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The Venezuelan bolivar, after years of excruciating, relentless declines that have left it almost worthless and sunk millions into deep poverty, appears to have finally bottomed out.
The currency has traded at a rate of around 4.5 per dollar for the past four months, a newfound stability that's come without much need for propping up by policymakers.
It's a moment that at times seemed would never come as inflation spiraled out of control, the government kept slashing zeros from the bolivar -- six just came off in October -- and the economy plunged deeper into chaos. But a handful of forces have come together to brake the collapse -- at least for now.
It starts with oil, which is generating more and more hard currency for the country as international prices spike and local output grinds higher following a decade of declines. Gold mining is also bringing in dollars as are a handful of small, but growing export industries -- shrimp farming, rum and cocoa -- that have popped up in recent years. And the socialist regime has, to the surprise of many, taken a largely orthodox approach to reining in fiscal spending and freeing up an economy that had long been throttled by government controls and red-tape. The economy expanded for the first time in seven years in 2021.
For many Venezuelans, the currency's stabilization comes too late.
Millions have fled the country and millions of those who stayed behind have given up on the bolivar and adopted the dollar as their currency. They receive their salaries and pay for almost everything in dollars. But many of the poorest Venezuelans continue to get paid in bolivars, and for them, the currency's strength has helped preserve the little purchasing power they have left. Inflation in bolivars has slowed to an annual pace of 53% in the past three months, down from well north of 1,000% in recent years, according to a Bloomberg index.
Even local economists who have become accustomed to seeing President Nicolas Maduro's government commit policy mistake after policy mistake acknowledge that this time feels a bit different. Asdrubal Oliveros, who runs financial analysis firm Ecoanalitica, puts it this way: The bolivar will start to slide against the dollar at some point but there won't be the kind of mega-devaluation that has hammered the economy time and again in recent years.
Given how much of the economy is now conducted in dollars, Oliveros finds the outsize attention the government is putting on the bolivar to be misplaced, but, he says, "I wouldn't call it an artificial policy. It's real."
It's real because the central bank has been able to largely orchestrate this stability without having to draw down its already depleted foreign reserves. The increase in exports has provided the bank with enough hard currency to meet demand from banks. Last year, it sold around $1.5 billion of dollars and euros in the foreign-exchange market, according to government documents seen by Bloomberg. Meanwhile, reserves held steady around $6 billion, once deducting IMF funds that the government can't access.
For now, the policy appears sustainable. State companies sold around $3.3 billion to the central bank in 2021, compared to only $743 million in 2020, according to government data shared during a call with investors last month and obtained by Bloomberg.
Still, risks abound. Inflows from oil production and other exports need to remain high if the central bank is to keep up the sales. And inflation, while easing, remains among the highest in the world, which will eventually put pressure on the currency.
Tamara Herrera, a Caracas-based economist at Sintesis Financiera, sees risks in trusting that the bolivar will hold steady in the long term, especially as oil prices and production fluctuate.
"The probability that the exchange rate will remain stable this year is relatively high," she said. "But that is an oversimplification of unforeseen events."
There is one other factor that helps explain the bolivar's stability: the collapse in demand for imports. Today, Venezuela is too poor -- and the bolivar is too weak -- to buy much abroad. Imports totaled less than $8 billion in 2021. Ten years earlier, that figure was $53 billion.
MAIMANA, Afghanistan - By all accounts, Makhdoom Alam was a Taliban stalwart. The 45-year-old ethnic Uzbek commander fought U.S. and Afghan forces for two decades and was held for five years in a U.S.-run prison. Last summer, his fighters seized three northern provinces, helping pave the way for the Taliban to take over the nation. With each victory, his influence grew.
Two weeks ago, the Taliban arrested him.
That was enough to touch off a minor rebellion in this Uzbek-dominated northern provincial capital. Hundreds of Alam's supporters took to the streets on Jan. 13, their anger fueled by long-simmering ethnic grievances - and accusations that the predominantly Pashtun Taliban didn't want an Uzbek to gain too much power within its ranks.
"Be careful, Uzbeks. They will arrest you all, one by one," one protester shouted in a video taken on that day. "If they can arrest a person who fought for them for 20 years, they can arrest you, too."
Alam's detention represents one of the first internal challenges to the Taliban regime, opening a window into the obstacles facing the militants as they transition from a guerrilla insurgency to a political force. Like previous Afghan governments, the Taliban is led by Pashtuns, the ethnic majority in a country where minorities have been marginalized or underrepresented for decades.
To many Uzbeks, Alam's saga signals a continuation of such policies.
"We have been victims of discrimination for a long time," said Abdullah, a protester who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used, fearing reprisals. "The Taliban say they are an Islamic government and in Islam there is no discrimination. So why do they want to arrest our leaders and those who represent us?"
In an interview, the Taliban governor of Faryab province rejected the accusations of ethnic discrimination as "baseless." He insisted that the demonstrations, which were swiftly suppressed by Taliban forces, were orchestrated by officials of the former Afghan government. Alam's arrest, he added, is an example of the Taliban's good governance.
"This shows the government is so serious that even their commanders or high-ranking officials who commit any mistake are not above the law," said Qari Hafizullah Pahlawan Ferdous, the governor.
But even Ferdous doesn't know why Alam was arrested. Some local media reports suggested that he underrepresented to Taliban officials in Kabul the amount of heavy weaponry he and his roughly 4,000 fighters possessed. But most people, including Alam's family and military comrades, said he was falsely accused of kidnapping a boy from a wealthy family two years ago. The boy is still missing.
"The reasons for his arrest are still not clear for us as well," said Ferdous, an ethnic Turkmen. "He was arrested by the officials in Kabul. They know better why he was arrested."
The Washington Post sent a list of questions to the Taliban seeking clarification on Alam's arrest and responses to the accusations of discrimination. Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban, replied that "investigations are underway in this regard" and "are not yet completed." He declined to comment further.
The controversy over Alam comes at a delicate time for the Taliban. When the militants returned as Afghanistan's rulers in August, their leaders vowed to create a government inclusive of all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups and religions, a move to convince the international community that the new government deserved diplomatic recognition and financial backing. But nearly six months later, that promise has yet to materialize.
The 33-member cabinet remains dominated by ethnic Pashtun hard-liners and Sunni Muslims, who hold the large majority of the powerful positions. Members of the long-oppressed Shiite Hazara minority have been evicted from their homes in some provinces. The community remains deeply suspicious of the Taliban's intentions, despite outreach efforts by the militants.
Here in Faryab province, where Uzbeks are a majority, the ethnic fissures have been deepening for months. Even though many mid-level security and political officials are Uzbek, most residents viewed the Taliban's appointment of an ethnic Turkmen governor and a Pashtun as his deputy as an attempt to dilute their community's influence. The most powerful Uzbek was Alam, and then he was gone.
"The demonstrations sent a clear message to the central government," said a professor of politics at Faryab University, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. "If they continue discriminatory policies, they will face a popular reaction that will create problems for the Taliban to rule this province and neighboring provinces."
The professor added: "It could also inspire other ethnic groups to rise up against them and their policies."
- - -
Alam once was a Taliban poster boy for diversity. Born in Faryab, he was among the first Uzbeks to join the Taliban in the mid-1990s, when the militants first ruled Afghanistan.
Back then, the Taliban had dispatched Pashtun fighters and officials to rule the province and enforce its ultraconservative decrees. In his teens, Alam was posted to Herat, where he rose to become a commander, according to two relatives.
When the Taliban was ousted in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks, Alam returned to Faryab and resumed his religious studies. But within a few years, he joined the emerging Taliban resistance, commanding a group of fighters that staged roadside bombings and guerrilla attacks on U.S. and Afghan government forces.
In 2010, U.S. Special Forces arrested and jailed him at Bagram, the American air base north of Kabul. Five years later, Alam was released by Afghan authorities after a group of tribal elders from Faryab vouched for him, said the relatives.
"He then rejoined the Taliban," said Khairullah Mobasher, Alam's cousin and a Taliban commander in charge of the military airport in Maimana.
By then, the Taliban was actively seeking to add more ethnic minorities to its ranks to project itself as a national insurgency. Alam played a key role in recruiting more Uzbeks from Faryab and neighboring provinces as well as Turkmen and Tajiks, although their numbers are still dwarfed by the Pashtuns in the Taliban.
In 2017, the militants anointed Alam the head of their military commission, increasing his influence.
Last year, Alam was instrumental in the Taliban takeover of Faryab and two neighboring provinces, Jowzjan and Sar-e Pol, said the professor and local officials. Tribal and religious mediators persuaded provincial officials of the Ashraf Ghani government to surrender to Alam and the Taliban.
After the takeover of Kabul in August, Alam headed a force of more than 4,000 men and was one of the top Taliban military commanders in the north. Alam, the father of eight children from four wives, also was appointed the deputy governor of Sar-e Pol province, said his relatives. His promotion makes his arrest all the more confounding to his family, friends and supporters.
"The Taliban treated him well; they trusted him," said Zabiullah Mohamedeen, Alam's brother-in-law. "He had much influence with the people, and through him, the Taliban could influence them as well. He spent most of his life fighting with the Taliban and made many sacrifices. So why arrest him in this manner? This is still a big question for the people."
- - -
The arrest itself was carried out sneakily, relatives said.
Alam was ordered by his superiors in Kabul to attend a meeting Jan. 13 in Mazar-e Sharif, a four-hour drive from Maimana. When he arrived, he was taken into custody. The arrangement now seems intended to avoid confrontations with his loyalists in Maimana. Alam was sent to Kabul and placed under house arrest by the Taliban's intelligence agency, according to relatives and his military allies.
At the time, Inamullah Samangani, a Taliban spokesman, told the BBC's Persian news service that Alam was arrested over accusations that he had orchestrated the kidnapping of the boy, a case that by then was two years old.
Alam's fighters were stunned. "I reject these allegations," said Ehsanullah Toufan, an Uzbek commander of a Taliban base in Maimana and a close friend of Alam's. "He's an honest man."
Alam's relatives have not seen him since his arrest. They, too, denied the accusations against him and blamed an internal power struggle in which they said rival commanders seeking more of the spoils of victory over the Americans and other foreign forces had spread lies about Alam to the Taliban authorities in Kabul.
"The main problem was the competition for power on the military side," said Alam's cousin Mobasher. "Some officials accused him without any evidence. If they have evidence, please show us that the boy was kidnapped by him."
Mobasher also denied that Alam was hoarding heavy weapons and becoming, in effect, a warlord. "He was committed to the nation," he said. "He didn't see the weapons as his personal assets."
Other close friends, though, said that Alam had grown too powerful too quickly and that the Taliban leadership wanted to curb his growing stature and influence in the north.
"It was not acceptable for the central Taliban," said Rahimullah Layeq, who had fought alongside Alam for two decades. "So they arrested him."
When Alam's supporters heard about the arrest the next day, they were enraged. A group passed Abdullah's shop and informed him of a meeting at the city's main mosque. By the time he arrived, hundreds of people had gathered.
Like Abdullah, many viewed the arrest as the latest sign that their community was being marginalized. Many Uzbeks had voted for the Pashtun presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, but afterward, Abdullah said, their governments "forgot us and never served us."
Since August, they had watched nervously as the Taliban appointed only two Uzbeks among its 33 ministers - the deputy prime minister and the agriculture minister. Some Uzbek language news and cultural programs also have vanished from national television, said the professor and Abdullah.
"Successive governments have looked at us and other ethnic minorities as second-class citizens," said Khalid, a senior municipal employee, who spoke on the condition that only his middle name be used because he feared reprisals. "The same story is repeating itself with this government, so people went to the street to seek their rights."
The large protests caught the Taliban off guard. Heavily armed reinforcements were brought in from neighboring provinces. By the next day, Taliban fighters had blocked off streets but agreed to allow the demonstrations. The crowd was much smaller, and many protesters carried weapons. Clashes broke out, leaving two people dead and four injured, according to local officials.
On Jan. 17, the Taliban staged a military parade through the city, showcasing tanks, armored vehicles and hundreds of fighters. It was at once a show of force and a warning to the residents. "They showed their power to the people and everyone understood they would not tolerate any more demonstrations," Khalid said.
Today, an uneasy calm blankets Maimana. Hundreds who joined the protests have fled the province, fearing arrest by the Taliban. Others remain in hiding, said Abdullah, who hid for several days before emerging because he needed to reopen his shop to provide for his family.
Ferdous, the governor, has urged Alam's fighters to remain patient and await the outcome of the investigation in Kabul. On Friday, the Taliban's acting defense minister, Maulvi Muhammad Yaqoob, expressed concern. "Such incidents are creating unrest and divisions within the system," Yaqoob said, in public remarks made during a visit to the north. "No one should be targeted on the basis of his ethnic background. We should come out of this division."
But he also warned that "no one has the right to rise up against the decision" of the Taliban to arrest Alam or to punish him if he is found guilty of crimes.
Nevertheless, if Alam is convicted, or if his position within the Taliban is diminished, many residents are bracing for ethnic tensions to flare again.
"We know these days all the power is with the Pashtun," Abdullah said. "If they continue the same way, the people are ready to sacrifice themselves again for their rights."
- - -
Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - The doctor opens the front door. Never mind introductions. "I know who you are. Do you think these guys would let you get this close to me, if we didn't know who you are?" Across the street is a security agent in Nikes, a badge on his belt. He's not the only one watching.
"I mean, isn't it amazing?" the doctor says. "Here I am, with cameras around my house."
The house is modest for Washington: stucco and brick, cozy and cramped. No obvious tokens of celebrity or esteem. Icicles on the dormant hot tub out back. Bottles of red wine and olive oil on the kitchen counter.
"It's messy because, as you know, in covid times, nobody comes over. So nobody cares."
People are coming by outside, though. They are snapping photos. Thousands of marchers are descending on the capital to rally against vaccine mandates. Are some of them staking out Anthony Fauci's home?
The security agents "usually leave at a certain time," the doctor says. "But tonight they're going to sleep in our guest room."
Year 3 of covid times. Nearly 900,000 Americans are dead. An average of 2,000 (mostly unvaccinated) Americans are dying every day now, even though there is a simple measure to limit such suffering - made possible in large part by the Vaccine Research Center founded under Fauci. And yet many Americans would rather take their chances with a virus than a vaccine, because there's more than just a virus going around. There's something else in the air. Symptoms include rage, delusion, opportunism and extreme behavior - like comparing Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (as Lara Logan did on Fox News in November), or setting out for Washington with an AR-15 and a kill list of "evil" targets that included Fauci (as a California man did last month).
"Surrealistic," the doctor says.
He has not had a day off since the beginning. "I would say I'm in a state of chronic exhaustion." He quickly adds: "But it's not exhaustion that's interfering with my function." He is a precise man whose tour in the information war has made him extra-vigilant about his words. "I can just see, you know, Laura Ingraham: 'He's exhausted! Get rid of him!'"
Fauci has been a doctor and public servant for more than 50 years. He's been the country's top expert on infectious diseases under seven U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush once called him his personal hero. Under George W. Bush, Fauci became an architect of an AIDS-relief program that has, according to the U.S. government, saved 21 million lives around the world.
He knows how a virus works. He knows how Washington works. He thought he knew how people worked, too - even ones who called him a murderer, as AIDS activists did decades ago because they felt left for dead by a neglectful government. Back then the angry people were motivated by truth and science. Fauci had something to learn from them, and they had something to learn from him. The shared mission was pursuing facts and saving lives. Fear and uncertainty could be eased by data and collaboration. Combatants, however scared or passionate, shared a reality.
Now?
"There is no truth," Fauci says, for effect. "There is no fact."
People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020 election was stolen because a former president says so. People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the good of his stock portfolio because it's implied by TV pundits, internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is unnerved by "the almost incomprehensible culture of lies" that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and his family. His office staff, normally focused on communicating science to the public, has been conscripted into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.
"It is very, very upending to live through this," Fauci says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He pauses. "I'm trying to get the right word for it." He is examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two years. "It has shaken me a bit."
The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of truth has seismic consequences.
Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can't slide a whole country into an MRI machine.
"There's no diagnosis for this," Fauci says. "I don't know what is going on."
- - -
A virus is a terrifying force that hijacks civilization. A bureaucracy, intricate yet imperfect, is what we have to take back control. For better and worse, Fauci became the personification of both. He has been sainted and satanized over the past two years, since he first fact-checked President Donald Trump. His inbox is a cascade of hosannas and go-to-hells. His days often start at 5 a.m. His nights are fitful. What more could he have done today? What fresh horror awaits tomorrow? He is fighting for a best-case scenario, urging preparation for the worst, and fretting that nothing will ever be good enough..
"I do worry about him," says Francis Collins, until recently the director of the National Institutes of Health. "He's incredibly frustrated" by the attacks "because it's a distraction. But there is no part of Tony Fauci that's ready to give up on a problem just because it's hard."
"Being two years into this, and being at the tip of the spear - it takes a certain person to be able to persevere through that," says Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "It's almost like asking someone to run a marathon every day of their life."
"He's always had complete bipartisan support, up until covid," says AIDS activist Peter Staley, who once picketed NIH and is now a dear friend of Fauci's. "It's flat-Earth time. Nothing makes sense. This is a guy who tries to let science dictate what he says and does. Now they're turning what is a pristine record into something evil. They lie, and repeat the lie 100 times until people think it's true."
Staley calls Fauci multiple times a week to check in, ask him how he's doing, discuss the covid response and the resistance to it.
"What do I tell him?" Staley says. "What kind of advice do I give him to win that war? It's very frustrating. It's almost unwinnable."
Look at Fauci's Jan. 11 appearance before the Senate Health Committee. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chided Fauci and other officials for spreading "skepticism and mass confusion" with mixed messaging on covid guidelines. A harsh but fair criticism. Then two senators - who each happen to have medical degrees - got personal.
"You are the lead architect for the response from the government, and now 800,000 people have died," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Fauci scolded Paul that such an "irresponsible" statement "kindles the crazies." "I have threats upon my life, harassments of my family," Fauci said, suggesting that the California man targeted him because he "thinks that maybe I'm killing people."
For years, Fauci had joked that his personal philosophy comes from "The Godfather": "It's not personal; it's strictly business." The business is science. Science helped him cure vasculitis. Science helped him and others transform HIV from a death sentence to a condition managed by a pill.
What he was facing now felt like it had nothing to do with science.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., displayed a giant prop paycheck depicting Fauci's $400,000-plus salary. Marshall accused Fauci and "Big Tech" of hiding his financial investments, which created an "appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on."
Fauci, bewildered and incensed, replied that his assets, which he had disclosed for decades, were available to the public. (While this statement was technically true, his disclosures were not just a Google search away; after the hearing, Marshall's office requested and received the documents from NIH, then declared that Fauci "lied" about the ease of their availability.)
When Marshall finished his questioning, Fauci let his frustration get the better of him. "What a moron," he muttered to himself, not intending it for the microphone.
What was going on here? Senators were "trying to troll Fauci, and they're trying to bring him down to their level," says Matthew Sheffield, a former conservative activist who now runs a political commentary website called Flux.community. "They know if they can get him to call people a moron, or engage in pettiness the way that they engage in pettiness constantly - if he does it even once, then it's a victory for them."
Paul disputes this characterization and claims that Fauci deserves "some culpability" for the pandemic because a grant from his agency funded research in a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first detected (the exact origins of the virus remain unknown, though scientific consensus points to an animal-to-human transfer).
Marshall's office did not have comment on Sheffield's theory. After the hearing, the senator's campaign website did start selling $29 T-shirts, featuring the doctor's likeness, to commemorate the moment: "Send Fauci a message by getting your own 'MORON' t-shirt!"
- - -
The way in which the United States funds and manages science provides a solid foundation for skepticism and conspiracy, says University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies science communication and misinformation.
Yes, scientific recommendations change based on available data, a truth that can be exploited to make responsible leaders appear inconsistent or incompetent.
Yes, Fauci has a high salary by government standards, has been in the same unelected position for 38 years and oversees a budget of $6 billion that flows into grants; those are truths on which a distrusting person could build a theory about corruption, unaccountable elites and a nefarious flow of money from this or that institution to this or that lab.
Yes, the virus seems unaccountable to our best efforts and fueled by our worst instincts. Yes, the ways it has ended and upended people's lives has been undeserved, tragic, crazy-making. These are scary truths that you can neutralize with a fantasy about how a single human villain is to blame.
The attacks and misinformation seem to be having an effect. Confidence in Fauci is softening, according to polling conducted since April by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. After holding steady last summer and autumn, the percentage of Americans who are confident that Fauci provides trustworthy information about covid-19 is down six points since April, from 71 to 65%.
"For the first time in my lifetime - and I am an elderly woman - the voice that speaks on behalf of the best available knowledge in science has weathered sustained attack," says Jamieson, director of the policy center. "Confidence (in Fauci) remains high despite that attack, but the erosion is worrisome."
With Trump long gone from the White House and public exhaustion with precautions surging alongside the omicron variant, Fauci may now be more useful to the pundits who need a villain than those who need a hero. "Fauci must go," the editors of the conservative National Review demanded this month. "I'm over covid," talk-show host Bill Maher told Deadline before his show last week. His guest, author Bari Weiss, echoed the frustration of millions: We were told "you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven't gotten back to normal."
"The stalwart Fauci was the wise Oracle of Delphi to then-President Donald Trump's babbling brook about household bleach as an injectable, anti-viral agent," Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this week.
"Maybe it's my imagination," she continued, "but Fauci appears less confident of late, perhaps weary of his own voice and exhausted by two years of on-camera appearances."
Marshall exaggerated this erosion during the Jan. 11 hearing. "You've lost your reputation," he told Fauci, adding: "The American people don't trust the words coming out of your mouth."
"That's a real distortion of the reality," Fauci answered.
Marshall replied with a truth from the world outside of medical science: "Perception is reality."
Fauci is not naive. He gets that a third of the country won't hear him. He still understands Washington enough to see how it is deteriorating in new and disturbing ways, as fringe thinking spreads to the central organs. As Peter Staley puts it: "Because one party has turned so anti-science, Tony's power is no longer stable."
Yet Fauci still thinks he is an effective messenger. And he still hasn't totally given up on the people who are making his life miserable. After the exchange with Marshall, and a news cycle dominated by "moron" instead of "omicron," Fauci told his own incredulous staff: Maybe the senator has a point. Maybe my financial investments, though disclosed and available, should be much easier to see.
As for the citizens who wish him harm, he can't help but search for some signal, some symptom, that could help him understand.
"I'm always looking for the good in people, that kernel of something that's positive," Fauci says. "And it's tough to imagine that that many people are bad people. And, I mean, it's just - has something been smoldering in their lives? Something that's sociologically evasive to me?"
He wonders: Does their resentment indicate an underlying issue that needs - for lack of a better term - healing?
"Maybe it's pain that they're feeling, that's driving it?" he says, as if bedside with a patient. "And we're focusing on the aberrancy of their actions, but we really are not fully appreciating that maybe they're suffering. And they're rebelling against a failing of society, maybe, to address some of their needs. Maybe we need, as a nation, to address the fundamental issues that are getting, you know, tens of millions of people to feel a certain way."
- - -
On Sunday, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands of people rallied against vaccine mandates. Fauci's name was scrawled on many signs. The rhetoric was familiar. "Dr. Fauci is the new Jeff Mengele from World War II," said a Long Island construction worker named Gio Nicolson, who described Fauci as both "puppet" and "dictator." A 57-year-old woman named Robin Field drove three hours from Yorktown, Va., to hold up a homemade sign that depicted Fauci's decapitated head in a noose, under the words "HANG EM HIGH."
Fauci is guilty of treason, according to Field. She's done her own research, she says, and it's clear that his recommendations have both "killed people" and made him money.
The violence of her sign, though - where is that coming from? At a primal level, it seems to convey pain or fear.
"Of co - " Field starts, then stops. "Well ..."
How would she put it?
"I feel so bad that so many people have lost their lives. That hurts, because we all have loved ones that have touched our hearts and passed away."
Almost no one alive has experienced this kind of sudden mass death, this level of widespread illness, this freezing and fracturing of all life. It hurts. For much of the 1980s, every single one of Fauci's AIDS patients died. Ugly deaths that he was powerless to prevent. He had to suppress the pain and bury the emotion to get through each day. When he recalls that era, his eyes water and his throat constricts. His self-diagnosis is a quick aside ("post-traumatic stress") as he bridges the past and the present. In the middle of a cataclysm, it's hard to see the end. But it does end.
"As a society, when we get out of this, you know, we're going to look up and say, 'Oh, my goodness, what we've been through,'" he says. "We've had an outbreak where we've lost close to 900,000 people in the last two years. That's going to have a long-lasting effect."
In the early 1970s, when he was chief resident in a Manhattan hospital, Fauci remembers glancing out over the East River in the middle of the night, "Saying, you know, I'm tired, but I can't stop until at least this patient is stabilized." When he was the main attending physician at NIH during the AIDS crisis, he wouldn't leave the ward until he addressed every patient need. Now he views the entire country as his patient - a patient afflicted by both a virus and an undiagnosed condition that hampers its ability to fight it.
He could spare himself further pain and exhaustion and allow America to see another doctor. He could tag out.
"That's not my character," he says. "I don't do that."
The patient, you see, is not stabilized yet.
Fauci stares out the kitchen window into his small backyard. Right now he sees a crossroads for America. The best-case scenario: increased vaccination, more immunity, antiviral drugs, a virus under control. If we work together. The worst: a new variant, as transmissible as omicron but more deadly, exacerbated by that comorbidity - the deterioration of our minds and politics.
"It's like it's 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm looking out the window at the East River," Fauci says, "and I got a patient who's bleeding, and another patient has a myocardial infarction, and another patient who has septicemia -"
The sense memory prompts a sort of pep talk for the present.
"There's no time to be exhausted, folks. You got a job to do."
Pulitzer-winning opinion from the most respected voices in the world.
EUGENE ROBINSON COLUMN
Advance for release Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, and thereafter
(For Robinson clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)
For Print Use Only.
By Eugene Robinson
WASHINGTON -- Not for the first time, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been unmasked and his true identity revealed: BoJo the Clown.
An official report released Monday confirms that while Britons were locked down under severe covid-19 restrictions, largely confined to their homes and prohibited from holding social gatherings, Johnson and his staff at 10 Downing Street were having alcohol-fueled parties. As far as Johnson is concerned, evidently, rules are for suckers.
"Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify," said the report, compiled by Sue Gray, a senior civil servant. "At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time."
Gray listed 16 events between May 2020 and April 2021. She issued the interim report on Monday, with most specifics and details omitted so as not to interfere with a separate criminal investigation into the gatherings that London's Metropolitan Police is conducting.
The scandal, inevitably called "Partygate," would be deeply embarrassing to Johnson -- if he were less clownish and more capable of embarrassment. "Firstly, I want to say 'sorry,'" he told Parliament shortly after the report was released. But he defiantly resisted calls, including some from within his own Conservative Party, that he resign.
To become prime minister, Johnson stabbed his Conservative predecessor, Theresa May, in the back over Brexit. On the floor of the House of Commons she got to return the favor, telling Johnson that either he "had not read the rules, did not understand what they meant and nor did others around him, or they didn't think the rules applied to No. 10. Which was it?"
Johnson had denied for weeks that any pandemic rules were broken, at one point categorically assuring Parliament that no parties were held at Downing Street on a specific day -- Nov. 13, 2020 -- when Gray's report says two such events were held. One convened in the upstairs apartment where Johnson lives.
Regarding a staff gathering that featured alcohol, Johnson has said he didn't realize it was a party and thought instead that it was a work event. Gray's report notes dryly: "The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time." As for a surprise party to celebrate Johnson's birthday in 2020, one of his allies last week offered the meme-worthy excuse that Johnson was "ambushed with a cake."
Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, demanded that Johnson step down. But of course he won't. As Starmer noted, Johnson is "a man without shame."
Indeed, that is a fair reading of his record. He began his public career as a journalist and was fired by the Times of London for fabricating a quote.
His agenda as a reporter was not to tell readers the truth but to make himself a star, and he did so by playing to the "little England" sympathies of those skeptical of E.U. membership. By the time one of his stories would fall apart under scrutiny -- such as his ridiculous claim about a planned demolition of the E.U. headquarters -- he was already on to the next tall tale.
As mayor of London, he donned the persona of a likable, boosterish buffoon -- the purposefully tousled hair, the ever-ready grin. And when, in Parliament, he saw the opportunity to use the Brexit question as a catapult to power, he seized it. While the beleaguered May was trying her best to negotiate an orderly British departure from the E.U., Johnson made her life miserable and her position, ultimately, untenable.
He got what he wanted -- he became prime minister -- and he delivered on Brexit. The fact that Britons have seen none of the promised benefits has been obscured by his government's erratic performance on quelling the pandemic. Which has now been overtaken by "Partygate."
Johnson has always managed to stay one step ahead of the law. But now the actual law -- in the form of the police -- is after him about the rule-breaking parties. He can keep running from the facts, but there appears to be no place left for him to hide.
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Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.
MICHAEL GERSON COLUMN
Advance for release Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, and thereafter
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By Michael Gerson
WASHINGTON -- There is a mythic version of the judicial selection process in which there is one exceptionally gifted candidate -- the most qualified nominee -- whom a president should choose for the Supreme Court. And nothing else should matter in determining this person other than their professional qualifications and temperament. Any extraneous factors are impurities, pulling an intellectual exercise into the bubbling bog of politics.
Compare this ideal with the recent and effective use of Supreme Court nominations as a political tool. In the summer of 2016, as Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination for president, he faced skepticism from the judicially conservative about his potential Supreme Court picks. So Trump not only released a list of prospective nominees approved by the Heritage Foundation but also said: "We're going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society." He also issued an updated list 55 days before his reelection loss.
Having made a particularly crass political use of Supreme Court selection, Republicans who criticize President Biden's narrowing of his first Supreme Court choice to Black women are about to test the public's tolerance for sanctimonious hypocrisy. In Sen. Roger Wicker's (R-Miss.) attack, the consideration of race is an instance of "affirmative racial discrimination." "Would be nice," tweeted former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, "if Pres Biden chose a Supreme Court nominee who was best qualified without a race/gender litmus test."
But just widen the historical aperture a moment. Over the centuries, U.S. presidents have selected Supreme Court nominees in part because they were Federalists, or Southerners, or from a Jewish background, or Westerners, or African Americans, or women (in the case of Ronald Reagan's first choice), or Hispanic, or Federalist Society-approved. Now, with Black women treated this same way by Biden, some have declared the whole enterprise illegitimate. Everyone gets their day in the sun -- until a group of Americans who, throughout our history, has suffered greatly from injustice and fought it mightily is about to be honored. Suddenly, the welcoming music stops.
The actual judicial nomination process is different. There is no single person most qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. There is, instead, a category of people we regard as having the background and temperament to be excellent justices. And within those boundaries, every president makes political choices. The real question is: Should presidents preface their announcements of nominees with the polite fiction that the search for a nominee had nothing to do with racial, ethnic or ideological background, even when it manifestly did?
Maybe. But this prevarication strikes me as a strange place to make an ethical stand. Rather, we should ask: Is it generally a good thing when the country's highest court becomes more diverse in background? Of course it is. For his vigorous assertion of this point, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., deserves credit. "Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America," the senator said. "You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America."
Few would accuse Biden of considering candidates who are not qualified. Graham is partial to a contender from South Carolina, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs, whom he calls a "fair-minded, highly gifted jurist" and "one of the most decent people I've ever met." U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, California Supreme Court Justice Leondra R. Kruger and others draw similar praise. The whole process is highlighting the Supreme Court-level achievements of Black women. Why should this immediately strike some Republicans as evidence of affirmative action and litmus tests? Isn't that tendency itself an indictment?
Allowing diversity to matter is also allowing history to matter. It matters that the Supreme Court, led from 1836 to 1864 by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney -- who wrote the decision that denied citizenship to all Black Americans -- will eventually have a Black female justice. It matters that the historical legacy of the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which found Black people to have "no rights which the White man was bound to respect," should die, in part, at the hand of a highly respected Black woman. It matters when the ghosts are finally exorcised and the spiritual high places of our democracy are cleansed.
None of this will be evident in the worst of the nomination process, when the culture war is revealed in its full ugliness. But what Biden promises to do in the elevation of a Black woman to the Supreme Court is not the problem.
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Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.
MEGAN MCARDLE COLUMN
Advance for release Tuesday, Feb. 1, and thereafter
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By Megan McArdle
WASHINGTON -- Crashing crypto markets have cost investors hundreds of billions in value, and Facebook is reportedly pulling out of Diem, the cryptocurrency project it launched 2½ years ago. People seem to be pondering the questions I've spent the better part of a decade trying to answer: What is this stuff worth? What is it good for?
I've always fallen on the skeptical side. But I am also mindful of the possibility that I am a blinkered fogey missing the Next Big Thing. And I am starting to think that one of the things I thought was a drawback for cryptocurrencies -- their extraordinary volatility -- might actually be a major selling point.
It's not that I can't think of anything cryptocurrency is good for. If a country is experiencing runaway inflation, bitcoin is probably a good alternative to the local currency (though note that during Venezuela's epic bout of hyperinflation, people mostly dollarized rather than turning to crypto). Cryptocurrencies might also be a better option than jewelry for smuggling wealth out of countries with strict currency controls. And cryptocurrency is absolutely essential to anyone collecting on a ransomware attack.
Yet those uses don't seem as though they're worth trillions, as the cryptocurrency market is currently valued. To justify those kinds of valuations, crypto needs to at least partially replace major currencies such as the dollar, or payment systems such as Visa, or investments such as gold, or some other fairly important economic activity yet to be named. Ideally, that activity would be legal, because, otherwise, there's a high risk that governments will get together and do to cryptocurrencies what they are trying to do to offshore tax havens.
Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies are too volatile to serve for most of those uses. Nobody wants a currency or credit card that might lose a third of its purchasing power in the space of a couple of months. Stablecoins get around that problem by pegging their value to currency such as the dollar or commodities like gold, but why would anyone prefer that over the actual dollars and euros in their bank account?
And because a lot of cryptocurrency investors seemed willing to pay top dollar on the assumption that it would eventually replace cash and credit cards, I have also been skeptical that crypto would make a good long-term investment, another use that's often floated. That leaves me wondering if crypto isn't ultimately some sort of collectible hobby, like Beanie Babies or Hummel figurines.
Still, I remain haunted by the possibility that I'm missing something. A lot of talented people, many of them smarter than me, are working on crypto, eagerly seeking new ways to use it. It's hard to rule out the possibility they'll succeed. Besides, after a decade of doomsaying, the crypto market has resolutely refused to go away. Bitcoin might have lost much of its value over the past couple months, but it's still worth $36,000 apiece, more than 300 times its price when I first expressed skepticism.
On the other hand, the persistence of crypto despite many wild fluctuations and few real-world applications should probably make its boosters ask whether they might be missing something. Markets like gambles, after all. And in particular, they like the kind of gamble that a volatile asset class like bitcoin offers.
It has long been known that intermittent, variable rewards are more motivating than steady ones. (That might be one reason that bitcoin has a higher valuation than stablecoins.) Something about randomness seems to enchant us, commanding our attention even over activities that are potentially much more rewarding overall. If you've ever watched the eerie fixed stare of people playing the slots, or found yourself repeatedly flipping over to Twitter to check out the new outrage of the hour, then you know the seductive, destructive allure of random rewards. This is why games that include a random element, such as cards or video games, tend to be more addictive than backgammon or chess.
Over the past decade, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been a good source of that delicious randomness. There was always a techno-futurist story about why crypto would eventually pay off big. But because all this was sometime in the future, the current price was free to float unmoored from dull reality, gyrating seductively with each passing market wind.
Gambling is a sustainable market niche even if it never pays off. Casinos have been big business for decades even though everyone involved knows that the percentage is always to the house. And there's a lot of money in that business; in the United States alone, casinos reportedly took in $43.6 billion in 2019. So it's possible cryptocurrency has a future even if its purported valuable uses never materialize. Though, of course, individual investors might be better off just taking the money to Vegas, where they can at least enjoy a show and a complimentary beverage before they start pulling the lever on the slot machines.
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Follow Megan McArdle on Twitter, @asymmetricinfo.
ALEXANDRA PETRI COLUMN
Advance for release Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, and thereafter
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By Alexandra Petri
WASHINGTON -- Some things are urgent, such as, for instance, filling a Supreme Court vacancy. Other things are not urgent, such as, for instance, filling a Supreme Court vacancy. Sometimes it is a little hard to know which one it is. It depends on whom you ask -- Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2016, or Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2020.
Now, Justice Stephen Breyer has retired (thanks for reading, Justice Breyer!), and it is time to locate a new jurist who will be willing to sit around for the next several decades writing withering dissents and waiting for her colleagues to die. And being warmly collegial, of course! It sounds depressing when you put it like that, but that is how the Founding Fathers designed it.
We had better proceed at a speed of some sort! Yes, now is either the time to grind to a halt, or to move forward with blazing rapidity from nomination to confirmation in 30 days, a fun process that gets you a new judge and also allows you to break the sound barrier.
On the one hand, it is an election year, which sounds urgent! On the other hand, it is an election year when Republicans might win -- less urgent. Of course, the president presides over a Senate majority that could evaporate at any moment, which sounds urgent! But! That president is a Democrat, so, a wash.
Sure, we have been rushed before. "I felt that the timetable for the last nominee was too compressed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. After all, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in such a short period of time that a Texan who became pregnant at the beginning of the process would still have been allowed to get an abortion under S.B. 8 when it ended, a time frame that has been correctly described as a cartoonishly short and unrealistic window!
"This time," Collins continued, "there is no need for any rush. We can take our time, have hearings, go through the process -- which is a very important one. It is a lifetime appointment, after all." So true! Now is the time to really sit and deliberate. The past two nominees were, only in the strictest and most literal sense, the deciding votes that could overturn Roe v. Wade; this nominee will be the one who has to sit there collegially dissenting after it happens, a role that requires a great deal more scrutiny.
We have hurried into this sort of thing before, and we can see how that turned out. (Please shout "Well!" or "Badly!" after a count of three so that we can see how apolitical a body the court currently is!) Now is no time to be hasty. The time to be hasty was earlier, after the failure of the Merrick Garland nomination to get a hearing but before the nomination of whoever this will be, when we were ramming new justices into forever appointments at astounding speeds and having the time of our lives.
Now, we should take our sweet time. We should get out our big reading glasses and a huge stack of books and proceed with enormous care. No rush! It's fine! Nothing can go wrong. The Senate appears very functional. President Biden is in office, with a wafer-thick zero seats to spare! We have world enough and time at last, and we can finally do all the detailed, lengthy vetting that we have been meaning to do all this time but couldn't, for some reason.
There's no excuse to cut corners now. This time, the FBI might even have the leisure to follow up on the tips it receives.
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Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter, @petridishes.
E.J. DIONNE JR. COLUMN
Advance for release Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, and thereafter
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By E.J. Dionne Jr.
He argued that the "judicial activism" that liberals were regularly accused of was standard operating procedure for the right: "It is now conservative judges who are supplanting the judgment of the people's representatives and substituting their own for that of the Congress and the president."
More than two decades ago, this senator even seemed to anticipate the Supreme Court's overreach this month in misreading -- or not reading -- the Occupational Safety and Health Act to overturn the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for private employers.
"This Supreme Court," he said in 2000, "is seizing the power to make important social decisions that, under our constitutional system of government, are properly made by elected representatives who answer to the people, unlike the court."
"What is at issue here," the senator declared, "is the question of power, who wants it, who has it, and who controls it."
The voice in question is that of Joe Biden. The prescience of the future president in anticipating the dangers an arrogant right-wing Supreme Court majority would pose to democracy explains why the coming debate over a successor to Justice Stephen Breyer is so important.
A new justice will not dent the court's majority of Republican-appointed justices. But the coming weeks will provide an exceptional opportunity to underscore the imperative of fighting back against ideologues in robes. They are ready to do further damage to voting rights and to eviscerate the government's ability to protect Americans through economic, labor, environmental and health regulations.
Their eagerness to rip up precedents -- the next sally, it would appear, will be on affirmative action -- speaks to a flight from one of conservatism's most valuable virtues: prudence.
The fact that the new justice will be replacing Breyer makes an offensive against a power-hungry judiciary particularly appropriate.
The retiring justice was one of the most forceful advocates of a jurisprudence that put a premium on respecting the democratically elected branches of government. His alternative to the theory of "originalism" that conservatives use to rationalize their backward-looking rulings was a concept Breyer called "active liberty."
Breyer argued that a focus on "the Framers' original expectations narrowly conceived" missed their basic intention: "to create a framework for democratic government -- a government that, while protecting basic individual liberties, permits citizens to govern themselves, and to govern themselves effectively."
This explains why Breyer dissented so passionately in the vaccine case.
"Underlying everything else in this dispute is a single, simple question: Who decides how much protection, and of what kind, American workers need from COVID-19?" Breyer wrote. "An agency with expertise in workplace health and safety, acting as Congress and the President authorized? Or a court, lacking any knowledge of how to safeguard workplaces, and insulated from responsibility for any damage it causes?"
Sounds an awful lot like the Joe Biden of 2000, doesn't it?
It's certainly true that the battle for a new justice provides short-term political advantages for Biden. His party has been broadly united on his picks for the judiciary up to now, so he has a good chance of a major victory after setbacks on voting rights and his social program.
And in keeping his promise to name a Black woman to the court, Biden will rally core supporters even as Republicans embarrass themselves by criticizing Biden for identifying the race and gender of his future pick.
Ronald Reagan, after all, kept his pledge to name a woman to the Supreme Court. The single difference between Reagan's promise and Biden's is pretty obvious, isn't it? It's not a good look for the GOP, especially because the jurists on Biden's shortlist have enormously impressive records. Don't the Republicans have enough problems around race already?
In the meantime, the Republicans' stale rhetoric can only bring home the point Biden made years ago. Typical was Thursday's statement from Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He warned Biden against "catering to the far-left by selecting a nominee who will legislate from the bench and push their preferred liberal policy objectives."
Sorry, Senator. The folks "legislating from the bench" in the name of their preferred policy objectives are members of the current conservative majority.
Whether it's Justice Samuel Alito's wholesale rewrite of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last year ("No matter what Congress wanted, the majority has other ideas," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her brilliant dissent), the court's destruction of decades of precedent on campaign finance law, or its ignoring the plain text of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the judicial right's message is consistent: We should run the country.
Senator Biden was right then to call out conservative judges for dealing "telling blows to our ability to address significant national problems." Maybe now, the nation will listen.
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E.J. Dionne is on Twitter: @EJDionne.
KATHLEEN PARKER COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, Jan. 29, 2022, and thereafter
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By Kathleen Parker
WASHINGTON -- Every now and then an individual or occasion comes along to remind us of the many reasons to love this country. Jason Rivera was one of those individuals and his funeral Friday was one of those occasions.
Rivera, of course, was one of the New York City police officers fatally shot on Jan. 21 while responding to a domestic disturbance call. Rivera, just 22, died that same day; his partner, Wilbert Mora, 27, died four days later after five people received his donated organs.
Although dozens of stories have been aired and written since the shooting, Friday's service provided a more-complete understanding of Rivera and his legacy. At the same time, we were offered a lesson in what has always been our nation's strongest suit -- the essential goodness that undergirds our aspirations and the willingness of so many to offer their lives in service to others.
We learned from his older brother Jeffrey that Jason had wanted to be a cop his whole life. Growing up, he would never miss a police show on TV and would lie on the couch wearing headphones, tuned to the police radio frequency. "He was afraid of dogs," Jeffrey recalled, "but he wasn't afraid to die."
We heard from Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell that Rivera recently sold his car and had begun taking the bus to work "so he could save every penny to make a better home." Turning toward Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Sewell said, "I'm a work in process, Cardinal. But if he (Rivera) can change the world, then we can change the world with him and for him."
This was the essential message of each speaker. Like countless Americans whose names we'll never know, Rivera loved his family, worked hard and strove to improve the world around him. "Salt-of-the-earth" is what we used to call such people. Specifically, Rivera wanted to help end the chaos and spiking gun violence in his city -- with homicides at their highest level in a decade.
Not that further evidence is needed, but a text exchange the morning of the funeral with my Manhattan niece was certainly on point. I was expressing concern about the coming weekend's winter-weather "bomb cyclone," to which she responded: "More concerned with being stabbed in nyc."
New York Mayor Eric Adams, who spent 22 years as a police officer, described the funeral as a "biblical moment" for the city. It certainly felt that way from my perch in South Carolina, and doubtless everywhere else that people watched and listened. There was even a hint of Old Testament when Rivera's bereft bride segued from the heart-wrenching story of their argument the last time she saw her husband to a starkly dispassionate indictment of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's new go-easy-on-criminals policy.
If I heard correctly, she issued a call to arms.
Directing her words to her dead husband, she said, "I want you to live through me. This system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he's watching you speak through me now. I'm sure all of our blue family is tired too. But I promise, we promise, that your death won't be in vain. We'll take the watch from here."
A deafening standing ovation carried her back to her seat.
At Mora's service slated for next week, we will hear similar tributes. But several things stood out to me during this one. Foremost, the great humanity expressed was balm at a time when cops are under fire and the absurd "defund the police" movement continues to have supporters. While understanding the origins of that movement -- the pivotal murder of George Floyd by a police officer most infamously among them -- shifting funds away from law enforcement to achieve other worthy social goals comes at a great cost.
Next, immigrants are our greatest resource. People such as officers Rivera and Mora, who willingly sacrifice for the privilege of opportunity, were both first-generation sons of immigrants. We need more, not fewer, like them.
Finally, the bond of our men and women in blue is the same we have shared and rallied to support in bad times (and sometimes good). The risk we take in shredding that bond through our politics, and in our dehumanizing incivility toward one another, might be greater than our Republic can bear.
Without the rule of law -- and respect for those commissioned to enforce it -- democracy doesn't stand a chance. Rivera and Mora were too young to perish, but their brave example is their legacy. They did not die in vain.
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Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
