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ticsPolitics Trump visits Trump Japan visits4Japan 4 Nation Bringing Nation Bringing home the home oysters the oysters 9 9 5 Myths5Student Myths Student loans 23loans 23

2 JUNE 2, 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019

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THE FIX THE FIX

Targeting Targeting statestate abortion abortion laws laws E UGENE S COTT

E UGENE S COTT

theon idea of echoing the Voting idea ofRights echoing Actthe a Voting Rights Act a cally unnecessary restrictions cally unnecessary on healthrestrictions clinhealth clin- the 1965 lawsolution. offers a The useful 1965 law offers a useful ics. These restrictions ics.doThese nothing restrictions to make do creative nothing solution. to makeThecreative model, said, of model, Congress he said, can of protect how Congress can protect people healthier or safer. people Their healthier sole purpose or safer. is Their sole he purpose is how ver the past few months, verseveral the past states few months, several states when states rights are camwhen states are camlimiting limiting access to abortion.”fundamental rights fundamental have moved to severely have limit moved accesstotoseverely limitaccess accessto toabortion.” paigning to flout paigning to flout them. anfight idea that that couldIt’s prove an idea popular that with could prove popular withthem. abortion, prompting aabortion, court fight prompting that aIt’s court “This undoubtedly a“This bold,iscreative undoubtedly plan toa bold, creative plan to andDemocratic with the country base and with theis country could make its way to could the make Supreme its waythe to Democratic the Supremebasethe employ employ Congress’s constitutional expressed constitutional generally.

Though more strict generally. bans appeal Though to strict bans Congress’s appeal to expressed Court. ConservativesCourt. are hoping Conservatives the neware more hoping the new powers to prevent powers states to fromprevent states from right-leaning majorityright-leaning will overturnmajority will overturn thwarting women’s right thwarting to an aborwomen’s right to an abor(or at least chip away (or at) at least Roe v.chip away at) Roe v. tion,” he told The Fix. tion,” “Obviously, he told The Fix. “Obviously, Wade. Liberals, meanwhile, Wade. Liberals, are meanwhile, are there are differencesthere between are differences the between the looking to 2020 to more looking firmly to 2020 en- to more firmly enJim Crow South and voting Jim Crow rights South in and voting rights in shrine the right to have shrine an abortion the right to have an abortion the 1960s and abortion, the but 1960s they’re and abortion, but they’re into law. into law. both situations whereboth we’resituations seeing a where we’re seeing a One candidate for the One Democratic candidate for the Democratic number of states targeting number a constiof states targeting a constipresidential nomination, presidential Sen. Ka-nomination, Sen. Katutional right and flouting tutionalitright in a and flouting it in a mala D. Harris (Calif.), mala hasD.a Harris novel (Calif.), has a novel number of different number ways. There’s of different ways. There’s idea for how to do idea that. for Shehow has to do that. She has differences, but there’sdifferences, also similaribut there’s also similariproposed legislation proposed modeled after legislation modeled after ties.” ties.” the landmark Voting the Rights landmark Act of Voting Rights Act of But Richard Hasen, professor But Richard of Hasen, professor of 1965 that would require 1965 states thatwith would a require states with a law and political science law at and thepolitical Uni- science at the Unihistory of limiting women’s history abortion of limiting women’s abortion versity of California at versity Irvine, of cauCalifornia at Irvine, caurights to get clearance rightsfrom to get the clearance from the tioned that it’s hard totioned imagine that a law it’s hard to imagine a law Justice Department before Justicepassing Department before passing like that passing Congress. like that Andpassing even Congress. And even laws that limit abortion. laws that limit abortion. if it did, it’s not clearifthe it did, Supreme it’s not clear the Supreme In connecting the twoIn issues, connecting Har- the two issues, HarCourt (which gutted Court the pre-clear(which gutted the pre-clearris is highlighting theris prevalence is highlighting of the prevalence of RICHARD VOGEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS RICHARDance VOGEL/ASSOCIATED provisionPRESS of theance Voting provision Rights of the Voting Rights discrimination against discrimination women in against women in Act in 2013) would Act it in legal.

2013) would find it legal.

America. On her website, America. sheOn ex-herDemocratic website, she ex- Democratic presidential candidatepresidential Sen. Kamala candidate Harris (Calif.)

Sen. Kamala has Harris (Calif.) has find “It’s hard to imagine “It’s a more hard hotto imagine a more hotplains the impetus behind plainsher the proimpetus behind aher proposed lawprothat would proposed require a law states thatwith would a history requireofstates limiting with a history of limiting buttonsuch issuelaws. than abortion, buttonasissue it has than abortion, as it has posed Reproductive Rights posed Act Reproductive this abortion Rightsrights Act this to get federal abortionapproval rights tobefore get federal passing approval such laws. before passing been for decades, so been I think forthat decades, I so I think that I way: way: like the out-of-the-box likethinking the out-of-the-box of this. But thinking of this. But GOP base, 60 percent the of GOP Americans base, 60 believe percent of Americans believe “We are living through “Weanare all-out livingassault through the an all-out assault substantial untilchange there isinsubstantial Congress change in Congress abortion should be legal abortion in all should or mostbecases, legal in until all orthere mostiscases, being waged on women’s being health waged andon reproducwomen’s health and reproducand thepoll Supreme and itthe doesn’t Supreme seemCourt, like it doesn’t seem like according to the latestaccording Quinnipiac to the polllatest on theQuinnipiac on the Court, tive rights. From Alabama tive rights. to Ohio, From andAlabama Misto Ohio, and Misthis is believe going tothat go anywhere,” this is going he said. to go anywhere,” he said. issue. than three-quarters issue. More believe than three-quarters that souri to Georgia, the souri goalto ofGeorgia, Republican the goal of More Republican framing Harris’s benefit framing her incould a benefit her in a should be legal abortion if a pregnancy should be was legal if a Harris’s pregnancy was could politicians is clear: Overturn politicians Roe v. Wade and is clear: Overturnabortion Roe v. Wade and primarytowhere so many primary candidates whereare so trying many candidates are trying by rape or incest, caused according by rapetoor another incest, according another end safe and legal abortion end safe in America. and legal States abortion caused in America.

States to win over the liberalto electorate. win over the Andliberal it could electorate. And it could Quinnipiac Quinnipiac poll. have mandated that women have mandated submit to that invawomen submit topoll. invaserve as an Rights, important serve reminder as anthat important the rights reminder that the rights David Gans, director of David the Human Gans, director Rights,of the Human sive ultrasounds, passed sivelaws ultrasounds, requiringpassed survi- laws requiring surviof Program multiple at marginalized of multiple groups marginalized are at risk groups are at risk Civil their Rightsrapist’s and Citizenship Civil Rights Program and Citizenship at the the vors of sexual assaultvors to carry of sexual theirassault rapist’sto carry under the United under current the United leadership.

States’ Constitutional Accountability Constitutional Center, Accountability called Center, calledStates’ child to term, and placed childonerous to term,and andmediplaced onerous and medin current leadership. n BY

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CONTENTS

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CONTENTS 4 8 10 12 16 18 20 23

ON once THE COVER In the city once ON THE COVER In4the city POLITICS known as the Paris8 of the West,as the Paris of the West, THEknown NATION is marring its once once THEinnovation WORLD is marring 10 itsinnovation welcoming landscape. Illustration welcoming COVER STORYlandscape.

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by RIC CARRASQUILLO forRIC TheCARRASQUILLO for The SCIENCE 16 Washington Post Washington Post18 BOOKS OPINION 20 FIVE MYTHS 23

3 SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019

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OPINIONS

Whether Assange is a journalist does not matter ELIZABETH GOITEIN is co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has became the first person to face prosecution in the United States for publishing classified information, although newspapers routinely publish government secrets that have been leaked to them. ¶ Defending the unprecedented move, Assistant Attorney General John Demers said “Julian Assange is no journalist.” Millions of Americans no doubt agree. Yet, in making this distinction, the Justice Department is drawing a line the First Amendment simply doesn’t draw — and is threatening the freedom of every news outlet in the process.

The federal indictment alleges Assange solicited and received classified information from Chelsea Manning and published that information through WikiLeaks. The documents he published included official assessments of detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, files relating to rules of engagement for U.S. troops in the Iraq War and State Department cables. Some revealed incriminating information about the conduct of American soldiers and other government officials.

Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act, a law passed during World War I to punish spies and traitors. But in recent years, the law increasingly has been used against government employees who leak classified information to the media. The Obama administration brought eight prosecutions for media leaks, and the Trump administration has upped the ante, bringing seven prosecutions in the space of two years. Alarmingly, many of the defendants have been whistleblowers: They disclosed information indicating waste, fraud or abuse on the part of the government.

Nonetheless, until now, the

Justice Department distinguished between government employees who leak classified information (deemed prosecutable) and outlets that publish it (considered to have First Amendment protection).

The Obama administration flirted with erasing that line: In court documents, it described a Fox News chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, as “an aider, abettor and/or coconspirator” in an Espionage Act case. The administration also reportedly considered bringing charges against Assange. But ultimately, Obama’s Justice Department decided prosecuting publishers of leaked information would be a bridge too far.

That was the right decision.

Although the Espionage Act does not recognize a line between leaker and publisher, the First Amendment, as interpreted by the courts, does. The Supreme Court has long held that government employees may be required to relinquish some freespeech rights as a condition of their employment. Officials with access to classified information sign nondisclosure agreements in which they agree to be subject to criminal penalties for leaking.

Publishers, obviously, sign no

NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was charged May 23 with violating the Espionage Act, a move that could test First Amendment rights.

such waivers. While the Supreme Court has not directly addressed whether publications can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, it has held that the government may not enjoin a newspaper from publishing information based solely on government claims of national security harms.

The Trump administration seeks to move the line. Demers insists that the Justice Department will continue to respect the prerogative of “journalists.”

Assange, however, engaged in the “explicit solicitation of classified material” and made no effort to redact information that could put people at risk, Demers said. In the Justice Department’s view, Assange is therefore not a “journalist” and is subject to prosecution for his actions.

Demers’s statement glosses over a crucial fact: The First Amendment gives journalists no special rights. In prohibiting abridgments of “the freedom of speech, or of the press,” it gives equal protection to those who speak, those who write, those who report, and those who publish.

Of course, the freedom of speech is not unlimited. Libel is not protected by the First Amendment, nor is direct incitement to violence. But whether Assange crossed any

such lines does not depend on whether he was acting as a journalist. The Justice Department cannot prosecute Assange for publishing information that The Washington Post could constitutionally publish.

Still, many Americans instinctively contend that Assange is different. The charges against Assange have nothing to do with the WikiLeaks publication of emails from Democratic National Committee accounts and from Hillary Clinton’s private server, but those incidents color Americans’ perceptions of Assange. They say his goal is to harm the United States, that he may be aligned with Russia, and that he cannot be trusted to make responsible decisions about when to publish classified information.

Robust protection for speech means that people will sometimes make bad calls, revealing potentially harmful information of little public interest. Society can and should condemn those disclosures. But there can be no “Assange carveout” to the First Amendment.

The Justice Department’s attempt to rewrite this core constitutional protection is a threat to every person or entity who publishes information — and every American who receives it. n

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SUNDAY, June,2, 2, 2019 2019 21 SUNDAY, JUNE

OPINIONS

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

BY LISA BENSON

Honoring our America’s greatest WWIIfemale veterans patriot ELIZABETH JOHN D. HOLLIS COBBS is the Melbern communications Glasscock manager chair in American at George history Mason at TexasUniversity A&M, a senior and authoratofStanford’s fellow “Sgt. Rodney M. Davis: The Hoover Institution Makingand of a Hero.” of “The Tubman author Command, A Novel,” released in May.

“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but Harriet Tubman won an Internet vote in 2015 to decide which also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”

American woman should appear on the nation’s currency by 2020. As a — President John F. Kennedy, October 1963 presidential candidate, Donald Trump denounced the choice as “political correctness.” Now, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has canceled theCallander plan’s implementation, leaststart untilofPresident Trump Sherwin was there foratthe U.S involvement leaves office. in World War II, and had a front row seat for the opening act Tubman should on the bill not simply she won a of But its final chapter asbe well.

The$20 98-year-old Navybecause veteran has popularity contest, butofbecause is the greatestat female inin the rare distinction havingshe been stationed Pearlpatriot Harbor American history.

Hawaii when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, before taking part in the D-Day invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944. government “They Designation were both as abad,” patriot Callander has said, “and we that lost Lincoln a lot of saved. good Andrew Jackson the people.” long beenNow the standard living infor Madison, Ala., Callander willonbe in$20 bill popularized the notionthe that Normandy appearance on next themonth currency. when Butthe world commemorates common folk have a place at the 75th what anniversary makes a patriot? of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied top, and Ulysses S. Grant on the France.

Historically, a patriot is $50 bill gave the United States its someone who symbolizes, hardest-fought forever silent. military victory. advances or fights to defend the However, this could mark As their efforts They put theirdemonstrate, lives on hold ideallast thatmajor all people aremilestone created the D-Day an outstanding does these and answered patriot their country’s equal.Callander By this standard, many that and many of his things at a time when them the nation’s call when it needed most.

Americans wouldwill qualify, fellow warriors live but to see. fundamental areshould imperiled So, while we values can, we each man on America’s bank our That’s because we’re losing (Jackson’s qualifications make certain to honor are them notes did something World War II veterans at an questionable forworld that reason). for saving the from extraordinary the per alarming ratetoofadvance about 348 How does Tubman rank among tyranny. nation’s founding day, according toideal the that “all these men? The scholarly Callander enlisted in record the men are created Department of equal.”

Veterans is clear. helped redeem Navy inTubman 1939 after a stint with George on the $1 Affairs.

OfWashington the more than America fromConservation its original sin to the Civilian billmillion won theAmericans war that forged 16 whothe bring our in line with its Corps.

Henation was aboard a supply nation. Thomas the served in WorldJefferson War II, on fewer founding ideal. She embodies ship returning from Wake the $2 bill500,000 wrote thewere idealstill thatalive defines than in resistance to slavery.

Island when the Japanese it. Abraham Lincoln on $5 bill 2018.

The youngest of the these On the eve ofstruck the Civil War, unexpectedly Pearl stood upare foralmost the Union no heroes all when in their more than 10 percent of all2,400 Harbor, killing roughly one thought could be preserved, midto late it90s at this point.

Americans by people on awere dayenslaved that President and Alexander Hamilton Soon, the voices of the on the other Americans, deprived of Franklin D. Roosevelt would $10 bill engineered the will be “Greatest Generation”

BY WALT HANDELSMAN FOR THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE

their right to life, liberty the later characterize as “aand date pursuitwill of happiness. which live in infamy.”

Tubman one ofthe those Arriving inwas Hawaii enslaved. Risking death, she fled following morning, Callander alonehis across more than 100 miles and shipmates were of hostile territory to liberate horrified at the carnage, but herself in 1849. content helped pull theNot many deadwith freeing just oneAmericans person, she from and wounded repeatedly her lifeinto to free a the water. risked “We pulled hundred othersand in repeated Pearl Harbor had to clean clandestine years. up the messraids thatover was11left,” he For sheer number of escapes, her said. record unparalleled.

The is experience inspired Risking apprehension to to Callander to go to Virginia address audiences the North, be trained on the in Higgins Tubman became the emblem of boats used to deliver combat defianceashore. to tyranny.

Captives troops He took partasin far away as Louisiana, like the invasions of North Africa Thomas spokeand in his and ItalyCole, in 1942 1943, recollections of the “colored respectively, before making woman .trips . . thattocomes here several shoredown under next to us and gets afire man withering enemy toand his wife andU.S. takes them out andUtah they deliver soldiers onto don’t get Beach onketched.”

D-Day. But her patriotic “Normandy wascontributions a rough did not when war broke one,” heend said.

“There were out.

Tubman the American dead andserved wounded cause on the occupied Sea Islands everywhere, but we were told of South Carolina.

According to not to help anybody.

We were theget brigadier general whoaslater to back to the ship soon recommended her forwe a military as possible because had to pension, operated as a get moreTubman manpower on the “spy” who “made many a raid beach.” inside the enemy’s Callander said lines, that day was displaying remarkable one he’ll never forget.courage, “They zeal, and fidelity.”us and were were expecting She staged her most dug in,” he said.

“Theepic firstraid in Junewaves 1863, when Union Idefeats three of soldiers, don’t still outnumbered victories think they made it 10 feetand

foreign observers were convinced after reaching the beach.

The that Lincoln wouldred lose. water was blood for about According eyewitness 10 feet out.toWe finally got a testimony,but, Tubman foothold, man,inspired, we lost a devised and guided the perilous lot of people.” raid on the Combahee that Callander, who willRiver be in liberated 756when people one day, Normandy heinturns 99 destroyed four of the Navy in on Tuesday, left Confederacy’s 1945 and wentrichest on toplantations enjoy a and broughtlife more than 200 black wonderful that produced men into the army. seven children, and more than other words, Tubman was 40In grandchildren and greatboth an antebellum hero and a grandchildren. war hero. helped He wasShe among thechange manythe fight toWar preserve the union into a World II veterans who fight to honor theand nation’s highest returned home ideal. immediately resumed their Later, Tubmanthe turned fresh lives following war’stoend. challenges. campaigned Many wentShe back to school with or Susan B. Anthony enfranchise got married and to began raising AmericanIt’s women and builtto a families. a testament shelter formuch the elderly just how time that has she passed operated her death that theiruntil children are in the1913.

No other woman the Baby Boomers nowserved old enough nation for as many as to be passing intoyears retirement Harriet Tubman, at comparable themselves. mortal risk, with Callander, who speaks to accomplishments equally on groups of young people transformative.

In stature, shethat is occasion, says it’s his hope America’s foremost femaleof more young Americans patriot.might serve their today But perhaps Tubman’s country in uniform as he so worthiness is not the realis issue. proudly did.

“Freedom not Mnuchin’s casual snub raises the free,” he said. question: Is any woman good It’s a sobering fact that enough to appear Callander and hison an American bank note? contemporaries knew all too TheAnd Trump administration’s well. we’re all the better answer appears off for it today. to n be no. n

5 21 SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019

SUNDAY, June, 2, Year2019 22 SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

BY LISA BENSON

America’sour Honoring greatest WWIIfemale veterans patriot JOHN D. ELIZABETH COBBS HOLLIS is the communications Melbern Glasscock chair in American manager at George history at TexasUniversity Mason A&M, a senior and fellow atofStanford’s author “Sgt. Rodney M. HooverThe Davis: Institution Makingand of a author of “The Tubman Hero.”

Command, A Novel,” released in May.

“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but Harriet Tubman won an Internet vote in 2015 to decide which also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”

American woman should appear on the nation’s currency by 2020. As a — President John F. Kennedy, October 1963 presidential candidate, Donald Trump denounced the choice as “political correctness.” Now, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has canceled theCallander plan’s implementation, leaststart untilofPresident Trump Sherwin was there foratthe U.S involvement leaves office. in World War II, and had a front row seat for the opening act Tubman should on the bill not simply she won a of But its final chapter asbe well.

The$20 98-year-old Navybecause veteran has popularity contest, butofbecause is the greatestat female inin the rare distinction havingshe been stationed Pearlpatriot Harbor American history.

Hawaii when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, before taking part in the D-Day invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944. government “They Designation were both as abad,” patriot Callander has said, “and we that lost Lincoln a lot of saved. good Andrew Jackson the people.” long beenNow the standard living infor Madison, Ala., Callander willonbe in$20 bill popularized the notionthe that Normandy appearance on next themonth currency. when Butthe world commemorates common folk have a place at the 75th what anniversary makes a patriot? of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied top, and Ulysses S. Grant on the France.

Historically, a patriot is $50 bill gave the United States its someone who symbolizes, hardest-fought forever silent. military victory. advances or fights to defend the However, this could mark As their efforts They put theirdemonstrate, lives on hold ideallast thatmajor all people aremilestone created the D-Day an outstanding does these and answered patriot their country’s equal.Callander By this standard, many that and many of his things at a time when them the nation’s call when it needed most.

Americans wouldwill qualify, fellow warriors live but to see. fundamental areshould imperiled So, while we values can, we each man on America’s bank our That’s because we’re losing (Jackson’s qualifications make certain to honor are them notes did something World War II veterans at an questionable forworld that reason). for saving the from extraordinary the per alarming ratetoofadvance about 348 How does Tubman rank among tyranny. nation’s founding day, according toideal the that “all these men? The scholarly Callander enlisted in record the men are created Department of equal.”

Veterans is clear. helped redeem Navy inTubman 1939 after a stint with George on the $1 Affairs.

OfWashington the more than America fromConservation its original sin to the Civilian billmillion won theAmericans war that forged 16 whothe bring our in line with its Corps.

Henation was aboard a supply nation. Thomas the served in WorldJefferson War II, on fewer founding ideal. She embodies ship returning from Wake the $2 bill500,000 wrote thewere idealstill thatalive defines than in resistance to slavery.

Island when the Japanese it. Abraham Lincoln on $5 bill 2018.

The youngest of the these On the eve ofstruck the Civil War, unexpectedly Pearl stood upare foralmost the Union no heroes all when in their more than 10 percent of all2,400 Harbor, killing roughly one thought could be preserved, midto late it90s at this point.

Americans by people on awere dayenslaved that President and Alexander Hamilton Soon, the voices of the on the other Americans, deprived of Franklin D. Roosevelt would $10 bill engineered the will be “Greatest Generation”

BY WALT HANDELSMAN FOR THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE

their right to life, liberty the later characterize as “aand date pursuitwill of happiness. which live in infamy.”

Tubman one ofthe those Arriving inwas Hawaii enslaved. Risking death, she fled following morning, Callander alonehis across more than 100 miles and shipmates were of hostile territory to liberate horrified at the carnage, but herself in 1849. content helped pull theNot many deadwith freeing just oneAmericans person, she from and wounded repeatedly her lifeinto to free a the water. risked “We pulled hundred othersand in repeated Pearl Harbor had to clean clandestine years. up the messraids thatover was11left,” he For sheer number of escapes, her said. record unparalleled.

The is experience inspired Risking apprehension to to Callander to go to Virginia address audiences the North, be trained on the in Higgins Tubman became the emblem of boats used to deliver combat defianceashore. to tyranny.

Captives troops He took partasin far away as Louisiana, like the invasions of North Africa Thomas spokeand in his and ItalyCole, in 1942 1943, recollections of the “colored respectively, before making woman .trips . . thattocomes here several shoredown under next to us and gets afire man withering enemy toand his wife andU.S. takes them out andUtah they deliver soldiers onto don’t get Beach onketched.”

D-Day. But her patriotic “Normandy wascontributions a rough did not when war broke one,” heend said.

“There were out.

Tubman the American dead andserved wounded cause on the occupied Sea Islands everywhere, but we were told of South Carolina.

According to not to help anybody.

We were theget brigadier general whoaslater to back to the ship soon recommended her forwe a military as possible because had to pension, operated as a get moreTubman manpower on the “spy” who “made many a raid beach.” inside the enemy’s Callander said lines, that day was displaying remarkable one he’ll never forget.courage, “They zeal, and fidelity.”us and were were expecting She staged her most dug in,” he said.

“Theepic firstraid in Junewaves 1863, when Union Idefeats three of soldiers, don’t still outnumbered victories think they made it 10 feetand

foreign observers were convinced after reaching the beach.

The that Lincoln wouldred lose. water was blood for about According eyewitness 10 feet out.toWe finally got a testimony,but, Tubman foothold, man,inspired, we lost a devised and guided the perilous lot of people.” raid on the Combahee that Callander, who willRiver be in liberated 756when people one day, Normandy heinturns 99 destroyed four of the Navy in on Tuesday, left Confederacy’s 1945 and wentrichest on toplantations enjoy a and broughtlife more than 200 black wonderful that produced men into the army. seven children, and more than other words, Tubman was 40In grandchildren and greatboth an antebellum hero and a grandchildren. war hero. helped He wasShe among thechange manythe fight toWar preserve the union into a World II veterans who fight to honor theand nation’s highest returned home ideal. immediately resumed their Later, Tubmanthe turned fresh lives following war’stoend. challenges. campaigned Many wentShe back to school with or Susan B. Anthony enfranchise got married and to began raising AmericanIt’s women and builtto a families. a testament shelter formuch the elderly just how time that has she passed operated her death that theiruntil children are in the1913.

No other woman the Baby Boomers nowserved old enough nation for as many as to be passing intoyears retirement Harriet Tubman, at comparable themselves. mortal risk, with Callander, who speaks to accomplishments equally on groups of young people transformative.

In stature, shethat is occasion, says it’s his hope America’s foremost femaleof more young Americans patriot.might serve their today But perhaps Tubman’s country in uniform as he so worthiness is not the realis issue. proudly did.

“Freedom not Mnuchin’s casual snub raises the free,” he said. question: Is any woman good It’s a sobering fact that enough to appear Callander and hison an American bank note? contemporaries knew all too TheAnd Trump administration’s well. we’re all the better answer appears off for it today. to n be no. n

66 SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019

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SUNDAY, June,2, 2, 2019 20197 SUNDAY, JUNE

POLITICS ANALYSIS

POLITICS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Trump faces Mueller leavesnew charge attacks to Congress over draft BY

R OBERT D AN B ALZ C OSTA

P F

or resident months, Trump, congressional who has Democrats touted himself haveas looked an unto Robert matchedS. ally Mueller of military III to offer veterans, the is justification facing pointed for new opening attacks an impeachment from Democratic inquiry presidential against President candidates Trump forwho obquestion struction his of justice. medicalOndeferment Wednesfrom day, the service special in Vietnam counsel did — and, everyin turn, thing his butpatriotism flash theand green integrity. light they Leading have been thewaiting assaultfor. are two military Mueller’s veterans: 10-minute South statement Bend, Ind., was a Mayor careful Pete and telling Buttigieg distillaand Rep. tion ofSeth the Moulton 448-page (D-Mass.). report he They issuedhave earlier offered this searing spring. assessHe rements peated that of Trump, had he accusing and his team the president been able toofclear faking the president a disability of and obstruction, forcing another they would American have of Trump’s done so, generation but they didtonot. riskHe histhen life in made the clear jungles that ofbecause Southeast charging Asia. a sitting Trump, president who hadwith beenatraveling crime is in prohibited Japan, has bynot Justice yet responded Department to either regulations, Democrat, the only butway he has to hold longa defended sitting president his deferments accountable as legitifor mate. possible More crimes broadly, lies he with portrays Conhimself gress and as apowers vigorous vested friendby to the military, Constitution. pushing for a buildup of theMueller’s armed forces, appearance praising milinow tary leaves leaders, Housereaching Democrats, out to ledvetby erans Speakerand Nancy promising Pelosi (D-Calif.), to avoid misguided with an unpalatable wars. choice. She canBut authorize the questioning a politically of theexplo1968 diagnosis sive impeachment of bone spurs inquiry in ophis heels posed presents by a majority a challenge of the Amerifor a commander can people — in andchief one that whosurely has tapped would die generals in the Republican-confor his Cabinet and trolled asked Senate the Pentagon — or appear to plantoa parade abdicatecelebrating in the face theof military. the eviIt could dencetest of obstruction whether the contained president’s in political the Mueller coalition, report.which includes many Thismilitary is the choice families, that has can been be cracked. weighing on the speaker for some time, “I don’t but Mueller’s think thatstatement lying to get — out and his of declaration serving your that country he would is patriotic. offer nothing It’s not more likesubstantive there was just thansome whatempty is in the seat report in Vietnam. even if Someone called to testify had toon goCapitol in his place,” Hill — Moulton adds significantly said this past to the Sunday pressure on MSNBC. to make a decision, “I’d like one to way meetor the American other. Pelosi, hero however, who went appears in Donto ald prefer Trump’s to defer place that to decision Vietnam.asI hope long as he’s possible. still alive.”

Buttigieg, Nothing Mueller speaking said at Wednesa Washington day wasPost not there Live in event, the pages said of Trump, his report, “This but is the somebody power who, of hisI think appearance it’s fairly — obvious the firsttotime mosthe of us, hastook spoken advantage publiclyofsince the fact he took that he charge was aofchild the of investigation a multimilliontwo aire yearsinago order — carried to pretend weighttothat be disabled the written so word that somebody might not have. could go Mueller to war inleft his it place.” to Congress to

EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

Veterans and 2020 did contenders Buttigieg and The special counsel everything but tell House Moulton lead questioning of president’s integrity Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry Buttigieg, 37, then made an overture Republicans to reconmake itstoown decisions about sider their support of Trump, impeachment, but overall he prosayinglittle he was “oldtoenough to vided comfort the presiremember conservatives dent.

To thewhen contrary, he made talked that about character as Trump somepoints undercut what thingclaimed that mattered in investigathe presihas about the dency.” tion and about what the investiThe concluded. flap could propel Demogators crats a more discusThetoward president haddirect said repeatsion of matters of war and service edly that the investigation was a as the 2020 campaign “witch hunt.”

He has intensifies. repeatedly Following victories by several questioned whether Russians inDemocratic veterans during and the terfered in the 2016 election 2018 their elections, party that efforts wereleaders aimedare at putting an on the prohelping himemphasis and hurting Hillary tection ofHe diplomatic andsince military Clinton. has claimed, the norms amid Trump’sthat shattering of report was issued, Mueller’s them. found no collusion, no obteam The critiques mark the first struction, and that therefore the time that Trumptohas been conreport amounted “total exonerfronted so directly on allegations ation.” of Mueller draft-dodging. rivals justifiedHis the2016 investigaof both rarely broached tion as aparties response to “multiple, the topic, even after he assailed systematic efforts to interfere in Johnelection” McCain, the and our bylate thesenator Russians.

Republican presidential nominee While his team concluded that who was a prisoner war in there was not sufficientofevidence Vietnam for overby fiveassociates years. of a conspiracy of a crowded Democratic theInTrump campaign, he presisaid,

dential field, Buttigieg and Moulton, along with Rep. Gabbard what Russians did Tulsi “deserves the (D-Hawaii), citeAmeritheir attention of regularly every single time in uniform as theyincludes look to can.”

That presumably stand apart from competitors. the president.

“I don’t have a problem standMueller stressed that because inglong-standing up to somebody was of Justicewho Departworking on Season 7charging of ‘Celebrity ment regulations, the Apprentice’ when was packing president was “notI an option we my bags for Afghanistan,” Butticould consider.”

But he specificalgieg saidthose during hisdepartmental Post appearly noted same ance. say “that the Constitution rules Buttigieg was commissioned as requires a process other than the an intelligence Navy criminal justiceofficer systemintothe formalReserve was dely accuseina 2009 sittingand president of ployed to Afghanistan in 2013, wrongdoing.” while serving as mayor.

Gabbard, After Mueller’s statement, the 38, servedissued in a field medical president a tweet that unit was of the steps Hawaii Army from National several removed his Guard in claim a combat zoneexonerain Iraq previous of “total from 2004 to 2005 andfrom was the detion.”

“Nothing changes ployed to Report,” Kuwait from 2008 to Mueller he tweeted.

2009. Moulton, 40, served as a “There was insufficient evidence Marine Corps captain Iraq anda and therefore, in our in Country, was an isaide to Gen.The David person innocent. case H. is Petraeus, then you.” the U.S. commandclosed!

Thank er Congressional in Iraq.

Democrats AlthoughThe Gabbard hasfar notfrom encountered. case is gaged Trump’s of military closed, they said,lack but exactly what service in the as Buttpath they will same followway remains in

Troops listen as President Trump Special counsel speaks S. Tuesday Robert Mueller III during on Mayan 29event said his aboard thecareful USS to team was Wasp accusing in Yokosuka, avoid Japan. TheTrump of a President president’s political crime because of coalition includes long-standing Justice many military Department families and regulations. veterans.

question. igieg or Moulton, House she Judiciary has suggestComed Trump mittee Chairman does not Jerrold understand Nadler the human (D-N.Y.), speaking cost ofinwar Newand York, is susceptible vowed to push to pursuing forward. “stupid On the wars” in places question of whether such asheIran would because hean launch has impeachment hired hawkish inquiry, advisers said, he such “All as national options security are on the adviser John Bolton. table.”

“If the main House Democrats way our cannot President have creates it botha strong ways economy indefinitely. is to sell On weapons to Saudis Wednesday, they continued to bomb to innoaccent people cuse the president in countries of committing like Yemen, thenlies” “crimes, we and need other a new misdeeds, president,” as Nadler Gabbard put ittweeted during his heading brief into Memorial news conference.

Day Pelosi weekend. spoke in a statement Trump, after of investigating graduating the in 1964 from for president the“his Newabuse York Military of powAcademy, er.”

She added, where “The he played American football andmust people basketball, have the obtained truth.” four separate Duringdeferments an appearance so heincould San study at Fordham Francisco, Pelosi echoed University Nadler and the University that all options of arePennsylvania. on the table, Then, but sheinreiterated September that 1968, shehe would was medically rather move disqualified, deliberately, according not to the ledger hastily.

She said from that hisalllocal investigaSelective Service tions underway System in six draft House board comin Jamaica,will mittees N.Y.,continue, which isthat in the custodywill House of the continue National to seek Archives. documents The and ledger testimony does notand detail willwhy let Trump the evidence failedguide the exam, the decisions. and the Selective In pointing Service to the destroyed various inall medical records vestigations, Pelosi and implied individual that files after there could theyet draft be other endedevidence in 1973. produced The New that York would Times put reported the preslast year ident in that jeopardy the daughters beyond of anya deceased podiatrist questions of obstruction said of it was jus“family tice.

She lore” argued that their thatfather, any case as a “favor,” provided against the president the fall must1968 be diagnosis and, compelling — in “ironclad,” return, received as she access put it — to to Fred create Trump, support Trump’s for father and further action owner and of possibly the Queens affirbuildingbyinthe mation which Senate. the “We father want practo ticed. do what is right and get results,” sheTrump said, emphasizing obtained his “results” medical as deferment her ultimateasgoal. the Vietnam War was Others escalating are more and the impatient. military needed aDemocratic Several wave of newpresidential conscripts.

In some interviews, candidates and some House TrumpDemhas cited hisspurred ocrats, medical deferment.

by Mueller’s In others, are words, he now has demanding said he simply that lucked the House out in move the 1969 immediately lottery. to anTrump impeachment said in a 2015 inquiry. interview, But “I’ve do they always not yet feltconstitute somewhataguilty critiabout cal mass because that forces I didn’t Pelosi’s serve hand. like many A majority otherofpeople.” rank-and-file Democrats Trump alsorecalled favor moving that he toward donated $1 million of impeachment, but the House $2.5 million leaders needed are weighing to fund the aoverall memorial cost to of Vietnam to yielding veterans public opinion in New York within in 1985, party their a donation vs. the potential that was cost docuof mented by striking at New the president York newswithout outlets at the time. success. n n

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Tiny If theyYuma buildfills it, will withthe migrant oysters children come?

B MRITTNEY ARIA S ACCHETTI M ARTIN in Copano Bay, Tex. Yuma, Ariz BY

C T

entral he orange American buoys parents placed and along children the perimeter started pourof an ing underwater into this desert construction border community site here keepfaster disappearthan ing, anyone leaving had predicted. behind a rust-stained Out of desbarge peration, with the a massive Salvation pile ofArmy broken opened limestone. a shelterThe in abarge strip carried mall in it March, downthinking the Mississippi it wouldRiver, be temto be porary. dumped At first, a mile theyoff had the50Texas peocoast. ple. Then 150. Then the numbers doubled Soon, by baby theoysters week. will attach to Churches the rocks’ issued rough surfaces urgent calls and start for diapers, to grow. infant formula, coloringThe books ambitious and crayons. project Aid aims workto restore ers flew in anfrom oyster Washington. reef nearly The wiped mayor,out whobyopposes hurricanes, illegal drought immiand gration, overfishing. declaredWhen an emergency the artificial and reef implored is completed the White thisHouse month, to half help will because be open the flow to harvesting of people and coming theout other of federal half protected detention to at give the border the species was unlike a long-term anything chance Yuma had to rebound. ever seen.

That “I’m dual not interested nature of the ineffort seeing is unique homeless andand could hungry be replicated families elsewhere walking around alongthethe city nation’s looking southeastern for resourcescoast. and all It offers the issues a rare opportunity that come for with often that,” competing Mayor interests Douglas — Nicholls state regulators, (R) said in con-a servationists, recent interview people at City whose Hall.liveli“It’s hoods a big issue.” depend on the mollusks and Inthose the who Border like Patrol’s eating them Yuma — to sector, all get which what stretches they want: frommore Calioysters. fornia deep into the Arizona desert,“We halfdesigned of the apprehensions it specificallythis to try yearand have make beenthe of children essential — point the that highest conservation share on theisU.S. about southern both the border. protection The tally and is the rising usefast of rein sources,” Yuma, a sparsely said Laura populated Huffman, farmregional ing community director forintheArizona’s Nature Conservancy southwest corner, in Texas, drivenwhich in part is leading by migration the project patterns andthat a second shift set frequently to beginasin people Galveston try toBay deterin the minewinter. the path If the of least project resistance is successful, to the United 110 acres States. of reef will be created.

Asylum-seeking migrants arriving Onlydusty a decade and ago, exhausted the Nature here Conservancy in recent days said declared it is easier that than the Gulf ever to of enter Mexico’s the oyster Unitedreefs States rep— resented if they surrender “the most with significant a child. wild Because harvests minors left generally in the world.” cannot Then be held disaster for long struck. periods, most are released In April with 2010, theirthe families Deepwater or to a Horizon shelter. oil rig exploded off the Louisiana Nearly coast.

169,000 Before youths a BP have well was surrendered finally capped at the southern months later, bormore der inthan the 4first million seven barrels months of oil of had this fiscal contaminated year, and Gulf moreCoast than half waters are ages and 12 beaches. and under, Billions according of oysters to federal were killed. records and officials

MATTHEW ASH PONDERS BUSCH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

As families seek easier the Arizona border An ambitious effort aimspaths, to restore a reef nearly town shows immigration system onoverfishing the brink wiped out byan hurricanes, drought and familiar Although withlittle Customs oil reached and BorTexder as shores, Protection its oysters statistics. were already Minors now in serious account trouble. for nearly Two years 37 percent earliof er,all sediment crossings had —smothered far above previreefs ous in Galveston eras, when Bay most — the underage source of migrants the vast majority were teenagers of theand state’s accounted harvest for — after 10 percent Hurricane to 20 perIke cent madeoflandfall. all crossings.

The “Overnight, children have Hurricane shattered Ikea multibillion-dollar came in, and we lost system overthat 50 Congress percent ofand the the oyster White habitat House in built Galveston over the Bay,” pastrecalled two decades Lance to quickly Robinson, catch coastal and deport fisheries adults. deputy Migrants division director say theyatare thecoming Texas to Parks theandUnited WildlifeStates Department. because droughts Little has aregone frying right Central since Amerthen ican for the harvests, speciesthey or the can’t $43pay million their bills, industry andit supports gangs are here. recruiting children.

From 2010 to 2015, the state experienced Families are anincreasingly intense drought heading that to caused the desert furtherdunes damage. of AriAs zona’s rivers ran southwest low, thecorner salinity because of the they bays sense they flow the U.S. into government’s increased. So focus did populations is on the Texas of certain borderbactealong the ria and Riopredators Grande and thatbecause kill oysters.

Arizona Thehas drought less space wasfor followed detention by beds, two years meaning of they spring are more flooding, likely which to behit released duringquickly. oysters’ crucial

spawning A revolving season. doorBaby oysters, called In October, spat, were theswept Border into Patrol the released Gulf.

Many about of those 200 Central that weren’t American family ended up dying members, because and nonthey profit groups, couldn’t survive in lacking water that shelter had space, too little housed salt from them theindeluge motels. of Federal agents have apprehended rains. more Thethan final 31,000 blow was family Hurricane members hereinsince, Harvey 2017.nearly Several fourfeet times of as manywas water as indumped the sameacross period last the year, and they Houston areahave and warned ultimately Yuma to expect gushed into hundreds Galveston more Bay. in Some a city that has reefs onathe small bay’s airport, east aside few sufbus stops and fered 100 percent an occasional mortality, train.Robinson Thesaid.

Salvation Army stunned neighboring After years business of struggling, owners in a Yuma strip source of relief mall emerged. when it opened A legala shelter in March, settlement relatedinstalling to the Deepwaportable toilets ter Horizon and showers spill included behind the building. $160 million for oyster restoration, Latinos $3.5 million make up of which more than is being 60 percent used forofthe Yuma Galveston County’s Bay populaprojtion,The ect. and $5 more million than Copano a quarterBay of the county’s project is being population funded by are a differimmigrants. ent settlement Though Latinos stemming generally from lean illegal the left, Yuma release is politically of chemicals divided. Some that contaminated embrace Trump’s bay waters hardin line approach South Texas. to immigration pol-

Oyster fishermen Migrant children look PJ's with through Shrimp the Co. border load their wall day’s in San Luis Rio catch onto Colorado, pallets in Mexico,Harbor, Fulton in earlynorth May. Yuma of Corpus County, Christi, Ariz., is onEfforts Tex. the other to side. protect the state’s oyster population are taking place up and down the Texas coast.

icy;A strong a few wind have was driven roiling

by Cothe shelter pano Bay andasshouted several at of the the famiprojlies ect’stoengineers go home. and Nature Conservancy Othersworkers help. They set serve out tomeals, check sort on the donated reef’s clothes progress and one monitor mornthe ing last shelter month. around The boat thecarrying clock.

Some them to drive thefamilies construction to thesite airport listor ed escort precariously them to as theitnew neared bus stop the out barge back. full of Piles limestone. of shampoo, diapers Conversation and canned was goodsnearly are arriviming, possible but over it’s difficult the roar to of keep an excaup with vator’s demand. engine. Operator Kelly Hayes “It’s steered basically the a revolving machine’sdoor,” massaid sive Salvation arm toward Army a mountain Capt. Jeffrey of Breazeale. limestone and “I’vescooped been told up ait’s bucknot going etful. to Then slowhe down.” rotated the machine Sister 180Mary degrees Bethand Kornely, used a member small computer of the Franciscan screen to line Sisters up a of little Christian black box Charity — representing in Yuma, said the the position localof Immaculate the arm — with Conception a circle Catholic on a grid.Church Once the asks square for was volunin teers the middle or supplies of the at Sunday circle, serhe vices. dumped the load into the water.

“The He willneed repeat is the extremely process more great because than 2,000 thetimes numbers to complete just keep the pouring side of the in,” Kornely project intended said. for harvesting, Though President using rocks Trump’ssmall proposed enough $4.5 to fit through billion the in teeth border of spending the dredges includes that oyster humanitarian fishermen aid rakeand across enforcement, reef. The rocks Democrats on the worry protected that half the approach are bigger doesn’t and adequately more varied.address In total,the 48,000 children, tons whom of limestone one lawmaker will be called deposited the “cannon into Copano fodder Bay.in Trump’s reelection Despite campaign.” the many setbacks Texas “I’ve oysters never have seen faced it this in bad, the past and Idecade, think it’s enough going to adult get worse,” oysterssaid reU.S. mainRep. in theRaúl baysM. to naturally Grijalva (DreAriz.), populate who therecently new reefs. visited In another Yuma.

“As restoration kids, they project, are now completed part and in parcel the Chesapeake of a presidential Bay in 2015, election. the As existing that population campaign was escalates so decias they matedbecome that scientists more desperate, in Maryland so will had the to situation conduct aonsort the border.” of oyster mating So far, ritual locals and have nurse shouldered the spat the in a cost. lab until Thethey mayor, were a Republican big enough married to be deposited to the daughter in the wild. of a MexicanTexas immigrant, represents hasa dispatched classic “if city you build workers it, they to help. willThe come” Demoscecratic-led nario, saysCounty Huffman, Board andofshe Superhas visors the numbers votedto unanimously support that conto spend fidence.up to $25,000 to cover shelter In 2013, utilities the Nature if it expands.

Conservancy “Ideployed oppose the illegal same immigration Missouribecause mined limestone it’s illegal, used butinwhat Copano you see Bay now to build is migration. a 54-acreIt’s sanctuary lawful,” said reef in Russell Matagorda McCloud, Bay,board 100 miles vice chairman southwest and of Houston. a Republican, Two years referring later, oysters to Central hadAmerican attachedasyto lum 70 percent claimants. of the “That’s reef’sthe surface, issue, right? and their Otherwise, population theyhad would grown be stopped by more and thanturned 550 percent. away.”nn

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In China, voices from the vanished Students from elite university prepare farewells amid crackdown over labor activism

Qiu Zhanxuan, former leader of the Peking University Marxist society, has been missing since April 29.

B Y G ERRY S HIH in Beijing

T

he video opens with the 21-year-old sociology student facing the camera.

His voice quivers as he recounts his interrogation — his humiliation — for days at the hands of Beijing police.

The officials pressured him to quit labor activism and drop out of Peking University, he says. They slapped him until blood streamed from his nose. They jammed headphones into his ears and played hours of propaganda at full volume.

On the last day, he alleges, they had him bend over a table naked and spread his buttocks, joking darkly that they would teach him how to insert a listening device.

“This all happened on campus,” Qiu Zhanxuan seethes in the video he recorded in February after he said the police released him, temporarily, after a four-day ordeal.

“If I disappear,” he adds, “it’ll be because of them.”

Qiu disappeared April 29.

State security agents seized him that day from Beijing’s outskirts, his classmates say. Qiu’s offense? He was the leader of the Marxist student association at the elite Peking University, a communist of conscience who defied the Communist Party of China.

Over the past eight months, China’s ruling party has gone to extraordinary lengths to shut down the small club of students at the country’s top university. Peking University’s young Marxists drew the government’s ire after they campaigned for workers’ rights and openly criticized social inequality and corruption in China.

That alone was provocative. In recent years, China’s leaders have been highly sensitive to rumblings of labor unrest as the sputtering economy lays bare the divides between rich and poor.

But the source of the dissent carried an extra sting for the government. Peking University, after all, educates China’s best and brightest, the top 0.1 percent

OBTAINED BY THE WASHINGTON POST

of the country’s high school graduates. And its rebellious young Marxists were doing something particularly embarrassing: They were standing up for disenfranchised workers against the state.

They were, in other words, emulating the early Communist Party itself.

Today, at least 21 members of Peking University’s Marxist society — including its slight but steely leader Qiu — have been placed under house arrest or have vanished altogether. Scores more are regularly hauled in for interrogation and live under constant surveillance. Months of clashes, five waves of arrests and an influx of plainclothes police have, at moments, turned a world-leading university into a surreal battleground.

The story of Peking University’s Marxist club illustrates the anxious political atmosphere in China, where idealistic students who embrace the party’s own ideology

can be suppressed just like any other political threat.

‘Looking at a reflection’ As the Marxist students came under attack last year, they sought help from Hu Jia, a veteran dissident who sits on the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Hu, who has been jailed in the past for advocating Western-style democracy, loathed how the students called for a reprise of the Cultural Revolution and wrote essays larded with propaganda language. But he helped introduce them to foreign diplomats and human rights organizations, he explained, because they seemed “righteous.”

They had the potential to be the most serious threat to the government since the Tiananmen protests, Hu said.

“The Communist Party knows there is no greater threat than a movement that links students

with the lower class,” Hu said by telephone. “They’re looking at a reflection of their early revolutionary selves.”

Perhaps sensing the potential for unrest, the Communist Party in October appointed Qiu Shuiping, a former head of the Beijing branch of the Ministry of State Security — the feared foreign and domestic spy agency — to be Peking University’s new top official.

But the more authorities clamped down, the more the students defied them by airing what was happening on Twitter and the hosting service GitHub, services beyond the reach of Chinese censors.

They publicized how unidentified thugs beat up their Marxist schoolmate Zhang Shengye on campus in November before taking him away. They posted pictures of Qiu, their leader, being stuffed into a black car in broad daylight on Dec. 26 — one of several run-ins he had with state security. An uploaded video from Dec. 28 showed campus security clearing Marxists from a science building, ending with a student sprawled on the ground.

That day, the university issued a decree that effectively disbanded the club.

To irritate the plainclothes agents who followed them, some members would continue to get together anyway — to do calisthenics. Qiu kept leading “work experience” trips for a few more months. The authorities had enough on April 29, when they seized Qiu and four other students from a Beijing factory at 8:17 a.m., the club reported in an online post. Those five haven’t been seen since.

As the number of missing students ticked up in recent months, those who still had freedom prepared “open letters” to be published in case they were seized.

The remaining Marxists, coordinating in secret, recently started releasing the letters at a slow drip.

They saved Qiu’s video and letter to release on May 4, on the anniversary of the protest that inspired their Communist revolutionary heroes a century ago. n

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Deadly traffic jams on Mount Everest B Y A NKIT A DHIKARI AND J OANNA S LATER

in Kathmandu, Nepal

C

hatur Tamang was on his way to the roof of the world when he hit a traffic jam.

Ahead of him, on the final ascent to Mount Everest, he saw more than 100 people bunched together on the narrow ridge that leads to the summit — a place so high that it is known as the “death zone,” where the human body has trouble functioning.

Some of those descending from the summit pleaded desperately with those ascending to clear a way for them to pass since they had run out of oxygen. “That sent chills down my spine,” said Tamang, 45, a mountaineering guide who lives in Russia. He fears that if no action is taken, the crowds next year could be worse, with potentially fatal consequences.

At least 11 people died trying to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain this year, the deadliest climbing season for the peak in four years. One factor contributing to this year’s toll appears to have been crowding as scores of people attempted to ascend in a short window of good weather, producing delays that extended the time climbers spent at deadly altitudes.

Now officials in Nepal are reviewing whether to change the way access to Everest works. Some experts say that the government should extend the climbing season in May or implement certain requirements for climbers, a number of whom lack experience or sign on with companies offering bargain-priced expeditions.

Nirmal Purja, an accomplished climber who is attempting to summit 14 peaks worldwide within seven months, was on his way down from the summit at Everest when he decided to stop and photograph the scene behind him. It was unusually cold, he said, and extraordinarily crowded.

“I’ve seen traffic, but not this crazy,” said Purja, who has summited Everest four times. Purja is among those who believe that the

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Overcrowding has contributed to a spike in climber fatalities this year solution is to lengthen the traditional climbing season at Everest to spread out the climbers attempting to reach the summit.

The Nepali government granted 381 permits to climb the mountain this year, a record. At least double that number of people were on the mountain, since the figure does not include guides.

Because of the crowds, some climbers took longer than normal to make their way up the mountain. One of them was Nihal Bhagwan, a 27-year old Indian man who died of dehydration, exhaustion and high-altitude sickness, said Keshav Paudel of Peak Promotions, the expedition company guiding Bhagwan’s trip.

Bhagwan spent two days each at two intermediary points on the climb, said Paudel, though he should have spent only one at each place. Already weak when he climbed to the summit, Bhagwan

became totally depleted while descending, said Paudel, who attributed his death both to the traffic and extreme exhaustion. Others who died this year while climbing from the Nepali side included two other Indians, two Britons, two Irish citizens and two Americans.

Two others died while attempting the Tibetan route, according to Reuters news agency.

Some involved in the trekking business said what had unfolded on Everest this year was not abnormal and was a reminder of the deadly stakes involved. “If you are setting out on an Everest expedition, it is no less than heading for a war,” said Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks. Climbing Everest is like “attaining the highest pilgrimage,” he continued, and sometimes delays are unavoidable.

Others saw the traffic as an indication of how climbing Everest has

Climbers line up to stand at the summit of Mount Everest on Wednesday in this photo released by climber Nirmal Purja’s Project Possible expedition.

At least 11 people have died trying to summit the mountain this year.

become a commodity, drawing inexperienced thrill-seekers and polluting the mountain with garbage.

But Nepali officials are reluctant to curb the number of climbers, who are also an important source of revenue for the country.

“The government cannot just say no to the tourists who come to ask for permits,” said Meera Acharya, director at the Department of Tourism with responsibility for mountaineering. “Personally, I feel that it is not as much about the number of permits as what kind of climbers we are issuing the permits to.” After this year’s expeditions conclude, Acharya said, officials would analyze the data and determine how to move forward.

“The mountain is for every human being,” said Purja, the climber attempting to summit 14 of the world’s highest peaks. But it has “to be managed properly.” n

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FIVE MYTHS

Student loans BY

A NYA K AMENETZ

Americans took out $105 billion in student loans last year, twice the amount in inflation­adjusted dollars as in 1999. That makes student debt, as a category of consumer debt, second only to mortgages.

Democratic presidential candidates are drawing applause by talking about free college and debt relief. As graduates toss their mortar­ boards in the air this month, here are five lasting misconceptions about the debt they’ll spend years or even decades paying back.

MYTH NO. 1 You can avoid debt by working your way through college.

It was entirely possible in the 1980s to pay your way through a typical public university with a part-time minimum-wage job.

But trends in both tuition and wages have put that strategy out of reach for most today. The average in-state cost for tuition, fees, room and board at a public four-year university last year was $21,370, according to the College Board. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. To pay for college on that wage, a student would have to work 56 hours a week, every week of the year. No wonder about 2 in 3 graduates of public and private nonprofit colleges borrow, a proportion that’s held steady for a decade.

MYTH NO. 2 The bigger the loan, the worse trouble you’re in.

This seems like a reasonable assumption. “Anyone who has shouldered the burden of sixfigure student loan debt knows the heavy toll it can take,” HuffPost wrote on May 14.

But the graduates who average six-figure student loan balances are generally doctors, lawyers and PhDs, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and those degrees tend to come with six-figure salaries to match.

Meanwhile, those most likely to default on their student loans (and suffer a lifetime of financial setbacks that follow bad credit)

have debt in the four figures, not six, according to the Center for American Progress, which profiled defaulters in 2017. Its report found that defaulters are more likely to be older, to be African American and to attend for-profit colleges. About half never finish their degrees.

MYTH NO. 3 Student loans are a young person’s problem.

According to CBS News, “Millennials struggle under the burden of student loan debt.”

True enough, but boomers are increasingly in hot water, too, and they have retirements to fund. AARP reported this month that Americans over 50 owe almost $290 billion of the nation’s student loans, up from $47 billion 15 years ago. Among seniors, the number of indebted people, the amounts they owe and the percentage who are behind on payments all rose in the first half of the 2010s, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Some of the growth comes from parents taking out what are called PLUS loans for their children’s educations: nearly $89 billion in total.

MYTH NO. 4 If you rack up student loan debt, college isn’t worth it.

“I’m going to owe $100K by the time I graduate college,” Jacob Lopez, a junior economics major at Columbia, wrote in a recent Newark Star-Ledger op-ed. “Is it

SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

worth it?”

Assuming he finishes his degree, Lopez has nothing to worry about. Economics is in the top 25 majors ranked by wages, according to Georgetown, with a midcareer salary of $117,800, according to PayScale. The firm also reports that a Columbia degree specifically is worth a 14 percent salary premium over the average grad.

Even if you’re not an Ivy Leaguer, odds are still pretty good that a college degree will pay off — as long as you finish. The College Board’s most recent Education Pays report found that the average bachelor’s degree recipient earns $61,400 annually, compared with $36,800 for someone with just a high school diploma. The average graduate, meanwhile, owes $28,650.

MYTH NO. 5 The Democrats have a plan to end student loan debt.

Democratic presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are promoting “billion-dollar plans to make college free on the campaign trail,” according to NBC News. They want to “erase student debt,” reports CNBC. And it’s true that the federal

government could, in theory, cancel existing student loans. The Democrats just have to take control of the White House in 2020, recapture Congress and get rid of the filibuster so they can pass student debt relief over the opposition of Senate Republicans.

But it’s unclear what would happen to the student loan program going forward. Erasing the need for all student debt forever — “free college” — is beyond the power of the federal government alone. Warren’s and Sanders’s free-college proposals, which have the most details, require the federal government to spend more to spur public universities to forgo charging tuition in favor of other revenue schemes, including more state funding. But it would be up to states to decide whether to ante up the extra dollars. Given how many red states opted out of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion — a similar federal proposal that relied on state participation — it’s unlikely that a Democrat would get nationwide results with such a plan. n Kamenetz, who covers education for NPR, is the author of “Generation Debt” and “The Art of Screen Time.”

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SUNDAY, June, 2, Year2019 COVER STORY

COVER STORY

San Francisco has a rich history.

Home to more billionaires per capita than anywhere on Earth and dominated by a tech monoculture, the city has gone from the Paris of the West to “a train wreck.”

BY KAREN HELLER IN SAN FRANCISCO

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY RIC CARRASQUILLO

Now, it’s just rich.

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COVER STORY

A Tuesday afternoon in the Mission District of America’s tech wonderland. ¶ Michael Feno stands outside Lucca Ravioli, his beloved pasta emporium on Valencia, a vestige of old San Francisco, puffing on a cigar while posing for pictures, his customers in tears. ¶ Living in this city’s radically shifting landscape, veterinarian Gina Henriksen found comfort by telling herself, “Thank God, Lucca is still here. If Lucca goes, I’m going to have to leave San Francisco. What do we have left?” ¶ Lucca is no longer here.

After 94 years, doors shuttered on the last day of April. The parking lot sold for $3.5 million. A three-building parcel, including the store, listed for $8.3 million and was purchased by — need you inquire? — a developer.

A few blocks away, in this neighborhood of shops hawking $2,600 electric bikes and $8 lemonade, Borderlands Cafe — a throwback with plants cascading from the ceiling — closed the same day after a decade in business.

Owner Alan Beatts couldn’t retain staff, even with a $15 minimum hourly wage. Who can live on $15 an hour in this city transformed by innovation?

How can Alba Guerra, co-owner of nearby Sun Rise restaurant, continue to charge $10.95 for the housemade vegan chorizo platter after her rent spiked 62 percent last year to $7,800 a month?

For decades, this coruscating city of hills, bordered by water on three sides, was a beloved haven for reinvention, a refuge for immigrants, bohemians, artists and outcasts.

It was the great American romantic city, the Paris of the West.

No longer. In a time of scarce consensus, everyone agrees that something has rotted in San Francisco.

Conservatives have long loathed it as the axis of liberal politics and political correctness, but now progressives are carping, too.

They mourn it for what has been lost, a city that long welcomed everyone and has been altered by an earthquake of wealth. It is a place that people disparage constantly, especially residents.

Real estate is the nation’s costliest. Listings read like typos, a median $1.6 million for a single-family home and $3,700 monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment.

“This is unregulated capitalism, unbridled capitalism, capitalism run amok. There are no guardrails,” says Salesforce founder and chairman Marc Benioff, a fourth-generation San Franciscan who in a TV interview branded his city “a train wreck.”

You no longer leave your heart in San Francisco. The city breaks it.

The city is filthy rich in what other regions crave: growth, start-ups, high-paying jobs, educated young people, soaring property values, commercial and residential construction, a vibrant street life, and so much disposable

revenue. But San Francisco, a city of 883,305 residents, 100,000 more than two decades ago, is the Patient Zero of issues affecting urban areas. The sole constant is its staggering beauty.

Downtown is a theme park of seismic start-ups — Uber, Airbnb, Slack and Lyft, with Twitter in the nearby Tenderloin, every app a skyscraper. The 58-story Millennium Tower is a sinking, tilting luxury condo folly that will take $100 million to right — writer Rebecca Solnit dubbed it “the leaning tower of hubris.”

In the shadow of such wealth, San Francisco grapples with a very visible homeless crisis of 7,500 residents, some shooting up in the parks and defecating on the sidewalks, which a 2018 United Nations report deemed “a violation of multiple human rights.” Last year, new Mayor London Breed assigned a five-person crew, dubbed the “poop patrol,” to clean streets and alleys of human feces.

The small downtown’s streets are choked with Google and Apple employee buses, and 45,000 daily Uber and Lyft drivers, some commuting from hours away and unfamiliar with the city. By comparison, there are 25,000 ride-sharing drivers in Philadelphia, a much

larger and more populous city.

There’s an ongoing battle between the NIMBYs and YIMBYs over development in one of the nation’s densest cities. Tech companies here are the beneficiaries of gilded carrots, tax breaks. Longtime residents worry that tech workers are drawn here for the jobs, not the city, and may never become stakeholders in San Francisco’s future.

“Our rich are richer. Our homeless are more desperate. Our hipsters are more pretentious,” says Solnit, who once wrote that “San Francisco is now a cruel place and a divided one.”

The Bay Area is home to more billionaires per capita than anywhere on Earth, one out of every 11,600 residents, according to Vox. The entire region, as far as two hours away, has been affected by spiraling real estate prices. Venture capitalist John Doerr has claimed that the area’s economic growth is “the greatest legal accumulation of wealth in history.”

And it’s only likely to keep growing. Several San Francisco tech companies, such as Slack and Postmates, are scheduled to go public this year — Uber did on May 10. This IPO fever could mint thousands more messenger-bagtoting millionaires and, denizens fear, more absurd prices.

“The city is losing the very things that people moved to the city for,” Beatts says. “People think that the best thing to happen is to get a lot of people to move here. But what happens when you get everything you want?”

T

ech isn’t what everyone talks about in San Francisco. It’s money.

Real estate, income inequality, $20 salads, the homeless, adult children unable to move out, non-tech workers unable to move in.

San Francisco has experienced plenty of change through its rich history: the Gold Rush, corruption, earthquakes, fire, reconstruction, strikes, multiple waves of immigration, the rise of gay culture, the Summer of Love, the dot-com bubble and the dot-com bust.

What residents resent now is the shift to one industry, a monoculture.

“What I wanted was this flow of humanity and culture,” says editor and former nonprofit executive Julie Levak-Madding, who manages the VanishingSF page on Facebook, documenting the “hyper-gentrification” of her city.

“It’s so devastating to a huge amount of the population.”

To many inhabitants, San Francisco has become unrecognizable in a decade, as though it had gone on a cosmetic surgery bender.

“I can’t tell you the number of friends who tell me how much they hate San Francisco,”

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COVER STORY says former city supervisor Jane Kim. Which is something given that she ran for mayor in the 2018 special election. (Kim came in third.)

“They say it’s too homogenous.”

Too homogeneous. Too expensive. Too tech.

Too millennial. Too white. Too elite. Too bro.

To take a midday tour downtown is to be enveloped by a jeaned and athleisured army of young workers, mostly white and Asian, and predominantly male. The presence of a boomer or toddler is akin to spotting an endangered species.

San Francisco has less of what makes a city dynamic. It has the lowest percentage of children, 13.4 percent, of any major American city, and is home to about as many dogs as humans under the age of 18.

The city was once a center of black culture, and Breed is its first black woman mayor. But the African American population has withered to 5.5 percent compared to 13.4 percent a half century ago. Director Joe Talbot’s “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” a Sundance winner scheduled to open in June, is an elegy to earlier times and a tribute to his long friendship with the film’s star and co-writer, Jimmie Fails.

“You’re constantly trying to justify why you stay. There’s this blanket of anxiety and frustration that lives on top of everything,” says Talbot, a white fifth-generation San Franciscan. “You’re heartbroken because it’s changed so much and so quickly. This nostalgia is baked into everything, of missing what was here.”

The city has become less eccentric, less of a home to artists and musicians, because they can’t afford studios or practice spaces — if they can find them.

How will the city create its next Grateful Dead or generation of beat writers?

“I don’t know anyone in San Francisco who is making a fulltime living as an artist,” says Victor Krummenacher of the band Camper Van Beethoven, who left the city in April after 30 years, moving an hour east of Los Angeles. “Part of being an artist is being an observer of what is going on. In the Bay Area, you’re so mired in the congestion and costs.”

San Francisco has also become less welcoming of altruistic professions, as teachers and social workers are priced out of housing.

The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, decamped to Oakland three years ago after its annual rent was projected to increase by almost $1.5 million. “Nonprofits are fleeing San Francisco. They can no longer afford it, ” says Doug Styles of Huckleberry Youth Programs, founded during the Summer of Love to assist runaway teens. Retaining staff is a challenge. “We’re missing that middle and

“You’re heartbroken because it’s changed so much and so quickly.”

Joe Talbot, director of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”

lower economic group.”

Everyone has a story about what isn’t here anymore. The inability to find a hardware store, a shoe repair, a lesbian bar, a drag-queen bar, an independent music club, the commercial casualties of vertiginous rents.

Retail operations have resorted to quasinonprofit practices to stay afloat. Beatts’s Borderlands Books, specializing in science fiction, mystery, fantasy and horror, remains afloat through $100 annual sponsorships from more than 500 customers, akin to a public television station, and $1.9 million in loans from 50 patrons to purchase a building in the Upper Haight. Restaurant owner Guerra launched a GoFundMe campaign to help defray rental costs. She also had to raise prices, which many small businesses have been forced to do.

Residents worry that such businesses will soon disappear, replaced by twee boutiques of artisanal socks, rain-scented candles and so many succulents. “All businesses that are part of the memory and tradition and the lives of San Franciscans are going away so fast, replaced by little hipster groovy shops that also feel transient, preserving some fake memory of the city,” Solnit says.

The city feels less the epicenter of LGBT culture it long was. “I have seen my people transformed from a criminal subculture to

WEEKLY

talking about poetry. I still love my town. I still love my neighborhood, but it is changing very rapidly. It’s quite harsh and quite brutal and it frightens me.”

Hyper-gentrification is not specific to San Franciso. Shoe repairs, dry cleaners, gay bars and independent cafes are disappearing elsewhere. With all this wealth, even with the derided tech tax breaks, comes a gusher of revenue for the city and California, the world’s fifth-largest economy. While Benioff, among others, has derided fellow tech billionaires for lagging in philanthropy, there’s hope that more money will lead to an increase in giving. And the city remains a great generator of innovation that has changed our daily lives.

“Many things were broken. Taxi medallions were expensive, and you couldn’t find one. So Uber and Lyft were started because of the broken taxi situation. The hotels were broken.

They were too expensive and not enough of them, so Airbnb was founded to fix the broken hotel situation,” says developer Eric Tao, who is building a hotel, among other projects.

“What I love is still here. That Gold Rush mentality that you can come here and do whatever you want,” says Tao, a resident of 30 years. “But this is what happens when unbridled capitalism collides with progressive ideals.”

Benioff, the city’s largest employer, says residents are at “the beginning of our journey in San Francisco of understanding who we’ve become and where we’re going,” he says. Yet, he acknowledges, “there are a lot of people who are not willing to do the work. They’re here to make money. They’re not here for the long haul.”

A

being celebrated, legalized and politically potent,” says activist Cleve Jones, who moved to the city in 1972 and worked as a student intern for Harvey Milk. “This came out of the gayborhoods, and now the gayborhoods are going away.” A resident of the Castro, the city’s famed gayborhood that’s been transformed by record prosperity, he bemoans the loss of cultural vitality and lack of caring for the less fortunate. “I don’t hear people

KLMNO

nother afternoon, another tour. Labor lawyer Beth Ross is a two-decade resident of Glen Park, once a middleclass enclave offering jaw-dropping views of the city. It is middle class no more.

Ross lives in a condo in a mid-19th century Victorian, on a snug street she’s dubbed “Apple Executive Way.” Construction projects abound and, in a city intoxicated by speed, last forever. That one down the block is on Year 4, and Contractor 3.

Over here is a smaller job, $350,000, for a garage.

For-sale signs bloom like jasmine, though neighbors suspect many sellers are waiting for more IPO windfalls to flood the market.

Ross, walking with her friend, VanishingSF’s Levak-Madding, points to the hillside spread of a tech executive. She gestures to a modest property a few doors up from that one that sold for $2.3 million, the estimated value increasing $1.2 million in four years. The tech mogul owns that, too.

Though it’s no longer a house. The executive is transforming it into a basketball court and gym, still under construction.

“This is a place none of us would have moved to. It’s Monaco,” Levak-Madding says.

“It’s urban blight by excess.” n

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SCIENCE

Apollo rocks set to solve more puzzles SARAH KAPLAN in Houston BY

T

he first person to set foot on the moon had one last task before he came home.

Neil Armstrong needed to pick up rocks — as many as he could carry, as interesting as he could find. The material he collected would constitute humanity’s first samples taken from another world.

With less than 10 minutes to go before the end of his moonwalk, Armstrong used tongs to pile about 20 rocks into a specialized collection box. Deciding it wasn’t full enough, he scooped an additional 13 pounds of lunar soil into the container.

Today, a tablespoon of that soil sits in a sealed dish in a locked and windowless lab at Johnson Space Center in Houston. It is a prized piece of the Apollo program’s greatest scientific legacy: nearly 850 pounds of moon rocks.

For 50 years, research on these rocks has transformed our understanding of the moon, revealing the circumstances of its birth and the reasons for its mottled face. Now, NASA has decided to release three new samples for analysis — samples that no scientist has touched.

The upcoming experiments, on vacuum-sealed cores and a long-frozen rock, can be performed only once, at the precise moment the samples are opened. That’s why the materials have been held back since they were retrieved from the moon, said Ryan Zeigler, who curates the Apollo rocks collection. NASA was waiting for the right scientists, with the right technologies, at the right time.

With Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary this year and renewed interest in the moon ahead of a proposed return mission, Zeigler said, the right time is now.

NASA’s Lunar Sample Laboratory, a maze of gleaming metal cabinets and spotless linoleum floors, was built in the 1970s to house the rocks brought back

PHOTOS BY SPIKE JOHNSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

50 years after the first lunar mission, NASA has decided to analyze 3 untouched samples from six moon missions.

A sophisticated HVAC system, designed to keep the air 1,000 times cleaner than in the outside world, fills the facility with a faint artificial breeze. Scientists enter only after donning special white jumpsuits, caps and booties to limit contamination.

These are some of the most valuable rocks in the solar system, Zeigler said. Just look at what they have revealed so far.

Before the Apollo 11 mission, scientists couldn’t agree on where the moon came from. It’s a misfit in the solar system — much larger relative to its planet than almost any other moon.

Some speculated that it was once an independent object that was “captured” by Earth’s gravity. Others proposed that the satellite formed in orbit alongside Earth when the planets were coalescing out of a primordial dust disc. Many grade-

school textbooks taught that it was, in fact, a blob of Earth that had been flung away by our planet’s spin; the Pacific Ocean was thought to be a scar from this ancient loss.

All of those theories had to be discarded as soon as scientists saw the first Apollo rocks.

The moon materials were extraordinarily ancient — as old as 4.5 billion years. Although they contained many of the same chemicals as rocks from Earth, they were startlingly poor in “volatiles” — molecules like water and carbon dioxide that easily vaporize when heated.

Some contained features produced only in cataclysms — showers of meteorites, blasts from volcanoes, or barrages of particles from the sun.

At a conference to discuss the initial findings six months after Apollo 11 returned to Earth, no one could agree on what all this evidence meant.

Lunar samples 15556, 60015 and 70017 in a stainlesssteel processing cabinet that contains a nearly pure nitrogen atmosphere at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Then, toward the end of the conference, geologist John Wood explained how the clues fit together. He realized that the strange white flecks in Armstrong’s hastily gathered soil sample belonged to an unusual type of rock called anorthosite, which forms when the mineral feldspar crystallizes out of molten rock.

At some point, Wood reasoned, the moon must have been completely covered in a magma ocean, in which anorthosite rocks floated like icebergs. The molten world would have cast an eerie, blood-red glow in Earth’s night skies.

To confirm Wood’s theory, scientists needed bigger and better samples. They got what they wanted in 1971, when Apollo 15 astronauts James Irwin and David Scott uncovered a half-pound chunk of anorthosite on the rim of a crater in the moon’s northern hemisphere.

Cleaning the dirt off the rock’s exterior, Scott realized what he was holding and started to shout. “Oh, boy!”

“Guess what we just found,” he exclaimed, as Irwin laughed with delight. “Guess what we just found! I think we found what we came for. . . . What a beaut.”

That sample came to be known as “the Genesis rock” — a nod to the role it played in helping scientists unravel the story of the moon’s origins. It sits inside its own glass case, not far from the dish containing Armstrong’s soil.

“These exact samples told us how the moon formed,” Zeigler said.

About 4.5 billion years ago, the theory goes, a long-gone giant planet called Theia, named for the mother of the Greek moon goddess, smashed into the newly formed Earth.

The impact shattered both Theia and the proto-Earth and splashed millions of tons of material into space. Some of the rock coalesced in orbit around the Earth, and our satellite was born. The heaviest bits sank to

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SCIENCE the moon’s center, while the light minerals floated to the top of the worldwide magma ocean and crystallized, forming the thin anorthosite crust. The rocks and dust retrieved by Armstrong and Scott are relics of this long-ago tumult.

Many researchers were skeptical of this “giant impact hypothesis” when it was first proposed in the mid-1970s. Astrophysicist Alastair Cameron, one of the architects of the hypothesis, recalled a colleague dismissing one of his presentations as “cosmic schmoo.” The idea seemed too arbitrary, too catastrophic, too strange.

But the evidence was strange, Cameron pointed out, and only the giant impact seemed to fit it.

It was big enough to generate the global magma ocean in which the anorthosite formed. It explained why the moon’s and Earth’s chemical fingerprints were so similar — they formed from the same swirl of exploded rock. It accounted for the missing volatiles, which would have been blown into space when Earth and Theia collided.

The hypothesis was also supported by data from science experiments astronauts performed during their time on the lunar surface. Seismometers deployed by Armstrong’s comrade Buzz Aldrin and his successors on later Apollo missions revealed that the moon has relatively little iron at its center.

After the collision, the theory goes, heavy elements such as iron sank into Earth’s core while lighter elements were blasted away into what became the moon. (Notably, Earth is the densest planet in the solar system.)

Other rocks have helped us “see beyond the moon” to the history of the whole solar system, Zeigler said. Most of Earth’s geologic record has been weathered by water and wind or swallowed up by plate tectonics, but the moon’s surface still bears the scars of every volcano that ever erupted and every meteor that ever crashed into it.

Lunar samples provided evidence for an era called the Late Heavy Bombardment, when the inner planets were assaulted by a barrage of asteroids, right around the time that life arose on Earth. And by counting cra-

“It’s exciting to open up something new.

We don’t know what we’ll find.”

Barbara Cohen, NASA scientist

ters on areas of the moon whose ages are known from the Apollo samples, scientists have established a system for estimating the ages of features on other planets.

Studying material from the moon up close hasn’t completely explained its history. For one, researchers can find no molecular fingerprints of Theia — the object whose collision with Earth purportedly created the moon. Nor can scientists agree on how traces of water wound up inside the samples, when the global magma ocean should have boiled it all away.

“For certain, the story is not

complete,” Zeigler said.

NASA hopes that the three newly available samples — which represent half of all the lunar material the space agency has in reserve — will help answer these questions.

Some researchers will look for traces of water in a rock that has been stored in a freezer for nearly 50 years. Others will seek out volatile molecules, including water, trapped inside tiny glass beads formed from lunar lava fountains that erupted billions of years ago.

Several teams will work together to examine the materials inside pristine vacuum tubes

The lunar rock display and test laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

There, Andrea Mosie, an Apollo sample processor, handles lunar rocks inside their airtight containers.

KLMNO WEEKLY

that were sealed by astronauts while they were still on the moon. The way the rocks are layered may offer insight about landslides that shape the lunar landscape in the absence of wind, weather and life. Captured gases carry clues about how the material was altered by radiation, which in turn will help scientists understand how long the rock was exposed to light before astronauts boxed it up and carried it away.

Some measurements, like the analysis of the captured gas, can only be made at the moment the canisters are opened. Scientists will spend months rehearsing the experiment on practice tubes containing samples from Antarctica before the big event.

“It’s exciting to open up something new,” said Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who will lead the gas analysis. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”

At the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference meeting in Houston this spring — the 50th event since the one where the Apollo 11 samples were first discussed all those years ago — announcements about the upcoming experiments were met with loud applause.

The United States hasn’t taken any new material from the moon since the last Apollo landing in 1972, and no lunar rocks have been brought to Earth since the Soviets’ Luna 24 probe flew four years after that. China has plans for a sample return mission this year, and President Trump has directed NASA to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024. But a 2011 law bars U.S. federal scientists from collaborating with China’s space agency, and a lack of funding for NASA has raised skepticism about Trump’s proposed moon shot.

To fully answer lingering questions, “we need a better global representation of lunar rock types,” Cohen said. And for that, “we need to go back.”

But in the meantime, she said, the decision to open the Apollo samples is like “a mini mission” unto itself; one more chance to probe a piece of another place; one more chapter in the story of the moon.n

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