CORA STAUNTON HAS been included in the 2021 AFLW Team of the year after another impressive campaign with the Greater Western Sydney [GWS] Giants.

The four-time All-Ireland winner is named among the forwards who made the shortlist, averaging 10.3 disposals, and kicking 10 goals for her club this year.

Staunton, 39, who first joined the Giants in 2017, has consistently been a standout performer since her move Down Under. She capped off her debut season by picking up the Giants’ Goal of the Year award.

She then suffered a career-threatening triple-leg-break injury in 2019 but managed to make a full recovery the following season and has continued to make a vital contribution for the Giants.

The https://t.co/FJ7UMYhaFF Team of the Year has been settled 👏#AFLW

— AFL Women's (@aflwomens) April 6, 2021

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Dublin 6-15
Waterford 2-12

HANNAH TYRRELL MARKED her return to inter-county football in style this afternoon as the Irish rugby international hit 1-5, as reigning All-Ireland champions Dublin convincingly defeated Waterford in Parnell Park.

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In a game that was dubbed a dress rehearsal for the championship, Dublin welcomed back Olwen Carey, Siobhan Killeen, and fresh from their endeavours in Australia, Lauren Magee and Niamh McEvoy.

Waterford did get off to a quicker start and dominated early possession, Maria Delahunty hit one from play and converted a free. Early Dublin efforts skimmed wide of the post but they opened their account for 2021 with a Sinead Aherne free after Niamh Hetherton was fouled. 

As Dublin upped the intensity, Tyrrell proved her worth hitting four first-half points. The first was a beautiful effort after a long range exchange with Niamh Hetherton, and Tyrrell was again on the scoresheet twice more minutes later.

Aherne converted her second free from 30 yards before Lyndsey Davey opened up a six-point gap when she found the net after a sweeping team move involved Hetherton and Siobhan Killeen.

Hetherton’s first-half efforts were rewarded with with a point of her own, while returning Killeen and Tyrrell also pointed leaving nine points between the teams at the water break, 1-8 to 0-2. 

Michelle Davoren of Dublin in action against Laura Mulcahy, left, and Rebecca Casey of Waterford.

Making her senior debut, Abby Shiels was comfortable in goals while Orlagh Nolan and Leah Caffrey bolstered a Dublin defence that proved difficult to break. 

Dublin’s second goal began as a sweeping team move down field and with Aherne in an inch of space, the captain offloaded to Hetherton, the Clontarf player made no mistake finishing to the net to open up a 12-point lead. 

Waterford steadied their ship and Eimear Fennell (2) and Delahunty brought the Munster side back into contention. The teams traded scores before the break, with Aileen Wall finding space and Delahunty firing over from short range. However, a brace of Aherne frees ensured Dublin took a nine-point lead into half time, 2-10 to 0-7.

The third quarter was a tighter affair, although Dublin did have to cope with two separate yellow cards, Aoife Kane just before half-time and Caoimhe O’Connor before the second water break but it had little impact on the champions.

Aherne raised a green flag of her own when Hetherton found her in space and as the substitutions rolled in, the scoreboard continued to tick over. Aherne (3) and Tyrrell raised white flags while Delahunty and Kellyann Hogan converted for Waterford.

The game finished in a goal frenzy with five goals inside eight minutes. Orlagh Nolan and Tyrrell found the net for Dublin inside a minute, Aileen Wall and substitute Kate McGrath raised green flags for the visitors. Caoimhe O’Connor signed off on the win for Dublin when she converted from the penalty spot.

Scorers for Dublin: S Aherne 1-7 (0-5f), H Tyrrell 1-5, N Hetherton 1-1, O Nolan 1-0, L Davey 1-0, C O’Connor 1-0 (1-0 pen), L Collins 0-1, S Killeen 0-1.

Scorers for Waterford: M Delahunty 0-7 (0-4f), A Wall 1-1, K McGrath 1-0, E Fennell 0-2, C Fennell 0-1, K Hogan 0-1.

DUBLIN: A Shiels; O Nolan, L Caffrey, O Carey; M Byrne, A Kane, L Collins; L McGinley, H Tyrrell; C O’Connor, S McGrath, L Davey; N Hetherton, S Killeen, S Aherne (captain).

Subs: H Leahy for M Byrne (28), M Davoren for N Hetherton (42), L Magee for S McGrath (45), H O’Neill for S Killeen (45), J Egan for S Aherne (48), N McEvoy for H Tyrell (52), L Kane for O Nolan (55), C McGuigan for L McGinley (55), S Loughran for L Davey (55).

WATERFORD: M Foran; A Mullaney, L Mulcahy, R Casey; C Fennell, K McGrath, M Wall (captain); C McGrath, M Dunford; R Tobin, A Wall, K Hogan; E Fennell, M Delahunty, K Murray.

Subs: K McGrath for R Tobin (39), A Murray for E Fennell (46), L Cusack for A Mullaney (49), B McMaugh for K Hogan (49), N Power for M Wall (56), C McCarthy for C Fennell (56), R Dunphy for A Wall (56). 

Referee: Kevin Phelan (Laois) 

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IN THE 50th minute of Sunday afternoon’s game, Páidí Fitzpatrick was summoned to the sideline at Semple Stadium.

The Clare defender gestured with his fist as he ran off, saluting David McInerney who was coming on as a replacement. The message was clear.

He had put in a huge shift to help establish a winning platform for his team as they were nine points clear.

Now the focus shifted to supporting the rest of the team as they attempted to finish the job.

Ultimately Clare were successful by four points. It was a victory to savour for their team to kick-start the 2021 ambitions but for Fitzpatrick it held a deeper meaning, this was an experience that he had waited some time to share in.

A first senior championship start for Clare at 30 years of age, seven weeks shy from his 31st birthday.

It was almost 13 years exactly, since he had previously started a championship game of any description for a Clare team.

On 25 June 2008 he featured in a Munster minor semi-final against Tipperary.

On 27 June 2021 he featured in a Munster senior quarter-final against Waterford.

It was a notable journey from one point to the other. His maiden competitive senior appearance for Clare arrived on Sunday 1 March last year. He acquitted himself well in a nine-point league win over Dublin in Ennis but any aspirations for channelling that momentum were soon wrecked. The country shut down 11 days later and the pandemic ripped up everyone’s plans.

Source: Bryan Keane/INPHO

Well done to Paidi Fitzpatrick who made his competitive debut for Clare in the National Hurling league versus Dublin in Ennis at the weekend. Joined by club mate Cathal Malone as the other wing back. #clareseniors #paidifitz #sixmilebridgegaa https://t.co/J9WwzPxMYT pic.twitter.com/CRAwWBSiRE

— Sixmilebridge (@SMBClare) March 2, 2020

When the 2020 inter-county programme of games resumed, Fitzpatrick made the bench for Clare’s four winter outings. He got pushed into the action in Portlaoise last November, a championship milestone arriving in the 60th minute of their triumph over Wexford.

2021 brought league starts against Wexford and Dublin before the big chance arrived on Sunday. He seized it, blotting out the threat of Waterford’s Jack Fagan to announce himself on the senior stage.

“It’s an amazing story,” admits Syl O’Connor, the Clare FM GAA commentator and Sixmilebridge club-mate of Fitzpatrick.

“Páidí would have been looked upon as one of the best man-markers in the county at club level. No question about that.

“Some of his greatest battles were marking Conor McGrath, when he was in his prime. The ‘Bridge and Cratloe were very prominent for a period, playing each other. Conor was one of the top players, Páidí always got the task of marking Conor.

“He probably has a unique style as well, he’s a real man-marker. He’d probably never run 100 yards and pop it over the bar. But the man that’s on him, won’t do that easily either.

“He’s a massive player from the ‘Bridge point of view. Very influential and very well got with the team.”

Back in 2008 he moved from club underage ranks to fill the centre-back spot for the Clare minor hurlers in a team powered by the inside attacking duo of McGrath and Darach Honan. It was a campaign where they made a rousing start by beating Cork but were then knocked out by Tipperary.

Fitzpatrick was on the fringes of the county U21 squad in 2010 and 2011 without ever managing to break into the first fifteen.

Then followed a long spell away from the inter-county game yet his hurling never declined. He focused on his work with the club and prospered.

When Sixmilebridge lifted the Canon Hamilton Cup last September, it ensured Fitzpatrick would pick up his fifth Clare senior hurling medal since 2013. He had started in all five final wins, captaining them in 2017, while covering a range of positions including full-back, wing-back, midfield and centre-forward.

Source: Lorraine O’Sullivan/INPHO

In his homeplace they appreciated his worth as a golden age for the club was enjoyed.

“I’d often think of the example of Shane Prendergast in Kilkenny,” says O’Connor.

“Came in the first year and won the All-Ireland (in 2015), he was captain the next year for the All-Ireland and was gone the following year. He was 29 when he came in.

“Look, everybody would be surprised to see you make your senior championship debut at 30 years of age. There’s no doubt about that. But you’d have to look at it and say, how did that happen?

“I think he’s come into the scene now, based on the type of player that I believe Brian Lohan looks for. Big men and trying to get power into the team. Páidí has fallen into the category then of making his championship debut at 30 years of age.

“That half-back line is a massive unit with himself, John Conlon and Diarmuid Ryan. The size of Páidí is a big plus and his man-marking ability.”

Playing club hurling at an elite level gave him a strong grounding, to the fore for a dominant side in Clare, then testing himself in Munster against heavyweights like Na Piarsaigh and Ballygunner.

His older brother Stiofan was midfield on the Clare minor team that lifted the All-Ireland crown at the expense of Clare in 1997. His father PJ has been a club coach of renown in the county, a long-serving principal in Clonlara National School where he was one of the early influences in the hurling careers of current Clare stalwarts Colm Galvin and John Conlon.

Cathal McInerney and Páidí Fitzpatrick in the 2019 Clare county senior final.

Source: Lorraine O’Sullivan/INPHO

Fitzpatrick spent some time travelling as well, switching careers around 2016 from chartered accountancy to mobile and web development.

On the day of the 2019 All-Ireland hurling final, he was lining out at Treasure Island in San Francisco to help Na Fianna win the senior hurling final against the Tipperary club. Wolfe Tones player Rory Hayes was a team-mate that day, now they are both part of the Clare defensive unit.

And this week they’ve a Munster semi-final to prepare for.

Back in 2006, Munster’s U16 inter-divisional hurling tournament culminated with East Clare pipping Mid Tipperary by a point in the final. Páidí Fitzpatrick was on the winning side, Noel McGrath on the losing team. Given their general positioning, they’re likely to renew acquaintances on the pitch next Sunday.

McGrath’s inter-county career exploded to life after that game 15 years ago, Fitzpatrick’s has taken a bit longer to take flight.

“It’s unusual nowadays to be starting so late,” admits O’Connor.

“But then again there’s nothing unusual nowadays about a fella blazing a trail of glory at 18 or 19 and then he’s gone. Maybe for a change, it’ll go the other way for a while.

“He stuck at it. The worst thing you can do is stand beside Páid Fitzpatrick, you’d only be looking up at him. He’s a massive lad.

“And if there’s a job to be done on the hurling pitch, he’ll do it.”

– First published 06.00, 29 June

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MORE IRISH PLAYERS have earned new Australian Football League Women’s [AFLW] contracts as the focus switches to next season.

Mayo and Cavan stars Sarah Rowe and Aishling Sheridan have committed their immediate future to Collingwood, putting pen to paper in recent days.

Yesterday, Rowe was one of six players to have a new deal announced, signing on until 2023. The 25-year-old recently completed her third AFLW campaign, playing seven goals across an injury-hampered season, while kicking one goal.

Having undergone shoulder surgery as the curtain came down on the 2021 season, Rowe stayed on in Australia to rehabilitate, missing the Green and Red’s league campaign. The Kilmoremoy forward returned to home soil in recent days, though, so the race is now on for her championship involvement.

Her immediate focus will be on Gaelic games matters, though her new two-year deal will see her head back Down Under afterwards to continue to “live the best of both worlds,” as she so often says.

Sheridan’s status of being on a two-year deal was also confirmed this morning, as she officially penned a contract extension until 2023.

The Mullahoran ace lit up the AFLW last season, enjoying a stunning individual campaign with goals almost every week as she established herself as one of the Pies’ main forwards in her second year at the club.

24-year-old Sheridan has been back in Ireland for some time now, returning to inter-county duty with Cavan through their Division 2 league campaign, as they now prepare for an Ulster championship meeting with Donegal.

Elsewhere, Rowe’s Mayo countywoman Aileen Gilroy has re-signed for North Melbourne.

Gilroy in action for North Melbourne.

Source: AAP/PA Images

One of 24 players retained from the Kangaroos 30-strong 2021 AFLW list, Gilroy sparkled once again in her second season and has subsequently been rewarded with a longer stay.

The 28-year-old has excelled in Australia of late and has been touted as “one of the most exciting Irish talents” over there, though has opted out of the Mayo ladies football set-up for 2021. 

A former underage soccer international with Ireland, the Killala native missed most of the 2019 ladies football season with a devastating cruciate injury, before announcing her comeback with a stellar debut season Down Under.

She returned to line out in the Green and Red’s midfield last autumn, but has decided against it this time around.

“Aileen’s not one to half-arse anything,” as manager Michael Moyles recently said. “The last year or two, she’s struggled with it so she needs to take a year to get things around her. And that’s fine, no problem.”

• Tipp’s Premiership champion O’Dwyer among Irish stars returning to AFLW next season 

Tipperary’s Premiership champion Orla O’Dwyer, Melbourne’s Dublin duo Sinéad Goldrick and Lauren Magee, and Adelaide Crows’ Ailish Considine have all had their respective returns for the 2021/22 season confirmed in recent days, with further announcements expected.

The42 understands that several other Irish players — 14 were involved in the 2021 season — are on two-year contracts, and will return for another campaign. 

The league is set to expand over the coming seasons, with the 2022 edition — season six –  due to begin in December 2021 and the Grand Final to be held in mid-March, before the men’s season begins. The competition will increase from nine rounds to 10, plus three weeks of finals.

Over the past few years, the AFLW campaign opened in late January and ran until mid-April, allowing for the Irish contingent — much of whom play inter-county ladies football — to return to these shores for the tail end of the league and for the entire TG4 All-Ireland championship.

Covid-hit 2020 aside, they normally travelled Down Under in October/November for pre-season, so it’s expected that will be earlier this coming autumn, throwing up the potential of code clashes.

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Taylor Swift’s new album Evermore, which dropped at midnight on Thursday in a surprise release, was Swift’s second surprise album of 2020. It comes after July’s heavily acclaimed Folklore and as Swift continues to re-record her old masters (she teased a bit of the new “Love Story” earlier in December). Jesus, you might be forgiven for thinking when Swift announced Evermore less than 24 hours before its release. Does she ever sleep?

But this streak of productivity fits into an emerging popular consensus on Taylor Swift. What is most compelling about Swift, commenters have started to agree, is how much she works, and how seriously she takes that work. That’s a startling contrast to the consensus on Taylor Swift a few years ago, when she was widely considered to be a try-hard whose hard work was off-putting.

“Taylor Swift isn’t very good at indifference,” remarked one critic in 2017, concluding that she’d probably enjoy Reputation more “if Taylor Swift wasn’t so try hard.”

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For Vulture in 2015, Lindsay Zoladz described a cringey moment of Swift’s 1989 concert tour: Swift giving the audience “the look the young, wide-eyed ingenue gives the twinkling skyscrapers in her coming-of-age movie right after she steps off the Greyhound,” as all around her the crowd wore light-up plastic bracelets that glowed varying colors and pulsed to the beat of her songs. “Do you think Taylor is controlling these with her mind?” Zoladz quipped. And it was the fact that Swift was trying so hard, regulating everything so tightly that you could see the sweat, that made the moment cringey.

At Jezebel, Jia Tolentino said the regimented, precision-edged sheen of the same concert tour made her think of Swift as “an animated mannequin, a Rockette on XR Adderall.”

Swift “is a ruthless, publicly capitalist pop star,” concluded Gawker in an article headlined “Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend.”

The consensus was that Swift was so intent on becoming a megastar that she overshot and came off as fake. Her Type A control-freak, try-hard qualities just made her seem calculated.

But even in the 2015 to 2019 era of peak Swift backlash, there was a brewing sense that the same control-freak tendencies were compelling, even admirable, when Swift applied them not to her public persona but to her songcraft.

“Swift’s automatic musicianship — on display only briefly behind a guitar for one song and a piano for another — is as physically magnetic as any choreographed routine,” wrote Tolentino of that 1989 concert tour.

And the idea that Swift’s hard work was not a liability but, in fact, a major asset began to cohere around her after the release of Miss Americana, the Netflix documentary about Swift that debuted in January. As nearly every review noted, one of the most interesting parts of the movie was just watching Swift noodle around on her piano as she wrote her songs.

“She writes lyrics and melodies rapidly, seemingly without effort, while her collaborators strive to keep up with her pace,” wrote Rachel Handler for Vulture, noting that Swift’s unproduced acoustic version-in-progress of “ME!” sounded better than the final product.

“It is a consistent pleasure to watch Swift work, and to behold the joy that spreads across her face as she puzzles through a verse or melody,” wrote Amanda Petrusich at the New Yorker. “Each time she completes a song, she appears to regard it with genuine wonder.”

“The most arresting stretches of the film are when we see Swift simply doing her work, conjuring up perfectly vague but succinct lyrics as some producer prods at a synth next to her,” argued Richard Lawson at Vanity Fair. “It’s a thrill watching her create, because she is so good at that. That’s when the whole thing feels truly organic, unvarnished, not compromised by any attempts at smoothing reality.”

And when Folklore hit in July, it continued this narrative of Swift as a serious craftsperson: someone who put in the work and was good at the work. Part of what distinguished Folklore from Swift’s other recent records was the lack of slick and precision-engineered radio-ready pop. Instead, it was filled with quieter, stripped-down melodies that allowed Swift’s talents as a lyricist to shine. Moreover, by showcasing that skill while under lockdown, Swift was only further emphasizing her enviable work ethic.

Swift’s previous albums, wrote Laura Snapes for the Guardian, had been exhausting, filled with “the sense that one of pop’s all-time greatest songwriters is overcompensating despite her clear talent.” But with Folklore, all that changed: “Folklore proves that she can thrive away from the noise.”

“There’s a bit of Rosie the Riveter spirit,” wrote Chris Willman at Variety, “in how Swift has become the first major pop artist to deliver a first-rank album that went from germination to being completely locked down in the midst of a national lockdown.”

The idea of the pop star whose hard work and grit become glamorous and aspirational is not new. Beyoncé, the pop queen of our Rise and Grind era, has perfected it. But it is new to Swift, and it suggests that she’s finally found a way to channel her workhorse vibes away from the sense of control that animated her backlash period and toward something more meaningful and desirable.

“Swift has always seemed most herself as the precociously talented songwriter,” remarks Carl Wilson in Slate’s Evermore review; “the pop-star side is where her try-hard, A-student awkwardness surfaces most.”

Swift herself talks about her work ethic with a certain amount of ambivalence. In a 2009 Rolling Stone profile, she recalls being unable to stop herself from practicing on her first guitar. “When I picked up the guitar, I could not stop,” she says. “I would literally play until my fingers bled — my mom had to tape them up, and you can imagine how popular that made me: ‘Look at her fingers, so weird.’” (The image of blood on a guitar here is a very Swifty spin on one of her first big hits, “Teardrops on My Guitar.”)

In her recently released documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, she notes that the Folklore track “Mirrorball” deals with her mixed feelings about her compulsion to work. “I wrote this song right after all my shows were canceled,” she says, and then quotes her own lyric: “I’m still on that tightrope. I’m still trying everything to keep you laughing at me.”

“I know I have an excuse to sit back and do nothing,” she muses, “and I’m not. I don’t know why that is.”

With Folklore, Swift ground her way through the hard work of finding a way to bring the crowds back to her. And now that she’s figured out what worked the first time, here is Evermore, Folklore’s sister album, to keep us looking at her.

President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration would begin the process of revoking Hong Kong’s special trade status, a day after China approved a national security law that threatens Hong Kong’s autonomy.

“China has replaced its promised formula of one country, two systems, with one country, one system,” Trump announced Friday from the White House Rose Garden. “Therefore, I am directing my administration to begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.”

Trump said this would include the “full range of agreements” the US has with Hong Kong, including the extradition treaty between the US and Hong Kong, and the end of export controls for the territory.

“We will take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China,” the president added.

Trump’s announcement is the most dramatic action his administration has taken yet against China’s intervention in Hong Kong. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decertified Hong Kong’s autonomy, saying “no reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.”

Pompeo cited Beijing’s new national security law, which, if broadly interpreted, could severely restrict freedom of speech and dissent in Hong Kong. Western governments and pro-democracy advocates have decried this as a direct threat to the territory’s semi-autonomous status, which Beijing is bound to preserve until 2047 under a treaty between Britain and China.

The secretary of state’s decision itself did not force action, but Trump’s announcement on Friday suggests his administration is willing to consider a range of options. In addition to reevaluating Hong Kong’s special status — which treats the territory differently than mainland China for trade and customs rules — Trump said the State Department will review its travel advisory for Hong Kong “to reflect the increased danger of surveillance and punishment by the Chinese state security apparatus.”

Trump also said the US would “take steps” to sanction Chinese and Hong Kong officials who were directly or indirectly “involved in eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy.”

This was a forceful declaration from the president who, in the past, has been somewhat reluctant to weigh in on the turmoil in Hong Kong, which is now coming up on a year of pro-democracy protests.

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At the same time, the consequences of Trump’s statement are still unclear. Along with its rule of law and relative freedoms, Hong Kong’s preferential treatment from the US helped it become a global financial capital. If the territory loses some of those benefits and exemptions, it could jeopardize Hong Kong’s international standing.

That could backfire, too. If Hong Kong loses its reputation as a financial hub — becoming just another city in China — Beijing may have even less reason to pretend it doesn’t want the territory fully under its control.

Trump also did not give specifics on when, or how, such policy changes might be implemented. (Vox reached out to the White House for more details, and will update if we hear back.)

Trump’s announcement on Hong Kong came as protests are raging across America over the death of George Floyd, yet the president did not acknowledge the unrest at home. Instead, he focused on China, announcing policy plans to “rigorously defend our national interests.”

“These plain facts cannot be overlooked or swept aside, the world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said, referring to the coronavirus pandemic. (Trump also announced Friday that the US would withdraw from the World Health Organization.)

China has gradually been eroding Hong Kong’s freedoms, though this national security law is undeniably a huge escalation in its attempts to bring the territory closer under its control.

Yet Trump’s speech looked to be a larger warning shot against China, which could revive fears that Hong Kong and its pro-democracy movement are now caught in the middle of a great-powers conflict.

At 11 pm local time on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s government unveiled the text of a draconian new national security law that gives the Chinese government vast new powers to crack down on free speech and dissent in Hong Kong.

Drafted in secrecy by top Chinese officials in Beijing — and not seen by the public until that very moment — the law criminalizes “secession, subversion, organization and perpetration of terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”

Those who commit such acts — which experts say are vaguely defined in the law, and thus allow for an extremely broad interpretation by authorities — face severe punishment, up to and including life in prison.

“The things that you talk about, you write about, you publish about, and even the people you know about, that you have connection with, can be potentially at risk of being prosecuted under this law,” Ho-Fung Hung, a political economy professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on China and East Asia, told Vox.

And, according to the New York Times, “The law opens the way for defendants in important cases to stand trial before courts in mainland China, where convictions are usually assured and penalties are often harsh.”

The law went into effect immediately. Less than 24 hours later, Hong Kong police announced the first arrest under the new policy.

And they weren’t subtle about it: They immediately posted photos on their official Twitter account of the young man they’d arrested. His alleged offense? Holding a pro-Hong Kong independence flag.

Chinese state media quickly reported the story of the first arrest — but they made sure to blur out the offending images of the pro-independence flag itself, lest they commit the same grievous act of promoting such a seditious idea (something the Hong Kong Police Force apparently didn’t think to do before tweeting the photos).

For many Hong Kong watchers, these images marked the beginning of the end of the freedoms that Hong Kong, unlike the rest of mainland China, had enjoyed for decades.

The law effectively ends “one country, two systems”

The “one country, two systems” principle — enshrined in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s de facto constitution — has been in place ever since Britain handed back control of the territory to China in 1997.

As Vox’s Jen Kirby explains, “The ‘one country’ part means [Hong Hong] is officially part of China, while the ‘two systems’ part gives it a degree of autonomy, including rights like freedom of the press that are absent in mainland China. China is supposed to abide by this arrangement until 2047, but it has been eroding those freedoms and trying to bring Hong Kong more tightly under its control for years.” Kirby continues:

Last spring, Hong Kong’s legislature tried to pass an extradition bill that critics feared would allow the Chinese government to arbitrarily detain Hongkongers. That ignited massive protests, leading to months of unrest that sometimes turned violent. The bill was withdrawn, but the demonstrations continued, as the fight transformed into a larger battle to protect Hong Kong’s democratic institutions.

But Beijing’s imposition of this new national security law is the most direct and dramatic move China has made toward erasing those freedoms once and for all.

“[The National Security Law] is a complete destruction of the rule of law in Hong Kong and threatens every aspect of freedom the people of Hong Kong enjoyed under the international human rights standards or the Basic Law,” Lee Cheuk Yan, a veteran Hong Kong politician and activist, told US lawmakers during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the new law on Wednesday.

Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Vox, “This law really eliminates ‘one country, two systems.’”

But Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists aren’t cowed — or at least, not yet

On Wednesday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam held a press conference to announce the new law — a law drafted without her input and whose full details even she didn’t know until just the day before.

Outside, thousands of Hongkongers took to the streets to protest against — and in direct defiance of — it, despite a heavy police presence.