The Washington Post National Weekly - October 13, 2019

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019

. IN COLLABORATION WITH

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Prepare for launch PAGE 812 After years of waiting, Virgin Galactic is close to flying tourists to the edge of space PAGE

Politics Polling on impeachment 4

Nation Another investigation for VA 8

5 Myths Hispanics 23

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THE FIX

Syria move may haunt Trump A ARON B LAKE

He added that “this is not a matter of if many ISIS fighters break out, it’s a matter of when.”

Some of these politicians might dress it up, resident Trump has made one of the but what they’re saying, strictly speaking, is riskiest decisions of his term on Syria, that Trump has made a decision that could well even though it may not have registered lead to a mass slaughter of U.S. allies and also with the average American. And even increase the threat from the most dangerous his allies are talking about it as though it’s a terrorist organization in the world. They’re tragic mistake that will forever tarnish him. saying that people will die, perhaps en masse, Indeed, they are saying things that will make and that Trump’s decision increases the danger it rhetorically difficult to turn around and to the Western world and Americans. support him in 2020.

Even Trump seemed to concede the Trump’s intraparty critics have often latter point Wednesday, suggesting that been criticized for halfheartedly anIslamic State fighters might go to Eunouncing their disapproval of the things rope.

Trump does. And that’s certainly still the “Well, they’re going to be escaping to case here. Rather than directly calling Europe; that’s where they want to go,” he Trump out for his decision to pull troops said. from northern Syria — a move that is If it happens — or if the dire predicapparently paving the way for Turkey to tions about the Kurds come true — how target the United States’ Kurdish allies can Republicans then turn around and who led the fight against the Islamic say Trump is the steady leader this counState in Syria, and that some worry could try needs? How can they argue that revitalize it — they’ll often cite the “ad“socialism” is worse than an increased ministration” or broadly express conterrorist threat and/or the mass death of cern about the Kurds.

U.S. allies whom they said Trump, pracBut even the things they are saying BURAK KARA/GETTY IMAGES tically speaking, sent to their own strongly suggest that the president they slaughter? Most of them still probably support will soon have blood on his A Turkish soldier waves from the top of an armored vehicle would, but that argument would carry hands. They’ll never say it in so many as troops prepare to cross the border into Syria on significant cognitive dissonance. The words, perhaps, but that’s really what Wednesday as part of a campaign to extend Turkish control. quotes above would certainly loom large they’re saying, for all intents and purin Democratic arguments that Trump has have been saying Wednesday: “The Kurds are poses. proved to be genuinely dangerous. the ones who have been leading the fight “Every concern I had about President To this point in his presidency, despite his against ISIS in Syria. Also pray for the ChrisTrump’s Syria decision is coming true in many controversies, Trump has avoided a true tians who the Kurds have been protecting. They spades,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) tweeted catastrophe involving massive loss of life that could be annihilated. Would you pray w/me Friday. “The reemergence of ISIS is on the way. can be directly chalked up to the federal govthat Pres. @realDonaldTrump will reconsider?

And if you think only Europe is threatened — ernment. Whatever you think of this decision, Thousands of lives hang in the balance.” you are sadly mistaken.” he has walked into a scenario in which that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said via Twitter “President Trump’s decision to withdraw could well be the case — and even his allies are that the “administration” had “cut [a] deal with U.S. forces from northern Syria is having sickpredicting it pretty unmistakably. n Erdogan allowing him to wipe [the Kurds] out.” ening and predictable consequences,” Rep. Liz

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Cheney (Wyo.), the No. 3-ranking House Republican, said Wednesday. She added: “The U.S. is abandoning our ally the Kurds, who fought ISIS on the ground and helped protect the U.S. homeland. This decision aids America’s adversaries, Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and paves the way for a resurgence of ISIS.” The derision extends to Trump’s most devoted base, evangelical Christians. The Rev. Franklin Graham echoed what many evangelicals

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CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY LIFESTYLE BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

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ON THE COVER Dee Chester, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher, used an inheritance in 2017 to buy her ticket on a Virgin Galactic space flight. Photo by CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK for The Washington Post

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POLITICS

Trump tests boundaries of his power

BY T OLUSE O LORUNNIPA AND A NN E . M ARIMOW

I

n legal maneuvers that have defied Congress, drawn rebukes from federal judges and tested the country’s foundational system of checks and balances, President Trump has made an expansive declaration of presidential immunity that would essentially place him beyond the reach of the law.

In courts and before Congress, Trump’s legal teams are simultaneously arguing two contradictory points: that the president can’t be investigated or indicted by prosecutors because Congress has the sole responsibility for holding presidents accountable, and that the House’s impeachment inquiry is an unconstitutional effort that the White House can ignore.

“We have a president who simply doesn’t believe that Congress is a coequal branch of government,” said Elliot Williams, who helped run the Justice Department’s legislative affairs office during the Obama administration. “That’s a huge departure from anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”

The broad legal effort escalated on Tuesday when the White House counsel sent a letter to House Democratic leaders dismissing Congress’s impeachment inquiry as “illegitimate” and stating that the entire executive branch would refuse to cooperate with it.

For a president who has responded to investigations into his conduct with claims of “witch hunt!” and “presidential harassment,” the latest machinations underscore how Trump’s White House and private legal teams, as well as — to a lesser degree — the Justice Department, have come to agree with his absolutist view of executive power.

“The Constitution has a supremacy clause for a reason,” said Jay Sekulow, Trump’s private lawyer. “It has separation of powers for a reason. And it defines the president in a unique constitutional capacity — and that is as

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

President’s broad claims of executive immunity lead to criticism that he is acting above the law commander in chief and as chief executive. And it requires a unique set of both obligations and constitutional privileges.”

In his eight-page letter to Congress on Tuesday, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone declared that “the President has a country to lead” and claimed that Congress’s attempts at oversight were overly partisan, lacked due process and ran afoul of constitutional principles. Echoing Trump, Cipollone made several political points in his letter, accusing Democrats of trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

Citing executive privilege, the Trump administration has blocked several officials from testifying before Congress or handing over documents in recent months. In a dramatic move Tuesday, the White House blocked House investigators from deposing Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, just hours before he was set to testify as part of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into

whether Trump abused his office by pushing Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

Trump’s private lawyers are also defending him in multiple court cases by pointing to executive privilege, making the case that Trump’s position affords him special protections.

The White House has argued that Trump can refuse to cooperate with Congress’s impeachment inquiry because the House has not held a full vote authorizing the probe and that the Trump administration has not been given due process.

The White House would not commit to cooperating with Congress even if the House holds a full vote to open an impeachment inquiry, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

Responding to the White House letter Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the House would proceed

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) is leading the Democrats’ inquiry into possible impeachment charges against President Trump. The White House blocked House investigators from deposing Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, hours before he was set to testify this past week.

with its investigation and consider any efforts to impede it as obstruction.

“Mr. President, you are not above the law,” she said in a statement. “You will be held accountable.”

Several legal scholars panned Cipollone’s letter as a political document with little legal relevance.

Michael J. Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor, said the White House letter amounted to “a bunch of political talking points” with a “completely backwards” interpretation of the Constitution.

The Constitution gives the House the “sole power of impeachment” and does not prescribe how the process should unfold, said Gerhardt, author of “Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

“The president doesn’t get to dictate to the House how it should do its job,” he said. “This is an attempt to flout the law and place the president above the law.”

Ilya Somin, a professor at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, joked in a Facebook post that the Trump administration’s legal reasoning made him wonder “whether the White House counsel was sick the day they taught law at law school.”

Somin also rejected the assertion from the White House that the inquiry violates “constitutionally mandated due process.”

An impeachment inquiry, he said in an interview, is not a criminal trial.

“What’s at stake is losing a position of power,” Somin said.

“None of the rights the White House demands” are required by the Constitution.

But Trump has long held an expansive view of executive power and has cited Article II of the Constitution, which defines the powers of the executive branch, as a catchall that gives him wide latitude.

“Article II allows me to do whatever I want,” Trump said in a June interview with ABC News. n

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POLITICS

Poll: Most Americans favor inquiry

BY D AN B ALZ AND S COTT C LEMENT

A

majority of Americans say they endorse the decision by House Democrats to begin an impeachment inquiry of President Trump, and nearly half of all adults also say the House should take the additional step of recommending that the president be removed from office, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released this week.

The findings indicate that public opinion has shifted quickly against Trump and in favor of impeachment proceedings in recent weeks as information has been released about his efforts to pressure Ukrainian government officials to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 campaign rival, and Biden’s son Hunter.

Previous Post-Schar School or Post-ABC News polls taken at different points throughout this year found majorities of Americans opposing the start of an impeachment proceeding, with 37 percent to 41 percent saying they favored such a step. The recent revelations appear to have prompted many Americans to rethink their positions.

Tuesday’s poll finds that, by a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent, Americans say the House was correct to open the inquiry.

Among all adults, 49 percent say the House should take the more significant step of impeaching the president and calling for his removal from office. An additional 6 percent say they support the inquiry but do not favor removing Trump from office, with the remainder undecided about the president’s fate. The results among registered voters are almost identical.

The findings highlight the partisan divisions that surround the Trump presidency and any impeachment inquiry, but also the degree to which there are defections among Republicans.

More than 8 in 10 Democrats endorse the inquiry and nearly 8 in 10 favor a vote to recommend

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Nearly half say House should impeach Trump, calling for his removal that Trump be removed from office. Among Republicans, about 7 in 10 do not support the inquiry but almost 3 in 10 do, and almost one-fifth of Republicans say they favor a vote recommending the president’s removal. Among the critical voting bloc of independents, support for the impeachment inquiry is 57 percent, with 49 percent saying the House should vote to remove Trump from office.

Since a Post-ABC poll in July, movement toward an impeachment inquiry has occurred among all three groups, with support for the inquiry rising by 25 points among Democrats, 21 points among Republicans and 20 points

among independents.

The impeachment inquiry is moving forward at a steady pace despite statements by the White House that the entire Executive branch would refuse to cooperate with it.

The president has denounced Democrats for undertaking the inquiry, and his reelection campaign has begun airing television ads echoing charges, largely unfounded, that the president has made in tweets and statements.

Two pieces of information triggered the impeachment inquiry and have sparked widespread public concern, according to latest survey conducted by The Post and the Schar School of Policy and

Recent revelations about President Trump’s interactions with the Ukrainian president have prompted many Americans to rethink their positions on impeachment.

Government at George Mason University. One was a rough transcript of a July 25 telephone call between Trump and newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked for “a favor” that included requests for the Ukrainians to look into what happened during the 2016 presidential election and to investigate Biden and his son, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The other was a detailed complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower that the Trump administration also released.

Asked about the contents of the telephone call, a clear majority of Americans say Trump’s request to

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POLITICS A majority (55 percent) say Democrats are not overreacting by starting the impeachment inquiry.

investigate Biden and his son was inappropriate (62 percent to 32 percent who thought it was not). More than 8 in 10 Democrats call the request inappropriate, as do 63 percent of independents.

Republicans have a different view, with nearly 6 in 10 calling the request for the investigation appropriate and one-third saying it was inappropriate.

The president has defended himself, saying he did nothing inappropriate, calling the conversation “perfect” and insisting that he was within his rights to demand investigations of alleged corruption of an ally to which the United States sends significant aid.

In the weeks before the July 25 phone call, the White House had held back military aid that had been approved for Ukraine. Asked how much this matters in judging the president’s actions, 58 percent say it matters either “a great deal” or “a good amount,” while 37 percent say it matters “not so much” or “not at all.”

When it comes to Trump’s overall conduct as president, Americans offer a harsh verdict. Asked whether he upholds adequate standards for ethics in government, 60 percent of Americans say he does not, while 35 percent say he does.

Partisan divisions mark the results on this question as well, with 83 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents saying he does not uphold adequate ethical standards and 68 percent of Republicans saying he does.

The verdict on the former vice president is more positive, if still mixed: Asked whether Biden would uphold adequate standards for ethics in government should he become president, 47 percent say yes, while 38 percent say no. Those results also split along partisan lines, with 72 percent of Democrats saying Biden would uphold ethical standards, while 63 percent of Republicans say he would not.

The poll finds that 15 percent of all Americans say Trump does not uphold adequate ethical standards and that Biden also would not do so if he were president.

At this early stage in the impeachment inquiry, whose timing is fraught as the country barrels toward an election year, the public is siding more with congressional Democrats than Republi-

POLL

Washington Post-Schar School Poll

Most Americans support impeachment inquiry, but just under half support removing Trump from office Q: Do you think Congress should or should not have begun an impeachment inquiry of Trump? (IF SUPPORT INQUIRY) Do you think the House of Representatives should or should not vote to remove Trump from office?

0

10

20

30

40

50

Support inquiry …

58%

… And support removing Trump

49

… But oppose removing Trump

6

Oppose inquiry

38

Note: No opinion not shown.

Source: Oct. 1-6, 2019, Washington Post-Schar School poll of 1,007 U.S. adults with an error Washington Post-Schar School Poll margin of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

POLL

EMILY GUSKIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

6 in 10 Americans say Trump does not uphold adequate standards for ethics in government; fewer say the same about Biden Among U.S. adults

Do you think Trump _______ uphold adequate standards for ethics in government?

0

10

20

30

Does

40

50

60

35

Does not

60%

No opinion

5

If Biden became president, do you think he _____ uphold adequate standards for ethics in government?

0

10

20

30

40

Would

60

47%

Would not No opinion

50

38 15

Source: Oct. 1-6, 2019, Washington Post-Schar School poll of 1,007 U.S. adults with an error margin of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

EMILY GUSKIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

cans when it comes to their responses. By a margin of 49 percent to 44 percent, Americans narrowly approve of the way congressional Democrats are responding to the inquiry. But by a margin of 56 percent to 33 percent, they say they disapprove of the way congressional Republicans are responding. The latter tally includes more than one-third of Republicans who disapprove of how their

party’s congressional representatives are dealing with this.

Majorities of Americans say Democrats in Congress are taking a stand against Trump’s actions (61 percent) and are acting to uphold their constitutional duties (53 percent). Similarly, a majority (55 percent) say Democrats are not overreacting by starting the impeachment inquiry. However, in a potential warning to Demo-

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crats, 50 percent of Americans say the impeachment proceeding is distracting Congress from more important issues, slightly higher than the percent who disagree (46 percent).

The survey finds cracks within the Republican coalition on the question of support for the impeachment inquiry, with younger and more moderate Republicans offering greater support. Overall, 25 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support the effort. Broken down by ideology, 41 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans say they favor the inquiry, compared with 16 percent of conservatives, who make up the majority of the party.

Broken down by age groups, 40 percent of Republican-leaning adults ages 18 to 39 endorse the start of the inquiry, compared with 23 percent of those ages 40 to 64 and 13 percent of those age 65 and older.

On the question of the appropriateness of Trump’s request to Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, 45 percent of moderate-to-liberal Republicans and Republicans younger than 40 say it was not appropriate. Overall, 33 percent of Republican-leaning adults say it was inappropriate.

As in many things related to the president, there is a significant gender gap in the findings of the poll, with 65 percent of women favoring the impeachment inquiry, compared with 51 percent of men.

A majority (61 percent) of white college graduates favor the inquiry, while whites without college degrees, a mainstay of Trump’s support, are split: 47 percent in favor and 48 percent in opposition. A smaller majority (53 percent) of white college graduates also say the House should recommend that the president be removed from office.

The poll was conducted by The Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The survey was administered by telephone Oct. 1-6 among a random national sample of 1,007 adults, 69 percent of whom were reached on cellphones and 31 percent on landlines. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; the error margin is larger for results among subgroups. n

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NATION

Fatal insulin injections spur VA probe L ISA R EIN in Clarksburg, W.Va. BY

F

our months after Melanie Proctor’s father was buried with military honors for his combat service in Vietnam, she came home to her farm to find an unfamiliar tan SUV in the driveway.

Two federal agents stepped out into the hot sun in August 2018.

“We’re here about your father,” the FBI agent said. “We don’t believe he died of natural causes.”

The agents showed Proctor her dad’s records from the three days he had been hospitalized at the local VA medical center.

What the line graph showed was alarming.

In the early-morning hours that April, Felix McDermott’s blood sugar had bottomed to dangerous levels. The retired Army sergeant his family knew as “Pap” died the next morning from severe hypoglycemia.

Someone had given her father, who was not a diabetic, a deadly injection of insulin, the investigators told Proctor — and he was not the only one.

Multiple veterans had died under similar circumstances on the same ward, and the agents had come to Proctor’s farm in a hamlet 42 miles east of Clarksburg to ask the unthinkable: They wanted to dig up Pap’s body.

Proctor agreed, and her father was one of seven bodies exhumed in an investigation of 11 suspicious deaths at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center, according to a person familiar with the case who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because it is ongoing.

The 14-month inquiry is the latest criminal investigation to engulf the Department of Veterans Affairs, intensifying questions about whether the country’s largest health-care system is doing enough to protect the veterans in its care.

In August, a former VA pathologist in Fayetteville, Ark., was indicted on three charges of manslaughter after officials say he misdiagnosed thousands of patients

PHOTOS BY JEFF SWENSEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Suspicious deaths of 11 veterans at W.Va. medical center are the focus of unfolding criminal case while using drugs or alcohol. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, in Beckley, W.Va., a former VA doctor is under investigation for sexually assaulting as many as 20 of his male patients, according to two people familiar with the case.

In Clarksburg, a small Appalachian community four hours west of Washington, hospital officials said they alerted VA leaders as soon as they learned that their medical staff suspected foul play.

The deaths from the second half of 2017 through July 2018, initially found to be of natural causes, are now being investigated as homicides. Federal authorities say they have identified a person of interest in the case.

The probe has come to focus on a now-fired hospital employee, a woman who worked the overnight shift as a nursing assistant and left last year, according to people familiar with the case.

The Washington Post is not using the woman’s name because she has not been charged. Through

her son, she declined to speak to a reporter who visited her home outside Clarksburg.

Investigators have identified similarities in nearly a dozen deaths: Elderly patients in private rooms were injected in their abdomen and limbs with insulin the hospital had not ordered — some with multiple shots, according to people familiar with the case. The insulin, which was quickly absorbed, was given late at night when the staff had emptied out.

The person of interest was assigned to monitor several of the veterans who died in what are known as one-on-one bedside vigils for patients who need extra attention.

Despite these common denominators, the medical staff and those with oversight of hospital procedures were slow to identify a pattern — a failure that could have cost lives, several people familiar with the investigation said.

The Clarksburg medical center reported 26 deaths from late 2017 through June 2018, according to

Linda Shaw walks with her mother, Norma, on their farm. Linda’s father, George, died last year at the VA hospital in Clarksburg, W.Va. An autopsy showed a severe blood-sugar drop hours before his death.

an internal VA database that tracks mortality rates across the system. The suspicious deaths accounted for close to half of them, according to the data reviewed by The Post.

The case has also brought new scrutiny to VA’s internal controls.

The medical surgical ward in Clarksburg, known as 3A, did not have surveillance cameras, according to people familiar with the case. The woman is believed to have had improper access to the medical supply room. The medicine carts on the floor also were routinely left unlocked.

Wesley Walls, a hospital spokesman, said the facility has “many protocols in place to safeguard medication.”

But lawmakers are still demanding answers.

“All of us are up in arms,” said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), describing the reaction of his colleagues on the Senate committee that oversees veterans’ care. He said he is incredulous that hospital leaders in Clarksburg took so long to put the pieces together.

“You mean to tell me that for nine months you didn’t know what was going on in your hospital?” Manchin said. “Either you didn’t care, or there was a lack of competency.”

The senator said he is preparing to call for a “full-blown” Senate investigation into how VA handled the case.

Glenn Snider, the medical center director, has said he notified senior leaders in Washington, including the VA inspector general, as soon as his staff alerted him to their concerns.

As the inquiry has unfolded, the hospital has required more rigorous tracking of its medications, including their dispensing and who has access to them, according to people familiar with the case.

VA Inspector General Michael Missal opened an investigation into the deaths in July 2018. The nursing assistant was moved to a dayside paperwork job and interviewed soon after, a person close to the case said. The hospital did not move to fire her for another seven months, the person said,

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NATION eventually terminating her for lymined the source of the insulin ing on her résumé. they believe was used on patients.

Three deaths have been ruled In some states, including West Virhomicides by insulin injection, ginia, insulin can be purchased according to people familiar with without a prescription. At the hosthe investigation. In recent pital, the drug, though not a conweeks, the Armed Forces deputy trolled substance, is secured in the medical examiner changed the medicine room by a coded keypad, death certificates of the others according to people familiar with from “natural causes” to “undethe protocol. However, people fatermined,” according to autopsy miliar with the case said the perreports and two people familiar son of interest obtained access to with the case. the room and that medicine carts The first patient afflicted with were often left unlocked. what would later be understood as Determining who may have acsudden, unexplained hypoglycecessed the insulin has presented a mia died in the second half of 2017. challenge. The hospital uses surThe deaths piled up. One in veillance cameras in general areas January 2018. Another in March. such as waiting rooms, hallways Three more in April, three days and parking lots, a spokesman apart, including McDermott. Two said. VA does not require their use more in May. Another two in June. in hospital wards and leaves the Another in early July, on the same decision up to individual facilities. day investigators arrived at the Soon after they arrived, investihospital. gators began knocking on the The hospital staff recorded doors of the victims’ families. their apparent causes: Advanced They drove first to Norma dementia, sepShaw’s 116-acre sis, heart attack farm past a — unsurprising closed coal mine determinations west of town. In for an elderly March 2018, her population husband, with chronic George, 81, had conditions, inshown signs of cluding a small dehydration number with and was admitdiabetes. ted to the VA They also Felix McDermott is buried in hospital.

His had extremely Westmoreland County, Pa. His room was next low blood-sug- death has been ruled a homicide. to the nurses’ ar levels — station. some as low as 12 milligrams per At one point, Shaw, a retired Air deciliter.

Force communications specialist, A high enough dose of insulin, fell in his hospital room. Then a especially the rapid-acting form, nurse told his family that George’s can be fatal for anyone, even with blood sugar had dropped. “She intervention to counteract it. said there was no explanation,” his When FBI agents and Missal’s widow recalled. He died nine days staff arrived on the scene, they later after being transferred to pored through patient medical hospice care, where he alternated records and began interviewing between agitation and lethargy. the staff and the person of interest.

Without hesitation, Norma They discovered that she Shaw gave the FBI the go-ahead to walked the hospital ward late at exhume his body. “I said, ‘Yes, take night with a bedside glucose mehim,’ ” she recalled. “I just want to ter, pricking the edge of patients’ know the cause of it.” fingers to test their blood sugar.

In January, Shaw’s body was She pricked one patient 12 times in taken to Dover Air Force Base in one night, the person on the mediDelaware for a forensic autopsy cal staff recalled. generally performed in cases of Another night, she told the violent or suspicious deaths. nurses’ station that a patient’s The federal medical examiner blood sugar had dropped. At the found four insulin injection sites time, her attention to blood-sugar in his arms and right thigh. The levels did not raise alarms; with autopsy showed a blood-sugar the state’s high rate of diabetes, drop to 17 in a span of a few hours, frequent checks are not unusual. according to the family’s attorney, Investigators have not deterDavid Glover. n

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Average commute hits new record BY

C HRISTOPHER I NGRAHAM

T

he average American commute grew to just over 27 minutes one way in 2018, a record high, according to data released in September by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The average American has added about two minutes to their oneway commute since 2009, the data shows. That may not sound like a lot, but those numbers add up: The typical commuter now spends 20 more minutes a week commuting than they did a decade ago. Over the course of a year, it works out to about 17 additional hours commuting.

Relative to 1980, the picture is even more grim: Since then, American workers have lost nearly an hour a week to their commutes, the equivalent of one full-time workweek over the course of a year. All told, the average American worker spent 225 hours, or well over nine full calendar days, commuting in 2018.

The shift is being driven in large part by an increase in the share of workers with long commutes. In 2010, about 8 percent of workers had a one-way commute of 60 minutes or more. By 2018, that share had edged up to nearly 10 percent. As of 2018, there were 4.3 million workers with commutes of 90 minutes or more, up from 3.3 million in 2010.

Rising commute times reflect the challenges of life in many metropolitan areas where new housing isn’t being built fast enough.

As a result, many workers are forced out to far-flung suburbs and exurban areas in search of affordable homes.

Transit and infrastructure woes are another factor. Many metropolitan areas put off necessary spending on roads, bridges and public transit as their populations soared, creating congestion as people try to get to and from work.

In Washington, D.C., daily Metro ridership has fallen by 17 percent since 2008 while the population of the greater metro region has

grown by several hundred thousand, resulting in one of the worst commutes in the nation.

Research has shown that longer commutes are bad for workers, their families, their employers and the economy as a whole. People with longer commutes tend to be less physically active, with higher rates of obesity and high blood pressure. Longer commutes are associated with higher rates of divorce, and the children of fathers with longer commutes tend to have more social and emotional problems.

On the employer side, longer commutes are linked to higher rates of worker absenteeism. One study from England found that a daily increase in commuting time of 20 minutes had the same negative effect on employee satisfaction as a 19 percent pay cut. Traffic congestion alone costs Americans $166 billion a year due to lost time and increased fuel costs, according to a Texas A&M study.

There is one bright spot in the latest census data: A small but growing share of American workers are opting to eliminate their commutes entirely and work from home instead (disclosure: I’m one of them). Just over 5 percent of the workforce telecommuted in 2018, a percentage that’s grown rapidly over the past decade. Telecommuting recently overtook public transit as the third-most-common commuting mode in the United States.

Research shows that even parttime remote work leads to employees who are more engaged with their jobs. A 2015 study of employees at a Chinese travel agency found that remote workers were 22 percent more productive than their office-bound colleagues, in part because they took fewer breaks and sick days. They were also more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to leave the company.

Rising commute times are likely to spur more workers and employers to experiment with remote work. n

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COVER STORY

They’ve got a ticket to ride After years of delays, space tourism is close to reality BY

C HRISTIAN D AVENPORT

W

hen Lori Fraleigh unwrapped the present her husband had given her for her 38th birthday, she found a curious surprise: a model of a spaceship. It was cool, sure, but a toy would be better suited for her young children, then 5 and 1, not her.

Then she noticed the ticket. It took Fraleigh, a Silicon Valley executive, a moment to realize what her husband had purchased for her: a trip to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. “I went through a lot of crazy emotions, like, ‘Did you really buy this?’ ” she recalled of the moment in 2011. “ ‘Do we still have enough money to remodel the kitchen?’ ” Today, her children are 13 and 9. The kitchen remodel has long since been completed. But Fraleigh is still waiting for her trip to space.

For years, Branson has been pushing a quixotic vision for the future, where his spacecraft would ferry

passengers off Earth as frequently as airplanes. But for all the talk about a new Space Age full of citizen astronauts, the journey has been fitful, and filled with setbacks, including the death of a test pilot in 2014 after a harrowing crash.

But now, 15 years after Branson founded Virgin Galactic, space tourism could be tantalizingly close to becoming a reality. The company has flown to the edge of space twice and says its first paying customers could reach space next year. Another space venture, Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos almost 20 years ago, hopes to conduct its first test flight with people this year, though it hasn’t announced prices or sold any tickets. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And NASA recently announced that it would allow private citizens to fly to the International Space Station on spacecraft built by SpaceX and Boeing.

Which means that Fraleigh may soon finally get her five minutes of weightlessness, a view that promises to

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PHOTOS BY CHRISTIE HEMM KLO /FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

be spectacular and a test to see if she has the right stuff.

Fraleigh has dreamed of being an astronaut since she was a kid and has solid space geek credentials, including having attended Space Camp as a teenager.

But she didn’t think she could become a NASA astronaut and instead became a tech executive in Silicon Valley, a career that meant her family could absorb Virgin Galactic’s charge ($200,000 per ticket in 2011) without financial hardship. A mother who spends weekends ferrying her children to soccer, baseball and music lessons, she doesn’t look like a thrill seeker. The most adventurous thing she’s done? Driving a go-cart in college, and “I’ve been on some hikes up in Lake Tahoe that were on the strenuous side.”

Now she’s preparing for a ride in Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, a sleek spaceplane with a rocket motor strong enough to send two pilots and as many as six passengers more than 50 miles high, where the Federal Aviation Administration says the edge of

Future astronauts Lori Fraleigh, shown on opposite page, and Craig Wichner are among the people who have tickets for a trip to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

Fraleigh was gifted the trip by her husband in 2011; Wichner paid his deposit in 2008.

Flying to space isn’t cheap: Today, tickets cost $250,000.

space begins. The spaceship is tethered to the belly of a large, twin-fuselage airplane that carries it to an altitude of about 40,000 feet. Then SpaceShipTwo is released, fires its engine and rockets off through the atmosphere.

For decades, people have dreamed of such adventures. After the Apollo missions, Pan Am started a waiting list for tickets to the moon that by 1971 stretched 90,000 names long. Famed CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite signed up, as did future president Ronald Reagan. Later, in the 1970s and early 1980s, NASA was so convinced that the space shuttle would, as the name implied, offer regular service to Earth orbit that a committee was formed to sort out the sticky problem of how to choose the first private citizens to fly.

For today’s space companies, it’s anyone willing — and wealthy enough — to pay the steep cost.

NASA said it would cost $35,000 a night for stays on the ISS, and the price to get there is estimated to be

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

“Space flight belongs to the public; they pay for it.”

NASA, in a 1982 memo

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson takes off his shirt to put on a Future Astronaut Training Program shirt given to him by commercial astronaut Mark “Forger” Stucky at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where they donated the rocket engine from the VSS Unity.

$50 million. Virgin Galactic has said it may in the short term raise the price of its tickets, which today cost $250,000.

Despite the high costs, Virgin Galactic expects high demand from the wealthy.

While it completes the testing phase of the spacecraft this year, the company projects flying 66 paying customers in 2020, more than 700 in 2021 and nearly 1,000 the following year. By 2023, when it expects to fly 1,562 paying passengers on 270 flights, it plans to have nearly $600 million in annual revenue. Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic announced it would go public by merging with a New York investment firm, a move that Branson said would “open space to more investors and in doing so, open space to thousands of new astronauts.”

Already, 600 people have signed up for what Virgin Galactic describes as a transformative experience of seeing Earth from space, what astronauts call the “overview effect.” That’s more people than have been to space since 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

Second thoughts?

Craig Wichner, who runs Farmland LP, an organic farmland investment fund in San Francisco, has been waiting for the opportunity for more than a decade. In 2008, he plunked down several thousand dollars as a deposit to ride on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo with a bunch of friends who thought it’d make a great adventure.

“Who wants to do this with me?” a pal said at the time.

“Yep, I’m there,” Wichner responded.

But it wasn’t just the adventure that attracted Wichner; it was the opportunity to help push humanity out of the atmosphere, he said. Buying a ticket was like casting a vote for Branson’s spacefaring vision of the future — “my way of actually supporting his mission, his dream and helping advance humanity.”

In the years since, the dream has unfurled slowly as Virgin Galactic learned that building a spacecraft was not as easy as initially thought.

But the repeated delays had an upside. They allowed Wichner to meet many of the other “future astronauts” who had signed up with Virgin Galactic, space enthusiasts from 60 countries who now form a sort of exclusive fraternity. They meet occasionally, bonding over the prospect of a wild adventure.

“It was just this wonderful, eclectic mix of people from all around the world,” Wichner said.

Now, as the company gets closer to flying and his number may soon be called, there are other factors to consider. Weighing on Wichner is the realization that spaceflight is dangerous. In 2014, during a test flight, the spacecraft came apart, killing Michael Alsbury, one of the test pilots and a father of two.

Wichner’s reaction to the crash was “a general sadness at the cost.” But he was also inspired by the company’s perseverance, “the unwavering commitment to just keep moving forward,” he said.

Now, however, the opinions of his own children, ages 13 and 8, matter. They’re old enough to understand the consequences of failure.

“Sometimes they’re excited about me going into space, and sometimes they’re

scared,” he said. “And so it’s not worth doing if they’re scared.”

NASA’s first ordinary citizen astronauts NASA’s leaders were convinced that the space shuttle could turn ordinary citizens into astronauts and set about trying to decide which private citizens should go first.

“Space flight belongs to the public; they pay for it,” reads a NASA memo from 1982. “Therefore NASA’s objective has been to maintain the openness of the program and to invite the public to participate to the extent possible. Now a new opportunity has emerged. With the advent of the Shuttle, people need no longer participate vicariously but may participate directly.”

At the time, NASA Administrator James Beggs “was being barraged by people wanting to fly,” said Alan Ladwig, who ran what NASA called its “spaceflight participant program.”

“He was getting all these VIPs and reporters calling him and saying they wanted to fly.”

The singer John Denver was among those keen to go. He lobbied NASA for a ride, touting that he was an airplane pilot and an amateur astronomer who kept in shape by running four to five miles a day.

In 1984, NASA surveyed artists about the prospect of a writer or painter going to space and got this response from Maya Angelou, the award-winning poet, according to a Chicago Tribune article from the time: “As poets over the centuries concentrated on Grecian urns, nightingales, ravens and romantic love, I am certain that poets in the future will focus on the configuration of planets, stars, weightlessness and the dis-

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COVER STORY

KLMNO WEEKLY

“I just hope I’m not crying and miss it all because it’s a big wet blur.”

Dee Chester, a retired schoolteacher who bought her space flight in 2017

NASA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

covery of our universe.”

Ultimately, NASA decided to take people who could communicate the experience to others. First a teacher, then a journalist.

But first came a pair of powerful politicians.

Jake Garn, a Republican senator from Utah who headed the appropriations subcommittee that oversaw NASA’s budget, pushed to go, saying it was his obligation to “kick the tires” of NASA’s newest spacecraft. Less than a year later, Bill Nelson, then a Democratic congressman representing the Florida Space Coast, hitched a ride. There were also many nonNASA astronauts known as payload specialists who worked on specific projects in space and often had a particular technical expertise.

The White House, though, was looking forward to the flight of another civilian, Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, who had been selected out of 11,000 applicants to fly on space shuttle Challenger in 1986. And NASA was deep in the process of picking the next civilian to fly — a journalist — when on Jan. 28, 1986, the Challenger’s booster exploded, killing McAuliffe and the other six astronauts on board.

The shuttle would stay grounded for more than 2½ years and never achieve the frequency of flight NASA leaders had initially envisioned, averaging fewer than five flights a year.

No journalist ever flew. And the dreams of opening the shuttle to the general public were deferred.

Preparing for flight While NASA shied away from flying private citizens after the explosion, the private sector kept pursuing it. In 2004, a venture backed by Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Micro-

soft, made history when it flew the first private vehicle to the edge of space to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

The flights were heralded as a new Space Age, one where the private sector would end the government’s monopoly on space. But while the SpaceShipOne flights were successful, they were also harrowing; in one, the navigation system went awry and the pilot had to fly blind; in another, the spacecraft spun like a top all the way to space.

Worried that someone would die in his spacecraft, Allen sold the rights to the technology to Branson, who set off to build the bigger, more robust SpaceShipTwo. And after the X Prize, Congress took notice, growing concerned over what they saw as dangerously loose regulations governing the industry. Former congressman James Oberstar, of Minnesota, criticized the FAA as having a “tombstone mentality — wait until someone dies, then regulate.”

The industry pushed back, saying burdensome rules would stifle a growing industry just as it was getting started, and, backed by the FAA, was able to keep the regulations relatively lax. So today, space tourism, like bungee jumping or skydiving, is governed under an “informed consent” standard: Passengers acknowledge they understand the considerable risks, and zoom, off they’ll go to space. And to secure a launch license from the FAA, the companies have only to demonstrate how they will protect people and property on the ground in the event of a crash.

Late last year, two pilots flew Branson’s SpaceShipTwo to the edge of space. Though it did not go into orbit, it was the first launch of a spacecraft with humans from U.S. soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011.

Then, in February, Virgin Galactic repeated the feat, this time with a crew member, Beth Moses, whose job is to prepare Virgin’s customers for their rides to space. For her, the trip was “mind-blowing,” as if “the sands of time of your life have stopped for a moment.”

Now that Virgin Galactic is getting closer to flying customers, Moses is starting to prepare them to make sure they get the most from the experience. “The one question I ask every one of our customers long before training is what do you most want to get out of your spaceflight?” she said. Some “want to do somersaults,” others want “a Zen, private experience.” Others are flying “to honor someone. . . .

It’s an amazing variety.”

But she knows some will have concerns. Part of her job is to allay them, so participants “arrive ready to savor your space experience,” she said. “If you are concerned about any aspect of the flight, that’s what we’ll walk through and just explain it.”

Dee Chester, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher from Newport Beach, Calif., bought her ticket in 2017, when she came into her inheritance. She said she has no hesitation about going. “I want to do the Superman pose, and look at the Earth and see the very thin bands of the atmosphere. I just hope I’m not crying and miss it all because it’s a big wet blur.”

Now that his day of flying is getting closer, Wichner is getting excited, as well. But he still needs to have the frank conversation with his children, who remain wary.

“It’ll happen naturally, and I think they’ll be fine with me going,” he said.

Until they are, he won’t commit, leaving the future uncertain: “I don’t know that I’m actually going to go.” n

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded during launch on Jan. 28, 1986. From front left, pilot Michael J. Smith, commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee and mission specialist Ronald E. McNair. From rear left, mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, teacher Christa McAuliffe, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis and mission specialist Judith Resnik.

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LIFESTYLE

For some, rats are the perfect pet Properly bred rodents are calm and seem to bond with cage mates and owners

BY

K IM M UELLER

W

hen Abby Chronister started college six years ago, she found herself struggling with anxiety and depression. After class, she often retreated to her bed. That’s when she adopted her first two rats, Luci and Lena.

“Those little critters are what made me get out of bed, knowing I had those little lives to care for,” the 25-year-old graphic designer from Mission, Kan., said. “They bond with you like a dog does. You might not have the energy to walk a dog, but you can manage to fill a water bottle.”

Chronister kept her rats in a cage tucked in the corner of her dorm room. They were quiet. They were clean. And her roommate loved them.

Rats might not be everyone’s idea of a perfect pet or a soothing companion for anxious times, but they have a following, albeit small.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, about half of American households have pets, primarily dogs or cats.

About 4 percent of pet owners have small animals, according to an online survey of 10,000 current pet owners by the American Pet Products Association, a not-forprofit industry group. And of those animal owners, only 6 percent own a rat or mouse — well behind guinea pigs (27 percent), rabbits (27 percent) and hamsters (25 percent), but ahead of gerbils (4 percent) and hermit crabs (2 percent).

Most pet rodents — such as gerbils, hamsters and guinea pigs — tend to bite, said veterinarian Cory Bassett, who specializes in exotic pet care in Overland Park, Kan. They are more antisocial and skittish because they are bred for quantity, not personality, she said.

But rats specifically bred to be pets, she said, are calm — and do not tend to bite the hand that feeds them, she said, and seem to bond emotionally with cage mates and owners.

“Rats are a misunderstood pet,” Bassett said. “People think of them

CHRISTINA MROZIK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

as vermin and pests. People who think they are a really gross pet just don’t realize what they have to offer. If you are looking for a rodent pet that you are going to have a personal connection with, I would recommend a rat.”

The rats sold at pet stores, used in laboratory experiments and adopted from private breeders are all Norway rats. Despite their name, they originally come from China but now live everywhere — except Antarctica.

The general public primarily buys pet rats at two places: retail stores and private breeders also called ratteries. Retail stores sell rats for $10 to $15 that are derogatorily referred to as feeder rats because they are bought as food for reptiles or birds. Randomly bred for quantity, these rats are seldom handled.

Private breeders often buy their first rats from retail stores then selectively breed them for several generations. Called Fancy rats, these creatures are bred to be friendly and curious companions.

Their price can range from $25 to $100 each, depending on the

length of its family tree. Rats selectively bred over several generations cost more than rats bred just once.

Rat lovers tend to agree that the critters have only one major flaw: They die too soon.

“They only live two to three years,” Chronister said sadly, “which is one of the heartbreaking parts because they grab hold of you and they never let go.” Yet, the short life span is a major selling point for parents buying a first pet for younger children who can quickly lose interest in the new family member.

Domesticated rats, like most animals kept as pets, do carry diseases.

In 2017, Norway rats from 31 ratteries infected 17 people in 11 states in the first known zoonotic (spread between animals and humans) outbreak of Seoul virus in the United States and Canada. Three people were hospitalized with the virus, which can cause health problems from mild influenza-like illness to kidney failure and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Commonly found in wild rats, Seoul virus is spread through rat urine or droppings, or from virus particles inhaled from the rats’ contaminated bedding. The CDC recommends that pregnant women, children age 5 or younger and people with weakened immune systems not own rats.

One infected rattery kept cages piled on top of one another against the kitchen wall near the food and dining table, CDC epidemiologist Trevor Shoemaker said.

“We recommended depopulation: kill all your rats and start over again, but they wouldn’t,” he said. “They were attached to them.

They all had names.” Infected colonies that weren’t killed were put into quarantine, Shoemaker said, and owners were given instructions for proper sanitation and ventilation.

Domesticated rats also can transmit leptospirosis, salmonellosis and rat bite fever, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. These diseases are considered rare, have low mortality rates, and also can be carried by other animals including dogs, cats, mice, guinea pigs, gerbils, ferrets, weasels, squirrels, monkeys, livestock and wild animals.

Prevention measures primarily include washing hands after handling animals, avoiding animals that bite and staying out of potentially contaminated water such as floods.

The American Fancy Rat & Mouse Association (AFRMA) recommends buying domesticated, socialized rats from breeders who can provide the animal’s health history, exact age and parental temperament.

“Do your homework before getting a pet rat,” AFRMA President Karen Robbins said. “Some people are allergic to the bedding or urine. On rare occasions, people are allergic to the rat itself. Research the pet before buying.”

Fancy rats come in seven varieties based on coat, ear and tail types: Standard (short, glossy coat), Rex (curly hair and curly whiskers), Satin (thin, long coat), Bristle coat (stiff, coarse hair), Tailless (born without a tail, simi-

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INVENTIONS lar to Manx cats), Hairless (born without a coat) and Dumbo (ears on the side rather than on top), according to AFRMA. The Dumbo rat is the most popular variety today thanks to its namesake featured in the 2019 Disney movie remake, Robbins said.

Studies suggest rats dream when they sleep, giggle when tickled and grind their teeth (called bruxing) with pleasure when stroked — similar to when cats purr. Rats are also empathetic, according to a study in which lab rats rescued other trapped rats who previously helped them.

“Rats will help other rats, and that is pretty amazing,” said Mason, who conducted the study.

“They were doing it because they not only recognized that another rat was in distress, but they actually felt that another rat was in distress.”

And the animals can be litterbox trained, just like cats, said Nina Hohimer, who with her two daughters raises 36 Fancy rats in Shawnee, Kan. She simply places rat poop and a smooth river rock into a litter box inside the cage.

The critters quickly catch on. They climb into the box, defecate in the litter box and urinate on the pee rock to mark their territory.

Hohimer keeps her 36 rats in her basement bedroom, safely away from her two dogs. Nine cages equipped with hammocks and toys line the wall in the small room just feet from her bed where she enjoys falling asleep to the sounds of their scurrying feet, little squeaks — and occasional squabbles.

A domestic abuse survivor, Hohimer brought her first rat home after rescuing it from an abusive owner. “The rats have helped me and my girls cope with a lot of emotional and psychological healing, The boys snuggle under our chins when we have flashbacks, anxiety issues or when we are feeling particularly sad. They help a lot with rebuilding our confidence and with quieting our nerves.”

“Recovery from trauma is a long road,” she said, “and I would say that it is certainly easier with these little guys helping us.”

Like many rat owners, Hohimer has taught her pocket pets to come when called by name. Other owners have taught their rats to fetch a ball, run an obstacle course, jump through hoops — even pull on a

cord to raise a little flag.

When not performing tricks, the larger males enjoy perching on their owners’ shoulders and snuggling against their necks. Chronister said male rats are more suitable pets for children because their large bodies are easier to hold compared with the smaller females who on average are about 30 percent lighter, and weigh about half a pound to one pound.

Her biggest male rat weighed more than 1½ pounds. Males also are less likely to run away, she said.

Bassett said hormones are to blame for the different behaviors.

Female rats, hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs all seem to be more independent and active while the males are more interactive with humans. And castrated rats are the friendliest, she said.

Because a female rat can pro-

DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Private breeders selectively breed them for several generations. Called Fancy rats, they are raised to be friendly and curious companions. Their price can range from $25 to $100 each.

duce litters of six to 12 pups every three weeks, reputable breeders usually only sell these social animals in same-gender pairs. Bassett also encourages rat owners to neuter their pets, a procedure that can cost about $300.

“I discourage people from breeding, especially rats,” Bassett said. “If you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to have a ton of rats in just a month’s time.”

Chloe LaPointe decided to skip the pricey procedure when she adopted two male rats in Bristol, Tenn., where she lives.

Then one day LaPointe discovered her boy rat was really a girl with an unusually large protrusion. Now she is caring for 24 rats.

“I accidentally had a breeding situation,” LaPointe said. “I’m thinking of getting a bird for my next pet.” n

KLMNO WEEKLY

Whisky innovation or a ‘sick joke’?

BY

T EO A RMUS

T

hey’re wrapped in seaweed. They’re filled with whisky. And they’re drawing a collective groan from the Internet, thanks to their suspicious resemblance to a laundry detergent pack turned meme turned public health hazard.

That’s right: They’re alcoholic Tide Pods.

Well, sort of.

In what is either a highly successful marketing scheme or an inadvertent attempt to launch itself into millennial relevancy, a 195-year-old single-malt Scotch whisky distillery rolled out three kinds of limited-edition “glassless cocktails,” available through today at a posh London bar.

These alcoholic amuse-bouche pouches provide “the perfect flavour-explosion experience,” the Glenlivet claims.

But, as hundreds of baffled commenters online immediately wanted to know: How do you “drink” them?

“Enjoying them is simple,” said the distillery in a 53-second video.

“The capsules are popped in the mouth for an instant burst of flavour.”

Then, “the capsule is simply swallowed.”

“Surely this is a sick joke,” said Julia Macfarlane, a foreign affairs reporter with ABC News, asking the Scottish prime minister to intervene. “This is an abomination.

What is going on. Somebody do something.”

While the pods might seem a departure for an august Scotch producer, Miriam Eceolaza, the distillery’s director, argued that they honor the legacy of the Glenlivet’s founder, George Smith.

While illicitly operating the distillery in the 1840s and arming himself with pistols to protect the business from political blowback, Smith “always went against the grain, bucking tradition and doing things differently,” Eceolaza said in an announcement.

The distillery’s latest creation is

certainly a different approach to a drink that is meant to be sipped.

And in doing so, it has fashioned a corporate, adult and European revival of an adolescent, American, homegrown meme.

In case you need a refresher: Around January 2018, the Internet lit aflame in its crazed obsession over Tide Pods, as YouTube filled with videos of adolescents biting into the colorful packs of plastic-wrapped laundry detergent.

Now, the Glenlivet wants adult patrons to sink their teeth into seaweed-wrapped whisky pods containing one of three cocktails.

The concoctions were created by the Czech bartender Alex Kratena for London Cocktail Week, the city’s annual celebration of alcohol innovation, exclusively available through Oct. 13 for patrons of his Tayer + Elementary bar, on the city’s bustling Old Street.

Kratena said his bar and the Glenlivet had teamed up with Notpla, a start-up that focuses on putting together alternative and sustainable packages.

“It was very much an exploration of the flavor pillars that are in the Glenlivet. For me, there’s so much more which makes the liquid complex,” he told The Washington Post. “When you insert them in your mouth and gently press them against your palate, you get all the flavors.”

Kratena said that any similarity to Tide Pods, or the meme they starred in, is purely coincidental.

He did not intend to find a new way to sneak alcohol into all sorts of situations where a handle or even a flask might be too obvious, as some have suggested.

He suggested that the packaging — a thin, seemingly invisible layer of seaweed that holds up to 23 milliliters of whisky cocktail — is a call for more sustainable consumption of liquor.

Most people seemed like they weren’t having it.

“Just put it in an IV bag,” wrote author Roxane Gay. “Let’s get to the inevitable conclusion.” n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD

Synagogue attack elicits safety fears B Y L UISA B ECK AND R ICK N OACK

in Halle, Germany

T

he suspect in a Wednesday attack at a synagogue in Germany, leaving two people dead, was described by authorities as a rightwing extremist with a clear antiSemitic motive and a desire to encourage others to follow his lead.

The attack, which the perpetrator live-streamed, was labeled a terrorist incident amid mounting questions about the safety of the Jewish community in Germany and why authorities were unable to prevent or stop it.

The attacker “wanted to imitate others, but he also wanted to instigate others to imitate him,” Public Prosecutor General Peter Frank said Thursday.

“He wanted to have a global impact,” he added.

Stephan B, as the suspect has been identified, is facing two murder charges as well as charges of attempted murder, among other crimes.

He was not known to authorities and most likely acted alone, even though investigators are continuing to explore whether there were accomplices. A senior security official added that the 27-year-old man is from the town of Benndorf, about 24 miles west of Halle.

Outside the targeted synagogue in the eastern German town of Halle, about 100 people assembled to mourn the two victims, as police officers stood by. But some of the mourners said the police presence came too late.

“Had there been police here yesterday, this would have ended differently,” Max Privorozki, chairman of the Jewish community in Halle, told The Washington Post. He added that officials had rejected his requests for more police protection before the attack. “They considered the situation be under control,” he said.

More widely known synagogues and Jewish institutions in Germany are usually protected by police at all times.

FILIP SINGER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Shooting that killed two comes amid worries about rising anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe Igor Matviyets, 28, a resident of Halle and a member of the local Jewish community, said he and others had long felt unsafe.

Anti-Semitic crimes have risen significantly in a number of European countries in recent years.

Deadly synagogue attacks in Pittsburgh and in Poway, Calif., have also rocked the Jewish community in the United States.

“Even before the events of yesterday, I wouldn’t have left my home with the kippah,” Matviyets said, referring to the traditional Jewish skullcap, as he stood in the historic old town district targeted by the attacker.

Wednesday’s attack could have resulted in a far higher death toll if the attacker had entered the synagogue as planned, according to a manifesto released online and verified by security analysts.

“We only narrowly avoided a terrible attack on those inside the synagogue. It could have ended much worse,” German Chancel-

lor Angela Merkel said Thursday.

In his manifesto, the writer said that one of his aims was to “kill as many anti-Whites as possible, jews preferred.”

In chilling echoes of a far-right attack on two New Zealand mosques earlier this year, the helmet-mounted camera video from Halle shows the suspect arriving at the synagogue in a car.

But his plan soon appears to go awry, as explosives and his firearm prevent him from entering the synagogue.

Inside the building, where 70 to 80 worshipers were present, a synagogue official almost immediately noticed the attack on a surveillance screen, said a witness, Christina Feist, 29.

“He and others started barricading the front door,” she told The Post.

In his live-streamed video, the attacker swears repeatedly as he is unable to enter and apologizes to his audience, at points blam-

A woman with her child lays flowers and lights a candle in front of a synagogue in Halle, Germany, on Thursday, a day after two people were killed by an attacker nearby. Up to 80 worshipers were inside the synagogue observing Yom Kippur when the attack began.

ing his homemade weapons, which included nearly nine pounds of explosives, investigators said. According to the manifesto attributed to the suspect, he also used 3-D-printed components to make his equipment.

“It took 15 to 20 minutes for officers to arrive,” Feist said.

By that point, the man already had allegedly shot a woman in the street and a man at a nearby kebab shop. Despite a shootout with the police, the suspect was initially able to escape, but he was later taken into custody.

Oliver Malchow, a representative of the police union, said the incident showed “how thin the level of police coverage is.” Speaking on public television, he also noted, however, that full protection of all religious sites is not feasible.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, said in a statement: “The leadership of the international community must declare that in our post-Holocaust global society, there is no room for antisemitism, racism or xenophobia.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Wednesday a “day of shame and disgrace.”

Those who show even only a “spark of sympathy for rightwing extremism and racial hatred,” he said, “will be complicit.”

Offering her condolences Thursday to the relatives of the victims, Merkel vowed to combat anti-Semitism by investing more in education and prevention efforts.

Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht called for new measures to protect “Jewish fellow citizens significantly better,” including more pressure on digital companies to flag threats to authorities.

In Germany, about 1,500 antiSemitic verbal and violent attacks have been reported annually in recent years, but researchers say the actual figures are higher.

One recent survey found that about 70 percent of anti-Semitic incidents go unreported, according to researchers at the Technical University of Berlin. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Hispanics BY

H ORACIO S IERRA

Envious of Spain’s conquests in the Americas, British propagandists circulated “la leyenda negra,” the black legend, a series of writings that denigrated Spaniards and the Spanish Empire as cruel, haughty and intolerant, starting in the 1500s. Anglophones have propagated myths about Hispanic cultures ever since. Though Hispanics make up 18.3 percent of the U.S. population — the country’s largest minority group — many Americans continue to remix and reuse centuries­old stereotypes about them. Hispanic Heritage Month is a good occasion to shoot down five of the most common mitos.

MYTH NO. 1 Hispanics are a racial group.

Hispanics constitute an ethnic community, not a race — a distinction evident on forms that ask if you’re non-Hispanic white or non-Hispanic black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics identify as white (65 percent), “some other race” (27 percent), mixed race (5 percent), black (2 percent), indigenous (1 percent) and Asian (0.4 percent), among other designations. Seeing Hispanics as a racial group erases our diversity and discounts the racism and pigmentocracy that plague Hispanic societies. To ask AfroHispanics to choose between being black and being Hispanic is to negate their unique identity. To ask white Hispanics to distance themselves from their European heritage is to diminish the ways Spain helped shape the United States. From Spain’s blue-eyed King Felipe VI to members of Peru’s Japanese-descendant Fujimori political dynasty, Hispanics can look like anyone.

MYTH NO. 2 Spanish is a foreign language in the United States.

Many viral videos in recent years have featured Englishspeaking Americans whining in front of Spanish-speaking Americans with profanity-laced tirades that showcase their xenoglossophobia (fear of foreign

languages). Although the United States has never had an official language, bans on the use of German, the shuttering of Japanese-language schools and “English only” movements are scattered throughout the nation’s history.

But through it all, Spanish has remained the second-mostspoken language in the nation, which is unsurprising considering that the U.S. population of 58 million Hispanics is more than Spain’s and second only to Mexico’s. In fact, Spanish was the first European language to be widely spoken in what is now the United States.

MYTH NO. 3 Hispanics support liberal immigration policies.

Hispanics do not speak in unison when it comes to immigration. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll from April, 36 percent of Hispanics described “the situation with illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border” as “a crisis,” similar to the share of Americans overall who said the same. Organizations such as the Latino Coalition offer complex views: They support legal immigration, encourage stronger security to deter illegal immigration and oppose local municipalities that defy federal immigration laws.

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Visitors sing before the White House’s Hispanic Heritage Month reception on Sept. 27. Despite his harsh rhetoric on immigrants from Central America, President Trump could pick up votes in 2020 among Hispanics who are anti-communist or antiabortion.

MYTH NO. 4 ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino’ are synonyms.

“Hispanic” stems from Hispania, the Roman Empire’s name for Spain, so it refers to the peoples and cultures of Spain and its former colonies. “Latino” describes the peoples and cultures where colonizers spoke Latinderived languages such as Spanish, French and Portuguese.

The term “Latin America” was coined in the 1800s to differentiate Romance-languagespeaking areas from English- and Dutch-controlled territories: People from Brazil (Portuguese) and Haiti (French) can be considered Latino but not Hispanic.

MYTH NO. 5 Trump can’t win over Hispanic voters.

In 2016, Trump received 28 percent of the national Hispanic vote but 35 percent of Florida’s Hispanic vote, helping cement his one-percentage-point victory in the state. Savvy campaigns understand that the Hispanic community is not a monolith.

Trump’s campaign has invested early in Florida — where the Hispanic population largely comprises Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan political refugees — with narrowly tailored appeals to communism-abhorring voters who are wary of political rhetoric that evokes even Europe’s socialist democracies, and with an eye on the growing number of antiabortion Hispanic evangelicals.

Despite their outreach efforts, Democratic campaigns flounder when they take the Hispanic vote for granted and pander to the community. Trump — despite, and perhaps because of, his blunt, offensive and arrogant rhetoric — will continue to appeal to a certain segment of the Hispanic population: American citizens whose families fled leftist regimes and are emboldened by promises of good jobs, low taxes and the American Dream. n Sierra is an associate professor in the Department of Language, Literature, & Cultural Studies at Bowie State University.

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SUNDAY, October, 13, 2019

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