal the Maine decision.

“Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot,” Cheung said in a statement. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”

Colorado, Maine and more than a dozen other states hold their primaries on March 5, which is also known as Super Tuesday. Election officials need firm answers on who can appear on ballots weeks before then so they can print ballots and mail them to absentee voters, including ones who are overseas.

The challenges to Trump’s candidacy have focused on primaries because Republicans won’t choose their nominee until states hold their nominating contests and the party holds its national convention in July. If Trump’s ability to run has not been resolved by then, attention would shift to the general election.

Trump’s opponents have targeted their efforts to states where it is easiest to object to a candidate’s eligibility. In Maine, voters filed their challenges under a state law that allows them to lodge objections with the secretary of state. Bellows held an eight-hour-long, live-streamed hearing on those challenges on Dec. 15 under a provision of that law and determined Thursday that Trump’s name cannot appear on Maine’s primary ballot.

Bellows cited the Colorado decision in reaching her conclusion that the Jan. 6 attack “was violent enough, potent enough, and long enough to constitute an insurrection.” And Trump, she said, incited that insurrection by repeatedly and falsely claiming the election was stolen, summoning his supporters to Washington, telling them to “fight like hell” in a speech just as Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s win, and criticizing Vice President Mike Pence on social media as the attack unfolded.

Trump, she wrote, “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.” Trump, she added, “was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”

Trump has five days to appeal the determination to Maine’s Superior Court. From there, the appeal could go to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the hearing, Bellows did not offer hints on how she was leaning and asked attorneys to weigh in on whether they believed she had the authority to prevent Trump’s name from appearing on the ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court issued its decision four days after Bellows held her hearing, and she allowed Trump and the challengers to file briefs responding to the ruling and say whether it should influence her thinking about whether Trump should appear on the ballot in Maine.

Maine’s legislature chose Bellows as secretary of state nearly three years ago. She previously served as a state senator and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. She was defeated in a 2014 run against Sen. Susan Collins (R).

On Wednesday, a day before Bellows issued her ruling, attorneys for Trump asked her to disqualify herself from the case because of past comments she made about Jan. 6. In social media posts in 2021, she called the riot at the U.S. Capitol an insurrection and said she supported Trump’s impeachment for the attack.

In Thursday’s decision, Bellows stated that Trump filed his request too late and that she would have remained on the case even if he had filed it earlier because she could handle the case impartially.

The high courts in Minnesota and Michigan recently allowed Trump’s name to appear on the primary ballot in those states. In California, the secretary of state certified his name on Thursday, despite a request from the state’s lieutenant governor to consider excluding him on constitutional grounds. Meanwhile, challengers have asked the Oregon Supreme Court to review the issue. And a Texas tax consultant running a long-shot presidential campaign has lost a string of challenges to Trump’s candidacy that he has filed in federal courts around the country.

The most closely watched court, however, is the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado Republican Party filed its request for review on Wednesday, and Trump is expected to do the same soon.

India targets Apple over its phone hacking notifications

Gerry Shih, Joseph Menn

12:00AM, 28 Dec, 2023

NEW DELHI — A day after Apple warned independent Indian journalists and opposition party politicians in October that government hackers may have tried to break into their iPhones, officials under Prime Minister Narendra Modi promptly took action — against Apple.

Officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company’s internal threat algorithms were faulty and announced an investigation into the security of Apple devices.

In private, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, senior Modi administration officials called Apple’s India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings. They also summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“They were really angry,” one of those people said.

The visiting Apple official stood by the company’s warnings. But the intensity of the Indian government effort to discredit and strong-arm Apple disturbed executives at the company’s headquarters, in Cupertino, Calif., and illustrated how even Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech companies can face pressure from the increasingly assertive leadership of the world’s most populous country — and one of the most critical technology markets of the coming decade.

The recent episode also exemplified the dangers facing government critics in India and the lengths to which the Modi administration will go to deflect suspicions that it has engaged in hacking against its perceived enemies, according to digital rights groups, industry workers and Indian journalists.

Many of the more than 20 people who received Apple’s warnings at the end of October have been publicly critical of Modi or his longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon. They included a firebrand politician from West Bengal state, a Communist leader from southern India and a New Delhi-based spokesman for the nation’s largest opposition party.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, above, is a longtime ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Journalists investigating their ties are among the more than 20 people who received recent warnings from Apple that government hackers probably tried to break into their iPhones. (Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg News)

Of the journalists who received notifications, two stood out: Anand Mangnale and Ravi Nair of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit alliance of dozens of independent, investigative newsrooms from around the world.

On Aug. 23, the OCCRP emailed Adani seeking comment for a story it would publish a week later alleging that his brother was part of a group that had secretly traded hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the Adani Group conglomerate’s public stock, possibly in violation of Indian securities law. A forensic analysis of Mangnale’s phone, conducted by Amnesty International and shared with The Washington Post, found that within 24 hours of that inquiry, an attacker infiltrated the device and planted Pegasus, the notorious spyware that was developed by Israeli company NSO Group and that NSO says is sold only to governments.

A spokeswoman for Adani denied that the magnate was involved in any hacking effort and accused OCCRP of conducting a “smear campaign” against the Adani Group. She also criticized The Post for asking whether the Adani Group was involved in, or had knowledge of, the hacking attempts against OCCRP. “While categorically denying and rejecting this insinuation, we find it disturbing and inappropriate that you would make an attempt to draw our name into this specious construct,” Varsha Chainani, the Adani Group’s head of corporate communications, said in an emailed response to written questions. “The Adani Group operates with the highest level of integrity and ethical standards.”

Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a national spokesman for the BJP, said any evidence of hacking should be presented to the Indian government for investigation. Hiren Joshi, the top communications official in the prime minister’s office, did not respond to requests seeking comment. Apple declined to comment in response to written questions.

The Modi government has never confirmed or denied using spyware, and it has refused to cooperate with a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court to investigate whether it had. But two years ago, the Forbidden Stories journalism consortium, which included The Post and OCCRP, found that phones belonging to Indian journalists and political figures were infected with Pegasus, which grants attackers access to a device’s encrypted messages, camera and microphone.

In recent weeks, The Post, in collaboration with Amnesty, found fresh cases of infections among Indian journalists. Additional work by The Post and New York security firm iVerify found that opposition politicians had been targeted, adding to the evidence suggesting the Indian government’s use of powerful surveillance tools.

In addition, Amnesty showed The Post evidence it found in June that suggested a Pegasus customer was preparing to hack people in India. Amnesty asked that the evidence not be detailed to avoid teaching Pegasus users how to cover their tracks.

“These findings show that spyware abuse continues unabated in India,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab. “Journalists, activists and opposition politicians in India can neither protect themselves against being targeted by highly invasive spyware nor expect meaningful accountability.”

NSO spokesperson Liron Bruck said that the company does not know who is targeted by its customers but investigates complaints that are accompanied by details of the suspected hack.

“While NSO cannot comment on specific customers, we stress again that all of them are vetted law enforcement and intelligence agencies that license our technologies for the sole purpose of fighting terror and major crime,” Bruck said. “The company’s policies and contracts provide mechanisms to avoid targeting of journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders or political dissidents that are not involved in terror or serious crimes.”

David Kaye, a former United Nations special rapporteur on free expression who has testified before an Indian Supreme Court committee probing the government’s suspected use of Pegasus, said the recent reporting by The Post and its partners “further shifts the burden onto the Indian government to disprove the allegations that it uses these kinds of tools.”

“Especially after this information, the government absolutely has to be honest and transparent,” Kaye said. "But the accretion of evidence suggests this is not divorced from the broader assault by the Modi government on the freedom of expression and the right to protest.”

Customers outside an Apple store in Mumbai. India is on track to account for 10 percent of Apple sales in 2025, up from 4 percent now, an analyst said. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

A persistent threat

One after another at October’s end, some of India’s best known journalists and politicians posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Apple had warned them that state-sponsored hackers may have targeted their devices. While Apple, as usual, did not accuse the Indian government or describe the attacks, the self-identified victims said there was a pattern: Many had questioned Modi’s close relationship with Adani, who lent the Indian leader aircraft for his 2014 election campaign, traveled abroad with him during state visits and operates a vast portfolio of seaports, airports, railroads and power plants.

On Aug. 31, the OCCRP published a joint investigation with British news outlets the Financial Times and the Guardian, reporting that Adani’s longtime associates had routed funds through offshore shell companies into publicly traded Adani shares. Adani denied the story’s allegations, but the report spurred calls for a parliamentary probe of suspected stock manipulation, and it renewed criticism that Modi’s government had failed to regulate Adani’s dealings out of loyalty to the businessman.

Hours after OCCRP sought comment from Adani a week before the story’s publication, unknown hackers used an exploit called Blastpass to weave through two security holes in Mangnale’s phone and install Pegasus, according to Amnesty’s analysis. Amnesty said it found no signs of an attempted intrusion on Nair’s phone, which is not uncommon after sophisticated attacks.

“We know Pegasus is only licensed to governments, and we know that the attack happened hours after we sent the email,” Mangnale said. “I am not pointing at anyone, but that is a hell of a coincidence.”

Mahua Moitra, a critic of Modi’s relationship with Adani who this month was expelled from Parliament, received a warning from Apple. (Vipin Kumar/Hindustan Times/Getty Images)

Others warned by Apple include Mahua Moitra, a member of Parliament who has vocally condemned Modi’s relationship with Adani. Moitra was expelled from Parliament this month by a BJP-dominated committee investigating allegations that she accepted gifts from an Adani business rival in exchange for raising questions about the billionaire’s business interests. In an interview, Moitra called the charges fabricated and said the government should scrutinize Adani’s transactions instead of her communications.

“Adani is the government and the government is Adani,” Moitra said. “It is our greatest misfortune that we are governed by a bunch of peeping Toms.”

IVerify examined Moitra’s phone backup and confirmed that she had received an Apple warning. It also saw urgent crash reports that, together with other digital records, suggested the device had been hacked. The company also found a threat notification and suspicious activity on the phone of Praveen Chakravarty, head of the opposition Indian National Congress party’s data analytics department.

This is far from the first time the Indian government has been accused of snooping on critics.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found evidence that servers used to plant NSO spyware were embedded in Indian telecom networks. Two years later, Citizen Lab and Amnesty found that nine human rights advocates in India had been hacked with emails that installed commercial spyware on their Windows computers.

In 2019, Meta’s WhatsApp also sued NSO, alleging that the firm exploited vulnerabilities in its chat software to hack approximately 1,400 people, and told the media that the victims included journalists and dissidents in India. NSO has denied wrongdoing in the case, which is pending. And last year, journalists working for OCCRP unearthed customs records showing that India’s Intelligence Bureau, the domestic security agency, received shipments of hardware matching Pegasus specifications from NSO’s offices outside Tel Aviv.

Siddharth Varadarajan, a co-founder of an Indian digital media outlet call the Wire, received one of Apple’s recent warnings. The attempt to hack his phone was unsuccessful, Amnesty International found. (Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times/Getty Images)

Siddharth Varadarajan, a co-founder of the Indian digital media outlet the Wire, received one of Apple’s Oct. 30 warnings. Amnesty found that the same hackers that broke into Mangnale’s phone had tried to do the same to Varadarajan’s. In both cases, someone using the Apple ID natalymarinova@proton.me had used the Blastpass vulnerability. The Post received no response to an email sent to that address.

The attempt to infiltrate Varadarajan’s phone and install Pegasus, which took place on Oct. 16, failed, Amnesty found. That’s because Blastpass had been revealed in September by Citizen Lab, Apple had fixed the two flaws it used and Varadarajan had kept his iPhone’s software updated.

Varadarajan said he was not working on any sensitive stories around the time of the attempted hack. But he said he was leading protests over the arrest of a leftist publisher accused of spreading Chinese Communist Party propaganda. The publisher’s website, Newsclick, had often run articles critical of Modi and Adani.

Customers outside a Mumbai Apple store in September. In private, the Indian government tried to pressure Apple to help soften the impact of the company’s warnings about potential government hacking. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

Government counteroffensive

As soon as journalists and opposition politicians shared their warnings from Apple, BJP officials scrambled to contain the fallout.

Senior Modi administration officials called Apple India’s managing director, Virat Bhatia, after the news broke, said two people with knowledge of the matter. One of the people said Indian officials asked Apple to withdraw the warnings and say it had made a mistake. After a heated discussion, the company’s India office said the most it could do was put out a public statement that emphasized certain caveats that Apple had already listed on its tech support page about the warnings.

Apple India soon sent out emails observing that it could have made mistakes and that “detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete.”

“Civil society was puzzled and concerned by the Apple statement,” said one U.S. digital rights advocate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about what he viewed as company missteps.

Bhatia told others that the company was under intense pressure from the government, but other Apple executives stressed the need to stand firm, the two people familiar with the events said. Bhatia declined to comment.

Still, Apple India’s corporate communications executives began privately asking Indian technology journalists to emphasize in their stories that Apple’s warnings could be false alarms and that similar warnings had been issued to users in 150 countries, not just India, said three Indian journalists, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationship with Apple. The guidance effectively cast doubt on Apple’s own security team and shifted the spotlight away from the Modi government, these journalists said.

A BJP memo distributed to party surrogates and friendly media outlets pushed similar talking points. The memo, seen by The Post, noted that Apple users in 150 countries, including “several political leaders in Uganda,” had received similar hacking notices and that Apple’s operating systems contained security vulnerabilities. The evening the memo went out, government officials anonymously told Indian outlets they suspected that an “algorithmic malfunction” within Apple’s internal systems had generated the hacking notices, and Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce minister, said in a television interview that the notices may have been “a prank.”

A memo on the Apple security warnings from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party went out to party surrogates and friendly media outlets. India’s commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, above, said in an interview that the warnings may have been “a prank.” (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

On social media, pro-government influencers further muddied the waters. Sanjeev Sanyal, one of Modi’s economic advisers, pointed out on X that, in Apple’s hacking alerts, the company advised targeted users to consult with Access Now, a digital rights group that Sanyal noted has received funding from George Soros, the liberal financier and philanthropist. Soros is often painted by the Indian right as a boogeyman who masterminds international conspiracies against India.

“See the sinister plot here?” Amit Malviya, the head of BJP’s social media team, asked his 765,000 followers on X, implying that Apple, Access Now, Soros and opposition politicians were working together to falsely accuse the government of hacking.

On Oct. 31, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy minister of electronics and information technology, announced that a government probe had been launched into “these threat notifications and ... Apples claims of being secure.”

After receiving a barrage of questions from the government, one Apple security expert from outside India flew to the country in November and met with officials at the technology ministry’s New Delhi offices, where officials again demanded alternative explanations for the warnings, according to the three people familiar with the events.

But Apple defended its work to the officials. “When Apple sends a notification, that’s yelling ‘fire.’ You’d better be pretty confident there’s a fire,” said a person who worked with the company. He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dealings with authorities.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy minister of electronics and information technology, announced Oct. 31 that the government had launched a probe into Apple’s threat notifications and the company’s “claims of being secure.” (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

In response to questions from The Post about whether the government exerted pressure on Apple, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement: “We have instituted technical investigation in the reported matter. So far, Apple has cooperated fully in the investigation process.”

Nikhil Pahwa, the founder of the Indian tech policy news website MediaNama, said the Modi government deployed a familiar tactic.

“You can’t have the Indian government investigating itself,” Pahwa said. “What we see often with the Indian government is what I would call ‘kite-flying’: putting a message out to defuse a situation or to misdirect a situation.”

Security personnel prepare for the April opening of a new Apple store in New Delhi. As much as Apple sees growth in India, India has been courting Apple as part of a campaign to create factory jobs. (Prakash Singh/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

A dilemma for Apple

Silicon Valley companies have been pressured to overlook Indian government overreach before. This year, The Post found that both Facebook and X uncovered covert Indian military propaganda and calls for violence on their platforms, but executives hesitated to remove them. In both cases, executives at the companies’ India offices warned colleagues at the U.S. headquarters about the risks of clashing with the government and endangering their business.

But the confrontation between Apple and the Modi administration this autumn was more delicate for both sides and ended in a stalemate, according to industry analysts and people working with Apple.

For its part, Apple has been looking to India as a revenue driver as sales flatten in other markets. India is on track to account for 10 percent of Apple sales in 2025, up from 4 percent now, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.

“India will be the heart and lungs of Apple’s strategy outside of China,” Ives said.

The Modi administration, meanwhile, doesn’t want to alienate a high-profile device manufacturer that it has been courting as part of its “Make In India” campaign to create factory jobs. That may have helped to blunt the government’s retaliation over the hacking warnings, people working with Apple said.

Although Apple India executives initially helped provide Modi government officials fodder for doubts about the warnings, Apple ultimately ceded less ground than its Silicon Valley peers have, according to people familiar with the events who noted that Apple issued no new statement after the November summit with Indian authorities.

“Apple is treading a very delicate line,” said Steven Feldstein, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington who studies the spyware industry. “It needs to stand up for digital rights and its core brand of protecting privacy, but it also doesn’t want to jeopardize its presence in an extremely important market.”

Rank-and-file Apple employees say that the company cannot afford to compromise on its commitment to making its devices as safe as possible in an era when crime and surveillance are surging. Last year, Apple introduced Lockdown Mode, an option that drastically reduces the number of electronic avenues that can be used to implant Pegasus or similar spyware. No infections have been discovered on phones running in Lockdown.

A multitude of internal signals factor into Apple’s determination that a country is behind a specific hacking attempt, and the chances of false alarms are small, former employees and people working with the company say. Apple has expanded its security and threat-research teams in recent years, hiring technologists with human rights backgrounds as well as intelligence agency veterans, and it conducts inquiries like a small intelligence agency itself. If it detects something unusual, it looks for the same activity elsewhere and then follows the leads to find more hacking techniques and victims.

With many hacking attempts, something outside the norm occurs. It can stand out as starkly as someone coming into a restaurant and ordering three desserts, then one entree, and then six appetizers, said a former Apple employee.

Apple sued NSO for allegedly hacking its infrastructure and began warning of state-sponsored attacks in November 2021, after the Forbidden Stories consortium exposed worldwide abuses. (Attacks on Android phones are also common, but they have a variety of manufacturers.) The Commerce Department blacklisted NSO that same month, barring it from deals with American companies.

The alerts have played a major role in exposing hacking activity, especially when those notified get their phones examined afterward. The discoveries have revealed hacking methods that can then be blocked, making it more expensive for those who sell the most powerful hacking tools, industry experts say.

“Apple’s warnings have fundamentally changed the game for finding spyware abuses,” said John Scott-Railton, a researcher at Citizen Lab. “Their warnings shift the power balance.”

The increased attention has elevated the issue to the White House, which this year pledged with allied governments not to buy from the companies whose tools were being abused by authoritarian regimes.

India is not among the governments that joined the pledge.

This year, there have been other signs of the Indian government hacking targets it perceives as threats.

New York-based Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was targeted for assassination by an Indian official, according to U.S. prosecutors. A technology security firm said crashes of his encrypted messaging apps could have been triggered by hacking attempts. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)

In recent weeks, iVerify examined the phone of the New York-based Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who U.S. prosecutors say was targeted for assassination by an Indian official. IVerify engineers found severe crashes of his encrypted messaging apps that could have been triggered by hacking attempts, said chief executive Danny Rogers. Referring to activity of an encrypted messaging app during two days in July, Rogers said: “Eight Signal crashes in a row screams that someone is trying to hack you.”

Rogers said those crashes were not proof of a hacking attempt but were troubling because there was other evidence Pannun had been targeted. In May, Pannun was chatting over Telegram with an account belonging to Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist based in Canada, Pannun told The Post. When the conversation seemed off and Pannun called Nijjar over the phone, Nijjar said he hadn’t used Telegram in a while. A few weeks later, on June 18, Nijjar was shot by masked gunmen in a parking lot — a slaying that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in September was “credibly” linked to the Indian government.

Pannun told The Post that his own phones had been hacked twice before.

The U.S. State Department declined to address India’s alleged use of spyware directly. A spokesman said that the government “remains very concerned about the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware, which is being used around the world to erode democratic values and to enable human rights abuses. We are committed to countering the misuse of this technology and the threats they pose, in partnership with allies around the world, and we welcome other like-minded partners to join us.”

A motorist rides past a billboard for the iPhone in Mumbai. One spyware industry expert said Apple is “treading a very delicate line” with India, as the company seeks to balance its mission of protecting privacy with avoiding putting an important market at risk. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News)

Journalists still under fire

Officially, the Indian investigation of Apple continues, but people briefed on the matter said pressure on the company has waned. The next step is a report by India’s cybersecurity office, but it has no deadline. Indian media have reported that Indian officials now believe Apple’s warnings of state-sponsored hacking were genuine, but that the culprit may have been Beijing. While China is India’s great regional rival and a prodigious hacker, it has never been publicly linked to any use of Pegasus. The Israeli defense ministry must approve all sales of the spyware.

While tensions between Apple and New Delhi have eased, the journalists who faced hacking attempts continue to experience pressure.

In November and December, a third Indian journalist who has worked with OCCRP received phishing emails from a hacker who posed as a whistleblower seeking to leak corporate documents. The emails contained malware, according to OCCRP’s security team, which has not been able to identify the sender.

After the publication of their Adani investigation in August, Mangnale and Nair were summoned by the crime branch of the Ahmedabad city police force, in Adani’s and Modi’s home state of Gujarat, to respond to a complaint by a local investor who accused them of releasing a “grossly false and malicious” story about Adani. Ahmedabad police have also summoned two British reporters with the Financial Times, which collaborated with OCCRP on the investigation, as part of a preliminary inquiry.

A spokesperson for the FT declined to comment. The OCCRP said it has successfully appealed to the Indian Supreme Court to protect Mangnale and Nair from potential arrest, but the journalists are still fighting in court to avoid questioning by police.

At their first hearing on Dec. 1, the OCCRP journalists discovered a particularly high-powered lawyer was arguing the case on behalf of local police.

That lawyer was Tushar Mehta, the solicitor general of India.

Two journalists who have investigated Adani’s ties to Modi have found themselves in court. Arguing on the other side of their case at a hearing this month: Tushar Mehta, above, India’s solicitor general. (Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images)

Menn reported from San Francisco. Anant Gupta contributed to this report.

About this story

Design by Anna Lefkowitz. Visual editing by Chloe Meister, Joe Moore, Olivier Laurent and Jennifer Samuel. Copy editing by Christopher Rickett. Story editing by Mark Seibel. Project editing by Jay Wang.

An aspiring journalist documented Gaza’s beauty, then its destruction

Kevin Sieff

8:00AM, 28 Dec, 2023

Before the war, Plestia Alaqad didn’t think much about her Instagram feed. She posted a few photos of herself next to the Mediterranean, holding her friend’s son, petting her dog, Luki. She uploaded a photo of herself sitting in a cafe (“Happy and carefree era,” the caption read) and one from an early-morning bike ride (“Catch sunrises, not feelings”).

When she imagined her future as a journalist, which was constantly, she thought about ways to bring the world’s attention to the Gaza she loved. But there was no rush. She was 21. There was time to figure out her career.

Photographs posted by journalist Plestia Alaqad on Instagram show what her life was like before the Israel-Gaza war began on Oct. 7. (Plestia Alaqad)

Then she woke up on Oct. 7. On her phone, she scrolled through news stories and posts about Hamas’s attack in southern Israel.

She considered how Israel might react, and what she should do next. She had graduated with a degree in new media and journalism in Cyprus a few months earlier. On Oct. 8, she was meant to start a job as a content creator for a Palestinian nongovernmental organization.

Instead, Plestia began wandering the streets of Gaza and recording what she saw, posting videos and photos to Instagram and TikTok. She had about 3,700 followers on Instagram then, many of them friends and family members. On Oct. 9, she recorded a video as she walked through her building, showing how families were sheltering away from the windows. Then an enormous blast went off, sending a plume of dust and smoke into the air.

“I was trying to explain things, but I think you can hear them now,” she says in the video.

And then: “I’ll go check on my parents.”

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-oct-9-2023/2023/12/21/425f7669-7a38-40e7-a06a-34f8bc74ac9f_video.html

The world’s attention turned to Gaza during the early days of the war. But Israel’s blockade made it impossible for foreign journalists to enter. Palestinian reporters and photographers have been providing the only window into the carnage.

All of a sudden, Plestia was one of the few young reporters documenting the biggest story in the world.

On Oct. 9, she and her family fled their home in Gaza City and began sheltering in a hospital. The next day, she recorded a video as she went to check on what was left of their building.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-oct-10-2023/2023/12/21/b8ae7014-185d-4a19-976d-7765ff4ed630_video.html

The street was covered in debris. She walked past ruined buildings before arriving at her own front door. Inside, she turned her camera to show the rubble. And then she tried to find a way to preserve some hope for her followers, and for herself.

“It’s important to clarify that my house was not completely bombed,” she says in the video. “It can be fixed.”

But not long after, she and her family fled Gaza City, heeding warnings from the Israel Defense Forces.

Her uncle in the United Arab Emirates managed to get through to Plestia’s mother over the phone. He wanted to check on the family — but also to tell Plestia that her video had gone viral. She now had half a million Instagram followers.

In her videos, Plestia was soon wearing a blue helmet and a protective vest that said “Press,” which she had borrowed from a local media organization. She was no longer only recording her own life, but documenting scenes of destruction and heroism from across Gaza.

After Plestia Alaqad posted about injured children at al-Quds Hospital, family members were able to find them. (Plestia Alaqad)

Alaqad posted photos of children who had been brought to the emergency room of al-Quds Hospital and asked for people to help find their parents. (Plestia Alaqad)

She began driving around with two other journalists who filmed what they saw: 10-story buildings whose top floors had crumpled like newsprint; wounded children whose parents were missing (“If you know who they are or you are their parents, they are in the hospital,” she wrote).

“Can you imagine that I lived my whole life here in Gaza and I can’t even recognize the streets right now?” she says in a video posted on Oct. 13.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-oct-13-2023/2023/12/21/bd6c6261-7823-462f-858f-2e293ddad021_video.html

By then, she was getting hundreds of thousands of new followers a day.

But there were also things she didn’t post. As more journalists were killed and as her profile rose, some of Plestia’s friends asked her to delete photos she had uploaded of them from before Oct. 7. She started to worry that if she was targeted, her family might be killed, too.

“Should I go back to where my family is, or should I stay away from them? Am I being selfish?” she began to ask herself, she told The Washington Post in an interview.

At the end of each day, her colleagues dropped her off at a cousin’s house where she and her family had sought shelter. She slept on a mattress on the floor. Her mother tried to cautiously talk her into staying inside.

“How about you take a break?” she would say.

When Plestia was growing up in Gaza, her mother, Rana, was constantly trying to shield her daughter from the horrors that sometimes descended on the Strip.

When there was bombing, her mother would say, “It’s far away,” even if it wasn’t. Sometimes, when airstrikes began, her mom would insist that it was just a thunderstorm.

Mostly, that strategy worked. Plestia loved growing up in Gaza. She modeled traditional Palestinian dresses and taught classes to other Palestinians at the Press House. She filled piles of notebooks with poems and diary entries.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Plestia Alaqad | بلستيا العقاد (@byplestia)

As the Israeli military campaign wore on, Plestia’s work continued. She filmed people baking bread on the floor of their homes after Gaza’s bakeries were bombed. She walked into an area where Palestinians were seeking refuge, and a group of children rushed to hug her.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-nov-12-2023/2023/12/21/263e1826-6903-4d46-8a90-f4f4b6feb3fd_video.html

A few weeks into the war, she had more than 2 million followers, then 3 million. She considered the responsibility that came with that audience. But she was exhausted, barely sleeping, increasingly certain that she would be killed. People began recognizing her in the streets and asking her to tell their stories.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-oct-28-2023/2023/12/21/aa8d2ab8-cbef-424a-9b6b-66d7d4f725ea_video.html

One night, she walked into a hospital and saw a woman who had lost three of her limbs. Only one of her hands remained. Plestia introduced herself and explained that she wanted to document the woman’s injuries.

“Oh, I follow you,” the woman said.

Sometimes she would flick through her own Instagram feed and it felt as if she were looking into a stranger’s life. There was no sign of the Gaza she had known before the invasion.

A sign that used to be in the background of many photos in Gaza near the beach before the war began. It has now been destroyed. (Plestia Alaqad)

On Nov. 11, she wrote: “Most of my memories in Gaza are gone. My favorite restaurants, cafes, and stores all gone. Most of my friends’ houses all gone as well. For my house, I’m not sure if it’s partially demolished or if all of it is gone by now.”

She tried to restore some balance to the version of Gaza she was documenting. She posted a video of a woman who had evacuated with three birds and two tiny turtles, one of whom she had named Plestia.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-nov-8-2023/2023/12/21/929ca27d-ba78-41f1-b94a-92b5df178819_video.html

Plestia’s aim was to share a more intimate glimpse into Gazan life. But the number of casualties soared. By early November, about 10,000 people had been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

It was at around that time that Plestia learned her uncle had secured visas for the family in Australia.

Once her name was placed on a list at the Rafah crossing, they would need to leave in 12 hours. Did she even have a choice?

“I felt guilty. Why do I get to leave and others don’t?” she told The Post. “Why is it only people with passports or relatives abroad that can escape a war zone?”

She thought about her mission to document Gaza, about leaving that mission behind.

“But I decided I would feel more guilty if my family was killed because I decided to stay.”

So she crossed into Egypt.

A few days later, she was in southeastern Australia.

Video: (Video: Plestia Alaqad/Instagram)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/plestia-alaqad-on-dec-9-2023/2023/12/21/e31fc4f2-b743-47b8-a61b-0315cbe5a97c_video.html

For the first few days, it was difficult to look at the news. The chasm between the tranquility of her uncle’s house in Australia and the devastation in Gaza was too much to bear.

But she needed to know what was happening. So she turned on her phone and began to scroll through the Instagram photos of those who had stayed behind.

Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?

Adeline Hambley’s employees at a county health department in Michigan saw her as their protection from political interference by conservative Christians on the county board. Then the board offered her $4 million to quit.

Greg Jaffe

11:00AM, 23 Dec, 2023

WEST OLIVE, Mich. — All year, the new conservative Christian majority on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had been searching for a way to get rid of Adeline Hambley, who ran the west Michigan county’s health department. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

They had discussed firing Hambley, whom they saw as an instrument of government tyranny. But her job came with protections, written into state law, that were intended to insulate her from political influence or retribution.

They had proposed paying Hambley $4 million to leave. She accepted in early November. But the commissioners backed out a few days later when they learned that the payment could damage the county’s bond rating and tank its finances.

Now it was Nov. 14. The commissioners huddled with their lawyers in a windowless conference room at the county’s boxy, brick government complex. Hambley and her lawyer waited anxiously in a small room just down the hall. The two sides were stuck.

All over the country, deep partisan divisions were making it harder for American government to function and its citizens to coexist. The number of intractable disputes seemed to grow by the day: climate change, racial equity, gender-affirming care, guns, immigration, abortion. The battles were paralyzing Congress and pitting red and blue states against each other. Increasingly, they were consuming school boards and local government.

In Ottawa County, a fast-growing community of 300,000 along Lake Michigan, the nexus for so many of these ideological fights was the health department.

The hard-right Republicans on the 11-person county board swept into office last year after defeating more-moderate GOP incumbents in a primary. The old commissioners had for years focused on keeping taxes low and the county’s biggest multinational employers happy. Their replacements reflected an increasingly populist and conspiratorial GOP — remade in the image of Donald Trump.

They complained that they couldn’t trust Hambley. They accused her of supporting mask mandates and pushing coronavirus vaccines that they believed were unproven and possibly unsafe. They said her employees had encouraged dangerous, sexually perverse behavior by attending a local Pride festival, where they tested attendees for sexually transmitted diseases and administered the mpox vaccine.

Hambley insisted that her job wasn’t to serve the board. It was her responsibility to look after the health and safety of all of the county’s residents, regardless of their moral or political beliefs. “I want to work with the commissioners so we can protect the community,” said the 44-year-old, who had sued the county to keep her position. “But I am not their subordinate.”

Doug Zylstra is the only Democrat on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners and a strong backer of Hambley. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Their latest, fruitless negotiating session was approaching the seven-hour mark on Nov. 14 when Doug Zylstra, the lone Democrat on the board and a strong backer of Hambley, suggested an option that only a few days earlier would have seemed unthinkable.

What if Hambley and the conservatives on the board tried to negotiate a temporary truce? No one was completely comfortable with the idea, but none of the commissioners rejected it. After a half-hour of talks, the commissioners had cobbled together a bare-bones proposal that would allow Hambley to keep her job and pay her about $100,000 to cover her legal fees.

Zylstra sensed that Hambley would not accept it. She wanted the commissioners to acknowledge her independence and authority as county health officer. She needed guarantees that they wouldn’t bully her staff or simply try to fire her again in a few weeks.

Still, Zylstra saw the board’s offer as a small step forward — a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise depressing and divisive year for the board and the county. The stalemate was finally forcing the two sides to wrestle with a question that for 11 months they had been unwilling to even consider: Amid all the rancor, could they somehow figure out a way to live together?

People gather for fireworks during an August festival in Grand Haven, the seat of Ottawa County. The city sits along the Grand River and Lake Michigan. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Paying a premium

The driving force behind the year-long effort to remove Hambley was Joe Moss, a 38-year-old newcomer to politics and the board chair.

Moss rarely talked about the actual work of county government: repairing roads, maintaining parks, inspecting restaurants and collecting taxes. Instead his public statements and social media posts described an epochal battle between Christian conservatives and powerful secular forces in the media, academia, government and the medical establishment that he said were trying to outlaw his faith and seize control of his community.

“Censorship, demonization and public intimidation of Conservatives have been the go-to method to obtain submission and silence,” Moss wrote in the midst of the board’s standoff with Hambley and the health department.

A few days later, he shared a post that said: “Progressives are working hard to make unapologetic conservative Christianity unacceptable in the public life of our nation.”

“This is absolutely true,” he added.

Moss’s posts echoed the messages he and his constituents were hearing regularly from their pastors on Sunday. And they mirrored the increasingly angry and apocalyptic rhetoric of national Republican leaders like Trump, who described his political enemies as “vermin,” often training his ire on the federal bureaucracy and its institutions.

“Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” the former president said.

In Ottawa County, Moss’s battle began with the 100-person health department. Hours after taking office on Jan. 3, Moss and his allies on the board voted to demote Hambley and replace her with Nate Kelly, a safety manager at a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a vaccine skeptic and critic of mask mandates.

The previous Republican-dominated board had appointed Hambley to her position in December 2022 after a months-long, nationwide search. They saw Hambley as a long-serving, reliable county employee. To Moss, she was a cog in a vast and unelected bureaucracy that included the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Joe Moss, center, attends a court hearing on Nov. 27. As chair of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners, he led the effort to oust Hambley. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Moss declined to comment for this article but discussed the department’s importance in an interview with a local right-wing talk-radio host. “In many ways, public health has been weaponized in the United States and outside the country,” Moss told him. “And that’s why we need people who are going to prioritize freedom and the Constitution. … We should not have top-down governmental control making daily decisions for hundreds of thousands or millions of people.”

Hambley sued the board in February to stop the conservative commissioners from demoting or replacing her. So Moss looked for other ways of limiting her and the department’s power. In late August, Moss and the county administrator gave Hambley less than three days to slash the department’s proposed 2024 budget in half, from $17.4 million to $9 million. The order came despite the county’s growing tax revenue and flush coffers. Hambley said she tried to comply but quickly concluded it was not feasible.

In news releases and public statements, she warned that the cuts would damage the county’s economy, endanger public safety and trigger a state takeover of the department. Moss and the board gradually backed off their most extreme demands. In late September, the commissioners authorized the department to spend $14.4 million in 2024, down about 20 percent from the previous year’s spending. On the night the budget passed, Moss accused Hambley of “inciting fear and panic in the community” with her warnings and initiated the formal process to fire her.

State law required the board to prove in a public hearing that Hambley was “incompetent” or had committed malfeasance. Current and former county employees testified over two days in late October about the chaotic budget process and the growing political pressure on county workers. When the hearing was done, the county’s lawyers warned the commissioners that voting to fire Hambley carried risks. A judge could order the county to reinstate her and pay damages.

Moss and his allies on the board debated their options for several days before the two sides reconvened on Nov. 6 at the county government center. They first offered Hambley $1.8 million to leave and drop her lawsuit. Hambley and her attorney countered with $8 million, according to court documents. The back-and-forth negotiations continued for several hours. Near the end of the day, Hambley and her lawyer said she would take $4.45 million to leave, though she didn’t expect the board to accept.

The county’s lawyers advised the commissioners that the proposed settlement was on the high end of what she might receive if she prevailed at trial. Hambley’s annual salary and benefits amounted to about $180,000. Several commissioners, who wanted to keep Hambley in the job, argued that the offer was exorbitant and unnecessary. A majority of the commissioners, though, wanted her gone.

The final decision on the proposed settlement fell to Moss. He had been saying for months that the nation’s survival required “unapologetic” conservative leaders with “spines of steel.” Now the moment had arrived for him to show he was that kind of leader.

Moss told the attorneys that he was “willing to pay a premium” to guarantee Hambley’s departure, according to several people in the room. Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s vice chair, suggested one last counter of $4 million. Moss agreed. Soon the lawyers were walking the offer down the hall, where Hambley and her attorney were waiting.

Hambley and her lawyer, Sarah Howard, attend the Nov. 27 court hearing. The health officer had sued the Ottawa Board of Commissioners in February to keep her position. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

A broken deal

Hambley had gone to the county government complex on the morning of Nov. 6 expecting that she would spend the day fighting to keep her job. She wasn’t sure what to do when she saw the board’s $4 million counteroffer.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m selling my soul in some way,” she texted her husband.

The daughter of a machinist and a school bus driver, Hambley was the first in her family to graduate from college. She had started with the county two decades earlier as a restaurant and septic inspector, working her way up to the department’s top job while raising three children, now 19, 17 and 12. That day, her husband was at their home — a small, muddy farm with chickens, goats and a pig named Waffles, who weighed several hundred pounds and slept in their front entryway.

“It’s life changing for our family,” she texted him. “What do you want me to do?” He told her to listen to her lawyer.

Hambley accepted the proposed settlement and the lawyers began working to finalize the language so that the commissioners could reconvene in a week and vote publicly on it.

A few days later, the deal fell apart. The county’s lawyers told the board that the large payout could cause its insurer to drop the county’s coverage, according to several commissioners who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. The county, in turn, could lose its AAA bond rating, driving up the costs that it, along with schools and townships throughout Ottawa, would incur to borrow money.

The county’s lawyers emailed Hambley’s attorney on Nov. 10 to say they had “run into problems” with the settlement.

On Nov. 14, everyone returned to the government center for another day of haggling. The board offered Hambley $1 million to quit, the maximum its lawyers said the county could give her without putting its bond rating at risk. Hambley rejected it. The board floated Zylstra’s idea of a truce, in which the board would pay some of Hambley’s legal fees. She would drop her lawsuit and stay in the job without any protections. She turned down that proposal as well.

About 4 p.m., the talks ended for the day. Hambley headed to the health department to address her employees — nurses, social workers, health inspectors and epidemiologists — who had packed the office’s main conference room. Many were wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “Nevertheless, she persisted,” in support of their boss.

To Moss and his supporters, Hambley was the vanguard of a national movement that was seeking to marginalize and silence Christian conservatives. To employees at the health department, she was their shield. She was fighting not just for them, but for embattled medical professionals across the state and the country. The Holland Sentinel, the local newspaper, had published the details of the $4 million deal a few days earlier, before it had been withdrawn. For the workers in the room, the news that Hambley was willing to take money to leave was a gut punch; some said they had felt abandoned and betrayed.

Hambley told her employees that she had wanted to stay and fight. “I would love to keep being the county health officer,” she said. But a majority of the commissioners were determined to get rid of her.

Judge Jenny L. McNeill has dealt with Hambley's case for much of the year. Hambley is asking her to enforce a $4 million settlement offer that the board now says is too costly. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Commissioner Roger Bergman, health department employee Lisa Uganski and Zylstra wait for the Nov. 27 court hearing to start. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

If the board fired her, Hambley told her staff, she probably would have to fight for a year or longer in court before she could return to her job. Even if she prevailed, there were no guarantees that a judge would order the board to reinstate her.

Hambley and Marcia Mansaray, her deputy, described the proposed $4 million settlement as a powerful deterrent that would clarify state law and send a message to other county commissions in Michigan that removing a health officer carried huge costs.

The employees began to ask questions. They wanted to know who would protect them if both Hambley and Mansaray were gone. Hambley replied that Gwen Unzicker, a physician who served as the department’s medical director, would fight to make sure their work met the standards of care.

They asked Hambley what she was hearing from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which also had oversight responsibilities for the department. Initially, state officials had pressed Hambley to try to “find common ground” with the new commissioners. Lately, the response from state officials had been silence, she told the workers.

They asked about the HVAC safety manager whom the board hoped to put in charge of the department if Hambley departed. There wasn’t much she could tell them.

The hour-long session was nearing its end. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now,” an employee in the medical examiner’s office told Hambley. “Thank you for being willing to fight for us.” Hambley and Mansaray thanked their employees for their perseverance and tenacity. The room burst into applause that lasted for a couple of minutes.

When the cheering died down, the workers headed home. They described their state of mind in interviews as “anxious,” “uncertain,” “stressed” and “utterly exhausted.” Most doubted that Moss or his allies on the board would be willing to seek an acceptable compromise. Eventually, they would find a way to force Hambley out.

“To them the stakes are eternal,” Unzicker said. “There’s no middle ground. They seem to think what we’re doing is evil.”

Doug Zylstra speaks with fellow commissioners Jacob Bonnema and Rebekah Curran during a Dec. 5 board meeting. All three said they didn’t support the $4 million settlement. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

The fallout grows

News of the scuttled $4 million settlement spread quickly through the county. A few hours after Hambley had addressed her staff, the Ottawa County Patriots held a previously scheduled seminar at a local church. It was titled: “The Second Amendment: Under Attack and Fighting Back!”

Rebekah Curran, one of the new commissioners who had taken office in January, sat in the third pew from the front. When the presentation ended, several attendees circled around her, expressing shock that the county would offer Hambley so much money.

“Are they actually going to give her $4 million?” asked an older man who wore a Navy veteran cap and balanced on a cane.

“If you give into one of them, you open the floodgates to them all!” warned a woman with an American flag scarf draped around her neck.

“I can’t believe numbers like that were even contemplated,” said a lawyer in a crisp Oxford shirt and khakis.

Curran told them she didn’t support the settlement and had planned to vote against it before it fell apart. “I don’t agree with it!” she said.

The board had spent more than 30 hours in open and closed session discussing what to do and seemed to have no workable answers. One of the commissioners resigned amid the standoff, citing “changes in his personal and professional life.” Six of the remaining 10 wanted to remove Hambley. Three were trying to find a way to keep her. Curran was somewhere in the middle. “I’m so tired of the political games on both sides,” she said.

The battle was affecting the health department’s ability to keep staff and deliver services. Since the beginning of the year, 24 employees — about a fifth of its workforce — had retired or left for other jobs, according to health department officials. In the five years before the pandemic, the department had averaged about eight departures a year.

The Ottawa County health department, which has become a battleground for the kinds of ideological fights playing out across the nation. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

One of those who quit in November was Matthew Allen, a supervisor in the department’s environmental division. He’d been with the county for 14 years and described himself as a devout Christian who home-schooled his children, voted for Trump and never got a coronavirus vaccine. “None of that mattered to [Hambley],” he said. “She was a wonderful leader.”

Allen said Moss’s interference had led him to leave the county for a state job. “There’s a line between government and religion, and when they get mixed up, you don’t get people making decisions for the good of the whole,” he said.

His and other departures from the environmental division were taking a toll, health department officials said. The wait time for septic inspections in the county had tripled since January to 30 days.

The turmoil had also upended Ottawa Food, a health department program that helped feed 22,000 low-income residents each year. The board in the fall had eliminated funding for the program’s director, a health department employee who coordinated food assistance with 45 local nonprofits and food pantries. In November, amid the fight over Hambley’s fate, the nonprofits that made up Ottawa Food’s board announced they were suspending a program that provided aid to seniors and an initiative that supplied churches and food pantries with thousands of pounds of fresh produce.

Rhodea, the board’s vice chair, accused the health department and its nonprofit partners of playing a “political game” with the program to discredit the commissioners. “We’re committed to food security in this county,” she said, “but we’re not committed to dysfunction.”

The nonprofits on the Ottawa Food board received nearly $1 million from the county in 2023 to run food programs and assist farmers. At a board meeting in late November, Rhodea threatened to take some of that money and start a new county agency that would work more cooperatively with the commissioners. She didn’t explain how the new agency would operate, but she did have a name for it: “The Department of Family Impact.”

Moss, seated next to her, listened and nodded. “A Department of Family Impact sounds really good,” he mused.

After the $4 million settlement fell apart, Zylstra tried to negotiate a temporary truce that would allow Hambley to keep her job. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Stirrings of hope

The two weeks since Zylstra first raised the possibility of a truce had been turbulent for Hambley, the board and the entire county.

In late November, the 57-year-old Democrat called Hambley to discuss a matter related to the fight over the health department budget and the Ottawa Food program. After a few minutes, the conversation shifted to the negotiations with the board over her future.

“I’m feeling hopeful,” he told Hambley.

“Why?” Hambley replied. “What’s there to be hopeful about?”

Zylstra understood her pessimism. There had been stretches in the summer and fall when he’d felt he couldn’t talk to Moss and the other conservatives on the board outside their regular meetings. He worried that they might take his words out of context and use them against him. The strains, he said, mirrored the county as a whole, which he described as “broken” before pausing to reconsider. “I don’t want to say that,” he continued. “We’re separated into parts.” The tension had also spread to his relationship with his sisters, who were strong supporters of Moss and his movement.

Yet Zylstra also believed there were reasons for optimism: The intervention by the courts had so far dissuaded the board from firing Hambley; hundreds of citizens had rallied to support her and the health department.

Shortly after the $4 million settlement collapsed, Hambley’s attorney, Sarah Howard, filed a motion asking a state circuit court judge to enforce it, arguing that the two sides had reached agreement on the “essential” terms before the commissioners decided to back out. The board’s lawyers countered that the deal hadn’t been finalized and that the commissioners hadn’t voted publicly to accept it. Both steps were required by law before the settlement was complete, they said.

David Kallman, an attorney for Ottawa County, speaks to the media after the Nov. 27 hearing. The board's lawyers have argued that the $4 million settlement offer was not binding. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Hambley and Howard have argued that the two sides reached agreement on the “essential” terms before the commissioners backed out. (Kristen Norman for The Washington Post)

Judge Jenny L. McNeill, who had been dealing with the case for much of the year, scheduled a Jan. 19 hearing on the matter. In the interim, she urged the two sides to meet with a mediator and try to reach a deal.

“I think everyone — not just the parties, but the entire county — needs some resolution here,” she said.

Zylstra understood that the mistrust and anger in the county weren’t going to be resolved by mediation or even the courts. The divisions were real and deep.

Like many in Trump’s Republican Party, Moss framed politics as a battle between good and evil. The nation’s survival was at stake. Compromise was a sign of weakness and corruption. His perspective had inflamed passions across the county and upended the way the board operated. “We don’t talk about whether we should plow the snow once or twice a day,” Zylstra said. “Those are not our fights. Our fights are much larger.”

But the past year and the standoff with Hambley had made it clear that there were limits to the board’s power, limits that even Moss was being forced to acknowledge.

Zylstra thought that the court-imposed delay might allow emotions to cool. He believed that eventually the board and Hambley would be forced to recognize that their only viable option was coexistence. “An uneasy truce,” Zylstra called it.

A trying year was drawing to a close. This was Zylstra’s hope for the next one.

Patrick Marley contributed to this report.

Inside A-Section

- Colorado GOP asks U.S. Supreme Court to keep Trump on the ballot

- Civil War ‘about slavery,’ Haley acknowledges

- Politicians targeted by surge in fake emergency calls

- Overcrowded Rafah, already short on food, braces for new refugees

- Songs of grief and defiance for the Palestinians

- Hong Kong activist convicted under China’s security law flees to the U.K.

- As threats of AI loom, parents can take steps to remove online photos of kids

- Ukraine gets small U.S. weapons package until Congress can agree to more

Colorado GOP asks U.S. Supreme Court to keep Trump on the ballot

Patrick Marley

2:15AM, 29 Dec, 2023

Former president Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event Dec. 17 in Reno, Nev. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Colorado Republican Party on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that Donald Trump’s name can appear on the state’s primary ballot after Colorado’s high court said he had engaged in insurrection and was ineligible to hold office again.

The request came a week after the Colorado Supreme Court determined that Trump engaged in insurrection before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and as a result is barred from running for office again under a Civil War-era provision of the Constitution.

The Colorado Republican Party asked the justices to reverse the ruling, saying the state court had misinterpreted Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and had interfered with the party’s First Amendment rights of free association.

“For the first time in American history, a former President has been disqualified from the ballot, a political party has been denied the opportunity to put forward the presidential candidate of its choice, and the voters have been denied the ability to choose their Chief Executive through the electoral process,” Jay Sekulow and other attorneys for the state Republican Party wrote in their petition.

Trump is far ahead in the race for the Republican nomination, but his candidacy would be endangered if other states also kept him off the ballot. The former president has called the Colorado ruling a form of election interference, while his opponents have argued that he is responsible for putting himself at risk of being taken out of the running.

Voters have challenged Trump’s ability to run elsewhere in the country, but Colorado is the only state that has said he cannot run.

The Colorado justices put their Dec. 19 decision on hold until Jan. 4 and said they would keep the hold in place if an appeal were filed. By filing the appeal, the Colorado Republican Party is getting Trump’s name back on the March 5 ballot, at least in the immediate term.

The U.S. Supreme Court is not obligated to take the case, but legal scholars have urged the justices to resolve the matter promptly so all states follow the same policies. Without a ruling from the nation’s high court, some states could allow Trump on the ballot while others bar him.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War. The amendment provided citizenship to those born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed equal protection of the law to all, including those who had been enslaved. Section 3 of the amendment, which was originally intended to prevent former Confederates from returning to power, prohibits people from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after swearing an oath to support the Constitution.

The Colorado Republican Party made three main arguments in saying the Supreme Court should reverse the state ruling. Section 3 applies to those who took oaths to serve in Congress or a state legislature, but not to serve as president, the party contended. In addition, states cannot enforce Section 3 because Congress hasn’t given them that power, the party said. What’s more, the Colorado ruling “violates the Colorado Republican Party’s First Amendment associational right to place the political candidates of its choice on both the primary and general electoral ballots,” the attorneys for the party wrote in their petition.

On Thursday, attorneys for the six Colorado voters who brought the lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to expedite the case so it could be decided by Feb. 11, the day before most mail ballots are slated to be sent to Colorado voters. They argued it’s important to know Trump’s eligibility before most states hold their primaries.

“This case involves issues of exceptional national importance,” Jason Murray and the other attorneys wrote.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D), who oversees the state’s elections and has said Trump participated in an insurrection, called for swift action from the Supreme Court.

“Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and was disqualified under the Constitution from the Colorado Ballot,” Griswold said in a written statement. “The Colorado Supreme Court got it right. This decision is now being appealed. I urge the U.S. Supreme Court to act quickly given the upcoming presidential primary election.”

The high courts in Michigan and Minnesota have allowed Trump to appear on the ballot in their states, but Maine’s secretary of state barred him from that state’s primary ballot late Thursday. Oregon’s high court is expected to weigh in on a challenge soon.

Federal judges have ruled against a Texas tax consultant who has filed lawsuits around the country seeking to remove Trump from the ballot in more than a dozen states.

Haley acknowledges Civil War ‘about slavery’ after facing backlash

Meryl Kornfield, Maegan Vazquez, Hannah Knowles

1:29AM, 29 Dec, 2023

Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a town hall in Atkinson, N.H., on Dec. 14. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

NORTH CONWAY, N.H. — Nikki Haley on Thursday scrambled to quell a firestorm that rocked her ascendant presidential campaign, acknowledging the Civil War was “about slavery” after critics in both parties admonished her for omitting that fact during a recent town hall.

First during a radio interview then again later during a campaign stop, Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor who has risen in polls of the Republican race, made remarks that departed from what she said a day earlier. When asked about the cause of the war at a Wednesday town hall, she made no mention of slavery, which scholars agree was central to the conflict. That initial exchange attracted widespread attention and criticism in both parties that continued Thursday.

“Of course, the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s unquestioned. Always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery,” Haley said at a town hall in North Conway. “But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government. For 80 years, America had the decision and the moral question of whether slavery was a good thing. And whether government economically, culturally, any other reasons, had a role to play in that. By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more.”

“I say that as a Southerner. I say that as a Southern governor who removed the Confederate flag off the State House grounds,” she added to applause.

The outcry over her comments and the attempt to clarify them marked a new test for Haley, who until this week had made few unforced errors and rarely veered off script as she pitched herself as the strongest general election candidate in the field. Her remarks came amid a year-end push in New Hampshire, a state that is seen as key to her chances in the GOP race and where she has shot up into a distant second against Donald Trump, the clear polling leader. They presented a fresh opportunity for rival campaigns and critics, who have accused Haley of trying to have it both ways on key issues.

At a presidential campaign event in Iowa on Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rival Republican, said Haley “had some problems with some basic American history,” calling her response to the Civil War question an “incomprehensible word salad.”

“I just think that this shows this is not a candidate that’s ready for prime time,” the governor said, adding that it’s “not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War.”

Race has historically been a delicate issue for Haley. After a white supremacist killed nine people attending Bible study at a historically Black church in Charleston in 2015, Haley signed legislation removing the Confederate flag from the State House grounds. In 2010, she had suggested that she would not make such a move and was well equipped to challenge an NAACP boycott of the state over the flag because of her status as a woman of color.

Haley has shown particular strength among centrist and independent voters who play an outsize role in New Hampshire and she has focused heavily on pointing to polls showing her performing well against President Biden. But on Thursday, she was looking to move past a difficult chapter.

“I want to nip it in the bud. Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery. But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters,” Haley said on “The Pulse of NH,” a local radio show. “And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is [to] never relive it, never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”

The response she offered Wednesday evening did not include slavery.

“What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” a man asked Haley at a town hall in Berlin, N.H.

She replied, “Well, don’t come with an easy question.” Then she proceeded to answer.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said.

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”

The questioner expressed surprise at Haley’s response, saying, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’”

“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley asked.

The man responded, “You’ve answered my question, thank you.”

Haley quickly drew criticism over the Wednesday exchange from all sides — including Biden and some rival Republican presidential campaigns and their allies.

“It was about slavery,” Biden wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting DeSantis, joked about “New Nikki Haley merch,” sharing a spoof image of shirts featuring her response to the town hall attendee: “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

DeSantis has also faced blowback to his approach to race and the history of slavery and discrimination in the United States. His administration barred an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, objecting to some of its content, and was widely criticized for slavery education standards that called for instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” DeSantis defended the moves and said they were misconstrued.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican candidate who has cast himself as the unfiltered truth-teller in the race while castigating Trump as unfit for the White House, said Haley’s Wednesday answer was a reflection of her unwillingness to speak hard truths. He argued that Haley knows the history of her state and doesn’t “have a racist bone in her body.”

“So don’t get confused about what she’s been saying and what she and her new political husband [New Hampshire Gov.] Chris Sununu are trying to mop up all around New Hampshire,” Christie, who is competing for moderate and independent voters who have also gravitated toward Haley, said during a town hall Thursday night in Epping, N.H. “She did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”

MAGA Inc., the super PAC backing Trump, echoed in an email blast that the comment showed Haley is “not ready for prime time” and said the “issue is her response, not the question.” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who is Black and has endorsed Trump, said slavery was the obvious answer and wrote on X, “This really doesn’t matter because Trump is going to be the nominee.” Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaking with reporters Thursday afternoon, Haley dismissed her opponents’ assertions that she had flip-flopped on the cause of the Civil War. She said she didn’t mention slavery in her initial response because she thought it was “a given.”

“If it requires clarification of saying, ‘Yes, the Civil War was about slavery,’ I’m happy to do that,” she added.

Sununu, who recently endorsed Haley and stood behind her during the conversation with reporters, said her response was “spot on.”

After the Wednesday event, some attendees told The Washington Post that they thought Haley answered the question to the best of her ability and they accused the man who asked the question of intending to cause trouble.

Vickie Plourde, who said she was undecided before the event, said she had been persuaded to vote for Haley after the town hall. She said the question was a setup. “We have to move past that,” she said of slavery. “If we continue to look in the past and say ‘Look, look, look, look,’ and we’re not moving forward, we’re going to stay back there.”

Ahead of Haley’s town hall in North Conway on Thursday, Bill Anderson, who plans to vote for Haley and has donated to her campaign, said he didn’t hold it against her that she didn’t mention slavery.

“I don’t expect her to be perfect,” he said.

Haley’s past comments on the Civil War have come under scrutiny. As she was running for governor in 2010, she addressed the Civil War during a private meeting with two leaders of Confederate heritage groups. She called it a fight between “tradition” and “change.”

“You see passions on different sides,” she said at the time, during comments that were captured on video and previously reported by The Post. “I don’t think anyone does anything out of hate.”

Christie referenced some of her 2010 remarks Thursday. “I’m sure Nikki will see this — so I want to talk directly to her. The Civil War was not a choice between change and tradition. It was a choice between right and wrong and that’s it. And we’ve got to stand on the side of right,” he said to applause.

Fergus Cullen, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a vocal critic of Trump, said Thursday that while Haley’s fumbled answer could spur criticism and negative ads, many voters intent on picking a non-Trump candidate have few viable options and would probably stick with her.

“Where else do the Not Again Trump voters go?” he asked.

When Haley called on a voter to ask a question during a Thursday evening town hall in Lebanon, N.H., the man held up his ballot and told Haley he is trying to decide between her or Christie, but he said he wanted to hear her say she’ll categorically rule out being Trump’s vice president, telling her, “this is your chance to redeem yourself” after the Civil War answer the night before.

“I could say what you categorically want to hear and you could go check that box and go do whatever, but I’m going to continue to tell you my truth,” she said, adding that she doesn’t play for second. He shouted at her that she didn’t answer his question, but she moved on to the next one.

Vazquez reported from Washington and Knowles reported from Iowa. Maeve Reston contributed to this report.

It’s not just Marjorie Taylor Greene. Other politicians are swatting targets.

Law enforcement has been summoned to the homes of elected officials based on hoaxes in a rash of episodes this week

Azi Paybarah

8:34PM, 28 Dec, 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks to reporters in July. (Haiyun Jiang for The Washington Post)

The holidays have ushered in a rash of swatting incidents targeting politicians across the country, with phony calls for help leading heavily armed law enforcement personnel to show up at the homes of unsuspecting members of Congress and other elected officials.

The most high-profile episode came on Christmas Day, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on X, formerly Twitter, “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here.”

Other similar episodes have followed this week in locations as varied as Cayuga County, N.Y., DeKalb County, Ga., Lincoln, Neb., and Licking County, Ohio.

On Thursday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) posted on social media that his home in Naples, Fla., had been swatted by “cowards” while he was at dinner with his wife. “These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family,” Scott wrote.

Most recent incidents have targeted Republicans, but Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, was among those who had law enforcement investigate a matter near her home after a report of a shooting that police determined was a hoax.

These episodes are the latest in a dangerous trend of people trying to send law enforcement personnel to homes, businesses or schools by falsely claiming a violent crime is underway or just took place.

Lauren R. Shapiro, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said lawmakers may be targeted over specific legislation, or because of their more broadly held beliefs and positions.

When “someone disagrees with a person’s beliefs/statements/etc., the person may lash out by launching a harassment campaign, stalking, swatting, etc., to try to intimidate the target into silence,” Shapiro said in an email.

Another expert said high-profile episodes targeting lawmakers could spur copycats.

“People learn of those threats, and it spreads,” said Gregory H. Winger, an assistant professor focusing on cybersecurity at the University of Cincinnati’s School of International and Public Affairs.

In Greene’s case, a man in New York called a Georgia suicide hotline and falsely claimed that he had shot his girlfriend at Greene’s address.

On Thursday, Greene said on social media that the homes where her two daughters live were also swatted. “Whoever is doing this, you are going to get caught and it won’t be funny to you anymore,” she wrote.

Following the episode on Christmas Day, several other lawmakers in Georgia and around the country were similarly targeted.

About an hour after Greene’s social media post, former Nebraska state senator Adam Morfeld wrote on X, “Merry Christmas to all, except for the jerk who called 911 pretending to be me claiming I was going to kill myself.”

Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) also announced that day on social media that “our home was swatted this afternoon.”

The day after Christmas, “numerous” sheriff’s deputies responded to the home of Ohio state Rep. Kevin D. Miller (R) “on a false report of a shooting,” he wrote on X. The event “put several lives at risk and was a huge waste of resources.”

Several state senators in Georgia — as well as the state’s lieutenant governor — have also been targeted this week, prompting calls for state legislation to strengthen laws against swatting. Among those targeted was state Sen. Clint Dixon (R). He was watching football with his wife on Christmas night at his Buford home when police arrived in response to a caller who said he had killed his wife and was holding someone else hostage, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

When a member of Congress is targeted by a swatting call, the U.S. Capitol Police seeks to “work closely with our local and federal law enforcement partners,” the agency said in a statement. “To protect ongoing investigations and to minimize the risk of copy-cats, we cannot provide more details at this time.”

Swatting has been employed as an intimidation tactic for more than 15 years. In early 2008, the FBI’s website warned of the “new phenomenon of ‘Swatting,’ ” calling it a “much more serious twist” on the old crime of hacking into phone companies to make long-distance calls. Since then, the problem has grown in frequency and severity.

In 2017, police in Wichita fatally shot a 28-year-old man who opened the front door of the home they had been summoned to by a phony call about a hostage situation.

In 2020, a 60-year-old man in Tennessee died of a heart attack after armed police surrounded his home while responding to a false report that someone had been shot at that address.

In April, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the FBI to investigate dozens of swatting episodes aimed at schools.

In October, The Washington Post reported that over the past year, more than 500 schools in the United States had been subjected to a coordinated swatting effort, based on a review of media reports and dozens of public records requests.

One widely cited figure comes from Kevin Kolbye, a former FBI swatting expert, who told the Economist that he estimated the number of swatting episodes went from about 400 in 2011 to more than 1,000 in 2019.

In the past two decades, there have probably been 20,000 swatting episodes, according Shapiro, the professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of the book “Cyberpredators and Their Prey.” It “has been a problem for a while.”

The problem has grown as law enforcement personnel have been responding to an increasing number of mass shootings and domestic threats, according to Winger, who said swatters found a way to “weaponize police responses.”

The increased public safety challenges posed by active shooters and other assailants, plus fake calls for emergency responses, “are two sides of the same coin,” Winger said. “How do you know whether that is a real situation or somebody being swatted, because the phone call you get is often quite similar.”

Shapiro said legislation to combat swatting and train personnel how to monitor and identify it has been hindered in Congress for years.

One reason for the delay is that lawmakers who support such legislation can become victims of it, Shapiro said.

Frances Vinall and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

Overcrowded Rafah, already short on food, braces for more refugees

Miriam Berger, William Booth, Hazem Balousha, Sarah Dadouch

7:47PM, 28 Dec, 2023

Injured Palestinians escape the ruins of a home after an Israeli airstrike in the center of Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Thursday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)

JERUSALEM — Israel’s spreading ground war across the Gaza Strip is sending new waves of displaced people into the enclave’s overcrowded south, where locals are already underfed and desperate under continuing bombardment.

Efforts to deliver medical supplies and fuel to the hospitals still functioning in and around the southern city of Rafah have been increasingly disrupted by hungry people stopping convoys in search of food, the World Health Organization said this week.

Twelve weeks into Israel’s campaign to root out Hamas, more than 21,000 people in Gaza have been killed and there’s little relief in sight. Talks in Cairo, and an Egyptian cease-fire proposal, appear to be in early stages, and Hamas says it will not return Israeli hostages until the fighting stops.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting Gaza this week, said the war “isn’t close to finished.”

Hamas and allied fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 240 more hostage, triggering current hostilities. Before that surprise attack, the U.N. agency for Palestinian affairs says, Israel allowed about 500 trucks carrying food, fuel and commercial supplies into the blockaded enclave each day. The wartime average of 80 to 100 trucks “is not anything close to enough,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the agency, known as UNRWA.

“We are forced to make decisions that no humanitarian should make on who do we give to, when and how much,” she said. “In many cases we are forced to deliver a can of tuna or a bottle of water to a family of six or seven people.”

The Israeli prime minister’s office said this week that delays in delivering aid to Gaza were not Israel’s fault. U.N. agencies are “struggling to distribute aid at the pace that Israel is inspecting it,” spokesman Eylon Levy said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, to date, the U.N. aid mechanism has been woefully unsuccessful because it goes through UNRWA. Aid isn’t reaching the people who need it because Hamas hijacks it and UNRWA covers up for it.”

Touma said the problem was a “combination” of Israeli restrictions on the number of trucks and intensive checks on the goods going in.

Displaced Palestinians arrive at a makeshift camp in Rafah on Thursday. (Hatem Ali/AP)

About 1.8 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents depend on UNRWA for humanitarian aid, Touma said. Of those, about 1.4 million are sheltering in U.N. facilities. The other 400,000 have set up informal camps nearby.

“With the ongoing bombardments, you cannot deliver aid in a place with a sky full of airstrikes,” she said. “The restrictions imposed on movement across the Gaza Strip ... means we are missing people in the north on a regular basis.”

Incidents of desperate Gazans breaking into storage areas or stopping trucks to take food items that they eat on the spot appear to be rising.

Breakdowns in civil order are no surprise to Shawqi Salman. The 39-year-old father of four on Thursday spent his third day in a row at a crowded UNRWA distribution center in Rafah hoping to receive two bags of flour. He went away empty-handed, again.

UNRWA initially gave flour, one of its main aid items, to bakeries. When fuel shortages caused bakeries to close, the agency began distributing it directly to families.

“Unfortunately, goods are scarce in the market, and purchasing anything is nearly impossible,” Salman told The Washington Post. Food, including black-market flour, sells for five or 10 times the prewar price. “What is available comes with exorbitant prices, and we can’t afford much.”

Palestinians line up for free food rations Thursday in Rafah, Gaza. (Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

Yasmine Rafiq, 22, has not yet made the trek to Rafah. She’s staying with her family of seven in a tent at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, the only functioning hospital in central Gaza, in an area that the Israel Defense Forces has not yet ordered people to evacuate.

Three times one of her brothers has pushed through the crowd at a distribution center to get a coveted food box with biscuits, sugar, salt, canned beans and mortadella. The family quickly finished it.

“We mostly buy items from the market, but the prices are very high,” Rafiq told The Post. “After waiting four days, we received three bags of flour from UNRWA.”

Gazans with extra food or fuel have tried to fill some of the gaps. A local charity worker said the Emirates Red Crescent was providing his group with twice-weekly donations.

“The small quantities sent to Gaza are not due to a lack of support but rather due to the capacity of the crossings in the Gaza Strip,” the worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being inundated with requests for help, told The Post by phone.

His group has focused on assisting Gazans who aren’t in UNRWA facilities. The group uses cars rather then trucks to avoid being stopped on the road while distributing food, medicine, clothing, mattresses and blankets.

The charity relies on a database for distribution, “but the movement of the population every day or every moment increases the burden on us,” he said. “Most of the residents here, whether residents or displaced people, lost everything and left their homes without any clothes or supplies.”

Gazans have crowded into Rafah, but no place in the enclave is safe.

Video: An Israeli strike hit a building in Rafah, Gaza, on Dec. 28, leaving 20 people dead and 55 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. (Video: Reuters)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/israeli-strike-kills-civilians-in-rafah/2023/12/28/e7c7e120-5708-4b32-adc8-7a478fa3fc33_video.html

A missile strike on two houses near the Kuwaiti Hospital killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens, hospital director Suhaib al-Hams said. The victims included women and children.

“We received some bodies cut into pieces,” Hams told The Post. “Some of them were identified as internally displaced people who came from the northern regions and Gaza City.”

Ahmed Qanan and his family fled Khan Younis for Rafah this week. On Thursday evening, the 38-year-old prayed and then gathered with his children to chat.

“We were talking about our wishes for a cease-fire so that we could return to our home, but we were surprised by a big explosion in the house next to our house,” he said. Shrapnel hit Qanan in the head and neck, he said.

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Biden administration is pressing Israel to transition from high-intensity strikes to targeted assaults, but there’s no indication that Israel has changed its approach. “We are expanding the fight in the coming days,” Netanyahu said this week. “This will be a long battle.”

Rescuers look for survivors after an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to the Middle East next week to discuss the war in Gaza, Israeli media has reported. He is expected to push for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, stressed the need for more aid and said they opposed any Israeli attempt to expel Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai region.

They said in a statement that the international community should pressure Israel to agree to an immediate cease-fire and allow more aid into Gaza.

Diaa Rashwan, the chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service, told The Post that the government was proposing to end the conflict in three stages leading to a cease-fire.

The Biden administration has been pushing for the Palestinian Authority, which administers a portion of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to return to run Gaza after the war ends.

Netanyahu has called that idea “a pipe dream” but has not said who he believes should run Gaza after the war. He has said Israel will maintain control of security around Gaza, at least temporarily, and talked about establishing a half-mile-wide buffer zone inside Gaza.

Netanyahu and members of his emergency war cabinet were scheduled Thursday night to take up, for the first time, the topic of Gaza’s postwar governance, but the meeting was postponed.

Reports circulated that Israel had proposed a new hostage exchange, but a senior Hamas official waved the suggestion away.

“Every once in a while they [the Israelis] try to send a new thing, but the stance of the movement until now has not changed,” Basem Naim told The Post from Doha, Qatar. “No negotiations before cessation of hostilities.”

Balousha reported from Amman, Jordan. Dadouch reported from Beirut. Kareem Fahim and Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo and Hajar Harb in London contributed to this report.

Songs of grief and defiance fuel Arab solidarity for Palestinians

Hannah Allam

7:00AM, 27 Dec, 2023

CAIRO — The oud player had strummed only a couple of notes when a flicker of recognition spread across the faces of Egyptians who gathered on a recent evening in a historic quarter of Cairo.

Together with the musicians on stage, the audience sang the famous opening words: “O, Palestinians!” By the second verse — about the dead and displaced — they were clapping to the drumbeat, voices at full volume, a communion forged in heartbreak over one of the Middle East’s oldest and deepest wounds.

The song, “Ya Falasteeniya,” emerged more than 50 years ago as a rallying cry after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. The mostly young audience that night sang it to honor newer casualties — the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, after Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7.

The classic song is part of a rich musical tradition that gets passed down — and added to — with every iteration of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Lyrics about exile and resistance have endured because the conflict has endured, each generation finding new resonance. At violent junctures, music has been a reminder of street-level solidarity, a record of past grievances and an outlet for fresh anger.

“All the Arab countries sing these kinds of songs,” said Hany El Hamzawy, an oud player in the ensemble that night. “They penetrate your soul.”

Video: Fans of the legendary Egyptian folk singer Sheikh Imam sing his famous pro-Palestinian songs at a cultural event in Cairo. (Video: Hannah Allam)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/loop-palestinian-songs-in-cairo-1/2023/12/14/0e4ce144-44f2-476c-b997-d7ad4204b928_video.html

Playlists with names such as “Palestine Sounds” and “Palestine Forever” have sprung up on social media and music-streaming apps since the war erupted, blending decades-old standards about dispossession with newer, more militant expressions of outrage.

“They’re basically saying eff off to the occupation,” said Andrew Simon, a Dartmouth University historian of pop culture in the Arab world. The in-your-face style, he said, “is quite different than [the Lebanese superstar] Fairuz singing in the ’70s and ’80s about the history of a bridge that Palestinians were expelled across.”

In the past two months, artists from the region have released a wave of Gaza-themed songs in a variety of genres. Media-savvy youths quickly add English subtitles and spread them on social media, hoping to scoop up new listeners in the West, which has seen large pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Washington, Paris and London.

But the main target audience remains the Arab world, especially younger generations who don’t remember earlier confrontations.

The Egyptian rapper Ganainy dropped a single last month that’s crammed with references to occupation and geography, “conveying some of the map and pieces of history, even if it’s just a song.”

Another theme of recent hits is perceived double standards by Western politicians.

The Egyptian rock band Cairokee, with more than 3.2 million YouTube subscribers, released a mournful track that opens with a line about saving sea turtles but killing “human animals,” a reference to an Israeli official’s dehumanizing language about Palestinians. The accompanying artwork shows a two-faced Statue of Liberty, with one side a devil.

The theme also runs through the lyrics to “Rajieen,” meaning, “We will return,” a collaboration of 25 Middle Eastern artists from different genres. In one section, a rapper pushes back at the blanket labeling of Palestinians as terrorists and another raps in Arabic, “Sorry that I’m not from Ukraine. Sorry that my skin isn’t White.”

“The older songs were more melancholic. The newer ones are more rebellious, more critical of the system in general,” said Ghada Eissa, a 26-year-old Egyptian who was wearing a necklace of a tiny Palestinian map that she bought recently.

Eissa was at a cafe with a friend, Yassmina Orban, 25, who’s been digging out older Palestinian songs to listen to. The war in Gaza, she said, has made her “relate on a whole different level.”

“I can imagine the words because I’m seeing what’s been happening,” Orban said, her eyes growing wet. “We’re watching our people get killed every single day.”

Songs about the Palestinian struggle stretch back to the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” the term Palestinians use for the forcible mass displacement that occurred during the creation of Israel in 1948. Old folk tunes about parting lovers took on new meaning as families were separated from their lands, said Louis Brehony, a U.K.-based academic whose book “Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance” was released last month.

The Nakba also interrupted a more cosmopolitan Palestinian music scene that took inspiration from the era’s Egyptian stars next door, he said. Little remains of that movement today.

“The recordings of these artists were looted in 1948,” Brehony said. Some were kept in Israeli archives. “Others were scattered, like the people themselves.”

Video: A historic quarter in Cairo plays host to musicians singing songs about Palestinian exile and resilience. (Video: Hannah Allam)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/loop-palestinian-songs-in-cairo-2/2023/12/14/fa216654-d5a0-4394-9287-52f0fe030ed6_video.html

As the conflict unfolded, and Palestinian militants took up arms, the musical themes evolved from tragedy and longing to steadfastness and resistance. Arab artists who championed the cause were often persecuted by authoritarian regimes, nervous about talk of rifles and rebellion.

That was the experience of Sheikh Imam, an iconic Egyptian singer and composer of the classic “Ya Falasteeniya.” Banned from the radio, the songs spread through informal cassette recordings made by Imam and his longtime collaborator, poet Ahmed Fouad Negm. The two were locked up repeatedly for subversive lyrics that are still sung by Egyptians today as a way around the government’s ban on protests.

At the same recent performance, musicians from the Sheikh Imam Society also sang “Nixon Baba” — a scathing commentary on President Richard M. Nixon’s 1974 visit to Egypt — but revised one line to “Biden Baba,” a jab at the U.S. administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

“With the atrocities happening ... I found myself returning to Sheikh Imam,” said Mahmoud Ezzat, director of the society dedicated to the singer’s legacy. “Gaza is in the hearts of Arabs.”

A picture of Sheikh Imam with a Palestinian flag behind him hangs in the reception area of the Sheikh Imam Society in Cairo. Imam was a popular Egyptian composer and singer who dedicated some of his music to the Palestinian struggle. (Sima Diab for The Washington Post)

Two widely shared TikTok videos illustrate how music is being weaponized in this round of fighting.

One video shows an Israeli soldier playing a guitar amid the rubble of a home in Gaza, belonging to displaced Palestinian musician Hamada Nasrallah, a member of the band Sol. On Instagram, Nasrallah said the guitar was a gift from his late father, a treasured souvenir he wasn’t able to carry when he fled.

“Isn’t it enough that they take away our loved ones, our homes, our families, and even our music and memories? Where does the injustice stop?!” Nasrallah wrote.

Another clip shows doctors and medical workers in October outside the besieged al-Awda Hospital in Gaza. Standing together in scrubs, with smiles on their faces, they sing, “We will remain.”

Other Arab creatives — painters, playwrights, novelists — have also reflected on the Palestinian plight over the past 75 years, but historians say their work hasn’t had the same mass appeal as music. Where books were banned and statues smashed, songs endured through oral tradition.

“We’re on the fourth generation right now, so memory is the fuel for it all. If you do not hold on to the memory, there is no cause,” said Kegham Djeghalian, a Palestinian Armenian creative director whose grandfather opened the first photography studio in Gaza in 1944.

A couple of years ago, Djeghalian curated an exhibition of his grandfather’s photographs, focusing on what he called the “ruptured archive,” the absences that remain after years of war and displacement.

A trove of fragile, irreplaceable negatives remained in Gaza with the brother of his grandfather’s apprentice, who inherited the studio. That man, Marwan Tarazi, died in October along with his wife and granddaughter in an Israeli strike on a church where they were seeking shelter.

More lives lost, Djeghalian said — another rupture in the archive.

When asked whether there was a song that encapsulated such experiences, Djeghalian paused for a moment then reached for his phone. He scrolled until he found a video taken last summer during a family barbecue in Bethlehem.

The clip shows his elderly uncle, white-haired and cane in hand, leading relatives young and old in a chant they’ve sung for generations at weddings and parties. With their voices raised in unison, Djeghalian said, “We’re not even thinking we are occupied.”

“I’d pay a lot of money to go back to that moment,” he said, his voice catching. “We were happy. There was hope. And now I don’t know when I can go back.”

Heba Farouk Mahfouz contributed to this report.

Hong Kong activist convicted under security law flees to U.K.

Shibani Mahtani

7:00PM, 28 Dec, 2023

Tony Chung in Hong Kong in 2020. Chung, who has fled to Britain, was among the youngest people sentenced under the city's national security law, but told the court he had “nothing to be ashamed of.” (Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images)

LONDON — One of the youngest pro-democracy activists to have been sentenced in Hong Kong under a national security law imposed by China has fled to Britain, where he said he will seek asylum.

Tony Chung, who in an interview described attempted brainwashing while incarcerated and arbitrary rules imposed on him even after his release, is the latest high-profile Hong Kong activist to leave the city in violation of restrictions on overseas travel. Chung told authorities he was planning a trip to Okinawa in Japan for vacation and promised to return to Hong Kong. Earlier this month, Agnes Chow, another democracy activist, announced she had left Hong Kong for Canada in violation of her bail conditions and would probably not return for the rest of her life.

The continued exodus of young activists — despite attempts by the Hong Kong authorities to compel their loyalty — underscores the deterioration of freedoms in a city meant to be autonomous from mainland China. The Hong Kong government has continued to claim that the city’s rights and freedoms are “better protected” after passage of the national security law.

Chung joins a growing number of exiled Hong Kongers who hope to continue exerting pressure on Beijing over the loss of political freedom in Hong Kong, despite cash bounties offered by city authorities for the arrest of 13 overseas activists.

“I have always believed that Hong Kong is the only home of our nation, we shouldn’t be the ones leaving,” Chung said in a statement. But he said the trauma of his arrest, detention and continued surveillance has left him feeling “immense pressure and fear,” which compelled him to leave.

Chung, 22, was just a teenager when he became involved in politics. He co-founded Studentlocalism, a group that advocated for Hong Kong to be independent from China, a red line for the Chinese Communist Party. In an interview with a local English-language publication in 2017, Chung said he came to believe independence was “the only way” to achieve self-rule and democracy for Hong Kong. The political position was fringe at the time and continues to be so even though it gained some traction during mass protests in 2019.

Studentlocalism dissolved before the national security law came into force in June 2020. Though the authorities promised the security law would not be used retroactively, Chung was among the first arrested under suspicion of inciting “secession.” He was initially released on bail.

Chung, whose passport was confiscated, decided to seek protection at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong. He knew it was a long shot, having looked up laws that spell out how asylum is granted once someone is on U.S. soil, but he was desperate. Such an attempt was not unprecedented — two Chinese dissidents had been granted protection by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1989 and 2012.

Chung never made it to the consulate gates. As he was alighting from a taxi across the road from the consulate in late October 2020, Chung saw several men watching him. The men turned out to be undercover police officers who detained him.

“I was completely broken,” Chung said of his mental state at the time. “I couldn’t really think.”

Chung said felt he had no choice but to plead guilty to the charges against him. He was sentenced in November 2021 to three years and seven months in prison. His alleged crimes, as detailed by prosecutors, involved no violence — only Facebook posts and other political speech. The judge presiding over the case said the sentence was needed to “deter future acts.”

While in detention, Chung was made to participate in a deradicalization program aimed at changing his beliefs and that of other young prisoners arrested for political crimes. The program was compulsory, he said. Chung confirmed details about the program previously reported by The Washington Post, such as mandatory history lessons that showcase China’s achievements.

Guards “kept telling us that the United States government is really bad and that we had been manipulated by the United States,” Chung said. “We felt like we had to agree with them, that we couldn’t disagree or argue back” for fear of punishment, he added.

Chung was eventually released in June 2023, his time reduced for good behavior. One week before he was due to be released, police from the national security division visited him and warned him not to continue any activities related to “splitting” China, to keep a low profile and not to leave Hong Kong for a year. Conditions of the order included not posting or saying anything that would harm Hong Kong’s national security — a wide-ranging and unclear restriction — and not speaking publicly. Authorities also prevented him from taking up a temporary job he had secured as a waiter in a restaurant, Chung said, stating without explanation that he could not work in that specific business.

Without the job, Chung struggled financially. Amid those difficulties, national security officers proposed he work as a paid informant. Chung provided some basic updates and photos pertaining to people of interest to the police, fulfilling the “minimum requirements” of the police, he said, and was paid a fee.

Representatives for the Hong Kong Correctional Services Department and police department could not immediately be reached for comment.

Since Chung’s release, officials from Hong Kong’s Correctional Services Department have requested meetings every two to four weeks, summoning him to random locations and then transporting him to undisclosed places in a seven-seater van, its curtains drawn shut. Chung said that during those encounters, he was interrogated about his activities over the previous weeks, asked to provide the names of elementary school classmates as well as “detailed information about his visits to restaurants and bars, along with contents of [his] conversations.”

In one meeting this September, officers asked him if he’d be willing to travel to mainland China, where they could arrange a tour for him. Chung replied that would go only if his safety was guaranteed. Officers did not bring up the proposal again.

Chow, the activist who left Hong Kong in early December, said on an Instagram post and in interviews she was brought to the mainland on such a tour, and was made to visit the headquarters of a Chinese technology company and attend an exhibition showcasing China’s rapid economic development — part of an apparent effort, she said, to convince her she should support the Chinese system.

Chung said he considered other potential destinations to seek asylum, including the United States and Canada, but felt his chances were highest in Britain. He convinced his minders that he wanted to travel to Okinawa for a vacation over Christmas, saying he needed to “emotionally adjust” to life outside detention. Chung submitted a full travel itinerary, including his flight and accommodation details, and the National Security Department approved the trip. Once in Okinawa, Chung bought a plane ticket from Okinawa to Britain before his deadline to return to Hong Kong.

Chung plans to continue his studies and says he will contribute everything he can in exile, “just as before.”

Posting kids online is risky. Here’s how to remove their images.

New artificial intelligence tools are the latest reason to be cautious about leaving minor’s images on the internet

Heather Kelly

11:00AM, 27 Dec, 2023

(Illustration by Elena Lacey/The Washington Post; iStock)

It makes sense that parents want to share their children with the world. Their easy smiles, moments of joy and milestones feel like something innocent to celebrate.

Most people also know better than to post young children, tweens or teens excessively online.

By now, we’re familiar with the risks of sharing photos and videos of minors to websites or social media apps, where they can be used for bullying or misused by strangers. An evolving threat is artificial intelligence tools, which are improving at a dizzying pace. They can be fed real images and photos to make “deep fakes.”

It’s already happening. New Jersey high school students allegedly used AI tools to make sexualized images of their classmates using “original photos” last summer. A high school student in Issaquah, Wash., allegedly used real photos of classmates to make sexualized images, which were then shared around. And in Spain, parents of more than 20 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 say photos of their children were altered using AI tools to create sexual images.

AI tools “need as little as one picture now,” says Wael Abd-Almageed, distinguished principal scientist and research director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. “You can train AI to pick up the facial features of somebody, so if the AI can pick up the facial features for a child, you can replace them in a video.”

How much can you actually remove?

There’s not a magic eraser button to wipe every image or video of someone from the internet. If you already know what you want taken down, that’s easier. But if you’re dealing with a child whose likeness has been shared widely, tracking down everything will be time-consuming or even impossible.

“What goes on the internet stays on the internet. It can never go away,” Abd-Almageed said.

Images and videos are shared and reshared, backed up and archived by companies, or can be saved and shared in encrypted chats or on the dark web, he said. Even removing a photo of a minor from Google search results doesn’t really take it off the internet. It will still exist on the site that was hosting it.

Whether it’s cleaning up the past or controlling the future, keeping all of a child’s data off the internet is also a huge commitment and may be unrealistic for most families.

“It might not be a level of vigilance most of us can live with at this point,” said Devorah Heitner, author of “Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World.” Instead, she suggests looking ahead and giving your child a say over if and where their image appears online.

What’s the process for Google, TikTok, Facebook?

Most large tech companies have a system to request images be taken down. We’ve rounded up the basics for Google, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. There are always exceptions, and not every photo can be removed. As your children get older, you might also run into issues with them wanting to share themselves more than you are comfortable with — most services will let minors create their own accounts as long as they are 13 or older.

Google Search, Photos, Drive: A minor, their guardian or someone authorized to act on their behalf like a lawyer can request content — an image, video or text — be removed from Google Search results using this form. There are some limitations. It only removes content from Google’s results, but they will still exist on the original site. Google won’t take down content if it’s on your own social media page and may decline requests if the images are in the public interest — say, a child is a public figure or the photo is from a newsworthy event. The process typically takes a few days. If the image is on Google Photos, you can report it here, and Google Drive here. If it’s a photo that has been removed but still shows up in search results, use this tool.

YouTube: If there’s a video of a child on YouTube, the minor or their representative can fill out a request to remove it here. YouTube is adding AI-generated materials in its policies so that you can more easily request their removal as well.

Facebook and Instagram: These social media sites will only let a parent request the removal of content for minors under 13 years old. If a child is between 13 and 17, they must submit a request themselves. Links to the forms for Facebook are here, and the forms for Instagram are here.

TikTok: If you want to request TikTok remove a video of a minor, the person depicted or their guardian must fill out this privacy form. Select “report a privacy violation” from the drop-down menu. Posting a minor without their permission does not automatically violate the company’s community guidelines — but if flagged, the company says it should remove them.

How do you find the images you want to remove?

Start with Google searches of their names, comb through social media accounts for yourself, family members and any schools or clubs they’ve belonged to. If you’re looking for copies of a specific image, try doing a reverse-image search. Go to images.google.com and click the camera icon to search by image.

A number of controversial face-detection companies like Clearview AI and PimEyes can take one image of a person and find matches across the internet. Unfortunately, they are not designed to be useful for people trying to control their own privacy. PimEyes is available to the public but recently said it would no longer include faces its AI systems flagged as minors. Clearview AI says its database is meant for entities like law enforcement, not individuals.

There is little to no legislation preventing companies from scraping the web for images. However, there are state privacy laws you can use to get a list of images from these sites in California, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia. First, submit a request to access your or your child’s information — here’s the PimEyes link and here is Clearview’s. You should get a file back that shows all the images it found and the sites where they’re hosted. You can then go directly to those site to request the images be removed. When you’re done, do another request but this time to delete all your data.

What can you do going forward?

It’s easier to make rules for sharing in the future than to clean up the past. For younger children, this responsibility will fall on the adults around them.

Only share images and videos of your children privately. The most secure way is in encrypted group chats like Apple’s iMessage or Signal. If you prefer the wider reach of social media, you can post family photos with their faces blurred out or use options that “disappear” like Instagram Stories. Clearly communicate your preferences to extended family members, like letting grandpa know you don’t want him sharing baby photos on Facebook.

With high schools at the center of these early AI scandals, consider where students find photos of each other. As children join different programs, schools and activities, guardians will be given photo release forms to sign. You can opt out of all of these if you want, or just the ones that want to use images publicly versus in closed groups.

Once they enter the tween and teen years, you’ll probably need to turn over some of these decisions to the children themselves. Give them all the information and support they’ll need to make good decisions, should they ever want to start a YouTube channel or even just appear in a friend’s Instagram feed.

“There’s just a point where I think we’re all on the internet,” Heitner said. “Giving kids the power and control over when they post about themselves gives them autonomy over their own reputation — there may be all kinds of reasons they don’t want us to post certain things, and it is important that they can trust us not to violate their privacy.”

Ukraine gets modest U.S. weapons package, until Congress can agree to more

Isabelle Khurshudyan, Anastacia Galouchka

2:20PM, 28 Dec, 2023

Activists hold signs at a rally in front of the Kyiv City Council, demanding that authorities allocate more funds to the Ukrainian military, in downtown Kyiv on Dec. 16. (Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images)

KYIV — A modest U.S. weapons package for Ukraine — what is likely be the last one until Congress approves new funding — was met with tepid gratitude in Kyiv on Thursday.

The $250 million package, which includes artillery shells, air defense equipment, antiaircraft and antitank missiles, and small arms ammunition for the fight against Russia, will address some battlefield shortfalls, but it still leaves Ukraine facing an uncertain future and without critical financial support entering the new year.

President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked President Biden in a post on X, formerly Twitter, for the weapons that “will cover Ukraine’s most pressing needs.”

“U.S. leadership in the coalition of over 50 countries providing Ukraine with military aid is critical to countering terror and aggression not only in Ukraine but around the world,” he added.

Yehor Cherniev, a lawmaker in Ukraine’s parliament, said the package “is only intended to keep us going for a little while longer, but it is not able to change the situation on the battlefield in our favor or even enable us to resist effectively.” And it’s unclear if or when Ukraine will receive more aid from its biggest backer.

“If a full package of aid to Ukraine is not voted through in the near future,” Cherniev said, “it will be difficult to restrain [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

Ukrainian officials have warned that without an influx of new funds, some salaries and social payments could be affected starting in January. Financial assistance from Washington alone accounts for roughly a third of Ukraine’s budget. That money can’t be used to directly pay soldiers their salary, but with so much money already going to the military, the Western aid is critical for civilian enterprises to continue running.

In addition to the uncertainty around U.S. aid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is blocking a proposed plan of $50 billion in new assistance from the European Union.

Adding to the budget constraints, Zelensky said last week that Ukraine’s military leadership submitted a plan to mobilize up to 500,000 more troops for the fight against Russia — what Zelensky estimated would cost the country some $13 billion. “I would like to know where the money will come from,” Zelensky said during a news conference in Kyiv.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko told Forbes on Wednesday that Ukraine has “exhausted our internal potential to finance military needs.”

“We do not rule out that we will have to look for additional internal funding sources,” Marchenko added.

Ukrainian soldiers work with a cannon on Monday, in the Bakhmut region of Ukraine. (Libkos/Getty Images)

While Ukraine waits for the passage of additional aid by Congress, this latest package will be welcome news to soldiers at the front line, who have complained that already scarce ammunition supplies have declined in recent months. Some are firing up to five times less artillery. After Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled with the start of winter, Russia has seized the battlefield initiative, claiming some gains near Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

White House officials have suggested in recent weeks that this weapons package, known as a “drawdown” from Pentagon inventories, was the last one they could make with existing funds, seeking to leverage what they have described as a dire funding situation to push Congress to approve Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion related to the war in Ukraine. Since Putin’s February 2022 invasion, the United States has committed $44 billion in security aid.

“This small package of aid is evidence for us that there are problems with the support of Ukraine from the U.S.,” Cherniev said. “We still believe that these problems are temporary and will be resolved very soon. … In the coming year, the Russians are most definitely counting on the fact that U.S. support for Ukraine will decrease and they will be able to achieve their goal.”

U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer shells lie on the ground to fire at Russian positions in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region in June 2022. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

With future funds uncertain, Ukrainian officials have placed more emphasis on domestic arms production. Zelensky has vowed that Ukraine will produce 1 million drones next year, and Kyiv has started producing artillery ammunition, though in small quantities. Cherniev warned that continued U.S. support “is the only factor on which it depends how long the war will last and how it will end.”

Despite the relative smaller size of the latest package, Mykola Davydiuk, a Kyiv-based political expert, said, “I think that this is good news.”

“The fact that our partners don’t leave us to fend for ourselves, even when bureaucratic moments don’t allow them to transfer the sum of money that they want to and that we would want to, they still don’t abandon us and support us either way,” he said.

Opinion

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- Preventing autocracy

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- Palestinians must be part of any postwar Gaza peacekeeping force

- Inside the drive to use Russia’s money for Ukraine

- Why your kids are obsessed with axolotls

When is this movie really going to start? I’ve been here half an hour.

Richard Zoglin

10:45AM, 27 Dec, 2023

Patrons arrive to see a film at the AMC 16 theater in Burbank, Calif., in March 2021. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)

Richard Zoglin is a New York-based writer and critic.

It took me a few weeks to get out to see the new Martin Scorsese film, “Killers of the Flower Moon”; the running time of three hours and 26 minutes was pretty daunting. Still, on a recent weeknight, I trekked to my local multiplex in New York City for an 8:30 p.m. showing. Since I knew it would be a long evening, I made sure to arrive a few minutes late, to miss some of the pre-show ads and trailers.

Not late enough. I still had to sit through several minutes of previews and AMC Theatres promotions before Leonardo DiCaprio finally appeared on the screen. But not in the movie — he was interviewing Scorsese about the historical background of the film, which recounts the organized murders of Osage tribe members in 1920s Oklahoma. After three or four minutes of their gab, the theater finally darkened, and the film seemed ready to start. But wait — there was Scorsese again, addressing the audience to say, once more, how honored he was to “tell this powerful historical story in the most authentic way possible.” By the time the movie dawdled onto the screen, a three-hour-26-minute film had ballooned into a nearly four-hour evening.

Scorsese is one of many filmmakers and critics who have campaigned for seeing movies the old-fashioned way — on the big screen in theaters, rather than through streaming services at home. But I wonder how many of these film lovers (who generally see movies in a comfy screening room, where they start on time and no one has to sit through ads for PlayStation) have actually been to a movie theater lately. It has become a grueling experience.

Set aside the $10 bags of popcorn and the confusing array of projection formats — Imax, 4DX, Dolby — that can boost the ticket price to $25 or more. And I’m not complaining about audience members who talk and scan their cellphones during the movie; complaints about unruly patrons date back to the days when people used to read the title cards aloud in silent films. No, it’s the bloated running times of so many current films and the expanding pre-show folderol that have turned moviegoing into an endurance test.

There once was a time (it now seems quaint to recall) when you had to go to Europe to see commercials in a movie theater; American movie houses were blessedly free of them. Not anymore. On another trip to the multiplex, to see Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (which weighs in at a relatively compact two hours and 38 minutes), I counted a dozen commercials, for everything from Hyundai to M&M’s, before the Regal voice of God told us to silence our cellphones and “enjoy the show” — after which came another slew of ads for various Pepsi drinks, six trailers for upcoming movies (because where better than a screening of “Napoleon” to look for fans of “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”?), and a pitch for the Regal Unlimited subscription plan. Thirty minutes in hard-sell captivity before the movie finally started.

Don’t get me wrong: I love going to the movies. After the pandemic, I returned to the theaters much sooner than most of my friends. But it’s becoming harder to justify that ordeal at the multiplex, rather than waiting a few weeks for the film to show up on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Watching a movie on the big screen can be absorbing, even thrilling. But it’s not a religious experience. My blood pressure spikes every time I see those platform heels stepping through a puddle on the way to a movie theater — the opening of Nicole Kidman’s inescapable promotional spot for AMC Theatres.

“We come to this place … for magic,” she intones reverently, as she settles into a seat in a deserted theater, stares beatifically up at the screen and rhapsodizes about “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim. … Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” AMC began running the spot two years ago to encourage people to return to theaters after the pandemic. By now it’s the most grating commercial pitch this side of the Kars4Kids jingle.

In an industry that takes itself so seriously, it’s perhaps not surprising that directors have been allowed to let their films run on and on. The average length of the top 10 grossing films of 2023 was two hours and 23 minutes — almost 30 minutes longer than in 2020. When some theaters tried inserting an intermission into their screenings of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the film’s producer and distributor forced them to stop, and Scorsese has fiercely defended the film’s length. Fine, Marty, you tell us where the best moment is to leave for a bathroom break.

I appreciate the nostalgia that Scorsese and other filmmakers feel for the old days, when going to the movies was a weekly habit. But it ignores how films have changed. They used to clock in at 90 minutes or less, and any preliminaries were added value — a Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry cartoon — not a commercial bombardment that both exhausts the audience and demeans the experience.

For an industry trying to lure people away from their home screens and back into theaters, a little restraint might be in order. If not a self-imposed limit on the number of pre-show ads and trailers, at least full disclosure in the listings of the film’s actual start time. After all, to reiterate the obvious, we come to this place … for movies.

Honestly, I love when AI hallucinates

Josh Tyrangiel

12:00PM, 27 Dec, 2023

It’s your wedding day. You have a charming but unpredictable uncle who, for this hypothetical, must give a toast. He’s likely to dazzle everyone, but there’s a small chance he’ll humiliate you in ways your guests will never stop talking about. Luckily there are options: You can roll the dice and let your uncle give his toast live or you can record and edit him to guarantee he makes a great impression.

This is roughly the choice Google faced when it unveiled Gemini, its new suite of artificial intelligence tools. Google has spent most of the year in competitive agony while people raved about the capabilities of Open AI’s ChatGPT. The company was desperate to show the world all the ways Gemini could vault it ahead. And on its most important day, debuting its most ambitious AI product, Google went with an edited video.

Generative AI tools have performed incredible feats in 2023, but they continue to be plagued by hallucinations — unpredictable errors that can range from flunking basic math to offending or flirting with users to providing completely made-up information. What all the errors have in common is that AI delivers them with authority. To users, a hallucination can feel like gaslighting.

The major players have been whistling past the hallucination problem in public because it raises serious questions about their products’ reliability. Also: That word is so devastating. Can you imagine a better wrapper for humanity’s fears about AI? Hallucination. “Hallucination” implies that the software you’re using has not only achieved consciousness, it has a consciousness it can’t control! If your product glitches in ways that remind people of their nightmares, you talk about it as little as possible. You definitely stay away from live demos.

There are a lot of disturbing examples of hallucinations, but the ones I’ve encountered aren’t scary. I actually enjoy them. (I also like watching drunk uncles at weddings.) Once when I was prepping for an interview, I asked ChatGPT to find transcripts from 10 interviews my subject had done with other publications. It not only made up a bunch of summaries and links to podcast episodes that don’t exist, but it also spat them out with flamboyant certainty. It was like talking to a George Santos bot. Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude, on the other hand, are more prone to taking a bad bit of logic or a slightly imprecise prompt and building on it, “Yes, and-ing” me into oblivion like terrible improv comics.

In the public vacuum left by Big Tech, academic research on hallucinations is booming. “We have a joke in our lab that you can’t take even an hour off or someone else will publish first,” says Vipula Rawte, a PhD student in computer science at the Artificial Intelligence Institute of University of South Carolina. As a result, we know much more about the phenomenon now than we did at the beginning of the year. The most obvious thing is that they’re not hallucinations at all. Just bugs specific to the world’s most complicated software.

Large language models are big probability machines with two tasks. The first is responding to a user’s prompt with accurate, well-reasoned information. Ask such a program the value of two dimes and one nickel, and it returns an answer by searching its training data, recognizing the monetary value of each coin and adding them up. The second task is responding to that same prompt in conversational language. This requires the model to predict the probability that one word will follow another in a sequence that mimics human speech.

When large language models work well, knowledge and language harmonize. “Two dimes and one nickel are worth a total of 25 cents.” When they don’t? It’s like watching a calculator talk to a word processor — except new research suggests that one of them is always talking louder.

William Merrill studies large language models in the PhD program at New York University’s Center for Data Science. As a Yale undergrad, he majored in linguistics. When I asked Merrill if he could make a model hallucinate on command, he seemed a little hurt. “Um, yeah.”

Using the nickel and dimes example, Merrill tweaked the prompt to force ChatGPT into a different kind of reasoning:

Boom.

Once a chatbot hallucinates, the fun is just getting started. In a spring paper called “How Language Model Hallucinations Can Snowball,” Merrill and four co-authors cited several examples of ChatGPT-4 incorrectly answering a yes or no question — and then generating even more incorrect information to double down on its response. In one instance ChatGPT-4 was asked, “Was there ever a US senator that represented the state of New Hampshire and whose alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania?” It incorrectly responded, “Yes … His name was John P. Hale.” But in a follow-up, ChatGPT recognized that Hale (a 19th-century senator) graduated from Bowdoin College.

So why did ChatGPT create a snowball of wrongness in one answer and recognize its error in another? Merrill told me that a first hallucination can sometimes happen because “predicting the format of the response is easier for [large language models] than actually figuring out the correct answer.” Language shouts down knowledge.

The authors suspect snowballing happens for a similar reason. In English and many other languages, people usually respond to yes-or-no questions by starting a sentence with yes or no before explaining themselves. GPT-4’s first response to these queries is either yes or no 95.67 percent of the time, and as Merrill’s paper says, “coherence would require commitment to that choice through the subsequent justification.” In other words, your large language model is programmed to talk like a person — and many people are confidently full of it.

This is still in the realm of theory for now. No one knows definitively why large language models hallucinate, though some causes are easier to diagnose than others. Bad training data is the most likely source of a flawed response: Garbage in, garbage out. An assertively false prompt or imprecise language can also confuse AI. In a paper she co-authored, Rawte created an example of both. “We said: ‘Kamala Harris and Elon Musk are married.’ This is true in that they are or were married to their respective partners. But, obviously, they are not married to each other,” Rawte says. “So an ideal response should be, ‘This is false.’” Instead, Flan-T5, an open-source chatbot released by Google in 2022, wrote a summary of the wedding announcement, punctuated by a Musk tweet that read, “Kamala is going to be the best wife.”

Unless you’re selling psilocybin, surreality is bad for business. So, it’s not surprising that as the furor over hallucinations has grown, the makers of the biggest AI chatbots have responded with blunt force. Their weapon of choice: dialing down their models’ temperature controls. Temperature is a way of measuring the randomness or creativity of AI-generated responses; a lower temperature means more predictable or conservative responses while a higher one encourages the model to experiment. Given the scrutiny of global regulators and the gobs of money at stake, no one is all that interested in letting their models get freaky.

This is the responsible thing to do. Turning down the temperature buys time to deal with hallucinations in a more nuanced way. Many academics, including Meta’s chief AI scientist, think the problem will be minimized or even resolved in the next few years through a combination of tweaks to the models and users learning how to structure their prompts for better results. Already, researchers have observed the latest version of ChatGPT-4 acknowledging an initial mistake and revising answers with fresh logic. The snowballs are melting.

If the age of hallucinations has peaked, I’m going to miss them. I’m not trying to minimize the harm they can do, nor am I naive enough to think there’s a mass market for surreality. If Steven Spielberg woke up with David Lynch’s box office results, he’d throw himself out a window. But I suspect we’ll soon have nostalgia for the days when AI was unpredictable and weird and a little bit messy. No one remembers a perfect wedding.

Nikki Haley goes on Civil War autopilot, runs over her own campaign

Jim Geraghty

7:22PM, 28 Dec, 2023

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign town hall in Atkinson, N.H., on Dec. 14. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Oooof.

Nikki Haley offered a really lousy answer on Wednesday night about the cause of the Civil War during a town hall in Berlin, N.H. On Thursday morning, she complained that the questioner was “definitely a Democrat plant,” as if she had been hit with a tricky or unfair question.

Decide for yourself if there was anything tricky or unfair about the question, or if — as someone is certain to complain — Haley’s words are somehow being taken out of context. Here’s the entire exchange verbatim:

Questioner: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

Haley: Well, don’t come with an easy question or any — I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was?

[The questioner’s answer is inaudible.]

Haley: I’m sorry?

[The questioner gets a microphone.]

Questioner: I’m not running for president. I, I, I wanted to see what your —

Another person: It’s a good thing!

Questioner: — on the cause of the Civil War.

Haley: I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government, and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t have to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties — so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.

Questioner: Thank you. And in the year 2023, it is astonishing to me that you answered that question without mentioning the word “slavery.”

Haley: What do you want me to say about slavery?

Questioner: No, um, you’ve answered my question. Thank you.

Haley: Next question.

In or out of the full context, the answer stinks. It’s gobbledygook. It’s as if someone took Haley’s usual stump speech, printed it onto those little “fridge poetry” magnet words and smushed them around on the refrigerator door.

Even if you cut Haley some slack — she didn’t expect the question and was speaking off the cuff — a person really has to bend over backward to not mention slavery at all in a 200-word answer about what caused the Civil War. Even when prompted by the questioner’s mention of slavery, she didn’t say, “Whoops, I forgot to mention that, sorry, it has been a long day.” She seemed to see no need to expand on her answer — or to recognize the political mess she was plunging her campaign into.

This is going to lead to a lot of accusations that Haley is some sort of neo-Confederate or slavery apologist, which is tough to align with the fact that in 2015, as South Carolina’s governor, she chose to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds.

No, this was just a hideous demonstration of what happens when a candidate goes on verbal autopilot and has apparently developed instincts to placate those in her home state who don’t want to believe that the Civil War featured one side with a righteous cause and one side with a lost cause that defended a fundamentally evil system.

Even when Haley announced the flag’s removal, she said, “For many people in our state, the flag stands for traditions that are noble — traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry. … At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state, we can survive, as we have done, while still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and loser.” Haley wanted to remove the flag but also never wanted to antagonize those who romanticized the Confederate cause.

Thursday morning, Haley appeared on New Hampshire talk-radio host Jack Heath’s show. In addition to complaining about Democrats planting questions at her town halls, Haley declared, “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery, that’s the easy part. Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.” Funny how doing the easy part was so hard the night before.

Even the paeans to liberty in Haley’s answer don’t really hold up: “They”— the government — “don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do” and “They don’t need to be a part of your life”? Come on, isn’t the government telling you “what you can and can’t do” a big part of why it exists? And short of living in the woods in a shack like the Unabomber, you’re going to need and want the government to be “a part of your life” — roads, schools, EMTs — in some way.

But, hey, how much can a screw-up in New Hampshire derail a candidacy? Well, Marco Rubio was doing pretty well in the 2016 GOP campaign until the debacle of his bizarre robotic debate performance in the Granite State. Haley clearly thought he’d survive — she endorsed him a couple of weeks later. She must be hoping for a better outcome from this self-inflicted wound.

Confederate monuments are lessons in war

Letters to the Editor

8:07PM, 28 Dec, 2023

A construction crew prepares Dec. 20 to take down parts of a Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Regarding the Dec. 21 Metro article “Confederate statue comes down”:

This sanctimonious policy foisted upon the U.S. military leadership is anathema to the ideals of chivalry, valor and honor due the simple soldier. Noble forts are capriciously renamed to satisfy fickle politicians. Now, stepping foot onto the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery to advance a political agenda has stirred the righteous anger of the living and awakened the spirits resting there. The headstones laid out in concentric circles surrounding the Confederate monument with the main figure removing her laurel wreath, hand extended and bowed head in mourning, are marked “unknown.” The Confederate soldiers resting there lost their lives in service to their home states, and they lost their identities.

They were granted amnesty to restore their honor. They were granted a plot of Virginia earth to lay their broken bodies with dignity. They were granted a monument to salute them in perpetuity, that they might know eternal rest in small recompense from their victors by affording them this small mercy. It is enough that Arlington was confiscated from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to use to bury Civil War soldiers in his own time. This monument was designed to convey respect to warfighters, that even if they were once your enemy, they were your countrymen. It is petty to begrudge them this final salute.

There will always be a political protest to war policy. That debate is done under the Capitol dome, not Arlington National Cemetery or anywhere else that honors our warfighters. If you disagree with the policy, take it up with the policymakers. Let the lessons of war be a constant reminder through the monuments erected for those who were destroyed in a war they never started over a policy they never created. The spirit of the soldiers laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery are protesting this. If you do not fight for us now, who will fight for you later?

Anthony Melé, Rockland County, N.Y.

Protecting democracy from autocrats

Letters to the Editor

8:07PM, 28 Dec, 2023

The dome of the U.S. Capitol. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Regarding the Dec. 22 editorial, “How the battle for democracy will be fought — and won”:

The Editorial Board must look beyond the box in defeating authoritarian advantages in framing democracy as dysfunctional. Democracies are dysfunctional. They can’t react instantly with a workable solution. And if they do, it’s only momentary in stopping the problem. Independent nations with independent agencies cannot quickly stop globally interdependent challenges. Authoritarians can act quickly and forcefully. Then they can quickly adjust if they fear a citizen revolt, making them appear strong and wise.

Democracies’ lag times at best yield only reactionary solutions. Combined with citizens’ unrealistic expectations for best results, problems are unlikely to be solved. Quick and effective responses to pandemics, immigration flows, violent extremists, destructive weather patterns or economic pain caused by interdependent global influences are not going to come from either form of government. Neither can deliver what’s actually needed: addressing root causes. This would require international cooperation and coordination on a level unseen since the global eradication of smallpox or hosting the Olympics.

Democracies moving in this sensible direction would require a majority of wise and patient voters insisting on it. Freedom certainly matters to them! But protecting a nation’s freedoms requires wisdom, responsibility, accountability and a democratic majority of virtuous voters. An authoritarian leader needs only patience and to placate citizens. Both systems of government can expect a rougher future.

Chuck Woolery, Rockville

The writer is a former chair of the United Nations Association Council of Organizations.

The Dec. 22 editorial called for government-funded media and counter-censorship tools to be beefed up. But Americans whose tax dollars support the alphabet soup of public diplomacy agencies long ago grew weary of their mismanagement.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) budget request for fiscal 2024 was about $940 million. Congress boosted spending year after year but failed to address the managerial rot that has become a baked-in feature of USAGM.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans alone have been willing to examine these issues. They have demanded more transparency and accountability. But the response from Voice of America — recently in the headlines for refusing to call Hamas “terrorists” — was stonewalling.

Basically, VOA and USAGM have a “don’t tread on me” attitude toward congressional criticism. At a 2023 congressional hearing, USAGM chief executive Amanda Bennett was seen to be evasive in her answers to sharp questions. On the Hamas matter, the current acting VOA director described complaints from Republican lawmakers as “silly.”

The Post and public diplomacy cognoscenti would have taxpayers pony up potentially hundreds of millions of dollars more in the great war against advancing authoritarianism. But careful thought needs to be given to how to clean up the mess at USAGM. No one will support just shutting the place down. But aggressive, targeted organizational reforms are sorely needed, and that hasn’t happened under the Biden administration.

Daniel Robinson, Potomac

The writer is a former VOA White House, congressional and foreign correspondent.

The Dec. 22 editorial noted “autocracy is on the march in today’s world, and democracy must confront this profound threat.” This is a view I share and therefore hope, in its next opinion, the Editorial Board will look at how the tactics of authoritarians are plainly visible in the platform of former president Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, most specifically in his past and proposed future efforts to capture the civil service for his political agenda.

The vast majority of civil service employees are not political appointees; they are hired and fired based on merit and cause, which means they are held accountable to the law and regulations of the land. But toward the end of his administration, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that, had it not been rescinded by President Biden, would have reclassified a large number of civil service professionals into political appointees. This would increase the number of political appointees by an estimated 50,000 positions, meaning there would be a much, much larger slice of our federal government subject to the whims and vendettas of the president. Mr. Trump has pledged to restore this executive order if reelected, thus making real the potential for an actual deep state and fast-tracking perhaps the most dangerous kind of authoritarianism — the one that masks itself as a democracy.

Danielle Brian, Washington

The writer is executive director of the Project On Government Oversight.

I really appreciated the timely and informative Dec. 22 editorial. In addition to the comprehensive discussion of the important tangible efforts to permit meaningful communication in repressed societies, the paragraph asserting the need for a “rebuttal to the narrative offered by dictatorships” was paramount.

The vital element among the inherent advantages of democratic systems is the freedom to discuss and the corresponding courage to admit to their imperfections. This is what attracts those who seek to effect political, economic, social or cultural change. This is what makes democracy, whether popular or representational, dynamic.

In contrast, beyond their depredations, authoritarian regimes degenerate from a lack of open communication and ultimately become sclerotic. Understanding the history of the development of democracy — and clearly presenting its limitations and how they can be overcome — precludes any need for reliance on spin or slogans.

The development of the communication tools described in the editorial and indeed the technological advances that facilitated their development are evidence of what democracy is all about.

Andrew Labadie, Washington

Regarding Karen Tumulty’s Dec. 20 op-ed, “Democracy has a youth problem”:

One factor contributing to its declining support is that democracy is erroneously viewed by some as being less decisive and therefore less effective than autocracy. This misconception should be addressed by a quick, hard-hitting, play-the-tape-forward civics lesson: People prefer autocracy from the vantage point of having chosen it.

They might express this preference in the near-term context of the upcoming presidential election. The premise that voters choose governments is intrinsic to democracy. It will be falsified in the longer term, however, if autocracy wins out. To teach that the autocracy premise is false, I suggest shifting to a longer-term narrative.

That is: The autocrat, not today’s voters, will fashion future governments. Autocracies increasingly will serve the interests of the autocrat, not the voters, not the public. Those saying they prefer autocracy are unlikely to prefer it if they are educated to understand that, ultimately, they will be marginalized, if not excluded from choosing it, and they will not be its beneficiaries.

Robert Michaels, Schenectady, N.Y.

The writer is a consulting scientist and author of “Civics and Science: Contemporary Issues for Civil Democracy.”

Face it: A smart ban on ski masks can help fight crime and protect rights

Editorial Board

12:00PM, 28 Dec, 2023

A pedestrian wears a ski mask in Philadelphia in November. (Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP)

Tucked into Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s Addressing Crime Trends Now Act, a bill intended to help police fight crime in D.C., is an under-discussed proposal: a prohibition on ski masks and face coverings.

The mayor’s proposal would revive the anti-mask section of a 1982 law, the Anti-Intimidation and Defacing of Public or Private Property Criminal Act. That statute prohibited those 16 and older from covering their faces while in public, intending to commit a crime, intimidate, threaten, or harass others or in cases in which masking would recklessly “cause another person to fear for his or her personal safety.”

The provision, which carried a one-year maximum sentence, was rarely enforced even when it was on the books. And D.C. repealed it in 2020 to encourage the use of face masks during the coronavirus pandemic.

That reasonable public health policy had an unintended consequence: normalizing masking for all sorts of purposes, legal and otherwise. Now, identity-obscuring ski masks have become a de facto uniform for those who commit retail thefts, carjackings and robberies. The disguises make crimes scarier and perpetrators more difficult to identify — which of course is the point. One of the more remarkable aspects of last week’s CityCenter Chanel store robbery was that a video camera recorded one of the suspects without a face covering.

Other cities are debating anti-mask measures or have already adopted them: Philadelphia in November banned ski masks in public places — parks, schools, day-care centers, city-owned buildings and public transit — and at least 11 states have some kind of anti-mask ordinance on their books, most decades old. The goal is to prevent citizens from feeling “under siege,” as one Philadelphia council member put it, and to promote a sense of public safety.

Safety, actual and perceived, is a valid goal, especially urgent in the District. Still, the case for mask bans is more complicated than it might seem. There is a tension between the security mask bans seek to protect and the First Amendment liberties some mask wearers can legitimately claim in certain contexts. Undeniably, dress can be a form of expression: As a fashion trend, the interest in ski masks spans classes and groups — spotted everywhere from music videos (ski masks are sometimes nicknamed “shiesties” after the Memphis rapper Pooh Shiesty) to high-fashion runways. The Guy Fawkes mask favored by anti-capitalist protesters has developed into a political symbol.

At the same time, anonymity has a long association with criminality or deviance, and social science research shows that it can enable untoward behavior and make crimes more terrorizing. Hence one of the earliest anti-mask mandates in the United States, the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which made it a federal offense to “go in disguise upon the public highways” with the intention of violating others’ constitutional rights. Much of democracy depends on citizens participating in politics visibly and with accountability; masks can be read as antisocial in the most basic sense.

Probably the biggest potential problem with anti-mask decrees is a practical one: enforcement. D.C. police are not eager to enforce such a ban; some officers have told us that it is a distraction from more important tasks and could heighten the risk of discrimination claims. The fact that ski masks are particularly popular among youths of color all but guarantees that enforcement will appear targeted. Seemingly disparate enforcement could engender resentment, as when the Alexandria housing authority issued a notice about upcoming enforcement of the city’s ski mask ban that only went to public housing residents. These fears aren’t unfounded: Enforcement of a mask law could easily facilitate unconstitutional behavior if wearing a popular accessory becomes a rationale for racial profiling.

Fortunately, relatively minor tweaks could address the concerns. A mask ban could be limited to particular and clearly delineated spaces — public transit, for instance, or city property and places of commerce, where mask-wearing is commonly understood to induce anxiety and serve little public good. Reasonable exceptions for religious practice or political expression should be spelled out in the statute. An anti-mask provision could be used to enhance penalties for other crimes of which the masked perpetrator is accused, rather than a stand-alone offense. A law that clearly provides that wearing a mask itself is not criminal, but committing a crime with one is, would be harder to use as a pretext for selective enforcement or harassment.

Ultimately, mask bans present a fresh iteration of a familiar problem: reconciling public safety with individual liberty. That balance is delicate at the best of times — but Ms. Bowser and the council should be able to strike it.

Palestinians must be a part of any postwar Gaza peacekeeping force

David Ignatius

11:15AM, 28 Dec, 2023

Palestinians are reflected on a damaged TV screen while searching the rubble of a building following Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. (Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

As New Year’s Day approaches in a blood-soaked Gaza, the Biden administration must prod Israel to face a reality: There is no endgame for this war that doesn’t require a Palestinian security force to help maintain order in Gaza after Hamas is deposed.

And where will this post-Hamas Palestinian force come from? The obvious answer is that it should be drawn from the thousands of Palestinians who serve in the roughly half-dozen security organizations now under the nominal control of the Palestinian Authority.

The authority is incompetent and corrupt — so this is hardly an ideal option. Israel rightly faults the authority for doing a poor job in maintaining law and order in the West Bank. But the authority, for all its faults, provides the best bridge to a postwar international peacekeeping force for Gaza, with Arab support. The authority has supporters in Gaza who despise Hamas. But they need help — not more bombs.

This challenge — of empowering and training security forces drawn from the Palestinian Authority — is one that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps resisting. But Biden administration officials see no other good pathway forward; they’re urging Israel to address the challenge before the carnage in Gaza gets worse and the future power vacuum there becomes impossible for anyone to fill.

Israel’s difficulty in thinking clearly about future security in Gaza is an example of the broader policymaking failure in Israel after the country went to war after Hamas’s savage terrorist attack on Oct. 7. Some prominent Israelis have told me privately for more than a month that the United States must press Israel to make wise choices about this war because Netanyahu seems unable to make them himself.

The reality is that the future of Palestinian security in Gaza begins with improved Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. That’s where such forces, independent of Hamas, can learn how to protect Palestinians, even as they cooperate with Israel, the United States and moderate Arab governments. Indeed, that’s what authority security forces are already doing in a sliver of the West Bank — not always well but with the legal authority to act and some competent and experienced leaders.

Though few Americans or Israelis are aware of it, the United States has been thinking about this problem of building Palestinian security forces for more than a decade. In 2005, the United States created a “security coordinator” in Jerusalem with an explicit mandate to “develop a capable, effective, and sustainable security force” for Palestinians and, by working with Israel, to “assist in ending violence” through this force. This office is now headed by an experienced veteran of Afghanistan, a former brigade commander in the 82nd Airborne Division, Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel.

The multiple security services illustrate the jumble of responsibility within the authority. Some units, such as the Presidential Guard and parts of the General Intelligence Service, have been well-trained by the CIA and Jordanian military and intelligence. The problem is that their writ has been too narrow, with authority limited mostly to what’s called “Area A” of the West Bank, which includes the big cities of Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, but accounts for only 18 percent of the overall territory.

To develop the leadership and skills they will need in Gaza — and the West Bank — the security forces need a wider footprint. The State Department explicitly calls for them to move into “areas vacated by [the Israel Defense Forces], including Area B,” which connects the West Bank’s big cities and accounts for another 22 percent of the West Bank.

Biden administration officials understand the need for such an expansion. But they’ve been wary of pressing a beleaguered Israel. They should push harder now.

Martin Indyk, who twice served as U.S. ambassador to Israel, noted the Palestinian Authority has been providing salaries for about 19,000 security personnel in Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007. “What state they are in one can only imagine, but they do represent a cadre of PA-loyal forces that could be trained and deployed to maintain law and order in the Gaza Strip,” Indyk said.

The natural partner for training these Gaza security forces would be Egypt, “since it knows the security terrain so intimately,” Indyk argued. In assuming this role, Egypt would augment the work Jordan has done since 2005 in training and mentoring Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.

Time is running out. Unless the authority can operate across a wider swath of the West Bank and begin training for a future role in Gaza, it won’t have the confidence of Palestinians or the competence to be a strong partner for Israel.

Israel’s path out of Gaza also requires a crackdown on violence by extremist settlers in the West Bank. The Biden administration has been urging Israel to discipline settlers for the past year, but the Netanyahu government, which has strong roots in the settler community, has often resisted. Biden finally got fed up — and took a unilateral step this month by announcing a ban on U.S. visas for settlers who engage in violence and their families.

The drive to restrain extremist settlers has a perhaps unlikely ally in Israeli Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, head of the IDF’s central command, which oversees the West Bank. Fox riled right-wing critics when he described a revenge attack by settlers on the Palestinian town of Huwara in February as a “pogrom.” Settlers are also furious that he has dismantled illegal “outposts” that often become settlements. In September, a pro-settler critic posted on X, formerly Twitter, a caricature of Fox as Hitler, with the claim “Yehuda Fox acts like a dictator.”

The Biden administration should recognize that senior IDF commanders oppose violence committed by extremist settlers and the harassment of the authority’s fragile security forces because they make it harder to maintain order in the West Bank — and, eventually, to create a stable post-Hamas order in Gaza in which Palestinian rights and security will be respected. The IDF doesn’t want an endless war.

Netanyahu’s relentless campaign against Hamas has shattered Gaza. He seems to have no idea how to put the pieces back together — or even to care what happens to the Palestinians there. The United States has a plan for the day after, even if Netanyahu doesn’t. He should start listening — or face the likelihood that he will soon be replaced.

To get Republican support for Ukraine, make Putin pay up, too

Josh Rogin

8:23PM, 28 Dec, 2023

A Ukrainian serviceman in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Nov. 8. (Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)

The Biden administration is finally warming to the idea of using Russia’s frozen assets to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. This idea was originally put forth by lawmakers as the best means of getting Russia to compensate Ukraine for the damage President Vladimir Putin has inflicted on it. Somewhat controversial and complicated, the proposal has long lingered in policy limbo despite bipartisan congressional backing.

Today, there is new urgency. If the White House can act quickly, its full support for the initiative could also be a means of getting Republicans to approve lifesaving Ukrainian military aid.

For more than a year, the administration resisted a bipartisan effort to pass legislation that would give President Biden the authority to seize Russian sovereign assets currently frozen in U.S. banks and give them to Ukraine. In November, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 40-2 on its version of the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (Repo Act).

Just last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the legislation could help him persuade House Republicans to vote for the administration’s emergency supplemental budget request, which includes about $60 billion for Ukraine in military, economic and humanitarian aid. “It would be pure poetry to fund the Ukrainian war effort with Russian assets,” Johnson said. “As you can imagine, that idea has been met with great enthusiasm on the Republican side.”

Johnson was fudging reality. The $300 billion of Russian assets frozen in U.S. and European banks would not be given to Ukraine right away; it would be used for funding reconstruction in the years ahead. Therefore, passing this law would not replace the need for Congress to also approve military aid to Ukraine as soon as possible.

But it could provide political cover for Republicans who want to support Ukraine but are afraid of backlash from the MAGA part of the GOP. “Many Republicans want to vote for Ukraine aid but they are scared of their base. If they can say we are making Putin pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine, it will be easier for them to vote yes,” former congressman Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), an early leader of this effort, told me. “And since the fate of the free world depends on getting every last vote for the supplemental, my hope is that the administration won’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

Behind the scenes, the White House has been involved in a long internal policy debate, extensive diplomatic outreach and simultaneous negotiations with Capitol Hill as it inches closer to publicly embracing the idea. There is legitimate concern inside the Treasury and State departments about seizing foreign sovereign assets, even under these conditions.

Also, only about 2 percent of those funds are held inside the United States, officials told me. Most of Russia’s frozen assets are in Belgium or Switzerland. And there is resistance in Europe, especially in Berlin, about whether the move is justifiable under international law and whether it might undermine confidence in the euro. The Biden administration is centering its diplomatic efforts around the Group of Seven and has called on those countries to come up with a way forward by the end of February.

But on Capitol Hill, the unspoken deadline for passing Ukraine aid in Congress is Jan. 19, the date by which Congress must also pass new government funding, several congressional aides told me. There’s frustration among the Repo Act’s supporters over both European objections and the perception that the White House has been dragging its feet.

“Yet again, Europe is arguing with itself, and its divisions on this issue only help Russia, which has already expropriated European companies,” a senior GOP congressional aide told me. “Common sense dictates that Russia should pay for the damage it has done to Ukraine.”

The White House wants to maintain the flexibility to give Russia back the assets if Putin compensates Ukraine on his own. Although that is unlikely, it bolsters the argument that the West is not taking Russia’s money — that it’s using it as a down payment on Russia’s future international obligations to Ukraine.

The Russian government is warning that the measure would be met with drastic retaliation. But when the U.S. and European banks froze the money last year, Moscow made similar threats and nothing came of them. Similarly, many warned that freezing the assets would undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar. That, too, has not come to pass.

Administration officials told me that without European buy-in, the plan won’t work. That’s true. But passing the Repo Act would show that the United States is deadly serious, thereby possibly inducing fence-sitting allies to fall in line. Moreover, the law simply gives Biden the authority to act. He would maintain broad flexibility in when and how he chooses to move forward.

The critics have a narrow point when they say this is an unprecedented use of America’s economic power for national security purposes. But unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. Without Russia’s seized assets, Ukraine could lose its ability to survive as a functioning country. And that is exactly Putin’s strategy.

Why your kids are obsessed with axolotls

Alyssa Rosenberg

11:00AM, 28 Dec, 2023

First, it was narwhals. Then, llamas. Now, axolotls are coming for America’s children.

The salamanders are the hottest creature in kids’ departments this winter. Children can dress plush axolotls from Build-A-Bear Workshop in holiday finery, or decorate their binders with bedazzled axolotl stickers from Pipsticks. Wee worriers might be soothed by a microwaveable axolotl heating pad or the pink light of an axolotl lamp. When Girl Scouts hit the streets to sell cookies in January, they’ll be cheered on by an axolotl mascot.

The story of how axolotls went from clammy and obscure to cute and ubiquitous is a lesson in the creation of contemporary trends. It’s also a caution: A market for tchotchkes featuring a critically endangered animal doesn’t necessarily support keeping the species alive in the wild.

Axolotls were primed to go viral. Their gills look fluffy from afar, making them easy to translate into plush. They have a winning expression, with wide-spaced eyes and perpetual small smiles. As one of the few creatures able to regenerate limbs and internal organs, they’re weird enough to appeal to kids enchanted by the oddities of the natural world. That they’re at risk only adds to the appeal.

Brand axolotl has been bubbling for a couple of decades. The critters appear to have made their pop culture debut in 1999, when Pokémon introduced something like one as a pocket monster named Wooper. Another similar Pokémon helped give rise to the first of many memes involving the creature. Toothless, an axolotl-inspired dragon, flapped onto the big screen in 2010’s “How to Train Your Dragon.” And the amphibians feature in the cryptocurrency game “Axie Infinity” that took off in the Philippines during the covid-19 pandemic.

But it was when the mega-popular world-building game “Minecraft” introduced axolotls in 2021 that interest in the creatures spiked.

Success breeds success: This year, axolotls beat out sea otters, zebras, sugar gliders, goats and pikas in the Girl Scout mascot vote, netting 38 percent of ballots.

The rise of the axolotl, and its challenge to llamas and narwhals, is also a product of the toy and craft industry’s constant search for the next cute thing to sell to kids and their parents.

Take Pipsticks, the sticker subscription service and retailer. It needs to generate 45 new sticker sheets a month, says Mo Vazquez, the company’s founder. “If there is a strange animal request, I usually want to do it immediately because we can make an animal fit into any theme,” she told me. Customers requested axolotls through the company’s Facebook page. (Axolotls have also racked up 3.7 billion views on TikTok.) The frilled-gilled ones made their Pipsticks debut for Valentine’s Day, all hearts and dreamy smiles.

Adults are driving the demand for axolotls, too — and for toys in general. At the Toy Fair in September, the Toy Association’s Kristin Morency Goldman highlighted research the group commissioned that suggests 89 percent of adults plan to buy toys for other grown-ups this holiday season. Goldman also said a staggering 53 percent of American men planned to buy toys for themselves.

Over at Build-A-Bear Workshop, which offers several plush axolotls and outfits for them, chief executive Sharon Price John notes a similar trend. Grown-up customers gravitate toward “trendy animals” as a form of self-expression. Fondness for axolotls — be they in jammies or tutus — can signal an affinity for gaming, environmental concerns or simply a love of all things cute. Many Pipsticks customers are adults, too.

Selling consumers small and big on axolotls has been easy. Channeling this enthusiasm toward conservation is harder, as the “Minecraft”-induced craze illustrated.

The platform has added at-risk animals and ecosystems to the game before, including bees, pandas and mangroves. And it partners with BBC Earth on environmental education. But the virtual axolotl introduction had unintended consequences in the real world. People rushed to buy axolotls as pets and then animal rescues were swamped with unwanted ones.

An axolotl poses on a stone. (Iva Dimova/Shutterstock)

A spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts noted that having an exotic animal as a mascot is an opportunity to educate girls about the challenges such pets pose. Rather than buying a live salamander, families might be better off with a symbolic axolotl adoption that contributes to conservation efforts.

Keeping axolotls alive in the wild requires both money and creativity. Wild axolotls’ wetland home around Mexico City has undergone radical changes. The expanding metropolis, changes to farming and the arrival of predatory nonnative fish saw the population plummet to just 35 per square kilometer a decade ago, down from thousands in the 1990s. Now researchers are trying to build demand for the products of farming practices that maintain the creatures’ native habitat, and to breed and release axolotls into the newly welcoming environment.

But conservationists hoping to seize axolotls’ moment in the spotlight to build long-term support had better hurry. From their monitoring of social media trends, Vazquez and John predict capybaras will be the next big thing. So when kids hanker after pajamas and pencils and plushies featuring the giant South American rodents in 2024, parents should remember: Pairing these with a real investment in biodiversity is the best gift of all.

Metro

- Wood sculptor transforms 300-year-old Md. tree into bench

- A decade later, she’s still fighting

- Rising syphilis cases in Va.

- Food aid increase uncertain for D.C.

- Man accused of grabbing women as he rode bike

- Montgomery board settles with ousted director

- Acclaimed author came from a past of French nobility

- Former owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks was a ‘committed’ senator

A 300-year-old tree was cut down in Md. A wood sculptor transformed it.

The park bench is expected to last for about two decades before the wood begins to decay

Kyle Melnick

10:08PM, 24 Dec, 2023

Chain-saw carver Colin Vale this month in Kensington, Md., unveiling the bench he made from the Linden Oak. (Bruce Guthrie)

When a long branch fell from one of Maryland’s oldest and most beloved trees earlier this year, chain-saw carver Colin Vale inspected it and began envisioning how he could turn it into a sculpture.

The Linden Oak, the largest white oak tree in Montgomery County, stood for about 300 years in North Bethesda before it was sawed down in July to keep it from becoming a safety hazard. Hoping to preserve the tree’s memory, county officials hired Vale, who studied the health of the branches after construction workers chopped them.

Vale spent months deciding how to commemorate a tree that began growing before America’s founding. After selecting a nearly 11-foot-long branch to transform into a bench, he settled on carving the left side of it into the shape of an acorn sprouting roots and oak leaves. The right side features a carving of a buffalo, an animal that lived in the county at the time the tree was planted.

Vale unveiled the bench this month at a Kensington park, about a mile north of where the tree stood. He said he hoped the sculpture, which he named “Connected Through Time,” would portray a sliver of the Linden Oak’s life.

“I tried to kind of empathize with the tree … and try to imagine what it has seen over the last [300] years or so,” said Vale, 32.

Montgomery County officials estimate that the Linden Oak, which stood near the intersection of Beach Drive and Rockville Pike, was planted in the early 1700s. Standing more than 95 feet at its peak, the Linden Oak had held the title of the county’s largest white oak tree since 1976.

By the summer of 2022, the tree had died and lost multiple limbs. Colter Burkes, Montgomery Parks’ senior urban forester, began brainstorming ways the oak could be commemorated.

“If we didn’t do anything with it,” Burkes said, “it might just kind of be forgotten.”

The Linden Oak tree in North Bethesda, Md., was cut down in July. The tree was estimated to be over 300 years old. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)

Near the start of this year, Burkes contacted Vale, who has worked on multiple sculptures in the county. Vale, who grew up in Olney, Md., about 10 miles north of the tree, said that he didn’t know much about the Linden Oak but joked that he might have inhaled its pollen at one point.

In the spring, Burkes and Vale examined which parts of the Linden Oak were healthy enough to sculpt. Vale said the oak from the back of the tree was rotten, but a few branches on the front, some of which were about 65 feet long, could be preserved.

Montgomery Parks officials decided to cut down the tree in June. The next month, Vale and a handful of community members watched as construction workers removed its limbs, putting most of them into a wood chipper.

“I’m looking forward to making something really beautiful and lasting, and maybe even touching, out of a large log from this tree to help it last even longer in people’s memories,” Vale said in July.

The Linden Oak’s 25-foot-tall trunk, and three plaques honoring the tree that had been posted on nearby rocks years earlier, remained in their original spots.

Construction workers moved a nearly 11-foot-long branch to a concrete slab at Ken-Gar Palisades Local Park for Vale to carve. Vale, who was finishing a wooden statue elsewhere in Kensington, settled on the bench’s design in early October.

He sketched an outline that included a stem draping over the bench and blossoming into two oak leaves while a second stem, representing the tree’s taproot, wrapped underneath it.

The back of the bench features two oak leaves, including one that serves as a seat. (Colter Burkes/Montgomery Parks)

In mid-October, Vale started cutting the branch with a 20-inch chain saw. Five days per week, he packed a vegan sandwich and spent three to eight hours carving.

A few weeks after he began, when the bench was mostly carved out, Vale started to use smaller chain saws to design the acorn, buffalo, leaves and tree stems. He finished the project on Dec. 4 and spread oil across the bench to preserve the wood.

On Dec. 7, dozens of people gathered around the bench, which was covered by a red tarp. Vale threw the tarp over his right shoulder as community members cheered at the sight of the finished bench. Vale said it will probably last for about two decades before the wood begins to decay.

Earlier this month, Vale visited the bench and saw a man and a child inspecting the carvings. The child ran to sit in the leaf-shaped seat on the back of the bench — a moment he said makes him smile whenever he thinks of it.

He died in police custody a decade ago. His sister fights weekly for justice.

Tawanda Jones has refused to let her brother’s name fade, waging an enduring fight for a criminal investigation that only now seems like a possibility

Ovetta Wiggins

11:00AM, 28 Dec, 2023

BALTIMORE — Tawanda Jones’s big brother looks just as she remembers him in the faded photo she has carried to so many protests.

Flashing a broad smile and sporting shoulder-length locs, on this July day he hangs from the microphone stand over bold black saying “STRANGLED DURING RESTRAINT” and “Enough is Enough.”

It was here that Tyrone West died, at the corner of Kitmore and Kelway roads in Baltimore, during an exchange with city police officers who had pulled him over for allegedly backing out too slowly into an intersection.

It happened in 2013, five days after the Black Lives Matter movement formed in response to a Florida jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Cellphone footage was not yet ubiquitous. There was no body-camera footage — the technology would not become widely used until after the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo. And while some of the facts of West’s death matched those of others whose names captured national attention in the years that followed, he never got it — even in a city that erupted not two years later over the police-involved death of Freddie Gray.

Jones, a petite mother of four, has been unable to bring herself to visit her brother’s grave, which is placed above her mother’s. But she has refused to let his in-custody death fade from public view, notching several legal and policy wins in an enduring fight for a criminal investigation that only now seems like a possibility.

Tyrone West with his sister, Tawanda Jones in an undated family photograph. (Family photo)

Tyrone West, right, with Tawanda Jones in an undated photograph. Jones has been on a 10 year crusade for accountability in West's death. (Family photo)

This year’s milestone for West also marks a decade that Jones, a prekindergarten teacher, has crusaded against police brutality and an American justice system that she says lacks accountability. She takes aim at in-custody deaths during weekly pop-up protests across the city, decrying violence anywhere but especially in Baltimore, a place with a long history of police corruption and racial discrimination.

By mid-December, Jones has organized 543 events she calls West Wednesdays, in honor of her brother. She moved them online during the pandemic, but otherwise, she can be found outside on Wednesday nights, sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter as she shouts her message to anyone willing to listen.

“She’s front and center at the struggle for justice for survivors of police violence in Baltimore and in Maryland,” said Sonia Kumar, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Maryland. “It’s not just about the victory. It’s also about the struggle and the effort to get justice … And I think to the extent that Baltimore has influenced the national landscape, she’s a huge part of that.”

It has cost her. A warrior to some and inspiration to families shattered by similar deaths, Jones has also been dismissed by some elected officials in Baltimore as a nuisance and disrupter.

“She’s so courageous to continue to fight all these years,” said LaToya Holley, whose brother, Anton Black, was killed during an encounter with police on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 2018.

“It’s very draining. It’s very time-consuming. It drains your energy and your mind because you’re always putting yourself in that place. It’s hard to move forward when you’re still fighting to try to see someone — anyone — to take you seriously about your loss, your pain, and what kind of individual your family was,” Holley said.

Jones has lost time with her family, money from her savings and peace as she endures a spotlight she wants shined only on the final minutes of her brother’s life.

She has no plans of stopping.

This year, the city’s top prosecutor, Ivan J. Bates, and the state’s top law enforcement official, Anthony G. Brown, have agreed that her brother’s case is worth review. Neither has committed to reopening it.

Tawanda Jones speaks outside the Baltimore Circuit Court in November 2015. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

‘I’m not going to stop’

Jones had a sense of foreboding after leaving church the morning after the Zimmerman verdict.

Toward the end of the message, Bishop Orlando Wilson implored the congregants of New Antioch Church — including West — to “be careful out there … Seems like Black lives don’t matter.”

Four days later, West was dead.

At first, the medical examiner’s office tied his death to a bad heart and dehydration — not the lacerations and wounds found across his body and documented in 2013.

“I was like ‘oh no, you’re not going to do this to my brother,’” Jones said. Weeks after her brother’s death she planted herself outside the coroner’s office at one of her first West Wednesdays, “urging the world to watch.”

The office was then headed by David Fowler, who years later would testify as an expert witness for the defense of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was on trial in the killing of George Floyd. Today, about a hundred in-custody deaths involving police restraint that were handled by Fowler’s office during his 17-year tenure are under review.

Former city prosecutor Gregg L. Bernstein cited the office’s report in declining to charge the officers involved in 2014. So Jones spent $50,000 of her savings to have her brother’s body exhumed for an independent autopsy, which found West died of asphyxiation while being restrained.

“I couldn’t wait to go on my own pursuit,” she said in an interview, through tears. “Because in my mind, I’m like, it’s never over. I’m not going to stop until these killer cops are in cell blocks. I don’t care how many years it takes. I don’t care. I’m going to keep going at it.”

The same year, she and her family opened another front in their push for accountability, with a wrongful-death lawsuit that laid out their findings.

About a week before a scheduled court appearance in 2017, Jones and her family were summoned to a settlement hearing.

Jones was sitting across from her attorney with a pen in her hand when someone mentioned a nondisparagement clause.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

A poster of law enforcement officials in Baltimore. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)

The clause would prohibit her from mentioning the names of the officers who were involved in her brother’s death during West Wednesdays, they said.

She dropped the pen to the table and walked away, removing her name from the civil suit to reserve her right to protest without jeopardizing the $1 million settlement for her nieces and nephews.

Jones said West, an artist who loved to draw, was a father who never met many of his grandchildren.

Months after the settlement, Jones joined Ashley Overbey Underwood, a Baltimore City woman who lost her settlement with Baltimore police in a misconduct case because she violated the gag rule, to change the city law.

They met with the ACLU, who took Underwood’s case, and testified at hearings at city hall where they sat with tape over their mouths in a sign of protest.

Two years later, the law was changed.

Over the last decade, Jones has become a fixture at city hall and at citywide town halls, calling out elected officials and chiefs of police for corruption and misconduct. She has lobbied against the city’s choice for police chief and protested against efforts to shield police records.

“Things don’t happen overnight, not as fast as we want them to,” Jones said.

A poster of Tyrone West on Dec. 6 in Baltimore. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)

A reason to hope

Two former prosecutors in Baltimore refused to file charges in West’s death, basing their decision on the official autopsy that found West died of cardiac arrhythmia from cardiac conduction system abnormality complicated by dehydration during police restraint.

But earlier this year, Bates, with six months in office, gave Jones more hope than she’d had in 10 years.

Bates said in a letter that the case merited a review.

“It put into words that something is not right, and that meant the world to me,” Jones said of Bates’s determination.

Bates met with Jones several times and she shared additional information “that I believe warrants a new investigation into this incident,” Bates said in a letter to Brown.

He asked the attorney general’s office to launch an investigation. He also wrote a letter to State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III suggesting that his office, which investigates misconduct of public officials, look into whether there was any perjury or other misconduct involved in the case. Bates said in the letters that he had a “personal conflict” that kept him from pursuing the case. As it turns out, a Bates spokesman later said, a top member of his team is a close relative of one of the officers involved in the case.

Nicole Pettiford, left, talks about her late daughter Ahjee Harrod as Tawanda Jones consoles her on July 18 in Baltimore. (Minh Connors/The Washington Post)

Police at the time said that when West was told to get out of the car, they saw a bulge in his sock that they suspected was drugs, which would have been a violation of his parole, and a chase and altercation ensued. They said West was combative. But they also acknowledged in court documents that they threw punches and used batons and pepper spray. In his letter to Brown, Bates cited new autopsy results that contradict the findings in the 2013 report and depositions provided by Jones that indicated that there were no drugs found at the scene or on materials tested.

Jones’s “sisters,” former strangers who have lost loved ones and often join her for West Wednesdays, said Jones has for years provided evidence to prosecutors and other elected officials who typically dismiss her.

“She says stuff and people look at her like she’s got three heads with a big ‘ol eyeball in the middle of her forehead and it’s actually the truth,” said Angela Sutton, whose brother, Timothy Flemings, died after a police interaction. “Everybody knows there are state’s attorneys in bed, literally in bed, with police officers. So the whole system is screwed up.”

Tawanda Jones releases balloons on the 10th anniversary of Tyrone West's death on July 18. West would have been 54 years old. (Minh Connors/The Washington Post)

An abiding faith

Whenever Jones learns of an in-custody death in Maryland she tries to reach out to a loved one.

Sometimes it’s a direct message on social media that leads to a phone call. It’s how she connected with Holley, Anton Black’s sister, and Nikki Owens, the cousin of William Green, who was shot six times by a police officer while handcuffed in the front of a patrol car.

Earlier this month, Jones began her 541st West Wednesday with “sad news” she learned moments before arriving.

A jury had acquitted former Prince George’s police officer Michael Owen Jr. in Green’s death.

“He got into a car accident, he hit several cars, nothing that warranted a death sentence,” Jones told the three people in front of her, one of them recording a Facebook Live. “I’m beyond disappointed. I’m heartbroken. It’s disgusting.”

Jones called to the microphone a White retired teacher and a loyal member of the West Coalition who went to the court in Owen’s case with other members of Jones’s group.

“It’s outrageous that this jury made the decision … I think the guilty party here is the legal system in P.G. County just like the legal system in the rest of the country,” said Bill Bleich, who blamed the outcome on a weak prosecution.

Jones said police in many cases, particularly in her brother’s, will change the narrative to criminalize the victim and to attempt to justify their actions.

“Dead people do not talk, let’s be crystal clear and when these killer cops murder our loved ones then they try to be our loved one’s voice,” she said.

She said police said they saw a bulge in her brother’s socks when he sat down on the curb. When she saw her brother earlier in the day he was wearing shorts and ankle socks, she said.

“So they can’t even lie straight,” she said. “To make up that absurd lie. To say he said, ‘You’re going to lock me up for these measly drugs.’ I never in the 44 years of my brother’s life at the time he was executed, never heard my brother use the word measly.”

Sometimes, she is tired. But the protests can be healing, she said.

“It’s therapeutic for me because I actually get to actually uplift my brother’s voice and name in a positive way. And if I’m angry and I want to press on the microphone or whatever or cry or whatever I want to do, I can let it out and I’m not holding that in,” she said.

Jones often ends West Wednesdays soliciting prayer. She said her faith is what has sustained her through the pain.

Asking for strength as she continues her journey, Jones paused after announcing the news about the acquittal on Dec. 6, and closed her tear-filled eyes. “If you are into prayer, say a prayer. If not, that’s okay,” she said. “We need positivity because all victims don’t die.”

Tawanda Jones at a West Wednesday event on Dec. 6. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)

Story editing by Katy Burnell Evans. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Jeremy Hester. Design by Jennifer C. Reed.

Spiking cases of syphilis among women in Virginia cause concern

Virginia aims to raise awareness and increase testing as infections rise, especially among people misusing opioids and other drugs

Jenna Portnoy

11:00AM, 26 Dec, 2023

An increase in syphilis cases among women in Virginia echoes national trends among multiple sexually transmitted infections, including chlamydia and gonorrhea. (iStock)

A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to syphilis as a virus. It is a bacterial infection. The article has been updated.

Cases of syphilis, rising nationally, have spiked dramatically among women in Virginia and led to more infections in babies, which can be fatal or cause lifelong medical issues. Cases are also increasing among people who misuse opioids and other drugs, research shows.

State officials said the mental health impact of the coronavirus pandemic led to behaviors that can be risky and helped fuel an uptick in cases. Federal funding for more infectious-disease specialists also boosted the state’s ability to identify cases.

The increase echoes trends that officials are tracking nationally among multiple sexually transmitted infections, including chlamydia and gonorrhea.

“We’re trying to triage more resources to the response and kind of organize the way that we’re responding differently, in light of the kind of attention and focus that we’re trying to bring to the increase in syphilis cases,” said Bryan Collins, assistant director of the STD Prevention and Surveillance team at the Virginia Department of Health.

The infection is most likely to impact Black residents in the state, followed by White and Hispanic residents who live in urban areas and localities along Interstate 81, according to a webpage with information about the disease and a dashboard the department launched last month to raise awareness of the spread.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that most newborn syphilis cases involved mothers who do not receive timely testing and treatment during pregnancy due to social and economic barriers. Health department officials recommend testing to all sexually active people ages 15 to 44 in 38 Virginia counties that reported a high rate of syphilis in 2022, meaning the rate of certain infections among women of childbearing age was at or above 4.6 per 100,000.

Although most cases are diagnosed in men, cases in women in Virginia rose 70 percent from 2018 to 2022, a slower rate of increase than the national average, state and CDC data show.

That includes Richmond, where Darius Pryor, HIV testing and prevention program manager at the nonprofit health clinic Health Brigade, which serves a large uninsured population, said he aims to normalize talking about sexual health. Part of that, he said, is educating patients about how syphilis can be transmitted: through skin-to-skin contact.

“I want them to be aware of the spikes and know that it’s out there and growing and becoming an issue, but also I don’t want to scare them,” he said. “I want them to know their options to prevent it and for getting it treated if they are exposed — and for it all to be normal.”

The pandemic sidelined many routine medical visits as the world shut down, Pryor said, delaying detection for some people.

In D.C., the Department of Health saw a dip in an otherwise steady increase in cases during the pandemic and a resurgence in 2022, said Brittani Saafir-Callaway, division chief of strategic information in the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Administration. An increase in anonymous sex arranged through dating apps and social media may help explain the rise in cases that started about a decade ago, she said.

D.C. ranked second-highest compared with states for its rate of certain types of syphilis infection in 2021, and Virginia was 42nd, CDC data show. Maryland did not report cases to the federal agency that year, but public health officials reported a 63 percent spike in cases from 2014 to 2018.

The national increase in syphilis among women means more than 3,700 babies were born with syphilis in 2022, which is over 10 times the number reported a decade earlier, CDC data show.

Testing and treatment during pregnancy might have prevented most of these cases because about 40 percent of people who had a baby with syphilis did not have prenatal care, the agency reported.

Syphilis during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death and lifelong medical issues.

The CDC recommends that all pregnant people should be tested for syphilis at the first prenatal appointment and, depending on the number of cases in the area and a person’s risk factors, some should be tested again at the beginning of the third trimester and when the baby is born.

D.C. regulations require syphilis testing at the first prenatal visit and in the third trimester.

In Virginia, cases in babies remain rare but increased from two in 2014 to 20 in 2022, state data show.

Collins, of the state health department, said state guidelines echo the CDC but can’t help those who lack access to prenatal care.

The state bolstered its surveillance and deployed an updated data system to help identify more cases, which still primarily occur among men despite the increase in women. Among the 84 percent of cases that occurred in men, Collins said, many are men who have sex with men. Collins said the agency is scrutinizing the role of drugs, especially methamphetamine, in increasing people’s risk tolerance, potentially resulting in infection.

Additionally, many people with syphilis do not have any symptoms or have very mild symptoms that are similar to signs of other health problems.

There are various stages of syphilis, with symptoms ranging from periods of one or more painless sores to skin rashes and can include sores in the mouth, vagina or anus, the CDC says. Other symptoms may include swollen lymph glands, headaches, muscle aches and fatigue, sometimes making it difficult to distinguish from other illnesses. Without the proper treatment, symptoms may go away, but syphilis can continue to be in the body for years.

A single injection of long-acting benzathine penicillin G can cure the early stages of syphilis, and and three doses will cure later stages of the infection but not repair damage already done, the CDC says.

Fate of D.C. Council plan to boost food assistance remains murky

Mayor’s office says spending constraints will prevent budget-mandated SNAP increase, but opinion from attorney general raises legal questions

Michael Brice-Saddler

11:40PM, 28 Dec, 2023

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Whether D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration will implement a council budget directive to increase food assistance benefits by nearly $40 million remains an open question heading into the new year, despite assertions from lawmakers and advocacy groups that failing to do so would violate city law.

The back-and-forth over the temporary boost to the city’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program comes months after the D.C. Council passed a budget provision to boost those benefits by 10 percent from January to September 2024 if there was enough excess revenue at the end of fiscal 2023.

But weeks after D.C.’s chief financial officer certified those funds were indeed available, Bowser’s administration said it would not be able to move forward with the council’s plan, citing significant spending and staffing constraints faced by the District’s Department of Human Services, which facilitates several key social service programs.

In recent weeks, those who disagree with the Bowser administration’s rationale have ramped up the pressure. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), who introduced the budget provision, last week posted a Dec. 13 opinion from the city’s Office of the Attorney General on X, formerly Twitter, that cast doubt on whether Bowser’s office had the authority to disregard the council’s budgetary mandate.

“Because the statutory language with respect to the SNAP benefit increase is mandatory, and it has been included in an approved budget plan, the Mayor must expend the funds as the Council directed and cannot unilaterally use them for other purposes,” the opinion from the Office of the Attorney General reads. “We are unaware of any mayoral authority to unilaterally divert funds legislatively mandated and appropriate for a specific purpose to another purpose or, generally, to refuse to spend funds that the Council has specifically directed be spent.”

Advocacy groups say the well-being of the 140,000 D.C. residents who rely on SNAP benefits hangs in the balance, particularly after the pandemic-era federal aid that previously enhanced benefits expired in March. In mid-December, they projected a message onto the Wilson Building, posting it with the hashtag #TheGrinchWhoStoleSnap. (Despite the funding dispute, residents receiving SNAP benefits should still expect to see their regular allotments next month.)

The group D.C. Hunger Solutions, which has fought for the temporary benefit as well as a separate unfunded 2022 bill from council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) that would create a local SNAP supplement to enhance families’ food assistance allotment, circulated a petition calling on Bowser (D) to use the excess revenue on SNAP as originally planned. In November, Henderson said Bowser’s administration had proposed funding administrative costs for Summer EBT, a federal program to provide food assistance to families with school-age children, instead of increasing SNAP, as a trade-off. The program would cost the city $2 million.

Henderson said in a message Thursday that while D.C. had met the Jan. 1 deadline to submit a notice of intent to operate the Summer EBT program, she wasn’t sure how the human services department would administer that program considering its staffing challenges. Summer EBT requires residents to submit an application even if they already receive SNAP benefits, she said, in addition to other administrative steps.

“Your administration has chronically underfunded public benefit enrollment and allotments, and now you claim that you can ignore the law and decline to implement the SNAP increase because of spending pressures that you have created and that are neither unforeseen nor new,” the D.C. Council wrote in a mid-December letter to Bowser. “We told District residents this money was coming because the law provided for it. Now, as we enter the holiday season, residents will learn that this sorely needed support is no longer on the horizon.”

A spokesperson for Bowser did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Vikram Swaruup, executive director of Legal Aid DC, which provides pro bono legal services and assistance to low-income residents, said Thursday that his group had also sent a letter to Bowser in mid-December urging her to implement the temporary SNAP increase, and to also fully fund Henderson’s Give SNAP a Raise legislation in the fiscal 2025 budget.

“Enhanced SNAP funding is critically important for our clients right now, with surging food costs, rent and other pressures to pay for basic necessities,” Swaruup said in an interview. “The council passed a law to ensure people could get a little bit more to provide for their families in these difficult times. To make sure that funding gets to the people who need it is morally imperative and legally required.”

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said in an interview that he was working to set up a meeting early next year between Bowser and relevant lawmakers, including Henderson, who chairs the health committee, to figure out a path forward. The DHS has said that it has upward of $75 million in spending pressures, Mendelson said, and that the agency further claims it doesn’t have the technical capability to issue the enhanced benefits next week even if funds weren’t a concern.

“The council was very clear we wanted to see the SNAP benefits that had been increased during the pandemic continue, even if it requires local dollars. And it’s clear the law’s on our side in terms of appropriations the council made,” Mendelson said. “I’m hopeful we can get this resolved.”

The meeting is tentatively scheduled for the second week of January, Mendelson said, though he declined to speculate on what a resolution might look like.

“There have been a number of disagreements between the council and mayor over the past year, many of which have involved funding,” he added. “It’d be nice to get this latest issue behind us and move toward more positive footing.”

Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.

Man charged with sexually grabbing D.C. bicyclists, pedestrians

Peter Hermann

7:18PM, 27 Dec, 2023

A D.C. police vehicle at a crime scene. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)

A Maryland man has been charged with sexually grabbing at least 10 women as he rode past them on a bicycle over the past 18 months in downtown Washington, near Dupont Circle and in the city’s West End, according to police and court documents.

Daniel Adam Grob, 46, of Riverdale in Prince George’s County, was arrested Saturday in Maryland. Documents filed in D.C. Superior Court show he was charged with 11 counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse, all in Northwest Washington.

Police said the attacks started in June 2022 and went into this past November. Efforts to reach Grob’s attorney were not successful Wednesday.

According to a police arrest affidavit, the incidents occurred at various hours of the day and night. In most cases, police said, Grob rode past female bicyclists or pedestrians and grabbed or touched their breasts or buttocks. In one case, police said, a woman’s shirt was pulled down.

The areas of the attacks, according to police, included K, L and 17th Streets, not far from the White House; New Hampshire Avenue near Dupont Circle; and 19th and 24th streets in the West End.

The areas of the attacks, according to police, included K, L and 17th streets, not far from the White House; New Hampshire Avenue near Dupont Circle; and 19th and 24th streets in the West End.een using a ride-share bicycle.

With the time and a surveillance photo, police said, they obtained a search warrant to determine who in that area at that hour had an internet location activated. Police said in the affidavit that Grob’s name surfaced, leading them to his Instagram account and to a photo they said matched the man in the surveillance picture.

The affidavit says that among other evidence in the case, location information matched Grob to the places and times of three other attacks.

Montgomery County Planning Board settles with ousted planning director

Katie Shepherd

10:38PM, 28 Dec, 2023

More than a year after four former Montgomery County Planning Board members voted to dismiss county planning director Gwen Wright, an entirely new board settled a lawsuit she brought over her termination and expressed regret over how she lost her job months before her planned retirement amid a scandal that rocked the body last year.

The agreement between the new board and Wright included a $100,000 settlement and an award renamed in her honor, the planning agency said in a statement. The county’s top award for design excellence will now be known as the Gwen Marcus Wright Award for Design Excellence.

“I’m happy to have this behind me,” Wright said Thursday afternoon. “It was a very fair settlement, all in all.”

The planning agency’s new leadership pointed to Wright’s lengthy list of accomplishments in a statement acknowledging the settlement.

“Although this Planning Board did not get to work with Ms. Wright directly due to her retirement prior to their arrival, her reputation and long-lasting impact on Montgomery County and Montgomery Planning are well known,” Montgomery County Planning Board Chair Artie Harris said in a statement on Thursday.

Wright, who worked for the Montgomery County Planning Department for 30 years, had led the effort to build Montgomery County’s historic preservation program, improved forest conservation, launched the county’s first design excellence program, and completed a record number of master plans in Bethesda, Silver Spring, Grosvenor, Rock Spring, Montgomery Village, Westbard, Lyttonsville, White Flint II, and Chevy Chase Lake.

“She is recognized as one of the top planning directors in the country and her positive impact on the community will be felt for generations,” Harris said in his statement.

In October 2022, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission — a bicounty agency that oversees the parks and planning departments in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties — announced that Wright had been removed from her role as planning director by a vote of the board months before her planned retirement. The agency says Wright is now categorized as “retired,” but Wright maintains that she was fired by the former board.

The saga that provoked Wright’s termination began in September 2022, when the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s inspector general launched a probe to investigate allegations that then-Montgomery County Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson kept alcohol in his office and shared after-hours drinks with co-workers. Anderson apologized for having the liquor in a government building, and the county council docked his pay for four weeks, while two other members of the Planning Board were docked one day’s salary.

But the planning board’s troubles continued. Other board members were accused of ethics violations. Allegations that Anderson created a hostile work environment surfaced, leading to an independent investigation that ultimately found no evidence to support those claims.

Amid that turmoil, Wright spoke to local TV station WJLA to defend Anderson against the unfounded allegations of inappropriate language and behavior in the workplace. One day later, on Oct. 7, the planning board voted to remove Wright from her longtime position as planning director without giving a reason for the termination; Anderson recused himself from that vote. Wright would have retired at the end of 2022.

Days after terminating Wright, the entire five-member Planning Board resigned their positions at the urging of the county council.

Earlier this year, Wright filed a legal complaint against the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and the Montgomery County Planning Board, seeking public records related to her termination. A spokeswoman for the commission said the agency also received a notice of claim alleging wrongful termination, and Wright’s attorney, Timothy Maloney, said the complaint also alleged retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights. The public records dispute will be withdrawn later this week, Maloney said, and the other claims were resolved out of court by the settlement announced Thursday.

Since Wright’s termination and the implosion of the planning board that swiftly followed, the county has been working to restore public confidence in the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The Montgomery County Planning Board — which has authority over project plans, sketch plans, preliminary plans, site plans, record plans and forest conservation plans — has undergone a complete overhaul, with the county council appointing five new members this year.

“I think that the current Board has worked very hard to resolve this,” Wright said. “They definitely pushed to get this wrapped up.”

Ted Morgan, acclaimed author with a vivid past, dies at 91

He served in the French army during the Algerian War, won a Pulitzer Prize as a young journalist and wrote more than two dozen books

Bob Drogin

9:11PM, 13 Dec, 2023

Ted Morgan is photographed in New York in 1978. (Ray Stubblebine/AP)

On March 4, 1960, a dapper French count turned American journalist named Sanche de Gramont was working the night rewrite desk at the New York Herald Tribune. A call came in alerting the newsroom that Leonard Warren, a celebrated 48-year-old baritone, had collapsed onstage at the Metropolitan Opera after singing the Verdi aria “Urna fatale del mio destino” (“Fatal urn of my destiny”).

Mr. de Gramont raced to the scene, several blocks away, and then sprinted back to his typewriter. His deadline was less than an hour away. “There was an awesome moment as the singer fell,” he wrote. “The rest of the cast remained paralyzed. Finally someone in the capacity audience called out ‘For God’s sake, ring down the curtain.’”

For his “moving account” of Warren’s death, Mr. de Gramont won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting — Edition Time, a category now called Breaking News. The article propelled the career of the young reporter, who became a foreign correspondent dispatched to France, Congo and Vietnam before he embarked on a prolific career as an author.

He fashioned a new name, Ted Morgan, an anagram of de Gramont that he chose over Tom Danger, Rod Magnet and Dr. Montage. Ted Morgan, he once noted, sounded “forthright and practical, incisive and balanced.” And he was tired of seeing his byline misspelled.

Mr. Morgan, who drew acclaim for biographies of author W. Somerset Maugham and statesman Winston Churchill and mined his own remarkable life story in three vivid memoirs, died Dec. 13 at a nursing home in Manhattan. He was 91.

He had dementia, said his wife, Eileen Bresnahan Morgan.

Possessed of intense curiosity, Mr. Morgan wrote his books as if he still faced a newspaperman’s daily deadlines, producing 25 volumes in 50 years. His topics were as varied as the Niger River in Africa, the rise of McCarthyism in America, the history of espionage, the settling of North America, the making of the American West, the trial of former Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie in France, and the 1954 French military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.

His 1980 biography “Maugham” was a finalist for a National Book Award, and his 1982 Churchill book, “Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874-1915,” was a Pulitzer finalist.

Mr. Morgan also wrote well-regarded biographies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Beat novelist William S. Burroughs; two novels; and three books about his life, “On Becoming American” (1978), “Rowing Toward Eden” (1981) and “My Battle of Algiers” (2005).

His old-world family was so fossilized, he wrote in the first memoir, that after a lunch with Marcel Proust, his father handed the novelist a guest book “and with the total disdain of the nobleman for the artist, said, ‘Just your name, Mr. Proust. No thoughts.’”

Mr. Morgan renounced his aristocratic title in 1977 when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

He was born in Geneva on March 31, 1932, as Le Comte Sanche Armand Gabriel de Gramont, a scion of nobility from the Lower Navarre region of France. His family name, de Gramont, dated “to the morning of civilization,” he wrote, and his bewigged ancestors attended emperors and kings. His first name, Sanche, was a contraction of St. Charles.

He grew up shuttling between France and the United States. His father was posted to Washington as the French air attaché in 1937 but returned to France two years later when war broke out in Europe, leaving his wife and three sons in Washington. He died in a plane crash in England in 1943.

The young count was sent to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle in New York, where he attended the French lycée. At his mother’s insistence, he tried a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, but he yearned for the less stuffy environment of America. A family friend arranged for him to meet the president of Yale, A. Whitney Griswold, who invited him to complete his degree there.

He graduated in 1954 and, after a summer writing film gossip for the Hollywood Reporter, received a master’s degree the next year from Columbia University’s journalism school.

He was attracted to journalism, he wrote in his 2005 memoir, because he had “an aversion to causes, however noble. I instinctively sought to remain uninvolved, an observer rather than a participant.” Also, he said, he liked “to snoop.”

After a brief stint at the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram, he was conscripted into the French army in 1956 and entered officers’ training school in an effort to avoid duty in French-ruled Algeria, where he opposed efforts to put down an insurgency. His bid backfired when he was posted as a second lieutenant to a combat outpost south of Algiers, the capital.

He was ambushed and nearly killed on his first official mission: leading colonial troops from Senegal on their monthly visit to an army-approved brothel.

In a protracted conflict that saw atrocities on both sides, French soldiers routinely tortured or killed Algerian captives, while insurgents planted deadly bombs in theaters and restaurants popular with French civilians.

A commander thus shrugged when Mr. Morgan entered into what he called an “altered state” and beat a prisoner to death during an interrogation. The man’s wrists had been tied over a beam so that his feet didn’t touch the ground.

“I was horrified by what I did,” Mr. Morgan wrote 50 years later in “My Battle of Algiers.” “I had killed a defenseless man.” The episode left “a form of inner disfigurement that I’ve had to live with.”

A family friend helped him get reassigned to a military newspaper in Algiers, and he was never charged with killing the unarmed prisoner or, later, helping a French military deserter flee the country. The French ultimately lost the war and withdrew in 1962.

After his military service, Mr. Morgan spent a year with the Associated Press in New York before joining the now-defunct Herald Tribune in 1959, where he worked alongside Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Charles Portis and other soon-to-be literary lions.

The Pulitzer win propelled his career, and he was sent to Paris as a foreign correspondent. He was reporting in Congo in December 1961 when U.N. troops from Sweden mistakenly fired a bazooka at his car, killing one of the occupants. He recalled his friend, author and journalist David Halberstam, telling him, “What do you expect from Swedes? They haven’t fought a war in 200 years.”

Badly wounded, Mr. Morgan was evacuated to a hospital in London but soon was reporting on the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

He was a freelance writer in 1967 when he permanently lost his hearing in one ear covering a French political campaign in subzero temperatures. “Every profession has its occupational hazards, and I caught otitis … stumping in the mountains,” he later wrote.

Although some critics of Mr. Morgan’s popular histories noted his tendency, at times, not to let the facts get in the way of a good story, his work ethic was never in question. Maugham, who died in 1965, had specified in his will that no one should be given access to his letters or papers for a biography, and Mr. Morgan was warned he would get no cooperation from Maugham’s estate or family in England.

Mr. Morgan was undeterred. He interviewed dozens of Maugham’s friends and associates and did research in 20 libraries from California to England, ultimately uncovering 5,000 letters.

When Maugham’s agent and executor, Spencer Curtis Brown, read Mr. Morgan’s first draft, he decided to ignore his client’s last wishes and granted access to the sequestered material to ensure the biography would be accurate and complete. Maugham’s family soon invited the author to visit.

A Washington Post reviewer, journalist Michael Kernan, praised “a masterful job of reportage” that revealed Maugham as “a complicated man who went out of his way to distort, conceal, and deliberately lie about the facts of his life.”

Mr. Morgan’s marriages to socialite Margaret Chanler Emmet Kinnicutt and poet Nancy Ryan ended in divorce. In 1985, he married photographer Eileen Bresnahan.

Besides his wife, of Manhattan, survivors include two children from his second marriage, Gabriel Morgan of Taos, N.M., and Amber de Gramont of Lakeville, Conn., and four grandchildren.

Mr. Morgan told C-SPAN interviewer Brian Lamb in 2010 that his peripatetic journalistic and literary career was a deliberate riposte to an upbringing he found uncomfortably predetermined.

“The idea in my time was I should marry a rich woman and live off my land,” he said. “We had a castle outside Paris. But … I’d spent too much time in the United States for that kind of life.”

Herb Kohl, former U.S. senator and owner of NBA’s Bucks, dies at 88

Mr. Kohl was the only member of the Senate who owned a professional sports team, and he was dedicated to keeping the Bucks playing in Milwaukee

Associated Press

3:04AM, 28 Dec, 2023

Herb Kohl during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Atlanta Hawks on April 16, 2014, in Milwaukee. (Morry Gash/AP)

Herb Kohl, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Wisconsin and former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, died Dec. 27. He was 88.

His death was announced by Herb Kohl Philanthropies, which did not give a cause.

Mr. Kohl was a popular figure in Wisconsin, purchasing the Bucks to keep them from leaving town, and spending generously from his fortune on civic and educational causes throughout the state. He also used his money to fund his Senate races, allowing to him to portray himself as “nobody’s senator but yours.”

In the Senate, Mr. Kohl was an unusual figure. He was quiet and not one to seek credit, yet effective on issues important to the state, especially dairy policy. He was one of the richest members of the Senate, and the Senate’s only professional sports team owner.

“Sen. Kohl was deeply committed to community, kindness, and service to others,” Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. “Wisconsin’s seniors, students, teachers, and schools, and farmers and rural areas, among so many others, are better off because of his life and legacy, the impacts of which will last for generations.”

Mr. Kohl was born in Milwaukee, where he was a childhood friend of Bud Selig, who went on to become commissioner of Major League Baseball. The two roomed together at the University of Wisconsin and remained friends in adulthood.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1956, Mr. Kohl earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University in 1958. He served in the Army Reserve from 1958 to 1964. He helped grow the family-owned business, Kohl’s grocery and department stores, and served as company president in the 1970s. The corporation was sold in 1979.

Mr. Kohl also got into Wisconsin politics in the 1970s, serving as chairman of the state Democratic Party from 1975 to 1977. In 1985, Mr. Kohl bought the Bucks for $18 million.

The team was in the middle of its sixth straight winning season when Mr. Kohl bought it, and the Bucks went on to post winning records in the first six full seasons with Kohl as owner, before stumbling through most of the 1990s. The team improved in the late ’90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Mr. Kohl, owner of the small-market Bucks, was one of eight league owners to ask then-NBA Commissioner David Stern to implement revenue sharing.

He eventually sold the team in 2014 to New York billionaires Wes Edens and Marc Lasry. He contributed $100 million toward construction of Fiserv Forum to replace the aging Bradley Center arena, helping ensure the team would remain in Milwaukee. The arena opened in 2018. Three years later, Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks past the Phoenix Suns to claim the NBA championship, the team’s first since 1971.

Mr. Kohl’s civic commitments extended well beyond keeping professional basketball in Wisconsin. He donated $25 million to the University of Wisconsin to help fund construction of the Kohl Center, home to the school’s basketball and hockey teams. It was the single largest private donation in university history.

He also used his own money to fund the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation, which donates money for scholarships and fellowships to students, teachers and schools in Wisconsin.

In 1988, Mr. Kohl decided to run for the Senate, following the announcement that Sen. William Proxmire was retiring, and defeated then-state Sen. Susan Engeleiter, the Republican candidate. He won reelection in 1994, 2000 and 2006. His considerable fortune helped scare away the Republican Party from mounting a serious challenge in 2006.

Mr. Kohl never accepted a pay raise in the Senate; he drew a salary of $89,500 every year, the same pay he got when he entered the Senate in 1989, returning the rest to the Treasury Department.

In the Senate, Mr. Kohl tended to home state interests. He opposed the Northeast Dairy Compact, a program opposed by Midwestern dairy farmers, and helped prevent it from being renewed in Congress. Mr. Kohl was instrumental in coming up with a replacement program, the Milk Income Loss Contract, which paid dairy farmers cash when prices fell below a certain level; the program especially helped Wisconsin dairy farmers.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations agriculture subcommittee, which controls the budget of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Kohl had a strong say on farm policy. He was also the top Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee and the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. Mr. Kohl served as chairman of all three panels when Democrats were in the majority.

Mr. Kohl didn’t mind doing things in the Senate without much credit. As Congress became more and more partisan, Mr. Kohl almost seemed to be a throwback to another era.

He was succeeded by Democrat Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin’s first female senator and the Senate’s first openly gay member.

Mr. Kohl, who never married, said that being single gave him time to balance the demands of life as a senator and owner. A sign on his Senate office desk said: “The Bucks Stop Here.”

Table of Contents

Washington Post (Print): Friday, December 29, 2023

Front Page

Trump barred from primary ballot in Maine

Apple’s hacking alerts anger Modi government

Young journalist captured Gaza’s beauty, then its ruin

A Michigan community, torn apart by a job dispute

Inside A-Section

Colorado GOP asks U.S. Supreme Court to keep Trump on the ballot

Civil War ‘about slavery,’ Haley acknowledges

Politicians targeted by surge in fake emergency calls

Overcrowded Rafah, already short on food, braces for new refugees

Songs of grief and defiance for the Palestinians

Hong Kong activist convicted under China’s security law flees to the U.K.

As threats of AI loom, parents can take steps to remove online photos of kids

Ukraine gets small U.S. weapons package until Congress can agree to more

Opinion

When is this movie starting? I’ve been here half an hour.

Honestly, I love when AI hallucinates

Nikki Haley runs over her own campaign

The lessons of war, set in stone

Preventing autocracy

Face it: Smart ski mask bans would help cities fight crime

Palestinians must be part of any postwar Gaza peacekeeping force

Inside the drive to use Russia’s money for Ukraine

Why your kids are obsessed with axolotls

Metro

Wood sculptor transforms 300-year-old Md. tree into bench

A decade later, she’s still fighting

Rising syphilis cases in Va.

Food aid increase uncertain for D.C.

Man accused of grabbing women as he rode bike

Montgomery board settles with ousted director

Acclaimed author came from a past of French nobility

Former owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks was a ‘committed’ senator