The Washington Post National Weekly - January 13, 2019

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POST POLITICS

‘I never said this.’ But he did.

BY

D AVID N AKAMURA

I

t was a foundational promise of Donald Trump’s historic presidential campaign: Mexico would pay for his 2,000-mile border wall. But as he desperately fights for $5.7 billion in taxpayer money for the project, Trump now claims he never said Mexico would directly foot the bill.

“Obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they’re going to write out a check,” the president told reporters Thursday at the White House.

He did say it — at least 212 times during his campaign and dozens more since he took office. And he put it in writing — in a March 2016 memo to news outlets that was then posted on his campaign website.

Specifically, Trump threatened to cut off billions of dollars in remittance payments from Mexican nationals in the United States to families in their home country. That, he proclaimed, would pressure the Mexican government to cough up “a one-time payment of $5-10 billion” for the wall.

Some observers said at the time that the plan would not work, and the Trump administration never tried to enact it. But 21/2 years later, with the parts of the federal government shut down for three weeks so far in a budget impasse over Trump’s wall, the episode illustrates how his routine application of falsehoods, exaggerations and lies in service of political combat has come back to burn him.

First, then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto openly defied Trump and canceled two scheduled visits to the White House, one in 2017 and the other in 2018, in retaliation for Trump’s demands that Mexico pay for the wall.

“Mexico will not pay for any wall,” he stated.

His successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,

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SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

As a candidate, Donald Trump said at least 212 times that Mexico would directly pay for a border wall, though he now denies that.

has shown no willingness to change course.

The Republicans who controlled Congress over the past two years never made funding the wall with taxpayer money a priority.

Trump and his aides have floated other ideas to pressure Mexico to pay — canceling visas or increasing fees for consular services for Mexicans, and taxing imported goods at 20 percent.

Most recently, Trump has resorted to arguing that Mexico will indirectly pay through a revised trade deal that his administration signed with Mexico and Canada. But that deal has yet to be ratified by Congress, contains no provisions earmarking money for the wall, and economists have doubted whether it would significantly increase revenue flowing to the U.S. treasury.

“Obviously, they’re not going to write a check,” Trump said of Mexico on Thursday, before leaving Washington for a tour of a

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2019 The Washington Post / Year 5, No. 14

Border Patrol station in McAllen, Tex. “But they are paying for the wall indirectly, many, many times over, by the really great trade deal we just made.”

Trump has been promising that Mexico would pay for a wall since before he was a candidate for the White House and the vow figured prominently in his June 16, 2015, campaign announcement.

“I will build a great wall,” he declared that day at Trump Tower in New York. “And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

It became a staple of his campaign rallies, where supporters chanted, “Build the wall!”

Trump would often add: “Who’s going to pay for the wall?” The crowd would respond: “Mexico!”

By the spring of 2016, after he had emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, Trump was under pressure to explain how he would make good on the promise.

In the two-page policy memo, the Trump campaign described using powers under the Patriot Act to compel U.S. financial institutions to block personal remittances to Mexico, which totaled more than $20 billion a year.

Such money is an important source of income to many families in Mexico and other Latin American countries, experts said, and gives their economies a boost.

“My first reaction was, ‘That sounds counterproductive,’” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. “Mexican migration is dropping in part because Mexican migrants are sending money home so more Mexicans can have a dignified life.”

Cutting off such a flow would potentially disrupt their lives and result in more migration from Mexico to the United States, he added. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS

White House readies emergency plan Declaration would face legal challenges; Army Corps budget eyed for funding border wall

BY E RICA W ERNER, J OSH D AWSEY, M IKE D E B ONIS AND S EUNG M IN K IM

W

ith negotiations at an impasse over President Trump’s demands for $5.7 billion to build more than 200 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the White House began laying the groundwork late last week for declaration of a national emergency to begin construction.

The move would be certain to

set off a firestorm of opposition in Congress and the courts but could pave the way for an end to a threeweek government shutdown.

The administration was looking at unused money in the Army Corps of Engineers budget, specifically a disaster spending bill passed by Congress last year that includes $13.9 billion that has been allocated but not actually spent for a variety of civil works projects, two people with knowledge of the developments told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Trump has urged the Army

Corps to determine how fast contracts could be signed and whether construction could begin within 45 days, according to one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the preparations.

The list includes dozens of flood control projects in areas affected by recent natural disasters, including the Texas coastline inundated by Hurricane Harvey and parts of Puerto Rico battered by Hurricane Maria. The military construction budget is also being eyed as a potential source for un-

President Trump and border agents salute a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter Thursday as it flies over the Rio Grande during the president’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Mission, Tex. Trump has said he may invoke national security powers to start construction of a wall.

spent funds, with billions more potentially available there.

Thursday’s preparations were taking place with talks at an impasse over Trump’s call for wall funding. Democrats remained staunchly opposed throughout the week. The partial government shutdown continued, and, as of Saturday, became the longest in U.S. history.

By the end of the week, some 800,000 federal workers missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began Dec. 22, and problems plaguing shuttered national

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POLITICS

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

parks, food inspection processes and other federal services were multiplying.

The Senate unanimously passed legislation Thursday that would guarantee back pay to furloughed federal workers once the shutdown ends, although thousands of government contractors who have been furloughed may never recoup their losses.

Trump, who walked out of a White House negotiating session on Wednesday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to agree to pay for his wall, reiterated Thursday that he may well declare a national emergency if Democrats don’t give him what he wants.

“We can declare a national emergency. We shouldn’t have to because this is common sense,” Trump told reporters as he visited the border in Texas, accompanied by the commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers. Trump repeatedly has said Mexico would pay for the wall.

The president and members of his administration have been de-

picting a humanitarian and public safety crisis at the border, focusing on drugs flowing into the United States and violence by unauthorized immigrants. There was a significant uptick in border apprehensions in 2018, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, especially of immigrant families, but border apprehensions remain much lower than the high levels seen in the 1980s through the 2000s.

Asked about a timetable for a national emergency declaration, the president said he would see how it goes with Congress.

But on Capitol Hill there were no signs of progress, and instead lawmakers of both parties were bracing for Trump to declare a national emergency. Democrats were exploring their options on how to respond.

Democratic staffers from leadership offices and relevant committees met Thursday afternoon to discuss a potential response.

According to an attendee, the meeting focused on undercutting any case that the border situation

Federal employees rally Thursday at the Capitol to protest the impasse between Congress and President Trump over his demand to fund a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are either furloughed or working without pay.

constituted a national emergency under the legal definition, and highlighting projects that might be put at risk if Trump were to raid other accounts to fund the wall.

House Democratic leadership staff has explored the possibility of a lawsuit against the administration. But while no final determinations have been made, the current thinking is that Congress probably would not have standing to sue, according to a leadership aide.

State attorneys general or people directly affected by a border wall — such as landowners who own property along the U.S.Mexico boundary — would probably have to file the lawsuit, and the House could file an amicus brief.

Pelosi declined to say how the House would respond to a national emergency declaration, when questioned Thursday.

“If and when the president does that, you’ll find out how we will react,” Pelosi said. “But I think the president will have problems on his own side of the aisle for exploiting the situation in a way that

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enhances his power.”

Indeed, a number of Republicans have expressed qualms or outright opposition about Trump declaring a national emergency, including members of the House Armed Services Committee who object to the prospect of the administration targeting funds within the Pentagon’s military construction budget.

Others cautioned against the administration taking executive action on an issue that should be Congress’s purview.

“It’s not the way to do it. I can understand why they’re looking at it,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). “I don’t like the idea of pulling money out of defense and military construction and the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s not a good option.”

Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor who is often supportive of Trump, said, “Weaponizing a national emergency to achieve a policy objective is usually something that happens in banana republics, not George Washington’s republic.”

But other Republicans were ready for Trump to take the step.

In a statement Thursday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) accused Pelosi of intransigence that’s brought talks to an end, and said that “it is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier.”

“There’s no question, it’s perfectly legal,” said Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.). “I wish we didn’t have to.”

Many Democrats also believe that an emergency declaration would benefit them politically by unifying their party while splitting Republicans, creating unease among some conservatives who have expressed discomfort with a president sidestepping the Congress in a way they might see as similar to how former president Barack Obama circumvented Congress on immigration.

The administration can expect a flood of court challenges if it proposes to build a wall without explicit congressional authorization.

“The use of emergency powers to build a wall is unlawful and we are prepared to sue as needed,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. n ©The Washington Post

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White House braces for Mueller report B Y C AROL D . L EONNIG

A

beefed-up White House legal team is gearing up to prevent President Trump’s confidential discussions with top advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators and revealed in the special counsel’s longawaited report, setting the stage for a potential clash between the branches of government.

The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort.

He is coordinating with White House lawyer Emmet Flood, who is leading the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his now-20-month-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Flood is based in the White House Counsel’s Office but reports directly to Trump.

Trump aides say White House lawyers are focused on preserving a legal protection routinely invoked by presidents of both parties.

But any effort to fight investigators is likely to further inflame Trump’s relationship with Democratic leaders and could lock the administration and Congress in protracted legal standoffs that may ultimately go to the Supreme Court.

Of particular concern to Democrats: whether the White House will seek to use executive privilege to keep private any portions of Mueller’s report that addresses alleged obstruction of justice by the president.

There is a growing sense that the special counsel’s closely held investigation could come to culmination soon. Some Trump advisers think Mueller could deliver the confidential report explaining his findings to senior Justice Department officials next month.

Under the rules authorizing the special counsel, the attorney general can then decide whether to share the report or parts of it with

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Beefed-up legal team anticipates clash with Congress, prepares to argue executive privilege Congress and the public.

Some House leaders have vowed to immediately seek to obtain a copy of Mueller’s findings.

But the White House would resist the release of details describing confidential and sensitive communications between the president and his senior aides, Trump advisers say.

It is unclear whether the special counsel’s report will refer to material that the White House views as privileged communications obtained from interviews with senior White House officials. Some Trump advisers anticipate that Mueller may simply write a concise memo laying out his conclusions about the president’s actions.

However, Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, said the president’s lawyers have made clear to Justice Department officials that they want to see Mueller’s completed report before

the department decides what to share with Congress. Their aim: to have a chance to argue whether they believe some parts should remain private under executive privilege, Giuliani said.

“At that point, we can decide whether we have executive privilege exceptions to the report,” Giuliani said in an interview.

If the Justice Department agrees with the White House counsel that the report or portions of it should be withheld from the public, the House could try to subpoena the document, Giuliani said — but the White House could then go to court to resist its release.

The legal showdown could be one of the most significant debates over presidential executive privilege since President Richard M. Nixon sought to block the release of his White House tapes in the Watergate investigation.

Ronald Weich, an assistant attorney general under President

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, left, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney listen as President Trump meets with top Democrats in the House and Senate in the Oval Office in December.

Cipollone, who succeeded Donald McGahn, has been rebuilding the counsel’s staff.

Barack Obama, said the Mueller report will be of such “overwhelming interest” to Congress and to the public that it is highly likely the courts would rule in favor of Congress’s receiving it, as the Supreme Court did in ordering Nixon to turn over his tapes in July 1974. He resigned the next month.

Further complicating the current dynamic is a possible change in Justice Department oversight of the special counsel probe, which Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein has continued to supervise under acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker.

Trump’s nominee for the top post, former attorney general William P. Barr, has criticized aspects of Mueller’s investigation. His Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department if Barr is confirmed, although the timing of his departure is unclear.

In preparation for the looming legal battles, Cipollone has been beefing up the White House Counsel’s Office, which was down to fewer than 20 lawyers late last year, compared with 40 to 50 in past administrations. Four of the five deputies under previous White House counsel Donald McGahn had left the office, The Washington Post reported last year.

Since his arrival in December, Cipollone has increased the staff to roughly 35 lawyers and aims to bolster the ranks to 40 in the coming weeks, administration officials said. He also hired three deputies, all with extensive experience in past Republican White Houses and the Justice Department.

Cipollone, a longtime litigator who worked briefly in the 1990s for then-Attorney General Barr, declined to comment. But Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, said the new White House counsel has quickly assembled a stable of top-notch lawyers.

“It’s almost as if he’s building a law firm within a government entity,” Sekulow said. “You have very senior lawyers coalescing into a great team.”

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POLITICS Under Cippollone’s guidance, White House lawyers are preparing a strategy to fend off a blizzard of requests expected from congressional Democrats, who are planning to launch investigations into an array of topics such as Trump’s finances and controversial administration policies.

Cipollone’s goal, Trump aides said, is to try to find common ground with the congressional Democrats in responding to their subpoenas when he can, but draw a clear line that would protect the confidentiality of the office of the presidency.

People who know Cipollone describe him as a self-effacing listener who will work to build relationships on Capitol Hill.

“Pat will be enormously effective, because if you meet him, you are not going to immediately put up your walls,” said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who attended the University of Chicago Law School with Cipollone and now helps run American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group.

“Sure, you would expect him to take aggressive stands on executive privilege,” she said. “But if there is a court order, he won’t bring on a constitutional crisis by resisting it.”

Cipollone first met Trump when Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham, a close friend, recommended him to help prepare the then-candidate for the 2016 presidential debates. He began informally advising Trump’s team of personal lawyers in 2018.

In his new role, Cipollone is expected to consult and coordinate with Flood, a veteran of the Clinton impeachment battle, as Flood leads the response to the Mueller report.

Trump advisers are concerned that the special counsel — whose team has interviewed numerous White House aides — could include in his report accounts of private communications between Trump and senior advisers such as McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.

“Conversations you had with your White House counsel. Conversations you had with senior advisers. Why should that be subject to disclosure?” said one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It would be catastrophic for the presidency.” n

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Rebuking Obama, Pompeo lays out anti-Iran manifesto

BY J OHN H UDSON AND S UDARSAN R AGHAVAN

in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

S

ecretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a scathing rebuke of President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in a Cairo address centered on exerting maximum pressure on Iran and doubling down on U.S. alliances with Sunni autocrats and Israel.

In establishing his own vision for the Middle East, Pompeo set up the Obama administration as a foil for what not to do, whether it was

AMR NABIL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, gives a speech Thursday at the American University in Cairo, where he denounced former president Barack Obama for his Middle East policy during his tenure.

striking a landmark nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 or leaving Egypt’s autocratic president, Hosni Mubarak, in the lurch during that country’s protests in 2011.

“The United States has reasserted its traditional role as a force for good in this region,” Pompeo told an audience at American University in Cairo on Thursday.

The speech served as an explicit rebuttal of the address that Obama delivered in Cairo in 2009, extending an olive branch to Iran and calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In that address, Obama criticized Israel’s settlement activity and underscored the suppression of political rights by Arab monarchies.

Pompeo, by contrast, offered unconditional praise to Israel and

credited countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for pushing back against Iranian aggression.

He did not raise their human rights records, in particular the Saudi kingdom’s killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October or the Bahrain government’s suppression of its majority Shiite population.

Instead, he depicted those countries as victims of an Obama administration that was unwilling to stand proudly behind its allies.

“The Trump administration has moved quickly to rebuild links among our old friends and nurture new partnerships,” Pompeo said.

While Obama’s 2009 address cautioned that the United States did not have the answers to all of the Middle East’s “complex” problems, Pompeo castigated that approach as insufficiently prideful.

“The good news is this: The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering,” Pompeo said.

He spoke amid confusion among U.S. allies over Trump’s announced plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria immediately, a proclamation that was followed by remarks that the withdrawal will happen “slowly.”

Pompeo said the United States would continue airstrikes in the region “as targets arise” and continue its mission of overseeing the full defeat of the Islamic State and the expulsion of Iranian forces from Syria, a job that analysts said would take much longer than an initial 120-day U.S. timeline for withdrawal. U.S. officials say there is now no timeline for withdrawal.

Exerting pressure on Iran has been a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

The president withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and reimposed punishing sanctions on the Islamic Republic despite opposition from key European allies.

Pompeo has repeatedly called the country the “leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

“Iran does sponsor terrorism,

but not the variety that tends to threaten the U.S. homeland,” said Max Abrahms, a terrorism expert and author of the book “Rules for Rebels: The Science of Victory in Militant History.”

Pompeo’s outlook “is driven by his support for Israel. Iran poses a major terrorism threat to Israel, much less so the U.S. homeland,” he said.

To many of those listening, Pompeo appeared to have ignored decades of collective angst in the region towards the United States and its policies, seemingly rewriting historical perceptions.

“Clearly, when Pompeo insists that ‘America is a force for good in the Middle East’, he’s not thinking about a local audience at all, which generally associates American foreign policy as being responsible for invasion and occupation, of supporting autocracy and occupiers,” said H.A. Hellyer, a Middle East analyst with the Atlantic Council in a tweet.

In his remarks, Pompeo also lauded the improvement in relations between Arab states, such as the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. But few Egyptians accept Pompeo’s declaration that Arab attitudes toward Israel are changing. Most view Israel as an enemy that has usurped the rights and lands of Palestinians.

“In Egypt, we do not really talk about Iran,” said Nouran Hassan, 23, a senior studying political science at American University of Cairo who was in the audience.

“We don’t consider it dangerous.

For most ordinary Egyptians, Israel is their enemy ever since the 1950s.”

Human rights activists said Pompeo was not forceful enough in his criticism of Egypt’shuman rights abuses. They also expressed concern that Pompeo’s strong support of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and other Arab authoritarian leaders in order to combat terrorism could embolden their governments to commit more abuses. n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions spike Increase for 2018 puts nation farther off course from Paris accord pledge

The estimated findings from the Rhodium Group on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions show the United States is no longer on course to dramatically reduce emissions.

B Y C HRIS M OONEY AND B RADY D ENNIS

U.S. drifts farther from emissions targets

C

Energy-related C02 emissions are estimated to have increased in 2018

arbon dioxide emissions rose an estimated 3.4 percent in the United States in 2018, according to new research — a jarring increase that comes as scientists say the world needs to be aggressively cutting its emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The findings, published this past week by the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group, mean that the United States now has a diminishing chance of meeting its pledge under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to dramatically reduce its emissions by 2025.

The findings also underscore how the world’s second-largest emitter, once a global leader in pushing for climate action, has all but abandoned efforts to mitigate the effects of a warming world.

President Trump has said he plans to officially withdraw the nation from the Paris climate agreement in 2020 and in the meantime has rolled back Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions.

“We have lost momentum.

There’s no question,” Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor who studies emissions trends, said of both U.S. and global efforts to steer the world toward a more sustainable future.

The sharp emissions rise was fueled primarily by a booming economy, researchers found. But the increase, which could prove to be the second-largest in the past 20 years, probably would not have been as stark without Trump administration rollbacks, said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium.

“I don’t think you would have seen the same increase,” Houser said, referring to the electric power sector in particular.

Emissions from electric power generation rose 1.9 percent in 2018, the analysis found, driven chiefly by more demand for electricity, which was largely satisfied by more burning of natural gas.

This fuel emits less greenhouse

6 billion metric tons

5.5

2018 estimate 3.4% increase from 2017 5

Copenhagen Accord target 17% below 2005

Paris Agreement target

4.5

26-28% below 2005 1990

2000

2010

2020

2025

Note: Energy-related C02 emissions represent roughly three-quarters of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Rhodium Group

JOHN MUYSKENS/THE WASHINGTON POST

LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG

gas than coal when burned but is still a major contributor overall.

At the same time, emissions from the transportation sector rose 1 percent thanks to more airline travel and greater on-road shipping. Industrial emissions from factories and other major facilities also rose significantly in 2018, the analysis found.

The figures, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources, remain an estimate because some data from last year is not finalized.

But the trend line is consistent with a recent estimate from a group of academics associated with the Global Carbon Project, which found U.S. emissions likely to rise 2.5 percent in 2018.

Rising emissions are not just a U.S. problem. Global emissions also reached a record high in 2018, and the increase in the United States goes hand in hand with rising emissions in other countries, such as China and India, said Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“It’s not an isolated phenomenon,” Mehling said, adding that the trend makes it difficult to solely blame the Trump administration’s deregulatory push and its dismissal of climate action for the change. “Such political developments, including the rollback of domestic climate policies in the

U.S., tend to have a considerable lead time before you can actually see their reflection in physical emission trends.”

The latest growth makes it increasingly unlikely that the United States will achieve a pledge made by the Obama administration in the run-up to the Paris climate agreement that the country would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.

A large part of President Barack Obama’s plan for meeting that goal turned on key climate policies, including new regulations for vehicle fuel efficiency and power plants. These policies alone were not enough — the United States has never been on target to fulfill its Paris promises.

But the Trump administration has moved to reverse or weaken them.

U.S. emissions have declined somewhat since 2005 because of technological changes, such as the dwindling of coal-fired power generation in the face of surging natural gas and the growth of renewable energy. In a major international climate change meeting in Poland last month, the Trump administration hailed a 14 percent decline in emissions from 2005 levels.

But that’s barely half of what the Obama administration was promising by 2025. And the 14 percent figure has shrunk based on the latest findings. The result is that any chance of hitting the original goal has diminished, said the Rhodium Group’s Houser.

In October, a United Nationsbacked panel of nearly 100 scientists offered a detailed account of what it would take to limit planetary warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — with the world already experiencing a 1 degree Celsius increase.

They found not only that going beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius would have devastating impacts, but also that the world has only about a decade to make the “unprecedented” changes necessary to hold warming at this level. n ©The Washington Post

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More early applicants for top colleges BY

N ICK A NDERSON

T

wins Kate and Henry Sosland were eager for a head start in the race to get into their top-choice colleges.

So they applied in October, more than two months ahead of the regular deadline, in hopes of winning early admission. She went for Barnard College, he for Washington University in St. Louis, joining a surge of others nationwide using the same gambit in hopes of gaining an edge.

For many college-bound seniors, the trend has lengthened and intensified the stress of what was already an angst-laden quest.

Henry Sosland said he believed at least three classmates applied early to the university he coveted.

“That was a nerve-racking thing,” he said. “All those students were very capable.”

Early applications have been expanding for years, but last month some big-name schools reported record-setting spikes. Totals were up 9 percent at Dartmouth College, 19 percent at Duke University, 21 percent at Brown University.

Some counselors worry the trend is widening the divide between haves and have-nots because early application programs often require those admitted to enroll. That proviso, known as “early decision,” tends to help the affluent.

Many students need to compare financial aid offers and weigh whether to take out loans. Jeff Levy, an admissions consultant in Santa Monica, Calif., advises them not to apply through binding early-decision plans.

The early-decision movement “further polarizes our high school population,” Levy said. “The big problem is social and economic inequity.”

Still, highly selective colleges and universities often fill a third to half of their first-year classes through early rounds — which makes the regular round even more competitive. To address equity concerns, schools typically pledge to give students in need the

BARNARD COLLEGE

Trend adds to an already competitive process; some say this system tends to benefit affluent same financial aid they would have received if they had been admitted in the regular cycle.

The first major wave of admission decisions comes in mid-December, a couple of weeks before deadlines for the regular application cycle in January. That means some early applicants can relax during winter break after getting into their first choice.

Many others face the early heartache of rejection or deferral before they have to gear up to send more applications. Deferral means an early application will get another look in the regular cycle.

“We’ve seen a lot of students this year be deferred,” said Steve Goodman, a college admission counselor in the District. “Not that they weren’t solid applicants.” But so many strong candidates were aiming early this year to top-tier schools, he said, that “the numbers were just so overwhelming.”

The 18-year-old Soslands, seniors at Charles E. Smith Jewish

Day School in Rockville, Md., were among those with early good news. Kate got her yes on Dec. 12, and Henry’s followed the next day.

They didn’t flaunt it. They knew the numbers for many schools were brutal.

“You want to celebrate,” Kate said, “but you also want to be conscious of people who are extremely hurt and stressed out.”

Their search is done because the Soslands applied through early decision. Making an enrollment commitment tends to help applicants in the early round.

Simply put, colleges want students who definitely want them. It helps fill classes (and varsity sports teams). By contrast, students admitted during the regular round, who might have multiple offers, are less likely to enroll.

More than 220 schools use early decision, according to the online Common Application. Some are highly selective, but many others are not and must work hard to

Early applications to Barnard College, a New York women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, rose 24 percent in 2018.

meet enrollment and revenue targets. Colleges find the early decision method so valuable that dozens use it for a second round — dubbed “ED2” — for applicants willing to commit in December, January or February to a secondchoice school.

But the admission edge for early-decision hopefuls diminishes when the applicant pool expands.

Early applications to Barnard, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, rose 24 percent this year. Washington University said its preliminary total for the first round was stable.

Some universities allow early applications without requiring those admitted to enroll — a process known as “early action.” They, too, reported record or near-record application totals: 6,958 to Harvard University (up 5 percent in one year); 6,016 to Yale University (up 5 percent); 7,337 to the University of Notre Dame (up 17 percent).

Many of those applicants were hoping for a slightly better shot at schools with microscopic admission rates. The overall admission rate at Harvard was 4.6 percent for the class entering in 2018. But the rate for early applicants Harvard admitted last month was 13.4 percent.

At the University of Chicago, which allows students to apply early with or without an enrollment commitment, about 15,000 sought admission in the first round, according to James G. Nondorf, vice president for enrollment and student advancement. That was up more than 10 percent. Nondorf said early applications were once perceived as largely an insider’s game for “highly sophisticated, wealthy kids,” often from the East Coast. Now, he is seeing more early applications from the Midwest and West Coast.

Kelly Fraser, an admissions consultant in Bethesda, Md., said all of her clients apply early. Those aiming for top-tier schools know there are no guarantees, she said. “The more selective the school,” she said, “the more uncertain the process.” n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

Europe braces for a no-deal Brexit B Y M ICHAEL B IRNBAUM in Rotterdam, Netherlands

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he Hook of Holland, a stretch of land outside Rotterdam sliced by canals, functions in many ways like Britain’s backyard.

Greenhouses stretch for miles, nurturing tulips, tomatoes and other supermarket specialties.

The bounty is gathered into warehouses and sorted under signs denoting destinations such as Sheffield and Gateshead. Then trucks whisk it all onto ferries headed across the North Sea. Thanks to this precisely calibrated ecosystem and the E.U.’s borderless trading zone, British shops can order fresh produce early in the morning and receive it by the end of the day.

But a no-deal Brexit threatens to throw it all into chaos, resulting in trucks backed up for miles, vegetables spoiled and economic pain for everyone.

The Netherlands — Britain’s main trading partner on mainland Europe — is among the mostprepared for the possibility that Britons will leave the E.U. on March 29 without a deal to manage the withdrawal. Leaders here fear that the best efforts of a nation that loves to be prepared may not be enough to safeguard against the mess. And Britain’s other trading partnerships in Europe could be even worse off.

“Everyone is fully aware that something is going to happen,” said Mark Dijk, the head of external relations at the Port of Rotterdam, whose docks, rail yards and warehouses handle nearly 1 million tons of goods moving to and from Britain every week.

Britain’s efforts to manage the withdrawal “are so chaotic that it’s hard for people to be sure there won’t be a [no-deal] Brexit,” Dijk said.

No precedent exists for a country scissoring itself out of the interconnected modern world. And yet that outcome appears increasingly likely, as the British Parliament prepares this week to resume debate on a draft withdrawal agreement that has meager sup-

ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Fast, efficient system of trade could collapse without withdrawal pact, damaging economy port.

In a no-deal scenario, London’s powerful banks could find themselves in legal limbo when they want to trade in Europe’s market.

Millions of British citizens who have lived and worked in the E.U. legally for years, as well as E.U. nationals in Britain, could suddenly become undocumented.

Connections between British and European law enforcement agencies would go dark.

British leaders have warned of shortages of food and medicines, and have asked importers to build stockpiles. Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson has put 3,500 troops on standby to deal with potential disruptions. In all, cabinet ministers have approved $2.5 billion of contingency spending.

The countries that will remain in the E.U. also are amping up their no-deal preparations. Irish lawmakers may have to set aside all other business this month to

pass 45 pieces of emergency legislation aimed at mitigating the impact of Brexit. France is building roads, warehouses and checkpoints near its ports in preparation for new customs controls.

The E.U.’s headquarters in Brussels unveiled a list of proposals to protect E.U. citizens from the worst consequences of a no-deal Brexit, but that would offer little relief to the British side. British airlines, for example, would be able to carry passengers to E.U. airports only from Britain.

Here in the Netherlands, exports to Britain could fall by 17 percent if Brexit happens without a deal, according to a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Dutch government is scrambling to limit the damage, hiring nearly 1,000 more customs agents for the inspections that would become necessary.

On a gusty afternoon last

Ferries arrive at the port of Dover, in southeast England.

Many carry trucks loaded with food and goods from the European Union that, under the old system, could be in British stores the same day.

month, tractor-trailers were arriving as little as 15 minutes before the vast Stena Hollandica ferry — which can hold 3.5 miles of trucks — pulled away. At the other end of the journey, in the British port of Harwich, the ferry can unload in 30 to 45 minutes, said Annika Hult, who directs North Sea shipping for the Stena Line.

The process goes quickly in part because no customs agents are involved. In 1993, countries that belonged to what was then called the European Economic Community pulled down their customs posts and stopped checks between countries.

Little would change if British lawmakers approve the withdrawal deal negotiated by the E.U. and Prime Minister Theresa May. Britain would remain inside the E.U. customs union at least until new trade agreements are devised.

But Britain’s leaving with no deal in place would set trade back decades.

Businesses would need to file paperwork with E.U. and British customs agencies when they want to send shipments between countries. Food and animals would need inspections on both sides.

Truck drivers already pass through passport checks, but the post-Brexit checks would be far stricter.

Some shipping and logistics companies expect that what currently takes a day to get to Britain could take a day-and-a-half — a dramatic increase for a system whose margins of error are measured in minutes. They also fear the roads leading to the ports will turn into parking lots. At present, there is no overflow space for trucks that cannot be driven straight onto ships. There has been no need.

Hult said ferry operators such as hers were ready to find ways to speed any customs checks — if only they knew what to expect.

“The challenge here is the lack of clarity,” she said. “If there’s certainty about what the framework is going to look like, and if the systems are there, we can act quite fast.” n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

KLMNO WEEKLY

China’s censors crack down on tweets B Y G ERRY S HIH in Hong Kong

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he 50-year-old software engineer was tapping away at his computer in November when state security officials filed into his office on mainland China.

They had an unusual — and nonnegotiable — request.

Delete these tweets, they said.

The agents handed over a printout of 60 posts the engineer had fired off to his 48,000 followers. The topics included U.S.-China trade relations and the plight of underground Christians in his coastal province in southeast China.

When the engineer did not comply after 24 hours, he discovered that someone had hacked into his Twitter account and deleted its entire history of 11,000 tweets.

“If the authorities hack you, what can you do?” said the engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of landing in deeper trouble with authorities. “I felt completely drained.”

In Beijing and other cities across China, prominent Twitter users confirmed in interviews to The Washington Post that authorities are sharply escalating the Twitter crackdown. It suggests a wave of new and more aggressive tactics by state censors and cyberwatchers trying to control the Internet.

Twitter is banned in China — as are other non-Chinese sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. But they are accessed by workarounds such as a virtual private network, or VPN, which is software that bypasses state-imposed firewalls.

While Chinese authorities block almost all foreign social media sites, they rarely have taken direct action against citizens who use them, preferring instead to quietly monitor what the Chinese are saying.

But recently, Internet monitors and activists have tallied at least 40 cases of Chinese authorities pressuring users to delete tweets through a decidedly low-tech

YAN CONG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Police head to homes to pressure Twitter users to delete messages critical of the government method: showing up at their doorsteps.

Even for a country accustomed to censorship, a crackdown on Twitter is surprising because the service, like Google and Facebook, is used by a relatively small number of people, at least by Chinese standards.

An estimated 10 million Chinese use Twitter, according to some tech-industry watchers.

(Twitter does not issue statistics on China.) That is a minuscule figure compared with those on government-approved messaging and app sites: 1 billion for WeChat and hundreds of millions on Weibo, according to state figures.

But in the past two years, as the space for political speech has all but vanished in President Xi Jinping’s China, Twitter has played an increased role. It has become a cyber-window to the outside world, a release valve for the disaffected, a virtual teahouse for politically minded Chinese at

home and abroad.

Bankrupt mom-and-pop investors fume about the lack of financial regulations. Disgruntled farmers pass around videos of land seizures or police thuggery.

Muslims from China’s far west share pictures of loved ones locked away in state-operated reeducation centers.

It has started to resemble the freewheeling Twitterscape in other tightly controlled nations such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

And to the Chinese Communist Party, that means it is a rising threat.

In late November, the wife of renowned photographer Lu Guang took to Twitter to seek help for her missing husband, believed to be detained by police.

(His name is censored on the Weibo service.)

Last summer, when the Chinese government tried to break up a nationwide labor movement, tech-savvy student supporters in-

He Jiangbing shows his Twitter profile on his phone in China, where the site is banned. Twitter has played an increased role in recent years as the government clamps down on political speech.

formed the world via Twitter.

An elite class of businesspeople with ties to the upper echelons of the Communist Party as well as media professionals are increasingly sneaking peeks at the banned service, according to Ho. “They all read it,” he said. “For the government, the threat exceeds that of anything else. Twitter has become their biggest target to take down.”

That’s precisely what’s happening now.

He Jiangbing, a financial commentator, said police came to his Beijing living room to warn about his tweets.

Days earlier, officials visited the Guangzhou home of Ye Du, a well-known writer and supporter of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to hand him a printout of 802 tweets he needed to delete, Ye said in an interview.

Meanwhile, all 30,000 tweets from the account of Wu Gan, an activist serving an eight-year prison sentence, were deleted in November, which suggested a government hack, said Yaxue Cao, a Washington-based activist.

Cui Haoxin, a Muslim poet, was taken to a police station and interrogated — partly because of his tweets calling attention to Islamophobia in China.

“They not only violated my personal freedom of speech, but they’re effectively violating a foreign company and a foreign country’s Internet sovereignty,” Cui said.

He, the Beijing-based columnist, said there are fears that a full-scale crackdown on Twitter would choke off the last online venue in China for open intellectual debate.

Last year, He wrote pointed comments on Weibo and WeChat urging the Chinese central bank to lower reserve requirements for lenders because, in his estimation, the Chinese economy was struggling.

“I never touched politics. I’m not a dissident, and I’m not a celebrity,” he said. “They still took away my voice.” n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Will we eat them?

Cutting-edge lab techniques could improve animal breeding, but society may not be ready

BY C AROLYN Y . J OHNSON • P HOTOS BY C HRISTIE H EMM

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K LOK

in Davis, Calif.

hree cows clomped, single-file, through a chute to line up for sonograms — ultrasound “preg checks” — to reveal if they were expecting calves next summer.

“Right now. This is exciting, right this minute,” animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam said as she waited for a tiny blob of a fetus to materialize on a laptop screen on a recent afternoon at the Beef Barn, part of the University of California at Davis’s sprawling agricultural facilities for teaching and research.

The cows had been implanted a month and a half earlier with embryos genetically edited to grow and look like males, regardless of their biological gender.

The research project pits one of the hottest fields in biotechnology against the messy politics of gene modification.

As scientists in labs across the world create virus-resistant pigs, heat-tolerant cattle and fatter, more muscular lambs, a big question looms: Will regulation, safety concerns and public skepticism prevent these advances from becoming anything more than fascinating laboratory experiments, or will the animals transform agriculture and the food supply? So far, Veterinarians at the University of California at Davis evaluate cows in November to see whether they are ready for genetically edited embryos to be implanted.

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COVER STORY

gene-editing tools have jumpstarted research worldwide, creating more than 300 pigs, cattle, sheep and goats. Now, proponents of the field say the United States is at a make-or-break moment, when government action over the next year could determine whether any gene-edited food animals make it to market.

The recent announcement that a Chinese researcher had created genetically edited human babies sparked an international furor and a moral debate. But while such research is effectively outlawed in the United States and was swiftly condemned by a group of leading researchers, Van Eenennaam and her colleagues are pushing similar techniques into the barnyard. There, such applications are far less hypothetical. But the societal consensus about how or whether they should be used – and how to prove the technology is safe for animals and people who eat them — is even less clear.

Just down the road from the Beef Barn are five bulls and a heifer, the second generation of cattle that have been gene-edited to lack horns, avoiding a grisly procedure in the dairy industry called “disbudding,” when calves’ horns are burned or cut off. The new gene-editing attempt is even more audacious.

For farmers seeking to maximize beef production, all-male cattle could be a win: Males gain weight more efficiently than females. For scientists, successful births would add to a menagerie of gene-edited animals that demonstrate the power of the technology beyond the lab, where their use is mostly routine and uncontroversial.

“The technology challenges of producing genetically engineered animals are gone,” said Charles Long, a biologist at Texas A&M University who says he works in pretty much any livestock animal except chickens. “What we have to do is really start producing the animals that have these traits.”

Gene-edited plants will soon be in the grocery store, but similar tinkering with the DNA of animals faces a far more uncertain future.

The regulatory process for getting animals approved is more complex and treats the edited DNA as a veterinary drug — a difference that animal scientists argue will effectively kill their field by preventing innovations that could

make raising livestock more sustainable, more efficient or more humane. Many advocates and ethicists agree that the current oversight system is a poor fit but think that scientists and industry underestimate potential safety concerns.

“I don’t want speed limits, either, but they have a role,” said Jaydee Hanson, senior policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety.

The Trump administration has signaled its interest in modernizing regulations to foster innovation. The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees animal gene editing, announced in late October that it will issue new guid-

TOP: Scientists at the University of California at Davis raise cattle that were genetically edited to not grow horns. This pen includes some bulls that were in the control group and do have horns. LEFT: Veterinarians review ultrasounds of the cows. RIGHT: A veterinarian begins to clean up after checking cows for possible pregnancies.

ance next year to calibrate the regulation to the risk posed by the product. Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, met with food biotechnology leaders in November.

Researchers, after years of fighting public skepticism on genetically modified foods, are hopeful but not optimistic. Advocates are lining up on both sides of the issue.

“We’re at this inflection point in society, where gene editing is really taking off, and now is the time we could have a more sustained public conversation about how we want it used in our world and how we don’t want it to be used,” said

Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University. “All the polls indicate that people are less comfortable with animal biotechnology than plant biotechnology. . . . A regulatory system cannot be based 100 percent on science or scientific risk, and values come into play when setting the standards.”

Scientific roller coaster For decades, scientists have been transferring genes between species in the lab — inserting a gene from a microbe into a cow’s DNA to make it resistant to a painful infection called mastitis,

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2019

15

COVER STORY or repurposing a gene found in bacteria to reduce pigs’ phosphorus pollution. The only genetically modified animal approved for food consumption in the United States is the fast-growing AquAdvantage salmon, but it isn’t being sold because of a labeling requirement originally introduced in a spending bill.

To oversee the emerging field of biotechnology, the Reagan administration, rather than passing new laws, created a “coordinated framework” in which regulatory agencies would use their existing laws for oversight. Genetically engineered animals thus fall under the FDA’s process for approving new veterinary drugs.

The regulatory path was complicated, and the research had to contend with the public “ick” factor.

Van Eenennaam recalls one of her fondest scientific memories — more than a decade ago, she inserted a gene from a roundworm into a mouse and successfully showed that this could generate heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids in the rodent’s milk. The experiment was conceived as a proof of concept before extending the technology to cows, but the grant proposal was rejected.

“While it may be putting the cart before the horse, the proposal has not mentioned the problem with acceptance of transgenic food products,” a reviewer wrote.

“Given the ‘pure and wholesome’ public perception of milk products, it may be particularly difficult to gain widespread public acceptance for transgenic milk products — despite their benefits.”

Many who worked in the field at the time recall feeling discouraged by similar rejections.

“I’m angry as hell 90 percent of the time,” said Long, who now plans to move some of his work to Brazil, where the regulatory path is more certain. “It’s been a 20year fight.”

When Van Eenennaam was traveling in China a few years ago, she visited a lab where the omega-3 gene had been inserted into cows.

“I kept getting these emails from researchers in China, and then I saw the cow,” she said, bringing up a photo on her computer screen. “Good on them.”

Scientists were re-energized by the invention of new and more precise technologies, the most fa-

mous of which is CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.

Using CRISPR, scientists can quickly, easily and cheaply make targeted cuts to the genome and make changes or insert new genes.

Instead of introducing the foreign DNA that had triggered public skepticism, they could delete or change a single letter out of billions in an animal’s genome. Such changes happen routinely in nature — they are the basis for evolution — so scientists were hopeful that regulators and the public would see these animals differently.

But in early 2017, the FDA put out draft guidance indicating that animals with intentionally altered DNA would be regulated just like the genetically modified animals have been — as containing veterinary drugs. Proponents and skeptics alike felt it wasn’t the right move.

“We need to rethink this — look at the science, look at the potential risk, look at the products that are going to be developed. Is there a need for oversight, and what is the appropriate mechanism for that oversight?” said Greg Jaffe, biotechnology project director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Van Eenennaam was in the middle of an experiment at the time. There were two bulls on campus that had been gene-edited to be “polled,” lacking horns, through a collaboration with the company Recombinetics. Over-

The university’s onsite feed mill produces food for cattle and other animals in the animal science department.

“I’m angry as hell 90% of the time. It’s been a 20-year fight.”

Charles Long, a biologist at Texas A&M University , on the complicated regulatory path biotechnology faces in the U.S.

night, the animals’ status changed.

“We went from having two bulls that were polled to having two 2,000-pound drugs,” Van Eenennaam said. “It sounds funny, but all of that becomes a huge liability.”

In written responses to questions, the FDA clarified that geneedited animals aren’t considered drugs but that they contain new animal drugs.

Researchers and companies argued that it wasn’t rational to treat all gene-editing the same, whether it was a single DNA letter change that was also found in nature or a radical rewrite of the genome.

“Somebody comes to me and says, ‘Randy, I want to make these genetic modifications and put it in the food chain. What is it going to take?’ I tell them I don’t know how long, and I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, because we don’t have any examples,” said Randall Prather, a reproductive physiologist who runs the National Swine Resource and Research Center at the University of Missouri. “You hear a click when they hang up.”

New regulations on the way A few days before the scheduled preg checks in Davis, the FDA sent out a new Plant and Animal Biotechnology Innovation Action Plan. The details will be rolled out over the next year, but the goal is to clarify its approach, reduce barriers to innovation and protect public health. The agency said in a

KLMNO WEEKLY

statement that it could be more “flexible with respect to data” if a genetic alteration does not differ in any “relevant way” from nature.

But it also added that genome editing techniques “may carry unique risks.” Scientists and watchdogs alike are worried that the process will take place behind closed doors.

Kuzma is particularly concerned about unforeseen changes to DNA that occur because tools such as CRISPR aren’t perfect and may make unintended changes to other genes. She worries that the regulatory process may be too industry-friendly.

“It’s going to be a very closed process and a very cozy relationship between the technology developers and the federal government,” Kuzma said.

Lab-grown brain bits open windows to the mind — and a maze of ethical dilemmas Van Eenennaam, wearing an “I love science” shirt, had a different concern. She worried that the agency won’t grapple with the fundamental problem, as she sees it, that edits creating animals with DNA and traits that occur naturally shouldn’t be treated as drugs.

But at the moment, her bigger concern was the difficulty of science. CRISPR is often touted a tool so simple that high school students can use it, but experiments in large mammals are far from straightforward. The challenges of in vitro fertilization, the imperfect efficiency of gene-editing and the vagaries of bovine fertility whittle down the odds of success.

At the Beef Barn, veterinarian Bret McNabb reluctantly declared one cow after another “open” — meaning no pregnancies today.

The last cow, 1201, showed signs that she may have been pregnant but lost the fetus.

A tense silence fell over the group.

“I don’t know that we can blame the cows. There’s a lot going on here,” Van Eenennaam said.

But this was not the end — graduate student Joey Owen had already spent the morning freezing the next round of gene-edited embryos. The next day, he showed up at lab at 2 a.m. to analyze biopsies from those embryos, and hours later, he and Van Eenennaam began to game out the next few months, planning another round of experiments. n ©The Washington Post

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SECURITY

TSA recruits more floppy-eared dogs BY

K ARIN B RULLIARD

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he dogs deployed by the Transportation Security Administration at airports nationwide use their noses to sniff out explosives and contraband. But pooches selected for duty these days are picked not just for the ability of their snouts — the shape of their ears matters, too.

TSA officials say the agency is increasingly replacing retired pointy-eared dogs — think German shepherds — with floppyeared sorts including Labrador retrievers. The recruits have a friendlier look, officials say.

“We find the passenger acceptance of floppy-ear dogs is just better. It presents just a little bit less of a concern,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske told the Washington Examiner during a recent tour at Washington Dulles International Airport. “Doesn’t scare children.”

About 1,200 TSA dogs from seven breeds are used to screen U.S. passengers and baggage, TSA spokesman James Gregory told The Washington Post. Five are breeds whose ears rest softly on their heads: Labs, golden retrievers, German short-haired pointers, wire-haired pointers and Vizslas. Two have ears that shoot skyward: German shepherds and Belgian Malinoises.

But about 4 in 5 recent additions to the canine corps are of the droopy-eared persuasion, and the agency hopes to stick to that ratio, Gregory said. The consideration of ear position, he added, was an informal internal decision “that is more about adapting to people’s perceptions about floppy-eared dogs (sporting breeds) being more friendly versus pointy-eared dogs (herding dog breeds) that may appear to be more aggressive-looking.”

Working-dog providers are also increasingly opting to breed retrievers and other sporting dogs, Gregory said.

This doggy development made a splash on social media, where some observers greeted it as a welcome gesture from an agency

ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Pointy-eared pooches are less approachable, scarier in public’s perception, the agency says not often lauded for its consideration of traveler sentiments. Others decried it as “canine racism,” not to mention a misplaced focus on dogs when barking TSA agents are a more common complaint, and offered up photos of perfectly nice-looking dogs with pointy ears.

Still others pointed out that these dogs, which typically wear “Do not pet” vests, are not supposed to be approachable.

“No petting, but there’s a balance,” Gregory said. “We don’t want people to shy away because they’re scared.”

The agency’s understanding of passenger views on detection dog ears is anecdotal and not based on survey data, Gregory said. But some research backs up the idea that people view pointy ears as more intimidating. In a 2016 study on perceptions of dogs with docked tails and cropped ears — or cut to stand

up, as is typical on breeds such as the Doberman pinscher — University of British Columbia researchers found that participants deemed altered dogs more aggressive and dominant than those with natural features.

Clive Wynne, an Arizona State University canine science scholar who has studied perceptions of dogs labeled “pit bulls,” praised the agency’s move. Detection dogs' noses are “amazing technology,” he said, “but the fact that this technology is embodied in a living animal creates its own issues.”

“People have attitudes toward dogs — and different attitudes toward dogs that look different,” Wynne said in an email. “So if you want to have a dog contact a vast number of people of many different backgrounds, you need that dog to be presentable to the widest possible range of folks.”

Floppy ears have actually

Howard, the dog handled by TSA officer Wendell “Dell” Hart, poses at the airport.

played a significant role in scientists' understanding of animals' friendliness toward humans. In an experiment that began in 1959 and continues today, scientists in Russia have sought to breed tame silver foxes. They selected the gentlest animals to start each new generation, and within 10 cycles, they had pups that were less aggressive and fearful.

What’s more, these amiable foxes sported new physical characteristics, including curly tails, mottled fur — and yes, floppy ears.

The same traits are seen in many domesticated animals.

Why these physical traits often accompany tameness is not yet clear. But it means that humans have for thousands of years associated them with more docile animals. That said, German shepherds, Belgian Malinoises and other triangle-eared breeds are no less domesticated or tame than others. All purebred dogs' looks, including their ears, have been shaped by selective breeding, and erect ears do not necessarily signal an aggressive temperament.

Nor do traditional detection dogs necessarily have stronger sniffers. Wynne noted that a study he published on dogs' olfactory sensitivity found that pugs performed “way better” than German shepherds, meaning “friendly-looking dogs can be perfectly suited to this task.”

Which is why the primary requirement for TSA dogs remains stellar detection skill, Gregory said. As many as half of aspiring working dogs fail out of training programs; in 2017, a very floppy-eared black Lab named Lulu became a minor celebrity for dropping out of CIA bombsniffer school.

“No dogs will be pulled off because they have pointy ears.

All the dogs are good — as long as they pass the test,” Gregory said.

“It’s stringent, and we put them through extremely difficult tests. … But at the end of the day, the dog’s going to be out there because they’re qualified, not because of their breed.” n ©The Washington Post

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INNOVATIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

White wine for the Red Planet?

A MIE F ERRIS- R OTMAN in Tbilisi, Georgia

BY

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eorgia promotes itself as the world’s birthplace of wine. So it seems only natural that the country is trying to figure out what varietal might be sipped one day on Mars.

That is the thinking behind the IX Millennium project, which is seeking to develop grapevines fit for the possible Red Planet agriculture pods. The team also wants to put a Georgian stamp on one of the more unusual research fronts related to a dreamed-of Mars colony.

But it’s definitely not without merits.

The research may help answer questions about radiation, dust and other challenges for life-sustaining agriculture on Mars. And after all, who wouldn’t want a glass of Martian wine to welcome a new year (687 Earth days long) on a new planet?

“If we’re going to live on Mars one day, Georgia needs to contribute. Our ancestors brought wine to Earth, so we can do the same to Mars,” said Nikoloz Doborjginidze, founder of Georgia’s Space Research Agency and an adviser to the Ministry of Education and Science, which is part of the wine project.

A consortium of entrepreneurs and academics also are involved in IX Millennium, which refers to the tradition of viticulture in Georgia going back more than 8,000 years in this land between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea. Endless debates are engaged on wine’s origins, but Georgia makes as credible a claim as any.

The quest for a Martian-friendly grape began in 2016 when entrepreneur Elon Musk boasted that his company SpaceX could launch its first manned mission to Mars in 2024, a decade sooner than NASA’s most optimistic timetable.

That inspired the Georgian team to begin looking at grapes for space. But others, too, are trying to figure out what might grow in protected gardens on Mars.

AMIE FERRIS-ROTMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Scientists in the former Soviet republic of Georgia are hunting for a perfect grape to take to Mars Scientists in Peru have been successfully growing potatoes in a mock Martian environment, part of a slew of experiments run in conjunction with NASA on extraterrestrial agriculture. The U.S. space agency already has salad crops aboard the International Space Station and will soon branch out into tomatoes and spicy peppers.

So far, food in space has been developed mostly with nutrition and calories in mind, said Ralph Fritsche, NASA’s food production project manager. This means grapes have not made the NASA menu. But that does not mean NASA is a buzzkill.

“Right now, we’re worried about keeping the crews healthy but also happy. They have to be able to survive, so maybe there’s a pathway for [alcohol] in the future,” Fritsche said.

The company that makes Budweiser is already on the case. In 2017, it sent an experimental batch

of barley seeds into space, part of its research into microgravity beer for places such as Mars.

In Georgia, the team is about to embark on experiments on grape varieties and Mars-like soil.

Early this year, the group hopes to establish the country’s first vertical-farming lab inside a hotel in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. A company called Space Farms plans floor-to-ceiling pods with grapes next to strawberries and arugula — plants with heaps of vitamins and whose seeds could be taken on long space journeys.

Vertical farming — using limited space, minimal human support and hydroponic lights — could help determine which grapes will thrive in the biodome colonies envisioned for Mars.

Next, Tbilisi’s Business Technology University, or BTU, plans to test various soils before simulating a Martian environment in a laboratory, complete with subzero temperatures, high carbon mon-

Vineyards belonging to Georgia’s staterun grape library in Saguramo, north of Tbilisi. Nearly all of Georgia’s 500 varieties are grown there.

oxide levels and air pressure that is equivalent to 20,000 feet altitude on Earth.

Knowing what Martian happy hour will taste like will take some time, though. The project doesn’t expect to know which Georgian grapevines will be most suitable for Mars until at least 2022.

Yet clues are already emerging.

Contrary to common understanding, red wine does not seem to be the best bet. Georgian scientists have a hunch that white grapes will fare better on Mars.

“Whites tend to be more resistant to viruses,” said Levan Ujmajuridze, director of the country’s vineyard laboratory, holding up a glass of white Georgian wine to admire the color against the sun’s low rays. “So I’d imagine they’ll do well against radiation, too. Their skin could reflect it.”

Ujmajuridze is in the gardens of Saguramo, just north of Tbilisi, where the government conducts experiments in its vast outdoor grape library, where nearly all of Georgia’s 500 varieties have been planted on trellises in organized rows.

One candidate for Mars is rkatsiteli, a robust and common wine high in acidity with hints of pineapple and fennel and a fiery kick.

Students at BTU will soon subject the grapes, which are characterized by a reddish splotch near the stem, to high levels of radiation. They believe rkatsiteli’s sturdy skin should survive the dust storms on Mars, whose particles could make their way into the man-made laboratories.

White grapes’ potential came as a surprise to the Georgian consortium members, who have not forgotten the advice given by Soviet officials in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster: Drink red wine or vodka.

American researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine later concluded the Soviets could have been onto something. They found that red wine contains resveratrol, a natural antioxidant that can protect cells from radiation damage.n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Fugitive, renegade, statesman and prophet N ONFICTION

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REVIEWED BY

A DAM G OODHEART

F FREDERICK DOUGLASS Prophet of Freedom

By David W. Blight Simon & Schuster.

888 pp. $37.50

rederick Douglass died in splendid isolation, at the top of a lonely hill in Southeast Washington. It juts up precipitously among flat blocks of middle-class rowhouses, as steep and incongruous as a pyramid in the desert. At its summit stands his last home, Cedar Hill, a white-columned antebellum mansion. A sudden heart attack struck him down in its front hall on a winter evening in 1895.

Like many of the other places that played a role in the famous abolitionist’s eventful life, this one feels freighted with symbolic meaning. From one side of the house, he could look out toward the hills of Maryland, the state where he was born into slavery.

The other side commanded a fine view of the Capitol and the Mall, emblems of the high federal office he attained much later. And all around spread a neighborhood of ordinary Americans, white and black — near at hand and distant, both at once.

David Blight’s extraordinary new biography, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” captures the complexities of the man who lived and died at Cedar Hill: a figure both eminent and solitary who gazed across vastly different American landscapes.

Douglass published thousands of pages of memoirs, journalism, polemics, speeches, fiction and poetry, and sat for more photographs than any other celebrity of the 19th century. For decades, he was the most famous living black person in the world, and in our own time, he remains a familiar staple of high school curriculums and Black History Month commemorations.

Yet surprisingly few scholars have chronicled his life. “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” is the first full biography in a quarter-century. Blight, an eminent Yale historian and author of several other acclaimed works on slavery, race and the Civil War era, has produced one worth the wait.

SIMON & SCHUSTER

It’s a well-worn cliche for biographers to bestow exalted epithets on their subjects: Almost every title declares its hero to be the sage of something or the oracle of something else. But Blight thoroughly justifies his claim in a book that is not just a deeply researched birth-to-death chronology but also an extended meditation on what it means to be a prophet.

Douglass’s prophecy often expressed itself in an uncanny gift for forecasting the future. In 1855, he predicted the coming Civil War and emancipation: “The hour which shall witness the final struggle is on the wing. Already we hear the booming of the bell which shall yet toll the death knell of human slavery.”

But above all, perhaps, being a prophet means living in a realm of language: words of exhortation, of

warning, of insight as well as foresight. While it is his books that endure today, in his own time Douglass was better known as an orator, a gift he discovered in his early 20s when, newly escaped from slavery and working in obscurity as a day laborer in New Bedford, Mass., he began preaching occasional sermons in a small African American church.

In August 1841, at a convention of black and white abolitionists on Nantucket, Douglass was invited to the podium to offer the firsthand testimony of a fugitive — accepting only with “much hesitation” and “embarrassment,” a witness remembered. No record survives of his words that day, but their effect was immediate.

“Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence,” wrote one listener. “Our

best pleaders for the slave held their breath for fear of interrupting him.” One of those best pleaders, the mighty abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, recalled simply, “I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment.”

Within days, the movement’s leaders whisked the young man onto the lecture trail. His oratorical power and intellectual brilliance before the crowds were astonishing, and so was his versatility: an ability to modulate between anger and inspiration, reflection and exhortation, even tragedy and comedy. His career on the circuit continued unabated for more than half a century; according to Blight, it is likely that more Americans heard him speak than any other figure of his time. His abolitionist lectures throughout Britain in the late 1840s stoked widespread antipathy to American slavery and probably helped keep that nation from siding with the Confederacy.

From his younger years as a hunted fugitive and then a radical renegade, Douglass lived to become a laureled elder statesman.

The young man had announced in the 1840s: “I have no patriotism. I have no country. . . . I desire to see its overthrow as speedily as possible, and its Constitution shivered in a thousand fragments.” The white-bearded dignitary sought and won federal appointments from Republican presidents in the 1870s and 1880s, including as U.S. minister to Haiti — where he was unwillingly dragooned into trying to advance American imperial ambitions in the Caribbean.

Yet still he spoke and prophesied. In 1893, with nascent Jim Crowism and the lynching epidemic, he wrote, “We have but one weapon unimpaired and it is that weapon of speech, and not to use it . . . is treason to the oppressed.” n Goodheart, director of Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, is the author of “1861: The Civil War Awakening.”

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KLMNO WEEKLY

A wild ride fit for the Cowboy King

A quest to change the car industry

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

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REVIEWED BY

R ON C HARLES

ho wouldn’t want to grow old like Jerome Charyn? Now in his 80s, the prolific writer seems ever more daring. With “The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson” (2010), he snuck into the bedroom of the Belle of Amherst and felt the palpitations of her erotic heart. Four years later, he reanimated Lincoln’s sainted bones in a novel called “I Am Abraham.” And now, with “The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King,” he scales the mountainous personality of Theodore Roosevelt, who died 100 years ago this month.

The Teddy Roosevelt who narrates this novel is a whirlwind of activity, a man so caught up in the escapades of his intrepid life that he can’t always be bothered with details. As Henry Adams once said, “All Roosevelt’s friends know that his restless and combative energy was more than abnormal,” and that’s the dynamo whom Charyn has spun into being.

For fans of Roosevelt, this is tremendous fun. But readers unfamiliar with his life and the political history of the late 19th century should be forewarned: There will be no coddling on this breakneck tour.

The story opens in panicked gasps. Little asthmatic Teddy spies a werewolf at the foot of his bed.

The boy’s life might have been snuffed out early if not for the unorthodox response of his heroic father who prescribed cigars to his 5-year-old son and took him on carriage rides through the most dangerous slums of New York. It was from this man that Teddy acquired his deep sympathy for “the ragged, the lonely, and the lame” that would guide his military and political crusades. But Charyn never lets us forget that this concern for the less fortunate rested upon a secure family fortune. “The Roosevelts did not strike their servants,” Teddy notes.

“It was considered vile.”

At 23, Teddy strolls into the district Republican Club over a

saloon near Fifth Avenue and announces his intention to become an assemblyman. The party thugs think he’s a rube, and he’s willing to play the part, but before long, he’s getting in fistfights with bartenders who want their liquor licenses lowered and political rivals who want this principled reformer driven out of town. “I rose like a rocket,” Teddy says. He goes after child labor, police corruption and the whole gamut of criminality infecting New York.

We follow this irrepressible young man out to the Badlands of the Dakota Territory with his silver stirrups and a Bowie knife from Tiffany’s. Despite the luxury into which he was born, Roosevelt was famously rustic. Equipped with a rocking chair, books and a rubber bath, he once said, “I do not see how any one could have lived more comfortably.”

One of the melancholy pleasures of this novel is the contrast it continually presents to our current president, another biggerthan-life man of wealth and privilege but otherwise a grim opposite of the brave warrior, the curious scholar, the principled legislator.

That contrast is never more striking than in the novel’s central adventure: Roosevelt’s audacious decision to leave his position as assistant secretary of the Navy and help lead a band of volunteers — the Rough Riders — to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Charyn provides little historical context, but he drums up the personal drama of war in all its absurdity and horror. Even knowing that Roosevelt survived, you’ll be gripped by the suspense of the chaotic Battle of San Juan Hill.

The famous Cowboy Colonel charges through the smoke on his horse, Little Texas. “I should have been shot off Little Texas a hundred times, but we took the heights,” he says, “and I’m still here.” n Charles writes about books for The Washington Post.

J

THE PERILOUS ADVENTURES OF THE COWBOY KING A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times

By Jerome Charyn Liveright. 283 pp. $26.95

INSANE MODE How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

By Hamish McKenzie Dutton. 294 pp. $30

l

REVIEWED BY

D AVID S ILVERBERG

ournalist Hamish McKenzie spent a year working for Tesla, but he makes clear at the outset of his book, “Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil,” that this is no insider’s story.

“I will leave that work to the gossip blogs,” he writes. Instead, he seeks to spotlight the company’s strategy in the context of the auto industry’s identity crisis. He interviews auto experts and electric-car CEOs to illuminate how Tesla paved the way for imitators seeking a foothold in the clean-energy game.

McKenzie introduces us to Musk, the mercurial entrepreneur who was bullied in South Africa and later won acclaim as a co-founder of PayPal; that success plumped him with enough capital to launch both Tesla and SpaceX, his aerospace manufacturing and transportation company. In 2018 Musk’s unpredictable nature was center stage: In August he shocked investors by claiming on Twitter that he had financing to take Tesla private, an assertion that Musk later said was a joke but that sparked a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation resulting in his departure as board chairman.

Musk, McKenzie argues, is driven not by profits but by his ambition to upend the auto infrastructure across the world. But it’s no easy task to enter the industry.

In a pithy few pages, McKenzie outlines the roadblocks ahead for anyone brazen enough to try: If a newcomer can actually fund engineers, lawyers and designers, and efficiently manufacture a product on a massive assembly line, then that newbie “can expect skepticism, hesitation, and in some cases active disparagement” in the quest “to reach more customers.

Get ready to do a lot of explaining.”

Certainly Musk has succeeded where others have not. In October Tesla pulled in a profit for the first

time in two years. By contrast, Faraday Future, based in Los Angeles and funded by a Chinese billionaire, so far has little to show for its impressive ambitions. Tesla, however, hasn’t been immune to missteps. It has repeatedly missed production targets, leaving consumers in limbo waiting for their vehicles to roll off the line. The company even had to get rid of some color options for its Model 3 sedan to streamline production.

McKenzie sometimes veers into Tesla cheerleading by stressing the company’s hits over its misses. But the reader also benefits from his exhaustive research, which delivers a fairly nuanced view of how big automakers are trying to keep up with Tesla’s innovations. McKenzie portrays the technological advantages Tesla has over larger companies with its cutting-edge software for autodriving. General Motors, Ford and others, meanwhile, are known for their sturdy designs.

McKenzie writes with breeziness and avoids talking down to readers or loading on too much insider detail. He apparently didn’t interview Musk; the quotes in the book come from company releases, news conferences and media reports. If McKenzie had been able to infuse his tale with original Musk comments, the book would have further stood apart from other works on Tesla’s impact.

McKenzie has delivered a narrative that both fascinates and frustrates: Musk’s passion for a clean-energy future is contagious, but at the same time it’s painful to see the struggle of the electric-car industry to widen its market and win over more consumers. “Insane Mode” will leave you wondering how different our roads would look if we embraced a technology that almost seems inevitable, batteries included. n Silverberg is a freelance journalist living in Toronto.

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OPINIONS

A White House without Mattis’s steadying hand DAVID IGNATIUS writes a foreign affairs column for The Washington Post.

At home and abroad, people are asking a question they’ve dreaded for nearly two years: How will the erratic presi­ dency of Donald Trump function without the steadying hand of Jim Mattis as defense secretary? ¶ Life without Mattis is the scary reality of this new year. The president may have tired of the careful, battle­hardened advice he received from the retired Marine general, but the United States’ allies depended on Mattis for reassurance.

As one prominent diplomat put it in a message after hearing the news of Mattis’s resignation: “God help us.” This concern was widely shared on Capitol Hill and around the world.

Mapping the contours of defense and foreign policy, postMattis, is a useful exercise — not least because it’s a reminder that the world hasn’t come to an end.

Mattis tried to guide an inexperienced and impulsive president, often keeping silent in public to preserve his access, but he knew that his influence with Trump would eventually degrade. It just happened quicker than he wanted.

The first question is who should succeed Mattis. The default choice is Patrick Shanahan, the former deputy who is now acting secretary of defense. He appears to have the trust of both Mattis, who worked closely with him for 18 months, and Trump. Ideally, Shanahan would be the unknown backup quarterback who suddenly gets the call and (to everyone’s surprise) wins the game.

Shanahan has some attributes of a good Pentagon chief. As a former Boeing executive, he knows how the siloed, hyperbureaucratic world of Pentagon contracting works, and why it’s a total disaster. As Trump said, Shanahan took the mismanaged 787 Dreamliner project at Boeing and produced a great airplane.

The negatives for Shanahan are also obvious. He lacks toplevel political or military experience. Running the Pentagon is arguably the most difficult management job in the world. People who succeed at it, such as former secretary Robert Gates, have combined strategic thinking with a willingness to overrule the hidebound and parochial interests of the military bureaucracies.

The next secretary faces a huge challenge that Mattis never fully embraced. The technology of warfare is being transformed, but our military services remain anchored to existing weapons systems and command structures. It is literally impossible, under current rules, to buy and deploy what’s needed.

The Pentagon budget is bloated and misspent; it’s largely a logrolling exercise that preserves the status quo. Does Shanahan have the guts and political skills to write the rules for a new generation of warfare? If so, he’s the right person for the job.

The second post-Mattis challenge falls to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. As Mattis often said, the United States needs a less militarized foreign policy — and a more confident, creative State Department.

Pompeo got off to a strong start, picking good people and boosting morale. He seemed to have a knack for checking

JIM YOUNG/REUTERS

Patrick Shanahan, above, is the default choice to replace Jim Mattis as defense secretary. Other contenders include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, bottom left, and national security adviser John Bolton.

ANDRE COELHO/BLOOMBERG

Trump’s mistakes without infuriating him. He was the “Trump whisperer.”

Pompeo is still managing North Korea diplomacy with a steady hand, from what we can see. But lately, he seems to have entered the Trump twilight zone, where he acquiesces on bad decisions, as on Syria and Saudi Arabia, to avoid an open break with his boss. One lesson of the past two years is that trying to tiptoe around Trump is not ultimately a winning strategy — for Pompeo any more than it was for Mattis.

Pompeo’s daily job description is fulfilling the mission Mattis invoked in his resignation letter: “Our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” In short, we need diplomacy.

The final member of Trump’s post-Mattis team is John Bolton, the national security adviser. He

CLIFF OWEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

bravely (and correctly) signaled to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Trump’s ruinous “let Turkey do it” deal for Syria withdrawal is off the table, drawing a volcanic response from Erdogan on Tuesday. If Trump backs Bolton, he may yet stumble to a satisfactory Syria policy. If Bolton retreats, he might as well quit; he will have been shown to have no influence.

And then there’s Trump. The problem Mattis encountered, in the end, was that the president really did think he understood military policy better than his generals, and foreign policy better than his diplomats. This arrogance is destroying Trump’s presidency.

After Mattis, Trump has another fleeting chance to get it right and halt the process of government by tirade. It’s hard to imagine him coming to his senses and avoiding the catastrophe ahead, but Trump could start by listening to his advisers. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Don’t fall for doomsday predictions DAVID VON DREHLE is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Earth’s greatest natural resource is the human brain. And it may also be among the least appreciated, judging from the persistent doom and gloom, going back centuries, over the supposed menace of overpopulation. Wishing for fewer human brains on Earth is like wishing for fewer diamonds or rubies.

Yet few wrong ideas have been more persistent than the fear of too many people. British cleric Thomas Robert Malthus promoted the terror of apocalyptic overpopulation in a memorable 1798 treatise.

Memorable, that is, for being so wrongheaded. Malthus anticipated that population would soon outstrip the food supply; instead, the rapidly growing human race set off on a long tear of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity.

That Malthus missed by a mile did not prevent the rise of the neo-Malthusians in the 1950s and ’60s, whose fallacies reached a zenith in the runaway 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb.” This dismal book floated ideas such as mandatory sterilization and a tax on children to save the planet. In China, such muddled thinking produced a draconian one-child policy, decreed in 1979, that will hamper the country’s growth for decades to come. Recent efforts by a more intellectually agile leadership to reverse the policy and undo the damage have seen underwhelming results.

Julian Simon of the University

of Maryland persistently challenged the doomsday error.

In a famous 1980 wager, Simon bet an author of “The Population Bomb,” Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich, that resources would actually become more plentiful, not less, as the population grew. Simon understood that more human brains would be at work finding new supplies, and inventing more efficient ways to grow and use them, and dreaming up alternatives to those that become scarce. Of course, he won the bet: In a little more than 10 years, the price of a representative set of commodities fell by more than half — a clear signal that supply

was outstripping demand.

In a cheerful paper published last month by the libertarian Cato Institute, Gale L. Pooley and Marian L. Tupy extend the results of the bet a quartercentury to the latest data available, while offering a more sophisticated tool for measuring what they call the Simon Abundance Index. In brief, they calculate the cost of commodities by how much time it takes a typical global worker to earn enough money to buy them. The index determines prosperity or shortage at ground level: in the lived experiences of actual human beings.

Measured by global average hourly income, the price of a representative basket of 50 key commodities — food, energy, minerals and so forth — fell by nearly two-thirds between when the bet was made and 2017.

Measured by the time it takes to buy the basket, the Earth’s resources have become 380 percent more abundant as the human population grew by 69 percent.

My gloomy human reflex almost had me write that resources grew more abundant “despite” the rise in population.

In fact, resources grew “because” of the rise in population. We think we know the limits of our

resources until human brains discover ways to burst those limits.

Some of the means are extractive, like freeing “tight” oil and gas through fracking, or the Japanese discovery of vast rareearth deposits under the sea. But other solutions are renewable. In water-stressed places from Israel to Singapore to Las Vegas, human brains are deploying a wide variety of technologies to efficiently desalinate seawater or effectively recycle wastewater, thereby increasing the available resource. Meanwhile, modern appliances and factories are made more efficient, which reduces demand.

These advances don’t happen by magic. They happen through price signals. When a resource grows expensive, creative people figure out how to find more, create more or use less.

From immigration to climate to wealth distribution, our policy debates are dominated by doomsday and stalked by scarcity. Yet all around us, if we will look past fear to facts, we see evidence of abundance. And we can continue to have more of it for more people, if we treasure and nurture the most precious of our renewable resources: ourselves and our fellow human beings. n

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OPINIONS

BY MIKE SMITH FOR THE LAS VEGAS SUN

Returning Nazi-looted art STUART E. EIZENSTAT was under secretary of state and special representative of the president and secretary of state on Holocaust-era issues in the Clinton administration and is expert adviser to the State Department on Holocaust-era issues in the Trump administration.

During World War II, the Nazis looted some 600,000 paintings from Jews, at least 100,000 of which are still missing. The looting was not only designed to enrich the Third Reich but also integral to the Holocaust’s goal of eliminating all vestiges of Jewish identity and culture. The Allies warned neutral nations in the 1943 London Declaration against trafficking in Nazi-looted art. Art experts, the storied “ Monuments Men ,” were embedded in the liberating U.S. Army.

The looted wealth they preserved was returned to the countries where it had been stolen in the expectation that the original owners or their heirs would receive it. That hope was misplaced: Most items were sold or incorporated into public and private collections, lost to their rightful owners.

Decades later, in December 1998, we started to change that.

Forty-four countries committed to the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art that I negotiated for identifying, publishing and ultimately restoring the looted art through negotiation. To achieve a consensus, we had to permit nations to act within their own laws, and appealed to their moral conscience to adopt a “just and fair solution.”

The principles were an overdue but vital first step. Philippe de Montebello, then-head of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, correctly forecast that after the Washington Principles “the art

world would never be the same.”

During the past 20 years, galleries, dealers and museums began researching paintings that had passed through European hands between 1933 and 1945 to spot suspicious gaps in their provenance or chain of ownership. With the Internet, suspected Nazi-looted art is increasingly being posted on websites. Almost 30,000 works from their collections have been posted by 179 members of the American Alliance of Museums on a portal, a single point of contact for potential claimants to find their Nazi-looted art.

Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain have

BY SHENEMAN

created advisory commissions to resolve disputed claims. Austria has returned more than 30,000 artworks, books and cultural objects, and Germany has restituted more than 16,000 from its public museums and libraries.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s maintain full-time staffs to implement the Washington Principles, and both auction houses decline to deal in art with suspicious Holocaust-era histories. Christie’s has successfully resolved more than 200 claims over the past 20 years.

In 2009, the principles were strengthened by the Terezin Declaration, when 46 countries, led by the United States, agreed to extend the Washington Principles to include “public and private institutions” and broaden the meaning of confiscated art to include “forced sales and sales under duress” for Jewish families desperately needing money to escape Nazi Germany.

There have been painful disappointments. Russia and a handful of other European nations that supported the Washington Principles have largely ignored or barely implemented them. Provenance research is a low priority in Europe’s public museums and nonexistent in its private collections; looted art still trades in the European market with little

hindrance. Deaccession laws prevent public museums from returning art under any circumstances.

Fortunately, the Washington Principles continue to exert a moral force. With bipartisan support, Congress in 2016 created a unique federal statute of limitations preempting other defenses related to the passage of time and providing six years to file a claim only after a claimant has discovered the identity and location of the artwork. In 2018, Congress passed another law instructing the State Department to report on the restitution record of all 46 countries that endorsed the Terezin Declaration. And in late November, more than 1,000 representatives and stakeholders from more than 10 countries gathered in Berlin for three days to measure our progress after 20 years and chart a road map for next steps.

No self-respecting government, art dealer, private collector, museum or auction house should trade in or possess art stolen by the Nazis. We must all recommit to faithfully implementing the Washington Principles before Holocaust survivors breathe their last breath. We owe it not only to those who lost so much in the Holocaust but also to our own sense of moral justice. n

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FIVE MYTHS

Congressional oversight BY

R ONALD W EICH

With a majority in the newly constituted House of Representatives, Democrats have gained the power to chair committees and conduct oversight of the executive branch. Cynics may predict a partisan cir­ cus. But congressional oversight is a serious business with a huge im­ pact on government policies. Here are five of the most stubborn myths that surround it.

MYTH NO. 1 Congressional oversight is for scoring political points.

Oversight is not a game. It is a core constitutional function, a cornerstone of the structural checks and balances on which our federal government is built.

Congress cannot carry out its constitutional duties without the power to investigate whether the laws it enacts are being faithfully executed and whether the money it appropriates is being properly spent. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the exercise of congressional oversight, including the power of committees to issue subpoenas, because oversight is “inherent in the legislative process.” As early as 1792, Congress investigated military failures in the western territories. Capitol Hill exposed financial improprieties during the Grant and Harding administrations and helped unearth the Watergate scandal.

Oversight has also paved the way for landmark legislative accomplishments such as government contracting reforms, controls on intelligence agency practices and tobacco regulation.

MYTH NO. 2 If Pelosi is serious, she’ll appoint select committees.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (DCalif.), responding to progressive demands, announced that the House will reconstitute a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Panels such as these take their inspiration from inquests like the Watergate committee.

But while select committees can highlight issues of national concern, they are no substitute for the work of Congress’s standing committees.

Lawmakers posted to them are already well-versed on issues within their panels’ jurisdictions and have an intimate knowledge of the executive branch agencies they oversee. Moreover, standing committees, unlike some select committees, have authority to transform oversight findings into legislation.

MYTH NO. 3 Executive privilege trumps congressional oversight.

Last year, former White House aide Stephen Bannon cited executive privilege as a basis for declining to answer questions from the House Intelligence Committee, including questions about the presidential transition, which predated his tenure in the executive branch.

But executive privilege should protect communications sent or received only by the president and his immediate advisers, not lower-level officials or transition advisers. And it’s not absolute; it is weighed against Congress’s need to obtain information to carry out its constitutional duties. Federal courts were skeptical of executive privilege claims when the House Judiciary Committee sought to enforce subpoenas for testimony about the firing of U.S. attorneys in the George W. Bush administration, and when the House Oversight Committee sought Obama Justice Department documents

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Nancy Pelosi was elected to lead the Democratic-controlled House.

The party now has the power of committees to issue subpoenas.

regarding a botched guntrafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Faced with these precedents and reluctant to risk a definitive ruling from the Supreme Court, the executive branch typically seeks to accommodate legitimate oversight requests rather than resist.

MYTH NO. 4 Witnesses can always ‘take the Fifth.’

Yes, the Fifth Amendment has been recognized to be valid before Congress. But a committee chairman holds a trump card: A federal statute authorizes Congress to obtain a court order forcing a witness to testify with limited immunity from criminal prosecution, thereby overcoming the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination. Congress uses this power sparingly, but the authority is on the books. What’s more, an invocation of the Fifth is a public relations disaster — and therefore a last resort — for any executive branch official and for the administration in which he or she serves.

MYTH NO. 5 Oversight alone will bring down Trump.

Oversight is a powerful tool, but it is no silver bullet. Public interest in hearings may wane, and the oversight process, meant to expose potential malfeasance, can have unintended consequences if its targets appear sympathetic, as when North became a hero in some quarters for stonewalling the Iran-contra committees. Also, several recent presidents have overcome probes that analysts thought might weaken them, such as congressional investigations of the Travelgate and Whitewater controversies during President Bill Clinton’s first term.

And even if oversight findings eventually lead the Democratcontrolled House to impeach Trump, the two-thirds supermajority required to convict him in the Republican-controlled Senate is a daunting obstacle. n Weich, the dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, was assistant attorney general for legislative affairs from 2009 to 2012. This was written for The Washington Post.