Author: News Polite

An Alaska man who pleaded guilty to threatening to murder two U.S. senators has been sentenced to 32 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The man, Jay Allen Johnson, 65, of Delta Junction, left a total of 17 voicemails laden with threats for Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Alaska Republicans, federal prosecutors said. The voicemails, placed from April to September 2021, were “intended to retaliate” against the two senators for doing their work, prosecutors said.

John E. Kuhn Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District of Alaska, said in a statement after the sentencing on Friday that nothing excused Mr. Johnson’s conduct and that threatening elected officials was “an act that attacks our very system of governance.”

“The erosion of civility in our political discourse will never justify threats or acts of violence,” he said.

Jason Weiner, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

In a sentencing memorandum, Mr. Weiner said that Mr. Johnson’s health problems after decades spent performing manual labor, along with pandemic-related “heightened turmoil” and isolation, had contributed to his behavior.

“Between the prescribed narcotics, pain, and self-medicating, Mr. Johnson was not himself,” Mr. Weiner wrote in the memorandum, dated April 1, adding that his client had learned from this experience. “His actions did not take place in a vacuum.”

Senators Murkowski and Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

In September 2021, Mr. Johnson called Ms. Murkowski at least two times, according to court documents. In one message, he said: “I will find out everything, where you’re at. I will find out all your properties and I will burn everything you hope to have, and I will burn everything you hope to own.” He also asked her if she’d ever seen what a .50-caliber shell does to a human head.

He left Mr. Sullivan 13 voicemails, stating in one that he would get his “.50 caliber out” and then hold an online fund-raiser for the shells.

An investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation traced the calls to Mr. Johnson, and he was arrested on Oct. 4, 2021. While executing a search warrant, F.B.I. agents also seized seven unsecured firearms illegally owned by Mr. Johnson, who has a prior felony conviction in 2016 barring him from possessing guns, prosecutors said.

In January, Mr. Johnson pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening to murder a U.S. official. In addition to his prison time and fine, he has agreed to a three-year federal protective order forbidding him to contact Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Sullivan, their families, and staff members after he is released. Mr. Johnson will also forfeit his guns.

After former President Donald J. Trump was elected in 2016, threats of violence against lawmakers surged. A Times review found clear increases of threats around Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and then after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year.

There were 9,600 threats against members of Congress last year, a record that was double the previous year’s total, according to the Capitol Police. Callers have left messages detailing various methods to kill lawmakers, from hanging them to shooting them in the head.

LVIV, Ukraine — When war came to Ukraine in February, Helen Polishchuk made some adjustments in the six-story bar she manages in central Lviv.

The Mad Bars House in Lviv’s historic central square stayed open, but served coffee and hot food instead of alcoholic drinks. They turned off the rock music. And as displaced Ukrainians began pouring into the city from places devastated by Russian attacks hundreds of miles away, she had instructions for the wait staff.

“When guests leave the restaurant we normally say, ‘Have a nice day,’” she said. Instead she told them they could say something else, like “Glory to Ukraine,” or “We wish you blue skies.”

“Because to say ‘have a nice day’ in this period is stupid,” said Ms. Polishchuk, 33.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, Lviv, a historic city just 40 miles from Poland, was a popular European tourist destination, with 2.5 million visitors a year and the biggest jazz festival in Eastern Europe.

Now, instead of tourists, there are displaced Ukrainians fleeing the war-torn east of the country. Lviv and its residents are learning to live with what most now believe will be many months of conflict, if not years.

Several Russian airstrikes have targeted infrastructure here, including a rocket attack on a military training base last month that killed more than 30 people. Air-raid sirens warning of Russian fighter jets breaching the airspace sound several times a day. This small city, though, is still far from the active fighting that has devastated entire cities in the east of Ukraine.

The main challenge for Lviv has been to survive a wartime economy and manage the flood of displaced, traumatized people who are swelling the city’s population.

“We have learned to live in wartime,” said the city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, who has recently lifted some municipal restrictions, including allowing bars and restaurants to sell wine and beer, although not hard alcohol.

Mr. Sadovyi, a former businessman, said that six months before the Russian invasion, he tasked city officials with finding a way to keep water supplies flowing if the electricity failed. They started buying diesel generators, as well as stockpiling medical supplies, and topping up blood banks.

“If I had not been bracing my city for this situation, we would be in a catastrophe right now,” Mr. Sadovyi, dressed in a black hoodie and black sneakers, said in an interview in the 19th-century Viennese-style City Hall. His office’s expansive stone balcony overlooked the market square, where displaced children shrieked with laughter and chased giant soap bubbles blown by a street performer.

Mr. Sadovyi said that civilians fleeing the fighting started coming into Lviv within hours of the invasion — 60,000 of them per day for the first three weeks. Now, with a new Russian advance expected, about 10,000 a day are arriving.

While many are heading across the border to Poland and other European countries, about 200,000 have remained, double the number the city administration was expecting and almost one third the city’s prewar population of 700,000.

Those with money are renting apartments or staying in hotels. But tens of thousands more are in shelters, dependent on aid. The Polish government has donated container homes for 1,000 people that are being set up in a city park. Others are being channeled from Lviv to other communities in Western Ukraine.

“This is a huge strain on our city,” said Mr. Sadovyi, 53. “Basically we have another city within our city.”

The war has sparked remarkable patriotism, and if some local residents note that they can no longer find tables at their favorite cafes or restaurants because they are filled with displaced people, they tend not to complain. Guides lead displaced families on free tours of the city. Passengers on the tourist trolley leaving City Hall are not foreigners these days but Ukrainians.

It makes for an odd juxtaposition. A significant number of the soldiers dying at the front are from Western Ukraine, and there are regular funerals in churches in the city center. On a recent day, the sobbing relatives of a steelworker and his factory colleagues stood outside a cathedral with wreathes of flowers.

Around the edges, longtime residents are trying to preserve some semblance of prewar life.

The Lviv National Opera recently resumed limited events, with snippets of ballet and choir performances. The number of tickets sold is limited to the capacity of the building’s bomb shelter, about 250 people. At the first performance, an air-raid siren sounded, sending audience members and dancers down to the shelter before resuming the show.

“We reopened because we received so many calls and emails from people,” said Ostap Hromysh, the opera’s international relations manager. The messages were apologetic, saying “of course we understand there is a war,” but asking if they had performances anyway.

“If people day by day are faced with sad news about death, about blood, about bombs, they need to feel other emotions,” he said.

At the Mad Bars House, Ms. Polishchuk said they planned to open a rooftop terrace next week, perhaps with nonalcoholic cocktails as well as wine and beer. They are bringing back more of their original 111-person staff.

She said the bar, which in normal times has a dance floor and serves increasingly potent drinks as patrons ascend its six stories, is losing money, but is committed to remaining open. On Sunday afternoon, the first and second floors of the bar were full.

The management has replaced the classic rock entertaining beer drinkers at the ground-floor bar before the war with Ukrainian songs, though on the floor serving wine to customers at tables, Frank Sinatra croons.

“We don’t want to pretend that nothing has happened, we understand that it’s a war,” Ms. Polishchuk said. “But we want to create an atmosphere of somewhere safe.”

On the menu, borscht, the beet soup that had few takers before the war, is now the biggest seller. Ms. Polishchuk said it was patriotism and stress. “We understand that people want comfort foods,” she said.

“Have a nice day” is not the only thing that feels off these days.

“This is not the time for carrot juice and green salads,” Ms. Polishchuk said.

America’s attempt to vaccinate the world against Covid is about to come to an end.

“We are at a point now where without additional funding we are going to have to start winding down our programming,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the leader of the United States Agency for International Development’s Covid-19 task force. Such funding does not appear to be forthcoming. Our gruesomely dysfunctional politics are going to lead to more illness and death across the globe, and we’re increasing the odds that a new viral mutation will once again upend American life. If it does, we might call it the filibuster variant.

Even for a body as broken and ineffectual as Congress, this level of self-sabotage is hard to fathom. “The biggest risk we face domestically and globally is more new variants,” said Konyndyk. Such variants, he said, are most likely to emerge in chronically immunocompromised populations, including people living with diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis; because they have trouble clearing the coronavirus, it lingers and has more opportunities to evolve.

“That’s likely where Omicron came from, quite possibly where Delta came from,” Konyndyk said. “So making sure that we are targeting those populations for vaccination and then targeting them with the rollout of antivirals is the best insurance policy we have against new variants. It’s not foolproof, but it’s the best we can do.”

But it seems we are not going to do it. Part of the blame for this lies with House Democrats. Far more belongs to Senate Republicans.

The Democrats miscalculated last month when, amid internal dissension, they stripped a $15.6 billion Covid aid package from the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill. Senate Republicans had insisted that the Covid aid come from money that was already appropriated but unspent. So congressional leaders devised a scheme drawing $7 billion from funds that had been set aside for state and local governments in last year’s American Rescue Plan.

House Democrats — as well as governors in both parties — had good reason to object, because state and local lawmakers had made their budgets with that money in mind. Twenty states got their American Rescue Plan money all at once, but in the remaining 30 states it was supposed to come in two tranches. Those states were suddenly looking at substantial budget cuts.

“A bunch of House members said no, we’re not going to vote to cut our own state budgets and have to go home and explain why we’ve cut these budgets,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

After a revolt among her own members, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to pull the Covid aid from the omnibus bill. But if House Democrats thought they’d get another chance to negotiate international Covid funds, they underestimated the nihilism of the Republican Party.

Because of the filibuster, Senate Democrats need 10 Republicans to support a stand-alone Covid bill, and Republicans are balking at more money for international Covid programs. “I’m frankly struggling,” Chris Coons, a Democratic senator known for his commitment to bipartisanship, said of trying to negotiate an agreement. He describes a basic disagreement between the caucuses over the threat posed by Covid. A number of his Republican colleagues, said Coons, have told him, “We’re done with this pandemic.”

Since they’re largely indifferent to whether additional Covid funding passes, some Republicans have used it as leverage in their demand for tougher border policies. They’re holding up authorization of any more Covid aid unless the administration reinstates Title 42, a policy adopted in 2020 to rapidly expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum, all in the name of protecting public health.

The U.S.A.I.D. funding is not fungible — the agency can’t simply transfer resources from other programs to keep its vaccine program going, or to start providing antivirals like Paxlovid. As a last-ditch measure, Coons tried to get Republicans to agree to give the agency emergency authority to move its own money around to address the pandemic, but he couldn’t get enough of them onboard.

As a result of this intransigence, many of the vaccine doses America already donated could go to waste. At this point, there’s no longer a global vaccine shortage — the problem is that many countries lack the infrastructure required to transport and administer them. The impasse in the Senate, Coons said, means we aren’t delivering millions of vaccine shots that we’ve already paid for.

Coons holds out hope that there could be a breakthrough in the Senate in three or four weeks, after it returns from recess. But it’s not easy to restart programs once they’ve been stopped, and in the meantime, we’re pointlessly imperiling both our own health and the health of people all over the planet.

There’s also a political cost to abandoning the rest of the world on Covid. At a time of renewed great-power competition, America’s effective vaccines could give us a diplomatic advantage. Last year, said Coons, “both Russia and China made big fanfares about delivering planeloads of vaccines to dozens of countries in the developing world. Those vaccines are ineffective against Omicron. Our vaccines are effective.” Our Congress, unfortunately, is not.

The Atlanta Dream, looking for a versatile player to help rebuild their roster, selected guard Rhyne Howard from the University of Kentucky as the No. 1 pick in the W.N.B.A. draft on Monday at Spring Studios in New York.

Ahead of the draft, Dream General Manager Dan Padover said the team was looking for a player who brought “fresh energy and sparks something underneath our franchise.”

The Indiana Fever selected NaLyssa Smith, a senior forward from Baylor University, with the No. 2 overall pick. At No. 3, the Washington Mystics chose Shakira Austin, a center from the University of Mississippi.

Howard said she planned to bring to the Dream the same “competitive spirit” she had with Kentucky, where she made sure to stay “calm, cool and collected” to make an impact. In Atlanta, Howard said, she will “continue to make everyone better.”

There is very little Howard can’t do. She is in the top 10 of almost every statistical category at Kentucky, and has scored the second-most points in program history for women and men. Last month, Howard led Kentucky to its first Southeastern Conference tournament title since 1982 when the team handed South Carolina, the 2022 national champion, its second and final loss of the season. Howard, who is from Chattanooga, Tenn., finished her senior year averaging 20.5 points and 7.4 rebounds per game.

Kentucky, a No. 6 seed in the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball tournament this year, lost to No. 11 Princeton in the round of 64. But Howard’s career at Kentucky has helped draw attention to the women’s basketball program at a school best known for its powerhouse men’s team.

To be able to select her, the Dream shook up the draft last week by acquiring the No. 1 pick in a trade with the Washington Mystics. In return, the Mystics will get the Dream’s No. 3 and No. 14 overall picks. The Mystics also have the right to swap first-round picks in the 2023 draft, which is expected to draw deep talent from around the country.

Atlanta finished last season 8-24, the second-worst record in the W.N.B.A., and has missed the playoffs for the past three seasons. Adding Howard to the Dream’s roster immediately bolsters their perimeter game, which should help after the team traded guard Chennedy Carter to the Los Angeles Sparks in the off-season.

“Some drafts are top-heavy; some are deep,” Padover said. “This one is probably the most deep more than anything.” He added that this year’s draft offered the best talent since 2018 or 2019.

This year, 108 college players renounced their remaining N.C.A.A. eligibility to be considered for the draft, more than double than in 2021. International players and those who are no longer eligible to play in the N.C.A.A. will also be considered. But the chances of getting a spot on a roster are slim: There 36 draft slots for the W.N.B.A.’s 12 teams, which have just 12 roster spots each. With only 144 roster spots in all, many players and fans are calling for bigger rosters and more teams, wishes the W.N.B.A. has resisted.

One reason for the increase in college-eligible draft prospects may be the pandemic. College athletes are normally eligible to play four seasons over the course of five years. After the pandemic disrupted schedules, the N.C.A.A. added a special bonus year of eligibility for any athlete who lost playing time during the 2019-20 season.

Should they not make it to the W.N.B.A. this year and still have a season of eligibility, athletes can return to their college (assuming there is still a place for them on the roster).

Julie Roe Lach, the commissioner of the Horizon League, said this year’s draft class mimics the parity seen in the 2022 N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament, which saw six double-digit-seeded teams make it to the round of 16.

“You’ve got some of the names you would expect to see, but we’re seeing more schools with players that look like strong draft prospects,” she said. “That speaks to the increase of talent we’re seeing across the country of these great women basketball players.”

The W.N.B.A. season starts May 6 with eight teams, including the reigning champion Chicago Sky, in action.

Not long ago, I impulsively bought a set of mini exercise bands — thick rubber loops designed to engage your muscles as you stretch them. I was seduced by ads promising they could improve my posture, which is lousy after years of slumping over a computer. They claimed a handful of quick exercises would unhunch my shoulders while I “tone my muscles” and “sculpt my physique.”

Getting a full-body workout with a set of $20 elastic bands was enticing, since I lack the budget or space for fancy fitness equipment.

The benefits of resistance training — workouts that build strength and muscle — are well known. It reduces your risk of diabetes and heart disease. With more muscle, you burn more calories and are less prone to injury. It’s also been shown to strengthen bones and reduce age-related decline in muscle mass.

Could resistance bands, which are relatively cheap, portable and easy to use, be a worthwhile alternative to a gym membership?

Bands build strength and endurance.

The idea of stretchy workout bands is over 100 years old. Some are long, thin tubes; some, like mine, are thick, flat loops with colors designating resistance levels. And they’ve seen a recent resurgence during the pandemic home fitness boom.

Like weights, exercise bands put stress on the muscle, which over time makes the muscle adapt and get stronger. The farther you stretch the band, the greater the resistance.

There are some key differences though. Bands do not rely on gravity, so people cannot use momentum to jerk the weight into position, which can overload the joints and ultimately works less of the muscle, said David Behm, a professor and exercise scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s School of Human Kinetics and Recreation. Bands also allow for movement on a number of different planes and axes, he said, whereas free weights limit you to mostly up-and-down movement.

Bands can engage the body’s major muscles just as well as weights, providing a full-body strength and endurance workout, said Todd Ellenbecker, a physical therapist at Rehab Plus Sports Therapy in Scottsdale, Ariz., and an author of the book “Strength Band Training.”

Research supports this. One study of middle-aged women compared 10 weeks of twice-weekly training sessions using elastic bands with a similar program that used weight machines. The women were tested for upper and lower body strength before and after the program, and results showed that muscle mass, strength and endurance improved at a similar rate in both groups. A systematic review of 18 studies also found no significant difference in muscle activation levels between those using elastic bands and those using free weights.

Dr. Ellenbecker said he works with athletes at all levels who exclusively use bands for resistance training, “and they are successful and injury-free.” But, as with any exercise, you need to be consistent with the exercise, he added. The American College of Sports Medicine guidelines call for strength training at least twice a week, with multiple exercises and multiple reps.

And don’t overdo it, he said. “People tend to gravitate toward bands that are way too strong, or they stretch them too far. It never hurts to start light and build yourself up.”

A well-placed band can improve your form.

Gerard Burley, founder and owner of a Washington D.C. gym called Sweat DC, said exercise bands may be the best option for people new to strength training and can help you master good technique. For example, a common problem when doing a squat is that the knees buckle in.

“The body’s lazy and likes to take the easiest way out,” said Mr. Burley, who goes by Coach G. A mini band around your legs just above the knees helps prevent this. While squatting, focus on pressing the knees outward to keep the band from slipping, while keeping the head and chest up.

Advanced athletes use them too. For example, tennis players will often anchor a band to a wall or pole and loop the other side around the throat of their racket to add resistance and improve the power of their forehand, backhand or serve, Dr. Behm said.

Let them help you do a pull-up.

Exercise bands also provide assistance with hard-to-master exercises like pull-ups, said Vanessa Liu, an online fitness trainer and nutritionist who uses them regularly with clients. In fact, certain bands are designed to loop around a pull-up bar for extra support.

But don’t get too reliant on them. “Eventually you’ll want to take off the band and do it yourself,” Ms. Liu said.

Use them to deepen stretches too. To stretch the hamstring, for example, lie on your back with the looped band around one foot and gently pull that leg toward you, keeping it as straight as you can.

Target the back muscles for posture.

Mobility in the body is what allows you to bend over and pick up a box or sit and stand with ease. As we get older, the connective tissues in our joints change, making us stiffer and less flexible.

“People do mobility exercises with bands to improve posture, reduce stiffness and move more freely and fully,” Ms. Liu said. She often works with clients who have developed stiffness in the shoulders and neck from sitting at a computer.

For posture, Dr. Ellenbecker recommends an exercise he calls an “external rotation with retraction,” which works the rotator cuff muscles in the shoulder and the rhomboids in the upper back. Grasp the band in front of you with both hands and your palms facing up. Slowly move your forearms horizontally outward like you’re feeling under a desk, while lifting your chest and squeezing your shoulder blades together. Return to the starting position and repeat.

Watch your eyes.

A word of caution: Bands can snap back into your face. Eye injuries have occurred this way.

To prevent this, be sure the band is securely attached to an anchor if the exercise calls for that, avoid pulling it directly toward the face or head and inspect it for nicks and tears before use. (You can purchase anchoring devices designed for use with bands. Securing a band by tying it around a stable object like a tree, table leg or post can work well too.)

But in most cases, a snapping band poses little risk of injury. In fact, if someone breaks a band in Mr. Burley’s classes, everyone cheers.

“It usually doesn’t hurt, so we’ll go, ‘Ooh, you popped it, you’re so strong!’” he said.

As for me, I’ve been doing daily strength training with my mini bands for a few weeks now, and while it’s hard to tell if my posture is improving, I do feel stronger and genuinely enjoy my workouts.

A few exercises to get started …

Here are five more exercises that could take the place of classic weight lifting exercises. With all of these workouts, aim for two to three sets, with eight to 12 repetitions (with good form) for each exercise, according to American College of Sports Medicine guidelines. If you have pain or past injuries, talk to your doctor before doing any new exercises.

Glute bridge

Loop mini band just above the knees. Lie on your back with feet flat, and knees bent and shoulder-width apart. Lift your hips while pushing the knees outward until your body forms a straight line from shoulders to knees, and then slowly return to starting position. Repeat. Works the glutes and hamstrings.

Row

Sit on the floor with legs extended, back straight. Loop the resistance band around the soles of your feet. Grip the band with your right hand, and pull it back toward your right hipbone, while squeezing the shoulder blades together and keeping your back straight. Return to starting position. Repeat on the other side. Works upper back, middle back and biceps.

Monster walk

Place the mini band around your thighs, above the knees. Bend hips and knees slightly. Keeping your head and chest up, take a step to one side while keeping the other leg pressed against the band. Keep moving sideways in one direction in a shuffling motion. Repeat the other direction. Maintain posture while stepping and keep the knees pushed apart. Works glutes and quadriceps.

Deadlift

This works best with a long looped band. Stand on the middle of the band with your feet hip-width apart. A loop of the band should be poking out from under the sides of each foot. Squat down and grab each loop. Start the movement by bending at the hips with your back flat and shoulders above your toes. Keeping your back flat, stand back up. As you stand, the resistance should increase. Return to the starting point by bending at the hips. Works legs, glutes and core.

Lying chest press

Lie flat on your back with a long band under the shoulder blades. Grasp the end of the bands and, with elbows bent and fists toward the ceiling, extend your arms fully, pushing upward as you stretch the band. The movement is similar to a chest press with dumbbells or a barbell. Works biceps, triceps and chest.

Jenny Marder is a senior science writer for NASA and a freelance journalist. She was formerly digital managing editor for the PBS NewsHour.