Late to the Game: Moneyball (and Ted Williams)

Growing up in Cleveland, of course I was an Indians fan, reading the box scores and Gordon Cobbledick every morning, collecting Topps cards, listening to games on radio and watching on TV. In college, I got away from it all. Working a contract in Cleveland March 96 to May 97, I picked it up again while the Tribe was hot and I actually attended a game but drifted away after Mike Hargrove was fired for winning division and league titles but never the World Series. Here and now, later this month, The Red-Headed  League is taking a multigenerational tour of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago just to buy peanuts and crackerjack. To keep up with the news while they tour, I have been reading books.

• Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball by Richard Hershberger
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning and Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (also watched the movie twice)
• The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia (2000 pages of statistics)
• The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams

With Strike Four as background, Moneyball was fascinating. Although Billie Beane fought, won, and lost his battle in 2002, the concepts of alternative statistics had deep roots. The book and the movie both nod to Bill James, of course, and of necessity, the book reveals more of the otherwise hidden history. 

So, Ted Williams drew from me a wry smile when I read this:

“Now, if a .250 hitter up forty times gets 10 hits, maybe if he had laid off bad pitches he would have gotten five walks. That’s five fewer at-bats or 10 hits for 35, or .286. And he would have scored more—everybody has been crying for more runs—because he would have been on base more.” (Page 26).

It is just a glimpse of the theories that Beane was pursuing in Moneyball but it indicates that some professionals who thought deeply about the game had ideas that most others never considered. 

Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts is often cited in Moneyball as having been cited by others. James was not alone and it should have been surprising if he had been. Our common culture has been influenced by scientific thinking at the same time that baseball was evolving. The first rule book was published in 1845 and older (partial) publications are known. Also, unlike other games with simple tallies of points scored, wins and losses baseball is a game of statistics. In Moneyball, Lewis followed James in insisting that followers do not copy but develop new theories and test those with not just new data but new kinds of data. 

According to Hershberger, among those other researchers were Ken Mauriello and Jack Armbruster of AVM Systems. Later, Bill James worked with Dick Cramer to establish Stats, Inc., which was eventually sold to Fox News in 1999 for $45 million. (See, also, When Big Data was Small: My Life in Baseball and Drug Design by Richard D. Cramer; University of Nebraska Press, 2019.) Meanwhile Paul DePodesta met AVM and then was hired away from Cleveland by Billie Beane in 1998. However, as early as 1977, Dan Okrent bought his copy of Baseball Abstracts #1, and took the knowledge to his friends who met to talk baseball at La Rotisserie Française and hence, “Rotisserie Baseball” as the start of fantasy leagues. It must be noted, also, that in Moneyball, James is cited as having played “tabletop baseball” as a youngster. That would have been an expected (if not wildly popular) hobby at time when kids built large scale “soapbox racers” and miniature “slot car racers, flew powered model airplanes and model rockets.

That being as it was, it was not until 1981, that Okrent was able get Sports Illustrated to write about Bill James, Okrent’s first submission having been rejected by “proofreaders” two years earlier by for contradicting “known facts.” Even more to the point, also, in Moneyball: Mike Gimbel was a statistician for the Boston Red Sox; Craig Wright did the  job for the Texas Rangers; Eddie Epstein worked for the Baltimore Orioles; and none was successful in their roles. Today, things are different. Whether Beane was the prime mover or an agency of something else is for historiography to explore. 

Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers is about the astronomers (astrologers) between Galileo and Newton who came close to but never touched the relationships between measuring the area under a curve, the slope of a curve at a point, and the motions of bodies falling on Earth and the orbits of planets around the Sun. (See Copernicus on the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies here https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2017/11/copernicus-on-revolution-of-heavenly.html

In a science fiction novel (perhaps Neuromancer or Count Zero), a European clucks that Americans think that everything was newly invented in their own generation. In baseball, we now (2023) have a 20-second pitch clock on the field. In fact, baseball always had a 20-second rule. 

“The 1901 season saw the implementation of a predecessor to the modern-day pitch clock. When no runners were on base, a one-ball penalty would be imposed if the pitcher did not deliver a pitch within 20 seconds of the batter taking his stance at the plate.^[11][12] The rules were tightened before the start of the 1955 season, and the 20-second timer now started once the pitcher received the ball. However, these 20-second limits were hardly ever enforced, and were left to the umpire's judgement.^[13][14]”. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_clock

Major League Baseball does acknowledge the new science of statistics and at the same time grants the importance of the fantasy leagues of fandom. 

• MLB Standard statistics here: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/standard-stats
• MLB Advanced Statistics here: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats

“In the past several decades, the baseball industry has become more enlightened -- thanks to an assist from advanced metrics.

Although standard statistics remain quite valuable, advanced formulas and figures have played a pivotal role in the creation of championship teams -- both in Major League Baseball and fantasy leagues around the world.

Today, each big league franchise relies upon advanced stats to some degree, with a growing number of clubs employing complete staffs devoted to their study, development and deployment in decision-making processes.

Many advanced stats have long been tied to sabermetrics -- a reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) -- a term defined by Bill James as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." James, widely considered the face and most influential advocate of sabermetric study, has helped shape the lens through which the game of baseball is viewed.” (Ibid)

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Along Interstate 35 over downtown Austin is a billboard with a motivational message: William Shatner and “Boldly go.” Everyone knows what that means. So, it would be unusual, perhaps, if over the course of the past 35 years, science had no equal and opposite attraction for baseball.

“As in baseball, the discovery of bacterial diversity has experienced a transition from relying on the subjective judgment of experts to objective and universal statistical methods. Originally, discovery and demarcation of bacterial species required a lot of expertise with a particular group of organisms, involving difficult measures of metabolic and chemical differences. To make the taxonomy more accessible, decades ago the field complemented this arduous approach with a kind of idiot’s guide, where anyone could use widely available molecular techniques to identify species—for example, a certain level of overall DNA sequence similarity.” — “Science Needs More Moneyball” by Frederick M. Cohan, American Scientist, May-June 2012, Vol. 100. No. 3, page 182. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/science-needs-more-moneyball

George Carlin on Baseball vs Football

This was often part of his show and the content changed for different venues and  audiences. The easy narrative was that football is bad and baseball is good.

• Football is a 20th century game of technology. Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game.
• Football is played on a rigidly defined gridiron field. Baseball is played in a park where the foul lines widen out to infinity and every park is different.
• In football you wear a helmet. In baseball, you wear a cap. 
• Baseball is so civilized that the uniforms have pockets. 
• Football proceeds by downs. In baseball you are “up.” 
• Football has penalties. In baseball, it is just an error, (oops).
• Football is a game of land conquest. In that, we are Europe Junior. We advanced on the Native Americans ten yards at a time: Ohio down; Midwest to go. 
• The object in football is to drive through your enemy’s defenses with an aerial assault, a ground assault, a blitz or a shotgun. In baseball, the object is to go home, to be safe at home.
• In every other game, the offense controls the ball. In baseball the defense controls the ball.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Hail to the Spartan Victors? 

Why a Level Playing Field? 

Shrugging the Stigma of Success 

The Legacy of Vannevar Bush (Part 3: Conclusion)

The response to Pres. Roosevelt’s request closes with Appendix 5: “Report to the Committee of Publication of Scientific Information.” It is short and to the point: except for considerations of military necessity, all scientific publications must return to their culture of sharing and openness. Appendix 4: “Report of the Committee on Discovery and Development of Scientific Talent” addressed the immediate shortage of scientists and projected that demand into the future. Moreover, science exists within a wider culture  so the committee insisted that nothing recommended here should interfere with the recruitment and development of talented people in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. 

“Table 8 shows that for every four able boys in the upper quarter, there were six able girls. Table 11 shows that the ratio of able boys to able girls in the upper quarter enrolled in college was 6 to 4.5. Thus, it is clear that the greatest social and personal loss of human resources comes in the ranks of able girls in the upper quarter” (Page 198) 

Persons who receive benefits under the plan should be selected solely on the basis of merit, without regard to sex, race, color, or creed. -- Page 170.

“Likewise proposals for recruiting more college students into the physical and biological sciences and enlisting more graduate students for training in research in the physical and biological sciences should be viewed in the light of the over-all needs of the country and of the requirements in other fields of research and in the several professions. If too many of the limited number of high quality students are absorbed by fields of scientific research, research in the social sciences and in the arts and humanities may be jeopardized with probably unfavorable reactions upon scientific research.”  — Page 204

“As said in the general preamble to this report, we think that plans for the discovery and development of scientific talent should have a limit related to the needs of the Nation as a whole for trained talent in all activities that are necessary for the national welfare. We think, also as stated, that while we have no fears that too much top ability can be found and developed there is some danger that too many scientists of less than top ability may be trained, thereby debasing the currency of scientific training to the point where scientific careers may not look attractive either to the best or to the second best.”  — page 168

“The findings of this study, in harmony with the findings of other studies, show that approximately as many of the ablest high school graduates are out of college as are in college. 

“On the basis of the sample (of 1,754 cases), the upper quarter of the State’s 16,000 high school graduates would contain a minimum of 4,000 of the ablest individuals, the type of students who really do well in college. Forty-nine percent of 4,000 is 1,960 individuals with high potential college ability, who for some reason or reasons, did not enroll in college. From the point of view of the colleges, as well as of the individuals and of society, the loss in human resources indicated in these data is highly significant.”  Page 197-198

[Citations above are from —“The Utilization of Potential College Ability Found in June 1940, Graduates of Kentucky High Schools,” by Horace Leonard Davis. Bulletin of the Bureau of School Service, College of Education, University of Kentucky. Vol. XV. No. 1. Sept. 1942. — given on page 198]

Total probable deficit due to war 1941 through 1955. Chemistry, Engineering, Geology, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, and Biological Sciences: 16,870.

“… it takes at least 6 years from college entry to achieve a doctor’s degree or its equivalent in science or engineering.”— page 3, and the fact is repeated on 27, 156, 166, 177-9, and 182.

"No matter how capable and gifted boys and girls may be, if they do not have opportunities to complete elementary and high school, they cannot go on to college and thence to graduate school for research training." -- Page 192 

“All economic groups, except the highest salaried group, are represented the highest one percentile class.” — (Page 198)

“Brightest seniors are not going to college." (Page 199)

An Indiana study published in 1922 showed:

If we compare the records made on our tests by the group of seniors representing the richest and the poorest homes, we find that there are proportionally more children possessing the highest grades of mental ability among the poorest class than among the wealthiest class, and more individuals with high average grades of intelligence among the wealthier than among the poorer group. The wealthiest group ranks high on central tendency. The poorest salaried group ranks low on central tendency and also has a larger percentage of individuals possessing the lower grades of mental ability.

But there are individuals in this class who obtain the highest intelligence rating made by high school seniors. * * * (Page 161) 

"It is still more significant that so many of this most superior group of high-school seniors will not attend college, while those with the most inferior grades of intelligence are planning to attend, in ever increasing numbers. Twenty-five percent of the brightest seniors found in the entire State said they were not planning to attend college at all, while 65 to 70 percent of the dullest seniors had definitely decided to go to college, most of them having already selected the college they expected to attend."

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARYFACTS

The Legacy of Vannevar Bush (Part 1) 

Vannevar Bush’s Legacy Part 2) 

The Scientific Method (2016) 

The Scientific Method (2021) 

I Stopped Listening to NPR

It was a long time coming, but I stopped listening to NPR radio on my local affiliate here in Austin, KUT-FM. Two stories hallmarked my decision: a denial of left wing violence and a hatchet job on Falun Gong. 

Words come with responsibilities for the creator and receiver. Understanding the hidden messages in news reporting is a necessary skill for any serious democrat (or republican). Reading and listening require translating, filtering, and interpreting. I learned to do it by the time I first took a journalism class in the 8th grade. When I entered high school, I also began writing news. For a couple of years lately, I would flip between Fox radio (KLBJ-AM/FM) and NPR. The headlines were often the same though the nuances were different. The truth was mixed in there somewhere for me to extract and evaluate. 

Now, I get my news by reading the Associated Press on my computer and phone. It is opinionated reporting, of course, beginning with the choice of stories. What is important? Why? Make of it what you will, they decide what to tell you about. So far, I have had less cause for groaning and muttering. 

LEFT WING VIOLENCE AND THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

Reporting on the murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky by Elias Rodriguez on May 22, 2025, National Public Radio denied the reality of violence committed in the name of progressive social causes. 

A. MARTÍNEZ: Now, we know that political violence has been on the rise in the United States, but how much of that are we seeing from the far left?

ODETTE YOUSEF: Look, the data show that the far right has been responsible for most of the lethal political violence we've seen in the last four decades. But I spoke with Colin Clarke about this. He says he's been warning about a rise in far-left militancy for years and says it's a reaction to the rise in far-right extremist activity. He's with The Soufan Group.

Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky

YOUSEF: … Historically, far-left violence has mostly been property damage, A. You know, we've seen this with the vandalism of Tesla vehicles and some of the riots during the summer of the racial justice protests in 2020. Lately, though, there have also been high-profile events like attempted assassinations of Trump, the killing of a health care CEO, where the facts are muddy but nonetheless there is a perception that these were leftist actors. This attack, though, may be a clear case of lethality from the left.

MARTÍNEZ: Oh, OK. That's terrible to hear. What happens now? Where did things go from here?

YOUSEF: You know, Clarke says this should prompt some soul-searching on the left. It's tough to claim a moral high ground when someone commits an act like this.

(Read the full transcript below. Also, although he said, "That's terrible to hear" his delivery carried absolutely no hint of terror. He dismissed it.)

In 1957, Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza catalogued five common excuses offered by criminals :

• Denial of Responsibility
• Denial of Injury
• Denial of the Victim
• Condemning the Condemners
• Appeal to Higher Authority

“Techniques of Neutralization” in American Sociological Review, Vol. 22, No. 6. (Dec., 1957), pp. 664-670.

Anti World Trade Riot in Seattle

NPR and the progressives whom it excuses betray a primitive epistemology which accepts physical objects as metaphysical constants: steel, lumber, hydro-electric dams, and skyscrapers are no different than rocks, trees, rivers, and mountains. So, if you destroy property, you are not really hurting anyone.

In fact, criminal acts are not the special province of any political group. Perpetrators justify their acts with words that are consonant with their own beliefs. It begins and ends there. Claiming the moral high ground is exactly what empowers violence. We couldn’t help it. We had to do it. They deserved it. Who cares about them anyway? They are just as bad as we are and even worse. So why pick on us?

NPR never condemned Occupy protests or Black Lives Matter riots. Finally, this instance of denial was too disingenuous and hypocritical to ignore. So, I stopped listening.

NOT OUR RELIGION

The expose´ that I heard was not their May 13 broadcast on All Things Considered. I heard a replay of a New York Times podcast from 2024. But I cannot find that on the KUT-FM website. I know what I heard. 

"... operation built on exploitation [and] coercion all in service to
[Falun] Gong's religious leader who has turned
Shen Yun into a major source of wealth..." 

The Shun Yen productions are the work of Falun Gong. NPR and The New York Times are opposed to its success and wealth. The Shen Yun productions are a cooperative effort financed by local members of Falun Gong who forward all profits to the organization while also agreeing to absorb any losses. Like any church lacking a government, Falun Gong exerts only a moral force. Its members choose to follow its mandates.

It also remains that some of the Shen Yun performers allege that their training is harsh, even brutal. I can accept their claims because professional athletics is known to be like that. The coaches always insist that championship comes at a price. So, work through the pain and get back in the game. But it is their choice. And these exposés exist now because some have quit and told their stories, which was also their choice.

Falun Gong teaches mediation and movement.

Every religion preaches niceties. In practice, the Abrahamic religions fail miserably. We tend to think well of Confucians and Buddhists but in his denunciation of all religions, (here) Christopher Hitchens includes them also. Hitchens also recognized communism as a religion. That case was made 75 years ago at the end of World War II in The God That Failed (Koestler, Gide, et al., Richard Crossman, ed.) and The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, which added fascism and nationalism to the narrative. 

It promises a lot.

In this podcast, the fact that China is a totalitarian society is quickly passed off with a dismissive tone of voice. 

As a lifelong admirer of the works of Ayn Rand, I am certainly cognizant of the social excesses of her own Inner Circle and two (now three) generations of second-handers and true followers. (See Against Gulching on this blog.). Ghosting, cancelling, and doxing are not new inventions of Generation Whatever. The worst thing that can happen to a Quaker, Mennonite, or Amish is to be shunned. But that is better than the Gulag nine ways to Sunday. And I fear that NPR, The New York Times, and their followers only wish that they could decide for the rest of us. They are intolerant of voluntary (market) choices not of their own making.

Previously on Necessary Facts

Peace is More Powerful 

Soldiers of Peace 

Armies Without Weapons 

Created Works and the Public Domain 

NPR TRANSCRIPTS 

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5407925

NATIONAL

< Jewish Museum fatal shooting raises concerns about domestic extremism

MAY 23, 20254:18 AM ET

3-Minute Listen

TRANSCRIPT

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5407925

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

We're now going to hear about more possible motives for the man suspected of killing Israeli Embassy aides in Washington. Now, among the details still emerging about the suspect is that he once belonged to a far-left political group. Let's bring in NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef. So what's known so far about the suspect's political beliefs?

ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Well, A, someone with the same name as the suspect was quoted back in October of 2017 in a publication put out by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and it quoted this person as being from that group. Since the killings, the PSL issued a statement disavowing the attack and saying that Elias Rodriguez's association with the group ended in 2017. I think, you know, we may learn more about this as the case develops. But also, yesterday morning, I went to the building where the suspect is believed to live. It's a brick multiunit on a leafy residential side street in northwest Chicago. The windows of the unit believed to be his had a lot of signs up, three of them relating to the conflict in Gaza, one that said ceasefire now, another that included the message free Palestine. There were also signs for local politicians on the left, including a Democratic socialist.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, we know that political violence has been on the rise in the United States, but how much of that are we seeing from the far left?

YOUSEF: Look, the data show that the far right has been responsible for most of the lethal political violence we've seen in the last four decades. But I spoke with Colin Clarke about this. He says he's been warning about a rise in far-left militancy for years and says it's a reaction to the rise in far-right extremist activity. He's with The Soufan Group.

COLIN CLARKE: Only really since October 7, the war in Gaza and the Israeli military campaign in the Middle East, have we seen this kind of uptick in what I would call far-left militancy, far-left extremism surrounding the issue of Gaza - and not just, you know, pro-Palestinian but actually pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro actual terrorist organizations.

YOUSEF: And Clarke, you know, says he's talking about a very small number of people doing that. But still, you know, he points to college campuses where there were some people waving flags of those organizations or voicing solidarity explicitly with them. Historically, far-left violence has mostly been property damage, A. You know, we've seen this with the vandalism of Tesla vehicles and some of the riots during the summer of the racial justice protests in 2020. Lately, though, there have also been high-profile events like attempted assassinations of Trump, the killing of a health care CEO, where the facts are muddy but nonetheless there is a perception that these were leftist actors. This attack, though, may be a clear case of lethality from the left.

MARTÍNEZ: Oh, OK. That's terrible to hear. What happens now? Where did things go from here?

YOUSEF: You know, Clarke says this should prompt some soul-searching on the left. It's tough to claim a moral high ground when someone commits an act like this. And, you know, you heard from Jennifer just now that some of the details in court documents paint a really chilling picture of these particular killings. I think it'll be important to watch also how this develops both in the political arena and in public discourse. Will this suspect be lionized by parts of the public? And politically, there are concerns that the government may use this as a reason for significant countermeasures aimed at suppressing free speech and even pushing the boundaries of labeling certain groups domestic terrorists.

MARTÍNEZ: All right, that's NPR's Odette Yousef. Odette, thanks a lot.

YOUSEF: Thank you.

Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5407925

NATIONAL

Suspect charged with murder in killing of 2 Israeli Embassy employees

MAY 23, 20254:16 AM ET

HEARD ON MORNING EDITION

By  Jennifer Ludden, Michel Martin

3-Minute Listen

TRANSCRIPT

The man suspected of killing two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C. has been charged with murder. Officials say they're continuing to investigate the attack as a possible hate crime.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The man suspected of killing two Israeli Embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., has been charged with two counts of murder, among other crimes.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Law enforcement officials say they're continuing to investigate the attack as a possible hate crime.

MARTIN: NPR's Jennifer Ludden is with us now with the latest. Jennifer, good morning.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Good morning.

MARTIN: I understand that we now have a lot more information on what exactly happened. So what can you tell us?

LUDDEN: Yes. We know now from the affidavit that the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, flew from his home in Chicago to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. That's the day before the attack. He declared a firearm in his checked luggage, and he bought a ticket to the event that was taking place at this Jewish museum three hours before it started. It was a mixer for young diplomats. From witness interviews and surveillance video, we also have some pretty gruesome details of the shooting. Law enforcement officials say Rodriguez shot at the two victims from the back and kept firing repeatedly, even as one of them tried to crawl away. He then discarded his 9-millimeter handgun, and eventually, he went inside the museum and told a police officer that he had done this, saying, quote, "I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza."

MARTIN: And The Washington Post is also reporting that the gunman sat down indoors after the shooting as though he was fleeing the danger. A witness told the Post that somebody even got him a glass of water. So President Trump and others have called this an act of antisemitism. But is it correct that so far, he has not been charged with a hate crime?

LUDDEN: That's right, not at this point. But Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters that the murder charges and others are only the beginning. Federal agents raided Rodriguez's home in Chicago yesterday. They learned that he expressed admiration for a person who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy here in D.C. last year. He described them as a martyr. And Pirro says investigators are going through massive amounts of evidence to learn what motivated him.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JEANINE PIRRO: Violence against anyone based on their religion is an act of cowardice. It is not an act of a hero. It is the kind of case that we will vigorously pursue.

LUDDEN: And she says, look, there's going to be additional charges as the evidence warrants.

MARTIN: Tell us more about the two people who were killed. They were a young couple. They both worked at the Israeli Embassy. What else can you tell us about them?

LUDDEN: Yeah, it's really quite sad, Michel. Israel's ambassador to the U.S. said Yaron Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring. He was planning to propose to Sarah Milgrim next week. They were going to be on a trip to Jerusalem. Lischinsky was a German and Israeli citizen. Milgrim was American. She grew up in a Kansas City suburb. A friend of Milgrim's, Israeli attorney Ayelet Razin Bet Or, told me she took the embassy job after Hamas attacked Israel a year and a half ago. She was already sensing a rise in antisemitism, and she wanted to combat that.

AYELET RAZIN BET OR: Not with violence or shoutings or verbal abuse, but in diplomacy, with love, with intelligence.

LUDDEN: Razin Bet Or says it is a painful irony that Milgrim lost her life in this way.

MARTIN: Finally, Jennifer, very briefly, obviously, something like this heightens people's fears - obviously, for many Jewish people, but others as well. Are officials saying something about that?

LUDDEN: Absolutely. D.C.'s police chief says there's going to be more law enforcement officers around faith-based groups, schools and places like the Jewish Community Center here.

MARTIN: That is NPR's Jennifer Ludden. Jennifer, thank you.

LUDDEN: Thank you.

Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.