The Washington Post National Weekly - March 17, 2019

SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 2019

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Long overlooked by science, pregnancy is finally getting the attention it deserves

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THE FIX

The end of impeaching Trump?

BY

A ARON B LAKE

N

ancy Pelosi raised more than a few eyebrows earlier this year when, the same day she became speaker, she appeared to open the door a crack to impeaching President Trump. Pelosi (D-Calif.) had been reluctant to entertain the idea, but now that the 2018 election was over and Democrats had the power to do it, maybe she was coming around?

Turns out, not so much. In an interview with The Washington Post Magazine, Pelosi says flatly that she opposes impeachment. Her comments are the strongest indication yet that Democratic leaders intend to let voters — and not impeachment hearings — decide this issue in 2020. But while that’s probably the safest and most politically prudent course, that doesn’t mean her party will accept it.

“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi told The Post. “This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”

Notably, Pelosi isn’t saying that we should wait to see what the evidence says — whether via special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or the newly launched investigations run by House Democrats. She’s saying she opposes impeachment, full stop. That’s a clear shift, as she herself acknowledges. She wanted this to register as her shutting the door.

This was always the most likely outcome — and makes sense for a whole host of reasons.

We saw in the late 1990s how badly impeach-

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ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

ment could reflect upon the impeaching party.

Even as it was accepted that Bill Clinton had engaged in an affair in the White House, lied under oath and obstructed justice, people still stood by him.

And this situation lends itself nicely to passing the buck, given that Trump faces reelection next year. The longer Democrats run the clock — even while investigating Trump — the easier it would be to say that this should just be left to voters. Will removing Trump from office in early 2020 be necessary if it can just be done in a less messy fashion in late 2020?

That said, that very reasonable approach may not be acceptable to members and voters who believe that Trump should be held accountable — and now. Polls show about threequarters of Democratic voters favor impeachment already. Nearly half the country believes Trump has committed crimes while in office.

Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) made

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waves in January by telling supporters that the House should “impeach the motherf-----.” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) has introduced articles of impeachment. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) has said there is “direct evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 campaign, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) has said it’s clear that Trump has obstructed justice.

Neither Schiff nor Nadler advocate impeachment yet, but what if the evidence becomes damning?

Complicating matters is the recent unrest in the Democratic Party. After leaders attempted to move forward with a rebuke of freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last week over comments that some of them labeled “anti-Semitic,” the base bucked, and the resolution was weakened. While Pelosi looked a strong leader after beating back opposition to her return as speaker after the 2018 election, her grip on the party doesn’t appear so strong anymore.

Indeed, what might be most interesting about Pelosi’s comments is the date of the interview: March 6. That means, even as the Omar stuff was playing out, Pelosi decided to lay a marker and assert control over the impeachment situation.

At least for now, key figures such as freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez haven’t tried to force the issue. Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said last week that she still believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but she added: “I defer to the chair. I defer to party leadership.”

We’ll see if that holds. Pelosi’s ability to tamp down impeachment fever could be one of the most significant battles of her speakership.

And these new comments are a line in the sand. n

ON THE COVER A pregnant woman holds her stomach. Because of a reluctance to perform research on pregnant women, there is a dearth of studies on pregnancy. Photo from ISTOCK

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POLITICS

Trump made border fight personal

BY S EUNG AND J OSH

M IN K IM D AWSEY

P

resident Trump tried to marshal his most potent weapon — himself — to stave off what eventually became an embarrassing rejection from his own party over his declared national emergency on the border.

In numerous calls with Republican senators in recent days, the president spoke of the battle almost exclusively in personal terms — telling them they would be voting against him while brushing aside constitutional concerns over his attempt to reroute billions of federal dollars for a border wall. He argued that a vote against the emergency would be seen by GOP supporters as being against border security and the wall and hurting their own political fortunes, according to a person with direct knowledge of some of the calls.

The president, along with his aides, continued to hammer that message leading up to Thursday’s Senate vote on the issue. Trump tweeted the day before that Republican senators were “overthinking” it, stressing that it was only about supporting border security. And White House aides made it clear to undecided Republicans that Trump was noticing those who chose to oppose him — particularly if they were up for reelection in 2020.

But it wasn’t enough, as a dozen Republicans joined Democrats in dealing Trump a humiliating blow by voting Thursday to nullify the national emergency, setting up what is likely to be the first veto of his presidency.

Trump’s personal pleas and pressure were among a series of missed opportunities and missteps by the White House that contributed to a defeat notably worse than the administration had hoped for, according to officials and lawmakers familiar with the efforts, many of whom requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The administration, for example, failed to give opposing GOP

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

He tried to make emergency declaration dispute about him — and lost senators legal opinions, project details and other information that they had requested about the national emergency, according to lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides.

Vice President Pence was also unable or unwilling to make commitments on behalf of the president even while serving as Trump’s main emissary to negotiate with Republicans, people familiar with the debate said.

And for some of the dissidents, it was not clear if anyone — including Trump — could have persuaded them to support the emergency declaration because of their constitutional concerns.

“If the White House were not relying on the emergency declaration to spend money that Congress had specifically dedicated to other purposes, the president could’ve gotten the $5.7 billion,” said Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), one of the Republicans who voted to reject Trump’s emergency declaration. “And every Republican senator, I think, would’ve enthusiastically supported that.”

The deep concerns some GOP senators held about potential abuse of the separation of powers have been clear to the White House for weeks. In fact, some

President Trump at a conference in the Oval Office. Twelve Republican senators joined Democrats in nullifying his emergency declaration.

White House and congressional aides questioned whether the effort to sway them was even worth it.

“This was the inevitable outcome, and it’s unclear why any effort or political capital was spent trying to avoid it,” said Brendan Buck, a former top aide to former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). “There aren’t the votes to override, so why bother negotiating?”

During a private GOP lunch in late February that Pence attended, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) asked to see any memorandum produced by the Justice Depart-

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POLITICS ment’s Office of Legal Counsel that would lay out the administration’s rationale for why the emergency declaration was lawful, according to an official with knowledge of the closed-door discussion.

Cruz had raised a hypothetical question involving a Democratic senator from Massachusetts that struck at the heart of some of their concerns: What if a President Elizabeth Warren declared a national emergency to seize oil wells in Texas?

A Justice official in attendance said the White House had drafted a legal memo the OLC had approved. When Cruz asked to see that document, Pence said he would relay the request to Trump.

The White House never provided that memo, according to an official familiar with the discussions.

A similar scenario unfolded a week later, when Republican senators pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for a list of military construction projects that could lose funding this year as a result of Trump’s emergency declaration. Nielsen told them the issue was largely the purview of the Pentagon — while Defense Department officials at the same time were deferring to Nielsen’s agency for information they needed to make a list of targeted projects.

Senators never got that list of projects either, and some Republicans doubted whether one exists.

Nonetheless, Trump called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) almost daily to press him on who was opposing his declaration — all while White House officials worked to keep the number of Republican defectors in the single digits, according to two administration officials.

McConnell hung back, declining to pressure senators and instead focusing on getting as much information to Republicans as possible.

“He didn’t come in and say, this is what we’re going to do,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said of McConnell. “He was listening to everybody as they were going through it.”

Trump kept saying in private to White House officials and senators that he would be willing to entertain any proposal that

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

would unite most Republicans and keep the vote count on the disapproval resolution at just 50 in the Senate, which would have defeated the measure.

To that end, the administration and a handful of influential GOP senators began quietly discussing whether they could reach a compromise addressing the flaws of a 1976 law, the National Emergencies Act, relied on by Trump to invoke his national emergency.

But in private, Pence was vague in what the White House would accept in terms of revisions to the law, people familiar with the discussions said. The sole commitment he made was that he would take the information back to Trump.

“None of the proposals got anywhere close,” a senior administration official said. “We were all wasting our time.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (RTenn.), one of the senators who had negotiated with Pence for days, acknowledged the vice president had a “difficult job.” Alexander voted to reject the declaration.

“The president feels very strongly about his authority and a number of us feel very strongly about the Constitution,” he said. “So I’m not sure anyone could’ve done a better job than the vice president did.”

Still, the administration averted an even bigger defeat by working with some Republicans in private. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan had privately assured Sen. Martha McSally (RAriz.) — a pledge he made public during a hearing Thursday morning — that four military projects in Arizona would not be touched by the president’s emergency declaration.

Meanwhile, assistant attorney general Steven A. Engel sat down one-on-one with various Senate Republicans to detail the legal arguments to them directly, according to a GOP senator familiar with the meetings. And the administration assured Lankford that it would not start drawing from $3.6 billion slated for military construction projects for at least six months.

Capitol Hill aides were concerned Trump would lash out at senators who voted no, and McConnell and others in leadership have encouraged the president to focus instead on issues that unite the party moving forward, two people familiar with the talks said.

“I think [the president] respects people with principle,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who told Trump during a private Oval Office meeting last week on China policy that he would be

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) was one of 12 Republicans to vote against President Trump’s emergency declaration.

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voting to reject his declaration.

The administration’s efforts with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) turned out to be the most fruitful.

Shortly after Tillis published a defiant opinion piece in The Washington Post announcing his opposition to Trump’s emergency order, the senator reached out to the White House to assess its willingness to change the emergencies act, which some conservatives have long complained about.

As he engaged in numerous conversations with Justice Department lawyers and the White House Counsel’s Office, Tillis repeatedly asked the administration to commit to something down the line — stressing that he wanted a reason to vote in favor of the declaration, officials said.

Finally, Tillis told the White House two days ago that he would support Trump, according to a senior administration official.

“The White House has been very gracious — and I should say very patient, given my initial position — in working with us, and as late as today, have a president make a statement that he’s willing to work with us,” Tillis said on the Senate floor before he reversed his stance.

Other last-ditch efforts were more dramatic.

Three Republicans — Cruz and Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Ben Sasse (Neb.) — showed up with little notice at the White House late Wednesday and interrupted a private dinner with Trump and first lady Melania Trump, trying to sell the president on a final pitch that would give senators an off-ramp from Thursday’s vote.

Cruz began making the case to Trump that he could reprogram federal dollars toward the wall without having to declare a national emergency to expend even more funds, people familiar with the episode said. Eventually, a White House lawyer was brought into the dinner, telling the senators the option would not legally work.

Trump berated them for showing up at the White House late at night, and told them they were wasting his time.

“Hell, if I’d been him,” Graham remarked Thursday morning, “I’d have told us to go to hell.” n

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Messaging battle over Medicare

BY T OLUSE O LORUNNIPA AND S EAN S ULLIVAN

A

proposal by President Trump to slash Medicare spending puts Republicans in a political bind ahead of the 2020 election as Democrats are pitching an expansion of the popular health-care program for all Americans.

Trump’s 10-year budget unveiled Monday calls for more than $845 billion in reductions for Medicare, aiming to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal program that gives insurance to older Americans. It’s part of a broader proposed belt-tightening effort after deficits soared during the president’s first two years in office in part due to massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

The move immediately tees up a potential messaging battle between Democratic proposals for Medicare-for-all — castigated by Republicans as a socialist boondoggle — and a kind of Medicarefor-less approach focused on cutting back on spending, from the GOP. Democrats, including some seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, seized on the proposed Medicare cuts as an example of the GOP seeking to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly and the poor after giving broad tax breaks to the wealthy.

“Make no mistake about it: Trump’s budget is a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a Monday tweet that highlighted Medicare cuts.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump broke from Republican orthodoxy by promising not to cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. His budget, by contrast, calls for scaling back all three programs.

In states with large senior populations, such as Florida, political attacks over Medicare cuts have proved so effective that both parties have used them. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) won his seat after

OLIVER CONTRERAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Trump’s proposed budget cuts put health-care policy at center of 2020 presidential race running ads last year accusing Democrat Bill Nelson of voting to cut Medicare.

Trump probably needs to win Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other states with large numbers of seniors to secure reelection in 2020. Older Americans consistently vote at higher rates than younger Americans.

Since taking office, Trump has largely left untouched Medicare and other programs heavily used by seniors. Republicans have followed his lead, ditching previous proposals to raise the retirement age or impose other restrictions to save costs and reduce the $22 trillion national debt.

While announcing his presidential bid in June 2015, Trump said he would “save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts.” He added that it was “not fair” to make cuts to a program that people had been paying into for many years, and that he would save it “by making us rich again” and cutting waste, fraud and abuse.

The White House said Monday that Trump’s budget, which calls for changing hospital reimbursement rates and finding savings on drug prices, does not amount to cuts for Medicare or change the program structurally.

“He’s not cutting Medicare in this budget,” Russell Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters Monday at the White House. “Medicare spending will go up every single year by healthy margins, and there are no structural changes for Medicare beneficiaries.”

Some of the Medicare savings — possibly between $250 billion and $300 billion, according to one estimate — would be redirected to other health programs, but most would be eliminated from the budget.

But Trump’s proposed Medicare savings are more than three times as large as those in his previous budget, and industry lobbying groups said the reductions would hurt hospitals and seniors.

Acting White House budget director Russell Vought, flanked by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, speaks during a news briefing Monday.

“The impact on care for seniors would be devastating,” Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a statement.

Many prominent Democratic presidential candidates have embraced some version of a Medicare-for-all system, which would allow most Americans to be covered under the federal program.

Trump and his Republican allies had been on the offensive on health care in recent months, after several Democratic candidates struggled to answer questions about how they would pay for universal coverage and whether they would allow Americans to keep their private insurance.

“Just this week, more than 100 Democrats in Congress signed up for a socialist takeover of American health care,” Trump said earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, claiming that a Medicare-for-all plan would “take away private coverage from over 180 million Americans.”

Democratic strategists and officials argued Monday that Trump’s budget proposal exposed how little credibility Republicans have in debating health care, and showed signs of confidence that it would sharpen the contrast Democrats are seeking to make in the run-up to the 2020 election.

“It totally eviscerates any integrity to their already pretty flimsy attack,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “This assault on Medicare lays bare the real Republican agenda, which is to destroy the healthcare safety net. They have no shred of intellectual underpinning or integrity to their attack on Democrats if they make this kind of proposal.”

Republicans and fiscal conservatives offered tepid praise for the president’s proposal, which would not balance the federal budget until 2034. Republicans have long called for more significant changes to Medicare and other mandatory spending programs that are the biggest drivers of the national debt. n

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NATION

Questioning Boeing’s crash response

BY A ARON G REGG, J ONATHAN O ’ C ONNELL, A NDREW B A T RAN AND F AIZ S IDDIQUI

B

oeing executives sat down last November with pilots at the Allied Pilots Association’s low-slung brick headquarters in Fort Worth.

Tensions were running high.

One of Boeing’s new jets — hailed by the company as an even more reliable version of Boeing’s stalwart 737 — had crashed into the ocean off Indonesia shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board the flight operated by Lion Air. After the crash, Boeing issued a bulletin disclosing that this line of planes, known as the 737 Max 8, was equipped with a new type of software as part of the plane’s automated functions. Some pilots were furious that they were not told about the new software when the plane was unveiled.

Dennis Tajer, a 737 captain who attended the meeting with Boeing executives, recalled, “They said, ‘Look, we didn’t include it because we have a lot of people flying on this and we didn’t want to inundate you with information.’ ” “I’m certain I did say, ‘Well that’s not acceptable,’ ” said Tajer, a leader in the association representing American Airlines pilots.

A Boeing spokesman said the company disputes that any of its executives made that statement.

On Wednesday, federal regulators ordered the grounding of the 737 Max 8 and a similar plane, the 737 Max 9, after another crash involving the plane, on this occasion in Ethiopia last Sunday.

Many other countries had already acted.

In statements throughout the week, Boeing has said that safety is its top priority. But it also announced that it would take several steps to make the planes “even safer,” including updating the flight-control software as well as pilot displays, operating manuals and crew training. The company said these changes would be implemented over the coming weeks.

The announcement comes after

MULUGETA AYENE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Pilots say they raised concerns to executives after Lion Air incident years in which Boeing had trumpeted the new plane as offering a “seamless” transition from previous models, a changeover that would not require carriers to invest in extensive retraining.

And it highlights concerns from pilots and other groups about whether Boeing moved fast enough to address potential problems after the Lion Air crash.

Congress, regulators and the company’s shareholders are now scrutinizing the decisions.

On Wednesday, Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he would hold hearings to study the Federal Aviation Administration’s process for approving the planes.

DeFazio cited a concern that has particularly alarmed pilots,

the introduction of software that was flagged in the bulletin sent out after the Lion Air crash.

The software, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), can in some rare but dangerous situations override pilot control inputs unless it is switched off. This can interfere with pilots’ longtime training that pulling back on the control yoke raises a plane’s nose, putting the plane into a climb.

That means that as a pilot tries to maneuver an airplane, the automated system may be counteracting that pilot’s inputs.

“I’m going to investigate how they came to the conclusion that retraining was not necessary, and then obviously we’re going want to look at how foreign countries certify their pilots and retrain them,” DeFazio said.

A grieving man who lost his wife in the Ethiopian Airlines crash is helped by a member of security forces and others at the scene near Bishoftu, Ethiopia.

‘Nothing on the MCAS’ After the Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday, Boeing said it would update flight-control software, provide more training, introduce “enhancements” to external sensors that measure the direction of an aircraft and make changes to how MCAS is activated.

But two pilots who attended the meeting with Boeing in November after the Lion Air crash said pilots had suggested that the company take these actions at that time.

“Whatever level of training they decided on [before the Lion Air crash], it resulted in an iPad course that I took for less than an hour,” Tajer, the American Airlines pilot, said. “A lot of pilots here at American did that course.”

But he said the course did not cover the new MCAS system.

“There was nothing on the MCAS

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NATION because because even even American American didn’t didn’t know know about about that. that. It It was was just just about about the the display display scenes scenes and and how how the the engines engines are are aa little little different,” different,” he he said. said.

Boeing Boeing did did not not comment comment on on the the pilots’ pilots’ concerns. concerns.

The The same same week week Boeing Boeing execuexecutives tivesmet metwith withpilots pilotsin inFort FortWorth, Worth, they they also also asked asked pilots pilots at at Southwest Southwest Airlines Airlines — — which which also also owns owns 737 737 Max Max planes planes — — to to meet meet with with them. them.

They They hurriedly hurriedly arranged arranged aa conferconference ence room room at at the the Reno Reno Airport Airport the the Sunday Sunday after after Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, said said Jon Jon Weaks, Weaks, president president of of the the SouthSouthwest west Airlines Airlines Pilots Pilots Association.

Association.

“At “At that that meeting, meeting, they they told told us us that that aa software software update update would would probably probably be be forthcoming forthcoming in in the the near near future,” future,” Weaks Weaks said. said.

But But no no update update came came in in the the following following two two months. months.

Boeing Boeing did did not not comment comment on on the the meeting. meeting. In In aa statement statement earlier earlier this this week, week, Boeing Boeing said said it it had had been been working working on on the the software software enhanceenhancements ments for for the the 737 737 Max Max for for the the past past several several months months in in the the aftermath aftermath of of the the crash crash of of Lion Lion Air Air Flight Flight 610.

610.

The The company company said said it it had had been been working working closely closely with with the the FAA FAA on on the the software software update update and and had had also also been been soliciting soliciting feedback feedback from from airairlines lines that that operate operate the the plane. plane.

Pilots Pilots reported reported concerns concerns The The concerns concerns in in meetings meetings with with Boeing Boeing executives executives were were not not the the only only signs signs that that pilots pilots had had concerns concerns about about the the airplane. airplane. A A federal federal flight-safety flight-safety reporting reporting system system concontains tains about about aa dozen dozen reports reports by by pilots pilots expressing expressing exasperation exasperation about about systems systems that that limited limited their their control control of of the the 737 737 Max. Max. Nearly Nearly two-thirds two-thirds of of the the comcomplaints plaints were were mainly mainly flagging flagging perperceived ceived faults faults with with the the aircraft aircraft or or shortcomings shortcomings and and ambiguities ambiguities in in instruction, instruction, according according to to an an analyanalysis sisof ofthe theAviation AviationSafety SafetyReporting Reporting System System by

by The The Washington Washington Post.

Post.

The The Dallas Dallas Morning Morning News News first first reported reported on on the the pilots’ pilots’ complaints. complaints.

“I “I think think it it is is unconscionable unconscionable that that aa manufacturer, manufacturer, the the FAA, FAA, and and the the airlines airlines would would have have pilots pilots flyflying ing an an airplane airplane without without adequateadequately ly training, training, or or even even providing providing available available resources resources and and sufficient sufficient documentation documentation to to understand understand the the highly highly complex complex systems systems that that difdifferentiate ferentiate this this aircraft aircraft from from prior prior models,” models,” one one pilot pilot wrote wrote in in NoNovember. vember. “The “The fact fact that that this this airairplane plane requires requires such such jury jury rigging rigging to to fly fly is is aa red red flag. flag. Now Now we we know know the the systems systems employed employed are are error error prone prone

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has has “not “not seen seen aa single single anomaly anomaly related related to to the the MCAS.” MCAS.”

JEMAL JEMAL COUNTESS/GETTY COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES

Investigators Investigators and and recovery recovery workers workers inspect inspect aa second second engine engine Wednesday Wednesday after after it it is is recovered recovered from from the the scene scene where where Ethiopian Ethiopian Airlines Airlines Flight Flight 302 302 crashed crashed Sunday.

Sunday. The The plane plane was was aa Boeing Boeing 737 737 Max Max 8, 8, as as shown shown at at left. left.

JOE JOE RAEDLE/GETTY RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES

— — even even ifif the the pilots pilots aren’t aren’t sure sure what what those those systems systems are, are, what what reredundancies dundancies are are in in place, place, and and failfailure ure modes.” modes.”

Pilots Pilots expressed expressed confusion confusion about about various various features features of of the the airairplane. plane.

“I “I reviewed reviewed in in my my mind mind our our automation automation setup setup and and flight flight proprofile file but but can’t can’t think think of of any any reason reason the the aircraft aircraft would would pitch pitch nose nose down down so so aggressively,” aggressively,” one one pilot pilot wrote. wrote.

“How “How can can aa Captain Captain not not know know what what switch switch is is meant meant during during aa preflight preflight setup?” setup?” asked asked another. another.

“Poor “Poor training training and and even even poorer poorer documentation; documentation; that that is is how.” how.”

The The FAA FAA pushed pushed back back against against the the idea idea that that these these pilot pilot comcom-

plaints plaintscould couldhave haveassisted assistedin inidenidentifying tifying problems, problems, saying saying they they did did not not involve involve the the MCAS MCAS system system that that has has been been at at the the heart heart of of pilots’ pilots’ concerns. concerns.

“Some “Some of of the the reports reports reference reference possible possible issues issues with with the the autopilot/ autopilot/ autothrottle, autothrottle, which which is is aa separate separate system system from from MCAS, MCAS, and/or and/or acacknowledge knowledge the the problems problems could could have have been been due due to to pilot pilot error,” error,” it it said said in in aa statement. statement.

Boeing Boeing declined declined to to comment comment on on the the system. system. Southwest, Southwest, which which uses uses the the 737 737 Max Max planes, planes, said said it it had had received received no no reports reports of of issues issues with with the the MCAS MCAS system. system. American American AirAirlines lines said said it it reviewed reviewed data data for for more more than than 14,000 14,000 flights flights since since the the Lion Lion Air Air crash crash in in Indonesia Indonesia and and

Reputational Reputational crisis crisis In In its its order order grounding grounding the the planes planes Wednesday, Wednesday, the the FAA FAA said said it it had had received received information information from from the the Ethiopian Ethiopian Airlines Airlines wreckage wreckage “con“concerning cerning the the aircraft’s aircraft’s configuraconfiguration tion just just after after takeoff takeoff that, that, taken taken together together with with newly newly refined refined data data from from satellite-based satellite-based tracking tracking of of the the aircraft’s aircraft’s flight flight path, path, indicates indicates some some similarities” similarities” between between what what happened happened with with that that flight flight and and the the Lion Lion Air Air flight flight in in Indonesia.

Indonesia.

Boeing Boeing is is scrambling scrambling to to mainmaintain tain its its reputation reputation for for making making safe safe and and profitable profitable airplanes. airplanes. Chief Chief exexecutive ecutive Dennis Dennis A. A. Muilenburg Muilenburg called called President President Trump Trump on on TuesTuesday, day, the the White White House House said, said, to to vouch vouch for for the the safety safety of of the the planes. planes.

On On Wednesday, Wednesday, the the company company issued issuedaastatement statementsaying sayingthat that“out “out of of an an abundance abundance of of caution caution and and to to reassure reassure the the flying flying public public of of the the aircraft’s aircraft’s safety,” safety,” it it agreed agreed with with the the FAA’s FAA’s decision decision to to ground ground the the planes. planes.

“Boeing “Boeing continues continues to to have have full full confidence confidence in in the the safety safety of of the the 737 737 MAX,” MAX,” the the company company said. said.

Boeing Boeing designed designed the the 737 737 Max Max to to fly fly up up to to 3,850 3,850 miles, miles, and and it it became became aa key key tool tool in in the the company’s company’s global global ambitions. ambitions.

The The Max Max uses uses engines engines that that are are both both bigger bigger and and more more fuel-effifuel-efficient, cient, and and the the new new engines engines have have been been moved moved slightly slightly forward forward on on the the wings wings compared compared with with previous previous models. models. To To compensate compensate for for the the repositioning, repositioning, Boeing Boeing added added MCAS MCAS to to replicate replicate the the handling handling characteristics characteristics of of earlier earlier models. models.

In In the the Lion Lion Air Air crash, crash, according according to to aa preliminary preliminary report, report, the the 737 737 Max Max seemed seemed to to careen careen up up and and down down repeatedly. repeatedly. Analysts Analysts said said this this suggested suggested the the MCAS MCAS system system was was redirecting redirecting the the plane plane whenevwhenever er it it went went into into aa nose-up nose-up position position by by pointing pointing the the nose nose down. down.

In In an an appearance appearance on on CNBC CNBC in in December, December, Muilenburg Muilenburg was was asked asked whether whether the the company company was was doing doing enough enoughto toensure ensurepilots pilotswere werepropproperly erly trained trained after after the the October October crash. crash.

Muilenburg Muilenburg said said that that the the comcompany’s pany’s bulletin bulletin on on the the software software helped helped in in “directing “directing pilots pilots and and airlines airlines to to these these existing existing proprocedures” cedures”and andthat thatBoeing Boeingwas was“tak“taking ing aa look look at at that that to to make make sure sure all all the the appropriate appropriate training training is is in in place place and andthat thatthe thecommunications communicationswith with our our customers customers are are there.” there.”nn

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Comedian tops Ukraine polls. No joke.

B Y A NTON T ROIANOVSKI in Kiev, Ukraine

I

n the second season of the Ukrainian hit TV show “Servant of the People,” comedian Volodymyr Zelensky plays a schoolteacher turned presidential candidate who shoots to the top of the polls amid voter disgust with the political establishment.

Zelensky is now running for president in real life.

With just weeks to go until Ukraine’s March 31 election, he has shot to the top of the polls amid — as in the show — voter disgust with the political establishment.

And just to blur the lines even more: His party is called Servant of the People.

“People are voting for the plot of the show,” said Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko. “They want to bring the plot of the show to life.”

As Ukraine’s deadly conflict with Russian-backed separatists drags on, a 41-year-old comedian with no political experience is increasingly a favorite to take over as its commander in chief.

The reason? Five years after the country’s pro-Western revolution, its people still thirst for change.

Street protests in 2014 marked a decisive turn away from Moscow, but they did far less to modernize the economy or root out corruption. President Petro Poroshenko’s government and administration have been beset by infighting and state spending scandals. The economy, suffering from weak investor confidence and the war in the heavily industrial east, still hasn’t recovered from its near-collapse five years ago.

The most prominent candidates heading into the election campaign represented the old guard: the incumbent Poroshenko, who is also a chocolate tycoon and one of Ukraine’s richest men, and the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

For them, things have not gone according to plan.

EFREM LUKATSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

In ‘parallel universe,’ the front-runner seeking to be president also plays one on television Zelensky, who declared his candidacy on national television on the New Year’s Eve edition of his variety show, has led Tymoshenko and Poroshenko in almost every published poll since early February.

The building disbelief among Ukraine’s political class echoes the furor of the establishment as Zelensky’s character rises in the polls in “Servant of the People.”

Voting for Zelensky for president, Tymoshenko told a Ukrainian interviewer recently, was like making the beet soup borscht out of Cheburashka, a Soviet-era cartoon character.

“This is a sort of experiment, but it’s certainly not tasty,” Tymoshenko said.

In “Servant of the People,” which premiered in 2015, the schoolteacher played by Zelensky becomes an overnight sensation after his impromptu rant against government corruption goes viral.

He is elected president and goes on to fight the entrenched elites, refusing to be bought. In Season 2, which started airing in late 2017, Zelensky’s character resigns as president after facing down the International Monetary Fund and then stages an improbable, underdog reelection campaign.

“We’re living in a parallel universe,” said a senior Western diplomat in Kiev who, like many colleagues, has been catching up on the show. “People are confusing what’s real and what’s fiction.”

Coming in the wake of President Trump’s election and the success of comedian Beppe Grillo’s populist Five Star Movement in Italy, Zelensky’s rise echoes that of other outsiders storming into politics.

But it is possible that no recent presidential campaign has featured such a head-spinning blend of fact and fiction.

Volodymyr Zelensky is the front-runner ahead of Ukraine’s March 31 presidential election. He is a comedian who also plays the nation’s president on the television series “Servant of the People.”

Just like his character in Season 2, Zelensky, the real-life candidate, has taken to addressing voters in selfie videos and recording himself talking to regular Ukrainians. Zelensky’s campaign videos on his YouTube channel include clips from “Servant of the People” interspersed amid footage from Zelensky’s actual campaign.

Unlike his character, Zelensky has not yet pulled all the funds from his campaign coffers to install safer, glowing sidewalks across the country. And Zelensky says that as president, he wouldn’t hurl an obscenity at the IMF as his character does in the show because “in life, we don’t have the right to.”

He claims his real-life principles do match those of the incorruptible, everyman character he plays on TV. “To some degree, maybe people really do have the feeling that the guy on screen and the guy in real life are one and the same person,” Zelensky told foreign journalists earlier this month in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

“This might even be true, to some extent.”

Zelensky’s true politics are a mystery.

He says he’s in favor of Ukraine seeking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, but that those moves should be endorsed by the public in a referendum. He says he’s ready to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in eastern Ukraine, but he’s offered few specifics on how he would accomplish that without ceding any territory to Russia.

He insists all of Ukraine’s powerful oligarchs will be equal before the courts. But critics doubt the same will hold for Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the billionaire rival of Poroshenko who owns the channel that aired Zelensky’s show.

“It’s extremely difficult right now to say what kind of a president he’ll be,” said Fesenko, the analyst. “I think he himself doesn’t know what his politics will be.” n

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POLITICS

O’Rourke’s career boosted by GOP M ICHAEL S CHERER in El Paso BY

B

efore Beto O’Rourke became the darling of liberal online donors, his top financial backers hailed from a different set entirely — wealthy business executives practiced in the art of winning Republican political influence with campaign cash.

Several of El Paso’s richest business moguls donated to and raised money for O’Rourke’s city council campaigns, drawn to his support for a plan to redevelop El Paso’s poorer neighborhoods. Some later backed a super PAC that would play a key role in helping him defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman.

For his part, O’Rourke worked on issues that had the potential to make money for some of his benefactors. His support as a council member for the redevelopment plan, which sparked controversy at the time because it involved relocating low-income residents, many of them Hispanic, coincided with property investments by some of his benefactors.

As a congressman, he supported a $2 billion military funding increase that benefited a company controlled by another major donor. That donor, real estate developer Woody Hunt, was friends with O’Rourke’s late father. Hunt also co-founded and funds an El Paso nonprofit organization that has employed O’Rourke’s wife since 2016.

“We shared a common goal,” said Ted Houghton, a local financial adviser and longtime O’Rourke donor who raised money for former Texas governor Rick Perry, a Republican, and helped steer millions in state transportation funding to the city. “The common goal was we needed to move El Paso in a different direction.”

O’Rourke, who emerged in 2018 as a Democratic sensation in his narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz (RTex.), launched his campaign for president on Thursday promising a new era of unity as he campaigned in eastern Iowa.

In contrast to the aspirational

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Former congressman’s ties to Republican moneymen are likely to be issue in 2020 bid image he has fostered in recent years, however, O’Rourke’s political career traced a more traditional path for a Texas politician — winning support from a typically pro-GOP business establishment interested in swaying public policy. Born into one politically potent family and married into another, he benefited repeatedly from his relationships with El Paso’s most powerful residents.

The former congressman’s GOP ties are likely to become an issue as he enters a crowded Democratic presidential primary field that has so far leaned leftward. Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have already criticized O’Rourke’s voting record as insufficiently liberal.

Republicans are also piling on.

A recent ad in by the Club for Growth, a conservative group, described O’Rourke pushing a redevelopment scheme “to bulldoze a poor Hispanic neighborhood.”

O’Rourke and his allies did not see it that way. At the start of his career, O’Rourke went door-to-

door to sell the plan, crafted by the El Paso Del Norte Group, a duespaying alliance by business and community leaders on both sides of the border.

O’Rourke, his mother, his wife and his father-in-law, William Sanders — one of the nation’s most famous real estate investors — had all been members of the group, who included many of the financial backers of his early campaigns. Sanders led a private investment group that was buying up downtown properties, along with other donors to O’Rourke’s campaigns.

The plan initially called for seizing land in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods through eminent domain — the same tactic that O’Rourke has opposed as part of the Trump administration’s plan to build a border wall. Faced with accusations of a potential conflict of interest, O’Rourke eventually agreed to recuse himself on votes on the plan, which was later shelved.

When O’Rourke moved home

Newly announced 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke meets Iowa voters at the Lost Canvas in downtown Keokuk, Iowa, on Thursday.

after college in 1998 and started an Internet services and software company, two local Democratic politicians who would become political mentors were beginning to put the pieces in place for the city’s rebirth. Future mayor Ray Caballero and then-state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh crafted a plan in the late 1990s to attract more educated professionals. The state’s power structure at the time was dominated by Republicans, so the Democrats began to recruit local business leaders to the cause.

They included people like Hunt and oil refining billionaire Paul Foster, who would become fundraisers and donors for Gov. George W. Bush and his successor, Perry.

Hunt, Foster, Houghton and others were rewarded by Bush or Perry with appointments to state boards, from which they would eventually help win huge new investments to El Paso.

While Republican donors from El Paso were working to get a foothold in Austin, Caballero and Shapleigh began urging a group of young liberals to run for El Paso city council. O’Rourke was a star of the group.

“Bottom line, he wants to get things done. That’s his history,” said Shapleigh. “He can walk across the aisle and get people to support him.”

Once O’Rourke got to Congress, he made cleaning up corruption in government a top priority. He stopped taking money from political action committees after his first term, promised to support term limits for members of Congress, and sponsored bills to provide partial public financing for campaigns and limit donations to national party committees.

At the same time, O’Rourke continued to received large amounts of money from employees of companies run by major donors. Employees of one of his father-in-law’s former companies, Strategic Growth Bank, including Sanders himself, gave $57,400 during his 2014 and 2016 House campaigns. Employees of El Pasobased Western Refining, including its chairman Foster, gave $10,600 in 2014. n

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Stephanie Hinze, who has spina bifida, holds her son Harrison, 2, in Gainesville, Ga. Hinze is now pregnant for the second time.

PHOTOS BY ELIJAH NOUVELAGE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

Scientists set sights on rarely studied condition:

Pregnancy

BY CAROLYN Y . JOHNSON

For two years, a group of world-class scientists pitched their idea for a hot new biotech company to investors: a start-up focused on a promising therapy for preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication that can become life-threatening. It was cutting-edge science, backed by a Nobel laureate, a Harvard kidney specialist, a leading chemist, and a biologist with both expertise and personal experience. ¶ Eventually, they gave up — not on the science, and not on preeclampsia — but on the investors. ¶ “We talked to so many different venture capitalists and other companies. The scientists and doctors would get excited,” said Melissa Moore, a University of Massachusetts Medical School scientist who began working on preeclampsia after she suffered from it in 2003 and was put on bed rest for more than a month, only to give birth seven weeks early to a baby girl who weighed less than four pounds. “But as soon as their lawyers heard ‘sick, pregnant women,’ nothing happened,” Moore said. “There’s such a sense of liability.”

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COVER STORY

Moore and her colleagues’ experience highlights a persistent problem in medical research.

About 10 percent of reproductive-age women become pregnant each year in the United States, but far less research is done into pregnancy than into much less common conditions.

The effect of medicines on pregnant women and their fetuses is rarely studied. Basic understanding of pregnancy itself is full of gaping scientific holes, mysteries that include how the placenta forms and what, exactly, controls the timing of birth. Some pregnancy experts call the placenta, an organ that is necessary for all human reproduction, the Rodney Dangerfield of the human body because it gets “no respect.”

The default assumption has long been — and, to a large extent, still is — that it’s essential to protect pregnant women from research, rather than ensure they benefit from its rapid progress. But concerted pressure from scientists and advocates is slowly beginning to change policy and research culture.

In January, an updated federal policy that governs protections for human research subjects went into effect, officially removing pregnant women from being listed as “vulnerable to coercion or undue influence,” alongside children and “mentally disabled” people.

“We all joke about pregnancy brain, but I was still able to make decisions for myself and my fetus,” said Sonja Rasmussen, a pediatrician and clinical geneticist at the University of Florida.

Separately, a federal task force last year recommended that pregnant women’s participation in drug trials that offered benefit to the fetus no longer require the approval of the father of the child as well.

“Once the child is born, only consent of one parent is needed,” said Catherine Spong, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who chaired the task force. “Given the autonomy of pregnant women and the evolution of family structure, we really should align that with parental consent for pediatrics.”

Activists successfully pushed for more women to be included in medical research in the 1990s, but pregnant and lactating women have largely been left behind. Now, another round of activism that began a decade ago is pushing new thinking on pregnancy. High maternal mortality rates in the United States have intensified the focus, and there is a growing awareness that conditions during pregnancy can affect a baby’s risk of developing chronic conditions late in life.

Some researchers note that pregnant women are increasingly being studied in their own right — and not just as the environment in which a fetus develops. Recent evidence suggests that pregnancy complications may predict women’s susceptibility to dementia or heart disease decades later.

“Probably most people think pregnancy is a time-limited experience, and therefore, because it lasts only nine months, we don’t need to invest that many resources in it — because it’ll be over soon,” said Diana Bianchi, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child

Health and Human Development. “But that’s really a fallacious idea. Pregnancy is a stress test for a woman, and there are these dual opportunities, to both understand what lies ahead for the pregnant woman, but also by doing research that ensures a healthy pregnancy, we’re contributing to the long-term health of the nation.”

Left out of drug trials The medical attitude toward pregnancy was shaped more than half a century ago by the thalidomide crisis, when women who took the medication for morning sickness had babies with birth defects. The incident helped launch the modern era of U.S. drug regulation, with requirements to prove the effectiveness and safety of drugs before they could be approved for sale. Pregnant women, however, are typically left out of such research.

One study found that the risks to human pregnancy were “undetermined” in 98 percent of prescription drugs approved between 2000 and 2010. An analysis of historical data reaching back to 1980 showed it took nearly three decades on average to get moreprecise risk information. That’s despite the fact that of the 6 million women in the United States who are pregnant each year, 90 percent take at least one medication.

Anne Drapkin Lyerly, a bioethicist and obstetrician at the University of North Carolina at

Hinze at home with her sons Ethan, 3, and Harrison, 2.

Chapel Hill, said that there is a deepseated norm to leave pregnant women out of clinical trials, reinforced by policies that have classified them as “vulnerable” and institutional rules that have made it easier to avoid considering the potential risks and benefits altogether.

“If you want to exclude a pregnant woman from research, all you’ve got to do is check the box; she’s excluded, no explanation needed,” Lyerly said. “If you want to include her, there’s a whole slew of paperwork and decisions, and you have to justify your decision.”

Taking women out of the vulnerable category is a long way from changing their access to drug trials or changing the incentives drug companies have to include them, but advocates say it’s a long-overdue start. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also released draft guidance on when to include women in clinical trials, laying out the case that there is a “critical public health need” for more information on how to use drugs safely in pregnant women.

“If you don’t do these studies, then you don’t have the data to base your decision, but you’re still making decisions,” Spong said. “You’re providing care in the absence of data.”

During the flu pandemic of 2009, Rasmussen recalled deliberating with other experts on whether the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should recommend that pregnant women be given Tamiflu — which it did.

“It’s one of the things I’m proudest of in my

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COVER STORY

career, is we looked at that and weighed the risk and benefits instead of the knee-jerk ‘We can’t let pregnant women have that because the data are limited,’ ” Rasmussen said.

Women with disabilities For people who are pregnant or hope to conceive, the unknowns extend far beyond what drugs women can safely take. The National Institutes of Health, which tracks its research funding on nearly 300 health categories, ranging from rare Batten disease to ubiquitous allergies, began breaking out its spending on pregnancy, maternal health and breast-feeding in only 2017.

Stephanie Hinze, 37, of suburban Atlanta, lives with spina bifida and has used a wheelchair since she was 8 years old. When she and her husband decided to conceive, there was little information for her to rely on — except for an informal network of other women with disabilities who had already had children. Concerns included whether it was safe to carry a child at all; fertility questions; whether she was gaining weight at the right rate, given that doctor’s offices weren’t equipped with accessible scales; and what to do when she couldn’t feel the baby moving because of a decreased lack of sensation in her abdomen.

Hinze, who has two sons, one of whom is adopted, is now pregnant for the second time.

She says she was lucky — her first pregnancy

Hinze makes chocolate chip cookies with her son Ethan.

went smoothly and her medical team was supportive, contrasting with anecdotes she has heard from others. But at each step, they were solving new puzzles.

“My doctor, while he was great and very receptive, didn’t know everything to expect. As things happened during the pregnancy, he’d say, ‘Let’s deal with this issue and let’s figure this out.’ ” Hinze said. “You don’t want to go in and your doctor’s not entirely sure what the solution will be for what’s going on.”

NIH last year partnered with the CDC to survey how disabled women experience pregnancy. The questions they hope to answer include: Are they more likely to develop complications? Does disability affect women’s ability to breast-feed? What is their basic experience of pregnancy like?

“We don’t know,” said Alison Cernich, director of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, describing the evidence gap around disability and pregnancy that she attributes to a “quadfecta” of barriers for women: Women’s health is often overlooked, many disabled women belong to ethnic groups that do not receive optimal care because of bias, many disabled people experience poverty, and disabilities are often stigmatized.

The basic science of pregnancy, too, is getting a closer look, as NIH has so far funded $76 million in research projects to study the human placenta, the temporary organ that provides

KLMNO WEEKLY

oxygen and nutrients to the fetus. The recent discovery that it is possible to grow a miniature version of the placenta in a laboratory setting may help scientists understand fundamental questions about how it develops, in part in response to secretions from the uterus.

“Even in the 21st century, we don’t know what’s in the secretions, we don’t know the composition of them, which the whole of the future of the human species depends on,” said Graham Burton, a professor of the physiology of reproduction at the University of Cambridge.

The placenta is necessary for a successful pregnancy, but it also affects the health of the pregnant woman. Preeclampsia, which causes maternal high blood pressure, is caused in part by proteins released from the placenta that affect the function of blood vessels in the mother.

There is no treatment for preeclampsia, which ends only when the woman delivers the baby — and the placenta.

Surendra Sharma, a professor of pediatrics at Brown University, has been trying to tease out the science behind an alarming observation made by other researchers: Women with preeclampsia appear to be at increased risk for dementia decades later. Intriguingly, he has found that there are misfolded proteins in placentas from women with preeclampsia, similar to those found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s.

Women with preeclampsia are also at increased risk for heart disease and stroke.

The idea that treating preeclampsia could help both mothers and babies adds urgency to the quest of Moore and colleagues, who have been disappointed but not deterred by the lack of investor enthusiasm.

“It was an eye-opener, really, to see how worried drug developers seemed to be about the pregnancy indication, but on the other hand, I don’t think it’s an insurmountable thing,” said Craig Mello, a Nobel laureate and co-founder of the fizzled start-up.

Late last year, Moore and colleagues demonstrated a therapy’s promise in treating a baboon version of preeclampsia. They hope to develop the drug through an unconventional nonprofit model.

Moore’s expertise is rooted in basic biology, a deep understanding of a molecule called RNA that performs a slew of basic functions in cells, including turning instructions written in the genetic code into proteins and regulating the genome. When Moore was pregnant and suffering from preeclampsia, she first met S. Ananth Karumanchi, a Harvard physician who had discovered a protein that was overabundant in women with preeclampsia — and they began talking about using RNA to reduce the level of protein. Translating that insight into an effective drug now depends critically on a UMass Medical School chemist, Anastasia Khvorova.

As relative newcomers to the field of pregnancy, the team is undeterred by history.

“One of the reasons we’ve not had a lot of drugs for pregnant women is the risk is viewed as too high — and that’s really unfortunate,” said Karumanchi, who recently moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Social media’s social responsibility MARGARET SULLIVAN is The Washington Post’s media columnist.

Right from the twisted start, those who plotted to kill worshipers at two New Zealand mosques depended on the passive incompetence of Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms.

They depended on the longtime priorities of the tech giants who, for years, have concentrated on maximizing revenue, not protecting safety or decency.

They got it.

Many hours after the massacre, a horrific 17-minute video — showing a man in black shooting with a semiautomatic rifle at those running from mosques and shooting into piles of bodies — could still be easily accessed on YouTube.

My colleague, Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell, summed up the social media disaster succinctly in a tweet: “The New Zealand massacre was live-streamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commented about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.”

It gets worse. The brutality that killed at least 49 people and wounded many others was fueled and fomented on social media — inviting support and, no doubt, inspiring future copy cats.

One of the suspects had posted

a 74-page manifesto railing against Muslims and immigrants, making it clear that he was following the example of those like Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. All of it ricocheted around the globe, just as planned.

The platforms, when challenged on their role in viral violence, tend to say that there is no way they can control the millions of videos, documents and statements being uploaded or posted every hour around the world. They respond when they can, which is often with agonizing slowness and far too late.

And they insist on presenting themselves not as media companies with some sort of gatekeeping or editing responsibility, but as mere platforms — places for their

billions of users to do pretty much what they wish.

To the extent that the companies do control content, they depend on low-paid moderators or on faulty algorithms. Meanwhile, they put tremendous resources and ingenuity — including the increasing use of artificial intelligence — into their efforts to maximize clicks and advertising revenue.

This is far from the first time acts of violence have been posted in real time. Since Facebook’s live-video tool began in 2015, it’s been used to simulcast murder, child abuse and every sort of degradation.

But the tragedy in New Zealand takes this dangerous — and largely untended — situation to a new level that demands intense scrutiny and reform.

Granted, there are tough issues here, including those involving free speech and the free flow of information on the Internet.

Reddit, for one, often takes the view that its users deserve to be treated like grown-ups, to see what they want to see.

As its representatives on Friday closed down a thread called “watchpeopledie,” where users commented on the massacre video, they sounded regretful:

“The video is being scrubbed from major social-media platforms, but hopefully Reddit believes in letting you decide for yourself whether or not you want to see unfiltered reality,” the post said. “Regardless of what you believe, this is an objective look into a terrible incident like this.”

Where are the lines between censorship and responsibility?

These are issues that major news companies have been dealing with for their entire existences — what photos and videos to publish, what profanity to include.

Editorial judgment, often flawed, is not only possible. It’s necessary.

The scale and speed of the digital world obviously complicates that immensely. But saying, in essence, “we can’t help it” and “that’s not our job” are not acceptable answers.

Friday’s massacre should force the major platforms — which are really media companies, though they don’t want to admit it — to get serious.

As violence goes more and more viral, tech companies need to deal with the crisis that they have helped create.

They must figure out ways to be responsible global citizens as well as profit-making machines. n

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OPINIONS

BY LISA BENSON

DNC’s debate move will backfire CHRISTINE EMBA writes about ideas and society for The Washington Post’s opinion section.

Election seasons are littered with unforced errors.

In 2012, Mitt Romney’s dismissal of the “47 percent ” — supposedly government-dependent, non-taxpaying Barack Obama voters — helped to derail his campaign in the final months of the presidential campaign season.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s offhand comments about the “deplorables” — irredeemably racist, sexist, xenophobic Donald Trump supporters — had much the same effect, except to an even greater extent.

Both carried more than a whiff of arrogance. “We don’t even need to bother with that segment of the population,” both statements conveyed. “We don’t care about you. Your participation is incidental to our goals.”

In Clinton’s case, the gaffe turned into one of the defining mistakes of her doomed campaign, energizing her opposition and delivering a ready-made rallying cry.

Reflecting on her loss in 2017, Clinton even described her “deplorables” comments as a “political gift” to her opponent.

One would hope that the Democratic Party would have learned from that disaster. Yet, in 2019, the Democratic National Committee’s decision to bar Fox News from hosting any of its

primary debates is sure to be just as counterproductive.

Earlier this month, the New Yorker published an 11,000-word article by writer Jane Mayer, reporting that Fox News had essentially devolved into a propaganda outlet for President Trump.

Among other things, Mayer’s reporting alleged that Trump and Fox News’s most popular hosts are in constant conversation; that Fox News killed a deeply unflattering Trump story ahead of the 2016 election; and that the channel may have leaked questions to then-candidate Trump in advance of the presidential debates it hosted.

In a statement, DNC Chairman Tom Perez cited that reporting as evidence that the network was “not in a position to host a fair

BY CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS

and neutral debate for Democratic candidates.”

Fair point. Maybe the channel that seems to spend approximately 20 out of 24 hours debating whether Democrats really hate America or only mostly do (and the other four hours stalking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) isn’t the best place for Democratic candidates to hold a substantive, left-leaning policy discussion.

But then again, is that what presidential primary debates are for?

The Democratic debates are unlikely to be a locus of serious discussion. In reality, they’re an early-stage beauty pageant. The objective of the 12 scheduled debates is to allow potential voters, especially those unfamiliar with the slate of perhaps as many as 15 or 20 Democratic candidates, to put faces to names.

On MSNBC one recent night, Perez admitted as much, saying that of his two “north stars” for planning the upcoming debates, the first was “to make sure as many people as possible see our candidates.”

Even Tucker Carlson cackling away in the moderator’s chair wouldn’t have prevented the DNC from succeeding at that — in fact, it might have helped. Fox News is,

after all, the most-watched cable news network. Furthermore, a non-trivial portion of conservative voters and potential voters get their news only from Fox News and shun other networks, which means an appearance on the channel might have been one of the few times a Democratic hopeful could actually present his or her case (or some of it, at least) to such viewers in their own words.

Yet, in its attempt to make the already-obvious point that the channel tilts hard right, the DNC has made it more challenging for the outlet’s viewers to consider the opposition.

By cutting Fox News out of the debates entirely, it has alienated even the few responsible journalists from that network and given Fox News defenders even more fuel for their antiDemocratic tirades.

Just what the nation needs.

In 2016, Clinton denigrating the nation’s so-called deplorables only made them stronger, feeding a sense of persecution and providing a “countercultural” identity that has been worn with pride ever since.

While Fox News may deserve Perez’s rebuke, branding it the “deplorable” channel will likely produce a similar backlash. n

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