The Washington Post National Weekly. November 17, 2019.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2019

. IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE National Weekly ‘I’m gonna lose everything’

A farm family struggles to recover after rising debt pushes a husband to suicide PAGE PAGE 812

Politics Diplomats vs. politicians 3 World Upheaval in Latin America 10 5 Myths The Constitution 23

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Politics

An only-in-Washington moment: Clash of politicians vs. diplomats

Matt McClain/The Washington Post

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M ARC F ISHER

t’s not clear that any minds were changed or that the issues are riveting enough to hold the nation’s collective attention for weeks to come or that President Trump’s fate will be determined in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building.

But the start of the Trump impeachment hearings was a classic Washington moment, a clash of politicians and diplomats as much as Republicans against Democrats. Like virtually everything else in Washington over the past three years, even without the president in the room, this was anoth-

er episode of the Trump Show — the transformation of the U.S. government into a long-running drama about one outsize personality.

The first day of hearings before the House Intelligence Committee was a rigorous civics lesson, a reminder that the United States employs battalions of envoys who live for long stretches in often unfriendly countries, representing the interests of the place they call home.

It was a stage for fiery courtroom rhetoric, with the chief Republican defender of the president, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), trashing the proceedings as an “impeachment sham . . . a tele-

vised, theatrical performance staged by the Democrats.”

And it was a made-for-TV forum for fresh revelations, as one of the first witnesses, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, testified that a member of his staff heard Trump ask about “the investigations” he had urged Ukraine to launch into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The first public step in an impeachment process that seems likely to flow well into the new year and the 2020 presidential primary season took place with Trump down the street in the Oval Office, where, he said later in the day, “I haven’t watched for one

From left, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (DCalif.), ranking Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), and Steve Castor, the Republicans’ chief counsel, during the first public impeachment hearing on Wednesday.

minute.”

Even as the hearing’s spotlight stayed fixed on Trump — his phone calls, his policy shifts, his quest to find usable dirt about a leading Democratic rival — the possible removal of the president seemed to lack the potency and gravity of previous impeachments.

Committee members largely steered clear of the kind of dark oratory that launched impeachment debates in 1973 and 1998, when the possible removal of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton occasioned speeches about the country’s perilous politics and damaged psyche.

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Politics Trump’s remarkable ability to skate through crises that wreck other people’s lives — bankruptcies of his businesses, abandoned projects, divorces and accusations of sexual misbehavior — seemed again to be at work.

The president’s defenders in politics and the media projected a determined “nothing to see here” vibe.

“Welcome to Year Four of the Trump impeachment,” said Rep. Chris Stewart (Utah), one of several Republicans who dismissed the inquiry as a partisan witch hunt.

Breitbart News, a dependably pro-Trump site, dubbed the proceedings “boring,” the same term that White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham deployed. She tweeted that “this sham hearing is not only boring, it is a colossal waste of taxpayer time & money.”

Nunes characterized Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — the spark that lit the impeachment fire — as “a pleasant exchange between two leaders who discuss mutual cooperation over a range of issues.”

Trump took his version of the high road, saying at a news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that “I hear it’s a joke . . . I’d much rather focus on peace in the Middle East.”

Although the hearing’s witnesses and questioners all collect paychecks that say “United States of America” at the top, it seemed at times as if they worked in different industries. During 5 1/2 hours of testimony, the diplomats offered a rolling civics lesson on why an obscure country on the other side of the world matters to Americans.

“Ukraine is important for our national security and we should support it — not to provide that would be folly,” said acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr., who, the nation learned, was No. 5 in his class at West Point.

By contrast, the Republican questioners deployed the president’s brand of sensational rhetoric, speaking of “shams” and “star chambers” and “the corrupt media.”

The stylistic contrast between witnesses and questioners spoke volumes about the changes Trump has brought to Washington. The president promised to disrupt American government just as he had American politics, and here were woolly men with many de-

Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post

cades of diplomatic experience talking about policy and principle in long, elegant sentences, explaining how Ukraine fits in with nearly 250 years of American cooperation with foreign allies.

“Support of Ukraine’s success . . . fits squarely into our strategy for central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Wall 30 years ago this past week,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent.

The contrast could be characterized as serious policy discussion vs. lurid tabloid talk — or “deep state” defensiveness vs. plainspeaking. Which lens voters choose may guide their decision about whom to vote for next year as president.

Public opinion has not settled into any consensus about whether Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was a big deal. When a CBS News poll asked Americans this month whether Trump’s dealings with Ukraine were typical of how presidents work with foreign countries, 42 percent said Trump’s acts were “the kind of thing most presidents probably do,” while 58 percent said he acted in a way that “few or no other presidents have.”

While in Washington impeachment groupies held viewing parties and wore their “Schiff Happens” T-shirts, much of the rest of the nation seemed to be mulling whether sneaking peeks at the

doings in a Capitol Hill hearing room was essential to their lives.

On Google, searches for “impeachment” topped the trending charts for much of the day, but the volume didn’t come close to the previous day’s leader: a nationwide quest for information regarding Sonic the Hedgehog, the video game character that is getting its own ad­ven­ture movie next year.

When Nixon and Clinton faced impeachment debates, the investigations into their behavior played a vital role in shifting or solidifying public opinion.

Many voters were unmoved by the Watergate scandal until a parade of witnesses laid out in numbing detail the sordid and cynical schemes cooked up by Nixon and his aides. Just before the hearings began, first lady Pat Nixon said she still had “complete faith that everything’s going to be all right.”

Even as the Senate select committee on Watergate launched its hearings, it was not clear where the proceedings were heading. “If you like to watch grass grow, you would have loved the opening yesterday,” The Washington Post’s Jules Witcover wrote on Page One of this newspaper on May 18, 1973.

But the first day of hearings convinced some that an endgame was in sight. The Post’s Sally Quinn wrote that “it seemed more

U.S. diplomats George Kent, left, and William B. Taylor Jr. are sworn into the impeachment hearings on Wednesday. As the diplomats offered a rolling civics lesson on why Ukraine is important, their Republican questioners spoke of “shams” and “star chambers.”

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like a public hanging.” Spectators in the hearing room traded examples of the gallows humor that already surrounded Nixon: “Did you hear the new song, ‘Bail to the Chief?’ ” During the Clinton impeachment, there were no public committee hearings. But the full House began considering the matter in December 1998 amid a flurry of revelations about extramarital affairs among members of Congress — so many that quipsters talked about creating a congressional Adulterers Caucus.

That debate took place as much of the country’s attention was focused on Operation Desert Fox, the four-day bombing of Iraq. Neon-green night photography of falling bombs dominated home TV screens. By the time the House voted to impeach Clinton, a huge majority of Americans had concluded that however sordid the president’s behavior had been, the case was about his personal shortcomings, not his management of U.S. policy.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the nation was working through cultural divisions that first emerged in the 1960s as American society cleaved over basic questions: Who counts as an American? What’s right in love and sex? What authorities deserve trust in a fast-changing world?

“The effort to exorcise the demons of the 1960s has been going on for 30 years,” the historian Jackson Lears said in 1998. “The impeachment is the latest act of the psychodrama.”

Two more decades into the American story, there’s little sign that the exorcism has been completed. The battles continue about power and sex and identity and whose values shall govern.

In the impeachment saga of 2019 and the election faceoff of 2020, the issues that lie at the root of American division have shifted somewhat — the nature of truth and the future of work have joined the mix — but the essential questions remain.

As does the divide: Not one Republican entertained a whisper of a doubt about the behavior of the president on Wednesday. And not one Democrat signaled that Trump’s actions had been anything other than an unacceptable breach of trust.

One day more before the storm, the barometer remained stuck. n

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Nation

Island residents grapple with future A storm ravaged Ocracoke.

Now longtime locals wonder whether to retreat.

The home of Stella and Edward O’Neal is torn down this past month after being damaged by flooding during Hurricane Dorian. Ocracoke has been closed to visitors since the storm rolled overhead in September and created a seven-foot wall of water.

F RANCES S TEAD S ELLERS in Ocracoke, N.C. BY

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n any normal late-fall day, the ferries that ply the 30 miles between Swan Quarter and this barrier island might carry vacationing retirees, sports fishermen and residents enjoying mainland getaways after the busy summer tourist season.

But two months ago, Hurricane Dorian washed away all signs of normalcy here. After buzz-cutting the Bahamas, the giant storm rolled overhead, raising a sevenfoot wall of water in its wake that sloshed back through the harbor, invading century-old homes that have never before taken in water and sending islanders such as post office head Celeste Brooks and her two grandchildren scrambling into their attics.

Ocracoke has been closed to visitors ever since. Island-bound ferries carry yawning container trucks to haul back the sodden detritus of destroyed homes. And O’cockers — proud descendants of the pilots and pirates who navigated these treacherous shores — are faced with a reckoning: whether this sliver of sand, crouched three feet above sea level between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound, can survive the threats of extreme weather and rising sea levels. And if it can’t, why rebuild?

“That’s the unspoken question.

That’s what nobody wants to say,” said Erin Baker, the only doctor to serve this community of 1,000.

“It’s a question of how do we continue to have life here.”

Scientists have long warned that Ocracoke’s days are numbered, that this treasured island is a bellwether for vast stretches of the U.S. coast.

If Ocracoke’s ultimate prognosis is grim, Tom Pahl, the township’s county commissioner, remains committed to its recovery.

“Is this really sustainable? The answer is pretty clearly no,” he said. “But what’s the timeline? No one has been able to say, ‘You’ve got 15 years, 40 years, 100 years.’

The clear-eyed vision is resiliency

Photos by Daniel Pullen For The Washington Post

then retreat.”

The disaster has in some ways shortened people’s outlook.

“I don’t think we’re thinking that far ahead right now,” said Monroe Gaskill, 64, echoing in the distinctive island brogue the immediate concerns of many “ol’ toimers”: whether the island will be open in time for duck-hunting season later this month; where students will study next semester when they have to relinquish their temporary classrooms in the old Coast Guard Station; and what will become of all the displaced residents, who are holed up in rental units, once the tourists return next Easter.

Even as some houses are being bulldozed, neighbors are working together to raise others.

“Now I know there is no such thing as high enough,” said Janet Spencer behind the counter of the hardware store, which reopened without power right after the storm. She and her husband jacked up their home 18 years ago — just one cinder block too few to keep out Dorian. Still, she said, long-term residents won’t leave.

“It’s the only thing we know,” she said.

There are hazards everywhere, said Amy Howard, 47, a local historian and craft store manager, and hurricanes have shaped the culture of this storied village. She showed off the floorboards her great-grandfather cut out in 1933 to relieve pressure from mounting water and prevent the house from floating off its foundations. The building was raised in 1944 after a storm, and her father plans to elevate it further.

Alton Ballance, a descendant, like Gaskill and Howard, of the island’s earliest white settlers, has heard the call to retreat. “Time to get off that island!” one friend, an ocean scientist, has told him.

“There may come a day when it’s not feasible to continue,” Ballance concedes, but for now he is methodically stripping out the old family home and installing new electrical outlets waist-high.

“It’s easy for people in government and sometimes in the media to target a small place like this,” Ballance said, rocking back and forth on a porch swing outside the room where his mother was born.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided support for rebuilding roads and oth-

er infrastructure. But a recent decision to deny residents individual assistance, which would have helped with temporary housing, has provoked ire when so many coastal communities received funds after hurricanes such as Sandy in 2012.

FEMA said it provides the funding only when state and local resources are overwhelmed.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has signaled his commitment to rebuilding. But the islanders’ sense of injustice reflects a broad dilemma, according to Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University — a lack of clarity about which parts of the nation’s threatened shoreline can and should be protected.

“There is no clear national plan,” said Young, so FEMA’s decision “comes across as arbitrary.”

While Young does not advocate mass migration, wetter storms are raising questions about using taxpayer money to rebuild coastal communities.

“At some point, there is going to be a breaking point,” he said, “when the public sector is either not going to want or to be able to

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Nation afford to accept the risk.”

Meanwhile, the future of the Outer Banks is made more precarious by development, said Stanley Riggs, who devoted his career at East Carolina University to studying the state’s 10,000-mile coastline.

“We’re loving these islands to death,” Riggs said, constructing roads and bridges to bring in tourists and blocking the natural flow of tides and storms that over millennia have shaped the ­175-mile string of shifting sand banks.

Riggs served on a state advisory panel that in 2010 predicted more than three feet of sea-level rise by 2100, prompting a backlash from lawmakers skeptical of climate change and developers. A compromise bill, based on a shorter timeline, passed in 2012, even as the jeopardy has become clearer here: The coastline of Cape Hatteras, north of Ocracoke, is eroding rapidly, retreating by more than a mile since Hurricane Isabel in 2003; to the south, once-vibrant Portsmouth is a ghost town.

Sitting outside the makeshift classrooms, middle school science teacher Patricia Piland described how climate science has become real for her eighth-graders. Their curriculum this semester focuses on the hydrosphere, but she has moderated her message for students shell shocked by their narrow escape.

“One girl said, ‘So, we’re screwed.’ ” Piland recalled. “I told them I believe we can plan for sea-level rise.” Doing so, she said, will require working with nature rather than responding to the demands of developers.

Enrollment at the school has dropped from 174 to 157 since the storm, and Brooks, the post office head, is seeing the community fray slightly as families file change-of-address forms. “There will be more,” she predicted, weeping as she recalled the trauma of being trapped by rising water.

Some people who lost their jobs took off quickly. Others are still deciding. Tom Parker, 66, who moved here 20 years ago, wiped away tears as he sat under the live oak tree where he has made a steady income charging tourists $1 to have their photo taken among its gnarled branches.

“I’m tired of having this constant risk of having it all destroyed,” he said.

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“We talked about moving, but here, it’s a special place.

We are going to be fine.”

Gloria Benitez-Perez, an Ocracoke resident

But for many people who come here to wait tables or clean motel rooms, Ocracoke remains a place of opportunity, not retreat. The storm was a setback for Idalid Maldonado, a seasonal worker already facing problems this year with her visa, but she hopes it’s only a temporary one.

She set down the wheelbarrow she has been using to lug the salt-stained contents out of guest rooms to ponder whether she will be back next summer.

“I don’t know,” Maldonado said.

“I don’t know.”

About one-third of Ocracoke’s population is Latino, many of whom came like Maldonado to serve summer visitors and then were seduced by the gentle yearround rhythm of island life where children can roam free.

“We talked about moving, but

here, it’s a special place,” said Gloria Benitez-Perez, whose husband is in the construction business and built their house on stilts. “We are going to be fine.”

But, like the shipwrecks that surface after storms, existing problems gained prominence following Dorian’s blow. Stanley “Chip” Stevens, owner of Blackbeard’s Lodge, named after the fearsome buccaneer who was beheaded here, said there has been no full accounting of Dorian’s damage and of the impact on people living in sheds and trailers who are “the backbone of our service workforce.”

He advocates more building, not less, to support the “shadow economy” on which Ocracoke — and impoverished Hyde County — depend.

“What the island needs is af-

fordable housing,” Stevens said.

Aid workers, meanwhile, comment on the extraordinary challenges of offshore construction.

Every box of nails, each bottle of bleach and all the two-by-fours have to be driven out through low-lying country before being loaded for the almost three-hour ride across the Sound. Contractors face a round-trip commute of six hours or more, or they have to find a place to stay.

There is another, shorter, route out of Ocracoke.

North of the village, past the discarded cars and the corroded appliances, Highway 12 leads through the National Park’s windswept dunes to an isolated ferry terminal.

Dorian chewed up the tarmac.

Only four-wheel drives are allowed to make the trip, tucking in behind a tow truck that leads over rutted, chassis-scraping sand to the waiting Hatteras ferry.

Once the road is passable — perhaps by late November — it will provide a lifeline. But it won’t restore normalcy or eliminate the sense that this little paradise is in limbo.

“The hard part hasn’t started yet,” said Baker, the island doctor, who is monitoring patients’ stress at the metal mobile clinic shipped in to replace her flooded facility.

The hurricane that pummeled the Bahamas had reduced to a Category 1 by the time it swamped Ocracoke, she said.

“There’s a whole new level of fear for those who stay.” n

Top: What remains of Highway 12 is piled up to be hauled away after flooding caused by Hurricane Dorian.

Bottom: Alton Ballance, a descendant of the island’s earliest white settlers, sorts through his belongings to see what is salvageable weeks after the devastating flood.

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World

In Latin America, the unrest mounts B Y A NTHONY F AIOLA AND R ACHELLE K RYGIER

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n Ecuador, a government besieged by protesters forced to flee the capital. In Chile, 2,500 injured and least 20 dead in weeks of unrest. In Bolivia, police stations attacked, homes of politicians torched and Latin America’s longest-serving president driven into exile.

South America is no stranger to unrest. But from the Caribbean coast to Patagonia, the outbreak of popular uprisings this year is already the region’s strongest and most widespread in decades.

In Chile, fury over a pocketbook issue — a subway fare increase — has snowballed into a deeper movement against elites and a right-leaning, democratically elected government. In Peru, the street rose up to back President Martín Vizcarra in his crusade to close down a corrupt congress.

In Ecuador, indigenous groups and left-leaning students pressured their government into restoring gasoline subsidies. In Bolivia, pro-democracy and rightwing forces drove power-clinging President Evo Morales from office after his socialists stood accused of stealing an election.

In Venezuela, an outlier in the current protests, a starving nation has risen up — unsuccessfully, so far — against a socialist dictatorship accused of destroying the economy. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó has called for more demonstrations on Saturday.

But all these events are taking place against a shared backdrop: The painful aftermath of a commodities boom. Rising prices of the fuels, minerals and crops at the heart of the region’s resource-rich economies at the start of the 21st century helped lift millions out of poverty. The revenue also raised expectations — expectations now unmet in the half a dozen years since the boom went bust.

As nations tighten their belts in leaner times, the pressure is hitting the poor and middle classes disproportionately, while elites are largely shielded.

“The millions of Latin Ameri-

Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Upheaval forces Bolivia’s president into exile, as widespread protests multiply across region cans who joined the middle class in the past two decades are bearing the brunt of economic adjustment and austerity,” said Moisés Naím, a former executive director of the World Bank. “The difference is that now, this larger middle class is activated, better informed, more educated, deeply connected by social media, and more able to resist and protest.”

The upheaval now is a far cry from the military coups and dirty wars that scarred the region during the Cold War. Yet analysts remain fearful of the long-term consequences, particularly at a time when support for democracy is flagging significantly across the region.

“You cannot be certain that more of these countries are not going to revert back to populism, because the people are angry and they don’t trust anything else,” said Patricio Navia, a political scientist at the Diego Portales Uni-

versity in Chile. “It can be on the left, like in Venezuela, or right, like in Brazil. But discontent can take you in the wrong direction.”

Indeed, there’s discontent at both ends of the political spectrum.

In La Paz, Bolivia, last Sunday morning, activist Jhanisse Vaca, 26, was bleary-eyed but determined. She had spent the night in the street with other protesters in front of a police station. Their aim: persuade the police to join the fight to oust the socialist Morales.

At 5 a.m., the Organization of American States issued a damning audit of the Oct. 20 elections, showing that they had been rigged to put Morales over the threshold he needed to win in the first round, and avoid a risky runoff.

The 60-year old socialist had claimed victory.

The opposition claimed fraud.

The protests began on election night — some peaceful, some not.

A man walks past buses burned during a protest in La Paz after Bolivian President Evo Morales announced last Sunday that he was resigning.

Morales and his supporters have decried the “coup.”

Vaca, who founded a nonviolent pro-democracy group in 2017 and supported Morales’s right-wing rival, former president Carlos Mesa, drew inspiration from protest movements worldwide. Her group watched videos on social media of the student protests in Hong Kong, where demonstrators sang “Happy Birthday” to warn of infiltrators entering their ranks. Vaca’s group adopted a similar tactic — singing the Bolivian national anthem instead.

Vaca had long considered Morales a tyrant. But her father, a physician, had once supported Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who was credited with reducing poverty and lifting up the country’s indigenous majority.

“We thought he’d really fight for the people,” she said. “But instead, he focused on amassing power.”

Morales ran for a fourth term despite losing a 2016 referendum to extend term limits. As public pressure grew this past Sunday, he offered new elections. But it wasn’t enough.

Thousands of furious protesters took to the streets, and the heads of the armed forces and the national police called on him to resign. Vaca was near the presidential palace when word spread through the crowd: After nearly 14 years in office, Morales was stepping down.

“Everyone was jumping and shouting,” she said. “A friend confirmed it on his phone, and it was just an incredibly happy moment.

We hugged the policemen who passed by.”

Yet Bolivia’s future remains clouded. Morales’ departure for Mexico has not ended violent protests. The ex-president and his socialists, still a massive force in the country, have decried a “coup.”

Jeanine Áñez, the anti-Morales second vice president of the senate, claimed the presidency on Tuesday, and vowed to call new elections in 90 days. But socialist lawmakers, a majority in congress, have rejected her appointment, deepening the country’s crisis.

“I’m a little worried about what’s coming,” Vaca said. “But I still have hope.” n

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White-collar workers join the fight S HIBANI M AHTANI in Hong Kong BY

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he six friends, then in their early 20s, met on an online messaging board where they traded advice on stocks and investing. Their bond grew as they pursued careers and dreams, securing whitecollar jobs, girlfriends and wives.

A decade on, they now swap notes on the most effective concoctions for molotov cocktails.

Rather than scouring Hong Kong for the best bubble tea and hot pot, they compare brands of respirators and helmets.

The group’s members — accountants and a legal aide among them — consider themselves foot soldiers in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, now into their sixth month, with tactics growing more violent among police and, in turn, among the demonstrators.

Amid the chaos, these six young men are being pulled along the same trajectory: increasingly supporting, and wielding, harsher methods of dissent.

“We have started to realize we need to arm ourselves. We are in a war — there is no other choice,” said Kelvin, a 33-year-old accountant, who like the others in the group provided one name for fear of official retribution. “We can’t just be sitting ducks anymore.”

This cohort’s political evolution demonstrates the breadth of anger in Hong Kong. Where previous upwellings of public fury were often led by students, the authorities now face a scenario where regular office workers with stable jobs and promising careers have been loosed on a path to radicalization.

A turning point

The six friends grew up understanding how large, peaceful rallies could effect change. Some of their families participated in huge marches in 2003 that forced the Hong Kong government to shelve plans to introduce sedition laws. In 2014, when thousands occupied the streets seeking direct elections in Hong Kong, the families were among the “wo, lei, fei” — the peaceful, rational and

Philip Fong/Agence france-presse/Getty Images

As Hong Kong clashes escalate, professionals are joining the ranks of more radical protesters nonviolent protesters that formed the movement’s core and who opposed radical actions.

Then came the call on June 9 to protest a now-withdrawn government proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China. Organizers estimated that over a million people turned out.

When Samson returned home, he feared that it would be a repeat of 2014 — another mass rally of marching and chanting that failed to achieve anything.

“I hoped that the next time, I could do more,” he said. “Not just complete a march and that’s it.”

The next opportunity came June 12, when thousands took to the streets around the legislative complex to disrupt a debate on the extradition bill. Several of the friends took a half-day off, leaving their air-conditioned offices to deliver face masks and water to front-line protesters who built barricades to hold back riot officers.

Police responded with thenrare force, including tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds.

“It was our most angry day,” said Kelvin. “For me, that was the turning point. Immediately, it was clear that the authorities would treat us differently than 2014, and so we had to respond differently.”

It wasn’t until July 21, when suspected members of organizedcrime gangs assaulted protesters at a subway station, that the friends started gearing up. Kelvin procured knee and arm pads, a half-face respirator and helmets.

Ryan, a 28-year-old legal assistant, purchased respirators along with a hiking stick and helmets.

“I thought, if that day comes again, to protect myself and my friends, I would use violence against [pro-Beijing gangsters],” he said. “If I don’t protect myself, I may get killed.”

Escalating action

At protests, the self-described

Pro-democracy demonstrators set a fire during fierce clashes with police Tuesday at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

nerds enlist the help of Steven, a 33-year-old construction worker.

When masked front-line protesters dismantle metal barricades, dig out bricks and find other ways to hold back riot police, Steven is there with an array of tools, ready to provide expert help.

He buys lighter fluid and electrical oil to douse floors of subway stations. The liquids serve a dual purpose: to vandalize the subway, whose operator is seen as supporting Beijing, and to slow police who use the trains to get around on protest days, when the network is often closed to the public.

Some in the team have developed their own niches. Kelvin, who is married, heads to the library to scour chemistry books for the best molotov cocktail recipes. When the first gasoline bombs were unleashed in July, he thought the flames were small and unimpressive. He wanted to make them more effective and share his knowledge with frontline protesters.

“Nowadays, you can see the huge flames and think, ‘Whoa, how amazing,’ ” he said, noting that “it isn’t an offensive tool to burn things, it is a barrier that allows our teammates to retreat.”

Hong Kong government officials and their counterparts in Beijing have condemned — in the harshest terms — the hundreds of cases of arson, vandalism and sporadic mob violence. On Oct. 24, China’s top diplomat in Hong Kong, Xie Feng, likened the violence at street protests to a “virus.”

The virus “knows no boundaries or limits. It is highly susceptible to being complicated by other viruses, such as populism, separatism and extremism, and developing into the tumor of terrorism,” Xie said.

On Monday, Lam, the Hong Kong leader, said any “wishful thinking” that violence would pressure her government into satisfying protester demands was misplaced. “Our joint priority now as a city is to end the violence and to return Hong Kong to normal as soon as possible,” she said.

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Diesel, the family dog, wanders the farm in Platte, S.D. At night, Amber Dykshorn says, she can hear him howling for her husband Chris who killed himself earlier this year.

COVER STORY

A season of loss on a family farm

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As his crop fields flooded and global trade wars dragged on, Chris Dykshorn was racked by debt and despair. His death reflects a worrying trend in farm country, where calls to suicide hotlines are on the rise.

A NNIE G OWEN in Platte, S.D.

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mber Dykshorn stood at her kitchen window and watched the storm come in.

It was a very dark Saturday night in the middle of the summer in the middle of a year that is on track to be the wettest in more than a century. The wind blew over the farm, the rain came down and she heard the ominous pings on her roof — pea-sized hail, striking the still-fragile stalks of the only corn her husband, Chris Dykshorn, was able to plant before he took his own life in June.

Did their crop insurance cover hail damage? She had no idea. That was something Chris would have taken care of, if he were here. Instead she was alone, with nearly $300,000 in farm debt, three kids ages 5 to 13 and a host of grief-fueled questions. Why hadn’t she been able to save him? What would happen to them now?

She scrolled through his final texts, rereading his words, leaning on the kitchen counter next to a whiteboard with the kids’ chore list — and a book someone gave her titled “Through a Season of Grief: Devotions for Your Journey from Mourning to Joy.” Chris had been despondent over the couple’s finances, crippled by surplus grain he couldn’t sell because of the trade war and flooded fields.

“I’m struggling so bad today. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he texted on May 31. “I seriously don’t know how we r gonna make it.”

On June 1: “I just want to sit in the house and cry.”

And then: “What am I supposed to do. I am failing and feel like I’m gonna lose everything I’ve worked for the past how many years.”

She was still asleep the morning of June 13 when he went to the utility room to get his gun.

In farm country, mental-health experts say they are seeing more suicides as families endure the worst period for U.S. agriculture in decades. Farm bankruptcies and loan delinquencies are rising, calamitous weather events are ruining crops, and profits are vanishing during President Trump’s global trade disputes.

A 2017 study found that farm owners and workers were three to five times as likely to kill themselves on the job compared with other occupations. Researchers studying more recent data have not yet determined if farmer suicides are increasing, but leaders and social workers in rural America say that, anecdotally, they’re Photos by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post

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Cover Story

seeing more of these deaths. Calls to suicide hotlines around farm country have risen, prompting new federal and state programs targeting farmers’ mental health, including support groups, public awareness campaigns and funding for counseling.

The Agriculture Department is setting up the first $1.9 million phase of a farm and ranch stress support network to expand emergency hotlines, training and support groups for farmers and ranchers. In addition, the department started a $450,000 pilot program to train some of its workers in how to help farmers in extreme distress and make ­mental-health referrals for them.

Here in South Dakota, the trade disputes and extreme weather have devastated farmers and ranchers — often isolated in rural areas, with little access to services — said Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), a lifelong rancher who is working to expand the state’s suicide prevention efforts.

Calls to the statewide suicide hotline were up 61 percent last year, and South Dakota’s largest regional health system, Avera Health, launched a special hotline in January to help farmers and ranchers.

Chris had received counseling through Avera’s farming program and thought of reaching out again before he died. The last Google search on his phone was “farmer crisis hotline.”

‘In God’s hands’ “Did you get hail last night?” a neighbor asked Amber at church the next morning, where everyone was talking about the rain that had not stopped.

Amber had seen the flattened corn on her way into town for the Sunday service with two of her children, Kalee, 13, and Kolbe, 5.

“I just started praying,” Amber said. “Maybe we can save it; I don’t know.”

Platte Christian Reformed Church has a stone tablet featuring the Ten Commandments on the lawn, a parking lot full of white pickup trucks and a young pastor, Drew Hoekema, who struggled with what to say to his congregation after Chris’s suicide. He finally settled on “he’s in God’s hands now.”

Amber has clung to her spirituality since her husband’s death, posting her favorite Bible verses and inspirational quotes on Facebook.

She seems serene in her hope that God will provide, even though she made only $18,056 from her part-time job at an insurance company last year and no money from her hobby selling a direct-marketing makeup line.

“There’s no way anybody can walk this walk without faith,” she says. “I don’t know how someone could. There would be no hope.

None.”

Even her daughter, Kalee, has asked, “Mom, how is this going to work?”

Pastor Drew chose Bible chapter Ezekiel 34 for that Sunday’s sermon, the one about God as a shepherd to his flock, gathering them back “from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.”

Amber clutched a wad of tissues as a precau-

tion, then tucked it in the pew. But there were no tears this day.

“Where’s Kahne?” her friend Corinne Middendorp asked about Amber’s 10-year-old son.

“Chris took him fishing,” Amber said. Her hands flew to her mouth as she realized her mistake. “I mean, my brother took him fishing.”

“Awww!” Middendorp said at the mention of Chris’s name. She made a sad face and pulled Amber close.

These are the days of meaningful hugs.

Amber is virtually surrounded by love — at church, at school, with both sets of grieving parents, siblings, friends and neighbors who come to pork chop fundraisers and bake sales held to benefit her family. She is enveloped by arms and held as tenderly as a baby, encouragement whispered into her blond hair.

“Thoughts and prayers,” everyone says.

“Thinking of you.” And from a parent on the first day of school: “The Lord is going to hear your name a lot today.”

Sometimes, it’s a relief just to be a mom again, to change into jeans and a yellow T-shirt that reads “Support Your Local Farmer” and pile the kids into the SUV for the hour-long drive to Walmart for back-to-school shopping.

Their father had been a constant presence in their lives, playing Squeak on family game night, reading books aloud, and rooting for Kalee at track and cheerleading meets. Now freckle-faced Kahne, named after Chris’s favorite racecar driver, has been quiet and clingy.

Amber thought Kolbe had grown out of his constant humming that once prompted his preschool teacher to suggest he be tested for autism. Since Chris’s death, Kolbe’s “sound

Amber and her children Kalee, 13, left, Kolbe, 5, second from right, and Kahne, 10, say a prayer before dinner.

Amber has leaned on her Christian faith since her husband’s death.

effects” had returned.

Chris and Amber, both 35, met at a barn party while in high school and married in 2004.

Chris, the son and grandson of farmers, got a job as a welder but longed to return to the farm.

Amber was skeptical at first, but in 2014, Chris began working alongside his dad and took over the operation in 2016.

The transition would prove difficult. Amber missed their life in town and struggled with depression herself. The smell of hogs on Chris’s clothes nauseated her.

American agriculture was booming when Chris joined the business. Global demand stoked high commodity prices, with corn nearly $5 a bushel and soybeans more than $13 a bushel.

This was before Trump started his trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada. Before rain gauges in Sioux Falls registered 39.2 inches of rain in 2018, the wettest year on record.

Before a freak spring blizzard claimed the lives of three dozen of Chris’s lambs and calves.

Before the roads flooded and hemmed in nearly $100,000 worth of corn and soybeans he had been holding onto since last fall, hoping better prices would return.

The week that Chris died, corn was $3.73 a bushel and soybeans $7.50 a bushel at the local grain elevator.

“We owed his dad $16,000 and the Christian school $3,000 for tuition, and our operating loan was maxed out and we still had monthly bills to pay,” Amber said as she drove the kids to shop for school clothes. “We couldn’t haul grain because the roads were too wet. You couldn’t drive a grain truck on them; you would sink.”

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Cover Story In the back seat, Kalee was listening intently, while Kolbe began making his anxious humming sounds. “Ummmm, hmmmmmm.”

“Kolbe, be quiet,” Kalee said. Then, to her mom, “Kolbe won’t be quiet.”

“Kolbe, will you quit making sound effects, please?” Amber said.

“Kalee started it,” he said.

“You’re a baby. Stay in preschool, baby,” Kalee said.

These are the times Amber struggles with being an only parent. Discipline is hard.

By the time they’d picked out a soft $8 T-shirt for Kalee, neon green and black Nikes for Kahne, and tiny Skechers sneakers for Kolbe, then stopped for dinner and began to made their way home, the sun was sinking behind the gold-washed fields, many with pools of standing water. Over the summer, the ravines became creeks, the creeks became rivers and the ponds became mini-lakes.

Amber took a detour, because the main route to her house was still flooded and blocked by “Road Closed” signs.

As she neared the farm, she looked to the right to try to spot the female deer that had been living with two tiny fawns in the clearing between their straggly corn fields. Seeing the doe — a hard-working single mother like herself — had been a source of comfort to Amber.

But she wasn’t there.

When they pulled into the driveway of the modest tan farmhouse, the three-legged family dog, Diesel, once Chris’s shadow, was there to greet them. At night, Amber can hear him howling outside for his lost companion.

‘I can’t do it’ His belt was down to the last hole.

That’s when Amber first realized something was wrong, when Chris sent her a Snapchat in May to show how much weight he had lost from stress and ask her to pray for it to stop raining.

Normally, his Snapchats were full of the joy of country life — the perfect arch of a rainbow at sunrise, newborn lambs, Kahne doing his homework in the combine, goose breasts sizzling in the smoker.

But now his jeans were hanging on his body, he was struggling to get the corn in, and nothing seemed to chase away his gloom, not even a trip to Florida, a gift from Amber’s dad.

Back home, there was no money to pay the electric bill, $700 and counting.

“We’re going to lose everything we have,” he texted Amber. “I can’t sell out, then we’ll have nothing.”

Just stay positive, she told him. God has a plan.

Then he woke up screaming, and she took him to the doctor, who arranged a video session with a farm stress counselor. Chris was admitted to Avera’s Behavioral Health Center in Sioux Falls the following day.

Duane “Bud” Meyerink, a relative who ran the farm equipment shop where Chris had worked, drove him to the hospital. It was a four-hour round-trip journey.

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called 911, and by the time Amber arrived, Chris had quit talking. She knelt beside him and grabbed his arm, pleading for him to hold on. There was blood everywhere. Across the flat land, they could see the ambulance that had come to save Chris was stuck in the mud.

It was a while before anyone found the suicide note, in a small notebook propped up on the dashboard of Chris’s car.

“I am so sorry. I can’t go on this way,” he wrote. “Lord forgive me for what I have done. I love Everybody. Thanks for carring [sic] about me. This is the Hardest thing I have ever done.

Gonna miss everyone.”

Top: Amber visits the gravesite of her late husband Sept. 2 in New Holland, S.D. They met in high school at a barn party and married in 2004, a decade before Chris would begin farming.

Above: A waterlogged crop field is seen from a pickup window on the Dykshorns’ farm.

This year is on track to be the area’s wettest in more than a century, posing a severe threat to farmers.

“He was in a really dark place,” Meyerink recalled. “I said, ‘Chris, you need God more than ever,’ and his comment to me was ‘I can’t even pray.’ ” From the hospital, Chris texted, “I’m so bad right now. I’ve been praying for sleep and rest and a clear mind and I get nothing. I am so ready to give up farming and walk away.”

He seemed better after his hospitalization and returned home for a dinner of nachos. The next day, on June 12, he wrapped Amber in his arms and told her he loved her, and when she was out mowing the lawn that evening, she was heartened to see him back on his tractor, tilling the field. He sent her a text message with a thumbs up.

But the work wasn’t going well, and Chris’s mood quickly changed.

“I could see the storm clouds are coming and it was going to start raining, and pretty soon, Chris came walking behind the house and he says, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it anymore,’ ” Amber said.

The next morning, a neighbor near the pasture where Chris kept cattle went out to feed his dogs and found Chris writhing on the ground next to his car. He had shot himself in the heart with a deer rifle.

He kept saying, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it,” recalled the neighbor, Jim Mudder. Mudder

Doubt and despair The first day of school at the Dykshorn household was a flurry of last-minute preparations, as Amber curled Kalee’s hair for band photos and Kolbe kept saying “Let’s go!” It was the first of what would be many firsts for Amber — Kolbe’s first day of kindergarten, then her first wedding anniversary alone, then the first school fundraiser for which Chris wouldn’t craft a wood bench trimmed in vintage tin for the auction.

With the kids in school, Amber would have more time for herself, to make lists in her new organizer with “You Got This” embossed on the cover. The house is tidier, with no more boxer shorts left on the bedroom floor or fuzzy deer blanket on the sofa: Kalee now sleeps with it.

Amber has restarted her makeup tutorials on Facebook Live, her breezy “how-to” patter now sometimes veering to talk of Chris and his death.

Yet she is haunted by fears that she didn’t do enough to save him. That night he texted her that he was upstairs crying while she was cuddling with the kids and watching “The Bachelorette” — should she have gone to him?

“This was supposed to happen to someone else, not me,” she wrote in a post on Facebook.

“Just a few short weeks of sadness for him and I lose it all forever? LIFE IS NOT FAIR.” As she drove the kids to school through the misty early morning, the sun was out for once and she spotted the doe back in her usual place, standing in a weedy patch with one of her fawns, watching them.

“I feel like it’s Dad telling you guys to have a good day at school,” she said.

On the way in, she stopped to take photos of the kids posed in front of the rock carved with a verse from Proverbs outside the school’s front door, a school tradition. She walked Kolbe to his new classroom and headed to the gym, where the kids, their parents and teachers would gather for an opening assembly.

It was empty except for a small ensemble of musicians with keyboards and an electric guitar practicing the morning’s song program, a Christian pop song called “Reckless Love.” She sat down alone under gold and black sports banners, alone in the bleachers, and shut her eyes, letting the music wash over her.

Then she started to cry, her shoulders shaking as she tried to hold back powerful sobs. n

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Education

Scavenging for classroom supplies BY

V ALERIE S TRAUSS

L

ike nearly all teachers in America, Becky Cranson spends her own money to buy supplies for her students. Working in a rural school district in Michigan, where 70 percent of her middle-school students come from low-income families, she shells out at least $1,000 a year for pencils, books, journals, glue sticks, tissues and much more.

But opening her wallet without reimbursement is only a small part of what she — and many others in America’s corps of 3.2 million teachers — do to secure classroom supplies they can’t get from their schools or from students’ families.

“I am a scavenger,” said Cranson, who teaches English at Bronson Jr./Sr. High School in Bronson, Mich. “My friend who works in the Michigan [Department of Natural Resources] office gives me their used binders, and my husband brings me furniture and supplies that the hospital he works at is throwing away.”

“I love my district and the families it serves,” Cranson said. “This is my 31st year, and I have many former students trusting me with their pride and joy. I refuse to let a family’s financial challenges be a stumbling block within the four walls of my classroom.”

The Washington Post asked teachers throughout the country how much they spend on supplies, what they buy and why.

Teachers — mostly in public school districts but also in charter, private and Catholic schools — sent more than 1,200 emails to The Post from more than 35 states. The portrait that emerges is devastating — and reveals that the problem has existed, without remedy, for decades. And it has gotten worse over time.

Federal data show that more than 9 in 10 educators spend an average of nearly $500 a year on supplies, but The Post review revealed that the problem is deeper, with teachers going to great lengths to secure resources for their classrooms.

Kandice Kieliszewski

Without proper funding, teachers go to desperate lengths to get the materials their students needs Some say they “politely beg” friends and relatives for help, posting wish lists for benevolent strangers to fill on DonorsChoose and other websites. They hold fundraisers, scour garage sales, look for items at Goodwill stores.

Some write grants and attend supply giveaways by companies that get tax benefits for being philanthropic.

Many depend on churches and parent associations and nonprofit groups, some of which set up stores with free supplies. In the Nashville area, teachers in several counties can shop for supplies at what they colloquially call the “Free Teacher Store,” operated by the charity Feed the Children. In Oregon, a nonprofit called Schoolhouse Supplies provides teachers with free materials.

“We are literally collecting pop tabs to recycle so we can buy more stuff,” said one high-school math department chair in Ohio. A California teacher said she takes “discarded things off the side of the road” if they are usable.

The vast majority of teachers who responded to The Post said they could not be identified by name or even district because they feared retaliation from bosses. One New England teacher spoke for many: “Please keep my name anonymous as I love teaching and would hate to face disciplinary action for simply being honest.”

They told similar stories about their search for supplies: paper and pencils and pens, erasers, markers and notebooks, tissue, furniture, books, menstrual pads, clothes, shoes, musical instruments, paint and clay, crayons, books, scissors, bulletin boards, food.

This year, Laura Estes-Swilley, who has taught English for 20 years in Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools, said she bought “the most unusual and disturbing” supplies: a magnetic curtain rod and blackout curtain in the event a shooter targeted her school.

In rural areas and big cities, in

Becky Cranson, like most educators, spends her own money on classroom supplies. That’s not all the Michigan teacher does to get what she needs for her school and students.

poor districts and even many wealthy ones, school budgets do not include enough money for supplies — and administrators and policymakers concede this has been baked into the funding process for decades.

“We should all be ashamed this has become the norm,” said Bob Farrace, spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “We let policymakers off the hook too easily by accepting that charity is the only way to fill the gap.”

The time-sucking and sometimes soul-crushing process, teachers said, is one of the fundamental indignities they face.

Asked to do the work of counselors, social workers, librarians, security officers and coaches, teachers earned on average 21.4 percent a week less than other comparably educated professionals in 2018, one study found. Yet they still are expected to buy supplies.

Teachers said this issue reveals: l A basic lack of respect for America’s teachers, nearly 80 percent of whom are female. “Other professionals don’t do this,” said Michelle Eirhart, who teaches in the Montgomery County Public Schools, in the second-wealthiest county in Maryland. She gets many supplies from her school but not everything, so she visits a “store” set up by her union, stocked with free goods collected from teachers who no longer need them. l A disinvestment in public education. According to a May report from the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 22 states still provide less money for each student than before the Great Recession of 2008, when budgets were slashed nationwide.

And federal figures show more teachers spending more money on supplies. l A dependence on donors. “I hate these articles about wellmeaning people buying up peoples’ [wish] lists,” said Julia Wasson, an activist teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“It normalizes this begging practice. If we properly funded schools and trusted teachers, we

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Health could stop seeing teachers beg step toward addressing this isonline and restore their dignity.” sue.”

While the supply scramble is Asked why lawmakers don’t well-recognized in the education provide more money for schools, world, it has never been a big Virginia state Sen. Stephen D. talking point in political camNewman (R-Bedford), president paigns or on the floors of legislapro tempore of the Senate, said tures. Teacher unions have somethe 2019 General Assembly signiftimes turned to collective baricantly raised spending and progaining for help — and the supply vided localities with more flexible crisis has figured in some of the funds “to use for items such as teacher strikes spreading across school supplies.” He did not rethe country. But nothing has spond to a request for comment changed the dynamic. about a solution to the issue.

Many teachers said they pay for The Republican-led Virginia supplies because families can’t.

General Assembly increased K-12 But even in well-off communities, funding in the 2019 legislative schools don’t provide all necessession, by about $50 million over sary supplies to teachers — and the amount approved in 2018, but parents don’t make up the entire that was tens of millions of dollars difference. less than requested by Some parents at WilGov. Ralph Northam (D). son High, in the wealthiEven with that extra est corner of Washingmoney, according to the ton, said they were Commonwealth Institute shocked recently at for Fiscal Analysis, Virback-to-school night ginia will spend less on when they were asked to K-12 education than bedonate paper and art fore the Great Recession. supplies. One art teacher Meanwhile, for years, said she might have to Virginia teachers have substitute coffee and tea Virginia’s K-12 ranked near the bottom for paint. D.C. schools funding for the of states in salary. spokesman Shayne year was raised Diana Dávila, presiWells said: “Every year, by $50 million, dent of the Houston InDCPS provides $200 to much less than dependent School Diseach one of our teachers requested by trict Board of Education, to offset the cost of in- Gov. Ralph is a former teacher who structional supplies. Northam. said she understands This was included in our “the frustration of not agreement with the Washington having basic supplies or books for Teachers’ Union that also providour students.” ed our teachers with a 9 percent Kathryn Vaughn, an elementaraise and one of the highest salary school teacher in rural Tennesries in the country.” see north of Memphis, said her The Post asked more than 30 district provides her with $200 a principals and assistant princiyear for supplies and two boxes of pals, superintendents, school copy paper to teach visual arts to board leaders and legislators to about 800 students from low-indiscuss the problem. Most did not come families. respond; those who did, includ“I work several additional jobs ing a Los Angeles Unified School to help supplement my classroom District representative, largely budget, pay back my $50,000 in blamed the lack of supplies on student loans and support my insufficient funding from their combat veteran husband,” she districts and states. said. “My school allows me to ask “I completely agree that teachfamilies for an optional $5 per ers shouldn’t have to dip into child art donation but in the poor, their own pockets for school suprural South, our hard-working plies,” said Jason Kamras, superfamilies simply don’t have a lot to intendent of the high-poverty give.”

Richmond Public Schools. “That’s Teachers can write off up to why we give every teacher in $250 a year for supplies they buy, Richmond a $150 Amazon card at according to an Internal Revenue the beginning of the school year Service spokesman. Republican to spend on their classrooms as leaders in Congress had sought to they see fit. Of course, that doesn’t eliminate the Educator Expense come close to covering all the Deduction in 2017 but did not costs teachers face, but it’s a first succeed. n

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Superbugs pose rising threat BY

L ENA H . S UN

D

rug-resistant germs sicken about 3 million people every year in the United States, and kill about 35,000, representing a much larger public health threat than previously understood, according to a long-awaited report released this past week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new estimates show that, on average, someone in the United States gets an antibiotic-resistant infection every 11 seconds, and every 15 minutes, someone dies.

Bacteria, fungi and other germs that have developed a resistance to antibiotics and other drugs pose one of the gravest public health challenges and a baffling problem for modern medicine.

Scientists, doctors and public health officials have warned of this threat for decades, and the new report reveals the top dangers and troubling trends. More pathogens are developing new ways of fending off drugs designed to kill them, and infections are spreading more widely outside of hospitals.

The report highlighted some successes. Hospitals have improved their methods for tracking and slowing the spread of resistant germs, and deaths from superbug infections there have decreased by nearly 30 percent since 2013. Experts say everyone can help control many of these pathogens by practicing basic prevention: good hand hygiene, vaccination, safe food handling and safe sex.

In addition to germs that have evolved drug resistance, the report included a dangerous infection that is linked to antibiotic use: Clostridioides difficile (C. diff.). It can cause deadly diarrhea when antibiotics kill beneficial bacteria in the digestive system that normally keep it under control. When the C. diff. illnesses and deaths are added, the annual U.S. toll of all these pathogens is

more than 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths.

The CDC had previously estimated about 2 million antibiotic resistant infections and 23,000 deaths in a 2013 report. The new report used previously unavailable data, including electronic health databases from more than 700 acute-care hospitals. By applying the new methods retrospectively, the CDC calculated that the 2013 estimate missed about half of the cases and deaths.

“A lot of progress has been made, but the bottom line is that antibiotic resistance is worse than we previously thought,” said Michael Craig, the CDC’s senior adviser on antibiotic resistance.

The new numbers, though still conservative, underscore the magnitude of the problem, establish a new national baseline of infections and deaths, and will help prioritize resources to address the most pressing threats, infectious diseases experts said.

The report details the toll that 18 pathogens are taking on humans, ranking the threat of each as “urgent,” “serious” or “concerning.”

Five germs account for the most urgent threats. Three are long-recognized dangers: C. diff., drug-resistant gonorrhea, and carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE), also known as “nightmare bacteria.”

Two new germs were added to the urgent category since the CDC’s 2013 report: a deadly superbug yeast called Candida auris that has alarmed health officials around the world and a family of bacteria, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, that has developed resistance to nearly all antibiotics.

The report cites two worrisome trends: the increasing numbers of resistant infections outside hospitals, including highly drug-resistant gonorrhea; and the increasing ability of drug-resistant microbes to share their dangerous resistance genes with other kinds of bacteria, making those other germs untreatable, as well. n

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Opinions

Breaking barriers with spacewalks, spacesuits Christina Koch and Jessica Meir are NASA astronauts living aboard the International Space Station. They were the 14th and 15th women, respectively, to conduct a spacewalk.

LOW-EARTH ORBIT — It’s tough being smaller in a bigsuit world. ¶ Aerospace is an industry that innovates with every leap, but what makes it so worth pursuing also makes it an endeavor with long development times. So when NASA designed new spacesuits in the 1970s after the Apollo missions, there were tradeoffs. Very few astronauts required a small suit, so given limited resources, the result was a spacesuit fleet that best fit larger bodies — typically male bodies.

But six years ago, before our astronaut class — the first class ever to be half women — stepped into our first spacewalk lesson, NASA made one thing very clear: Failure was not an option. We would be spacewalkers, and that meant all of us. This past month, that mantra rang true as the two of us embarked on the first spacewalk to be conducted with only women.

Nothing could have fully prepared us for what it would be like to float outside the space station. And even on one’s 23rd — or 217th — day orbiting the Earth, as was the case for us, the vast expanse of the cosmos is still a wonder.

The close quarters of the spacewalking suit are another story. The current suit is challenging to operate even when it fits perfectly. Its pressure resists movement, its bulkiness precludes dexterity, and its inertia demands significant upper body strength.

When it is too big, these woes amplify. Not surprisingly, this drove persistent underrepresentation of women in spacewalking.

Although the first spacewalk by a man happened in 1965, it took until 1984 for a woman to step out into the vacuum of space. Since then, a total of 15 women have ventured into it. Of

the 221 spacewalks at the International Space Station, 37 have included a woman, and now, just one has included two.

Those women who did break through before us became our heroines. As the sentiment and demographics of the astronaut corps moved toward gender equality, the range of suit sizes remained an anachronism tethered to the era of its birth by technical constraints and long redevelopment timelines. In this instance, the ramifications of a different epoch of space exploration diminished slowly because of technology, not intention.

We received nothing but support in our training at NASA. Mentors of all sizes lent their expertise. Classmates guarded against biases that any one set of physical characteristics was inherently better for spacewalking than any other.

We knew that together, we could break down the faulty stereotypes built up by decades of limited-size spacesuits.

Everybody was on board, from technicians who suited us up for practice runs to the leaders who prioritized our training. It was in their eyes, their work, their high-fives.

Yet we found that echoes of a bygone era could still stack the deck against smaller astronauts.

Last spring, though two fully

NASA/Associated Press

NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir exit the International Space Station on Oct. 18. The pair made history this past month by conducting the world’s first all-female spacewalk.

certified female spacewalkers were ready to go out the hatch to make history, suits that would allow them to do so were not.

The sign of progress, however, was that this hitch resulted from a delayed cargo launch followed by an aborted crew launch — not from any lack of will.

In the same spirit that greeted our astronaut class at the door, NASA set to work reconfiguring the on-board suit fleet. When it was time for our spacewalks, two medium suits awaited us in the airlock.

One could say that the first all-female spacewalk was worth celebrating simply because it overcame history. It was the story of two girls who gazed at the stars with an improbable dream, who as women were given the “go” to egress the airlock. But there’s more than that.

The real achievement is the collective acknowledgment that it is no longer okay to move forward without everyone moving together. NASA’s mission is to answer humanity’s call to explore. If there is any

part of humanity that’s not on that journey, we are not achieving our mission. The efforts to equalize exploration are what really ought to be celebrated.

NASA is in the habit of small steps and giant leaps. Our spacewalk was one; another will play out when the first woman and the next man set foot on the moon as part of the Artemis program in the 2020s. They will be wearing spacesuits designed with enhanced mobility and a size range that’s more extensive than ever before. With these suits, astronauts’ achievements will at last rely only on their own hard work and dedication.

We are entering a new era where we must commit to go boldly only if that means we all go, an era in which any person who dares to dream will have the opportunity to contribute.

Our successes will be greater because not a single innovative idea will be turned away — that is what diversity and inclusion mean. And that is why a longoverdue all-female spacewalk so captivated the world it served. n

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KLMNO Weekly

Five Myths

The Constitution BY

S TEPHANIE B ARCLAY

Our Constitution is both the shortest (with the possible exception of Monaco’s) and the oldest (with the possible exception of San Marino’s) written constitution of any government in the world.

Myths persist about America’s most enduring, and important, document. Here are five.

Myth No. 1 The First Amendment is first because it’s the most important.

Not quite. Certainly, our First Amendment freedoms, including speech and religion, are among the most fundamental liberties protected by the Constitution. But the numerical ordering we wound up with wasn’t the original plan. In fact, the First Amendment was originally the Third Amendment.

The Bill of Rights that Congress approved in 1789 contained 12 amendments, which were then sent to the states for ratification.

The first two — concerning representation in the House and congressional pay — didn’t meet the three-fourths ratification requirement and were discarded.

As a result, the Third Amendment became the First Amendment simply by being the next in line.

Myth No. 2 ‘Originalism’ is a politically conservative philosophy.

Originalism doesn’t always lead to right-of-center outcomes. For example, the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education decision was championed by Justice Hugo Black, an originalist, even though it contradicted what one might have expected of his personal politics. Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman described Black as “the strongest internal voice on the Supreme Court” for ending “separate but equal” racial segregation. Despite being a former Ku Klux Klan member from the Deep South, Black was convinced that “the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and its two

Reconstruction-era companions,” the 13th and 15th amendments, required ending this discriminatory regime. Though few now, progressive or conservative, take issue with the holding in Brown, at the time it was a major progressive victory.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, also an originalist, has highlighted additional instances where originalism leads — or should lead — to outcomes considered left-leaning, such as upholding protesters’ right to burn the American flag, preventing the government from putting a GPS tracking device on your car without a warrant or protecting immigrants from being punished according to too-vague laws.

Myth No. 3 The high court has the final say on all constitutional questions.

While the Supreme Court is an arbiter of constitutional meaning, it is not the only, or even the final, one.

Citizens can directly reject the high court’s constitutional rulings by amending the Constitution.

Americans did just that in 1868, ratifying the 14th Amendment in part to effectively nullify the court’s discriminatory decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which in essence denied citizenship to African Americans.

The Constitution generally acts as a floor, but not a ceiling, for important rights. And when other government actors believe that constitutional values require greater protection, those officials can usually provide such protections. For example, shortly

Matt McClain for The Washington Post

The Constitution, on display at the National Archives, doesn’t actually say anything about the “separation between church and state.”

after being elected president, Thomas Jefferson pardoned everyone who had been convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Congress paid back the fines these individuals had incurred. President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order desegregating the military six years before the Brown decision.

And there are some constitutional questions that the court has said it does not have authority to decide, including political matters in wartime contexts, presidential terminations of treaties or challenges to Congress’s impeachment process.

Myth No. 4 The Constitution requires ‘separation of church and state.’

But it’s important to note that the first known use of the phrase “separation between Church & State” was in a letter written by Jefferson in 1802, more than a decade after the First Amendment was ratified. And the Supreme Court doesn’t always rule in this direction. Although the government cannot force citizens to engage in religious activities,

the court recently held in a 7-to-2 decision that the Constitution sometimes requires the state to support religious organizations by providing them equal access to public programs, such as government grants for playgrounds.

Myth No. 5 Before the 19th Amendment, women couldn’t vote.

It’s true that the 19th Amendment expressly guaranteed the right of all Americans to vote. But before it was ratified, the Constitution was silent on the question of women’s suffrage. In fact, women did vote in some states and federal territories before the 19th Amendment’s ratification. New Jersey’s first constitution, in 1776, granted voting rights to women and African Americans, though the state disenfranchised both groups in 1807. In 1870, in the Utah Territory, Seraph Young, a grandniece of Brigham Young, became the first woman to legally vote in a federal jurisdiction. n Barclay is an associate professor at the Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School.

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