Clay Bennett

Jeff Danziger

Jack Ohman

Named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal

Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award, 1996

Empathy Award from the Volunteers of America, 2002

National Human Services Assembly’s Award for Excellence by a Member of the Media, 2004

Hillman Award for Career Achievement from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, 2011

One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported (co-authored with Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann)

Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism – From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond

Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent

Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right

Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge

They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era

Why Americans Hate Politics

We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama (co-editor)

One Electorate Under God?: A Dialogue on Religion & American Politics (co-editor)

United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship (co-editor)

Sacred Places, Civic Purposes: Should Government Help Faith-Based Charity? (co-editor)

Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary (co-editor)

What’s God Got To Do With the American Experiment? (co-editor)

Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (co-editor)

Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country

E.J. DIONNE JR. COLUMNAdvance for release Thursday, May 26, 2022, and thereafter(For Dionne clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By E.J. Dionne Jr.
 Australia sent the democratic world some useful messages in its recent election. The most important: that democracy can stay healthy even when voters are disgruntled, and even when they have problems with the two major parties.
 Our friends Down Under could do this partly because they have an electoral system that requires everyone to vote and allows voters to cast ballots in a nuanced way. Preferential voting, in which voters rank their choices, means that voters can say more about how they think than a single marking next to one candidate or party can convey.
 And with turnouts approaching 90%, the will of the people really is the will of the people.
 The headline news is the victory of the Labor Party, led by new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Think of Albanese as a 59-year old Joe Biden, a mainstreamer with the common touch and long experience -- he's been in Parliament since he was 33. Albo, as he is known, ran down the middle, even though he began his political life on the left.
 He is a shrewd negotiator, a careful tactician, and possesses an inner toughness that comes from being raised in what we would call the projects. The son of a single mother on a disability pension, he used his victory speech to express hope that "there are families in public housing watching this tonight" so parents could tell their children that "no matter where you live or where you come from, in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to us all."
 The new prime minister has a bit of a chip on his shoulder -- "I've been underestimated my whole life," he said at his moment of triumph -- but he was not wrong in alluding to doubters. And staunch progressives were unhappy about his no-big-promises "small target" campaign, designed to give his conservative foes as little to shoot at as possible.
 Albanese correctly calculated that he could win simply by making the increasingly unpopular and divisive incumbent, Scott Morrison, the issue. Morrison headed Australia's conservative coalition, a long-standing alliance of the Liberal and National Parties. (Yes, the Australian Liberals are the conservatives.)
 Labor unexpectedly lost the 2019 election, and party moderates saw a bold list of policies -- including strong action against climate change -- as the culprit. So Albanese took a more cautious stand in general, and especially on climate. His environmental goals were bolder than Morrison's, but not so sweeping as to endanger Labor in industrial and mining areas.
 While Morrison performed well during the pandemic -- certainly compared with Donald Trump -- his importation of aspects of American-style cultural right-wing politics (his backing of an anti-trans candidate, for example) did not go down well with moderates, including some members of his own party.
 Many of the dissenters were women. They got their revenge in the Liberal Party's upper-middle-class suburban heartland as one seat after another fell to a group of female candidates. Financed in the main by corporate figures committed to climate action, they were known as "Teal Independents," their color a combination of green, for their forceful climate stance, and blue, the color of traditional, pro-business Liberal Party supporters. They will also press the new government for a strong anticorruption commission.
 The Teal revolution mattered. With several seats still undecided, the Sydney Morning Herald's count on Tuesday showed Liberals losing 10 seats to Labor, but another six to Independents and one to the Greens. The Greens were the other big winners, taking three seats in the lower House, and they could end up with 12 seats in the Senate.
 The Green and Teal surge reflected the urgency of the climate issue in Australian metro areas and a revolt against both parties -- Morrison for his skepticism about climate action and Albanese for soft-pedaling it. The role of women in this anti-party revolt mattered, too, especially after the uproar created by a devastating 2021 report on a toxic culture of sexual harassment in the Australian Parliament.
 When all the votes are finally tallied, Labor is likely to have a bare majority of 76 seats (and possibly one more) in the 150-seat House of Representatives. But the two parties were on track for the lowest combined share of first preference votes in history, the Coalition with just under 36% and Labor just under 33%.
 Labor's share was depressed by loyalists who backed Teal candidates in seats Labor could never win. But because of a preference system that lets voters back third parties without fear of electing the party they like least, Australians were able to send a message to both major parties that they would like a different kind of politics.
 Albanese has been given a chance to "end the climate wars," one of his core promises, and to push moderately progressive policies that include universal child care. It also falls to this proud veteran of the old party system to usher in the new style of politics Australians seem to yearn for.
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 E.J. Dionne is on Twitter: @EJDionne.

Australians' big message on climate change and politics as usual

Oxford University, D.Phil.

Harvard University, BA

White House Correspondent Association's Beckman Award

National Press Club's Gingras Prize

Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America (Doubleday, 2010)

Homo Politicus (Doubleday, 2008)

Smashmouth (Basic Books, 2001)

DANA MILBANK COLUMNAdvance for release Wednesday, May 25, 2022, and thereafter(For Milbank clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Dana Milbank
 Just how dark can "Dark MAGA" get? Donald Trump and one of his prominent acolytes have just shone some light on the matter.
 On Sunday, amid a growing number of signs that he has lost his hot hand in Republican primaries, Trump elevated the idea of "civil war" against an "enemy [coming] from within" the United States. Republican leaders responded, as usual, with silence.
 On Monday, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor in Georgia, former Sen. David Perdue, closed out his flailing campaign for the Republican nomination by stripping off the mask and letting fly a starkly racist finale: He said the (Black) Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, is "demeaning her own race" and should "go back where she came from."
 The back-to-back appeals to violence and white supremacy provide a caution to those celebrating Trump's apparent loss of his kingmaker status in Republican politics: As ugly as things have been with Trump holding an iron grip over the GOP, they could actually get worse if he feels his grasp slipping and becomes even more incendiary in his provocations.
 Trump on Sunday used his own hapless media company, Truth Social, to share a screenshot of a tweet from Salvadoran president (and Trump ally) Nayib Bukele saying of the United States: "Something so big and powerful can't be destroyed so quickly, unless the enemy comes from within." Trump "ReTruthed" that message, along with the two-word commentary a Truth Social user had appended to it: "Civil war."
 Trump, who has long idolized Robert E. Lee and championed memorials for Confederate leaders, wasn't clear about whether his sharing of the message was meant to recommend, or merely to predict, a civil war. Neither did the aspiring Jefferson Davis share what he found enticing about the prospect.
 Was it the mass death? A repeat of the mortality of the Civil War would mean about 8 million deaths today. Or was it the Lost Cause mythology, which gave birth to Jim Crow and today's white supremacy?
 But this much is perfectly clear: Trump was, once again, amplifying a favorite theme of the violent far right.
 The Oath Keepers, the right-wing militant group now being prosecuted for sedition for its role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, has long had the civil-war idea at the heart of its ideology. "We aren't getting through this without a civil war," the group's leader, Stewart Rhodes, wrote before the insurrection, according to court filings. The leader of the group's Arizona chapter posted a video claiming that Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., told the chapter that the country is already in a civil war.
 The casual expectation of violence is spreading. Pennsylvania Republicans last week chose as their gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, a state senator who marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6 and who wrote his master's thesis on the need for the military to protect the country from a "Hitlerian Putsch" by the left, The Post's Greg Jaffe reported. And Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., who had previously warned of "bloodshed" if elections "continue to be rigged," said after losing his primary last week: "It's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command" over the "cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming."
 Then there's Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of course, who has spoken of a secession-style "national divorce" as a civil-war alternative, and of using "our Second Amendment rights . . . to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government."
 Precisely because of such people, the United States actually is at risk of civil war -- more than at any point in recent history. As I have noted, the Trump presidency and the Capitol insurrection caused the country to lose its status as a "full democracy" for the first time since 1800, according to an index used by the CIA to track instability and political violence abroad. A partial democracy, which the United States now is, faces three times the risk of falling into civil war.
 That was true before Trump began amplifying talk about war against an enemy within; before Fox News's Tucker Carlson, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York and others promoted the "great replacement" conspiracy theory allegedly used to justify last week's racist massacre in Buffalo; and before Perdue, on his way to likely defeat, told his White audience that Abrams was "demeaning" her race.
 Trump and Perdue are the ones demeaning to their own race -- the human race. After Buffalo, they know exactly where these words lead, and yet, even now, they choose to escalate.
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 Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

As Trump loses kingmaker status, he becomes more dangerous

Yale University, BA cum laude in political science

1977 Pulitzer Prize for commentary

1979 National Magazine Awards: Finalist in the essay and criticism category

1978 National Headliners Award

1980 Silurian Award for editorial writing

1985 The Washington Journalism Review named Will best writer, any subject

1997 Named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal

The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts

The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions

The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986

Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home 1986-1990

The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994

The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

With a Happy Eye, But ... America and the World, 1997-2002

One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

Statecraft as Soulcraft

The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy

The Conservative Sensibility

American Happiness and Discontents

GEORGE F. WILL COLUMNAdvance for release Thursday, May 26, and thereafter(For Will clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By George F. Will
 WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security's announced "pause" of its Disinformation Governance Board, 21 days after creating it as a "national security" measure, probably is itself disinformation. DHS realizes that its 10-thumbed debut of this boneheaded idea almost doomed it, so the "pause" feigns deliberation while the department plots the DGB's resurrection.
 Government pratfalls such as the DGB are doubly useful, as reminders of government's embrace of even preposterous ideas if they will expand its power, and as occasions for progressives to demonstrate that there is no government expansion they will not embrace. Progressives noted approvingly that DHS was putting a disinformation "expert" -- a "scholar" -- in charge, so science would be applied, including the "science" of sorting disinformation from real information.
 Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas's short-lived choice as DGB executive director was Nina Jankowicz. Before becoming, for three weeks, head of the "nonpartisan" (so said the president's press secretary) disinformation board, Jankowicz had a colorful career chastising "Republicans and other disinformers." The contents of Hunter Biden's laptop? "A Trump campaign product," she decreed. Her certitudes are many.
 To assuage the anxieties of those uneasy about government bestowing the imprimatur of truthfulness on contested propositions, DHS officials said the disinformation board had no "operational authority or capability," and denounced as a "great misperception" the idea that the board's mission would involve dispelling what it deems unhelpful statements. The White House said the DGB would "prevent" the circulation of disinformation, yet without trying to "adjudicate" truth or falsehood.
 Barack Obama, commenting on disinformation and offering a sample of it, recently called himself "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist" while fondly remembering the Fairness Doctrine (1949-1987) as part of the "framework" that made broadcasting "compatible with democracy." That doctrine allowed the federal government to require broadcast entities -- all dependent on federal licenses -- to be what government considered fair and balanced.
 Using radio spectrum scarcity as an excuse, even before the Fairness Doctrine was created, Republicans running Washington in the late 1920s pressured a New York station owned by the Socialist Party to show "due regard" for other opinions. What regard was "due"? The government knew. So, it prevented the Chicago Federation of Labor from buying a station, saying all stations should serve "the general public."
 In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration conditioned one station's license renewal on ending anti-FDR editorials. (Tulane Law School professor Amy Gajda's new book, "Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy," reports that earlier, FDR had "unsuccessfully pushed for a code of conduct for newspapers as part of the Depression-era National Recovery Act and had envisioned bestowing on compliant newspapers an image of a blue eagle as a sort of presidential seal of approval.") John F. Kennedy's Federal Communications Commission harassed conservative radio, and when a conservative broadcaster said Lyndon B. Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 as an excuse for Vietnam escalation, the Fairness Doctrine was wielded to force the broadcaster to air a response.
 As the Disinformation Governance Board floundered in ignominy, Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, said, "We could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn't." It is ever thus: No progressive ideas are foolish or repellant, although a few are artlessly merchandized.
 But to be fair to DHS, it has more employees (240,000) than Richmond, Va., has residents, and there is enough disinformation in circulation to preoccupy all of them. The Manhattan Institute's Brian Riedl offers some examples from the administration that conceived the DGB:
 President Joe Biden said the $2.4 trillion Build Back Better spending bill "costs zero dollars." Biden calls today's inflation, which ignited a year before the invasion of Ukraine, "Putin's price hike." Speaking in 2021 about his American Rescue Plan, Biden said, "According to Moody's . . . this law alone will create 7 million new jobs." Moody's actually said the law would add 4 million jobs to the 3 million that would be created without the law. Last year, the Biden administration said Moody's predicted "19 million jobs" would be created by the American Jobs Plan. Moody's actually predicted 2.7 million jobs over a 10-year period, with the other 16 million representing the baseline of expected job growth.
 If -- when -- the DHS's "pause" ends and a resuscitated disinformation board buckles down to protecting Americans from falsehoods, it will of course concern itself with only disinformation of foreign origin, the theory being that only this sort threatens national security. The theory will, of course, be disinformation.
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 George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

Watch for a return of the ignominious Disinformation Governance Board

Trinity College 

Oxford University

Princeton University

MARC A. THIESSEN COLUMNAdvance for release Wednesday, May, 25, 2022, and thereafter(For THIESSEN clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Marc A. Thiessen
 For the third time in his presidency, Joe Biden has declared that the United States will defend Taiwan if it is invaded by Communist China. And for the third time in his presidency, his staff has undermined him by walking back his comments and insisting that Biden did not say what he plainly said.
 Which raises an important question: Who elected them?
 At a news conference in Tokyo on Monday, Biden was asked: "You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, if it comes to that?" Biden replied: "Yes." The reporter asked again: "You are?" Biden was unequivocal: "That's the commitment we made." He added: "The idea that (Taiwan) can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate." He said the same thing last August, when he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan." And in October, after he was asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper if "the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked," Biden answered forthrightly: "Yes, we have a commitment to do that."
 Now that Biden has said not once, not twice, but three times that he would order the U.S. military to defend Taiwan, one begins to suspect that it was not a gaffe -- and that he actually meant what he said.
 But instead of falling in line, his staff went into cleanup mode, insisting there had been no change in policy. Unfortunately, they appear to have persuaded Biden to back off as well. Asked the next day if the policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan was "dead," Biden answered "no," adding that "the policy has not changed at all." This makes no sense. He said he would defend Taiwan if it were attacked. There was nothing "ambiguous" about what he said.
 Biden was right the first time -- and the second and third time, too. One of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to invade Ukraine but not, say, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, is because those countries enjoy something Ukraine does not: an Article 5 commitment. Putin knows an attack on them would be declaring war not just on them but also on the United States and the NATO alliance -- and that knowledge is a powerful deterrent.
 If we are to deter China from invading Taiwan, then we must be equally clear about the response it would face. This is why many foreign policy experts have been arguing for the clarity that Biden offered this week. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, co-authored a Foreign Affairs essay in 2020 that declared: "The policy known as strategic ambiguity has . . . run its course. Ambiguity is unlikely to deter an increasingly assertive China with growing military capabilities. The time has come for the United States to introduce a policy of strategic clarity: one that makes explicit that the United States would respond to any Chinese use of force against Taiwan." And as my American Enterprise Institute colleagues Gary Schmitt and Michael Mazza also pointed out in 2020, "China's increasingly threatening posture vis-à-vis Taiwan has elicited a growing view among Americans and American politicians that 'strategic ambiguity' has outlived its usefulness."
 Biden was right to ditch ambiguity for clarity -- his backtracking notwithstanding. But clarity alone is not enough. We also need to have the right capabilities in the region to back up our new deterrence posture. Whereas Ukraine has a long, porous border with Russia, Taiwan is an island. China needs to cross the Taiwan Strait to reach it. So we must deploy weapons -- including intermediate-range conventional missiles, armed drones and anti-ship weapons in Guam, Japan and the Philippines -- that would allow us to prevent China from doing so. We can do that thanks to Donald Trump's 2019 decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. If Chinese leaders know we can stop their forces from ever reaching Taiwan, they will be less likely to launch an attack.
 We also need to make sure Taiwan has the weapons to defend itself. The Trump administration approved historic defense sales to Taiwan, totaling over $18 billion in four years -- more than his predecessor provided in eight years -- including F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles, torpedoes and Reaper drones. Biden needs to expand those sales even further. Unlike what played out in Ukraine, we must arm Taiwan before an invasion to deter one. We need to ask ourselves: If China invaded tomorrow, what capabilities would we wish we had provided Taipei -- and then provide those weapons now.
 Most important, Biden's staff needs to stop undermining deterrence by undermining the president. Biden was 100% correct: If China invades Taiwan, we must come to its defense. Better that China know that now, before an invasion -- so we can prevent one from happening in the first place.
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 Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen.

Biden's flip-flop on defending Taiwan makes America look weak

What the Hell Is Going On?

Pulitzer Prize for commentary, 2010

H.L. Mencken Writing Award, 1993

Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care

KATHLEEN PARKER COLUMNAdvance for release Wednesday, May 25, 2022, and thereafter(For PARKER clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Kathleen Parker
 When we decided to escape the blistering 98-degree South Carolina heat and head for the North Carolina mountains, we packed up our three pups, two of whom had just turned 9 months old.
 Within hours of arrival, one of them went missing.
 The smallest of the three, Nugget, vanished after chasing his bigger brother, Gatsby, out of sight. Gatsby returned within 15 minutes without the little guy. We immediately began searching, calling out Nugget's name, which, I learned later, one shouldn't do. A runaway dog knows he's done wrong and, fearing he's in trouble, often might not respond. Also, a tracker named RV told me, never chase a dog but sit quietly, facing away from the pet, and wait for him to approach. Tossing treats will bring him closer.
 We three -- husband Woody, one of our exceedingly methodical sons, Henry, and I -- began dissecting possibilities and plotting strategies. Henry said, "He's probably on someone's porch or in a golf cart." All three of our small pups love cart rides more than tummy rubs. The surest way to collect them is to shift the cart into reverse gear. The annoying beeping sound must be to them what Homer's mythical Sirens were to sailors. In seconds, they'll materialize and leap into the cart. Nugget, once in, won't get out -- ever -- unless we retrieve him.
 We decided a cart was our best hope. Slowly circling the area for hours, we'd periodically stop and hit reverse, hoping Nugget might reappear. No luck. Dread began seeping into our hearts as Saturday's sun disappeared behind thunderclouds and lighting ripped the sky. Our only consolation was that Nugget was wearing a reflective collar bearing my husband's name and cellphone number. Also, Nugget had an implanted microchip that identifies him and provides proof of ownership.
 As a deluge broke and night closed around us, thoughts unavoidably turned to the realities of mountain wildlife - bears, bobcats and coyotes. The same tracker who had guided me on how to lure him back reminded me that a small dog such as Nugget would look like dinner to any of our local predators. Thanks, RV.
 It was still raining Sunday morning as we began anew. Meanwhile, dozens of people from various lost-pet websites (10 million pets are lost each year) and social media where I had posted news of Nugget offered tips and valuable information. Our chip company, an invaluable resource, issued a regional alert to hundreds of vets and shelters. I printed and distributed posters. We draped unwashed jeans and T-shirts from railings and tree limbs, hoping Nugget might pick up a scent. Nada.
 As it happened, the weekend was to have been a birthday celebration for my husband. Naturally, every gift was dog-related, including an 8-by-10 framed photo of him and his three charges at home. When I walked into Walgreens to retrieve the print, I beseeched the staff to please forgive my tortured eyes and obvious distress. We celebrated the birthday Sunday night with weak smiles, as more thunder and lightning crashed around us. I couldn't stop the constant loop in my head: (BEG ITAL)My poor baby. He must be so cold. And hungry and afraid.(END ITAL)
 The darkness in these eastern mountains, especially when few people have arrived for summer to turn on lights, is black-hole-ish - impenetrable and, if you're alone out there, terrifying. With sad hearts, we turned in that night vowing without much hope that we'd find him the next day.
 At 10 a.m. Monday, the phone rang.
 I could hear my husband talking in the next room and raced in to listen. Hearing the caller struggling with English, I began frantically waving my arms and whispered loudly, "I speak Spanish!" In the moment, I think he had forgotten.
 As we say, Gracias a Dios.
 Nugget was in the safe custody of a painting crew working at a house - you won't believe - 400 feet away, as the crow flies. As Henry had predicted, Nugget had spent the entirety of two stormy days and nights nestled in a golf cart beneath the back porch of a nearby house we had presumed was occupied. Adequate evidence indicated he'd never left the cart. Our heroic painters, who discovered him when they arrived for work, declined a reward.
 I offer this miraculous (to us) story as a cautionary tale. Take from it what you will. Every tip included is solid, but prevention is better. My advice: If you take a pet on vacation, prepare in advance a list of services and contacts you could need in an emergency. And keep your pet restrained or contained, especially in unfamiliar places. For two seconds, we thought, (BEG ITAL)Oh, let's just let them run around for a minute. For two days, we were as lost as Nugget.(END ITAL)
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 Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.

One puppy, lost and found

2018 Finalist team, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service

2018 George Polk Award

2010 Urbino International Press Award

2013 Overseas Press Club Award for Foreign Affairs Commentary

Lifetime Achievement Award, International Committee for Foreign Journalists

Legion D'Honneur awarded by the French government

2004 Edward Weintal Prize

2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary

As The Post’s foreign editor, Ignatius supervised the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

The Paladin

The Quantum Spy

The Director

Bloodmoney

The Increment

Body of Lies

The Sun King

A Firing Offense

The Bank of Fear

SIRO

Agents of Innocence

IGNATIUS COLUMNAdvance for release Wednesday, May 25 and thereafter(For IGNATIUS clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By David Ignatius
 WASHINGTON -- Reading Russia's latest sanctions list, permanently banning travel to the country by 963 people, saddened me -- and not just because my name is on it. It's a catalogue of hurt from a nation that seems ready to blame everybody but its leaders for its current troubles.
 The list is very long indeed, running to nearly 100 pages in my printout. Reading so many names, you sense that Russia is deliberately burning nearly all its bridges to the United States. Russia's ruling elite feels abused by American politicians, business leaders, journalists, judges, think tanks -- nearly everyone, it seems.
 Donald Trump can still visit Moscow, but scores of Republican members of Congress can't. The list of excluded GOP senators ranges from moderates such as Roy Blunt of Missouri and Mitt Romney of Utah to hard-right stalwarts Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The GOP doesn't fare much better in the House. Moderates Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin can't tour the Kremlin anymore, but neither can Jim Jordan of Ohio or Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
 As for Democrats, forget about it. The sanctions list includes the Democratic House leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina. The Congressional Progressive Caucus can save its rubles, too. The members of "the Squad" are all banned. So are Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Ro Khanna of California. It's the same on the Senate side. Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York and Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois: Nyet, nyet.
 National security advisers, who form a chain of foreign policy expertise from administration to administration, are mostly untouchables, too. Jake Sullivan, the current adviser, is banned (along with his wife, Margaret Goodlander, for good measure). But so are John Bolton and H.R. McMaster from the Trump administration, along with Stephen Hadley from the George W. Bush years. Henry Kissinger can still travel to Moscow, and maybe he should. The Kremlin needs to talk to someone.
 The sanctions document seems to be an all-purpose payback list, with some pretty peculiar grievances. I searched for information about people who were identified only as "U.S. citizens." A half-dozen of them had been accused in court of mistreating Russian orphans they adopted. They included a 1997 case in Colorado, a 2003 case in Pennsylvania, a 2008 case in Maryland, a 2010 case in Ohio and a 2012 case in Tennessee. Some of the details in these stories were ugly, but still, these are very old wounds.
 The list has other anomalies. People who played a role in the Helsinki Commission on Human Rights are cited 18 times. So are the members of organizations that sought to expose Russian disinformation, including actor Morgan Freeman and director Rob Reiner. Representatives of think tanks that tried to untangle Russian foreign policy machinations, such as the Atlantic Council, are named frequently. A D.C. Council member who named a block near the Russian Embassy in Washington after dissident Boris Nemtsov is also banned.
 My own crime, in addition to being a "journalist," is that I am supposedly an "expert at the [Woodrow] Wilson Center." Sorry, comrades, but you have that last part wrong. I am, however, a trustee of the German Marshall Fund (as I have regularly informed readers). I guess even sanctions compilers need editors and fact-checkers.
 Speaking of which, among the banned are some who wouldn't be able to go in any event, for the simple reason that they are dead. They include the late senators John McCain of Arizona, Harry Reid of Nevada and Orrin Hatch of Utah.
 Some Americans might regard permanent exclusion from Russia as a treat, but I'm not one of them. I've visited the country a half-dozen times, starting in the early 1980s, and enjoyed every visit. I've talked for over four decades with Russian ambassadors, foreign ministers, Middle East specialists and other officials. Quite apart from this journalistic work, I love Russian literature and music. The vodka isn't bad, either.
 So it's a genuine personal regret for me that I apparently won't be visiting Russia again anytime soon. But beyond that, I worry about how, if Russia won't talk to anyone, the country will find its way back to normal life after its tragic assault on Ukraine is halted.
 Adults sometimes behave like children, and that's especially true of adult politicians. When they make big mistakes, as Russian President Vladimir Putin did in his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, they want someone else to blame. They huff and puff. They imagine there's a virtue in their isolation.
 Everyone knows what it's like to nurse a grudge; sensible people know how to get over one. They find a way out, so that they stop inflicting pain on others - and escape the prison they are creating for themselves.
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 Contact David Ignatius on Twitter @IgnatiusPost

Russia's travel ban list saddened me - and not just because I'm on it

Harvard College

Kings College, Cambridge

Pickles

Loose Parts (strip)

Loose Parts (panel)

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 Two years ago, a video of George Floyd rocked the world.
 Floyd - a father, boyfriend and man trying to get his life on track - was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for almost 10 minutes in May 2020.
 His last words, captured on cellphone video by a teenager, spurred protests across the nation. Thousands of Americans marched to call for an end to racism and police brutality against people of color.
 The Washington Post photographed some of these demonstrators in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, documenting who was on the streets and why. Some told photographer Joshua Lott that they wanted to see a change in policing. Others hoped to show their outrage and demand an end to racism.
 Two years later, we asked the same protesters how their lives had changed since the summer the country caught fire. Here's what they said.
 - - - 
 Maria Tovar, 20
 Tovar is a musician. And in recent months, she's found herself writing songs that capture the despondency she feels about her beloved city, channeling her pain and sharing it on social media.
 "Hoping that there's more sunshine than rain in the city, I'd be lying if I said my city wasn't bleeding," she recently wrote following a double homicide at an intersection in north Minneapolis.
 "We're not healing," she said about the spike in violent crime.
 Tovar, who is Native American and Hispanic, knew long before Floyd's death that racism existed. She would feel glares from White students at her high school in St. Paul, and she says family members have been mistreated by law enforcement.
 But after Floyd's killing, she grew even more cautious. In the summer of 2020, she was pulled over with two Black friends for going 10 mph over the speed limit, she said.
 "I told everybody in the car: 'Don't say nothing. Make sure they can see your hands,'" she recalled, adding that the officer had called two squad cars for backup. "I'm rolling down all the windows just so they can see we don't have nothing."
 - - -
 Josh Melton, 31
 Melton has been waiting for change.
 Two years ago Melton, who is White, and his wife, Hope, who is Black, took their 5-year-old daughter, Izzy, to the protests. The drywall finisher wanted Chauvin to pay for his crime and Minneapolis to hold officers accountable for their behavior.
 Though a jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree unintentional murder and sentenced him to 22.5 years in prison, Melton isn't feeling hopeful. More Black men have died in the Minneapolis area since Floyd's death, including Daunte Wright and Amir Locke, he said.
 Melton's days of making protest signs with his daughter have lessened. His activism these days is more about calling people out when they say something he considers racist or offensive. That has led to some strained relationships.
 He recalled a false story his stepmother posted on Facebook claiming that a Muslim cashier had denied service to a White person. Melton told his stepmom that she shouldn't be spreading fake stories, he said. They fought, and communication has been limited since.
 "Ultimately, there still has to be a lot more change," he said. "I think things are changing for the better. I would like to see them change faster."
 - - - 
 Susan Larson, 55
 For months, Larson tried to get the police to respond to her calls about the domestic violence and guns in her Bolero Flats apartment building, calling 911 multiple times. The Minneapolis Police Department did nothing, she said - until an officer fatally shot Amir Locke just four days after she moved out.
 "They kept telling me they had bigger fish to fry and more important things to do," she said.
 Since Floyd's death, violent crime has spiked in Minneapolis alongside rampant police staff shortages and other issues.
 "Whoever in Minneapolis who used the phrase 'defund the police' should've had their tush spanked because, of course, we all know now that's not what they intended," Larson said.
 Larson is still deeply committed to quashing bigotry anytime she hears it and wants to get back into diversity and inclusion work.
 She said most of the work to end racism starts with White people. "We're the ones who did the wrongs," she said. "Who cares if it was primarily our ancestors? Just because I see myself as not being a racist doesn't mean I don't do racist things."
 - - -
 Starla Wesley, 43
 Wesley saw herself, her son and her father in Floyd as she watched the video two years ago.
 As a 15-year-old in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Omaha, Wesley said, she was held in a chokehold by a police officer. She believes that her foster mother's anguished cries saved her life.
 She has lived with suspicion of police officers since. And watching Floyd plead for air brought back a rush of feelings.
 Yet two years later, as the marches have dwindled, Wesley is working with police in her suburban neighborhood near Minneapolis. For the last 10 months, she has sat on a multicultural and multiethnic committee that works with police to address racial profiling.
 Wesley sees her work as a way to honor Floyd's legacy. And she hopes her committee's improvements will have a domino effect, unleashing change that could lead to better police practices.
 "You can't blame and point fingers at everyone or anyone when you're not doing nothing that impacts your community," she said. "When you work with the police, you're working with the politics. You have an impact on politics when you're working with the police. . . . That is our system. You work with the system and not against the system."
 - - - 
 Doran Schoeppach, 58
 About six years before Floyd's murder, Schoeppach witnessed police brutality outside the window of his South Minneapolis home.
 He saw eight or nine officers surrounding a handcuffed Black man on the ground; some were kicking him while other officers watched. Schoeppach wanted to go out and yell at the police, he said, but he was frozen in horror. "I don't know if I've even forgiven myself," he said.
 After Schoeppach watched the video of Chauvin on Floyd's neck, he knew he had to do something, attending multiple rallies and marches in honor of Floyd.
 Nearly two years later, 80-hour workweeks as a middle school teacher have made attending marches more challenging.
 Floyd's death, Schoeppach said, has made him more aware of issues that disproportionately affect people of color, such as no-knock warrants. He is pushing, through committees and proposals, for more diverse voices in his school district. He recognizes that school officials must try to connect with the growing Muslim community.
 "For me, that's a steppingstone," he said. "It's hard to peel away [from work]."
 - - - 
 Vincent Kim, 20
 As the son of Vietnamese and South Korean immigrants, Kim has always wondered about his place in Minneapolis. "I think Minneapolis is one of the poster cities for how to redline a metropolis pretty effectively," he said. "It's pretty clearly a segregated city."
 Kim, who is interested in English and political science, wants to remain active in activism after graduation. But he also wrestles with how to stay positive about the future as he reflects on the spate of violence against Asian people and other minorities.
 He was dispirited when he saw women who looked like his mother and grandmother gunned down by a White man - who one official said was just having a "bad day" - in three Atlanta spas last year.
 And when he thinks of Floyd, he mourns the humanity that was stolen from him in his last minutes of life.
 "I'm not sure what the impact of George Floyd's murder will be because some people make him into a martyr," Kim said. "It's unfair to him and his family that his impact will be forever relegated to that . . . on so many different levels, there is an unfairness that is so great and deeply twisted you cannot ever escape it."
 - - - 
 Becky Waters, 47, and Deevo, 55
 Waters and her fiance, who goes by Deevo, both demonstrated in the summer of 2020 to demand justice for Floyd - but for different reasons.
 Waters, who is White, wanted her children to understand the inequality that exists in America for Black people. "[Deevo] said, 'This happens all the time. You're just seeing it now,'" she said. "I remember how stunning that comment was. I knew that it happened, but I'd never seen it happen or witnessed it. There's just no denying . . . the realization of what happens when you just have a different skin color."
 Deevo, who grew up in Chicago, had grown tired of seeing Black people killed by police. Suffering from carpal tunnel in his arms since a 1999 encounter with White Minneapolis police officers, he was reminded that much hadn't change as he pumped his fist for justice during the protests.
 "Most of the time we're pretty numb to [the pain]," he said. "For whatever reason, we get to a point where we get fed up."
 - - - 
 Jada Nutter, 41
 Nutter can still recall the clamor of sirens and the smell of fire that permeated her yard in the summer of 2020.
 The stay-at-home mother of four spent the weeks after Floyd's death explaining to her children how people of color have been historically mistreated in the United States, often by people in power such as police officers. Nutter said she and her husband wanted to have balanced conversations, without branding one group as good or bad.
 Nutter, who has a Black father and a White mother, remembers how hard her mother tried to organize her neighbors for a safer community and how frustrating she sometimes found the work. "The lack of change with the system, I think that burned her out," she said of her mom, who was raising her and her siblings as a single parent. "She took a massive step back and didn't do anything after that."
 As she looks around two years later, Nutter can understand that frustration.
 "I wish we could say [Floyd] was the catalyst to change," she said. But "even two years now, we haven't seen much change."
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 </story></html> floyd-protesters Two years after Floyd's death, protesters reflect on what changed National partner-exclude Lateshia Beachum ellipsis

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 More Americans are quitting their jobs than ever in the U.S., and fewer are sticking around in their new positions.
 Among workers who took a new job in 2021, the share who had been in their previous position for less than 12 months rose by 6.5% compared with a year earlier, data compiled by LinkedIn show.
 This job-jumping metric is at the highest it's been since 2016, when LinkedIn started tracking it. That helps explain why job openings remain at record highs in the country two years into the pandemic: A rising number of people who left their employers in search for better working conditions elsewhere reconsidered and quit again soon after.
 Laurel Camirand was one of them. Feeling undervalued working at a treatment center for men recovering from mental-health issues and substance abuse, she left last September to become a program director in a similar field at another company.
 Camirand moved about 30 miles to North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, for the new job. It only took two months for the 28-year-old to question her decision. She wasn't well supported by her manager. Employees were covering for one another on their time sheets, and when she confronted them about it, they pushed back and threatened to leave. 
 At first, she tried to stick it out, but she became withdrawn from work and isolated in her office. She quit within six months.
 "At the end of the day, you spend most of your life working," Camirand said. "It sucks to be miserable."
 The millions of job openings created by the recovery, combined with the widespread adoption of remote work, has given many Americans the possibility of switching employers.
 Getting higher pay has been one of the driving factors, but many also sought better benefits, more flexible hours or the option to work from home. Young Americans entering the workforce now are much more attuned to their mental health and would rather be happy than grind it out - a major cultural shift from generations' past.
 LinkedIn figures show that the share of people jumping to another place in less than a year rose the fastest in industries that have been upended by the Covid crisis: accommodation, entertainment, as well as hospitals and health care. But it's on the rise elsewhere - from education to retail and administrative jobs. One major sector has seen a drop in that metric: financial services.
 The dataset - based on more than 500,000 job changes in 2021 - doesn't discern whether people quit or were let go. But there's strong evidence to suggest most left voluntarily, said Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn. Quit rates are at a record high while layoffs hover around all-time lows, according to government data.
 "It stands to reason that it's much more likely that people are faced by better opportunities," Berger said. "There aren't that many layoffs out there. It's a really hot labor market."
 Job switchers have had better luck getting a raise, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Hourly wages climbed 5.6% in April for those who moved to a new job, on a 12-month moving average, compared with a 4.2% gain for those who stayed put. That creates a strong incentive to jump at a time when decades-high inflation has been eating into recent wage gains. 
 LendingTree found an even higher increase of 11% on average for workers who took new jobs that entailed a relocation within the U.S., based on an analysis of Census Bureau data at the end of 2020, the latest available at that level.
 While it may be tempting to jump for money, that doesn't necessarily solve other issues, said Jamie McLaughlin, founder and chief executive officer of recruiting agency Monday Talent. And with so many people interviewing for positions remotely, it's hard to get a good feel for what office culture is like.
 "We get a lot of people who come to us after two months, three months, even two weeks sometimes, and just say, 'I made a mistake,'" McLaughlin said. "That conversation has become even more apparent as a result of the pandemic and the change in the working environment."
 There may be signs that job switching is leveling off. Wages grew at a slower rate in April, and the ratio of workers who change employers to the total number of employed people - known as the employment-to-employment rate - appears to have peaked, according to Bloomberg Economics.
 Other indicators point in the same direction. The share of small businesses reporting job openings that are hard to fill peaked in September and has slid since, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. Similarly, those planning to raise compensation hit a high at the end of last year.
 Camirand hopes her job-switching journey is coming to an end. She picked up a few part-time jobs and eventually got into human resources and recruiting, drawn by the connection she makes with candidates and helping them advance in their careers. While she doesn't love the industry she's currently recruiting for, the actual work itself is fulfilling.
 "I heard it takes three-four major job changes before you find the one," Camirand said. "I feel I'm nearing the one."
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 </story></html> job-switchers U.S. job jumpers reconsider and quit again soon after Molly Smith US-Job-Jumpers Reconsider-and-Quit-Again-Soon-After

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 MINNEAPOLIS - George Floyd's May 2020 death beneath Derek Chauvin's knee cast a harsh national spotlight on the Twin Cities, exposing what people of color here have long complained about - the region's troubled history with race and policing, including several high-profile police killings of Black men, and a state that boasts some of the nation's deepest racial disparities between Whites and Blacks, including in housing and income.
 And in the days after Floyd's murder, White politicians publicly grappled with how a state known for its progressive politics and economic opportunity could become the ugly epicenter of an American reckoning on race and justice.
 At the news conference after Floyd's death, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, spoke emotionally of how a state long ranked as one of the best places to live in terms of jobs and education did not deliver for people of color and joined other elected officials in vowing to fix those disparities.
 "We ranked second in a survey of the 50 states, second in happiness behind Hawaii. But if you take a deeper look and peel it back … all of those statistics are true if you are White. If you're not, we ranked near the bottom," he said. "Those two things can't operate at the same place. You cannot continue to say you're a great place to live if your neighbor, because of the color of their skin, doesn't have that same opportunity."
 Walz ascribed those disparities to "small hidden racisms" for which the "ultimate end … is the ability to believe you can murder a Black man in public."
 But two years later, many Black Minneapolis residents say little has changed since Floyd's killing. The signs that featured images of Floyd's face or demanded justice for his death have vanished from front yards, even as many of the same tensions over race, policing and inequality linger. While many believe the commitment for change is still there, some question the urgency.
 "Although everybody's heart seems to be in the right place, their actions are not matching up as fast … We're dealing with big, deep cultural issues, systematic issues that have built up for hundreds of years and that takes time," said PJ Hill, an adviser at NorthRock Partners and vice-chair of the Minneapolis NAACP. "You worry about the time that it is taking and whether we are missing a moment."
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 </fraction> year murder sentence and the three other officers at the scene were convicted in February on federal civil rights charges related to Floyd's death, a recent state investigation found the Minneapolis Police Department continues to engage in racially discriminatory policing - targeting and using force on Black people at a higher rate than White people even though Black people make up just 19% of the population. Since Floyd's death, two other Black men have been killed by police, inflaming the trauma of a city that remains deeply on edge.
 That includes that fatal shooting of Amir Locke, who was killed as officers executed a no-knock warrant inside a downtown Minneapolis apartment in February. Locke wasn't the target of the warrant, though police initially described him as a "suspect." Locke's death, which sparked fresh protests, resulted in no charges against the officers involved.
 Scott Redd, a former Minneapolis Public Schools official and a relative of Locke's, told reporters that Locke would be alive if he weren't Black and echoed what other Black residents have long said about systemic racism in the state, which they say has been concealed by its reputation for being "Minnesota nice."
 "We often call it Mississippi with snow," Redd said as he stood with Locke's parents the day after their son was killed. "We have some of the largest disparities when it comes to education, employment, homeownership and now justice. And we're tired of it."
 Jeff Hayden couldn't always find the words to explain what it is like being a Black person in Minneapolis, especially to his White friends. And then one day, the former state senator saw a film that struck him as an apt metaphor.
 "It's like that movie, 'Get Out,' " Hayden said, referring to Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning 2017 racial satire, which depicted a Black man arriving into a world that appeared nice on the surface but turned out to be ominous underneath.
 "In the film, everything is pleasant - just like it is here. Minneapolis is a beautiful city, with downtown and the lakes. People are pleasant. It has this history of great mayors. We have this disproportionality of Fortune 500 companies here, so there are great jobs," said Hayden, who until late 2020 represented the area where Floyd was killed "But for Black people, it's like, 'What is going on here?' … You look around, and you dig into the data, and you realize Black people are doing terrible here."
 As the nation has slowly moved to reopen after more than two years clouded by the covid-19 pandemic, Minnesota has enjoyed a robust economic rebound, including a record $9.2 billion state surplus that Walz and lawmakers are debating how to spend.
 The state recently marked its lowest unemployment rate on record - 2.2% in April, one of the lowest rates in the country, prompting celebratory statements from Walz and other elected officials. But the Black unemployment rate was still more than double that of White Minnesotans - 6.7% versus 2.8% , according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.
 Across the Twin Cities, the median Black family income was just under $42,000 in 2020, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by DEED, far from the nearly $90,000 averaged by White families that year. In Minneapolis, the disparities were even sharper - with Black families on average earning just under $28,000 in 2020, compared to the nearly $79,000 median income reported by White families - one of the largest income gaps in the nation and one made worse by the pandemic, which hit Black Minnesotans harder than Whites.
 Less than a quarter of Black families own their homes in the Twin Cities, one of the lowest homeownership rates in the nation and one that has been in steady decline over the last two decades, according to a 2021 study of property records and census data by the Urban Institute. In contrast, the region's homeownership rates among Whites has remained above 70% since 2000 - one of the highest rates in the country.
 A recent report by Urban League Twin Cities found other disparities, including in education and health care. Graduation rates were double for White students compared to Black students, who reported feeling less cared for by educators then their White counterparts. The report also found that Black mothers in the region are nearly three times as likely to die during or after pregnancy than White mothers "regardless of education levels or socioeconomic status," while infant deaths among Black infants in Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located, were 3.4 times higher than Whites.
 "I don't think there have been many changes for the plight of African Americans in Minneapolis … In some ways, it feels like we are in a worse place than where we were two years ago," said Andrea Jenkins, the president of the Minneapolis City Council who lives two blocks from the intersection where Floyd was killed.
 Jenkins, a poet and activist who grew up in Chicago before moving to Minneapolis, made history in 2017 as the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in America. She made headlines again in January, when she was elected president of the city council - the first trans person to hold such a position in the country.
 "I think that's progress," said Jenkins, who ran on a platform of racial equality, including police accountability and affordable housing. "But any progress is always met with opposition."
 And the last two years, the inequality that led her to run for office had been laid at her doorstep - from the repeated complaints that she heard from other Black people about the racism they had endured at the hands of police to the struggles of her low-income neighbors to survive in a city where many are increasingly priced out.
 After Floyd's death, Jenkins led the council to declare racism as a public health emergency in Minneapolis - calling out what she described as systemic issues that have plagued Black residents in Minneapolis and led to Floyd's killing, and forcing the city to confront head-on the disparities as it crafts future budgets and policies including its approach to public safety.
 "Until we name this virus, this disease that has infected America for the past 400 years, we will never ever resolve this issue," Jenkins said at the time.
 Jenkins was heartened to see others around the Twin Cities join in her call. But two years later, she expressed concern about the slow progress in fixing the systemic issues that continue to challenge Minneapolis.
 "There have been a lot of foundations, a lot of corporations, a lot of institutions that have made proclamations and statements about addressing racism. But the substantive changes, nothing has really changed," Jenkins said. "Minneapolis remains this dichotomy because it one of the most beautiful places … It's like nowhere else. Minneapolis is it. Except if you're Black and low income, it could be one of the worst places to live in America."
 Last November, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, convened a working group of outside advisers to suggest how the city could shape its budget to speed up the city's recovery from both the pandemic and the 2020 unrest while also seeking to dismantle the racial and economic disparities. Frey said Minneapolis could not afford to return back to the "old normal."
 The group's report, made public in March, recommended the city invest in more affordable housing and work opportunities in communities of color and expand access to funding for entrepreneurs, businesses and first-time home buyers. The group suggested the city's overarching goal should be to "recreate the Black middle class."
 "It's not going to happen overnight, but we have to start the work," said Hill, who served as a co-chair of the group.
 A South Minneapolis native, Hill played college basketball at Ohio State and then professionally overseas before returning home to work as an investment adviser - a career that he began after the White father of one of the kids he coached suggested he consider a career in finance. It was the kind of opportunity that Hill hopes to pass on to other people of color, describing himself as a "bridge" between the Black community and the corporate world of the Twin Cities that remains overwhelmingly White.
 "Growing up, I never saw people who looked like me, who were advisers, who were doctors, anything like that so that's why I live in the community," said Hill, who until recently lived two blocks from where Floyd was killed. "I want to show people from my community, all minority kids, that you can be bigger than just an athlete or an entertainer to make it out of this place."
 But Hill also sees himself as a way of connecting wealthy White people to the Black communities that need investment and support. "I think people are genuine in that they want to help make Minneapolis a better city and bridge these gaps, but they don't know where to begin," he said.
 Still, Hill, who led protests across the Twin Cities in the aftermath of Floyd's death, continues to be troubled by the racism he sees. In the recent state human rights report into the practices of the Minneapolis police, investigators claimed officers had surveilled Black leaders and organizations in the community and used the department's covert Twitter accounts to pose as a Black resident and send a message criticizing the local NAACP.
 "It's disheartening," Hill said. "But it proves that what we have been saying as a community about the police is true. … But we just have to fight to continue toward trust, truth and transparency."
 Hill describes himself as an optimist, but admits he worries about the pace of change. Last month, he and other work group members reached out to Frey's office to find out how the mayor was planning to implement their suggestions. A city official told them they were still going through the report. "I think the commitment is there, but we have to keep the pressure on," he said.
 Two years ago, he was among the hundreds of activists standing on the Interstate 35 bridge near downtown Minneapolis to protest for accountability over Floyd's death when a gas truck plowed through barriers and drove into the group, narrowly missing him. Hill had thought of his family, of what could have happened, but as he looked around he marveled at the diversity of the crowd, including more young White people than he'd seen at protests before.
 "It gave me such hope," Hill said. "You have a large group of people here who really do want to make a difference … but it's not happening fast enough."
 "We have this unique opportunity to really reset the system, but we have to get it right," Hill added. "We can't be back here in 20 or 30 years and say we had this chance but did nothing with it."
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 </story></html> minneapolis Two years after Floyd's death, Black Minnesotans say little has changed National partner-exclude Holly Bailey ellipsis

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Charleston church members react to Buffalo shooting

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 CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A few days ago, at three o'clock in the morning, the Rev. Eric Manning found himself thinking about how last weekend's massacre in Buffalo mirrored the one at his church.
 A young man, a self-described white supremacist, armed with a gun, drove miles out of his way to seek out and kill Black people.
 In June 2015, nine Black men and women, members of historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston were murdered in June 2015 by a White man, then 21 years old, who had prayed with him during their Wednesday night Bible study.
 Last Saturday afternoon, ten Black men and women were shot to death at a neighborhood supermarket. Payton Gendron, 18, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the Buffalo slayings, railed online about a conspiracy to "replace" White people and detailed his plans to target a Black neighborhood. The document also references Dylann Roof, later convicted of killing the Black men and women in the church basement, who talked of starting a "race war."
 "In June, it'll be seven years since the massacre at Mother Emanuel," Manning, who became pastor of the church one year and five days after the attack, said during a recent interview. "People would have thought that we would be in a better place."
 When Carlotta Dennis, a retired English teacher, heard about the carnage in Buffalo, her mind "went right back to that, the thought of what happened that night," she said. "The tragedy, the horror."
 Dennis, 69, had been at Mother Emmanuel earlier that evening in June 2015, serving as recording secretary for a meeting attended by 61 members. Most left afterward, but about a dozen members stayed behind for Bible study. Hours later, church members' cellphones began ringing as family and friends frantically called to check on them, sharing news of the shooting.
 Roof killed the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 41; Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49; the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74; Cynthia Hurd, 54; Susie Jackson, 87; Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; and Tywanza Sanders, 26.
 State Rep. JA Moore is the younger brother of Myra Thompson. News of the Buffalo slayings, so close to the anniversary of her murder, exacerbated the pain for his family, he says. Just a day earlier, the South Carolina state senate had ended its session without taking a vote on a hate crimes bill named in honor of Pinckney, who had been a senator.
 Moore, who cites his sister's murder as the reason he ran for public office, is incensed that the bill did not pass. According to news reports, two of the Republicans who declined to support the bill, state Sens. Brian Adams and Larry Grooms, represent the district in which Mother Emanuel is located. Adams did not respond to a request for comment; Grooms could not be immediately reached.
 "The frustration is incomprehensible," he said in a telephone interview. The legislation is "not going to prevent white supremacy or domestic terrorism or hateful acts," Moore acknowledged. "But sometimes, as my grandmother always told me, you've got to label people for who they are and things for what they are. And there's power in that."
 Shortly after the church massacre, then-Gov. Nikki Haley, R, finally pushed to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol. But Moore, who also noted that South Carolina lawmakers haven't enacted gun control measures since the shootings, dismissed it as a symbolic gesture meant to burnish Haley's image. "It did nothing to stop hate. It did nothing to protect lives. It did nothing to heal the pain, the wounds that my family suffered."
 At their Bible study sessions, and at a meeting with Washington Post journalists on Wednesday, church members described their deep disappointment with how little the country had changed since the murders at Mother Emanuel.
 They sat in the sanctuary of the 206-year-old church building, sunlight streaming through stained glass windows. There, a photo collage of the nine church members who were killed covers most of a wall; next to it sits a newly-installed security system, with large monitors. The downstairs area where the shooting took place is a sacred space, off limits to visitors. Church leaders, trying to move past the shooting, are raising money to renovate the sanctuary and building.
 The members were concerned at what they see as a rise in racism and of racist attacks on people of color. They faulted the Internet for helping to spread racist ideas. They expressed particular disgust with elected officials in South Carolina, who cried and prayed with them after the killings.
 "The laws haven't changed since then," said Clifford Jones, 62, a retired Army staff sergeant and Veterans Affairs worker. "No hate crime bills have been passed. You have to do more than show up. If you're a politician, you're supposed to support the people."
 "Of course, politicians turn up," said retired attorney Willi Glee, 81. Like Dennis, Glee left the church mere hours before the shooting in 2015, going to a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. He still remembers what he ate: shrimp, string beans and mashed potatoes. "People are tired of hearing 'sorry for their loss.' Are they really sorry or just paying lip service? I don't see results on the ground."
 Manning said communities traumatized by racist violence need more from political leaders than displays of "false grief."
 "From a Black perspective and pastoring Mother Emanuel, I understand the whole aspect of forgiveness," Manning said. "But at the same token, forgiveness never negates the reality of justice."
 Members of Mother Emmanuel noted another similarity between Buffalo and the shooting at their church: Law enforcement authorities took both Gendron and Roof into custody without physically harming them. That night at 3 a.m., Manning said, he pondered that treatment. He noted reports that Gendron emerged from the grocery store holding a gun to his neck. He couldn't imagine that a Black man could emerge from an active shooting scene, still armed, and not be shot dead by police.
 "There are two forms of justice, one that will given for Black and brown citizens and one that is given to Whites," Manning said at the church.
 Glee interjected, "There are two forms of justice, justice and injustice. White people get justice and Black people get injustice for the most part."
 For some, last weekend's shooting has reignited the fear of being targeted again by a White racist armed with a gun. They are more aware of their surroundings, identifying the exits wherever they go. One member said he lives with a constant feeling of "heightened alert."
 "Even now, I come to church, one Sunday a young white man sat behind me. I was so uneasy. I couldn't focus on Rev. Manning's sermon. There are still things that spook us as a result of this," said Lois Gethers, 77, who had gone with Glee to the restaurant that night in 2015.
 "A lot of Roof's followers are trying to continue what he started," Jones said, referring to the threats the church still receives. Jones said the Black community in Buffalo needs to "be ready" for additional threats from those who now see Glendron as a hero.
 The Buffalo shootings reminded Glee of the work that needed to be done with younger generations. "When I was a young man I thought, by the time I became an old man, most of this stuff would have gone away," said Glee. "We thought it would have been better. Now we have radicalized 18 and 20-year-olds. I thought the Strom Thurmonds, Bull Connors and George Wallaces would have gone away. But now they are being replaced by young men who are worse than they were."
 Manning encouraged his members to study Psalm 37: "Fret not yourself because of evil doers, be not envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good."
 But he has not tried to steer them away from their emotions. "You have a right to be angry," he said in an interview Friday. "You're the one who's got to sit across from that empty seat at the dining room table day by day, week by week, at holidays and other significant other times. And it's going to be empty because of an act of hatred."
 Manning said he plans to go up to Buffalo next week to offer help, and that he'll encourage the communities there and in Charleston permission to embrace what they feel in this moment. But he also will remind them to have hope.
 "I am hopeful. I mean, you always have to have a glimmer of hope. You cannot give in to complete despair," he said. He takes solace in knowing that he can remind people -- whoever will listen -- that they have a higher calling to answer. 
 "The question is, are they going to do the heavy lifting that that's required or are they going to take the easy way out? And I believe for so long we have been taking the easy way out that we no longer want to do the heavy lifting of trying to find common ground."
 ---Video Embed CodeVideo: Almost seven years ago, a young man killed 9 people in a racially motivated shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Today, after another racist attack killed 10 in Buffalo, N.Y., church members in Charleston are troubled by the parallels.(REF:gerbergj/The Washington Post)Embed code: &lt;iframe src=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/92459a79-fac5-4ebf-b680-743524714e38?ptvads=block&amp;playthrough=false&quot; width=&quot;480&quot; height=&quot;290&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</text>
 </story></html> emanuel-church For members of Mother Emanuel, Buffalo shooting stirs painful memories Keith L. Alexander Vanessa Williams National partner-exclude ellipsis

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 MARYINKA, Ukraine - Shortly after the Ukrainian sniper team arrived, a Russian shell slammed close to the operations base, rattling the windows and shaking the earth. A second one crashed moments later, then a third. Two Ukrainian drone operators arrived on yellow bicycles. They, too, had narrowly avoided a mortar attack.
 On this volatile morning, the snipers' mission was to set up a forward position in this war-wrecked front-line town, vital to slowing the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine. It required a risky 300-yard dash across several street blocks, including a main road that the Russians were actively pounding. The unit had to avoid stepping on mines - or revealing themselves to locals who might tip off the Russians.
 There was a lull in the artillery barrage.
 "Let's go now," declared Dmytro Pyatnikovskiy, 38, the leader of the five-member team.
 But then another shell rammed into the ground.
 With Russia's military pushed out of Kyiv and on the retreat in Kharkiv, the war is now being waged largely in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, in and around villages and towns like Maryinka. Russian forces are trying to push south from the town of Izyum and west from Moscow-backed separatist-controlled areas in a bid to fully take over Donbas, to which the Kremlin has laid claim on the grounds of defending its large Russian-speaking population.
 But the Ukrainian troops here, a mix of soldiers and volunteers, have resisted stiffly, inflicting heavy casualties under conditions that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described as "hell." More than a month after Moscow shifted its focus to seizing the country's east, the Russians have made limited gains so far; in many areas, their offensive has ground to a stalemate.
 A visit to Maryinka brought a rare close-up look at the current nature of the war in eastern Ukraine - fueled now by crushing artillery battles aided by drones and snipers - and showed why Russian forces have failed to break Ukraine's defensive lines.
 "The Russians only fire with artillery and tanks now," said Curly, 35, a drone operator who gave only his nom de guerre. "They don't engage in close combat. Because they know they will get kicked by us. There are Russian ground units, but they are afraid to come to Ukrainian positions. We shell them with mortars.
 "It's like badminton."
 Another lull. Pyatnikovskiy, known to his team as Dima, glanced at his comrades and nodded. This was their window of opportunity.
 Carrying their rifles, they moved out of the building and onto a side street. Curly, a welder before the war who has fought in the town since April and knows the terrain, joined them. As they reached an intersection, Curly suggested they go straight across - there had been less shelling up ahead. But Dima disagreed.
 "Do you want to go through the park?" Dima asked. "There is nowhere to take cover."
 "There is," Curly replied.
 "There are at least walls here," said Dima, indicating the road to his left. Everyone followed.
 They trotted alongside the walls of abandoned houses, some shattered by artillery, and past fences pocked with shrapnel. Tree-lined sidewalks were strewn with broken glass and torn open by mortar fire. The streets were ghostly. Not a resident was in sight.
 As they neared the main road, the soldiers started to run.
 The day before, the sniper team had set up camp in a village overlooking a lake roughly five miles outside Maryinka. They took food and other supplies, constructed a makeshift shower and dug a pit latrine.
 Like many Ukrainian fighters, the five had been civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24. All from the southeastern city of Dnipro, they shared a passion for high-powered guns; all were members of a local shooting club called Wild Fields. They joined a volunteer corps and were sent to protect strategic sites. But what they really wanted was to put their skills to use. Now they were finally getting their chance. For three of them, Maryinka was their first front-line mission.
 They were a motley crew. There was Alex, 34, a tall, blond boxing trainer; Andrei Kolupailo, 47, a towering businessman; and Oleksi Shapoval, 33, a wiry construction worker. Dima, also a construction worker, was a sniper trainer at the shooting club. All had purchased their own sniper rifles.
 Oksana, 35, the curly-haired mother of a 5-year-old boy, was a former electrical engineer who had spent six years as a fire juggler in a circus that traveled around the world. She was now one of the small group of female snipers in the Ukrainian forces who can hit a target nearly a mile away.
 "It is frowned upon in our society that a woman is in the military and doing this line of work," said Oksana, who for this reason declined to give her family name. "I may be judged later for decisions I made here. But it's not about gender to be patriotic and do your part for your country."
 What team members lacked in front-line experience, they made up in confidence. They were bolstered by Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv that drove the Russians beyond artillery range and, in some cases, back to their border. Ukrainian aircraft and drones are actively bombing Russian positions in Donbas.
 The snipers' primary mission was reconnaissance. But they also had orders to kill high-value targets, such as commanders or officers, whenever they saw an opportunity.
 "Finally! I get to kill the occupiers," Oksana said. "We were trained to be here."
 The Russians "have had losses in Kyiv," she said. "They have had losses now in Kharkiv. We are more than capable of fighting off the Russians. They will not push through here."
 But the snipers also understood the volatility of the landscape, and how swiftly front lines in Donbas can shift. The region is made up of two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, portions of which were under Russian control before the war.
 Russian forces have seized nearly all of Luhansk and besieged the strategic city of Severodonetsk from three sides. If the city falls, it could open the way for the Russians to push toward major cities such as Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
 The Ukrainians still control much of Donetsk, but after weeks of bombardment, the Russians have taken the port city of Mariupol. Keeping the Russians from seizing Maryinka has grown more urgent.
 "It's very important," Kolupailo said. "If we lose this location, the Russians can advance in Donetsk."
 This town has been in the crosshairs of war since 2014, when conflict erupted between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. By the time a cease-fire was signed the following year, Maryinka had been shattered.
 The town now is split between Ukrainian and Russian zones, lines that have been static for weeks. The sides are fighting a battle of attrition in which the enemy is rarely seen.
 "It's harder to gain territory here because the Russians have had more time to fortify their positions," Dima said. "They have the same problem with pushing through the line into the Ukrainian side because the Ukrainian positions are also fortified.
 "It's a game of moving backward and forward."
 That hasn't stopped the Russians from trying. Last month, they reached a bridge roughly a mile from the operations base. The Ukrainians destroyed it, Curly said, but the Russians managed to cross the river and a battle erupted. The Ukrainians pulled back. "There is still a dead soldier from my unit lying there," Curly said.
 But since then, the Russians have not moved.
 "We have to fall back sometimes from our positions because we are getting shelled, we are getting bombed," Curly said. "We don't surrender the territory, but we retreat tactically.
 "Now, every time the Russians try to advance with their tanks, they get shelled from the Ukrainian side. They cannot move forward from that position."
 Each side flies surveillance drones to spy on the other and to identify targets to shell. Curly's drones have sent back images of Russian positions and tank movements, vital information for the mortar and artillery units.
 Curly's younger brother, whose nom de guerre translates roughly to "crappy Ukrainian car," is an actor and aviation hobbyist. A few weeks ago, he devised tiny homemade bombs to attach to the drones. One night, Curly attached a thermal scope to a drone, spotted a group of Russian soldiers and dropped one of his brother's bombs on them.
 When the Ukrainians spot a Russian drone overhead, they prepare for a barrage of artillery.
 The Ukrainian forces here have received some U.S. and Western military support, including Javelin and NLAW antitank missiles. But they have far from enough heavy weaponry to launch counteroffensives, soldiers said. "If we have more of these weapons, it will tip the scale against the Russians," Curly's brother said.
 Behind their own lines, the Ukrainians suspect that a large percentage of the civilians who have remained in Maryinka support Russia and are collaborating with the enemy. Locals accused of tipping off the Russians to Ukrainian positions have been apprehended and jailed. One elderly woman was caught carrying Russian passports and several burner phones, Dima said.
 A group of suspected Russian sympathizers is living in a basement of a school. Recently, Ukrainian soldiers found two phones with suspicious numbers. Now it's a police matter, Curly said. The soldiers saw a benefit to keeping the residents in the school, which was near the operations base.
 "Their presence actually helps because the Russians are not firing at this position," Curly said.
 For the snipers, there are additional challenges. Their reconnaissance mission means observing Russian forces to understand their number, the timing of their movements and the type and amount of equipment they have.
 "It's very important for us to learn about all of the threats so Ukrainians won't become targets for Russians," Oksana said. "As snipers, we are trying to minimize the risks for all units on the ground and in the area."
 But getting close enough to surveil the Russians is a risky endeavor. Both sides have planted mines and improvised explosives around the town. "Mines are everywhere," said Kolupailo. "You have to be very mindful of where you are stepping."
 Another danger is the Russians spotting the snipers and shelling them. "The first obstacle is you have to choose the location wisely, Kolupailo said. "The second one is to sneak into the position quietly, and the third is to leave the location quietly."
 But even the best-laid plans can go awry. Two weeks ago, a different team led by Dima set up position in a building. Other units had said their intelligence indicated there were no Russian positions nearby, said Shapoval (He was with Dima on that mission, too).
 "A few minutes later, [a rocket-propelled grenade] struck a few meters away from us," Shapoval said.
 The intelligence had been wrong. The snipers dismantled their guns and fled before they could be targeted again.
 All these risks weighed on Dima, Shapoval and Alex as they ran across the main road. Oksana and Kolupailo remained in their camp, preparing to take the next shift.
 The snipers crossed the road and walked swiftly past an abandoned market, its windows blown out, its roof battered by shells. As they turned into a yard with rusting, broken cars, a shell crashed.
 "Go, go, go!" Dima yelled, ordering everyone to take cover near a wall.
 They opened a red gate into a yard filled with debris to get to a former administrative building, its windows barricaded with sandbags and books. They gingerly climbed stairs littered with bricks and debris toward the top floor.
 They were wary of mines or other booby traps. With the windows of the building large and open, they walked low to the ground, their backs hunched, to avoid appearing in a Russian sniper's crosshairs.
 The Ukrainians' focus was on an emerald green hilltop nearly a mile away.
 "The Russian positions are over there," Dima said, pointing out the window. "The sandbags you see are Ukrainian. Everything beyond that point is Russian."
 In a corner of the room, away from the windows, the snipers set up a high-powered rifle and pointed the long scope at the hilltop. Alex pulled out a pair of binoculars and Dima directed him to observe the Russian position. Shapoval opened a tripod and placed a camera atop it. He looked through the rifle's scope.
 The Russians were launching mortar fire, shells and Grad rockets toward the area. The rifle the snipers had set up could hit a target a mile away. They would be able to kill the Russian troops that were firing on them.
 "This is going to be our position," Dima said.
 
 - - - 
 
 The Washington Post's Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report.
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 </story></html> ukraine-snipers Dodging shells, mines and spies: On the front with Ukraine's snipers Europe Sudarsan Raghavan ellipsis

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 ROME, Ga. - The request for a campaign contribution came in an email. Or was it a text? Gerald Luongo gets so many he can't remember.
 Luongo does recall that he was eager to give $25 to the Democrat - he struggles to recall his name - who's running to unseat Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman whose recent outrages include calling Democrats the "party of pedophiles" and speaking at a white nationalist's political conference.
 "What she's saying and doing is annoying the hell out of me," says Luongo, 83. "A disgrace."
 A few weeks after his contribution, an automated text popped up on Luongo's phone from the same Democratic candidate. "Hey, it's Marcus Flowers," the text began, explaining that a donation "before midnight" would maintain the momentum needed to "end" Marjorie Taylor Greene's "tenure of terror." This time, Luongo gave $50.
 Then another, "Hey, it's Marcus" text arrived a few days after that. So he sent another $50.
 It didn't matter that Luongo doesn't live in Georgia, let alone the district where Flowers is running. Nor does it seem to matter that Flowers - or any Democrat, for that matter - is viewed as having little chance of unseating Greene, who won in 2020 with nearly 75% of the vote in one of Georgia's most pro-Trump areas (although his name appeared on the ballot, the Democrat running against Greene that year dropped out early, citing personal reasons).
 "It's important that we tell Marjorie Taylor Greene that not everyone likes her," Luongo says by phone from Boca Raton, Fla. where he owns a language school. "I get to make a statement."
 A maxim of American politics in the digital age is that anyone, even a no-name challenger launching a long-shot campaign, can raise gobs of cash if they have the right opponent, preferably one who inspires widespread scorn.
 For Marcus Flowers, 46, an Army veteran who only recently discovered an interest in politics, the right opponent is Greene, who in the past has made comments that even fellow Republicans called "appalling," "disgusting" and "bigoted," and who has energetically echoed former president Donald Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election. Flowers, among three Democrats competing for the chance to face Greene, rarely utters more than a few words without mentioning her. "I'm Marcus Flowers," he likes to say, in an easy-on-the-ears baritone, "Army veteran and Democrat running to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene."
 This strategy helped him raise more than $8.1 million by early May, according to his most recent campaign finance report. As of Monday, according to the Federal Election Commission's website, he had raised more money than any congressional challenger in the country, despite the fact that experts doubt a Democrat can win Georgia's 14th District, even with a recent redistricting making it ever so slightly less red.
 "This district is solidly Republican," said Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political science professor. "If the goal is to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene, I would not hold my breath."
 Yet some Democrats are hoping Greene's incendiary words and antics make her vulnerable - even to a Democratic challenger. "There's a sense of people being tired of her shtick," said Vinny Olsziewski, an adviser to Wendy Davis, another Democrat in the race (not to be confused with the former Texas state senator).
 Jen Jordan, a Georgia state senator supporting Flowers, said victories aren't the only way to measure a long shot's political value. Especially in a state like Georgia, where an uptick in turnout can have broader consequences. "It's about losing less," said Jordan, who is running for attorney general.
 If Flowers can drive up turnout, Jordan says, he can help Democrats in tighter races - Sen. Raphael Warnock, say, or gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. "That's why you need good Democrats running," she says. "It adds up."
 A Greene spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.
 Long-shot candidates raising heaps of cash have drawn notice in the past. In one especially memorable Democratic cash bonfire, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath lost by nearly 20 points to Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky despite outspending McConnell by $25 million. In New York, Republican John Cummings raised $11 million running against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and lost by 44 percentage points.
 Lauren Harper, a co-founder of the Welcome PAC, an organization that promotes a "big-tent" Democratic Party, said Democrats should train resources on competitive races. "We can't just focus our energy on the people who are driving us bananas," she said. "It's a matter of us not using our money as wisely as we could."
 Flowers has built a fundraising powerhouse that uses emails and texts, as well as posts and ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, to cash in on how many people around the country wish Greene were not in Congress. His donors include Patricia Arquette, Felicity Huffman, Kyra Sedgwick and also lots of fired-up liberals who aren't famous actresses. In a black cowboy hat that has become his signature campaign accessory, Flowers asks for small donations - $5, $10, or $25 - but he is happy to take more.
 "I probably get an email a day from his campaign," said Pete DeSimone, the manager of a National Audubon Society sanctuary in California who gave Flowers $1,000. "I don't know much about him. But I know enough about her that I'd like to see her beaten. I just wanted to do something."
 Martinus Nickerson, a retired traffic engineer in Bellingham, Wash., gave Flowers $2,900. Reached by phone, he pauses when asked about the candidate. "He's running for Congress, is that right?" After being reminded that Greene holds the seat Flowers hopes to win, Nickerson says he doesn't need to know anything more to justify his contribution.
 "Democrats are irrationally throwing money into the campaign," says Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist who advised the candidate who lost to Greene in the 2020 primary. "It's scratching an itch. They hate Marjorie Taylor Greene so much, they want to do something to manifest their hatred in a tangible way."
 - - -
 "I hear it every day: 'You can't win.' That means zero to me."
 Marcus Flowers is sitting in his campaign headquarters, a cavernous storefront in Rome, about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta. On the campaign trail he often looks as if he walked off the set of a contemporary Western, in his cowboy hat, silver belt buckle, blue jeans and square-toed boots. As a younger man, he wore the uniform of the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of sergeant and later worked as a military contractor. He talks in the tough-guy language of a soldier, with references to his "mission" and pleas to voters like, "I can't take this hill alone."
 Flowers, who is Black, often says his decision to enter politics was heavily influenced by the 2020 killing of George Floyd, and he has described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack as the moment running for Congress "became mission-critical for me." He frames his candidacy as a virtuous expression of underdog resolve. "Do you just say, 'You're a Democrat,' you don't run at all, you don't put up a fight, you just sit back and say, 'It's an unwinnable race'?" he says. "That ain't me."
 Flowers has raised far more money than his Democratic opponents. Holly McCormack, a small-business owner, has raised more than $1.8 million, according to campaign finance records. Davis, a local elected official and longtime party organizer, has raised $485,000.
 Davis said in an interview that she rejected strategists who "pitched to me that you spend a lot of money to buy a lot of donor lists and you email the list constantly and call Marjorie Taylor Greene the devil and people will send you money."
 She acknowledged that Flowers's fundraising advantage may help him win the primary. But in a general election, "I don't see how he takes his messaging and wins Republican voters over," Davis says. "It creates an us-vs.-them environment, Republicans are the enemy. It doesn't benefit me to say my neighbors are kooks."
 Steven Sherry, a former adviser to McCormack, also expressed uneasiness about the approach, which he said has been in vogue since Democrats across the country made a point of rejecting corporate donations. "The issue is we're taking $25 from our grandmother because we're sending her an email that says if she doesn't, the insurrection is just the beginning," he said. "They freak people out. It's a race to the bottom in how we can trick you into giving us money."
 Flowers says nobody's tricking anybody here.
 "I'm sounding the alarm," he says, adding that "2022 is a dry run for an authoritarian takeover in 2024."
 Flowers knows how to get attention. A month before entering the race, he tweeted a video of himself using a razor blade to peel a Confederate flag sticker off what appears to be a public utility box. "I'm Marcus Flowers, and I'm here to say, 'No more,'" he said, crumpling the sticker.
 The video caught the eye of an Atlanta-based digital advertising and fundraising strategist named Bobby Kaple, whose firm, Blue Chip Strategies, produced Flowers's first campaign video, in which the candidate talks about his military background amid images of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and references to some of Greene's most outlandish statements.
 "Her twisted conspiracy theories may have helped make her famous, but they haven't done a damn thing for the people here in the district," Flowers says in the video.
 After entering the race, Flowers tried to get into a rally that Greene and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., held in Georgia and turned the outing into more social media content. "Just got kicked out of the 'America First' rally with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz because they said I was a threat," Flowers says in a video his campaign posted on Facebook.
 "I'm not a threat to her," he later says. "Perhaps to her job if you help me out. So, please, chip in five, 10 dollars - whatever you can - and let's end this national nightmare."
 As of early May the Flowers campaign had spent $7.4 million of the $8.1 million it had raised, according to campaign finance records.
 He had paid Blue Chip Strategies over $2.5 million. He also had spent more than $1 million on another firm, Run the World Digital - which, as its website advertises, "uses proven customized programs and data-driven strategies to engage your supporters, generate contributions, and boost your bottom line." Consultants often spend a portion of their earnings on media buys and placing digital ads, among other costs. Kaple, the chief executive of Blue Chip, declined to comment on the record, as did the chief executive of Run the World.
 Since March 30 Flowers has given about $1 million to Buying Time LLC, a media strategist, to target and purchase advertising space for his message, the records show. A Buying Time executive did not respond to messages seeking comment.
 His current Facebook tab is more than $2.5 million.
 - - -
 "Your picture just keeps showing up," Jeff Tate, 50, a mutual fund salesman, tells Flowers.
 It's a Saturday morning in late April. Flowers was ambling through a BBQ, Boogie and Blues festival in Calhoun, Ga., when Tate recognized him from the four or five mailers that have arrived at his house. The mailers feature photos of Flowers in a cowboy hat that looks like the one the candidate is now wearing.
 Tate says his household is split when it comes to the primary. While he says his wife is leaning toward Wendy Davis, he thinks Flowers's military background could help him appeal to conservative voters and take on Greene. "I'm glad you're here," he tells Flowers.
 They're standing at the Gordon County Democrats' table, among rows of vendors offering servings of barbecue. Some people aren't as happy that a Democrat is here. The man selling Farmers Insurance at the neighboring table hung a "Trump 2020" banner to block his view of the Democrats' booth. His setup also features a Marjorie Taylor Greene campaign sign.
 At the Republican table nearby, Harry Russell, 84, a retiree wearing a shirt designed as an American flag, laughs at the idea that any Democrat can beat Greene. "The more they lie about her, the more popular she gets," he says.
 The Greene campaign may even see Flowers's fundraising success as an opportunity to generate more donations from Republicans. Flowers's adviser, Chase Goodwin, shared a screenshot of what appears to be a recent fundraising email from Marjorie Taylor Greene's campaign, which has raised more than $10 million.
 "HELP MTG BEFORE TONIGHT's DEADLINE, DONATE TODAY!" the plea begins. "I'm afraid of what will happen if I fall short. The Communist Democrat running against me raked in over $8,000,000 to defeat me ..."
 
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 </story></html> georgia-flowers Marcus Flowers has raised and spent millions running against Marjorie Taylor Greene Style Paul Schwartzman ellipsis

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