Newly named Washington Post editor decides not to take job after backlash

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NEW YORK (AP) — The Washington Post said Friday that newly named editor Robert Winnett has decided not to take the job and remain in Britain instead, another upheaval at a news outlet where a reorganization plan has gone disastrously wrong.

The Post’s CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, announced Winnett’s decision to withdraw in a note to staff on Friday morning, and said a recruitment firm would be hired to launch a search for a replacement immediately.

The financially struggling Post had announced Winnett would take over as editor of the core newsroom functions after November’s presidential election, while it was also setting up a “third newsroom” devoted to finding new ways for its journalism to make money.

Three weeks ago, then-executive editor Sally Buzbee said that she would quit rather than take a demotion to head this revenue-enhancement effort. Former Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray was brought on as her interim replacement and future leader of the “third newsroom.”

Since then, several published reports had raised questions about the journalistic ethics of Lewis and Winnett stemming from their work in England. For example, both men worked together in a series of scoops about extravagant spending by British politicians fueled by information that they paid a data information company for — a practice frowned upon by American journalists.

The New York Times wrote that both Winnett and Lewis were involved in stories that appeared to be based on fraudulently-obtained phone and business records.

It sparked a newsroom revolt at The Post. David Maraniss, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who has worked at the newspaper for four decades, said this week that he didn’t know anyone there who thought the situation with the publisher and “supposed new editor” could stand.

“The body is rejecting the transfusion,” Maraniss wrote on Facebook.

Lewis, a former Wall Street Journal publisher and vice chairman of The Associated Press’ board of directors, started at The Post earlier this year, hired by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos to stem a costly exodus of readers. The Post had said it had lost $77 million last year.

In a memo to key staff members earlier this week, Bezos assured them that journalistic standards and ethics at the newspaper would not change. “I know you’ve already heard this from Will, but I wanted to also weigh in directly,” he wrote.

“To be sure, it can’t be business as usual at The Post,” Bezos wrote. “The world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change as a business.”

In his Facebook note, Maraniss said that the issue for staff members is integrity, not resistance to change. To that end, it remains to be seen whether Lewis can gain staff support.

Lewis said Friday that the recruitment firm and process for replacing Winnett will be announced soon. Winnett’s sudden hiring — without any indication of an extensive search — had also rankled staff members.

But Lewis also said that the reorganization efforts would continue.

Winnett is staying at the Telegraph in London. Telegraph editor Chris Evans told that newspaper that “he’s a talented chap, and their loss is our gain,” according to the Guardian.

___

Associated Press correspondent Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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Finding God, Asking State to Find Mercy on Death Row

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The State of Texas plans to execute 41-year-old Ramiro Gonzales next Wednesday, June 26. Not for the first time, his lawyers are pleading with Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency. This time, attorneys are arguing that his religious growth and ministry on death row means he deserves to live. 

Gonzales was sentenced to death in 2006 for the murder of Bridget Townsend, who witnessed Gonzales robbing his drug dealer’s home, in 2001. 

His attorneys filed an application for clemency on June 5 and requested a hearing on Gonzales’ upcoming execution. The board denied the hearing request but will vote on whether to recommend the governor grant clemency by Monday, two days before his scheduled execution.

“The role of executive clemency is, supposedly, to prevent miscarriages of justice that might yet occur due to the fallibility of our criminal legal system,” said Thea Posel, one of Gonzales’ attorneys. “On a basic level, it is an opportunity for those in power to grant mercy and to recognize not only grave injustices but also the power of rehabilitation and the human capacity for change.”

Texas governors have very rarely granted clemency to prisoners on death row. The only time Governor Greg Abbott has done so was in 2018, when Abbott commuted Thomas Whitaker’s sentence after his father—and would-be victim of Whitaker’s 2003 familicide plot—pled for mercy for his son. 

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) stayed Gonzales’ original execution in July 2022 two days before the date, after an expert who had testified that Gonzales posed a future danger to society walked back his testimony. The state’s highest criminal appeals court ordered a lower court to review the case given that new information. At a lower court judge’s recommendation early this year, the CCA dismissed Gonzales’ claim, and the state set his June 26 execution date. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to hear the case in February. 

While in prison, Gonzales became one of the first members of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Faith Based Program on Death Row, where participants live in a special housing area and take religious classes. State prison systems have provided similar programs to the prison population for decades, but TDCJ became the first to extend the initiative to death row in 2021. According to his clemency application, Gonzales found God in the Medina County Jail ahead of the trial for Townsend’s murder, after a visiting preacher gave him a Bible. 

Gonzales’ participation in the death row program and his spiritual journey are at the heart of the calls for clemency, both from his lawyers and tens of thousands of people who have signed online petitions against the scheduled execution. Before he received his execution date and was moved to a special “death watch” area, Gonzales was a peer mentor and coordinator for the Faith Based Program and often ministered to other people on death row. He received the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree from a theological seminary while in prison. 

“Is clemency called for in a case where executing [Gonzales] is the judicially imposed sanction for a heinous crime, but granting him mercy would save souls that would otherwise be lost?” his clemency application states.

Such religious language is common in appeals for clemency in Texas. Condemned Texans often ask for clemency on religious grounds, pulling from scripture and theology to draw parallels between flawed religious figures and those on Texas’ death row, and proclaiming the transformative power of faith. Historically, these arguments haven’t swayed governors and their pardon board appointees to show mercy, even in Texas. 

Last October, Will Speer, the first inmate coordinator for the Death Row Faith Based Program, was set to be executed, and despite his extensive work with the program and his spiritual growth, the board unanimously denied his clemency application, which highlighted his religious devotion. For reasons unrelated to his clemency application, the Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay five hours before he was supposed to be killed. 

Speer told the Observer this week that it’s difficult for men in the program—which he said consists of “not just some fluff that sounds good [but] life changing, life growing, life giving classes”—when one of their leaders gets an execution date. 

“There are men who are new to the change, some new to faith,” he wrote in a message to the Observer. “They need lots of help to see things in a new light, or a different perspective. It’s not always easy to shake off 20, 30, 40, years of living with one mentality.”

(Elisabetta Diorio)

An op-ed in The New York Times lauded Gonzales’ efforts to donate and his spiritual growth on death row. “His attempt to donate a kidney represents something beyond a modification of the simple logic of an eye for an eye,” wrote Rachael Bedard, who worked as a palliative care physician at Rikers Island for five years and met with Gonzales after hearing about his case. “It is an expression of hard-won self-knowledge and the good he has found in himself, commingled with remorse.”

In addition to highlighting his religious turn, Gonzales’ current clemency application includes grim details about his childhood—mitigating circumstances like childhood abuse and mental illness are also common threads in many clemency applications in Texas. 

Raised by his mother’s parents, he was allegedly sexually abused by his cousin and others when he was a child, according to court documents. He became addicted to drugs after his aunt, with whom he shared a close bond, died in a car accident when he was 15. He struggled in school, repeating multiple grades—by the time he dropped out at age 16, he was still in the 8th grade. 

But Gonzales’ attorneys told the Observer that in this second clemency application, they wanted to focus not just on the reasons Gonzales “does not deserve to die,” but to highlight the reasons he should live and continue his ministry on death row. 

“In the free world, ministers and faith leaders are viewed as pillars of the community. … In the same way, Ramiro is a leader in prison society,” Posel said. “He is deserving of mercy for numerous reasons, but faith is inextricably intertwined with all of them, as it is an essential part of who he is and how he has attempted to atone for his sins and the pain he has caused.”

Opinion: Don’t Let Misconceptions Kill The Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act

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“We don’t need to choose between landmarking and affordable housing. We can have both. I wrote this law to explicitly enshrine and protect existing landmarking processes across the state, protections I further strengthened in a recent amendment to the bill.”

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes’ Office

The author, State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, at a rally in support of the Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act in March 2024.

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With more than 100,000 New Yorkers in homeless shelters every night and more than half of renters in the state paying a third of their income in rent, we need to take bold action to address our affordable housing crisis. That’s why I’m so disheartened to see opposition to my Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act based on misunderstandings and false narratives.

Churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith-based organizations are trusted community pillars that offer crucial services like child care, education, and health care. Many already build affordable housing and want to continue that noble tradition, but can’t because of restrictive zoning.

My Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act would enable houses of worship and other faith-based organizations to more easily build affordable homes on their property. This new housing would be available to all who need it, not just members of a faith community; organizations that develop housing under the Act would be prohibited from discriminating based on religion. 

This simple legislation has worked elsewhere, and could be a critical tool in addressing the severe shortage of affordable housing across our state by empowering faith communities to put their values into action. That’s why a diverse coalition of legislators, faith leaders, and civic groups support this Act, and why I plan to fight to pass it in next year’s legislative session.

Some organizations have claimed that the Act could weaken protections for historic sites—but this simply isn’t true. We don’t need to choose between landmarking and affordable housing. We can have both. I wrote this law to explicitly enshrine and protect existing landmarking processes across the state, protections I further strengthened in a recent amendment to the bill.

To understand these protections, it’s important to understand the differences between landmarking and ill-defined concepts like “preserving neighborhood character.” Landmarking is a defined process in which decisions about buildings and neighborhoods are made based on clear, established criteria, like architectural and historical significance. In contrast, efforts at preserving an undefined “neighborhood character” usually lack formal criteria and function to advance exclusionary community preferences and even racial bias.

The greatest threat to historically-significant houses of worship is declining congregation numbers, not affordable homes. Across the state, many houses of worship and affiliated community organizations are struggling with falling attendance and funding that have forced them to reduce services or even close entirely. My bill would enable them to create a new income stream by building housing, allowing them to secure a stronger financial footing while continuing their tradition of serving their communities by offering much-needed affordable places to live.

Opponents of the Act have also argued that new housing will strain community resources, or that utilities and schools in their towns can’t support more residents. But the opposite is true: the construction of new homes would bring acres of currently non-taxable land onto the property tax roll, and invite more taxpayers into cities and towns across the state. These funds can support public infrastructure and essential services that communities need. Long Island, for example, faces significant challenges with its aquifer system due to mid-century corporate pollution, not because of demand. School enrollment has declined as much as 25 percent in school districts across Long Island, leaving ample capacity for new students.

Perhaps most importantly, faith-based organizations are ready and willing to help address the housing shortage. Affordable housing and homeless services are already central to the missions of countless houses of worship, and many others are looking to do more. The Sisters of Saint Joseph in Brentwood on Long Island, for example, have already secured $3 million in federal funding to adapt existing buildings for housing. Without the Faith Based Affordable Housing Act, though, the Brentwood community may have to wait years for these badly-needed homes to be available.

We have an obligation to address the homelessness and housing crisis afflicting so many of our neighbors. We cannot allow misconceptions to stand in the way of proven solutions. My Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act offers an opportunity for people of all faiths to live out their values of compassion and service. Policymakers and community leaders must take advantage of that opportunity by working together to pass it.

Andrew Gounardes is a New York State senator representing Brooklyn’s 26th Senate District.

Andreas Kluth: U.S. exceptionalism is dead no matter who wins the election

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A facile way to frame the future of American foreign policy is to set up two scenarios as a binary choice. If former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, the United States becomes isolationist. If President Joe Biden wins reelection, the U.S. remains broadly internationalist.

That framing neglects a change that may be less obvious but more consequential for other countries, a shift that will keep playing out no matter who wins in November: For the first time in its two-and-a-half centuries, the U.S. will stop looking at the world through the lens of its own exceptionalism, and behave as just another Great Power using its awe-inspiring might to serve a narrow self-interest.

The old notion that America is exceptional was there from the start. It inspired John Winthrop, as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, to speak of a “city on a hill” and Ronald Reagan in 1980 to turn the same phrase into a “shining city upon a hill.”

Over the years, this exceptionalism took many forms, from Manifest Destiny to racist “Anglo-Saxonism,” from a belief in the country’s unique theological calling to pride in its civic virtues. One way or another, though, most policy makers agreed with Herman Melville: “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world … The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world, the advance guard.”

This shared sense of exceptionalism was also the common factor in the country’s two otherwise contradictory foreign-policy traditions, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in 1994, at a moment of unipolar American primacy. Isolationists saw the U.S. as perfecting its democracy at home and shining its light as a “beacon” to the rest of humanity but otherwise leaving the world alone. Internationalists understood exceptionalism as an obligation to spread American values around the world as “crusaders” or “missionaries.”

Each tradition has at different times served America and the world well and also ill. Until the Spanish-American war, isolationism largely kept the U.S. out of the old world’s balance-of-power machinations and imperialist adventurism; that was good. Between the two World Wars, an isolationist U.S. abdicated its responsibility when it could have preserved international order; that was bad.

After World War II, an internationalist and quasi-messianic U.S. built and policed a new world order, at least in much of the non-communist or “free” world. Good. In time, American confidence became hubris, as when George W. Bush proclaimed in 2002 that “today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s triumph,” and promised that “the United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.” A few months later, he gave orders for a misguided and disastrous war in Iraq.

Whether shining as a beacon or conquering and preaching as a crusader, U.S. leaders largely agreed that America’s self-government — its democracy — was exceptional. Far from complete, especially before the civil-rights movement, it seemed to be forever climbing toward its destiny on that shining hill, a work in progress that showcased a narrative of freedom to people everywhere. And that’s what has changed.

The eschatology of American democracy first became dubious during the first Trump term, especially with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. If the country had subsequently rallied in defense of its republican ideals — during the congressional hearings on 1/6, for example — the next chapter could have reaffirmed the narrative of perennial self-correction. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the Big Lie (that the last election was “stolen” from Trump) lives on, alongside other conspiracy theories. Preparations are underway to use a second Trump turn to weaponize the Justice Department against political enemies, even as Trump’s minions pretend that this has already happened under Biden. The neutrality of more than one Supreme Court justice is in doubt. Left and right alike, for different reasons, fear that the rule of right is yielding to a rule of might, and are losing faith in America’s elections, institutions and exceptional virtue. The film that captures the mood this year is Civil War, a haunting tale of Americans killing one another for no fathomable reason.

The outside world is paying incredibly close attention. Foreigners certainly no longer see the U.S. as a beacon of republicanism. Nor would they, whether allies or adversaries, tolerate any more American crusading. The Pew Research Center surveyed people in 34 countries, and found that an average of 69% had no confidence in Trump doing the right thing in world affairs; a still unflattering plurality of 46% said the same about Biden.

What arguably matters even more is what Americans believe nowadays. I doubt many beyond the capital’s Beltway would still subscribe to a phrase that former secretary of state Madeleine Albright coined and many Republicans and Democrats subsequently adopted, which sees America as the “indispensable” nation. Exceptionalism in its old form is dead, and with it notions about an American role as either a beacon or crusader.

What will replace it? The new approach to world affairs would resemble the one Kissinger studied as a scholar and tried to practice as America’s top diplomat. It leaves less space for idealism and more for realism, places less emphasis on values and more on interests. It’s neither inherently good nor self-evidently bad, just very different in outcome for almost every other country.

For example, both Ukraine, which is defending its national sovereignty and survival against Russia, and Taiwan, which may yet have to fight for its democracy and freedom against mainland China, have been called “the new West Berlin.” But will any future U.S. president risk war, including the nuclear kind, by pledging that “Ich bin ein Kyiver”?

An America that refuses to be a crusader will also reject any role as White Knight. And a country that doesn’t see itself as a beacon will care less about acting high-minded toward others. U.S. economic policy is already turning protectionist and nationalist. It will also become more transactional, pocketing deals that leaders can sell to their base at home rather than upholding lofty principles of global governance.

American hegemony in guarding the liberal — or “rules-based” — international order will die from lack of interest long before expiring from lack of resources. Washington’s support for international law, from the United Nations to The Hague, will fade.

American leaders will instead approach their foreign counterparts much as the Austrian statesman Prince Metternich (a Kissinger favorite) dealt with Europe’s monarchs in the 19th century. They’ll try to arrange a new balance of power and to negotiate spheres of influence, even at the expense of friendly but small nations. Beijing already speaks this language in the South China Sea, and Moscow in eastern Europe. In the coming years as in Metternich’s time, that style of diplomacy will occasionally use war as an instrument, albeit (one hopes) the limited kind.

Some students of American statecraft will mourn this shift. Others, irate about the hypocrisy that often accompanied both the beacon and the crusader personas, will shrug and say good riddance. In a sense, the world, inside America and beyond, is merely reverting to the historical norm, in which values mattered less and power more. America’s friends and foes alike should be aware.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

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