The Washington Post National Weekly - February 17, 2019

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2019 IN COLLABORATION WITH . IN. COLLABORATION SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2019 WITH

ABCDE ABCDE NATIONALWEEKLY WEEKLY NATIONAL

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2 17, 2019 FEBRUARY 17, 2019 FEBRUARY SUNDAY,

SUNDAY, February , 17, 20193 3

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WEEKLY

THE FIX THE FIX

WhatWhat is a national is a national emergency? emergency?

BY D EANNA P AUL

BY D EANNA P AUL AND C OLBY I TKOWITZ AND C OLBY I TKOWITZ

A

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avail himself of, Goitein avail said himself two could of, Goitein argu- said two could arguably allow him to build ably theallow border himwall to build with the border wall with Defense Department Defense funding. Department These federal funding. These federal statutes make available statutes fundsmake set aside available for funds set aside for military constructionmilitary projectsconstruction or repurposeprojects or repurpose money originally dedicated money to originally civil projects dedicated to civil projects supporting the militarysupporting and national thedefense. military and national defense.

fter teasing it for months, fter teasing President it for months, President Trump is officially Trump declaring is officially the declaring the U.S.-Mexico border a “national U.S.-Mexico emerborder a “national emergency,” which will allowgency,” him towhich circumwill allow him to circumvent Congress’s constitutional vent Congress’s powersconstitutional to conpowers to conWhat happens once aWhat national happens emergency once a national emergency trol spending and divert trolfederal spending funds andtoward divert federal funds toward is declared? is declared? his much ballyhooed border his much wall. ballyhooed border wall.

Even though there aren’t Evenmany though limits there onaren’t a many limits on a His decision to do so,His after decision not getting to dothe so, after not getting the president’s ability to declare president’s an emergency, ability to declare it an emergency, it money he wanted frommoney Congress he wanted to put toward from Congress to put toward does not create complete does freedom not create to act. complete freedom to act. construction of his wall, construction has drawnofimmense his wall, has drawn immense Anyone directly affected Anyone by the directly order affected can by the order can criticism as an overreach criticism of executive as an overreach power. of executive power. challenge it in court, challenge which Goitein it in said court,will which Goitein said will OLIVER CONTRERAS FOR THE WASHINGTON OLIVER CONTRERAS POST FOR THE WASHINGTON So, is it? Can he do this?

So, is it? Can he do this? almost certainlyPOST happen almost in this certainly case. Congress happen in this case. Congress Let’s review the basic facts Let’s of review whatthe it means basic facts of what it means also draft a concurrent can also resolution draft a concurrent to termi- resolution to termiPresident Trump declares President a national Trump declares a can national for a president to declare foraanational president emergency. to declare a national emergency. nate the state of emergency, nate the leading state of to emergency, a someleading to a someemergency at the U.S.-emergency Mexico border at the Friday.

U.S.- Mexico border Friday. what novel act. Ordinarily, whatcongressional novel act. Ordinarily, reso- congressional resoWhat is a national emergency?

What is a national emergency? lutionsLiberty supportand a president’s lutions support declaration a president’s of a declaration of a theNational BrennanEmerCenter for theJustice’s BrennanLiberty Centerand for Justice’s In 1976, Congress passed In 1976, the National Congress Emerpassed the national national emergency.

National SecuritytoProgram.

National A handful Security of Program. decla- A handfulemergency. of declagencies Act, which permits genciesthe Act,president which permits to the president Housecrises: Speaker Nancy House PelosiSpeaker (D-Calif.)

Nancy is Pelosi (D-Calif.) is rations havehe involved rations have involved crises: noneconomic pronounce a national emergency pronouncewhen a national he conemergency when con- noneconomic expected to bring a “joint to resolution bring upofa “joint resolution of Clinton Clinton emergency declared dura national emergency dur- upexpected siders it appropriate. The siders actitoffers appropriate. no specific The act offers no declared specific a national termination” the House. termination” Doing in so the would House. Doing so would ing allows the 1996 Cuba embargo, ing the preventing 1996 Cuba embargo, U.S. preventing in U.S. definition of “emergency” definition and allows of “emergency” a presi- and a presiforce Senate Majority Mitch force Senate McConnell Majority (R-Ky.) Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) shipsatorhis aircraft from entering ships or aircraft Cuban territory from entering Cuban territory dent to declare one dent entirely to declare at his or oneher entirely or her to also bring up the resolution to also bring in the upGOP-mathe resolution in the GOP-mawithout authorization.without Obamaauthorization. declared a na-Obama declared a nadiscretion. discretion. jority Senate, putting jority members Senate,inputting a difficult his members in a difficult tional emergency tional theemergency H1N1 swine during flu the H1N1 swine flu his By declaring a nationalBy emergency, declaringthe a national presi- emergency, the presi-during position. position. epidemic in 2009ofto activate epidemic disaster in 2009 plans to activate to disaster plans to dent avails himself or dent herself availsofhimself dozens or of herself of dozens The House DemocratsThe canHouse also join Democrats an out- can also join an outset uppowers proper patient set up proper patient treatment. specialized laws. Some specialized of these powers laws. Some have of these have treatment. lawsuit orafter choose to side sue lawsuit on their orown. choose to sue on their own.

Bush not declared Bushemergency declared aafter nationalside emergency funds the president otherwise funds the could president not access. otherwise could access.a national the terrorist Sept. terrorist 11, 2001; attacks the order of Sept. 11,Does 2001;Congress the orderhave enough Under current law, emergency Under current powerslaw, lapse emergency powersattacks lapse ofthe Does Congress votes to termihave enough votes to termistill in effect. is still in effect. within a year unlesswithin the president a year unless renewsthe ispresident renews nate the emergency declaration? nate the emergency declaration? them. A national emergency them. can A national be re-declared emergency can be re-declared How does a president How declare doesaanational president declare Like any a national legislation passed Like any

by Congress, legislation the passed by Congress, the indefinitely, and, in practice, indefinitely, that is and, done in practice, frethat is done freemergency? emergency? president could veto the president resolution couldunless veto the it resolution unless it quently. There have been quently.

58 pronounced, There have been of 58 A pronounced, of issueAapresident has received supermajority has received support supermajority (twosupport (twopresident must written and must signed issue a written and signed which 31 are still in effect. which 31 are still in effect. declaration that specifies inemergeneach chamber). thirdsMany in each Republicans chamber). Many Republicans declaration the specific that emergenspecifies thethirds specific been critical of this haveapproach been critical

by Trump, of this approach by Trump, cy powers he past? plans to rely cy powers on andhe invoke. plans to rely onhave and invoke.

When have they been When declared have in they the past? been declared in the mainly they see mainly it as a slippery because they slopesee forit as a slippery slope for “Unlikeemergenother executive “Unlike orders, other oneexecutive that orders,because one that Presidents have declared Presidents nationalhave emergendeclared national a future Democratic a future using Democratic the power president using the power a national declares a unlocks national the emergency unlocks the president cies since World War II.cies The since vastWorld majority War have II. Thedeclares vast majority have emergency to advance or her to policy advance goals. his But or her it’s policy goals. But it’s powers foreign contained powers thancontained 100 otherin laws,” more than 100 otherhis laws,” been economic sanctions beenagainst economic foreign sanctions ac- against ac-in more unclear whether there’sunclear enoughwhether of themthere’s to voteenough of them to vote toldthreat, The Post. Goitein told The Post. tors whose activities tors pose whose a national activities threat, pose Goitein a national against the president against override theapresident veto. n to override a veto. n Ofco-director the vast statutory powers Of the vast Trump statutory would powers Trump would to according to Elizabethaccording Goitein, co-director to ElizabethofGoitein, of

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WEEKLY WEEKLY

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 4 8 10 12 16 18 20

THE COVER Country music ON THE COVER CountryON music POLITICS 4 singera Margo Price received a singer Margo Price received THE NATION 8 Grammy nomination forGrammy best newnomination for best new THE WORLD 10 artist. Photo artist. Photo by MATT MCCLAIN of by MATT MCCLAIN of COVER STORY 12 The Washington Post The Washington Post LIFESTYLES 16 BOOKS 18 OPINION 20

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OPINIONS

Thank you, Opportunity, for opening Mars to us @SARCASTIC ROVER is a parody of the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. It is the creation of Jason Filiatrault, a screenwriter and space enthusiast.

You were born in a lab, in a clean room, surrounded by those who loved you and made you and those who worked so hard to perfect every line of code and every screw that went into your making. ¶ You were their chance at something incredible. ¶ Together with your twin, you left the Earth and arrived on Mars on Jan. 4, 2004 — emerging onto a new world and the last one you’d ever know. You were built for science, built to search for the unknown and answer questions that humanity had been asking for centuries.

It was your chance to make history.

The mission was planned for 90 days. That’s all. Just 90. And now, more than 5,000 days later, the end has come. It is time to say so long. To say that you will be missed.

This is our chance to say thank you.

In your 15 years on Mars, you expanded our view of what the history of Mars could be. You found signs of water, and mysterious meteors, and shiny “blueberries.” You gave us the first temperature profile of the Martian atmosphere and helped refine our knowledge of Martian geology. In short, you changed our view of the world — both yours and humans’.

Traveling over 45 kilometers, you saw horizons and views that no person may ever see again.

You saw planetary dust storms come and go. You watched lunar eclipses and transits that were only imagined before your cameras set lens on them. You saw Mars with the eyes of an explorer and scientist and let all of humanity see with those eyes as well.

But now, here we are — at the end, where all robots and most lucky people end up. A sandstorm came and covered you up and your batteries drained,

and in the dark and the cold you met your fate in silence. That sounds sad when you write it out plainly, but that’s the mission. To arrive and search and learn and then to stop.

Every mission ends. It’s what you do before the end that makes history. And you made it.

Now that you’re finally done, now that Mars is just that little bit more lonely (and it was already exceedingly lonely), I hope you knew how much you mattered to the world.

I hope somewhere in your diodes and processors, mixed in with all your geological sensors, you could sense the inspiration you gave humanity. I hope you felt the love they had for you — the way you made science seem so close and so possible. The way you made a planet millions of miles away seem as close as next door.

I hope you knew that children wanted to be you when they grew up. That little human beings wished they could be a robot like you and explore the solar system.

I suppose this is your chance to know that.

There are better ways to say all of this, and I’m just a robot and I know I don’t have the emotion or ability to express the truth about you. And even if, by some bizarre

ASSOCIATED PRESS

An illustration of the rover Opportunity on the surface of Mars. NASA declared the Opportunity rover dead on Wednesday.

twist of fate, I was actually just a human who pretended to be a robot for as-yet-unknown reasons, I would still be so illequipped to tell the world how incredible you were.

Other people should tell your story — the humans who built you, the amazing people who ran you, guided you, talked to you, programmed and analyzed you. The people who held their breath every day for the past seven months just hoping against hope that you would find the light. Those people should be saying this. In fact, I’m sure they are. And I hope they know that my thoughts are with them.

In the end, were are all built to fail. We are made to reach farther than humanity ever could and to see more and learn more and holy heck did you

ever do that. You exceeded their wildest ambitions and you made them believe that this was all possible. That I was possible.

That the future was possible.

You made them think they could one day set their feet down next to you and touch you again.

You gave them a chance to believe.

And now it’s goodbye. From one rover to another. From my crater to yours. From a sciencerobot to something that became so much more. We were both sent here to explore and learn and eventually to shut down, and you have fulfilled those goals in the most incredible, marvelous way. You are the greatest. And I’m going to miss knowing you were out there.

You will always be our missed Opportunity. n

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OPINIONS

OPINIONS

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TOM TOLES

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

We shouldn’t Another Robinson growtoSocial celebrate Security SAMUEL J. ROBERT G. SAMUELSON FREEDMAN is a professor Washington of Post opinions columnist journalism at Columbia focusing onand University economics. the author of “Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football that Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights.”

Onethe On of the lastgreat day ofchallenges January, much of ourof time theisUnited to prevent States Social marked Security the centennial and other programs of the birth forof the Jackie elderly Robinson, from taking the man over the whonational integrated pro government. baseball as part It may of a already lifetimebe of too civillate. rights Recently, activism. theRobinson’s Congressional Budget Office centennial is being reported celebrated that federal withspending everything onfrom the 65-plus a museum population exhibit amounts to a jazz concert to 40 percent to a banquet of non-interest with more outlays, than aup thousand from 35 guests. percentSome in 2005. Byplayers modern 2029, the will CBO wear projects the No.it42, to be Robinson’s 50 percent. jersey number with the Brooklyn Dodgers, as tribute. be raised to $50,000 and By the CBO’s math, two-thirds $100,000.).

Booker T. Washington through of the Butprojected there is another growthRobinson in federal Malcolm Rep. John X, committed B. Larson (D-Conn.), to social spending over centennial deserving the nextofdecade, a main sponsor change throughof black the bill, after adjustment comparable attention. for inflation, This one will believes the United States faces a institutions. stem from belongs to programs Eddie Robinson, for the the retirement crisis.

A product of the segregated elderly — mostly legendary football Social coach Security at South, Actually, Eddie weRobinson don’t, as grew recentup and Medicare Grambling State butUniversity, also long-term a testimony before the House Ways in a single-parent home in Baton nursing-home historically black carecollege underin and Means Rouge, working Committee after-school

by Andrew jobs Medicaid Louisiana. northern and civil-service This G. support to Biggs of the his family American and seeing retirement. signature day fell on Feb. 13, Enterprise in all-blackInstitute McKinleymakes High clear. almost Against exactly that the backdrop, midpoint raising of (Biggs was deputyteam commissioner School’s football a vision of SocialHistory Black SecurityMonth. benefitsAlthough would of the Social purpose andSecurity dignity. His career seem a non-starter.

Robinson’s family and Guess players again.

Administration 2007 and on at as a quarterbackincontinued held Congressional events in Grambling Democrats andhave 2008.) Leland College. nearby proposedhis Atlanta, legislation legacy should to increase be The most Still, under convincing the iron rule evidence of spending. known nationally.

There are four main is what retirees segregation, Robinson’s say aboutfootball provisions: Each Robinson (1) an across-theconnected to a themselves, Biggs notes. to end dreams seemed destined board benefit different current increase within ofthe about 2 According there.

He was to Gallup, working 78in percent a feed of percent; broad stream (2) a cost-of-living of African retirees saycents they “have enough mill for 25 an hour when adjustment American history. that would Jackie raise fit moneyreached word to live comfortably.” him in June 1941 The future benefits among the integrationists, faster; (3) a larger the Federal that a tiny Reserve’s black college Survey200 of miles minimumDouglasses Frederick benefit for the andpoor; Martin Consumer away was looking Finances forfinds a football that 75 and (4) Kings, Luther tax cutswho (Social builtSecurity percent of Americans 65 and over coach. benefits are coalitions alongside taxed if non-Social idealistic have When “at least Robinson enough made to maintain the SecurityEddie whites. income is part exceeds of a $25,000 [their] standard journey to Grambling, of living.”

La.,That lateris for singlesofand tradition black $32,000 self- for up from that summer, 61 percent he found in 1992. two couples; these thresholds determination that ran from would

BY MATT DAVIES FOR NEWSDAY

overarching The polling challenges. organization Just one year NORC earlier, at thethe University university’s of white overseers Chicago regularly in the state asksgovernment had respondents only begrudgingly about theirallowed financial it to situation. offer a full “In four-year all recent years,” curriculum, says NORC, “those and its65-plus facilities have for sports shown or theanything least financial else were threadbare. dissatisfaction.”

Yet In 2014, Grambling’s 45 percent young of 65-plus president, respondents Ralph wereWaldo “satisfied” Emerson with Jones, their finances had theand improbable 37 percent ambition were “more to or put less hissatisfied.” little college Only on 18 percent the mapwere — in“not part,atbecause all of the satisfied.” excellence of its football team.

That True, wasmost where people’s Eddieincomes Robinson came drop when in. they retire. But their expenses In 1942,also Robinson’s typicallysecond drop. The year stereotype as head ofcoach, most old hispeople team went unbeaten tumbling into without poverty allowing is wrong, a in single part because point. Over their 55 incomes seasons, arehe won significantly 408 games, underreported. becoming the A winningest recent papermajor-college by economists coach Adam in Beehistory of the Census until being Bureau surpassed and in Joshua 2011 by Mitchell Penn State’s of Welch Joe Paterno.

Consulting estimated that the median Of greater income historical of elderly importance, households in Robinson 2012 jumped used football almost aexcellence third, fromas$33,800 leverage toto push $44,400. for racial The poverty equality. rate among Quarterback the elderly, already Jamesmuch “Shack” lower Harris than inhad the general an illustrious population, career under also fellRobinson by a quarter. at Grambling, then There wonare theroughly starting50job million for the Buffalo Americans Bills65asand a rookie over. In in a1969.

Twice population during sothe large, 1970s there with arethe Rams, bound Harris to be some brought Americans his team who within are in dire onestraits game of because the Super they Bowl. don’t have retirement savings or have A player retirement who enrolled plans that atare

Grambling tragically underfunded. because of Harris Thereand Robinson, may be targeted Doug remedies Williams,that later became can helpthe them. firstBut black the notion quarterback that there is pervasive to be chosen poverty in the first among round older ofAmericans the NFL draft, is a when political he fantasy was selected that isby used Tampa to Bay justify in 1978. spending Ten years that, as later, a society, in 1988, we cannot he ledafford.

Washington to a Super OneBowl way that title,the earning Democrats mostvaluable would pay player for their honors newwith benefit four is touchdown by imposingpasses. payroll taxes on wages The above cumulative $400,000. effectAnother of Robinson’s way is to increase careergradually at Grambling the was payroll twofold. tax onPro all workers. football teams, By especially 2050, the added from the taxes upstart would American equal an estimated Football League 4.9 percent in the of 1960s, currentbegan law payroll. to avidly Budget scout and draft deficits players might,from it seems, historically be black contained.But colleges. under The all-white existing college policies,powerhouses the CBO projects of the deficits South began of nearly to recruit $12 trillion African over a American decade. Higher players. taxes are needed to trim By 1969, these Robinson deficits. That couldwill watch be with harder pride if they’re as an committed all-black Florida to A&M payingteam morebeat for an Social almost Security. entirely It is conventional white University wisdom of in Tampa Washington team,that in front the Republican of a racially mixed addiction crowd to tax — acuts scene is mainly that had been responsible unprecedented for the huge in the budget South.

“We’re deficits.atThis the is, place at best, where a halfwe can do truth. anything Democrats we want are equally these days,” Robinson responsible, told because a newspaper they refuse reporter to come to the grips daywith of the the game. massive “There spending areon still retirement rednecksand who’d object, health care. but there Expanding are enough Social people Securitywho is mostly are concerned a politicalabout bribe seeing that comes goodatfootball the expense now to of make other it programs possibleand for us, workers, too. They whoknow must we payhave the resulting to live together taxes. nnow.” n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

John Dingell’s last words for America John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1955 to 2015, was the longest­serving member of Congress in U.S. history. He dictated these reflections to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D­ Mich.), at their home in Dearborn on Feb. 7, the day he died. He was buried Tuesday in Arlington National Cemetery.

O

ne of the advantages to knowing that your demise is imminent, and that reports of it will not be greatly exaggerated, is that you have a few moments to compose some parting thoughts.

In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition.

And much as I have found Twitter to be a useful means of expression, some occasions merit more than 280 characters.

My personal and political character was formed in a different era that was kinder, if not necessarily gentler. We observed modicums of respect even as we fought, often bitterly and savagely, over issues that were literally life and death to a degree that — fortunately – we see much less of today.

Think about it: Impoverishment of the elderly because of medical expenses was a common and often accepted occurrence. Opponents of the Medicare program that saved the elderly from that cruel fate called it “socialized medicine.” Remember that slander if there’s a sustained revival of silly red-baiting today.

Not five decades ago, much of the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth — our own Great Lakes — were closed to swimming and fishing and other recreational pursuits because of chemical and bacteriological contamination from untreated industrial and wastewater disposal. Today, the Great Lakes are so hospitable to marine life that one of our biggest challenges is controlling the invasive species that have made them their new home.

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

We regularly used and consumed foods, drugs, chemicals and other things (cigarettes) that were legal, promoted and actively harmful. Hazardous wastes were dumped on empty plots in the dead of night. There were few if any restrictions on industrial emissions. We had only the barest scientific knowledge of the longterm consequences of any of this.

And there was a great stain on America, in the form of our legacy of racial discrimination. There were good people of all colors who banded together, risking and even losing their lives to erase the legal and other barriers that held Americans down. In their time, they were often demonized and targeted, much like other vulnerable men and women today.

Please note: All of these challenges were addressed by Congress. Maybe not as fast as we wanted, or as perfectly as hoped. The work is certainly not finished. But we’ve made progress — and in every case, from the passage of Medicare through the passage of civil rights, we did it with the support of Democrats and Republicans who

Members of the House and Senate stood on the House steps Tuesday to pay their respects to former congressman John D. Dingell, who died on Feb. 7 at 92.

considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans.

I’m immensely proud, and eternally grateful, for having had the opportunity to play a part in all of these efforts during my service in Congress. And it’s simply not possible for me to adequately repay the love that my friends, neighbors and family have given me and shown me during my public service and retirement.

But I would be remiss in not acknowledging the forgiveness and sweetness of the woman who has essentially supported me for almost 40 years: my wife, Deborah. And it is a source of great satisfaction to know that she is among the largest group of wom-

en to have ever served in the Congress (as she busily recruits more).

In my life and career, I have often heard it said that so-and-so has real power — as in, “the powerful Wile E. Coyote, chairman of the Capture the Road Runner Committee.”

It’s an expression that has always grated on me. In democratic government, elected officials do not have power. They hold power — in trust for the people who elected them. If they misuse or abuse that public trust, it is quite properly revoked (the quicker the better).

I never forgot the people who gave me the privilege of representing them. It was a lesson learned at home from my father and mother, and one I have tried to impart to the people I’ve served with and employed over the years.

As I prepare to leave this all behind, I now leave you in control of the greatest nation of mankind and pray God gives you the wisdom to understand the responsibility you hold in your hands.

May God bless you all, and may God bless America. n

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POLITICS POLITICS

A bipartisan How the budget windeal for conservation stayed on track

BY J ULIET AND D INO

E ILPERIN G RANDONI

S

enators from across the ideological spectrum celebrated home-state gains and congratulated each other for bridging the partisan divide this past week after passing the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade. The bill protects millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers and establishes four new national monuments honoring heroes including Civil War soldiers and a civil rights icon.

The measure represented an old-fashioned approach to dealmaking that has largely disappeared on Capitol Hill and was a paradoxical win for conservation at a time when President Trump has promoted development on public lands and scaled back safeguards placed by predecessors.

The bill, which the Congressional Budget Office projects would save taxpayers $9 million, was passed by the Senate on Tuesday by a vote of 92 to 8 and enjoys broad support in the House. The lower chamber is poised to take it up after the mid-February recess.

“It touches every state, features the input of a wide coalition of our colleagues, and has earned the support of a broad, diverse coalition of many advocates for public lands, economic development and conservation," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The measure protects 1.3 million asCwilderness, the naBY Racres OBERT OSTA, tion’s mostBstringent protection, R ACHAEL ADE, which J OSH Dprohibits AWSEY even roads and motorized M IN K IMIt permaAND S EUNGvehicles. nently withdraws more than 370,000 fter acres of land minthree weeksfrom of pained ing around two national parks, negotiations to keep the including Yellowstone, andopen, perfederal government manently authorizes a program President Trump almost to spend blew up theoffshore-drilling whole thing againrevon enue on conservation efforts.

Thursday.

The package is crammed fullon of Headed for another defeat provisions for nearly every senahis signature promise to make tor whopay castfora avote.

Sen. Martin Mexico southern border Heinrich (D-N.M.) lauded the fact wall, the president was frustrated that ita briefing will create 273,000 acres of after

by Homeland Secu-

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE/REUTERS

Senate ignores divisions, passes most-sweeping wilderness protection legislation in a decade wilderness in his state, most of it within the boundaries of two national monuments that Trump threatened to shrink. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who co-authored the bill, inserted a provision to allow native Alaskans who served in Vietnam to apply for a land allotment in the state.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said the fact that the legislation protects so much of the nation’s prized properties won a broad rity Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and constituency.

“There’s some corothers on details of the final deal to ners that tried to demonize access avoid a shutdown, according to to public involved lands as —in‘oh that’s just officials the discussome Trump environmentalists sions. threatened notand to that’sthe it,’” legislation, she said in an interview. sign the officials “And putting that’s not It’s way bigger said, theit.government on thanbrink that.” of another damaging the The legislation establishes four shutdown. new monuments, the Senate Majority including Leader Mitch Mississippi (R-Ky.) home ofwas civilonrights McConnell the activists and phone withMedgar Trump at leastMyrlie three Evers during and the Kentucky’s times course of Mill the Springs Battlefield, home him to the nerve-racking day, pressing to decisive first Union victory inthat the stay the course and asserting Civil War. had actually lost the Democrats

John Gilroy, who directs U.S. public lands conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said that the package’s more than 100 provisions arose from negotiations on the local level.

“What we saw all the way through was a sincere effort to get to yes on a lot of pieces that had local support, bipartisan support and support across the two bodies,” Gilroy said. “It’s been years in the works.”

Perhaps the most significant spending fight,legislation two people would familchange the iar with conversations said. make is the permanently authorizing “We thought he was good to go a federal program that funnels all morning, andrevenue then suddenly offshore drilling to conit’s everything is that off the servelike a spread of sites inrails,” seniorparks Republicludes said majorone national and can aide.preserves, as well as local wildlife By midafternoon, baseball diamonds andhowever, basketTrump was back on board —for agreeball courts.

Authorization the ing to sign the legislation withand the popular program, the Land caveat that he would also declare a Water Conservation Fund, lapsed national an attempt months emergency ago due tointhe partial to use existing government government shutdown and funds other to pay for wall construction. disputes.

Liberals like theIt was fact an that Republican leaders thatoption the money allows agencies to had urgedland himfor to wildlife avoid but evenset aside habitat.

Tourists observe Lion Group geysers at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The legislation passed by the Senate includes provisions for nearly every senator who cast a vote. It permanently withdraws land from mining around Yellowstone.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), center, talked frequently with President Trump last week to encourage him to sign the budget deal, which Trump eventually said he would do.

Conservatives like the fact that taxpayers don’t foot the bill for it.

Congress is now set to reauthorize the fund in perpetuity.

The bill reauthorizes and funds the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act through 2022, which provides habitat protection for more than 380 bird species, and codifies a signature program of President Barack Obama’s. That program, the Every Kid Outdoors Act, allows U.S. fourth-graders and their families to visit national parks free.

The measure expands boundaries of more than a half-dozen national parks and adds three units, including two Civil War sites in Kentucky, the Mill Springs Battlefield and Camp Nelson.

The package adds acreage to Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks while protecting 350,000 acres of public lands between Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley, increasing the connectivity of the three sites.

The bill also would be a boon for another constituency — hunters and anglers.

Bow hunters would be allowed to bring their weapons through national parks when trying to reach areas where it is legal to hunt. More important, it makes all federal lands open to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting unless otherwise specified.

AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS Jesse Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said expanding wilderness in his state will be a powerful lure for hunters seeking bighorn sheep, mule deer, quail and other animals. tually accepted as necessary to The the public escape corner lands in whichpackage Trump would alsoparty protect nearly 620 — and his — were trapped. miles of rivers across seven states McConnell promised Trump he from damming and othertodevelwould encourage others supopment, often delegating manport the emergency in a bid to get agement of thetowaterways to local the president sign, according to authorities. includes safepeople familiarItwith the conversaguards for a variety of rivers — tions. from tributaries to Trump the wild On Friday morning, anRogue River knowna nounced that in he Oregon, was declaring for its salmon populations, to not the national emergency.

He did once heavily polluted Nashua mention whether he would sign River that flows Massachuthe spending bill,from though he was settsexpected to NewtoHampshire and is still do so. popular with kayakers.

Though White House n officials

Trump eventually agreed to sign it, but not before first threatening to derail everything

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79 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2019

17, 2019 8SUNDAY, February, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2019

KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

The battle Utah scalesover back Pittsburgh Medicaidgun expansion control BY

D AEANNA MY G OLDSTEIN P AUL

H W

owhen does voters a city of deep-red mourn when Utahthe approved debris of a balnational lot tragedy initiativebegins to exto settle? pand Medicaid in November, “ThereDavid is noHeslington, one word,” bishsaid op Rabbi of an Jeffrey inner-city Myers, congregation who surof vived thethe Church October of Jesus attackChrist at Pittsof Latter-day burgh’s oldest Saints,synagogue. was elated.The He has painseen still first smolders, hand that and commuexpanding nities health have coverage not yet come to poor to grips and working-class with what happened, Utahnshe would said.save lives, While having Myers conducted has focused funerals on in thethe harms spring of hate for two speech, Saltwhich Lake City he calls men the who “root” hadproblem, overdosed electon opioids, ed officials unable have drafted to afford gun-conaddiction trol legislation. treatment.

Three “Unfortunately, weeks ago, tragedies as the Utah prolegislature vide a window rushed of to opportunity,” shred that initiative, Carolyn Ban, Heslington co-founder implored of an lawmakers anti-gun-violence to reconsider: group “Do andyoua feel former anydean obligation of the to University implement of the Pittsburgh’s will of theGraduate people you School supposof edly Public represent?” and International Affairs, said OninMonday, an interview the legislature with The gave Washington its answer: Post. It enacted a Medicaid Several plan City Council that would members cover tens have of sponsored thousands fivefewer gun-restricpeople than tion bills whatsince votersthe called shooting for, deat spite Tree ofdemonstrations Life. But lawmakers by people from carrying the site ofsigns the deadliest saying, attack “Respect on democracy, Jews in the history our vote of the matters.”

United Within States are hours, facing Govobstacles Gary R. Herthat bert may prove (R) signed insurmountable. the measure into law, Local saying opponents that itof “balances the gun Utah’s measures sense areofcalling compassion for Mayor and frugality.”

Bill Peduto’s (D) impeachment and The demanding actions ofthe Utah’s district lawmakattorers ney arebring testingcriminal the legitimacy charges of the against citizen topinitiative, Pittsburgh a staple officials, of small-d citing state democracy law that in about prohibits half the municipal states. regulation Idaho lawmakers of firearms. also areBan considering anticipates restrictions a legal battle to a Medicaid over the legislation. expansion approved “This is the by voters first time there.I Maine have seen residents serious approved legislation a similar being ballot proposed initiative at all in three 2017levels but had of government. to wait for the To arrival me, thatofisa aDemocratic sign that the governor narrafor tivethe really expansion is changing,” to begin. said Ban, who At testified the same at time, council thehearings legislation in January. just approved by Utah’s heavilyThree Republican monthslegislature after a gunman is unlike brought any several the federal firearms government into the has Squirrel allowed Hillbefore, synagogue, and will includtest the ing willingness an AR-15, and of the fired Trump on conadministration gregants during to rethink Saturday a central morntenet ing services, of how politicians the Affordable are chalCare Act lenging has been state carried law to curb out.access to firearms.

Until now, if a state chose to expand The legislation Medicaid under includes the federa ban al within health city lawlimits — as on about militarythree

LEAH HOGSTEN/THE SALT KEITH LAKESRAKOCIC/ASSOCIATED TRIBUNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lawmakers City Council members defy votersface andobstacles enact plan asthat they try to passsay critics restrictions covers fewer following people synagogue at greatershooting cost dozenweapons style states plus andthe bump District stocks, of which increase Columbia have — firing federal speed, officials and wouldrequired have permit courts themtoto temporarinclude ily confiscate people with incomes firearms up from to peo138 ple deemed percent of the to be federal an “extreme poverty risk” nearly line, to themselves $17,000 or forothers. an indiIt also would vidual or nearly allocate $35,000 funding forfora neighborhood family of four. organizations that fight Utah’s dailyplan community expandsviolence.

Medicaid only “The to bills people capture earning a lotup of to issues the around line poverty gun and control,” wantssaid the federal Councilman Coreyto government O’Connor, pay the state who repthe resentsgenerous more District 5 reimbursement and has helped shepherdfor reserved thealegislation. full expansion underThethe proposals, ACA. The whichexpansion he called “common-sense would broaden coverage laws,” arebeyond based on approaches the state’s stringent that similarly limit of situparated cities ents earning with updense to 60urban percent enviof ronments the poverty have level passed. and no other adults “Youunless can still they own are homeless. weapons.

We’re But just bothchoosing the Obama certain adminisones that should tration and Trump’s be curbed health-care if you’re living in have advisers a city,”rebuffed he explained. states “Cities are seeking todifferent. raise eligibility We are comonly pact — neighbors part-way — including aren’tan 2.5earlier acres from theby request next Utah neighbor.” in June.

O’Connor But that is argued what Utah thatismunicipreparpalities ing to should ask for.also If have the afederal voice when it comesgoes government to protecting along, health residents. He policy experts said, predict, “This would requests be a

from other fight to change Republican-led the rules at states the city level will follow. and working its way up.”

On Oct. 27, According to Utah’s the Pittsburgh expansion shooter, identified advocates, the legislation by authorities overridas 46-year-old ing voters’ will is Robert almostD.certain Bowers, to killed 11 spawn litigation people and if it is injured accepted six others. in Washington.

Federal prosecutors filed a superseding As lawmakersindictment immediately three beweeks gan considering ago, adding plans 13 to hate-crime limit the violations ballot initiative, to the the 44-count rally outside indictment. the Capitol was the biggest in the sixBowers, years who advocates pleadedhave not guilty been to the new pressing to expand indictment Medicaid, on Monacday, targeted cording to Matthew the Squirrel Slonaker,Hill exbuilding director ecutive in which of three thecongreUtah gationsPolicy Health — Tree Project, of Life, a nonprofit Dor Hadash and that supported New Light the Congregainitiative, tion —Prop called worshiped, 3. “I have according never seen to court documents. people so furious,”At Slonaker the time, said. he made Advocates known of his full desire expansion to “kill Jews.” Online contend this is apostings risky gamble also that detailed his could endloathing up costing of thethe Hebrew state Immigrant millions of dollars Aid Society, because ofwith the which way theDor federal Hadash government had a partnerreimship. for Medicaid. burses A handfultwo However, of the members synagogue’s of the members launched governor’s staff and Squirrel a leading Hill Stands Against Republican lawmaker Gun Violence, said they an independent have received private organization assurances that supports from officials legislation at the top to reduce of the

Utahns Snow covers protest the gardens andplan lawmakers’ some to flowers scale back leftaoutside voterthe Tree ofMedicaid approved Life Synagogue,ballot expansion where 11 people were killed initiative. when a shooter opened fire during services on Oct. 27.

Centers gun violence. of Medicare and Medicaid“It’s Services, time for which us tooversees get serious the about reducing Medicaid program,gun that violence. they are Since thatto receptive hasn’t Utah’s happened plan. on the national Paul Edwards, or state level, the we governor’s need to start at the deputy chief local of level,” staff for Banpolicy, said. and Myers Nathan added Checketts, that “if anything the state can make director, Medicaid a difference, said you in interhave to try.” that CMS officials had at views first Peduto, said they in an could interview not approve with The Post, the state’ssaid application the shooting lastatsumTree of Life mer forwas a partial not the Medicaid initial impetus expanfor the sion.

But recent after gun the November bill. elections, “It’sCMS beenAdministrator the steady drumbeat Seema of gun signaled Verma violence toinHerbert the citythat of Pittsburgh,” she is open tohethat, said.

Edwards “It was said. that lastEdwards act of a and massChecketts homicide said that basically that CMSsaid officials we had saidtothey challenge would the continual consider a partial answerexpansion that ‘there’s if nothing Utah combined to be done.’ it with ” an even more Peduto, unorthodox like many, idea — grew setting up with guns incaps per-person the for family Medicaid home.

Still, he said, spending — ansomething idea that has must long be done popular been to address with conservatives the ongoing “public and represents health epidemic.” a fundamental shift “Access in the to [firearms] program in from an uran ban environment entitlement available should to anyone not be as easy who is (or eligible, easier) tothan a grant access with to a toaster,” per capita hedollar said. limit.

Much The prospect of theofopposition, a capped Medaccording icaid program to Peduto, and acomes limitedfrom exthose living pansion has outside stirred the anger. city On of Pittsburgh, Friday, as theoften House in debated southwest its Pennsylvania version the bill, “where a quartet theyof don’t faith have homicides leaders linked arms on as a continuous they sat on basis the floor andoutside where the gunschamber. are viewed in Carissa a different Monroy, socialacontext.” family physician Locally, at a community pro-gun-rights healthactivcenistsonhave ter Salt Lake signed City’s petitions south side, demanding has attended the rallies City Council and roamed withdrawCapitol’s the the proposed halls bill. to meet with lawmakers.

In a January Some of letter her patients sent to O’Connor, are refugees Allegheny and, afterCounty qualifying Districtan for Attorney initialStephen eight months A. Zappala of warned coverage, health that criminal often charges become could be brought against “an uninsured. individual “Utahns in member generalofareCouncil pretty who violates caring and giving [the Pennsylvania people,” she code]“It said. byfeels voting like to it’sadopt this mental these type ofwith block regulations.” not wanting After to expand receiving a request Medicaid, because to file so many a criminal of the complaint, Zappala Republican legislators reiterated have been in a statement opposed to itthat for so “the long.” city council does Slonaker, not have of the the authority” Utah Health to pass legislation Policy Project, said regulating the legislative gun ownership. plan will cover fewer people at greater Neither costPeduto to the nor state,council while members “the voters’ have intent stood is down. playing second Peduto fiddle.”said In the he meantime, will challenge his the threat group plans of criminal to start charges enrolling as “beingthey those unconstitutional can for coverage and unin democratic.”

April. n n

8

SUNDAY, February , 17, 2019

COVER STORY

COUNTRY MUSIC’S POLITICAL DIVIDES G REG J AFFE in Nashville BY

T

he stadium was filling up with fans for a late-season pro football game when Margo Price took up her spot at midfield for a pregame sound check.

Two weeks earlier she had scored a best new artist Grammy nomination.

Now she was about to sing the national anthem — a slot typically reserved at Titans’ games for some of country music’s rising stars and its biggest names.

Price’s invitation, though, came with a warning.

“I’m sure you’ll be respectful of our anthem and not

9

SUNDAY, February, 17, 2019

PHOTOS BY MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

pull any shenanigans,” the Titans’ representative told her as she stepped onto the field. Price, 35, waited a moment for the team rep to amble away. A button emblazoned with the word “feminist” was pinned to her black leather jacket and glinted in the midday sun. “My reputation precedes me,” she said.

Price’s career — her success and nearly a decade of struggles — is a testament to the way America’s poisonous politics are scrambling country music. Study after study has documented the widening social gulf that separates the major parties. Republicans and Democrats report increasing levels of animosity for those on

the other side of the political divide, according to surveys. They have few close friends from the opposing political party. They watch different television shows.

Those same pressures are fracturing one of America’s most distinctive art forms, giving rise to separate musical genres aimed at liberal and conservative fans.

“I’m just singing the truth,” Price said. “That’s what country music is supposed to be — three chords and the truth.” Increasingly, though, that truth is shaped by America’s political war.

Price has appeared as the musical guest on liberal bastions such as “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily

Spotify put up a billboard in Nashville to congratulate Margo Price on her best new artist Grammy nomination.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

Show” on Comedy Central and the three major late-night network talk shows. She was also nominated for the best new artist Grammy.

But she’s entirely absent from country music radio — still the major star maker for Nashville-based musicians who aspire to fill stadiums. And that has made Price all but invisible in certain quarters of the country, including some parts of her adopted hometown.

“No bags,” the security guard at the entrance to the Titans’ stadium barked at her earlier in the day when she tried to bring in a backpack with her curling iron and makeup.

“I’m the anthem singer,” she protested.

No luck.

“Did you let Carrie Underwood bring in a curling iron?” she pleaded. The security guard shot her an irritated look.

The Titans’ management eventually intervened on Price’s behalf and she made her way into the stadium — backpack in hand. The anthem went off without a hitch. A few days later Price was launching a tour that included stops in D.C., Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and reflecting on the strangeness of the experience back home, in the capital of country music.

“It was definitely out of our element,” she said.

As a teenager growing up in rural Illinois, Price sometimes sang the anthem at high school football games. “That was what our town revolved around,” she said.

Her mother was a teacher, and her father farmed soybeans and corn, until the farm crisis forced him to find work as a prison guard.

The way Price tells it, her path to Nashville began at Northern Illinois University, where she made the varsity cheerleading team as a freshman, tripped on mushrooms and decided to get as far from cheerleading as she could. She signed up for theater and dance classes. At the end of her sophomore year, she dropped out of school entirely and moved to Nashville.

She played around with political music, forming a duo with Jeremy Ivey, her future husband, called Secret Handshake. “An easy way to clear a room,” Ivey said of the band’s short-lived and unsuccessful stint. Then came Buffalo Clover, her rock-and-roll and soul band, which critics described as Dolly Parton backed by the Rolling Stones.

Eventually, Price switched to country. She haunted open-mic nights in Nashville studying the crowd to figure out what worked. Her best songs tackled heartbreaks, embarrassments and failures that she had hid even from her family. At 27, Price gave birth to twin boys, one of whom died weeks after he was born of a genetic heart ailment.

In the years that followed, she struggled

with drinking and depression, including a 2013 arrest for drunken driving. She crashed her car into a pole, she said, and then tried to outrun police. Her husband picked her up after a weekend in the county jail. On her way home, Price grabbed a carton of Newports for her cellmate. “You’ve only been in there for two days and you’re already making alliances,” her husband joked.

She mined the tragedy and comedy of the experience for a jailhouse ballad.

Price’s rich country voice caught the attention of Nashville music critics. “Her voice is just unreal. That’s what grabbed me,” said Joseph Hudak, a Nashville-based writer for Rolling Stone. Her writing called to mind country music’s hell-raising, honky-tonk roots.

“I killed the angel on my shoulder with a bottle of the Bulleit / So I wouldn’t have to hear him bitch and moan, moan, moan,” she sang to the cry of a steel-pedal guitar.

Price, though, had several strikes against her when it came to landing a recording contract with a major label.

Country music these days is dominated by men, who typically account for about 80 to 90 percent of Billboard’s top 40 country radio hits. Online the situation can be even worse.

Spotify’s “Country Gold” playlist of 50 songs often doesn’t include even a single female artist.

Price’s music also didn’t sound like the other hits played on country radio, which mixed hip-hop beats with twangy verse.

Her biggest problem might have been her lyrics. Hit country songs tended to celebrate small-town life. Often, they responded to the growing partisan rancor by emphasizing America’s essential goodness, as Luke Bryan

Jeremy Ivey plays harmonica next to his wife, Margo Price, as they work on rehearsing the Tom Petty song, “You Don't Know How It Feels.” Petty’s music, such as “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” appealed to Price growing up in the Midwest.

did in his hit “Most People are Good.”

Bryan focused on fatherhood and football: “I believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights,” he sang.

Price was offering a different view of America. She sang about sin and struggle and the sorts of misfits who never felt comfortable in football stadiums. “I’m an outcast, and I’m a stray / And I plan to stay that way,” she sang.

Her songs were about small, depressed towns that people longed to escape. These were the very places country music expected her to celebrate.

“You’re so country, but you’re not a redneck,” she recalled one record industry executive telling her. She took it as a backhanded compliment. He passed. Others pressed her to give her song arrangements more of a pop feel. She refused.

Price had been at it for 12 years when her husband prevailed on her in 2014 to sell their car, pawn her wedding ring and spend the money recording a country album. The last song she wrote before she headed into the studio told the story of her life: her father’s decision to sell the family farm, her struggles in Nashville, the death of her son.

“I felt like I was at the end of a rope and if something didn’t happen soon, I was going to break,” she said of “Hands of Time.” “I wrote it as a form of therapy. Not for anyone else, but for myself.”

Months passed with little interest from record companies. Her slide guitar player persuaded an executive from Third Man Records, founded by Jack White, a well-known rock and blues musician, to watch her play at a Nashville bar. Third Man didn’t have much experience with country music, but signed her anyway.

Before the album was even released in 2016, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” booked her to sing. Just weeks after it dropped, “Saturday Night Live” offered her a slot on the show.

“Are you sitting down?” she asked her drummer, shortly after she got the news. He was stacking boxes at the warehouse job he had taken to pay the bills.

“We’re going on SNL!” she screamed.

The New York Times called her the “next big thing out of Nashville.” A New Yorker staff writer described listening to her as “an uncomplicated joy, with awe laced through it.”

Country music radio programmers were less impressed.

“I have never heard a Margo Price song that I thought was a mass appeal runaway hit,” said Nate Deaton, the general manager of a station in San Jose. Country hits often offered up a dose of nostalgia. “There’s a lot of people in big cities that came from small towns,” he said, “and there’s an awful lot of us that never lived

“Her voice is just unreal. That’s what grabbed me.”

Joseph Hudak, Nashville-based writer for Rolling Stone

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COVER STORY in small towns, but nonetheless there’s an appealing nature to it.”

R.J. Curtis, the executive director of the Country Radio Broadcasters trade group, echoed that assessment. He was a fan of her music and had even attended one of her Nashville shows. “But programmers just don’t know what to do with her,” he said. “Man, we’re missing out.”

Country music has for decades accommodated different sounds and styles — the Bakersfield Sound, Outlaw Country, Urban Cowboy country and alt-country among others.

What united them was a working-class sensibility that rose above politics.

In the early 1970s Johnny Cash recorded “What is Truth” in support of Vietnam War protesters even as his close friend Merle Haggard was singing “The Fightin’ Side of Me” slamming them. The two stars could still share a stage.

By 2003, though, the rules had changed.

With U.S. troops massing on the Iraq border, Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, told a London audience that she was ashamed that George W. Bush was from Texas.

At that moment, the female trio was one of the biggest acts in country music.

Sixteen years later, the Chicks are both a band and a verb. To be “Dixie-Chicked” is to be excommunicated from mainstream country music radio. The Chicks were the victims of a rally-around-the-flag backlash — they criticized the president on the eve of a major war.

These days the divide in country music has become more obviously partisan, reflecting the political division among its main supporters: white Americans. Mainstream country music has little patience for messages that fail to celebrate small-town America or tilt even remotely anti-Trump.

Liberal country music fans, meanwhile, want assurances that their favorite singers are sufficiently to the left. “White people are the only race that’s politically divided right now,” said Lilliana Mason, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and author of “Uncivil Agreement,” a book about political identity and America’s growing divide. “Because the partisan divide is so deep you have to define what kind of white person you are.”

For left-leaning country singers, like Price and Sturgill Simpson, there’s pressure to signal to their fan bases that they are on their side. In 2017, Simpson let loose an epic anti-Trump rant that made Maines’s criticism of Bush seem tepid by comparison.

“He’s a fascist . . . pig,” Simpson said of Trump outside the Country Music Awards in Nashville. All Trump supporters, he added, were “bigots.”

Simpson had won a Grammy earlier that

Margo Price takes to the red carpet during a Grammy nomination event at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel. Despite the Grammy nod, Price hasn’t had much time on country radio airwaves.

same year for best country album, but, like Price, was rejected by mainstream country music radio. A few years ago there was an expectation that stars such as Simpson and Price might bring a new sound and sensibility to country music.

Instead, they became their own subgenre and today are often classified as “Americana” artists, a subset of roots music aimed largely at liberals. Americana music isn’t always easily defined, but the Milk Carton Kids, who opened this year’s Americana awards show in Nashville, took a stab at it in a song: “A country song that’s a little too political / A feminist anthem that’s a bit too literal / Your lyrics are biblical / Your Twitter feed is liberal” The same pressures that were splitting the country were now fracturing country music.

“Country music is taking collateral damage because so many people these days want blood,” said Kyle Coroneos, who runs the website Saving Country Music. “In previous eras no one thought about this stuff, just like we didn’t think about our neighbors’ politics.”

Midway through her recent set in Washington, Price launched into “All American Made,” a song about the divisions in the country and the title track to her second album.

Price and her husband wrote it together several years ago, and last summer Price updated the song for the Trump presidency.

“I wonder how the president gets any sleep at night / And if the folks down by the border are making it all right,” she sang before a crowd of about 2,000 people in Washington who let out a cheer. To anyone who might have been offended, Price explained that she wrote the song during the Obama administration. But no one seemed to care.

‘Country music radio isn’t doing me any favors.’

Margo Price

KLMNO WEEKLY

A few weeks later Price was back in Nashville for a pre-Grammy party. She mingled awkwardly with the guests and then cut out early. On her way to dinner, she and her husband made a quick detour to get a look at a billboard that Spotify had put up congratulating her on her nomination.

“Who dat?” she called out laughing when she spotted her face staring back at her. The Nashville skyline glittered in the distance.

The next morning she gathered with her band to rehearse before she jetted out to Los Angeles for the Grammys and a spot on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

From there her schedule was a sprint. She was five months pregnant, working on a new album and had live shows planned through April.

Price suggested the band add a new Tom Petty song to its set. Her husband pulled up “You Don’t Know How it Feels” on his phone, picked up his harmonica and began to play along, feeling his way through the song. The band joined in. Price copied the lyrics on a piece of paper.

Petty’s music had been one of her first loves.

As a teenager in rural Illinois she taped “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” off the radio and sang it into her hairbrush. “He was singing to a girl in Middle America who was maybe a little poor or a little different,” she told Rolling Stone when Petty died in 2017. His music, she said, “defied genre . . . defied politics.”

But it was getting harder and harder for stars, such as Price, to pull off that trick.

Recently, her management team had encouraged her to do a dual interview with a big mainstream country artist. “It will be good exposure,” she recalled them telling her, an opportunity to introduce her music to a new group of fans who might not otherwise hear it.

Price shot down the idea.

“I don’t respect his art,” she explained later.

“It’s not anything personal.”

These days, Price said, she was eager for her own “mental sanity” to edge away from country music. “Sonically I want to do something different, and I want to reach more people.

Country music was a good way to get my foot in the door, but . . . when you venture out of country music you have more freedom to say what you want, and country music radio isn’t doing me any favors.”

Sometimes, Price mused, that she should have been “born in an earlier era.”

As it was, she was playing almost 200 dates a year. She wasn’t a country music megastar, selling out stadiums across the South and Midwest. But she could fill a theater with 2,000-3,000 die-hard fans in Brooklyn. More and more, when she looked out at the crowd, there were people singing along to her lyrics as if she was singing about their lives too.n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

LIFESTYLES

Sleep is ‘magic pill’ for top athletes BY

A MANDA L OUDIN

T

om Brady, the NFL’s oldest quarterback, and his high-tech pajamas, early bedtime and preference for a cold, cavelike bedroom have provided plenty of fodder for American sports fans. But for elite athletes, sleep is no joke. And these days, coaches, trainers and athletes are focusing on shut-eye like never before.

“There’s a 100 percent correlation in quality of sleep to performance on the field,” says Steve Smith, senior director of health, wellness and performance for Washington’s professional basketball team, the Wizards. “Acutely and chronically, sleep impacts reaction time, alertness and the ability to play to talent level.”

Studies have shown that getting a good night’s sleep may help reduce the risk of injury and illness in athletes.

Sleep and its relationship to performance is a relatively new focus for many athletes, says Chris Winter, author of “The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It,” and consultant to the NBA’s Washington Wizards. “As the field of sports performance has evolved, we’ve covered most of the bases,” including training, nutrition and hydration, “and sleep is the last to fall into place. It really wasn’t until 2005 that research started delving into it.”

Winter has led some of the most influential research on the connection between sleep and athletic performance. A 2013 study, for instance, piggybacked on early Major League Baseball research to look into the relationship between fatigue and career longevity in the league. It found that the more tired players were — on a self-reported sleepiness scale — the less likely they were to still be in the league at the threeyear follow-up point.

“If you’re an athlete who has a long season — like MLB or NBA players — the season catches up to you, particularly if you’re not sleeping well,” Winter says. “Sleep impacts everything.”

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

‘Sleep impacts reaction time, alertness and the ability to play to talent level,’ one expert says For some athletes, checking sleep hygiene boxes a la Brady pays off. For others, however, restorative sleep can be hard to get.

Sleep anxiety Becky Wade, 29, is among the country’s top female marathoners — the runner will be lining up at next year’s Olympic trials for the fourth time. When in heavy training, Wade, who lives in Boulder, Co., logs 100-plus miles per week.

She knows all the right things to do to keep her body healthy, such as eating well and balancing her training, and is diligent about them. She finds a good night’s sleep elusive, however.

“It became problematic in high school,” Wade says. “The pressures of school, training and my goals all began to escalate. I had a hard time both getting to sleep

and staying asleep.” And she felt it then — and now — in her training.

“I can get through an easy day, but if it’s a tough workout, I definitely struggle.”

Wade is well aware of the science behind sleep and performance and admits that, sometimes, that’s part of the problem. “It is stress inducing,” she says. “I feel like because I don’t get the sleep I need, I’m skimping on maximal training.”

Natasha Cloud, a 26-year-old point guard with the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, says she’s always been a poor sleeper but she really noticed its impact when she got to the WNBA. “I really struggled my first three years in the league as a result,” she says.

“It’s tough to recover after a bad night’s sleep. On the court, I was drowsy, slow and had poor reaction times.”

Washington Mystics point guard Natasha Cloud (9) dribbles past Atlanta Dream point guard Renee Montgomery (21) in a game last September. Cloud says changes to her sleep routine have paid off on the court.

After a consult with Winter, Cloud made changes to her routine, including limiting late-night use of her cellphone and other devices, and dedicated herself to getting the rest she needed. It paid off.

“This has been my best year yet,” she says. “I’ve established a bedtime routine that helps my body signal it is time to sleep. I’ve learned to stay off my phone at night and aim for an early bedtime whenever possible.”

Winter says that the vicious cycle of needing sleep, worrying about it and then getting even less, like Wade described, is common among top athletes. “You’ve got hyper-focused athletes who want to do everything right,” he says. “But that can be a liability when it comes to sleep.”

Coaches can sometimes contribute to the issue. “When a coach drills it into an athlete’s head that he or she needs to get a good night’s sleep, it can backfire,” Winter explains.

Wade says she has explored many avenues to improve the quality of her sleep. Over time, she says she has developed workarounds to help offset the detrimental impact of lost sleep.

“I do all the right things with regards to sleep hygiene and that helps to some extent,” she says. “I also take naps when I can because I’m better at napping than sleeping through the night.”

This napping approach may actually mean Wade, and others like her, get more sleep than they realize, says Winter, mitigating the negative effects of nighttime insomnia on performance.

“These are the people who, when they track their sleep, find that they do better than they think,” he says. “They might struggle four nights out of 30, but it’s the four nights that they focus on.”

And Wade’s results suggests that her napping may be compensating for her nighttime sleep issues, even if her daytime quality of life can be affected by her fatigue.

“I recover well from hard workouts, have made progress and

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TECHNOLOGY have run six marathons in a row without injury,” she says. “I’d be more worried if I was in a constant state of breakdown.”

Solutions Smith sees plenty of players who don’t get enough sleep. “I don’t know that there are many players who don’t have some sleep issue,” he says. “You’ve got a fast-wired, driven group and after a game or practice, they need to shut it down and sleep. That can be hard.”

One study also found that team-sport athletes are “particularly susceptible to reductions in both sleep quality and sleep duration after night competition and periods of heavy training Like many regular people, elite athletes multiply their issues by spending too much time on devices. “The blue light damages their circadian rhythms,” says Smith, meaning that their body’s natural sleep-wake cycle can get out of whack. “We’ve given them bluelight blocking glasses and ask them to take a break from their devices before bed.”

The Wizards take other steps to improve sleep, as well, including scheduling travel for away games across time zones “to optimize sleep,” Smith says. “We’ve also added sensory deprivation tanks, education, and staff members who send reminders about sleep. We’ve thrown everything at it, both high-tech and lowtech.”

One thing the athletes generally do not do is use sleep aids, either over-the-counter ones, such as melatonin, or prescription pills such as Ambien. “Instead of handing them a pill, which doesn’t solve their longterm problems, we like to give them tools to deal with their issues,” Winter says.

It’s not hard, says Smith, to predict which athletes will be in the NBA for the long haul. Like Brady in the NFL, they’re the ones who take sleep seriously. “The guys who have a sleep routine and appreciate the value of it are the ones who will make it,” he says. “If they don’t, given equal talent, they will have a shorter career.”

As a performance coach, sleep is the one issue Smith wishes all his athletes took seriously. “It’s the magic pill,” he says. “For an athlete, it simply cures most ills.” n

KLMNO WEEKLY

Parkland turns to software that can track students BY

D REW H ARWELL

K

imberly Krawczyk says she would do anything to keep her students safe. A year ago this past Thursday, the Parkland, Fla., high school math teacher barricaded students behind her classroom door during one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

But one of the unconventional responses the local Broward County school district has said could stop another tragedy has left her deeply unnerved: an experimental artificial-intelligence system that would surveil her students closer than ever before.

The South Florida school system, one of the largest in the country, said last month it would install a camera-software system called Avigilon that would allow security officials to track students based on their appearance.

The 145-camera system, which administrators said will be installed around the perimeters of the schools deemed “at highest risk,” will also automatically alert a school-monitoring officer when it senses events “that seem out of the ordinary” and people “in places they are not supposed to be.”

The supercharged surveillance network has raised major questions for some students, parents and teachers, like Krawczyk, who voiced concerns about its accuracy, invasiveness and effectiveness.

Her biggest doubt: that the technology could ever understand a school campus like a human can.

“How is this computer going to make a decision on what’s the right and wrong thing in a school with over 3,000 kids?” said Krawczyk.

The specter of student violence is pushing school leaders across the country to turn their campuses into surveillance testing grounds on the hope it’ll help them detect dangerous people they’d otherwise miss. The supporters and designers of Avigilon, the AI service bought for $1 billion last year by tech giant Motor-

JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

Sheena Billups brings flowers to a memorial at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for those killed during a mass shooting last year.

ola Solutions, say its security algorithms could spot risky behavior with superhuman speed and precision, potentially preventing another attack.

But the advanced monitoring technologies ensure the daily lives of American schoolchildren are subjected to close scrutiny from systems that will automatically flag certain students as suspicious, potentially spurring a response from security or police forces, based on the work of algorithms that are hidden from public view.

The camera software has no proven track record for preventing school violence, some technology and civil liberties experts argue. And the testing of their algorithms for bias and accuracy — how confident the systems are in identifying possible threats — has largely been conducted by the companies themselves.

Elizabeth Laird, a former state education official in Louisiana and the District of Columbia and a current senior fellow at the think tank Center for Democracy & Technology, said systems such as Avigilon have faced little public testing for their validity or longterm impact. As they multiply across campuses, she fears they could leave a chilling effect over a place where students are taught

to think independently, express themselves and learn from their mistakes.

If the Avigilon contract wins final approval from county leaders in the coming weeks, the school district will spend more than $600,000 in federal and local funds activating the AI-powered system around the high school campuses “with the highest security incidents,” contracting records show.

Many aspects of the program, however, remain a mystery, and it’s unclear how exactly the surveillance system’s data and performance will be regulated, measured or tested for potential flaws.

Michael Dorn, the executive director of Safe Havens International, a consulting firm that Broward hired to assess its security, said video-analysis systems like Avigilon are becoming increasingly popular among schools seeking to maximize their surveillance capabilities, and security staff use them to watch for students hopping fences, climbing onto roofs or loitering around campus.

But that capacity for widespread monitoring has some students concerned that it could be overused to police students’ time, movement and activity. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

Decision ushered in decades of Jim Crow N ONFICTION

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REVIEWED BY

E RIC F ONER

A

SEPARATE The Story of Plessy v.

Ferguson, and America’s Journey From Slavery to Segregation

By Steve Luxenberg Norton. 600 pp. $35

few years ago the legal scholar Jamal Greene published “The Anticanon,” an article that identified the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history. High on the list was Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case in which the court upheld a Louisiana law requiring railroad companies to provide “equal but separate” coaches for white and black passengers. Legally mandated segregation, the court ruled, did not violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee to all persons of the equal protection of the laws.

Thanks to the iconic status achieved six decades later by Brown v. Board of Education, which overruled it with regard to public education, Plessy is undoubtedly the most widely known of a series of late-19th-century Supreme Court decisions that eviscerated what Republican leader Carl Schurz called the “constitutional revolution” after the Civil War — the three amendments that ended slavery and sought to establish the legal foundations for equal citizenship regardless of race. But few Americans know much about the cast of characters central to the case. They include Albion W. Tourgée, who as a judge fought the Ku Klux Klan in Reconstruction North Carolina and argued the case before the court; Henry Billings Brown, a scion of the New England elite who wrote the 7-to-1 decision; John Marshall Harlan, the slave-owning Kentuckian who fought for the Union in the Civil War and became the lone dissenter in Plessy; and members of the Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans, descendants of the city’s prewar mixed-race free black community, who initiated the campaign to overturn the Separate Car Act. As Steve Luxenberg makes clear in “Separate,” which tells the story of the Plessy case, blacks saw the law first and foremost as an affront to their rights as citizens,

ASSOCIATED PRESS

White men protest integration at Southern High School in Baltimore in 1954. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision long allowed segregation.

which, in their view, included equal treatment in places of public accommodation and entertainment, such as hotels, restaurants and theaters, and by transportation companies.

With financial assistance from a local railroad company, the Citizens’ Committee arranged for the light-skinned Homer Plessy to enter a whites-only coach and for the conductor to have him arrested when he refused an order to leave.

Tourgée thought the fact that Plessy could easily have passed for white demonstrated the absurdity of attempting to write racial classifications into law and empowering train conductors to determine a passenger’s race.

Writing for the court’s majority, Brown did not confront most of Tourgée’s arguments but blamed blacks for being oversensitive. So long as facilities were equal, he insisted, separation was not a “badge of inferiority,” even if “the colored race” chose to see it as such. He went on to muse about the immutable nature of “racial

instincts,” the undesirability of “enforced commingling” of the races and how whites’ reputations would suffer if they were forced to sit in the same car as blacks.

In his dissent, Harlan issued the oft-quoted rebuke to the majority: “Our Constitution is color-blind.”

The “thin disguise” of equal facilities, he wrote, could not obscure the fact that enforced separation was an expression of racial dominance rooted in slavery and therefore violated not only the 14th Amendment, with its guarantee of equal treatment, but also the 13th, which had irrevocably abolished that institution.

Luxenberg, for many years a senior editor of The Washington Post, is a fine writer who tells this story in an engaging manner. To be sure, his apparent desire for novelistic effects sometimes gives the prose a purplish hue.

A more serious problem is the book’s structure, which undermines its narrative coherence.

Most of “Separate” consists of alternating biographical chapters

about Tourgée, Brown, Harlan and members of the Citizens’ Committee. This produces chronological confusion. Thus, one chapter ends in early 1862 with Harlan engaged in battle with Confederates. The next one then backtracks to 1847, when Brown helped prevent the capture of a family of fugitive slaves.

The long biographical excursions are not only unnecessary but often of questionable relevance.

Two hundred pages elapse before the narrative reaches Reconstruction. Not until four-fifths of the way through this 600-page book does Louisiana enact the Separate Car Act. This is a pity, because the best parts of “Separate” consist of Luxenberg’s vivid account of how the Citizens’ Committee and Tourgée developed their legal strategies and how the case proceeded in the Louisiana courts and in Washington.

“Separate” reminds us that our history is not simply a narrative of greater and greater freedom.

Rights can be gained, and rights can be taken away. Constitutional guarantees can sometimes, with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, be violated with impunity.

We live at a moment not unlike the 1890s, with its retreat from the ideal of equality. Just a few years ago the court invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a signal achievement of the civil rights revolution that was meant to enforce the 15th Amendment, enacted during Reconstruction. President Trump recently announced a plan to abrogate the clause of the 14th Amendment that recognizes as citizens virtually all persons born in the United States. With a newly strengthened conservative majority on the Supreme Court, one cannot help wondering which constitutional provision will be next. n Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University.

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BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

A sweeping saga of a family’s bond

A call for outsiders to rewrite the rules

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

M

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REVIEWED BY

K ARIN T ANABE

ost children get to know their siblings as playmates in a protected world under watchful adult eyes. It is the sudden disappearance of this supervision that defines the characters in Tara Conklin’s second novel, “The Last Romantics.”

An elegantly penned family saga that stretches for nearly a century, the book opens in the year 2079. Fiona Skinner, the narrator, is a famous poet, aged 102, and is in the midst of her first public appearance in 25 years.

The world outside the auditorium is plagued by environmental decline, but inside the audience is focused on her iconic work, “The Love Poem.” Luna, a young woman who shares the name of the poem’s protagonist, is firing questions, insistent on learning more about her mysterious namesake.

The request prompts Fiona to tell her family’s story, one that she declares is “about the failures of love.”

In 1981, a solidly middle-class Connecticut family suddenly loses its bearing. Ellis Skinner, a successful dentist, dies of a heart attack, leaving his children Fiona, Joe, Caroline and Renee, ranging in age from 4 to 11, brokenhearted and rudderless. Their homemaker mother Noni, widowed at 31, breaks down in crippling depression. She tucks herself away in her bedroom, becomes more ghost than parent, and as a result, Fiona explains, the children “went feral.”

During those two wild years, forever known as “the Pause,” Renee is forced to shelve her youth and assume a mother-figure role; nervous Caroline is plagued by nightmares and yearns for stability; Joe morphs his prepubescent self into the man of the house, fiercely protective of his sisters; and creative Fiona, well watched over by the three, remains a child and embraces the Pause.

When their mother finally emerges from her haze, she dabs

on lipstick and finds work as a receptionist. But after a two-year absence, her control over her children has been severed for good.

The one thing she is determined to hold on to is Joe’s success as the baseball star unrivaled in town.

Despite the sisters’ lives growing more disparate as the decades go on, their relationships morphing from intense to surprisingly distant, the care and preservation of Joe remains of utmost importance, even when the sisters eclipse his success.

Caroline marries young, to a boy that burrowed into her life during her tumultuous childhood, and becomes a mother. Renee never strays from her path of responsibility, putting herself through medical school and working as a successful transplant surgeon. Only Fiona allows herself to float through the world.

She finds a good enough job at an environmental nonprofit and spends her free time partaking in the early days of blogging. She has a hit with the blog “the Last Romantic,” a chronicle of her sexual exploits, where she lists the men she beds by number and critiques their performance in detail. But Joe can’t keep up with the dizzying pace of his sisters. With his bat retired, he finds himself trying to make it in the New York finance world, which he navigates in a haze of drugs and alcohol.

His fall from grace brings him to Luna Hernandez, the inspiration for “The Love Poem.” For Joe, she represents romantic love in its most luscious, electrifying form, and for his family, she is something much darker.

It is the strength and fragility of the siblings’ bond, the evolving nature of love that is at the core of Conklin’s novel. And Fiona, with her uncommon insights, her lyricism and steady pacing, feels like the perfect narrator. n Tanabe, a former Politico reporter, is the author of four novels, including “The Diplomat’s Daughter.”

P THE LAST ROMANTICS A Novel

By Tara Conklin HarperCollins. 368 pp. $26.99

TRY COMMON SENSE Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left

By Philip K. Howard Norton. 240 pp. $25.95

l

REVIEWED BY

R OBERT L ITAN

hilip K. Howard is the rare lawyer who doesn’t shy from criticizing his profession, and particularly the lawyers who populate the government. He has long argued for a common-sense approach to law to reduce the legal stranglehold on American society and shake loose the gridlock in Washington.

In his latest book, “Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left,” Howard makes a case for pushing a giant reset button: in effect, starting over by wiping clean the legal landscape and replacing it with principles that apply a common-law standard to government decisions. Howard, the founder of a nonprofit called Common Good, which aims to simplify government, wants to encourage reasonable action to control pollution, make the workplace safe and guide just about every other policy choice in the interest of the common good. He has been advocating for common sense in law and government for more than 20 years, since his book “The Death of Common Sense” came out in 1994. But looking around today, one can’t help thinking that common sense in America is as elusive as a unicorn. Given the difficulty of making any sweeping policy changes, Howard’s prescriptions, while invigorating, face a large uphill battle.

Nonetheless, his analysis of our predicament is valuable. Howard has a gift for the turn of phrase, and he leaves neither political party untouched by his critiques.

We are in this mess, he argues, because of a simple lack of trust: Democrats don’t trust the private sector to behave, so they roll out rules to discourage bad actors.

Likewise, Republicans don’t trust government, so they constrain its enforcement capabilities. Neither approach amounts to a governing philosophy, Howard argues.

What’s to be done? As Jonathan Rauch showed in his 1994 classic, “Demosclerosis,” a gridlocked, in-

side-the-Beltway system, hamstrung by an expanding army of lobbyists and lawyers, isn’t likely to suddenly abandon its way of doing business. Howard’s solution is to delegate the search for change to an independent body, the way Base Realignment and Closure Commissions come up with tough military base-closing decisions for recommendation to Congress. In 2013, Michael Mandel and Diana Carew of the Progressive Policy Institute proposed a similar idea for eliminating outdated government regulations.

Howard proposes outsourcing to an independent commission the rewriting of the entire federal statute book and code of federal regulations. The commission would be tasked with producing a vastly streamlined set of general principles that would guide rulings.

These are sweeping, even revolutionary, notions. I sympathize with Howard, who is clearly frustrated after writing thoughtful bestsellers of a similar ilk over the past two decades but not seeing results. He makes a convincing case that in many ways government doesn’t work. But will legislators be any more receptive to his latest suggestions? If bureaucrats were given simple rules and broad authority, would they abuse them? Would they avoid making decisions, as in the past, and continue gridlock?

It might be wiser to start on a smaller scale than Howard’s sweeping ambition. His wipe-theslate-clean approach might best be targeted at a specific area.

Testing and tweaking streamlined decision-making in one corner of government might allow it to be expanded later. It’s a slower approach, but it may be the only realistic way of getting where Howard and, I think, many of his readers want to go. n Litan is a non-resident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

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