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How one Ukrainian village survived the terror of Russian occupation
VORZEL, Ukraine - The power was out, the faucets were dry and the Russians were drawing near when Victor Prykhodko's neighbors came to him for help.
Prykhodko flung open his cellar doors, his son Pavlo said, doling out water from his well and warming 20 people with his wood-burning stove at his home in Vorzel, a village outside Kyiv.
"He did what was necessary," Pavlo Prykhodko said of his father's decision to shelter his neighbors in late February. "They said that without my father, they wouldn't have survived."
The towering 65-year-old had a good heart but bad knees, his son remembered. So Prykhodko could not run when a Russian armored vehicle opened fire as he stopped to chat with neighbors on March 6. He was killed a few steps from his front door on Kvitkova Street, his son said, his body left in the road for two days out of fear that anyone who moved it would also be shot.
The terror of a military occupation and quiet moments of mercy among neighbors underpinned daily life for weeks in Vorzel, a suburb surrounded by birch forests that is home to a few thousand people. Now its residents are emerging from their homes and picking up the pieces after Russian troops withdrew this month, leaving behind a trail of wreckage.
Lyudmyla Ryzhenko, a deputy member of the village council, said the Russian occupation was marked by theft and violence. Four people were killed in the shelling of a residential street, she said, and buried nearby. Soldiers would confiscate phones and laptops from people's homes, and stole cars when their own vehicles ran out of fuel. Once those cars were also out of gas, the soldiers took bicycles.
After the Russians withdrew, Ryzhenko's father collected the bicycles one by one so they could be picked up by their owners. When an apartment building was shelled on March 17, residents formed a bucket brigade to the fifth floor to put out the fire. In the absence of government services, people here learned to rely on one another.
A nearby evangelical church has become a temporary home for about 50 sick and disabled people displaced by the war. Inside the church, veiled in darkness on another cold evening without electricity, the residents hobbled out on canes to chat and lingered near the makeshift kitchen to collect hot tea from volunteers. Julia Gunko spooned out stuffed cabbage for an 87-year-old woman struggling to stand.
Her work done, Gunko stepped outside. She sat on a bench and quietly described the moment a Russian soldier tried to rape her.
"He arrived at my home armed with his weapon, in uniform, and demanded I follow him outside toward a shed," she said. "I pushed him away and told him that he would have to shoot me first in the head and only then could he do what he wants with my body."
Gunko's dog appeared to scare him away, she said, and she hid in a friend's basement for days, terrified that at 37 she was one of the youngest women left in town after many others had fled. She watched with relief when she saw the soldier depart with his unit late last month.
"I suppose I am lucky," she said. "My neighbor was found tortured in his basement, and another was shot by a sniper and buried in the yard of his home."
Other townspeople rarely ventured out. Maryna Khrystiuk, 58, stayed in her house most of the time, peering through a window that allowed her to count armored vehicles heading to nearby Irpin, where the Russians suffered heavy losses.
"I was very happy when the number of vehicles that came back was lower than the number of vehicles that left," she said.
Russian forces camped in a vast, rolling field on the outskirts of town, spreading out improvised shelters made from felled trees, pallets, black plastic wrap and cardboard boxes. There was even a sauna built with plywood and sheet metal. Before retreating, Russian forces carved up the land with heavy machinery to build artillery firing positions. All that's left now are empty wooden munitions boxes, some with stapled paperwork dating the weapons to the Soviet era.
A group of men from the village arrived to discard more refuse at the site, and to retrieve a bit of recompense. Russian shelling put a hole in his roof, one man said, so he came to the Russian ghost camp to find lumber to fix it.
Word of Prykhodko's effort to protect his neighbors spread throughout Vorzel, where he was a respected member of the community. He served in the Soviet navy, his son said, and returned to Vorzel to build garages, buildings and a few homes.
His death rattled the village. Neighbors kept watch through windows to ensure that his body wasn't booby-trapped by Russian soldiers. After two days, it was decided that moving Prykhodko's body was worth the risk.
The retrieval was a fitting tribute. A few of the people who had sheltered in his cellar organized a working party to gather his remains and take them back down Kvitkova Street. They buried Prykhodko in his backyard, shaded by the house he had built.
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The Washington Post's Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report.
Poland builds a border wall, even as it welcomes Ukrainian refugees
MICHALOWO, Poland -- Her impulse was to welcome people in desperation, so Maria Ancipiuk made sure her border town was ready. As immigrants mostly from the Middle East started streaming into Poland last year from Belarus, she lobbied the mayor to offer up two empty town-owned apartments for anybody who might need them. Volunteers changed the wallpaper and renovated the flooring. Ancipiuk bought a refrigerator and a television.
Five months later, though, the apartments are empty.
Rather than being welcomed into Polish homes, the vast majority of people crossing from Belarus are being detained or pushed back by Polish authorities.
That stance, in effect just to the north of Poland's border with Ukraine, means two different groups seeking the same thing -- refuge -- are arriving to find what amounts to two different versions of Europe.
Along one segment of Poland's border, where 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled, border agents help carry duffel bags, push wheelchairs, hold tired children and escort to safety refugees who've been granted automatic European Union residency for up to three years.
On another segment of that border, Poland is trying to stop what it describes as "illegal" immigrants by using drones, infrared cameras and helicopters. It has dispatched 13,000 soldiers and border guards to patrol the forested boundary, while sealing off the area -- under an emergency decree -- to journalists and human rights groups. It is hurrying to finish a $380 million 116-mile steel wall that the government says will be "impenetrable."
"I cannot stand the contrast," said Ancipiuk, a 65-year-old town councilor and grandmother of six who now furtively provides aid to immigrants trying to move through the Polish forest at night. "Ukrainians are considered war refugees and Yemenis are considered migrants. Why? What is the difference?"
Poland's approach is in line with the broader E.U. policy of forcefully deterring undocumented immigration -- including from parts of the world where there are few legal options for reaching this continent. The E.U. has been funding the Libyan coast guard to thwart immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. In Greece, security forces have been accused by immigrants and by Turkey of repelling would-be asylum seekers back into Turkish waters. And when Poland vowed to block people trying to cross from Belarus -- a crisis orchestrated by authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who lured people to his country with the promise of access to Europe -- E.U. leaders said Poland was justifiably responding to a "hybrid attack."
Months later, though, Poland's national human rights institution says the country is not living up to European ideals -- and is also violating international law.
It is illegal for security authorities to expel foreign nationals without giving them a chance to claim asylum. Yet humanitarian groups have documented Polish border guards tracking down people in the woods and driving them back to the Belarusian border, a practice that Poland's parliament has effectively legalized. Poland so thoroughly patrols the border that some immigrants say they've been pushed back to Belarus more than a half-dozen times. The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner said one person who returned to Belarus had given birth only hours earlier.
Poland has garnered much praise for its willingness to accept so many refugees in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But the war also leaves Poland in a position where it is sending people back to a country that is serving as a staging ground for missiles launched into Ukraine.
"Poland should not be sending anybody back," said Hanna Machinska, Poland's deputy commissioner for human rights. "Belarus is not a safe country. There is no question about it."
Belarus has one of the world's most repressive governments, and its approach to immigrants is also harsh: Though it invited thousands of people, it appears to have no interest in hosting them; hundreds spent the winter in a warehouse, and when the facility was recently shuttered, the immigrants were taken to the Polish border and given instructions to leave.
For those crossing from Belarus who are fortunate enough not to be pushed back, the next stop is generally a closed detention center, including one where people are kept in rooms with 24 beds. Poland permits only a small subset to move into alternative facilities -- like the homes Ancipiuk had prepared in Michalowo. Since January, as the overall flow from Belarus started to decline, the number of lucky few has been zero.
In mid-March, Ancipiuk received a call from a regional official, notifying her of funding incentives for towns that would host Ukrainians.
She asked if there were similar incentives for hosting people who'd crossed from Belarus.
"There was a bit of consternation on the line," Ancipiuk said.
She never heard back with an answer but took the silence as a no. Her town is now offering the two apartments to refugees from Ukraine as well.
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At Poland's border agency headquarters in Warsaw, Lt. Anna Michalska said her country is responding as any should: by defending order and its own laws. Lukashenko had precipitated the emergency in a place where undocumented border-crossings had once been "practically zero," she said, and she argued that the people who'd taken the offer to go to Belarus had the time and luxury to plan their journey. They booked tourist visas. Unlike Ukrainians, she said, they are not looking "for the first place to be safe."
What they tend to want above all, she said, is a life in Germany.
She denied the widely documented accusation that Poland is pushing back people who request asylum. Most people don't want to apply for protection, she said, knowing such a request triggers a mandatory stay in the country. She said there is no legal problem in returning people to Belarus.
"I don't have information that there is war in Belarus," she said. "We're not a taxi service from Belarus to Berlin."
So Poland is building its wall. The border agency granted two Washington Post journalists access to the restricted zone, providing them a meeting point five miles from Belarus, where a border guard van was waiting. In the exclusion zone, police worked checkpoints, and the road through villages and small farms was all but empty, aside from military vehicles. The border guards described a daily tension: immigrants who launch stones at security authorities, smugglers who run routes to and from Germany, activists who communicate with the immigrants and "incentivize" them to cross.
Then the van stopped at the wall.
It is partially completed, composed of 18-foot-high planks of vertical steel beams, with tiny spaces in between. The spaces provide visibility to the other side, and from afar, the wall has the look of a translucent silver strip running along the horizon, covering a territory where this year there have been more than 3,500 attempts to cross.
"Everything is going according to plan," said Katarzyna Zdanowicz, a border guard spokeswoman who was on the tour. She said the wall would be completed in June.
She said the border guard over the past months has improved "a lot" in its efficiency in stopping people. While waiting for the wall to be completed, the agency has strung razor wire across the border, plowed new roads and purchased tear gas canisters.
As part of the tour, Zdanowicz walked over to a green-painted Toyota SUV, parked in a field, where two agents were patrolling the border with high-resolution cameras.
"We're trying to show that this is not the way to come," she said.
In villages near the border, some residents -- sympathetic to the plight of immigrants -- have taken to turning on green lights in their homes, a signal that they have a safe place to stay for someone on the run. Michalska, the border official in Warsaw, said it is permissible to provide housing for somebody coming from Belarus -- on the condition that the host immediately alerts the border guards.
"Otherwise," she said, "you're offering help for an illegal stay in Poland."
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Activists and human rights officials say Poland is treating the immigrants coming through Belarus as universally undeserving of protection in Europe, when that is not always the case. Some come from countries, such as Cameroon, whose citizens rarely win asylum in Europe. But others come from countries such as Yemen, ravaged by war, or Syria, where towns have been decimated by Russian airstrikes.
For Ibrahim Al Maghribi, 27, a Syrian, seeing Poland's response to Ukraine has made him feel all the more confounded about the inequities.
After being displaced from his home outside Damascus, all he wanted was safety and a "decent life," he said in an interview conducted over WhatsApp, because he said he could be more articulate with written English.
To get that life, he booked a tour package to Belarus, where he was chauffeured by members of the Belarusian military to a spot along the Polish border they said was easy to cross. After walking miles overnight in the Polish forest, he was arrested by Polish border guards who told him "this is not your land." He was returned to Belarus, which denied him reentry as well, leaving him stuck briefly between two borders, before trying to enter Poland again. This time, he and some friends successfully reached the car of a smuggler and eventually wound up in Germany -- a trip that cost him $5,000, paid to tour guides and drivers, as well as several nights of exhaustion and sleeplessness.
"It's a horrible feeling to feel that you came from another planet," said Al Maghribi, who is now applying for asylum and living in a public housing complex in Rieden, Germany. The same Polish authorities who welcome Ukrainians wouldn't even "offer us a glass of water," he said.
One consequence of Poland's approach is that immigration along the Belarusian border has been pushed nearly out of view. Poland denied a request to visit the closed centers holding asylum seekers.
Activists say they have had to become more cautious after Poland last month arrested four volunteers on charges of organizing illegal immigration.
Even the number of immigrant deaths in Poland is disputed; the government says nine have died since the middle of last year, while activists put the number at more than two dozen. Among the unknowns is what happens to immigrants who are pushed back and don't return -- including two Kurdish families, both with infants, who were repelled several times after crossing into Poland and recently fell out of communication with activists.
"We can't reach them," said Monika Matus, an activist working with one of the main border activist groups. "This is the reason I'm having a hard time sleeping at night."
Even at the height of the crisis, last November, the volume of people crossing was about 700 per day -- compared with tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Now, the number of arriving from Belarus has dropped even further; some days, as many as 130 try to cross, according to Polish government data. Other days, it's only a few dozen. The decrease stems in part from pressure on international airlines and tour groups to discontinue the immigrant pipeline to Belarus. Some of those crossing now enter Belarus not directly but via Russia. Activists who used to be overwhelmed by middle-of-the-night SOS calls now go some days without a single alert.
For Poland, it's a sign that its tactics are working.
For activists, it's a sign that Poland's response has been disproportionate.
"We're spending so much money to create a fortress," said Tomasz Thun-Janowski, a volunteer for the humanitarian aid group Fundacja Ocalenie, "when helping them would cost a fraction."
Cash handouts are saving Brazil's poorest - and Bolsonaro's campaign
Hawking his goods by the roadside in the northeast town of Salgueiro, traveling salesman Matheus Silva has a new line in this election year in Brazil.
Alongside the windshield wipers, car seat covers and hammocks that are his mainstay, on a recent weekday Silva was selling towels at 35 reais ($7) apiece featuring the two main candidates for the presidency. By late afternoon he'd sold four showing President Jair Bolsonaro, and six of his likely challenger, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - but, he added, he'd shifted more Bolsonaros earlier in the neighboring town of Cabrobo.
"It's a draw," Silva concluded.
After a turbulent four-year term that saw him dismiss Covid-19, take on the judiciary and roll back protections for the Amazon, Bolsonaro, 67, is trailing the former president in polls for October's presidential election. But signs of support even in places like Salgueiro - in Lula's home state of Pernambuco, no less - suggest the incumbent isn't down and out just yet.
A tour of three states in the so-called sertao, or hinterland, of Brazil's northeast in mid-February showed that the strongest headwinds to Bolsonaro's re-election come less from his most controversial policies than a weak economy and rampant inflation that are hitting the poor hardest.
Rather than translating into rock solid support for his opponent Lula, 76, however, many people were undecided how to vote.
If the president does have a chance of turning the tide in his favor, it's because of his program of cash assistance for the poorest families. In particular, his flagship government subsidy, the "Auxilio Brasil," has become crucial to his electoral fortunes - and Bolsonaro's performance in the northeast will be a key indicator of whether it can help him pick up enough votes to win a second term.
"The northeast will be this election's battlefield," said Creomar de Souza, chief executive officer at Dharma Political Risk and Strategy, a Brasilia-based consultancy. "It's where Lula and Bolsonaro will measure their strength."
Brazil's election is shaping up to be a bruising contest between polar opposites on the political spectrum to determine the direction of Latin America's biggest economy at a time of change. Leftist leaders have taken power this past year in Peru and Chile, and may win in Colombia, as anger grows across the resource-rich region at inequalities that were exposed and aggravated by the pandemic.
In Brazil, the divide is geographical. The southeast region that includes the financial center of Sao Paulo accounted for some 55% of Brazil's economic output last year, according to estimates by LCA Consultores. That compares to 13% for the northeast; only the sparsely populated northern region was lower. Consequently, the northeast region has more households in receipt of the Auxilio Brasil than any other.
It's also the only one of Brazil's five regions that Bolsonaro failed to win in 2018. But with around 30% of the country's 215 million-strong population, his campaign team sees it as key to his chances of taking the country.
That helps explain why the president has visited the region more than any other in the past year, clocking up 31 trips through the end of March, including most recently on March 30.
Bolsonaro won't win in the northeast, his chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, acknowledged in an interview with TV Globo aired last month. "But he will have a much higher vote than he had in the last election," said Nogueira. "Overall, I think Lula wins in the northeast, but he will lose in the rest of the country in a very significant way."
Government subsidies are set to shape that outcome. Brazil's poverty rate fell to an all-time low of 4.8% of the population in August 2020 as the Bolsonaro government paid 600 reais per month to poor families at the height of the pandemic's first wave - coinciding with a peak in the president's approval rating. When handouts were halved in October 2021, poverty levels shot back up to 13%. The government is now paying 400 reais to a smaller number of families. On average, Auxilio Brasil is double what was paid by Bolsa Familia, the Lula government equivalent.
On paydays, queues form around the block of bank branches as people line up to receive what for some is their only regular source of income.
That's the case for Francisca Vieira Gomes, 53, and her family outside Brejo Santo, a town of about 50,000 in the interior of the northeast state of Ceara. She lives with her husband, a 26-year-old son, her daughter-in-law and three small grandchildren in a makeshift house of wood and clay whose roof is partly covered with a plastic sheet.
No one in the house has formal work. The gas canister ran out two months earlier and she was using a wood-burning stove to cook. Sometimes, she says, she goes hungry.
"When Bolsonaro gave us this money, he helped a lot," Gomes said. She still doesn't know who she'll vote for, though. "The situation here is difficult," she added. "Only God knows who will win."
Inflation that's above 11%, driven by rising fuel and food prices, is hurting the purchasing power of all families, but especially the most needy. A poll by the Datafolha institute released at the end of March found that one-in-four Brazilians said the amount of food available at home in recent months was less than they needed to feed the family.
"Food, electricity, cooking gas, all of this weighs much more on the life of a person who earns a minimum wage," said Tania Bacelar, a partner at consultancy Ceplan based in the northeast city of Recife.
The Getulio Vargas Foundation, an influential think tank, considers someone who earns less than 261 reais per month - $56 - to be poor. By that measure, poverty steadily declined during Lula's two terms, from 2003-2010, and in his successor Dilma Rousseff's first term. It's a drum he's beating in the campaign.
"During the Workers' Party government there was food on the table, formal jobs and a valued salary," Lula said in a TV address on March 29. "Today, what we see is hunger, high prices and poverty on the streets."
Luzia de Sousa, 71, agrees that life was better under Lula, and says he's got her vote. Now retired, she receives a pension of 800 reais, but continues to clean houses for 30 reais a day to help her 14 children, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Sao Jose de Piranhas, in the northeast state of Paraiba.
"Lula was very good," she said. Now though, she said, "the rich don't even look at the poor."
Bolsonaro is trying to address that deficit. In mid-March, he unveiled a 165 billion reais package of social spending aimed at the poor and middle class. He's also exempted basic food items from import taxes, including roasted coffee, cheese, macaroni and sugar. Polls suggest his focus on aid for the poor is helping him to gnaw away at Lula's lead. Lula had 45% backing in a Genial Investimentos/Quaest poll released April 7, up from 44% in March, while Bolsonaro's support rose to 31% from 26%.
"Brazil is going through a difficult time," the president said at a public event on March 29, citing the impact of inflation. He blamed it on the pandemic and the actions of state governors in applying restrictive measures to contain the spread of the virus.
More than 660,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, more than anywhere in the world except the U.S. Bolsonaro promoted gatherings, ridiculed the use of face masks, criticized vaccines and defended quack cures. Polls show voters are critical of his handling of the pandemic, but they also express understanding for any president faced with a crisis of such magnitude.
"He is more likely to suffer the consequences of a loss of purchasing power and a high degree of unemployment and underemployment than the results of the pandemic," said Graziella Testa, a professor at the School of Public Policy and Government at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brasilia.
In Barro, a city in the northeast state of Ceara, farmer Cicero Antonio de Oliveira finds everything expensive. The price of a gas cylinder jumped from 70 reais before the pandemic to 120 reais today. A kilo of meat that was 25 reais is now 40.
Oliveira, 55, says that he received 600 reais from the government during four months of the pandemic, but he's not eligible for the current payout. He doesn't yet know who he's going to support at the election, but he's clear he won't vote for Bolsonaro. "I don't think he's any good," he said.
Francisco Branco is less sure. Lula enjoys more support in his hometown of Penaforte in Ceara because "in his time it was better for me and for others," said Branco, 61, who delivers barrels of water by horse-drawn cart. Now, though, with the cost of living soaring, he says he doesn't know who to vote for.
The sertao in Brazil's northeast is characterized by an arid landscape with twisted branches, cacti, and livestock whose skin stretches taut over pronounced bones, hinting at the hardships of rain just three months of the year.
Long known as an impoverished part of the country, there are signs of change. The constant sun and near year-round winds are a boon for clean energy, which has helped it become a net exporter of electricity.
Whereas water was once mostly supplied by trucks - traditionally in exchange for votes in small towns - a massive irrigation project to deploy the Sao Francisco River is now coming to fruition. First conceived in the 1870s, work on the 700 kilometers (435 miles) of canals began in 2007 under Lula and is being completed under Bolsonaro. A measure of its success is that both camps are sparring over who deserves credit for the near 15 billion reais infrastructure project that crosses four states and has the potential to bring water to 12 million people.
For Bacelar, a former secretary of planning and finance in Pernambuco state, the northeast should be seen as "part of the solution," rather than the epitome of Brazil's problems.
That's little comfort to Jose Demontie de Souza, 61, who lived in Sao Paulo for 14 years before returning to Ceara. Now he sleeps in a hammock and only has electricity because he's wired it up to the house next door. His refrigerator is broken and serves as a closet.
He has little truck with Bolsonaro, yet neither is he planning to vote for Lula. Soaring prices are causing "the worst crisis" he's seen. Life, he said, "should be better for those of us of a certain age."
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Bloomberg's Simone Preissler Iglesias and Gabriela Mestre contributed to this report.
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Is Dianne Feinstein still up to the job?
RUTH MARCUS COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, April 17, 2022, and thereafter
(For Marcus clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)
For Print Use Only.
By Ruth Marcus
WASHINGTON - Meetings at which attendees had to reintroduce themselves -- several times -- to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Senate colleagues who aren't sure she fully recognizes them. A memorial service for a San Francisco official at which Feinstein failed in her remarks to mention the dead woman, whom she had known for decades.
The portrayal of the 88-year-old Feinstein in an article this week in the San Francisco Chronicle was devastating, painful and, from my own reporting, accurate. "Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions," the headline read.
"Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers . . . told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating," reported Tal Kopan and Joe Garofoli. "They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California."
In a telephone call with the Chronicle editorial board after the story published, Feinstein proclaimed herself "rather puzzled by all of this." "I meet regularly with leaders," Feinstein told the board. "I'm not isolated. I see people. My attendance is good. I put in the hours."
This is not a new issue. Feinstein's handling of the 2018 Brett M. Kavanaugh confirmation hearings -- in particular, her decision not to alert fellow lawmakers to the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford -- prompted a near-insurrection by her Democratic colleagues. Her performance at the 2020 confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, including her post-hearing hug of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., and thanks for "one of the best set of hearings that I've participated in," was the last straw.
Under pressure from Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer, Feinstein announced she would step down from her position as the committee's ranking Democrat. According to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, that took "several serious and painful talks," in part because "Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again."
Feinstein is the oldest sitting senator, but she is far from the only official whose mental acuity has been called into question. In their final years in office, Sens. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., were widely understood to have faded to the point where their senior staffs were essentially functioning in their place. The current Senate is the oldest ever, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, just three months younger than Feinstein, is running for reelection; he would be 95 by the conclusion of his eighth term.
So one question raised by the focus on Feinstein must be whether, as some of her defenders insinuate, there is sexism at work. I think I have pretty good radar for sexism, and I just don't see it. Times have changed since the deficits of Thurmond and Byrd were ignored; I suspect they now would be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny Feinstein is facing.
Indeed, one theme in the coverage of Feinstein's decline is how different she is now from the tough-minded Feinstein of days gone by. As the Los Angeles Times's Mark Z. Barabak wrote in a sympathetic column last month about Feinstein's performance at the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings, "The widely admired pathbreaker who opened avenues for women in politics and the steely-spined lawmaker who took on the National Rifle Association to pass an assault weapons ban was nowhere to be seen."
To the extent that there is differential treatment, the explanation might be less gender than ideology. Progressive Democrats long frustrated by Feinstein's centrism are eager for a more liberal replacement.
The Feinstein story evokes broader issues: the unwillingness of so many who hold power to cede it voluntarily, with their identities and support systems so bound up in their jobs; and the inability of our political system, in the absence of term limits (which I oppose for other reasons), to deal with those unwilling to recognize when it is time to step down. In the private sector, a board of directors would find a way to shunt a senile CEO aside. In public life, the only effective mechanism is the voters themselves.
Which gets to the heart of the puzzle: How are voters supposed to know what's up when an elected official's staff works overtime to mask the problem? The instinct to do so is understandable. Loyalty to the principal is one of the highest values in political life, and your role as a staffer is to support the boss, not expose her. But this approach is also deeply self-interested. If aides in normal times are only as powerful as the official they serve, they can become extra powerful when the same official is no longer functioning.
These inherent tensions help explain the high turnover from Feinstein's office in recent years. Covering up is not public service. At a certain point, it is the antithesis.
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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
Inflation is another reason you shouldn't aim for a big tax refund
MICHELLE SINGLETARY COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, April 17, 2022, and thereafter
(For Singletary clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)
For Print Use Only. WRITETHRU: Updates data in 1st and 7th grafs
By Michelle Singletary
WASHINGTON - The average Internal Revenue Service tax refund at this point in the 2022 season is $3,175, up nearly 10% compared to a year ago.
Many people see their four-figure tax refund -- year after year -- as a windfall. It's their cushion for the financially unexpected.
Over the years, I've tried to persuade folks to change the way they think about a tax refund. It's not a bonus.
Unless your tax situation changed during the year -- maybe you had a baby or bought a home -- you're just letting Uncle Sam hold your money for a year interest-free.
OK, maybe you don't trust yourself to save, so you rely on the refund to do it for you. Among those expecting refunds, 32% plan to save most or all of the money, according to a survey by Bankrate.com earlier this year.
Readers have told me that the promise of a refund pushes them to file early. Others argue that -- in today's pitifully low-interest environment -- the amount of interest lost is pretty small, so they aren't concerned about letting the government play their banker.
As of April 8, the IRS said it has issued more than 70 million refunds worth over $222 billion. I wonder how many millions of individuals or couples receiving a refund could put that money to better use during the year?
Only 44% of Americans could cover an unplanned $1,000 expense from savings, according to another survey by Bankrate.com. In a pinch, without a rainy-day fund, 35% would have to borrow the money they needed by using a credit card, taking out a personal loan or hitting up family or friends.
If you've been using your tax refund as a forced savings technique, you should seriously reconsider this strategy as consumer prices rise because of inflation.
Rising prices could be here for some time as the U.S. economy continues to deal with the financial fallout from the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine. You are going to need more money in your paycheck to deal with the price increases in food, gas and utilities.
Inflation is at its highest level in 40 years. In March, prices rose 8.5% compared with a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The cost of gasoline rose 18.3% last month.
If you're looking to replace your car this year, it'll cost you a lot more to buy a used or new vehicle.
The average new vehicle loan increased to $39,721 at the end of 2021, up 12% from a year earlier, according to Experian. Used vehicle loans jumped 20% to $27,291, up from $22,630. The average monthly payment for new vehicles was $644, while the average monthly payment for a used car was $488.
If you let the federal government hold your money, you could end up borrowing more for your vehicle. Instead, get more of your money in your paycheck and save for a higher down payment. Or, use the money to handle your loan payment.
Got a home equity line of credit? Looking to buy a home this year?
You could be facing higher costs for that debt.
The Federal Reserve raised its target federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point and has signaled six more hikes by year's end in an effort to control inflation. The rate increases impact fixed-rate mortgages and anyone with a variable-rate loan.
As of April 14, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit an average of 5% for the first time in over a decade, according to Freddie Mac. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.17%. A year ago at this time, the average rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.35%.
Got revolving credit card debt?
The rates on this debt are also trending up. Bankrate.com found that 23% of people expecting a refund said they planned to use it to pay down debt. Rather than wait for a lump sum refund to pay down this debt, avoid racking up interest charges by paying on it during the year.
It's not always possible to avoid getting a large refund. For some people, part or all of their tax benefits must be in the form of a refund, points out IRS spokesman Eric Smith. They have no choice when it's the refundable portion of a benefit, such as the earned income tax credit or the child and dependent care credit, he said.
As a wage earner, you are required to pay federal income tax by having it withheld from your paycheck throughout the year. The goal is to have your withholding match your actual tax liability.
"In a perfect world, everyone would nail it, with maybe just a small balance due or a small refund," Smith said.
You should evaluate your withholdings every year. You also want to make sure you don't have a hefty, unexpected tax bill, especially if you can't pay on time. The interest rate the IRS has to charge taxpayers when they can't pay what they owe has increased. As of April 1, the rate for underpayment was 4%. The interest rate last spring when people were filing their 2020 returns, was 3%.
To check your withholding and make adjustments, if necessary, use the IRS "Tax Withholding Estimator" at irs.gov. The estimator helps workers, self-employed individuals and retirees who have wage income figure out how much should be withheld from their paychecks. Use the result to submit a new W-4 Employee's Withholding Certificate if needed.
With inflation up, now's the time to go over your withholding for 2022. If you always aim to get a large refund, this is the year to change that habit.
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Call Michelle Singletary at 1-800-Ask-Post. Readers can also write to Michelle Singletary c/o The Washington Post, 1301 K St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. Her email address is michelle.singletary@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter (@SingletaryM) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/MichelleSingletary). Comments and questions are welcome, but due to the volume of mail, personal responses may not be possible. Please also note comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer's name, unless a specific request to do otherwise is indicated
Greg Abbott is starving his own voters to own the libs
CATHERINE RAMPELL COLUMN
Advance for release Saturday. April 16, 2022, and thereafter
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By Catherine Rampell
Starve your own voters to own the libs.
That appears to be Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's latest strategy for reaching the White House, given his decision to deliberately snarl traffic on the U.S. southern border -- leaving food to rot and critical components for cars and other manufacturing to remain inaccessible to U.S. companies and consumers.
Last week, Abbott, R, announced that state troopers would begin "enhanced" safety inspections of commercial vehicles crossing the border, ostensibly to catch illegal immigrants and drugs. Now, federal officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) already inspect vehicles crossing the border for human trafficking and potentially illicit cargo. And Texas state troopers are not legally allowed to inspect these truckers' cargo; they can check only for mechanical issues, such as faulty brakes, tires or taillights.
Abbott must have known his stunt had risks. The quantity of cross-border trade -- in food, auto parts, retail goods -- is enormous, and of enormous consequence to the Lone Star State's economy. Roughly $9 billion worth of fresh produce alone -- 1.28 billion pounds -- crosses into Texas from Mexico annually, according to the Texas International Produce Association.
But this is political theater, after all, and the show must go on.
Amid all the other existing supply-chain bottlenecks and shipping delays, drivers waiting to cross into Texas have been backed up for miles. The typical wait at some border crossing points, usually measured in minutes, this week has exceeded five hours, according to CBP; some trucks have reportedly sat in traffic for more than 30 hours. These bottlenecks are not merely a waste of time for drivers and businesses. Produce also spoils in the heat as idled trucks run low on fuel needed to keep fruit and vegetables refrigerated. Some truckers staged a blockade this week to protest the useless new inspection requirements, snarling traffic even further. (The protests have since ended.)
Meanwhile, Texas-sourced exports intended for markets in Mexico sit untouched, waiting for empty trucks to reach them.
Even fellow Republicans have criticized Abbott's policy, with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller calling the inspections "economy killing" and warning that they will soon drive produce prices higher, if the produce is available at all.
"Your inspection protocol is not stopping illegal immigration," Miller, an early supporter of Donald Trump, wrote in an open letter. "It is stopping food from getting to grocery store shelves and, in many cases, causing food to rot in trucks -- many of which are owned by Texas and other American companies."
In the face of mounting pushback, Abbott relented slightly Wednesday and announced that he was relaxing inspections at the Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge -- but that's just one of the 13 commercial crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.
It's tempting to characterize this as a uniquely stupid policy. But in many ways, the path to this economic self-sabotage was paved long ago by other Republican politicians.
It's not exactly unprecedented, after all, for a Republican gubernatorial administration to settle political scores by orchestrating traffic jams on crucial bridges. Perhaps Abbott, emulating public officials before him, decided it was "time for some traffic problems" in Laredo.
Or maybe Abbott is hoping to deliver on the Trumpian promise of eventual autarky, whatever the economic consequences. Between this and the GOP-encouraged trucker blockade on the Canadian border in February, the United States has crept closer to executing Trump's proposed experiment to close off imports.
Or maybe Abbott is trying to one-up the other 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls, who are working to raise their national profiles with increasingly ridiculous and cruel stunts that exploit immigrants and their children and other border-related issues. The same day that Abbott announced his commercial vehicle inspections, for example, he also declared that he'd be shipping "illegal immigrants" on charter buses and flights to the nation's capital. These are actually Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and others applying for asylum, who are waiting for their cases to be processed.
Abbott's first bus arrived in Washington on Wednesday. Coincidentally, the bus pulled up right outside the building that houses Fox News, NBC News and C-SPAN.
Or maybe Abbott, like many other Republican politicians, simply thinks his voters are stupid.
He might presume that angry voters will see backlogged traffic, empty store shelves and struggling businesses and blame President Joe Biden, even though this latest contribution to supply-chain woes comes courtesy of Abbott's own policies. If that sounds far-fetched, recall that Abbott and other Republicans have tried to blame Biden for mounting covid infections and deaths, even as these same politicians have deliberately sown distrust in vaccines and undermined or outright barred efforts to increase vaccination and other covid-prevention measures.
If Abbott's border policy is motivated by the last of these possible explanations -- if he's assuming Texans are too dense to figure out causality here -- let's hope voters will be motivated to prove him wrong.
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Catherine Rampell's email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.
Inflation is rising, Biden's polls are falling, and his message is failing
MARC A. THIESSEN COLUMN
Advance for release Friday, April 15, 2022, and thereafter
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By Marc A. Thiessen
WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden got more bad news this week: Inflation rose to 8.5%, while his approval rating dropped to 33% in a new Quinnipiac University poll, tying the lowest mark of any major public survey during his presidency.
Normally, during a foreign policy crisis, Americans rally around the commander in chief. Instead, the opposite is happening. Not only do Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy, just 39% approve of Biden's handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Americans believe Biden's policies are a disaster, and his efforts to convince them otherwise are backfiring. The only thing people hate more than a failed president is a failed president who lies to them. If he wants to stop the bleeding, here is some advice for Biden on what not to say to the American people.
First, stop touting rising wages. Biden boasts about how "working people actually got a raise" under his administration and the "positive real wage growth" his policies have unleashed. But Americans know full well that wage growth has been completely wiped out by the record inflation his policies have unleashed.
In February, when inflation was still 7.5%, average net hourly wages fell 2.7% from a year earlier after accounting for inflation -- "the 12th straight monthly drop in inflation-adjusted wages." From February to March, inflation rose another 1.2% -- the largest month-to-month jump in 17 years -- which means real wages have fallen even further. And as real wages are declining, the cost of gas and food is rising far faster than that 8.5% inflation figure. The week before Biden's inauguration, the price of a gallon of regular gas in the United States was $2.65; today it is $4.07 -- a 65% rise since he took office. The prices of meat, poultry and fish are up 13.8%; milk is up 13.3%; eggs are up 11.2%; fresh fruit is up 10.1%. When Americans can't afford to fill their tanks and grocery carts, they don't want to hear Biden bragging about the amazing wage increases he has given them.
Second, stop crowing about low unemployment. Biden boasts that he has presided over the "fastest decline in unemployment to start a president's term ever recorded." That's because millions of Americans are not participating in the labor force. There are nearly 11.3 million unfilled jobs in the United States today. One of the reasons we have record inflation is because we have a record labor shortage. Prices are rising because supply can't keep up with demand because businesses can't find workers. When Biden claims credit for low unemployment, it makes him appear completely out of touch with the lived reality of small business owners and the consumers they are struggling to serve.
Third, stop asking Congress to approve more spending. Biden keeps trying to revive elements of his failed Build Back Better agenda. But the reason Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) killed the legislation was because of his concerns about inflation. With inflation rising even higher, he is even less likely to support more government spending. Americans understand that Biden's $1.9 trillion in social spending disguised as "covid-19 relief" helped create record inflation and labor shortages -- and that more government spending will make things worse. An October 2021 Gallup poll finds that a 52% majority of Americans think the government is trying to do too many things -- up from 41% the year before. Calling for more government is the opposite of what most Americans want.
Finally, stop blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for domestic policy failures. "I'm doing everything within my power . . . [to] address the Putin price hike," Biden said Tuesday. Americans are not stupid. Yes, they know that Russia's invasion has affected prices at the pump, and an ABC/Ipsos poll shows that 71% correctly hold Putin responsible for his part in this. Yet, despite those costs, 79% support placing even tighter sanctions on Russia. It's a price they are willing to pay to support the Ukrainian people.
But that doesn't mean Americans buy Biden's effort to shift the blame onto Putin. A 51% majority also blame the president for rising gas prices, and 69% disapprove of his handling of inflation.
Americans know that before the war in Ukraine began, Biden presided over the fastest year-over-year gas price rise in at least 30 years. They know that before the war in Ukraine began, Biden had already ushered in the worst inflation in four decades. By blaming Putin for inflation, Biden is using the suffering of the Ukrainian people to cover for his disastrous economic policies.
In the midst of rising inflation and falling real wages, Biden's message to the American people appears to be: Don't believe your lying eyes. Things are better than you think. And, oh, by the way, it's not my fault. As Biden's plummeting poll numbers confirm, those are not winning messages.
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Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen.
Putin's Plan A in Ukraine has failed. We can't let his Plan B succeed.
FAREED ZAKARIA COLUMN
Advance for release April 15, 2022, and thereafter
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By Fareed Zakaria
Ukraine's brave and brilliant response to Russia's attack is rightly being celebrated across the world. But it might be obscuring a growing danger. While the assault on Kyiv and the surrounding region has failed, Moscow's strategy in the south and east of Ukraine could well succeed. If it does, Russia will have turned Ukraine into an economically crippled rump state, landlocked and threatened on three sides by Russian military power, always vulnerable to another incursion from Moscow. It will take much more military assistance from the West to ensure that this catastrophic outcome does not come to pass.
As Can Kasapoglu, a military scholar and strategist, presciently pointed out in the first few weeks of the war in an essay for the Hudson Institute, there are two distinct wars taking place in Ukraine, one in the north and one in the south, and the latter has been "radically more successful" for Moscow. Russia has been able to move forces and supplies out of its bases in Crimea and capture the cities of Melitopol and Kherson. Mariupol is now encircled and invaded by Russian troops, and Ukrainian forces trapped there cannot be resupplied. Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov has been blocked, and, Kasapoglu points out, Russian forces have a contiguous land corridor from Crimea deep into Donbas. They are also trying to move west, from Kherson to Odessa.
Odessa is the prize. As the main port from which Ukraine trades with the world, it is the most important city for Ukraine economically. It is also a city replete with symbolic significance. It was here in 1905 that a mutiny on the battleship Potemkin (made famous by Sergei Eisenstein's movie) marked the beginning of the troubles of czarist Russia. Were Odessa to fall, Ukraine would be practically landlocked, and the Black Sea would essentially become a Russian lake -- which would almost certainly tempt Moscow to extend its military power into Moldova, which has its own breakaway region filled with many Russian speakers (Transnistria). Russian President Vladimir Putin could present this outcome as a grand victory, liberating Russian speakers, gaining crucial cities and ports, and turning Ukraine into a nonviable vassal state.
This must not happen, and the Ukrainians are fighting ferociously to prevent it. In Ukraine's east, the Russians are trying to advance from Kherson, through the city of Mykolaiv, but they are being stymied by the extraordinary courage of the city's inhabitants, who have reportedly blown up the bridge that connects the city to Odessa and blocked the railway tracks. This week, Ukrainian forces claimed they were able to deploy their never-before-used Neptune missiles and sink the Russian missile cruiser Moskva. Still, it's important to remember that, before the invasion, Russia had a 10-to-1 advantage in defense spending over Ukraine -- and Putin seems determined to press on, no matter the costs.
What can the United States and the West do? Much more of everything they are already doing. Ukraine needs more arms, especially those that give it massive asymmetric fighting power. Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who has been farsighted in diagnosing Russia's weaknesses and Ukraine's strengths, explained to me that Ukraine needs more equipment that allows it to maneuver quickly around Russia's rigid forces. That means helicopters, armed Humvees, multiple-launch rocket systems and drones of every kind. Turkish drones have proved to be an amazingly effective weapon in this conflict. Hertling urges that Ukraine be given more of those, as well as American "kamikaze" drones and intelligence drones.
The Russian navy, which has been massing in the Black Sea, continues to pose a great danger to Odessa, threatening either to lay siege to it or to launch an amphibious landing behind Ukrainian lines. Despite the purported success of the Neptune missiles, Ukraine does not have the capacity to stop the Russian navy. NATO should consider doing something similar to what it did during the Balkan wars in the 1990s. It should enforce an embargo around those waters, preventing Russian troops from entering to attack Ukraine's cities or resupply Russian forces. NATO ships would operate from international waters, issuing any approaching ships a "notice to mariners" that NATO forces are active in the area and warning them not to enter.
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, supports the actions the Biden administration has taken but urges a more aggressive response from the West on all fronts. Give Ukraine fighter planes and air defense systems, he tweeted, and help it with cyberattacks and give it antiship missiles to "sink Russian ships in [the] Black Sea."
The United States has dedicated about $16 billion in aid to Ukraine since the invasion. Meanwhile, the world is expected to pay $320 billion to Russia this year for its energy. Economic sanctions will not force Putin to end the war as long as this gaping loophole exists. The only pressure that will force Russia to the negotiating table is military defeat -- in the south. Putin's Plan A failed, but we cannot let his Plan B succeed.
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Fareed Zakaria's email address is fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.
A tantrum by infantilized French populists could elect Marine Le Pen
GEORGE F. WILL COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, April 17, 2022, and thereafter
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By George F. Will
Populism is, always and everywhere, a cri de coeur -- populism has a French accent this month -- by people feeling a painful scarcity: of esteem. Marine Le Pen might be elected France's president on April 24, elevated by her nation's contradictory populism. It is the surliness of those who resent the predictable consequence of the political culture that the resentful embrace, paternalist statism. The consequence is individuals diminished as infantilized wards of a government that, by presuming to provide almost everything, subtracts from one thing: the social esteem of those in the lower strata of a government-ordered society.
Le Pen's measures to "detoxify" (her term) her party have included purging the party's founder, her antisemitic father (he once called the Holocaust a "detail" of history). And destroying campaign leaflets showing her pleased to be shaking Vladimir Putin's hand (her party has received Russian funding). And deploring inflation even more than immigrants. All this is cosmetic, but successful.
In 2002, Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reached the two-candidate second round of presidential voting, where he was trounced 82% to 18%. In 2017, his daughter won 33.9% in the second round while losing to Emmanuel Macron by 32.2 percentage points. In this month's first round, she trailed Macron by only 4.7 percentage points, and defeated him among every age category except voters over 65.
In democracies where performative candidates now blur the distinction between politics and entertainment, fortune favors the entertaining. Le Pen's opponent, Macron, exemplifies something annoying: "French Caesarism." This phrase is French-British professor Brigitte Granville's.
Her answer to her book's title -- "What Ails France?" is a "righteous consensus," the statism that "asphyxiates the country's potential." France's paternalism expresses the "tenacious notion of the state as saviour." Sixty-two percent of France's gross domestic product is spent by government, the European Union's highest level.
The French distrust of free markets is related to low trust of one another, and high trust in government bureaucracy, which employs 20% of France's workforce. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) said, "France is an extremely fertile country: bureaucrats are planted in its soil, and taxes spring up." High income taxes (on top of a 20% value-added tax on most purchases) help explain why average annual hours worked per employee has decreased 20% in 30 years. France's labor code fills 3,784 pages.
A French word describes the French disease: (BEG ITAL)dirigisme(END ITAL), the micromanaging state as source and director of society's creativity, which for that reason is another scarcity. The self-fulfilling assumption is that the public is infantile. Another assumption is that the civil service is omnicompetent. A French thinker, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), warned against the cognitive dissonance inherent in paternalistic statism:
"The government should know everything and foresee everything in order to manage the lives of the people, and the people need only let themselves be taken care of. ... Nothing is more senseless than to base so many expectations on the state ... to assume the existence of collective wisdom and foresight after taking for granted the existence of individual imbecility and improvidence."
In 2018, Macron's climate change grandstanding produced a short-lived 23% increase in the tax on diesel fuel. Nearly two-thirds of French vehicles, which are disproportionately outside Paris, run on diesel. The diesel debacle included mass protests that are the preferred French mode of notifying the paternalist state that the children are grumpy about government-as-parent.
Macron named the party he founded 13 months before winning the presidency in 2017 En Marche! (On the move). He titled his book "Revolution." Since then, he has been on the move defining revolution down, retreating even from his vow to raise the pension-eligibility age from 62 to 65. Now, fighting populism with a dose of it, he suggests sending pension reform to almost certain defeat in a referendum.
The "verbally incontinent" (Granville's description) Macron began his tone-deaf presidency by promising both "humility" and government with the grandeur of Jupiter, a Roman god. Really. Macron has, Granville writes, a politically perilous trait -- an "ingrained dislike for ordinary people -- or, at least, an inability to disguise that fact."
France's flirtation with Le Pen's version of Henry Adams's curdled notion of politics ("the systematic organization of hatreds") illustrates how populists' rote denunciations of "elites" open a path to power for demagogues. Today, one such is implicitly promising to wield the French state's gigantic redistributive power to somehow redistribute esteem, thereby assuaging populists' resentments. She could become president of the nation once considered the cradle of the Enlightenment.
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George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.