NEW: Colombian child-welfare officials told the country's highest court they couldn't find the boy's family.
It took Washington Post reporters less than a week.
Our investigation into the Venezuelan children stuck in Colombia's child-welfare system:
It is officially curfew in D.C. and the crowds at Lafayette Square are the biggest I’ve seen all week. Thousands of people, of all ages, many newcomers to the protests who say they were emboldened by yesterday’s events.
I grew up reading the
@nacion
newspaper on my grandma’s kitchen table in Costa Rica. Today my 92-year-old abuelita picked up the Easter Sunday paper and saw this.
Francisco told me he is from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, and was on the island with no power or running water after Hurricane Maria three years ago, when Trump threw the paper towel rolls.
“It’s going to mean a lot to my parents,” he said, asking someone to take a video.
Francia Márquez is a kind of leader who has rarely reached the highest levels of power in the hemisphere, and not only because she is a Black feminist activist. She forces people to question their privilege in ways few other Black politicians have.
“Why are so many people taking my picture?” 4 year-old Nile asked her mother.
“Because you give people hope ,” her mother said. “We’re doing this for you.”
EXCLUSIVE: The Biden administration and the Venezuelan government have agreed to a deal in which the U.S. would ease sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and Maduro would allow a competitive, internationally monitored presidential election next year.
The island had a total infrastructure collapse. Patients languished in hospitals without power. Damaged roads made it impossible for people to get dialysis. Medical specialists were virtually nonexistent. We know because we've talked to these families
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000...
A sea of hundreds of teenagers here at the MLK Jr. Memorial, where a group of students have organized a die-in protest.
“Today would have been my high school graduation day,” a teenage boy shouted. “Emmett Till won’t get the chance to graduate. Trayvon won’t get the chance.”
About a hundred people are kneeling and sitting in front of the MLK Jr. Memorial, fists raised, silently listening to King’s “I have a dream” speech from someone’s speakers.
For the first time in days, protestors in DC are not breaking a curfew right now.
Some surreal personal news: I will soon be moving to Colombia as The Post's new Bogotá bureau chief! It's been a lifelong dream to work as a correspondent in Latin America, and I can't wait to join this talented team of reporters.
Breaking: The Arkansas Senate and House have both voted to override the governor's veto on this bill. The nation's first ban on medical treatments for transgender youth passes.
I’m back out here reporting on today’s protests in DC. Hundreds of people, including many college students and teenagers, are marching down Georgia Avenue from Howard University down to Lafayette Square
Teenagers have been on the front lines of the George Floyd protests. They've been choked by gas, hit by rubber bullets, and knocked down by officers’ shields. But they have continued to come back.
Here are some of their stories.
Powerful moment as hundreds of people take a knee and a moment of silence, fists raised, in the middle of the intersection at 7th Street NW and K Street
The crowd is kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to mark the amount of time an officer kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck.
Aly Conyers, 17, is reading the names of other black men and women who have died.
For 28 days, these 43 men did not leave their factory — sleeping and working all in one place — in order to make millions of pounds of face masks and surgical gowns. A must-read story by
@Meagan_Flynn
Moments after lawmakers and activists referred to trans girls as "biological males," 16-year-old Stella Keating testifies in support of the Equality Act on behalf of "hundreds of thousands of kids just like me."
"Hi, I'm Stella, and I'm transgender," she said.
This has been one of the most consistently impressive aspects of these protests to me: There is no leader in charge. Marches take off without specific destinations in mind. Everything feels spontaneous and organic.
Here’s a look at this crowd. Unlike so many protests I’ve covered in DC, these have been truly organic.
No leaders. No agenda. No podium.
The crowd ebbs and flows with the energy of the day. Today is more resolute than angry. Whomever has the megaphone can command a march.
Last night, Elizabeth Warren recited the names of the trans women of color killed so far this year. Two of them were on the fringes of the nation’s capital: Ashanti Carmon and Zoe Spears.
“There are no words to comprehend the magnitude of this madness. 3 students are killed and dissolved in acid. The 'why' is unthinkable, the 'how is terrifying.'"
Las palabras no alcanzan para entender la dimensión de esta locura. 3 estudiantes son asesinados y disueltos en ácido. El ¨porqué¨ es impensable, el ¨como¨ es aterrador.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson called the legislation a “vast government overreach." He said the bill would interfere with physicians and parents “as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people.”
Full story here:
‘What choice do we have?’: Portland’s ‘Wall of Moms’ faces off with federal officers at tense protests
Keep following the relentless
@Marissa_Jae
in Portland:
For days, Cynthia Schmidt Jones has been searching for her missing brother, Donald. Today she learned his remains were found in his mobile home in Phoenix, Oregon. His German Shepherd, Roxy, was found on top of him, she said.
“She was protecting him.”
New: Colombia’s riot police should undergo a “profound transformation” to prevent the disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters, the United Nations urged in a report Wednesday.
Chloe Clark, 15, knows the country is debating her right to play sports, to get medical care — debating her right to exist. But the transgender girl is just trying to get through her day, as a pandemic moves her whole life online.
Please read her story:
BREAKING: Colombia’s constitutional court has voted to decriminalize abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, a transformative shift for the majority-Catholic country and the latest sign of a turning tide in Latin America.
With
@dicaduran
New: Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, wants to lead a global experiment: decriminalizing the drug.
In his first interview since being named Petro’s drug czar,
@felipetascon57
told us about his bold plans.
@dicaduran
Before storming the Capitol, Derrick Evans was known for harassing women outside the only abortion clinic in West Virginia.
“I have been screaming about him for two years, trying to stop it, and nobody listened to me. Nobody.”
With
@CAKitchener
Many of the recent political debates about transgender rights are filled with misunderstandings about what it means to be a trans kid today. So I decided to write an FAQ, informed by doctors and experts on trans youth.
In Black Lives Matter Plaza, a 9-year-old boy from Philadelphia, Dane McFarland shouted into the crowd:
“We decide who’s going to be the president! We do!”
When I profiled Leana Wen in the fall, she was quick to assert that she was not, by nature, a politician. “My identity, first and foremost, is always as a doctor," she told me. 8 months later, she has been forced out as president of Planned Parenthood.
After 21 months on the overnight shift, I’m thrilled to be taking on a new beat covering gender and family issues for The Post. Send story ideas and daytime food recommendations my way!
“They wiped out the poor,” she said. “They wiped out the Mexicans.”
My dispatch from the Oregon wildfires today, which devastated the Latino community in mobile home parks in the Rogue Valley.
Given the overwhelming support for the bill in the legislature, the general assembly is likely to override the governor's veto.
“I’m hopeful, though, that my action will cause conservative Republican legislators to think through the issue again," Hutchinson said.
Last night, Joe Biden spoke about the transgender women of color being murdered at high rates.
As
@cmclymer
told me, politicians would not be talking about these statistics if it wasn't for the groundbreaking work of Monica Roberts, who died last week.
I spoke with Matthew Shepard’s parents yesterday as they prepared to lay their son to rest at Washington National Cathedral, 20 years after his death became a symbol for the gay rights movement
Ana Estrada, a 45-year-old psychologist and poet, is fighting for the right to euthanasia in Peru. But here’s what most people don’t understand about her historic case: She doesn’t actually want to die.
Please take some time to read her story.
Lillie Baker, 87, is spending Juneteenth dancing and clapping as protesters march by her apartment. “I wish I was younger, I would be out there myself!”
This is a Patriot Church, part of a rapidly evolving network of start-up congregations that say they want to take the country back for God.
@spulliam
gives us an up-close look at the rise of Christian nationalism under Trump
When the senate president accused her of being linked to a rebel group, she said:
“What really makes the president uncomfortable…is that today, a woman who could have been the woman in his house, working as a maid, could now be his Vice President.
I came to Oregon to cover the Portland protests and pro-Trump rallies. But because it’s 2020, I’m now on wildfire duty. Our latest from the burning West, with
@PostScottWilson
@chriscmooney
“The problem people have with Francia is that she is a Black woman who does not behave well, who knows she is Black, and knows what that means in historical terms,”
@erestrepo_
told
@dicaduran
. “And she doesn’t shut up.”
Americans have struggled to adjust to the nonbinary pronouns “they/them.” So how could it be possible to acknowledge these identities in Spanish, a language in which every noun is gendered? These teens in Argentina are doing just that.
Crisis-stricken Lebanon, in the throes of financial and economic collapse, is in no position to cope with another disaster, especially on this scale. A devastating report from the relentless
@LizSly
@SarahDadouch
@leloveluck
Her talk about race is disruptive in a country that long identified as sharing a single mestizo race. In its 1991 constitution, Colombia gave specific rights to Indigenous and Black ethnic groups. But they still face disproportionate levels of poverty and violence.
“I’m part of a community that has historically been excluded and marginalized, a community that was enslaved,” she said. “It’s more than just about the color of our skin. It’s about the elite who believe they are superior, that the rest are inferior and that it doesn’t matter.”
D.C. schools reopening in wealthier wards are at maximum capacity while seats remain empty in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, because families there have opted in high numbers to stay home.
Important story by
@PerryStein
As a record number of trans people were killed across America last year,
@shesdecaille
@BritRenee_
and I wanted to learn more about these cases.
We found that nearly half of trans women killed between 2015-2020 died at the hands of an intimate partner.
Contrary to Rand Paul’s arguments, and those in a wave of GOP-led bills targeting trans children, current medical guidelines in the U.S. do *not* recommend transition-related surgeries for minors. Hormones are not given to young trans kids before puberty.
Psychologists have long written about the friendship crisis facing many men: Male friendships often lack emotional intimacy, and are rooted in “shoulder-to-shoulder” interactions such as watching sports. But the pandemic might be forcing this to change.
More than 429 Women's March events are happening across the country today.
@rebtanhs
and I will be in downtown D.C., where crowds are gathering in Freedom Plaza before marching to the Supreme Court.
Just 2 days old, he was one of the youngest casualties of Putin’s war.
Please take the time to read about the short life of baby Serhii, killed in the Ukraine maternity ward where he was born.
With
@serhiikorolchuk
@Heidiphotos
On today’s front page, one of the most devastating stories I’ve ever had to write. But one I hope you’ll take the time to read.
The short life of baby Serhii, killed by a rocket in a Ukraine maternity ward.
@serhiikorolchuk
@Heidiphotos
"What happens if I want to attend a college in a state that doesn’t protect me?" she said. "What if I’m offerred a dream job in a state where I can be discriminated against? ..."Why am I having to worry about all this at the age of 16?"
This
@mjcontrera
story is just what I needed this morning. "Here in this community of the rich and powerful...barking is the subject of a ferocious (fur-ocious?) debate — one that has divided the two-legged one-percenters for nearly a year."
Trump is trying to win over suburban women with his ‘law and order" message this week. So I spoke with women in a place he's determined to flip — the Minneapolis suburbs where I grew up.
Bridget Early, a 20 year old journalism student from Butler University, taped a copy of the Washington Post on the back of her sign, in honor of the dozens of journalists across the country who have been detained for doing their jobs, she said.
My parents in Minnesota are HUGE
@abbydphillip
fans. They constantly ask me if I know her, and even though I don’t, I told my mom I’d pass along her message:
Ruth Barcena's partner was killed in Peru's protests. A week later, she lost their unborn twins.
Now she's organizing families to demand action from the government — and is facing threats for doing so.
Our dispatch from Ayacucho, w/
@mrchavezphoto
Rodolfo Hernández, the man who could be Colombia's next president, described his supporters as “messianic." In an interview with me, he compared his supporters to the “brainwashed” hijackers who destroyed the twin towers on 9/11.
New: Colombia’s national police were responsible for the deaths of 11 people during two days of protests against police brutality in 2020, according to an investigation supported by the UN. The killings amounted to a “massacre.”
With
@dicaduran
New: One in six adults in Gen Z identifies as LGBT, according to fascinating survey data released today from Gallup. As more and more people come out, the percentage of U.S. adults who identify as LGBT has grown to 5.6 percent.
Take a closer look:
I spent the past few days at a maximum security prison in upstate New York where an inmate debate team was preparing to compete against an elite team of students from Cambridge. At Friday’s debate, the prisoners won. Here’s how they did it:
I have been stunned at the reactions to this story. So many readers have said they remembered similar lists at their schools and workplaces, created by both men AND women.
15-year-old Katia remembers rushing out of the orphanage just in time, minutes before the Russians arrived to take the other children away.
The story of how Katia’s teachers hid her and other Ukrainian children in their homes to keep the safe.
We have the best boss on the planet.
@semelm
has been up past 3 a.m. for five days in a row, guiding our protest coverage and constantly checking in to make sure our team is safe.
New: Colombia's largest drug cartel managed to shut down much of the country in retaliation for their leader's extradition to the U.S.
@Andres_CardonaC
and I went to Montería to capture what it feels like when your city is paralyzed by an armed strike.
More than a week later, our
@postlocal
team is back out reporting on today’s protests.
@mjcontrera
and I are at the Lincoln Memorial, where the crowd of more than a thousand is growing quickly.
New: The green bandanna has become a universal symbol of abortion rights, a sign of solidarity among activists across Latin America. Its journey began in Argentina, decades ago. Now it's reached the U.S.
Chileans are voting on a bold democratic experiment: A new constitution that could dramatically transform their country.
A dispatch ahead of tomorrow's vote, here in Santiago w/
@jwbartlett92