(TOKYO) — Novak Djokovic could be on his way to making men’s tennis history with this year’s Olympic Games.
Every year, tennis players have the opportunity to achieve a Grand Slam by winning all four majors: the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.
But every four years — or, well, five years, in this case — they have the opportunity to achieve a “Golden Slam.” That means winning all four majors and the Olympics.
It’s only ever been achieved once, by Steffi Graf in 1988. No man has ever completed a Golden Slam.
Djokovic, at the very least, is close to it. So far this year, he has won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. The U.S. Open takes place at the end of summer.
A Grand Slam is rare enough. No men’s tennis player has done it in a calendar year since Rod Laver in 1969 — though Djokovic did hold all four titles simultaneously from 2015 to 2016.
After debating whether he would attend the game due to COVID-19 restrictions, the world No. 1 confirmed on July 15, “I booked my flight for Tokyo and will proudly be joining #TeamSerbia for the Olympics.”
Despite that — and despite the Serbian athlete’s general dominance over the last two years — it won’t exactly be a walk in the park as Djokovic’s competition will include Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, Germany’s Alexander Zverev and Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, representing the Russian Olympic Committee, among others.
Djokovic has made no secret of his ambitions, recently telling Montenegro’s MINA news agency, according to USOpen.org, “I am inspired to play my best tennis and confident that I can win the gold medal after a tremendous run so far this season.”
While he acknowledged the Olympics and U.S. Open would be “demanding,” he added, “But I am full of confidence and motivated to represent Serbia in the best possible way. I am yearning for a medal in Tokyo, hopefully gold, and then I’ll go to New York aiming to complete it all.”
(NEW YORK) — Some of the best colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing backlash over the extent of their commitment to classroom diversity.
Several high-profile Black academics have been denied tenure at esteemed higher-learning institutions, sparking a new debate about racism and privilege in academia. This comes as data has shown that as student demographics changed to have more people of color, while the racial makeup of professors and instructors remains the same at these institutions: predominately white.
After decades of teaching at schools including Yale and Princeton, activist and scholar Dr. Cornel West’s name made headlines this year in a very public conflict with Harvard Divinity School. West resigned from his position at the school in June.
In his resignation letter, he attributed his decision to “spiritual rot” after he was denied tenure.
“I’ve been a Black man in America for over 60-something years. … I know what’s going on. It has nothing to do with academics,” West said in his letter.
West has said he believes race was a factor in his not getting tenure. He had previously held tenure during his last stint at Harvard and has also held a tenured position at Princeton University. He said his teaching has been significantly limited by Havard’s failure to grant him that protection.
Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, spoke with ABC News about tenure standards and policies for higher education.
“[Tenure] provides job security, but it’s really about academic freedom,” Mulvey said. “[With tenure], you’re not worried about your job security for teaching the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, or because somebody doesn’t like what you’re researching.”
Harvard administrators offered West a five-year contract with consideration of a future tenure bid following public outcry from student protestors, but West declined.
“Harvard offered me more money. It offered me a big chair … and I said it’s not about that. You can’t even undergo a tenure process. You can’t negotiate respect in that regard,” West said in an interview with ABC News’ Deborah Roberts.
The Harvard Divinity School issued a statement thanking West for his “enormous contribution to … issues of racial justice” adding: “We had hoped to retain him on our faculty for many years to come.”
During the three-month dispute over West’s tenure debate with Harvard, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones publicly announced her withdrawal from tenure negotiations with her alma mater, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
UNC recruited her to be the Knight Chair in race and investigative journalism, a position which is endowed at schools by the Knight Foundation to lead journalism in the digital age.
However, the board of trustees at the school initially refused to vote on her tenure. It would have made her the first person to hold the position without tenure in the Knight Chair’s history at the school.
“I think it showed that there was not a respect for what Black faculty go through on campus,” she told ABC News in a recent interview. “If they were able to do this to me — I work at the New York Times. I have a huge megaphone, I have a huge platform — what do they think they could get away with when it came to lesser-known scholars?”
Though the school’s board of trustees did eventually vote in her favor for tenure, she declined the offer, instead announcing her decision to accept the first Knight Chair position at Howard University, a historically Black college.
UNC said it is “disappointed” that Hannah-Jones won’t be joining the faculty” and that the school is working “toward a more inclusive and equitable campus,” in a statement released on July 6.
ABC News’ data team analyzed U.S. Department of Education reports on more than 4,000 schools and found that there has been a dramatic change in the demographic makeup of students, while instructors’ demographics remained stagnant.
Overall, they found the student population on the nation’s college campuses have become majority non-white, while faculty has remained about 70% white.
“Nikole Hannah-Jones’ situation is particularly egregious because what you can see is a Black woman not getting what was given automatically to everyone that came before her,” Mulvey said.
Research shows non-white professors are less likely to receive tenure. Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows professors of color make up 30% of the overall faculty, but only 10% of tenured professors are people of color. Of that 10%, 3.7% are Black and 4.8% are Hispanic/Latino.
Overall about 41% of all faculty are tenured, but among Black and Hispanic faculty, the percentage of those who are tenured is lower.
Hannah-Jones will join faculty members at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University, alongside author and Howard alumnus Ta-Nehisi Coates.
West says there are “barriers” that non-white professors face on the path to tenure.
He noted the “invisible” responsibilities that professors of color take on that typically fall outside of their job description on paper. In large part, he said, this stems from their relationship with students of color. These professors fulfill the role of a mentor and encourage professional development.
“When you have students coming in who are hungry and thirsty for a quest for truth and they themselves feel disrespected, many Black professors feel that we want to spend some time with them. Some of us spend a lot of time with them to empower them. Why? Because we had Black professors who empowered us. So that takes extra time. It takes extra effort. It takes extra energy,” West said.
According to Mulvey, the glass ceiling for nonwhite professors in higher education is nothing new.
“Higher education is not immune to systemic and institutional racism,” Mulvey said. “Faculty of color will talk to you about the Black tax, which is well-known in that faculty of color are always asked to serve on diversity, inclusion and equity task forces. And as a result, when a faculty of color comes up for tenure, they may have found they didn’t have the same amount of time for research as their white colleagues.”
The racial disparities within higher education reach beyond the realm of faculty, influencing students’ experiences in the classroom.
ABC News’ data analysis has found that non-white students at universities with more diverse faculty have higher graduation rates.
It’s a correlation not lost on Georgetown University senior Yaritza Aguilar. She is the first in her family to go to college and says professors of color have been crucial throughout her education.
“When I have a Latino professor, I feel more confident. Latin professors have been in my shoes, being the first to kind of lift your family out of a difficult situation and there’s a lot of trauma that comes with that,” said Aguilar.
ABC News’ data team found racial disparity is present across schools, which can cause students to feel isolated and discouraged to continue their education, affecting graduation and retention rates.
“For a student to come on a campus and not see anyone else that looks like them, the message is you’re an outsider. If they see faculty that looks like them, the message they get is that, I can succeed here, I can succeed in this field,” Aguilar said.
Early last year, Aguilar was involved with a group of student volunteers who pushed an initiative to help the school hire two more Latino professors in the history and American studies department. She is also starting a petition to help create a Latino studies minor.
“After the murder of George Floyd, I think Georgetown has been more responsive and critical of the way they’ve dealt with diversity. They created a racial justice initiative and hired another professor of color. But we want that rhetoric to be turned into action,” Aguilar said.
Though progress has been made among universities and colleges, many academics say there is still more to be done for faculty and students.
“Racism is still operating in these institutions,” West said. “The racism is still at work at each and every one of these institutions. Yet there’s decent people of all colors willing to fight against it. That’s the good news. That’s the good news.”
(TOKYO) — The first gold medal of the 2020 Olympics was officially won Saturday in Japan
China’s Qian Yang earned gold in the women’s 10-meter air rifle to take home the long-awaited first medal. The 21-year-old is a rising star in the sport.
She defeated Russian Anastasiia Galashina — competing under the Russian Olympic Committee moniker — in the final. Nina Christen took the bronze for Switzerland.
The first medal events took place Saturday in Tokyo, with opportunities to win in archery, men’s cycling, fencing, judo, shooting, taekwondo and women’s weightlifting.
Although the opening ceremony just took place Friday, competition has been underway for several days, including in soccer, softball, baseball and shooting. Competition will continue through Aug. 8, when the closing ceremony will be held.
The United States won the most medals during the last Summer Olympics in 2016, coming home with 121, 46 of which were gold. China and Great Britain followed shortly after the U.S., taking home 70 and 67 medals, respectively.
Shooting takes place in several disciplines, based on different distances from targets. In the 10-meter air rifle, athletes have 75 minutes to fire 60 shots at a target. Ginny Thrasher of the U.S. won gold in 2016. Thrasher did not qualify for the 2020 Games, though American Mary Tucker finished in sixth.
The men’s 10-meter air pistol competition will be taking place later in the day.
While this is the first gold medal of the Tokyo Games, there are other notable first medals coming up. The first medals ever will be awarded over the next two weeks in skateboarding, karate, surfboarding and sport climbing, four sports that are making their Olympic debut this year.
Meanwhile, American greats like gymnast Simone Biles and sprinter Allyson Felix are competing to make medal history as individuals in their sports, and Serbian tennis icon Novak Djokovic is going for gold on his hunt for an elusive Golden Slam.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Friday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL:
INTERLEAGUE
Final N.Y. Mets 3 Toronto 0
Final Baltimore 6 Washington 1
Final Milwaukee 7 Chicago White Sox 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Final Tampa Bay 10 Cleveland 5
Final Boston 6 N.Y. Yankees 2
Final Kansas City 5 Detroit 3
Final Minnesota 5 L.A. Angels 4
Final Houston 7 Texas 3
Final Seattle 4 Oakland 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Final Chicago Cubs 8 Arizona 3
Final Philadelphia 5 Atlanta 1
Final San Diego 5 Miami 2
Final Cincinnati 6 St. Louis 5
Final Pittsburgh 6 San Francisco 4
Final Colorado 9 L.A. Dodgers 6
(TOKYO) — It was one of the most lopsided losses in Olympic basketball history: Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Team USA thrashed the Nigerian men’s basketball team by 83 points in London in 2012, with a final score of 156-73.
“I remember that game,” said 21-year-old Precious Achiuwa, who was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States in eighth grade. “It wasn’t good.”
Fast forward nine years, and Achiuwa, now a forward for the Miami Heat and Nigeria’s national team, helped pull off a surprising upset against Team USA, 90-87, in an Olympic exhibition game two weeks ago — playing highlight-reel defense against American superstar Kevin Durant.
It was the first time an African team has ever defeated Team USA. It was a coming-out party of sorts for the Nigerian team, called D’Tigers, who are hunting for Africa’s first basketball medal in the upcoming Olympics.
“Hopefully it brings a lot of attention to us from younger athletes that are Nigerian, that may be interested in being a part of Nigerian basketball now,” said Gabe Nnamdi Vincent, a Nigerian American guard who, like Achiuwa, plays for the NBA’s Heat and the Nigerian national team.
Stephen Bardo, a former NBA player and college basketball analyst who has run basketball clinics across Africa, told ABC News he wasn’t surprised by Nigeria’s victory.
“Over half that team has NCAA or NBA experience,” he said. Eight players on the team’s 12-man Olympic roster are currently playing in the NBA.
The team also has a top-flight coach in Mike Brown — a former NBA coach of the year who helmed teams with some of the world’s top stars, including LeBron James and Bryant.
“I’ve been a head coach in the NBA Finals. I’ve been an assistant coach in multiple finals with multiple different teams. And I’ve won a couple,” he told ABC News. “Being a coach in the Olympics, I’ve never done that. So why not experience that now?”
While he doesn’t have any personal ties to Nigeria, Brown sees the role as an opportunity to build something bigger than a strong national team — and is working for the Nigerian Basketball Federation without pay.
“I got 10 toes in. I got both arms in. I got my big ole head in, every part of my body is in — to uplift Nigeria as a country through the game of basketball,” he said.
With a team of stars, the USA men’s team is still the favorite for the gold medal in Japan. But after dropping consecutive exhibition games to Nigeria and a powerhouse Australian team, the Americans are entering their first game in their shakiest position since 2004, when a team of NBA stars struggled to play together and wound up with the bronze medal at the Athens Olympics.
Brown said “the rest of the world is catching up” to Team USA.
That shrinking skills gap has been on full display this summer, as Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks superstar born in Greece to Nigerian parents, led his team to victory in the NBA Finals, through the playoffs filled with teams anchored by stars from Cameroon, Slovenia, Serbia, France and the Bahamas.
“We all fought so hard to make sure that we opened the door for the next generation to come and compete in this game,” said Dikembe Mutombo, the Congolese American Hall of Fame basketball player-turned-philanthropist.
He was one of three African-born players in the NBA when he was drafted in 1991. Last year, the NBA season began with 107 international players from 41 countries — including 14 from Africa.
Now, he’s excited to watch the Nigerian team perform in Tokyo, and said they have a good shot at ending up on that medal stand.
“This will be a great celebration for everyone on the continent of Africa. We can say that we did it — not just Nigeria,” he said. “They are representing a big flag, not just the green flag of Nigeria.”
Ekpe Udoh, a veteran on Team Nigeria who played in the NBA for eight years, expressed optimism for the future of the national team.
“The core of our team [is] pretty young,” he told ABC News. “So if we can start now and continue to build a culture, I know we’ll be successful for years to come.”
“I don’t think there’s any one or two countries that would dominate something like the Olympics forever,” Vincent told ABC News. “I think it’s only a matter of time that Africa itself will step up.”
The Stray Cats‘ Brian Setzer has released a second advance track from his forthcoming solo studio album Gotta Have the Rumble, a revved-up surf-rock-influenced tune called “Smash Up On Highway One.”
The song is available now as a digital download and via streaming services, while a music video for the tune has premiered at Setzer’s official YouTube channel.
The clip offers up a montage of black-and-white video segments featuring such evocative images as a belly dancer, a burning cigarette, a burning $100 bill, a slithering snake, an animal’s skeleton, a hissing cat, a snarling dog, a solar eclipse, piano keys lit aflame, an iguana, a spider in its web, a tornado, a graveyard and a burning car out in a desert.
Setzer says he got the idea for “Smash Up On Highway One” after he and The Stray Cats played surf-rock legend Dick Dale‘s classic instrumental “Misirlou” with Dale himself.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to write something as cool as that riff.’ So I came up with something out of left field,” he explains. “I don’t know what you would call it — Middle Eastern or Eastern-European…I had that riff laying around. I guess you could say I’m always collecting cool guitar parts. [Frequent collaborator] Mike Himelstein sent me those lyrics and they just fit right in. I think it’s really cool.”
As previously reported, Gotta Have the Rumble will be released on August 27 on CD and digitally, while a vinyl version will arrive in the fall.
The new collection, which you can pre-order now, features 11 original tunes written or co-written by Setzer. Brian previously released the album’s first song, “Checkered Flag,” as an advance track.
(WASHINGTON) — COVID-19 vaccinations rose 14% over the past week, White House officials said Friday, as the more contagious delta variant is quickly spreading in under-vaccinated areas.
“In the past 7 days 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%),” Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 data director, said on Twitter Friday.
“The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US,” he added. “Get vaccinated!”
Friday just in: +600K doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, incl. 363K newly vaccinated. In the past 7 days, 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%). The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US. Get vaccinated!
The delta variant now makes up over 80% of cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, up from 50% at the beginning of July.
It’s unclear at the moment whether the increase in vaccinations is a blip or a trend. An ABC News analysis of CDC data shows that, as of Thursday, the number of COVID-19 vaccinations had plateaued at about 530,000 total shots administered per day. Over the last week, on average, 297,202 people initiated vaccination per day — 9.6% higher than the previous seven days.
On average, 236,791 adults initiated vaccination each day in the last seven days — 7.4% higher than the previous seven days, the analysis found. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, that number rose nearly 20%.
The five states that currently have the highest COVID-19 case rates are seeing their vaccination numbers increase, according to the White House. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are seeing a higher rate of people getting their first shots compared to the national average, Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on COVID-19, told reporters Thursday.
“This is a very positive trend,” he added.
Visits to the website vaccines.gov from users in Alabama — the least-vaccinated state — have gone up three times in the last two weeks, according to epidemiologist and ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein. Meanwhile, people in Louisiana and Missouri have doubled visits to the site, he found, suggesting people there are seeking information on where to get a shot.
On Friday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called on people to get vaccinated, as the daily average of new COVID-19 cases has tripled over the last two weeks in the state.
“Let’s get it done, and we know what it takes to get it done — get a shot in your arm,” she said during a press briefing. “I’ve done it, it’s safe, it’s effective, data proves that it works, it doesn’t cost anything, it saves lives.”
Just under 34% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey said. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that let us down.”
Louisiana’s health department issued new COVID-19 guidance Friday, recommending mask-wearing indoors regardless of vaccination status “in light of Louisiana’s troubling COVID-19 trends in cases and hospitalizations,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Twitter.
“Louisiana is undeniably in a fourth surge of COVID,” the governor said during a press briefing Friday afternoon, as the state reported 3,127 new cases. The state’s average daily cases per 100,000 residents has increased 208% over the past 14 days.
“Louisiana now has the highest growth rate in cases per capita in the United States of America. I want to let that sink in,” Bel Edwards said, attributing that to widespread transmission of the delta variant and the “very low percentage of people who have been vaccinated.”
About 48% of residents ages 12 and up have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the governor.
“That number is far below where we need to be to have the protection that we need in order to slow the spread and move toward ending the pandemic,” he said.
One encouraging sign, and one the governor noted he hopes continues, is that vaccinations have been on the rise over the past two weeks, state officials said, going from an average of 2,000 vaccine initiations per day to about 5,000 per day.
“This surge is on us,” Bel Edwards said. “How bad it gets, how long it stays bad, how many people ultimately die — on us.”
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
(CLEVELAND) — Following decades of backlash from the Native American community, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team announced that the franchise will change its name from the Indians to the Guardians.
The team initially announced its intention to change its name in December 2020, but the new name was shared on the team’s official Twitter account Friday morning in a video narrated by actor Tom Hanks, a longtime fan.
The new name is a nod to the Guardians of Traffic, the city’s iconic statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge and is set to take effect at the end of the 2020 season.
The final decision was a product of interviews with fans, community leaders, a survey of 40,000 fans and team brainstorming sessions, which generated 1,198 name options that were winnowed down through 14 rounds of vetting, according to a Friday MLB press release.
“While inspired by the iconic sculptures of the Hope Memorial Bridge, our Guardians name is a reflection of the traits we, as Clevelanders, take pride in the most—fierce loyalty, unwavering support, and a resolve to stand side by side through thick and thin,” the franchise says on its website. “As a team, as an organization, as citizens of Cleveland, we hope to protect and preserve all that we love about this city.”
For the Native American community, including advocates in Ohio who have been urging the franchise to drop the Native American moniker for decades, the name change is welcomed but long overdue.
“We are excited. This has been a long half century of adjuration towards this name change. It is coming not a moment too soon,” Sundance, director of the Cleveland branch of the American Indian Movement, told ABC News in a phone interview on Friday, but urged the franchise to continue to engage in dialogue with the Native American community.
Sundance is a member of the Muscogee tribe who led a successful effort to change the mascot of a high school from the Oberlin Indians to the Oberlin Phoenix.
The organization he leads has been urging national and local teams with indigenous names and mascots to change their names for more than 50 years through lawsuits, protests and public appeals, arguing that making Native Americans mascots further dehumanizes a community that has been oppressed for centuries.
“For the moment we’re just all floating on the good news that the name is changed, but I hope this does not mean that Cleveland baseball has ceased to dialogue,” he said. “I am hoping that this will be an avenue for them to meet the Native community in northeast Ohio on an even playing field,” he added.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the country’s oldest and largest American Indian and Alaska Native tribal government organization, applauded Cleveland baseball’s name change in a statement on Friday.
“The Cleveland baseball team has taken another important step forward in healing the harms its former mascot caused Native people, in particular Native youth,” NCAI President Fawn Sharp said. “We call on the other professional sports teams and thousands of schools across the country that still cling to their antiquated Native ‘themed’ mascots to immediately follow suit.”
Before deciding to change their name the Cleveland team stopped using the Chief Wahoo logo on their uniforms in 2019.
“Hearing firsthand the stories and experiences of Native American people, we gained a deep understanding of how tribal communities feel about the team name and the detrimental effects it has on them,” team owner and chairman Paul Dolan said in a statement in December 2020.
He also said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time that the police killing of George Floyd was an “awakening or epiphany” that contributed to the team’s decision.
Amid nationwide protests and an energized civil rights movement sparked by the killing of Floyd, Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, announced in July 2020 that the team would change its name to the Washington Football Team, after FedEx, which has naming rights to the stadium, requested a change.
According to an October 2020 FiveThirtyEight analysis, hundreds of schools across the country still use Native Americans as their team mascots — monikers widely seen as racist and dehumanizing to the Native American community.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Senate committee has approved legislation that would, if enacted, require young women to register for Selective Service alongside men, and in the rare event of a war or other national emergency, be drafted for the first time in the nation’s history.
During the Vietnam War — between 1964 and 1973 — nearly 2 million men were drafted in the U.S., according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Just afterward, in 1973, facing a tide of opposition to the controversial draft, President Richard Nixon officially ended military conscription, and the U.S. established an all-volunteer force.
But even though the draft is no more, most young men, including immigrants, are required to register with the Military Selective Service in case conscription becomes necessary once again. Federal law requires registration when a man turns 18 years of age, and immigrants are required to register within 30 days of arriving in the country.
The new legislation, authored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., would remove any reference to “male” in current law, leaving women on an equal playing field.
But not everyone is on board.
Committee member Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced his opposition to the measure, tweeting Friday, “American women have heroically served in and alongside our fighting forces since our nation’s founding – It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives. Missourians feel strongly that compelling women to fight our wars is wrong and so do I.”
Women have been serving at all levels of the military since 2013 when the Pentagon opened up front-line, ground combat positions to them, and supporters of the Reed legislation say it’s high time that women sign up, particularly since the service has changed dramatically since the Vietnam era.
“This isn’t our grandfather’s military,” a Senate aide close to the matter told ABC News in an interview, noting that should a draft be instituted, the greater need nowadays would be for more educated conscripts in the specialty branches, like those with an expertise in cyber, technology and STEM, as well as doctors and lawyers.
“So, while a draft is highly unlikely in many of our lifetimes, none of that raises the same arguments about physicality — all of the things that were used to argue for a male-only draft,” the aide said. “It’s a different world.”
When asked if President Joe Biden supports the change, a White House aide pointed to a September 2020 Military Officers Association of America candidate forum in which then-candidate Biden said, “The United States does not need a larger military, and we don’t need a draft at this time…I would, however, ensure that women are also eligible to register for the Selective Service System so that men and women are treated equally in the event of future conflicts.”
In a Supreme Court case earlier this year, the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of an all-male draft legislation, but the acting solicitor general pointed to likely action from Congress in arguing that the high court hold off making a judgement, which it eventually acceded to.
The Reed legislation is part of a massive defense policy measure known as the National Defense Authorization Act, a highly popular piece of legislation giving raises to U.S. troops, funding many new military systems, weapons upgrades and more. It is considered must-pass legislation, and it is expected that the new selective service requirement for women will remain in place, according to the aide.
The Senate nearly passed the legislation back in 2017, but instead a national commission was created to study the issue, along with a wider mandate to look at national public service in general.
That National Commission on Military, National, & Public Service last year came out in favor of the Reed position, and the senator took his current legislation directly from the commission findings.
“In reviewing the question of whether Selective Service registration should include women, the Commission seriously considered a wide range of deeply felt moral, legal, and practical arguments and explored the available empirical evidence,” the panel’s report read.
“The Commission concluded that the time is right to extend Selective Service System registration to include men and women, between the ages of 18 and 26. This is a necessary and fair step, making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency,” the report concluded.
Taken together, the Senate aide said, the sentiment was, “If we’re going to have a draft – a selective service system – then women have to be involved.”
“The recognition is that we’re probably not going to have a military draft, but if we do, then we recognize that you can’t fight with one hand tied behind your back,” the aide added.
Plus, the aide noted, back in 2016 when the initial idea was being seriously considered, all four service chiefs testified in favor of adding women.
Congress for years has shot down the idea of mandatory registration for women, but times are changing. The NDAA — with the requirement in it — passed the Senate Armed Services Committee 23-2 this week.
If the legislation survives, the measure would go into effect one year after enactment of the new law.
Robert A. Reeder/The The Washington Post via Getty Images
(CAMBRIDGE, Md.) — While extreme heat waves, wildfires and devastating flooding bring attention to the impacts of climate change, some parts of the country are fighting more pernicious effects that threaten both protected ecosystems and important landmarks of American history.
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is a wetland in the outer banks of Maryland established in 1933 as a protected area for bald eagles, osprey and several species of migratory birds. The government officials working to protect it say they can see the impacts of climate change in the refuge every day. As the ocean continues to warm and sea levels rise, the water is turning marshes into lakes and allowing invasive species to take over the ecosystem.
But the pressure to protect Blackwater is about more than just the plants and animals that live there. It also has deep roots in American history. Harriet Tubman is connected to multiple sites in the area, including the town where she was born, the general store where she was hit in the head after refusing to stop an enslaved boy from escaping and multiple locations she used when leading slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
“These are the very forests. If Harriet Tubman were here today, none of this landscape would have looked different to her at all,” said Deanna Mitchell, the superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Historical Park.
Those forests are now also feeling the impact of climate change. The trees can’t survive the saltwater intruding on the marsh, and more and more forests are dying, turning into what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Matt Whitbeck calls “ghost forests.”
“For many people, many visitors, if they come to the refuge, they go around our wildlife drive and they look to the south and they see this big body of open water. And it’s beautiful. You know, we have pelicans out there, we get tundra swans out there in the winter, the sunsets, and it’s just lovely,” he said.
“But once you understand the factors that cause this big expanse of open water, it’s a little alarming. So when the refuge was established in 1933, that was all the vast expanse of tidal marsh. So we had black rails, we had nesting black ducks. We had all of this habitat that has since been lost to open water.”
Whitbeck said 5,000 acres of tidal marsh at Blackwater have been converted into open water since the refuge was created, and encroaching saltwater has killed acres of forests and made irreversible changes for native species. The Fish and Wildlife Service expects sea levels around Blackwater will be 3.4 feet higher in 2100 than they are now, meaning most of the marshlands visible now will all be underwater.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has worked to restore marsh areas and is researching ways to manage the ecosystem, but Whitbeck said they won’t be able to stop all of the changes they’re seeing in the marsh as sea levels continue to rise and the saltwater makes it harder for native species to survive.
Just in the last year, a team of archeologists from the Maryland Department of Transportation announced they discovered the site of a cabin belonging to Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, where Tubman lived as a child and worked with him as an adult.
The agency recently purchased the 2,600-acre property where they found the site, because they were concerned it could be completely flooded before they were able to find and preserve what remained of the property.
“Sea level rise was already beginning to take away that particular site and that history. So if we had waited, if we hadn’t been able to begin this, even a couple of years, we might never have found it. So we found it just in time in a surprise area, in an area that was definitely being impacted by sea level rise,” said Marcia Pradines, the head of restoration efforts for wildlife refuges around the Chesapeake Bay.
Pradines and other federal officials are charged with making difficult decisions about how to prioritize the fight against climate change in protected wildlife refuges, including sometimes accepting that not every impact of climate change can be stopped or that they have to adapt their approach to determine what parts of the ecosystem will be able to survive. The federal government has adopted new guidance called Resist, Accept, Direct, acknowledging that they can no longer protect the country’s natural resources from every impact of climate change.
“I am very confident that at the end of my lifetime, Dorchester County will continue to be one of the largest expanses of tidal marsh in the Chesapeake Bay,” Whitbeck said.
“The trick is what kind of marsh will it be, and what plants and animals will live in that marsh? And that’s what we’re still sorting out.”
While federal and state officials work to balance the current impacts of climate change with the parts of Blackwater they can protect, they say they are focused on preserving the history for generations to come.
“The reality is we are dealing with climate change, and we are seeing the impacts of sea level rise to some degree,” Mitchell said.
“So I would say probably by the end of the century, things will start to change in here, you know, pretty much. But while we can do it and while we have the ability, we need to try and do as much as we can to protect what we can for as long as we can.”
