Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 102

Trump's Latest Accusation: Obama 'Founded ISIS'

In his latest outburst, Donald Trump has pinned blame for ISIS on Barack Obama.

“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,” Trump said Wednesday in Florida. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS.”

Trump added, “I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”

Just two months ago, Trump set off a firestorm when he implicitly accused Obama of treason, suggesting the president might have known about the Orlando massacre and done nothing. Trump insisted he hadn’t said that, then promptly did so again the following day. At the time, that seemed like a nearly unfathomable depth, since surpassed by Trump’s obscure apparent joke earlier this week about gun owners preventing Clinton from appointing judges to the Supreme Court. In that case, as with the treason allegation, Trump—who typically boasts of his blunt talk—has insisted what he meant was different from the most obvious interpretation.

The ISIS remark is different, because this time Trump is insisting he meant just what he said. It’s not hard to factually debunk Trump’s accusation. For example: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late terrorist, founded Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, ISIS’s predecessor organization. Zarqawi’s organization was founded in 1999, or, in its more recent form, as ISIS, in 2006, the former when Obama was a lowly state senator, and the latter when he was a freshman U.S. senator. There’s also the fact Obama has launched thousands of airstrikes and deployed ground troops to combat ISIS. There are reasonable critiques of Obama’s ISIS strategy, but the idea that he’s a founder of the group is plainly ridiculous.

But the facts are beside the point, aren’t they? It’s really just about ridiculing Obama however possible, and tossing red meat to the president’s critics. Given Trump’s freewheeling speaking style, there’s little indication he had thought through the comment for long before he made it. In an excellent piece this week, Dara Lind made the observation that many of Trump’s most outlandish comments have come in places where he seems to be caricaturing conservative thought. Gun-rights advocates have argued that citizens need guns to defend against government tyranny; Trump went just a little further, advancing that to the idea that someone could shoot either Clinton or her nominees. Pro-life advocates argue abortion is bad and should be stopped; Trump, going against decades of anti-abortion messaging, advanced that to the idea that women who get abortions should be punished.

“The problem with treating Donald Trump as the conservative id, though, is that Trump isn’t a conservative,” Lind wrote. “He’s not saying things he believes because he doesn’t know he’s not supposed to say them; he’s saying things he doesn’t believe because he thinks other people do.”

This was true of Trump’s treason accusation, too. Leading Republican voices had accused Obama of selling out U.S. interests with the Iran deal, his handling of Israel, and other matters. Trump took it a step further and went directly to the suggestion that Obama was a traitor.

Accusing Obama of treason, or of founding ISIS, are however neatly of a piece with Trump’s baseless insistence that Obama is not American and was born abroad—just new ways to portray him as an alien other. Ironically, Trump himself has been labeled an other, completely alien to the existing U.S. political system and its norms. It stands to reason that he’d mirror such attacks: When Trump is criticized, his go-to rhetorical turn is “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” which is why ever since Clinton labeled Trump unfit for office because of his “temperament,” Trump has made criticizing her own temperament a centerpiece of his stump speech, using the word repeatedly.

Thursday morning, Trump gave an interview to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host who was an early Trump critic but has since come around. Recognizing the factual bankruptcy of Trump’s “founder” jibe, Hewitt, a far more informed foreign-affairs observer, tried to throw Trump a life raft.

“Last night, you said the president was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” Hewitt said.

Trump threw the life raft right back, insisting he meant exactly what he had said.

“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton,” he replied.

HH: But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them.

DT: I don’t care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?

HH: …. But by using the term founder, they’re hitting with you on this again. Mistake?

DT: No, it’s no mistake. Everyone’s liking it. I think they’re liking it. I give him the most valuable player award. And I give it to him, and I give it to, I gave the co-founder to Hillary. I don’t know if you heard that.

Given the opportunity by Hewitt to turn an outlandish remark from a demonstrable falsehood into mere hyperbole, Trump wasn’t interested. He knows the comment means nothing, but he can’t bear to admit a mistake. (This interview could serve as a useful reminder next time Trump insists he’s being misinterpreted or misunderstood. He has indicated time and again that he means what he says.)

For obvious reasons, it’s difficult to have a useful political discourse when disagreements over policy can only be ascribed to actual identification with the nation’s enemies. (Or when presidential candidates are flirting with assassination, but that’s another story.) Trump isn’t thinking that way, though. He’s thinking about immediate political payoff. “Everyone’s liking it. I think they’re liking it,” he said. In fact, voters favor Clinton over Trump on handling of terrorism by a sizable margin.

Arianna Huffington's Goodbye

NEWS BRIEF Arianna Huffington, the founder and editor in chief of the Huffington Post, said Thursday she will step down as head of the company to switch her focus to her health and wellness start-up.

Huffington has written recent books about health and sleep issues, and her start-up, Thrive Global, was originally intended as an extension of her work in these areas, with a focus on improving employee health. She said she originally planned to balance her time overseeing both companies, but after she received funding to launch Thrive Global, she decided it would require all of her attention.

Huffington’s role at the website she founded has been precarious since Verizon bought AOL, as The Wall Street Journal reported:

Her continued role at her namesake site—which was acquired by AOL Inc. in 2011 for $315 million—had become unclear after AOL was bought by Verizon Communications Inc. for $4.4 billion last year. The matter appeared put to rest when she signed the new contract, but her future with the site came into question again when she announced two months ago that she would be launching a new venture.

Huffington started the Post 11 years ago as a liberal counterpoint to the Drudge Report. The site now receives more than 100 million visitors each month, and has expanded outside of the U.S., into Mexico, France, and the U.K., among others. Her site was an early success in a changing media market, and was one of the early online-only media organizations to grow a massive audience. But the site has also run into controversy, most notably with the people who make its product—reporters and writers. The Post pushed the limits of aggregation, and sometimes refused to pay contributors, saying publication and the reach of their audience was compensation enough. This led to a court battle, which the Post won, and to a strike headed by the National Writers Union, which was later called off.

Huffington’s new start-up, Thrive Global, will help companies improve the health and well-being of their employees through seminars and trainings.

Who Tipped Off Glenn Beck?

NEWS BRIEF After the Boston Marathon bombing, Glenn Beck, the conservative radio host, said his producer received a tip. Two officials from the Department of Homeland security, Beck said, told the producer a Saudi man seen in a video at the scene financed the 2013 bombings.

But that man, Abdulrahman Alharbi, was cleared in congressional testimony of any role in the attacks by Janet Napolitano, who was Homeland Security secretary at the time. Despite that, Beck repeatedly insisted otherwise. Alharbi sued Beck and TheBlaze radio network, which Beck owns, for defamation. This week, a federal judge ruled Beck must reveal the sources who allegedly provided the information Alharbi was the “money man” behind the attacks.

The case has set up a fight over First Amendment rights, and the ethical obligations of the media when dealing with private figures.    

Judge Patti Saris, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, released her 61-page decision Tuesday, in which she said all other means to learn if Homeland Security did indeed consider Alharbi a suspect had been exhausted. A freedom-of-information-records request turned up no evidence linking Alharbi to the attacks, so she requested Beck turn over his sources.

What will happen next is uncertain, as Politico reported:

It's unclear whether Beck plans to comply with the disclosure order, which is directed to the defendants in the case: Beck, his companies TheBlaze Inc. and Mercury Radio Arts, as well as radio distributor Premiere Radio Networks. If they defy the order, the judge could impose sanctions, which could hurt their defense in the suit. She could also assess fines, or potentially even jail Beck for contempt.

Beck and his legal team had argued Alharbi was a public figure because he gave interviews to the media on the matter. But Saris ruled against that notion, saying if Alharbi was indeed a public figure, he was a “limited-purpose figure,” or an involuntary one. That means Alharbi must only prove Beck and his broadcasting network were negligent in reporting that he financed the bombing. Had he been declared a public figure, Alharbi would have had to prove Beck and his producer deliberately broadcast a falsehood, or intentionally acted with reckless disregard.

Typically, U.S. shield laws protect reporters from revealing their sources. Most states have these, but Massachusetts does not.  

Alharbi, a student, was a spectator at the marathon, and was even injured in the blasts. Homeland Security did place him on a terrorist watch list, according to Politico, but Napolitano said they “quickly determined he had nothing to do with the bombing [and] the watch listing status was removed.”

So far, Saris has seemed unimpressed with the testimony Beck and one of his top administrators, Joe Weasel, have offered. In her report, she criticized them for allegedly taking notes of their conversation with the unnamed security source on post-it notes, then throwing the notes away. She wrote:

When asked what the confidential sources told the defendants about the plaintiff’s role in financing the attacks, Weasel could not recall specifically what the confidential sources told him about the nature of the plaintiff’s involvement. There are no notes to confirm the information.

How the Baltimore Police Department Abuses African Americans

The Baltimore Police Department routinely violated the constitutional rights of citizens, used excessive force, and discriminated against African Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a detailed investigation released Wednesday.

“The relationship between the Baltimore Police Department and many of the communities it serves is broken,” the 163-page report states. “Officers seemed to view themselves as controlling the city rather than as a part of the city. Many others, including high ranking officers in the Department, view themselves as enforcing the will of the ‘silent majority.’”

The document lays out, in often sickening detail, the many ways Baltimore police abused the law, the people they were meant to serve, the public trust, and their own brothers in arms. In the wake of the failed prosecution of six officers for the death of Freddie Gray, the report serves as a reminder that rather than an isolated crime, the Gray case was symptomatic of a force that regularly arrested people for insufficient reasons, or no reasons at all, and used excessive force against them—but particularly, and uniquely, black citizens of the city. The Justice Department makes clear that African Americans in Baltimore were targeted and abused by the police, making this report a twin to the department’s report on Ferguson, Missouri, which my colleague Conor Friedersdorf wrote indicated a “conspiracy against black citizens.”

The inquiry is the product of more than a year’s worth of investigation. In the aftermath of Gray’s death in April 2015, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake sacked police Commissioner Anthony Batts and asked the Justice Department to intervene. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first week on the job, agreed to the request. In response to the scathing report, the city is expected to agree to a consent decree or memorandum of agreement with the Department of Justice, promising to address the problems. Other deeply troubled departments, including Cleveland and Ferguson have reached similar consent decrees, which can cost tens of millions of dollars to implement.

The report applauds the mayor and current Commissioner Kevin Davis for cooperating. One of the more striking elements of the report is that there’s little disagreement about the dire straits in Charm City.

“Almost everyone who spoke to us—from current and former City leaders, BPD officers and command staff during ride-alongs and interviews, community members throughout the many neighborhoods of Baltimore, union representatives of all levels of officers in BPD, advocacy groups, and civic and religious leaders—agrees that BPD has significant problems that have undermined its efforts to police constitutionally and effectively,” the report states.

President Obama and other leaders have noted that police are often asked to grapple with problems they are neither hired nor equipped to answer, from entrenched poverty to public-health crises to systemic racism. The report does not stint on those issues, including, for example, a history of redlining. But it also makes clear this “does not excuse BPD’s violations of the constitutional and statutory rights of the people living in these challenging conditions.” Indeed, “BPD’s law enforcement practices at times exacerbate the longstanding structural inequalities in the City” [emphasis added].

It’s impossible to sum up the breadth of the report succinctly, but these are a few of the most surprising, troubling, and disturbing findings. They involve not only racial disparities, but dismissive attitudes toward sexual assault, violence against the mentally ill, and a culture of retaliation against whistleblowers.

Constitutional Violations

The report comes down hard on “zero-tolerance” policing, a variation on the “Broken Windows” style that was laid out in a 1982 Atlantic article and was until relatively recently in vogue in major cities around the nation:

Starting in at least the late 1990s, however, City and BPD leadership responded to the City’s challenges by encouraging “zero tolerance” street enforcement that prioritized officers making large numbers of stops, searches, and arrests—and often resorting to force—with minimal training and insufficient oversight from supervisors or through other accountability structures. These practices led to repeated violations of the constitutional and statutory rights, further eroding the community’s trust in the police.

Police frequently arrested people for minor offenses. More recent city and department leadership have rejected that policy, but the report documents how that message hasn’t made it down to mid-level commanders and officers on the beat:

Many BPD supervisors instruct officers to make frequent stops and arrests—even for minor offenses and with minimal or no suspicion—without sufficient consideration of whether this enforcement strategy promotes public safety and community trust or conforms to constitutional standards.

Many of BPD’s stops lack the reasonable suspicion required to justify them, and many of the arrests they make are unconstitutional, too: They either lack a warrant and probable cause, or officers failed to inform people they were engaged in unlawful activity. In many cases, they also end without a citation or arrest. Strong evidence of the flimsiness of many arrests comes from the fact central booking and local prosecutors rejected more than 11,000 charges between 2010 and 2015.

Just how often are police stopping or arresting people for rinky-dink violations, or for no reason at all? Over a four-year-plus stretch from January 2010 to May 2014, police reported more than 300,000 pedestrian stops. But the report doubts that figure, noting that stops are one area where Baltimore cops consistently failed to document their actions. “In short, our investigation suggests that BPD officers likely make several hundred thousand pedestrian stops per year in a city with only 620,000 residents,” the report says.

Those stops are highly localized, though:

From 2010–2014, BPD officers in the Western and Central Districts recorded more than 111,500 stops—roughly 44 percent of the total stops for which officers recorded a district location. Yet these are the two least populated police districts in Baltimore, with a combined population of only 75,000, or 12 percent of City residents. These districts include the City’s central business district and several poor, urban neighborhoods with mostly African-American residents. In these districts, police recorded nearly 1.5 stops per resident over a four-year period. [emphasis added]

One African American man was stopped 34 times during that stretch, all in the Western or Central districts, while several hundred others were stopped at least 10 times. Seven were stopped more than 30 times.

“BPD officers made 520 stops for every 1,000 black residents in Baltimore, but only 180 stops for every 1,000 Caucasian residents,” the Justice Department report notes.

Baltimore police routinely trample on First Amendment rights, arresting “members of the public for engaging in speech the officers perceive to be critical or disrespectful.” Supervisors have encouraged “facially unconstitutional” arrests for trespassing. One shift commander emailed a template for such arrests to officers and a sergeant. Even worse,

the template contains blanks to be filled in for details of the arrest, including the arrest data and location and the suspect’s name and address, but does not include a prompt to fill in the race or gender of the arrestee. Rather, the words “black male” are automatically included in the description of the arrest. The supervisor’s template thus presumes that individuals arrested for trespassing will be African American. [emphasis added]

This is, as explored below, barely the start of racially discriminatory enforcement.

The Justice Department also found a pattern of police arresting people as part of effectively speculative roundups:

Local prosecutors described this practice to Justice Department officials as BPD officers making arrests without probable cause on the street, then hours later deciding to “unarrest” when detention and questioning failed to uncover additional evidence.

Discriminatory Policing Against African Americans

Even as the report finds widespread abuses within the department, it leaves no doubt that it is black Baltimoreans who bear the brunt of this abuse. This is true of both stops and arrests. In both cases, African American pedestrians and drivers are both stopped at numbers that far outweigh their share of the population. They are also more likely to be searched—even though “BPD officers found contraband twice as often when searching white individuals compared to African Americans during vehicle stops and 50 percent more often during pedestrian stops.”

Black citizens represent the vast majority of those stopped in predominantly black neighborhoods (93 percent of stops vs. 90 percent of the population in the Eastern District); mixed neighborhoods (83 percent of stops vs. 57 percent of the population in the Central District); and mostly white ones (66 percent of stops vs. 23 percent of the population in the Southeast District).

Unsurprisingly, these statistics lead to discrepancies in arrest rates, too: “African Americans similarly accounted for 86 percent of all criminal offenses charged by BPD officers despite making up only 63 percent of Baltimore residents.” Blacks particularly dominate the arrest rates for minor and procedural violations. For example:

87 percent of the 3,400 charges for resisting arrest
89 percent of 1,350 charges for making a false statement to an officer
84 percent of the 4,000 charges for failing to obey an order
86 percent of the more than 1,000 charges for hindering or obstruction
83 percent of the roughly 6,500 arrests for disorderly conduct
88 percent of the nearly 3,500 arrests for trespassing on posted property

The report notes that charges against blacks are declined at “significantly higher rates” than charges against people of other races, indicating that blacks are being over-arrested.

Other charges seem to be reserved entirely for African Americans. Of 657 people arrested for “gaming” or playing “cards or dice,” 99 percent were black. The report drily comments, “Although we are not aware of any data tracking the precise rate at which people of different races play cards or dice, it is extremely unlikely that African Americans comprise 99 percent of those doing so.”

As a result of these discrepancies, blacks are five times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses, though “survey data shows that African Americans use drugs at rates similar to or slightly exceeding other population groups.” While disparate arrest rates are a problem in many cities, Baltimore blows the competition away: “For each of the three years we examined, Baltimore drug arrests of African Americans were between 200 and 500 percent higher than the comparison cities.”

A further consequence of all this is that blacks are more likely to be subject to the use of force by police:

The consequence of the large racial disparities in stops, searches, and arrests may also manifest itself in what may be disproportionate use of force against African Americans by BPD. We found that African Americans accounted for roughly 88 percent of the subjects of non-deadly force used by BPD officers in a random sample of over 800 cases we reviewed.

The report says Baltimore has made no effort to track its own data to find or combat discriminatory policing. In fact, there was evidence the department tried to bury allegations of use of racial slurs by officers:

In the approximately six years of complaint data we received from BPD, we found only one complaint that BPD classified as a racial slur. This is implausible. By manually reviewing and performing text searches on BPD’s complaint data, we found 60 more complaints that alleged that BPD officers used just one racial slur—“n****r”—but all these complaints were misclassified as a lesser offense.

It’s not just African Americans who contend with police abuses. The report finds that BPD uses “excessive force” against people with mental-health disabilities, and “unreasonable force” against juveniles.

Rough Rides

Central to the Gray case was how the 25-year-old was mortally wounded. He appeared to be healthy when arrested and placed in a police van, but his spine was nearly severed by the time he was removed less than an hour later. A judge ruled that prosecutors failed to prove that police had intentionally harmed him by driving recklessly—a practice known as a “rough ride”—but there has been evidence of rough rides in Baltimore and other cities in the past.

The Justice Department said it could not gather enough evidence to determine whether rough rides are common, but it said that the department “routinely fails to properly secure arrestees in transport vehicles ... fails to keep necessary records,” and needs to better monitor vans. While many vans are equipped with video cameras, “Many of these cameras ceased to function shortly after the vans were put in use, however, and have not been repaired.”

Excessive Use of Force

The report finds a practice of police using excessive force, especially against people who are either restrained or who pose no threat to officers or anyone else. The report adds:

Officers also use heavy-handed tactics when civilians simply refuse to obey their commands and escalate encounters by resorting to force too quickly, including against individuals who are not being arrested for any crime, with mental health disabilities or in crisis.

The story is told with the aid of several harrowing anecdotes. One apparently mentally disturbed man was tased using “drive-stun” mode, which the manufacturer says requires safe distance. But Baltimore had no guidance on use. The man had to be taken to the emergency room afterward, and two officers were also injured.

In another case, an officer choked a suspect who he believed was trying to swallow bags of drugs that were evidence:

The use of force on Brandon’s neck—a handcuffed detainee who did not pose a threat to officer safety, and who was being arrested for what the officer’s described in their own report as a “street level drug transaction”—was excessive and unreasonable. Although some force to prevent the destruction of evidence or to protect Brandon may be reasonable, the sergeant’s application of pressure to Brandon’s throat was a use of lethal force that was not justified by the possible destruction of evidence or even the potential threat to Brandon of swallowing the narcotics.

Police seem to often endanger themselves. In one case, an officer pursued a man whom he believed fled when he saw police. The officer believed the man was carrying a weapon based on the way he ran, and chased the suspect into a home. “If Andrew had been armed, the officer’s choice of tactics—forcing entry without backup—could have resulted in the officer being shot,” the report notes. The officer eventually tased the man twice. “After taking him into custody, the officer discovered that Andrew was not armed, had no contraband, and was eventually determined, at a later, unknown time, to have an open warrant.”

One officer tased a man simply for swearing in an “aggressive” manner:

Although the report is not altogether clear on what the officer meant by “aggressive,” the report does make clear that the man’s “mouth”—his words—constituted the weapon or means of attack. Indeed, this report appears to indicate the officer felt he was justified in tasing an individual—a high level of force—for this reason. Moreover, the report noted that the individual’s “trademark” was “[e]xplicit word this place.” If this was in fact the officer’s justification for tasing this individual, it is grossly insufficient, and it would violate both the First and Fourth Amendments.

One man was stopped without reason, detained without basis, and had to be taken to a hospital. He was not charged with any crime. Nonetheless, the report notes,

The sergeant who responded to the scene confirmed that the involved officers tased the man twice and hit him in the face with their fists, yet the sergeant’s report of the incident concluded that the “officers showed great restraint and professionalism.”

The Justice Department also criticized BPD for firing guns at moving vehicles, which it said is “highly dangerous, ineffective, and may be constitutionally impermissible.”

Strip Searches

The department repeatedly engaged in improper strip searches, the report finds. In one incident, a woman was pulled over by two officers, one male and one female. She was instructed to strip.

The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity….The search occurred in full view of the street, although the supervising male officer claimed he “turned away” and did not watch the woman disrobe… Officers conducted this highly invasive search despite lacking any indication that the woman had committed a criminal offense or possessed concealed contraband.

In fact, the officers found no wrongdoing, and the woman was released without being charged. In another case, a teenage boy reported that an officer “pulled down the teenager’s pants and boxer shorts and strip-searched him in full view of the street and his girlfriend.” He filed a complaint, but that was not the end of the ordeal:

The teenager recounted to us that, shortly after filing the complaint, the same officer approached him near a McDonald’s restaurant in his neighborhood, pushed the teenager against a wall, pulled down his pants, and grabbed his genitals. The officer filed no charges against the teenager in the second incident, which the teenager believes was done in retaliation for filing a complaint about the first strip search.

Mishandling of Sexual-Assault Cases

Officers evinced an appalling attitude toward alleged victims of sexual assaults, the report found, based on conversations with victims and advocates, as well as documents. Officers engaged in victim-blaming and tried to discourage pressing of charges. For example:

Officers and detectives in BPD’s Sex Offense Unit often question victims in a manner that puts the blame for the sexual assault on the victim’s shoulders—for example, with questions suggesting the victims should feel personally responsible for the potential consequences of a criminal report on a suspect or for having engaged in behavior that invited the assault. In their interviews of women reporting sexual assault, for example, BPD detectives ask questions such as “Why are you messing that guy’s life up?” BPD officers and detectives also asked questions suggesting that they discredit the reports of victims who delayed in reporting the assault to the police.

One advocate reported hearing a detective in the Sex Offense Unit say that “all of our cases are bullshit.”

Complaints and Retaliation

Why have these practices been allowed to flourish within the department? One potential explanation is that Baltimore has effectively cut off any route for the airing of grievances, either from the public or from inside.

“BPD discourages members of the public from filing complaints against officers through the procedural requirements BPD has imposed on filing complaints, and BPD officers and supervisors have actively discouraged community members from filing complaints,” the report states. If people do make it over those hurdles, “BPD investigators frequently misclassify those complaints or administratively close them with little attempt to contact the complainant.”

Officers who might serve as whistleblowers are discouraged from doing so by the threat of retaliation. Several officers who had complained told the DOJ they believed they had been targeted. One especially egregious case is worth reporting in detail. A detective felt two officers had used excessive force. Despite a warning from a third cop that “If you’re a rat, your career here is done,” the detective filed a complaint.

The detective faced significant retaliation for exposing this misconduct. The detective recounted that, after reporting the incident to prosecutors, fellow officers frequently called him a “rat.” A sergeant left pictures of cheese on the detective’s desk. The detective also told us that a lieutenant denied his transfer request to a violent repeat offender squad because the detective “snitched.” The lieutenant allegedly said that the detective was “not the right fit” for the unit because they “have to do things in the gray area.” And on two occasions, no one in the detective’s unit responded to his calls for backup. The retaliation intensified as the officers’ trials approached. In November 2012, the detective found a dead rat on his car with its head severed under his wiper blades. Shortly thereafter, a BPD sergeant allegedly told the detective “you better pray to God you’re not the star witness” against the officers.

The man eventually moved to a different agency, and the department settled a lawsuit in 2016. But his experience had a chilling effect in other cases:

In one case, an officer in a specialized drug unit observed one of his fellow officers plant drugs on a suspect after a foot chase. The officer decided not to report the misconduct because he did not want BPD officers to “do me” the way they treated the detective.

* * *

The Baltimore report fills out a trifecta alongside similar documents from Cleveland and Ferguson. In each case, the Justice Department was brought in following the death of a black man at the hands of police that had resulted in outraged demonstrations in the streets: in Cleveland, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams (though the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice shortly before the Justice Department announced its findings overshadowed that case); in Ferguson, Michael Brown; and in Baltimore, Freddie Gray. In each of those cases, criminal prosecutions did not result in convictions, and, in fact, only the Gray case resulted in charges.

The protests and riots in Baltimore last spring—and the way the police handled or mishandled them—offered some sense of the broken relationship between Charm City and its police. But for anyone tempted to take the failed prosecution in the Gray case as an indication that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, or that African Americans are not badly victimized by police, the report should dispel those possibilities. Identifying the problems is different from solving them, however, and the report shows the enormity of the task Baltimore faces now, first in rebuilding its department and then in rebuilding trust with its black residents.

Justice Department Report on Baltimore Police (PDF)


Justice Department Report on Baltimore Police (Text)

The Turkish Rear Admiral Seeking Asylum in the U.S.

NEWS BRIEF The relationship between the United States and Turkey, two NATO allies, grows more strained by the day. As Turkey pressures the U.S. to extradite the alleged mastermind of the failed July coup who lives in Pennsylvania, it has also moved toward closer ties with Russia. Now, the country has learned that yet another alleged coup participant is in the U.S.

A Turkish military officer has reportedly claimed asylum in the U.S., the first to do so after the July 15 putsch. Authorities in Turkey say the man, Mustafa Ugurlu, is linked to the coup. Ugurlu, a rear admiral, was stationed at NATO’s Allied Command Transformation headquarters in Virginia. He was one of 26 Turkish military personnel working there.

An official in the Turkish embassy in Washington told Reuters:

On July 22, on that day he left his badges and his ID at the base and after that no one has heard anything from him.

Turkey has purged some 100 generals from top military ranks for their alleged connection to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, along with 70,000 other civil servants, academics, and military officers. Turkey has detained another 26,000 people for allegedly assisting in the coup attempt.

The Real Olympic Challenge for American Basketball

For almost every athlete in Rio, participating in the 2016 Olympic Games represents the pinnacle of their career. The 100-meter dash, the uneven bars, the marathon pentathlon—these events reach public consciousness just once every four years, and the people who dedicate their lives to mastering them get to compete against others who’ve done the same on a massive, rare stage.

There are exceptions: people for whom the Olympics aren’t end points but pit stops. A gold medal does less to distinguish Serena Williams or Andy Murray than a Wimbledon trophy does. The golf world met the sport’s inaugural inclusion in the Games with such dismissiveness that many of its top players stayed home. For players of sports that are already popular and well-known, the Olympics provide an outlet for patriotism, but not for the highest level of competition.

The purest example of this disconnect comes from United States basketball. With rosters full of superstars, both the men’s and women’s teams are such heavy favorites in the Olympic tournament that the traditional measures of world-class competition don’t apply. They are out not only to win, but also to win in style, to assert the continued primacy of American players and leagues in an American game. On the one hand, this can result in some dull watching. Through four combined games so far, neither team has won by less than 30 points, margins that can make you thirst for the competition of the NBA or WNBA season. On the other, though, there’s a kind of thrill in seeing usual rivals come together to uphold a national sporting reputation. The goal of everyone in Rio is to win, but the goal of the United States basketball teams is steeper: to prove they can’t lose.

The last quarter-century of international men’s basketball features two watershed moments. One was in 1992, when the first U.S. Olympic team to include professionals—the famous “Dream Team,” with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, etc.—tore through the Barcelona Olympics with showy ease, ridding games of their drama in the opening minutes and spending the rest of the time performing intricate ballets of dunks and fast breaks, stifling defense and quickfire passing.  The other was in 2004, when the U.S. lost three times in Athens en route to the bronze medal: the first time an American team with NBA players failed to win gold.

After Athens, the United States adopted a more structured international program, seeking to build a team with continuity instead of the one-off All-Star rosters that it had gotten used to deploying. The Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was installed at the helm, and players who wished to be considered for upcoming Olympics had to establish themselves as part of the program in training camps and other international tournaments. The U.S. men have won every Olympic game they’ve played since then, taking home gold medals in 2008 and 2012.

This year’s iteration may be a bit lighter on top-level talent than the previous two—last year’s NBA MVP, Stephen Curry, declined to participate, as did the Finals MVP, LeBron James—but it retains its steep advantage over the rest of the world. Kevin Durant, 2014 MVP and habitual NBA scoring champion, paces the team, with four-time Olympian Carmelo Anthony, sharpshooter Klay Thompson, and sleight-of-hand point guard Kyrie Irving in tow.

If the United States men are heavy favorites, the women are mortal locks.

The results to this point have been definitive. In its opener against China, the U.S. team played stifling defense, forcing turnovers and running out for easy baskets. In its follow-up on Monday against Venezuela, it overcame a shaky first quarter to pull away over the course of the game. Highlights came so frequently they massed into one mental reel: Durant rising easily and canning a long jumper, Irving skipping to the rim for a layup, the ball arcing for one of a dozen alley-oops. One or another of the U.S. maestros overpowered his defender, or the ball whirled around the court in a tic-tac-toe flurry. The shifting modes of attack seemed less strategic than inclusive; up 30 points, the players could make sure everybody got his share.

The competition will grow stiffer over the course of the tournament. On Wednesday, the U.S. will face an Australia team with some NBA talent, and even more well-stocked squads loom in the medal round.  Still, the pattern established back in 1992 and revitalized in 2008 seems likely to hold.

The United States’ Tina Charles is congratulated by her teammate Brittney Griner during a game against Senegal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. AP

If the United States men are heavy favorites, the women are mortal locks. The former team, for all its skill, is sometimes prone to lapses of missed shots and shoddy communication; the latter is as steady in its mission as a thresher rolling over a field of wheat. The women’s team has none of the holdout issues the men’s team does; it’s so full of great players, in fact, that even the depths of its roster feature peerless talent. The reigning WNBA MVP, Elena Delle Donne, comes off the bench for this team, as does the 2015 Finals MVP, Sylvia Fowles.  The starting lineup is ideal: Sue Bird as the steadying hand at point guard, Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore as versatile scorers, Tina Charles as the rebar-tough forward, Brittney Griner as the shot-swatting and rebound-wrangling center.

The true engine of the U.S. women’s team, though, may not be its talent but its history. Compile any possible lineup, and chances are its members have played together somewhere else before. Geno Auriemma, the steward of the University of Connecticut’s dynastic basketball program, coaches the team, and five of his former pupils play for it. Four members of the defending WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx are on the team as well. By mining the sport’s recent powerhouses, the U.S. team combines top-tier talent with honed chemistry.

The job of the U.S. teams is to nudge the likelihood of victory from near-certain to certain.

The style of play that results seems telepathic. To watch the U.S. women’s team is to be aware of how beneficial brilliant players can be to one another. The ball moves logically and artfully, working its way inside and attracting multiple defenders before skipping back out to the hands of Taurasi or Moore for an open three-pointer, or shifting around the perimeter before darting, via a well-timed bounce pass, to a cutting player for a layup. Every possession is a masterpiece of control—advantages exploited, leverage maximized. The team is as tuned as an orchestra and as inevitable as a mathematical proof.

Barring disaster, the U.S. women’s team will provide even less drama than the men. It’s already walloped one of its presumed closest competitors, beating Spain by 40 points on Monday. Viewers looking for the excitement of close margins and time running out will have to look to other teams in the tournament, or to other sports. For an exhibition of pure expertise, though, nobody in the Olympics has it beat.

In a certain light, the United States basketball program can seem antithetical to the spirit of the Olympics. For its participants, it’s something of a side project.  Rather than staying in the athlete’s village in Rio, the two teams are based on a well-appointed nearby yacht, and the influence of Nike is so pervasive that non-Swoosh-wearers’ feet are obscured in promotional photos. For some NBA fans, the men’s team mostly provides the chance to see Durant, who signed with the Golden State Warriors this summer, play alongside his new teammates, Thompson and Draymond Green; for fans of UConn basketball, the women’s team is much like a family reunion. It’s big-money, big-name sports imprinting itself on an event that is at its best when it has an element of the amateur to it—the relative unknown coming up big in his or her only shot.

There is, though, a low-level desperation that comes with such heavy expectations. Addressing the pressure that comes with playing basketball for the United States, Auriemma said, “It’s my experience that the more you win, the more paranoid you become about losing because you know down the road it’s going to come. We just keep our fingers crossed and work really hard that it doesn’t happen in the next two weeks.” The job of the U.S. teams is to nudge the likelihood of victory from near-certain to certain. The output of that project is a level of virtuosity that, setting its trappings aside, is superbly Olympian.

Duke of Westminster, 1951-2016

NEWS BRIEF Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster, who once said he’d have preferred to be born poor and live in the Bahamas instead of being one of the richest men in the world, has died. He was 64.

Cavendish took suddenly ill Tuesday and was airlifted to the Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire where he later died. He had a fortune of more than $10 billion, and owned “half of London,” which will now be turned over to his son, Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, 25.

The family’s wealth dates back to a marriage that, as The Guardian reported, bestowed hundreds of acres in London to his ancestors’ name:

The origins of the Grosvenor family fortune date back more than 300 years when an ancestor of the new duke, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, married wealthy heiress Mary Davies, who had inherited a medieval manor in Middlesex and 500 acres of undeveloped land west of London.

Part of that land, which forms part of the Grosvenor’s London estate, was built on by the family in the early 18th century and became known as Mayfair, named after the annual Mayday fair. A second big development by the family 100 years later became Belgravia, named after the village of Belgrave, near the family’s country seat in Cheshire.

Cavendish took his wealth in stride. Through his Westminster Foundation, he donated to more than 1,500 charities, and once spent $5 million on his son’s 21st birthday party. He was an indifferent student as a young man, but joined the military, an institution where he’d hoped to build a career, but had to abandon in 1973 to become trustee of his family’s estate. He signed up in 1994 for the Territorial Army, the U.K.’s equivalent of the National Guard.

If trapped on a desert island, he once told the BBC, he would take along a telescope and the song “Albatross” by Fleetwood Mac.

The Infinite Possibility of No Man’s Sky

Underwater, someone explores the wreckage of a crashed ship, swimming among exotic, alien fish. Then they surface onto an alien beach, bordered by tall red grass, before hopping into a spaceship, blasting into the sky, and zipping through an asteroid field in search of more celestial bodies. In 2013, a two-minute “announcement trailer” sparked an instant frenzy of anticipation in the world of video gaming. “Every planet unique. Every planet unexplored,” it boasted, promoting No Man’s Sky as a sort of cosmic Minecraft, a universe-sized sandbox for players to discover. How did the hype get so impossibly large, and could the game even hope to live up to its promise?

Three years later, after waves of fan excitement, multiple delays, and untold rumors about the game’s tortured development process, No Man’s Sky finally arrived on Tuesday and is available for purchase on the PlayStation 4 and PC. Booting the game up and navigating its world is as daunting as its early advertising suggested, and there’s certain mundanity to its early hours, perhaps befitting your avatar’s status as a speck in a giant universe. But it also turns the mere act of discovery into thrilling, fulfilling joy—this is a game whose objectives are liberated from a hackneyed story arc, and where agency is invested entirely in the player. There are no rails—simply jump in your ship, blast into space, and make your own adventure.

Despite its staggering size, No Man’s Sky was created by a a tiny British company called Hello Games (or, more specifically, by just four of its employees). Its co-founder Sean Murray wanted to visualize his dreams of embarking as an astronaut to unexplored alien worlds; he and his team created a complex game engine that could generate near-infinite random environments, plants, and creatures. The indie-game phenomenon Minecraft used similar technology to create a Neptune-sized planet with unpredictable landscapes for players to roam around on. No Man’s Sky takes that principle and multiplies it: Instead of one planet to explore, it has 18 quintillion.

Hello Games

It’s that boundless possibility, and the independent spirit of Hello Games, that made No Man’s Sky so appealing when it was first announced. The game exists in an online world that ever player is connected to; everyone is exploring the same universe in their own separate ships, naming planets, flora, and faunae that they discover and that other intrepid explorers might later stumble across. On paper, it sounds like a revolutionary title, one that could bust open new avenues for the medium of gaming. Super Mario 64 turned the side-scrolling platform game into a 360-degree experience. Metal Gear Solid presented itself as a work of living cinema, one the player could move through and affect with their actions. Grand Theft Auto turned the “sandbox game,” where players roam an open world, into an industry norm. No Man’s Sky aims to do the same, but with an open universe.

The early hours of the game are slow going, as it introduces its core mechanics one by one. Stranded on a planet, you have to harvest its minerals and isotopes to repair your ship; once you’re in space, you begin to learn the vagaries of interstellar navigation, first hopping around a local solar system before upgrading your engines to faster-than-light travel. The planetary landscapes are suitably bizarre: The skies are every color in the Crayola box (from pine green to burnt sienna), the ground covered in misshapen, glowing outcroppings, with hybrid animals walking around that look like escapees from the Island of Dr. Moreau.

Hello Games

You might stumble across remote outposts, or colossal space stations, and meet aliens looking to trade goods or initiate diplomacy. Much like Minecraft, No Man’s Sky takes a perverse pleasure in not making things easy—if you don’t speak the alien’s language (and you probably don’t), you’ll have to communicate through simple gestures to get things done. There’s an undeniably social aspect to a game this vast—already, the internet is pooling its resources to figure out the game’s secrets and pass around tips and hints. That collective spirit is part of Hello Games’ mission, but like many big titles, No Man’s Sky has also laid bare some of the more uncomfortable aspects of gaming fandom.

As anticipation built, the game’s subreddit became a hub of near-religious fervor, with fans speculating furiously about every last detail in every piece of promotional material. One fan spent more than $1,000 to obtain an unfinished preview copy of the game. Hello Games’ Murray was profiled by The New Yorker more than a year before the game’s release. He appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in October, demonstrating the massive scale of his game and letting the late-night host name a solar system after himself. “And I thought Morgan Freeman was God,” Colbert joked, referring to the episode’s other guest.

Unlike Minecraft, No Man’s Sky arrives burdened with a reputation as a game-changer.

Online fandom can often get out of hand—witness the nightmare spawned by the Gamergate cadre, or the repeated harassment of critics and fans that plays out with the release of almost any superhero movie. Indeed, when the release date for No Man’s Sky was pushed from June 21 to August 9, some fans were apoplectic. The author of a Kotaku article announcing the delay, Jason Schreier, was bombarded with threats simply for reporting the news. Whether the game itself will live up to these impossible expectations seems almost beside the point—and it will likely take weeks, if not longer, for players to know for sure. But for now, early reaction seems undoubtedly positive.

No Man’s Sky has the advantage of being big enough to avoid scorching insta-takes from reviewers and fans. Even after hours of play, there’s a sense of barely scratching the surface of what it can offer. In contrast to a game like Minecraft, a pixelated indie creation that slowly built out its fandom over years of updates and small-scale tweaks, No Man’s Sky arrives burdened with a reputation as a game-changer, and it may turn off some casual players with its quiet beginning. But the first time you get your ship working, blast off into the atmosphere, and emerge into the starry void, there’s a sense of infinite possibility ahead—a feeling that few games in the history of the medium have ever inspired.

The Glorious Drama of the U.S. Swim Team

If Hollywood screenwriters, in their best moments of stimulant-aided inspiration, had tried to write the story of the 2016 U.S. Olympic swim team, they’d have been hard pushed to come up with better narratives than those that have played out over the past few days in Rio. The storied old-timer hoping for one last shot at glory. The scrappy, record-busting upstart. High-stakes rivalry not seen since the Cold War, encapsulated in a single raised finger.

So it’s hard to blame NBC for relishing every second of the drama, and amping it up as much as possible via judiciously timed documentary segments, detailed analysis of supposed hostilities, and seemingly endless shots of Michael Phelps wearing a parka and noise-canceling headphones offstage, glowering intensely. “There’s the live shot that we’ll be showing a lot of,” a commentator said on Tuesday night, after spending much of Monday remarking out loud what good television Phelps’s Darth Maul-ish snarl at Chad le Clos was. Thanks to the U.S. swim team, the network—which paid $1.2 billion for the rights to air the 2016 Olympics—has some remarkably compelling storylines to pick apart, and it’s wasted no effort in producing and editing them for maximal viewing satisfaction.

The drama began on Sunday, when Lilly King, a 19-year-old American swimmer from Indiana, won her heat in the 100-meter breaststroke, qualifying for the semi-finals with a time of 1:05.78. In the pool, King wagged her index finger, as if to remind her competitors that she was #1. In the first semifinal, as King watched from the swimmers’ ready room, the Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova mimicked the finger wag after she won the race, qualifying for the final. And just like that, it was on. King wagged a finger back at the projection screen, still sporting a pink and orange towel around her neck. “You wave your finger number one, and you’ve been caught drug cheating?” she told NBC. “I’m not a fan.”

The rivalry, NBC was sure to emphasize, was more than just friendly competition between fierce athletes: It was practically a battle between good and evil. On the one side was American exceptionalism, and on the other was Russian cheating. Efimova only found out she’d be competing in the Olympics on Saturday, the day before her first event, after the entire Russian Olympics squad had come under intense scrutiny thanks to varied allegations of doping. In 2014, Efimova tested positive for the steroid DHEA and was banned for more than a year; in March this year she also tested positive for meldonium, the same drug that got the Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova banned from competing for two years. Every time she stepped into the pool area in Rio, Efimova was booed by the crowd. But on Monday night, King soundly beat her for the gold medal, setting a new Olympic record in the 100-meter breaststroke in 1:04.93. Not since Balboa beat Drago has American justice been so definitively delivered.

The U.S./Russia beefing livened up Olympic coverage that’s been markedly less charged in recent years. Reporting from the Athens Games in 2004, The Washington Times lamented the lack of an arch enemy to tear down. Russia, once “a big, bad, imposing supervillain, similar to USA Basketball ... has become just another player at the Games, one more nation panning for gold in the unglamorous waters of modern pentathlon,” it wrote, concluding that all this honorable brotherhood made the Olympics rather dull. “Nationalism makes the Olympics worth watching. Jingoism makes them worth caring about.”

Phelps wagged his finger in the pool, and the lesson was clear: If you come at the king, you best not miss.

In this spirit, NBC offered up another villain on Monday night: the South African swimmer Chad le Clos. In an extraordinary moment captured in the ready room, le Clos appeared to practice a shadow-boxing routine while the veteran Olympian Michael Phelps glared at him in response. It was the stuff that memes are made of. And when Phelps beat le Clos in the 200-meter butterfly semifinal, the first question NBC asked him after he emerged, dripping, from the pool, wasn’t about the race, but rather what was going through his mind as he’d fixed his rival with a death stare minutes earlier. “Nothing,” Phelps responded, diplomatically, but the footage told a different story.

On Tuesday, NBC aired a lengthy segment detailing the reasons for the feud: In the London 2012 Games, le Clos beat Phelps for gold by hundredths of a second, after which Phelps announced his retirement. But in 2014, he returned to the sport, and to the 200-meter butterfly in particular, claiming that the times other swimmers were making were “really not that fast.” Le Clos, taking this as a personal slight, bragged in 2015 about putting up a time in the 100-meter butterfly that Phelps “hasn’t done in four years.” Later that same day, spurred by the challenge, Phelps beat his rival’s time, saying, “I’m going to let what I do in the pool do my talking.”

With that, the two swimmers faced off once more on Tuesday night in the final for the 200-meter butterfly. As Phelps came out into the pool area, he gazed straight ahead, while le Clos, next to him, appeared to try to make eye contact. The tension was palpable. And Phelps, perhaps inevitably, won, claiming his 20th Olympic gold medal, while le Clos came fourth, not even managing to scrape a bronze. After winning, Phelps wagged his finger in the pool, and the lesson was clear: If you come at the king, you best not miss. Or as the U.S swimmer Natalie Coughlin put it on Twitter:

Don't poke the bear.

— Natalie Coughlin (@NatalieCoughlin) August 10, 2016

Amid all this sparring has been Katie Ledecky, the 19-year-old prodigy from Maryland, fighting with no one except perhaps the laws of physics. And yet Ledecky’s extraordinary victories have been proof that success offers its own drama—the fact that a distance swimmer could manage to defeat one of the best sprinters in the world (the Swedish swimmer Sarah Sjöström) in the 200-meter freestyle proves that Ledecky’s talents are almost unparalleled. In her first post-race interview, Ledecky was still panting. “I’m pretty sure that’s the closest I’ve come to throwing up in the middle of a race,” she said.

If she had, it’s fair to say NBC would have made the most of the moment.

The Rio Olympics: A Crib Sheet

The most decorated athlete in Olympics history took home his 20th gold medal on Tuesday night. For America’s Michael Phelps, this isn’t just the latest victory in an extraordinary run, it’s also sweet, sweet payback for his silver-medal finish to South Africa’s Chad le Clos at the 2012 Games, and a possibly definitive salvo in a rivalry that’s been simmering for years.

Even beyond Phelps’s win, Tuesday’s events treated America well overall. For the second time in a row, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won the gold, earning the highest score in all four gymnastics events. Now the focus turns to individual competitions, and the question of whether Simone Biles, widely considered the best gymnast in the world, will continue to fulfill the stratospheric expectations heaped upon her.

Katie Ledecky, the American who astonished the world with her gold-medal-crushing 400m freestyle swim on Sunday, also won her second gold medal of the Games in the 200m swim. Her win is stunning because Ledecky is a distance swimmer who beat Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström, one of the best sprinters in the world.

The U.S. did have a couple of notable disappointments on Tuesday, however: tennis legend Serena Williams, who was knocked out of competition on Tuesday after losing to Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina. Serena and her sister Venus Williams also lost their first doubles match, their first time losing the Olympics after three victories.

Read on for a guide to some of the biggest events at the Games.

Swimming

Who to Watch:

Men: America’s Michael Phelps, the winningest Olympian in history, remains the one to beat. We’re also watching America’s Ryan Lochte, South Africa’s Chad le Clos, and Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh.

Women: The spotlight is on America’s Katie Ledecky, the first swimmer to compete in and win all four freelance distances at the 2015 World Championships. We’re also watching Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, as well as Missy Franklin, Simone Manuel, and Emily Seebohm, all from the U.S.

What We’re Watching Next:

Wednesday, 8/10: Men’s 100m freestyle, women’s 4x200m freestyle relay

Thursday, 8/11: Men’s 200m backstroke, men’s 200m individual medley, women’s 100m freestyle

Friday, 8/12: Men’s 100m butterfly, women’s 200m backstroke, women’s 800m freestyle

Saturday, 8/13: Women’s 50m freestyle, men’s 1500m freestyle, men and women’s 4x100m freestyle relay

The Story So Far:

Michael Phelps has earned his 20th gold medal, making the winningest Olympian even winning-er. If you haven’t watched Katie Ledecky celebrating her 400m freestyle win before some of her competitors even finished the race, do it now. This is the intense athleticism the Olympics were invented to highlight.

Gymnastics

Who to Watch:

Men: The men’s individual all-round can be seen Wednesday. Japan’s Kohei Uchimura is the favorite to take gold; watch out, though for China’s Deng Shundi, widely viewed as the gymnast most likely to upset Uchimura. Brazil’s Arthur Zanetti, the defending Olympic champion, is also in the mix.

Women: The spotlight is on USA’s Simone Biles, 19, viewed as the world’s best gymnast. She could achieve a first in Rio: five gold medals. You can watch her Thursday at the Women's gymnastics all-around final.

What We’re Watching Next:

Wednesday, 8/10: Men’s individual all-round final

Thursday, 8/11: Women’s individual all-round final

Sunday, 8/14: Men’s floor exercise final

Tuesday, 8/16: Women’s floor exercise final

The Story So Far:

The U.S. women’s team dominated their rivals to win gold, earning the highest score in all four gymnastics events (184.897). It’s the USA’s fifth successive global title. Russia, which scored 176.888, claimed silver; China with 176.003 won bronze. On the men’s side, Japan won the team all-round, shocking China, the favorites, who took bronze; The Russian men won silver. The U.S. finished fifth.

Football (Soccer)

Who to Watch:

Men: Brazil is the favorite to win, but the Seleção appear to be wilting under pressure. Their biggest rivals are Germany and no one watching the beautiful game will have forgotten the 7-1 drubbing the Brazilian men suffered at the hands of the Germans in the FIFA World Cup semifinal in, where else, Brazil.  

Women: Team USA’s women, the defending champions, are the favorites to take gold; Their Brazilian counterparts, who are also favored, will have home-crowd support in Rio. Germany and France are also in the running.

What We’re Watching Next:

Wednesday, 8/10: Men: Argentina versus Honduras; Germany versus Fiji; Mexico versus South Korea; Denmark versus Brazil.

Friday, 8/12:  Women’s quarterfinals

Saturday, 8/13: Men’s quarterfinals  

The Story So Far:

The Brazilian men have played two games so far—against South Africa and Iraq—both of which have ended in goalless draws. They take on Denmark on Wednesday. On the women’s side, after a 2-2 draw against Colombia, the U.S. women won their preliminary games against France and New Zealand, to sit atop their group. Brazil, meanwhile, with victories against Sweden and China (and a draw against South Africa) sits atop its group.The quarterfinals start Friday.

Track and Field

Who to Watch:

Men: Two words: Usain Bolt. No one has beaten the Jamaican powerhouse in the 100 meters or 200 meters at an Olympic or world-championships final since 2007. But Bolt is coming off a hamstring injury and hasn’t been at his best in either the 100m or the 200m. Count him out, though, at your own peril. His main rival is likely to be Justin Gatlin, the American who has returned to the games after serving a four-year ban for doping.

Women: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price is vying for her third consecutive Olympic gold in the 100m. No woman has ever achieved that. Also, South Africa’s Caster Semenya, who is seen as a contender in the 800m.

What We’re Watching Next:

Friday, 8/12: The track-and-field events start