The Washington Post National Weekly - April 2, 2017

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

.

IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY

Fear, hope and deportations On a Texas prairie, distance grows between neighbors over an American birthright PAGE 12

Politics She is Pence’s shield 4

World Kim Jong Un isn’t crazy 10

5 Myths College admissions 23

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

2

Have you tried it yet?

DIGITAL EDITION

Log in from any computer or smart device using the same user name and password that you use for wenatcheeworld.com:

wenatcheeworld.com/digital/

Introducing the Digital Edition of The Wenatchee World!

Take us with you on your phone, tablet, or laptop

• Exact replica of the printed newspaper • Flip pages digitally, just like a newspaper • Zoom in and out or double click the story to read in “article view” • Switch to “dynamic view” with thumbnails of the day’s stories - looks great on mobile!

• Live feed for the latest and breaking news

• Email and share stories on social media right from your digital newspaper • Easy access to our website from the Digital Edition • Included with any print or online subscription • Digital Editions available for 14 days • Download the app

Are you a print subscriber who hasn’t ever logged in to wenatcheeworld.com?

Log on to wenatcheeworld.com/subscribe/ and click the Activate button at the top of the page and follow the steps.

Not a subscriber yet? Log on to wenatcheeworld.com/subscribe/

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

3

KLMNO WEEKLY

ANALYSIS

These roles sound familial P HILIP B UMP

political capital. “The best of all worlds would be that I get either Donald Trump Jr. or Chris Cox to say the coalition . . . actually supports the ithout the usual pomp of an Oval bill that I’m promoting,” he told the newspaper.

Office handshake or even the de rigueur “JOBS!” tweet, President Eric Trump. (Trump’s son.) Eric Trump has Trump directly created new been tasked with helping Don Jr. lead the employment for an American this past week — Trump Organization. The other week, it was an American woman, no less. In a quiet reported that he would still maintain contact announcement from the White House, it was with his father — as you might expect — but revealed that the ranks of the unemployed fell that the contact probably would include from 7,528,000 in February to 7,527,999 with regular updates on how the business is doing.

Ivanka Trump’s acceptance of a formal position Forbes’s Dan Alexander spoke to Eric Trump, at the White House. who said that there was a “clear separation of The announcement brings to an end a very church and state that we maintain” in regard to weird and lengthy dance isolating his father from during which the first the business. And yet, he daughter went from would provide Trump denying that she’d be with updates “on the involved in the bottom line, profitability administration to acting reports and stuff like as a sort-of first lady to that” every quarter or so. advising her father “I talk to him a lot. informally — but, after We’re pretty concerns about her inseparable,” Eric adherence to ethics Trump said. rules were raised, Lara Trump. (Eric acceding to a formal, Trump’s wife and the Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Lara Trump all have White House ties. unpaid position. president’s daughter-in(Luckily for the president’s economic information about what his company is doing. law.) On Wednesday, it was announced that numbers, that one unpaid job won’t move the That said, USA Today reported Wednesday that Lara Trump would take a new position as well, needle on wages much.) The position’s title: a gun rights coalition announced at the tail end serving as a senior consultant to a company assistant to the president. of the presidential campaign that it expects to called Giles-Parscale, which does Web design While Ivanka Trump has attracted a lot of leverage Donald Trump Jr.’s relationship with and digital marketing. You may know the the attention, it’s important to note that much the White House to convey policy priorities to name Parscale from the campaign. Brad of the rest of the president’s family also will the president.

Parscale served as Trump’s go-to digital remain linked to him and his administration in “As it was explained to me, this whole thing strategist, working with the campaign on the some way — including the two sons who are is about providing policy and legislative development of its online advertising. supposed to be walled-off, running the family recommendations for the new administration Lara Trump’s background is in television, business. through Donald Trump Jr.,” said John Boch, having served as a producer for “Inside Edition.” co-chairman of the gun rights coalition and Her role with Giles-Parscale? According to the Jared Kushner. (Ivanka Trump’s husband head of the nonprofit Guns Save Life.

Associated Press, she will “serve as a liaison . . . and the president’s son-in-law.) Kushner, as Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) echoed the to Trump’s ongoing campaign.” most readers know, serves as a senior adviser assumption that Trump Jr. would provide The job creation continues apace. n to the president. His hiring was the trigger for BY

W

KLMNO WEEKLY

the Justice Department’s formal determination that the White House was exempt from federal prohibitions against hiring family members. In his position, Kushner has been involved in any number of upper-level decisions the president has made.

Donald Trump Jr. (Trump’s son.) Trump Jr. will help lead the Trump Organization while his father serves as president. Trump himself resigned from leadership positions with the organization to avoid conflicts of interest that might arise if he were asked to make a decision about something that might affect his company.

It’s implied, then, that he will be insulated from

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 3, No. 25

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

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER Tamara Estes, seen with her dogs in Valley View, Tex., feels that Americans will have better job prospects once undocumented immigrants, even her neighbors, are deported.

(Photo by LINDA DAVIDSON/ The Washington Post)

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

4

KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Beside the vice president stands a ‘prayer warrior’

JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Karen Pence’s bond with her husband extends from marriage into politics BY

A SHLEY P ARKER

D

uring the first of Vice President Pence’s two unsuccessful races for Congress, he rode a single-speed bicycle more than 250 miles around his district, much of it accompanied by his wife, Karen, along for the journey.

During their time in the Indiana governor’s mansion, the Pences installed twin treadmills upstairs in their residence.

And during his years as a House member in Washington, after he had finally won on his third attempt, Mike Pence proudly displayed an antique red phone on his desk — a Christmas gift from his wife for which only she had the number, a hotline straight from her to him.

More than a decade later, even as cellphones

were the norm, Mike Pence had that same red phone installed in his statehouse office — a reminder, both physical and symbolic, of the direct and enduring connection between Mike and Karen Pence.

Now, as second lady, Karen Pence, 60, remains a key influence on one of President Trump’s most important political allies. She sat in on at least one interview as the vice president assembled his staff, accompanied her husband on his first foreign trip and joins him for off-the-record briefings with reporters, acting as his gut check and shield.

On the vice president’s visit last month to Germany and Belgium, the Pences quietly toured the Dachau concentration camp, often holding hands, and huddled together on the Air Force Two ride home to debrief on the trip.

Vice President Mike Pence takes the stage with his wife, Karen Pence, at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership meeting on Feb. 24 in Las Vegas.

When Mike Pence, 57, ventured to the back of the plane to chat off the record with reporters, his wife accompanied him, bearing a silver tray of cookies and standing by his side for the 20-minute conversation.

“As governor, Mike Pence had a very tight inner circle, and Karen Pence was very much a part of that,” said Brian Howey, publisher of Howey Politics Indiana, a nonpartisan political newsletter in the state. “I would characterize her as the silent, omnipresent partner. You knew she was there, you knew there was some considerable influence she wielded, but, boy, she was not public about it.”

Over the years, Karen Pence has repeatedly said that one of her “hard and fast rules” is that she never weighs in on or attempts to influence policy.

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

5

POLITICS Pence, through a spokeswoman, declined interview requests for this profile. (Her spokeswoman did, however, say she would be open to participating in a story that focused solely on her art therapy initiatives and other passions.)

Friends and aides, meanwhile, say she is the Pence family “prayer warrior,” a woman so inextricably bound to her husband that even thencandidate Trump understood her importance and consulted her in critical campaign moments.

When Trump called to offer Mike Pence the No. 2 slot, the businessman knew Karen Pence was by his side and asked, “I hear Karen is there, too? Can I talk to her?” And nearly three months later, when an “Access Hollywood” tape revealed Trump talking crudely about women, Trump called his running mate to apologize and then asked him to hand the phone to his wife, so he could apologize personally to her, too.

Though aides said Karen Pence was among those most upset by the tape, they stressed that she also emerged privately as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders overall.

“She was a major part of our campaign, and she just never flinched,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “Karen Pence was one of the biggest pro-Trump people and Trump defenders there was. . . . She has a great sense of people and saw at events and rallies the enthusiasm and support for Mr. Trump.”

Born Karen Sue Batten in Kansas, she grew up just north of downtown Indianapolis, where she met Steve Whitaker, her first husband, in high school, where she was valedictorian and president of the Speech Club. In a telephone interview, Whitaker recalled few details about his 21-year-old bride. The marriage ended, he said, after they simply grew apart as he, then a medical student, spent long hours at the hospital.

In fact, he added, the last time he saw her was more than three decades ago, when they ran into each other on the street in Indianapolis. He didn’t know who she was married to — or that her husband was Trump’s running mate — until shortly before the election.

“We were kids,” said Whitaker, now the chief medical officer of a Seattle-based biopharmaceutical company. “We probably didn’t necessarily know what we were doing.”

Later, after dating Mike Pence for eight months, Karen engraved a small gold cross with the word “Yes” and slipped it into her purse to give him when he popped the question.

He did, just a month later, as the two were feeding the ducks at a local canal. He hollowed out two loaves of bread, placing a small bottle of champagne in one and the ring box in the other for her to discover as she tore off pieces, according to local news reports. (They later got the bread shellacked, as a keepsake, a local paper noted).

The Pences were married in a Roman Catholic church in 1985 but later became evangelical Christians.

In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.

Supporters and critics alike cite her as a

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

force behind her husband’s socially conservative stances, including his opposition to samesex marriage and the religious freedom law he signed as governor of Indiana, which opponents worried would allow business owners to discriminate against gays and lesbians by citing religious concerns.

“You can’t get a dime between them,” said Ken Blackwell, senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a senior domestic policy adviser on the Trump transition team. “It is not him seeking her approval, but his doing a sort of gut check with what they have learned together and come up through together in terms of their shared Christianity.”

Friends of Pence — who say she quietly held a small Bible study group during her time in the governor’s mansion — say her faith has sustained her through challenging periods, from when she and Mike first had trouble conceiving a child to the vagaries of politics, including her initial reluctance to support his third attempt to win a congressional seat.

Vicki Lake, the wife of the Pences’ former pastor, recalled a visit from Karen Pence one day at her Greenwood, Ind., home. As Pence was leaving, Lake recalled, “She grabbed my hands, and we prayed together in my laundry room.”

“That’s the kind of person she is, a person who believes in prayer, a godly mother and wife,” Lake said. “In fact, when Mike was a congressman, Karen would send out prayer requests to people — to pray for them as a family, that God would give them the strength to do all that they had to do.”

Marilyn Logsdon, who met Karen Pence when they were elementary-school teachers in the late 1980s and later served on her charitable board when she was the first lady of Indiana, recalled her friend beginning meetings with prayer. “She would say, ‘Before we look at these grants, let’s just ask God for wisdom and discernment,’ ” Logsdon said.

Pence has stayed close with many of the women she met in church, as a teacher and through her children’s play groups, all of whom describe her as a loyal friend. Lake, who has a

Karen Pence, left, talks to Marine Corps 1st Lt. Talia Bastien, as Pence hosts a gathering of female service members at her residence in recognition of Women’s History Month on March 23.

KLMNO WEEKLY

disease that hinders her red blood cell production, says Pence often prays for her hemoglobin count. “I personally get an occasional text asking me, ‘How are your numbers?’ ” she said.

Lake also remembers a lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Greenwood with Pence, who ordered a salad-to-go for a friend after the two women had finished their meal. “Now this is the governor’s wife,” Lake said, “and she was going to stop by her house and drop off this salad for a friend.”

As Indiana’s first lady, Pence became the first governor’s wife in modern memory to keep her own office suite on the second floor of the statehouse, just down the hall from her husband.

She reached out to all her living predecessors for tips and advice on the job, eventually settling on her own dictum: The role was hers to mold as she saw fit. Pence, who minored in art at Butler University and still paints watercolors, combined her interests in art, education and families, becoming the honorary chair of the art therapy program for Indiana’s Riley Hospital for Children and serving on the board of Tracy’s Kids, an art therapy program at children’s hospitals in the Washington area.

Now, as second lady, she expects art therapy to be one of her big initiatives, along with work supporting military families. Recently, Pence hosted roughly two dozen female service members at her residence for a small reception in honor of Women’s History Month.

“I just want you to know how much we appreciate you, and I think a lot of times, people in the military, men and women, aren’t told enough how much we appreciate you,” she said. “So we are saying thank you to you.”

In Washington, Pence is repeating many of her routines. She has begun reaching out to her counterparts and, like her predecessors, plans to keep an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where her husband’s team works.

In the governor’s office, Pence accompanied her husband on trips abroad, including to Germany and Japan. And almost exactly a month into his vice presidency, she joined him on his first trip overseas to the Munich Security Conference — a practice that will probably be routine for future foreign travel.

“They are in a strong, supportive marriage bound by common faith,” said Peter Rusthoven, a lawyer active in Indiana Republican politics who has known the Pences for more than 25 years. “I don’t think they make decisions separately.”

Indeed, her prime allegiance remains to her husband, and the loyalty is reciprocal. Among all the frustrations Mike Pence has faced since becoming Trump’s No. 2, the most publicly outraged he has become involved an Associated Press story that published his and his wife’s private AOL email addresses.

Mike Pence’s team demanded that the AP take down Karen’s private email, and when it didn’t, the vice president tweeted that his wife was owed an apology.

The email accounts, naturally, were all-butmatching his-and-hers emails, exactly the same but for the first initials. n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

6

KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Last hope or false hope for patients?

BY

L AURIE M C G INLEY

“W

here’s Jordan?” asked Vice President Pence as he walked into the White House meeting of terminally ill patients and their families. All eyes shifted, and Pence made a beeline for a 7-year-old boy from Indianapolis with a broad grin.

Back home, when Pence was Indiana’s governor, Jordan McLinn and his battle with Duchenne muscular dystrophy had helped inspire passage of a state “right-totry” law intended to give the desperately ill access to medications not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Fast forward to Washington, where Pence is now in a position to encourage national right-to-try legislation.

“We’re going to get this done,” he assured Jordan’s mother, Laura McLinn, and the other families gathered in February.

Thirty-three states have passed such laws, which ostensibly allow patients to take experimental medicines outside of clinical trials and without FDA oversight as long as the therapies have undergone preliminary safety testing. Many of the remaining states are considering such bills or are expected to do so.

And now, for the first time, federal legislation is gaining traction.

Congressional supporters may try to attach a measure — drafted with a unique and highly controversial restriction on the FDA — to the agency’s must-pass funding bill this year. The anti-regulatory mood dominating Washington is boosting these efforts.

President Trump recently weighed in, accusing the agency of denying drugs to patients with terminal conditions: “The FDA says, ‘We can’t have this drug used on the patient’ . . . but the patient is not going to live more than four weeks!”

The right-to-try campaign is the ultimate in patient empowerment, according to its champion, the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian nonprofit organization that wrote the model legislation that has become the foundation of most statutes. “It represents a unanimous voice from the states

and the people saying that patients ought to be able to make these life-or-death decisions to save their own lives,” said the institute’s executive vice president, Christina Sandefur.

But the increased momentum is raising alarms, with opponents saying that such laws largely offer false hope. That’s because many drug companies are reluctant to provide medications outside of clinical trials — and why critics insist that the FDA is not the problem. In 2016, they note, the agency revamped its “expanded access” program to speed unapproved drugs to patients who have no alternatives and can’t get into clinical trials. The FDA approves almost all such requests, the data show.

“A lot of this is smoke and mirrors for some other agenda,” said Andrew McFadyen, executive director of the Toronto-based Isaac Foundation, which assists U.S. and Canadian patients seeking access to medications. “A weaker FDA is what they are after.”

The legislation pushed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) would forbid the federal government from interfering with the state laws and would exempt doctors and drug companies from liability for prescribing or providing experimental drugs. It also would limit the FDA in an unprecedented way: If a patient were injured or killed by an unapproved treatment under a right-to-try law, agency officials would not be allowed to use the information to delay or block approval of the treatment.

Supporters say such a provision is crucial to spurring drug companies to make experimental drugs available to terminally ill patients, without worrying that an “adverse event” could prompt the agency to stop a trial conducted as part of the drug-approval process.

The notion that the FDA would be barred from considering all data has consumer advocates, ethicists and drug-safety experts in an uproar. If a person is harmed by an experimental drug, they say, that has implications for anybody who might eventually take the medicine. “The idea that you blind the

LAURA MCLINN

Laws to provide unapproved treatments to desperately ill are now in national spotlight FDA to any negative side effects in using an investigational agent is just nonsensical,” said Alison Bateman-House, a bioethicist at the New York University School of Medicine.

FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Lurie told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at a hearing in September that the provision would “be detrimental and raise significant ethical issues.” With 11,000 expanded-access requests over the past decade, he said, only twice did the agency temporarily halt clinical trials because of “adverse events.” Both times, drug development resumed after the problems were resolved.

Right-to-try opponents are also

Laura McLinn and her son, Jordan, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, helped inspire passage of a “rightto-try” law in Indiana. They visited Washington in June and are pushing for a national law.

skeptical that constraining the FDA would be enough to induce pharmaceutical companies to make unapproved drugs available.

Manufacturers, they say, don’t like to provide experimental therapies in part because they don’t want to be besieged by desperate patients but also because of the potential cost involved.

The drug companies’ main lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, is noticeably cool to right to try, saying that “any legislation should protect the integrity of clinical trials and the FDA oversight of expanded access to maintain the best interests of patients.”

Those interests, others say, include protecting terminally ill patients from spurious therapies.

Right-to-try supporters reject that latter point as paternalistic.

Even if a federal law does not end up helping patients, it won’t hurt them either, they insist. “We’re asking for a very special carve-out for a very small exception that doesn’t cost us any money,” said Matt Bellina, a Navy veteran with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, who testified at last fall’s hearing.

He added, “At some point in the near future, I’m going to suffocate under the weight of my chest, so what difference does it make if we have a side effect?”

Traditionally, these patients have received unapproved treatments by enrolling in a clinical trial or, if that is not possible, by going through the FDA’s expanded-access program. The program allows the agency to authorize use of an unapproved therapy if it determines that the drug’s potential benefit justifies the treatment risk.

In Indiana, Jordan McLinn was 3 years old when he was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. “We know what happens,” his mother said recently. “You lose muscle function, and then you die.”

Laura McLinn plans to keep working on right to try. “If even just one person finds the one doctor and one drug company to help,” she said, “that’s important to my son.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

7

POLITICS

KLMNO WEEKLY

A fight that will likely change Senate B Y P AUL K ANE

S

ens. Roger E. Wicker (RMiss.) and Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) are not usually partisan firebrands, particularly on presidential appointments.

Back in 2013, Wicker helped temporarily defuse a showdown over Republican filibusters of President Barack Obama’s nominees to the judiciary and agencies.

More than a decade ago, Carper voted to confirm President George W. Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee and opposed Democratic efforts to filibuster the other.

Now, with days left in the showdown over President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, both Wicker and Carper have turned dour in their outlook for what the battle means for the Senate — and the country.

Wicker is all but certain that Democrats have enough votes to block Gorsuch’s confirmation this week with a filibuster — by demanding a procedural step that takes 60 votes to clear. That, in turn, probably would prompt the Republicans to change the rules unilaterally to allow Gorsuch’s confirmation, and all other Supreme Court picks thereafter, by a simple majority.

“I think it’s a done deal,” Wicker said this past week. “That’s the way it’s headed.”

Carper agreed, explaining that he would rather see Republicans eliminate supermajority thresholds for Supreme Court nominees, further poisoning the already toxic atmosphere in Washington, than do anything to support Gorsuch.

The purpose of the rule is to promote bipartisanship and consensus, which in turn creates legitimacy and buy-in for policy and governance. If the filibuster goes away, so does yet another layer of collegiality in Congress — and another way to shore up Washington’s credibility.

It would be the second time in 31/2 years that the Senate majority has breached the long-held standard of first clearing a two-thirds majority vote to alter the cham-

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

If Democrats filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination and GOP alters rules, odds of future consensus dim ber’s rules. The first time Democrats, then led by Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.), ended 60-vote filibusters for all nominees except those for the Supreme Court.

If they all contribute to taking the next step, both parties will have completed their hypocritical march to the opposite side of this issue over the past decade. Democrats, after years of demanding speedy passage of Obama’s nominees, now clamor for scrutiny and supermajorities.

Republicans have quickly adopted the old Democratic talking points. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who at times has played the role of custodian of his chamber’s rich history, will have made the same move that led to what he called in 2013 “a sad day in the history of the Senate.”

And once both sides are guilty of breaching that standard on nominations, it would seem to be only a matter of time before a future majority obliterates filibusters on other legislation.

Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.),

one of the first Democrats to declare his support for a filibuster of Gorsuch, said that the likelihood that the judge will not win 60 votes proves that he is outside the mainstream. “If you’re a consensus pick, you should be able to get 60 votes,” Casey said.

In reality, Gorsuch’s hearings unfolded without any new revelations and followed the playbook of hearings for the four justices confirmed this century. The majority asked soft questions to bolster his case, and the minority asked tough questions and demanded, unsuccessfully, that he predetermine how he would rule on hot-button issues. In another time, Gorsuch easily might have been considered the consensus candidate that Casey described.

As a result, there is a sense of raw politics in Democrats’ growing opposition to Gorsuch, because liberal anti-Trump activists are pushing Democrats to oppose every Trump move.

With most centrist voters not paying attention to procedural

People gather outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday to protest or show their support for Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the high court. The Senate is expected to vote on the issue this week.

fights over confirmations, some Democrats think the bigger political penalty would be to disappoint their base by allowing an easy confirmation this time.

Republicans misjudged Casey, hoping he would come around to supporting Gorsuch because of his congeniality — and because Trump won his state. The Democrat cited Gorsuch’s rulings against federal agencies in their regulatory decisions.

And Carper said he cannot forgive Republicans for never even holding a hearing on the first nominee for the current court vacancy — Judge Merrick Garland, whom Obama nominated after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016.

“I have a very hard time getting over what was done to Merrick Garland, a very hard time,” Carper said. “That’s a wrong that should be righted, we have a chance to do that, and it won’t be by confirming Judge Gorsuch the first time through.”

Interviews with Wicker, Carper and half a dozen other senators who could anchor something called the “Reasonable Caucus” delivered few signs of compromise ahead. If those assessments are right, by the end of this week Republicans will have triggered the “nuclear option,” as the potential rule change is known by insiders.

No concrete attempts have been made to convene the bipartisan huddles that have sometimes worked in previous fights over the state of the Senate.

“Not that I’ve seen,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the coleader of the bipartisan Gang of 14 that averted a similar showdown in 2005. McCain said that the environment is too polarized now and that the old personalities — powerful chairmen, often war heroes, willing to buck their leadership — have been replaced by a less social, more timid crop of senators.

“We just have a different environment around here,” he said.

“People don’t sit down and talk the way they used to.” Asked whether he considered that depressing, McCain said: “It is, it really is.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

8

KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

Cities, states take up climate fight

BY S TEVEN M UFSON AND B RADY D ENNIS

J

im Brainard is a Republican mayor in a Republican city in a Republican state. But that hasn’t stopped him from taking aggressive steps in recent years to combat climate change and become more energy efficient.

During his tenure, Carmel, Ind., has shifted its fleet to hybrid and biofuel vehicles, replaced streetlights with LED bulbs, installed hundreds of miles of bike paths and spent millions of dollars planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide and provide shade.

Carmel now has 102 roundabouts — more than any community in the country, he says proudly — that have reduced traffic accidents as well as helped to conserve gasoline, reduce air pollution and save electricity by negating the need for traffic lights. “For a long time, taking care of our environment was a nonpartisan issue,” Brainard said. “I have yet to meet a Republican or Democrat who wants to drink dirty water or breathe dirty air.”

But this past week, President Trump signed an executive order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature effort to combat climate change by limiting carbon emissions from power plants and requiring states to cut down on overall emissions.

Trump maintains that Obamaera regulations have unnecessarily hampered businesses and that freeing companies from such burdensome requirements will provide an economic boost.

Some mayors, governors and business leaders plan to press ahead with plans to clamp down on carbon emissions, saying it makes sense for the economy as well as the climate. “It doesn’t impact anything we’re doing,” Brainard said.

He would rather not have seen the Clean Power Plan scrapped, but its absence won’t alter the trajectory of Carmel, which sits just north of Indianapolis, or many other places around the

LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Efforts to cut emissions locally proceed, despite Trump’s order to repeal the Clean Power Plan country. “Cities aren’t going to stop. They were working on things that save money and provide a better environment long before the federal government got involved with the Clean Power Plan, and they’ll continue to do so.”

It’s not only cities. About 30 states already have established standards that require utilities and power companies to sharply increase their reliance on renewable energy over the next decade or more.

Falling prices for wind and solar and low prices for natural gas have further undercut coal’s share of the electricity market. According to the Sierra Club, 175 coal plants in the United States have shut down since 2010, and 73 others are scheduled for retirement by 2030.

The Energy Information Administration is more sanguine about coal’s prognosis, but it still says that coal will be eased out of the electricity mix even without the Clean Power Plan. In a 2015 report, the EIA said that 90,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity

would be retired by 2040 with the plan in place. Without the plan, coal capacity would still fall by 40,000 megawatts.

“We’re not building any new coal plants in this country, and the existing ones are having a harder and harder time competing with ever-cheaper renewables,” said Mary Anne Hitt, the head of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign. “There’s a . . . structural disadvantage for coal in the marketplace. That’s not something Donald Trump can wave away with the stroke of a pen.”

State-level programs to boost renewable sources of electricity have support, in some cases, across party lines. In the weeks after Trump’s election, Republican governors in three politically important Midwestern states — Illinois, Ohio and Michigan — committed their states to adding more renewable power and boosting energy efficiency.

“If President Trump doesn’t recognize it, we’ve seen that Republican governors do see an invest-

The NRG power plant in Thompsons, Tex., uses a carboncapture program.

NRG set a goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

Texas is also home to one-fourth of the nation’s wind-energy capacity.

ment opportunity with efficiency and renewable energy,” said Dick Munson, who works on clean energy programs in the Midwest for the Environmental Defense Fund.

In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed the Future Energy Jobs Bill, which was negotiated with the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature. The measure would channel more than $200 million a year into renewable energy investment. It also sets tougher standards for utilities, requiring them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 56 percent by 2030. The Clean Power Plan would have required a comparatively modest cut of 34 percent.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed a bill that would have weakened that state’s renewable standards. Major corporations such as Amazon and Whirlpool, as well as wind and solar developers, had urged him to stick to ambitious renewable goals. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

“I believe it’s real,” Kasich said of climate change in a speech last fall at the University of Texas at Austin. “You can’t read these stories about these things happening all over the world, on our coasts and the rising sea levels, without being concerned about it.”

Out west, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has made clear that he will eagerly push forward with his state’s efforts to combat climate change and shift to cleaner energy sources.

“Whatever they do in Washington, they can’t change the facts,” Brown said during a state of the state address days after Trump’s inauguration. “And these are the facts: The climate is changing, the temperatures are rising, and so are the oceans. Natural habitats everywhere are under increasing stress. The world knows this.”

Months earlier, Brown had signed legislation requiring the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 — an ambitious goal compared with past targets. Weeks earlier, the state had hired an outside legal team that includes former U.S. attorney general Eric H.

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

9

NATION Holder Jr. to help defend its environmental and other policies in the age of Trump.

Some of the nation’s biggest utilities also say that shelving the Clean Power Plan will have little effect on their long-term actions, which aren’t aimed at four-year presidential cycles but involve looking decades ahead.

Our “long-term strategy is focused on generating and delivering electricity in ways that meet the needs and expectations of our customers,” Nick Akins, chief executive of American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest utilities, said in an email. “That includes diversifying our fuel mix and investing in renewable generation and other innovations that increase efficiency and reduce emissions. That won’t change.”

AEP’s 2016 carbon dioxide emissions were already 44 percent below 2000 levels, and Akins said the company expects further declines as it adds more natural gas and renewable power generation.

It plans to invest about $1.5 billion in renewable energy over the next three years.

Marijke Shugrue, a spokeswoman for another major utility, NRG, said the company “set our sustainability goals back in 2014 unconnected to the Clean Power Plan. Whatever happens to that, our goals still stand. It made sense before, and it still makes sense.”

The plan set a goal of reducing NRG’s carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

At the Environmental Defense Fund, Munson expects renewable energy will continue to surge even in states that lack renewable portfolio standards.

Texas is home to one-fourth of the nation’s wind capacity, with more on the way. On Nov. 27, wind energy set a record there, providing 45 percent of the state’s total electricity demand that day. Overall, wind provides 12.7 percent of the state’s electricity, and projects underway will bring that to about 16 percent when finished.

Yet Trump’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan is still a setback, Munson said.

“It was a symbol, and an important one, that suggests this is the path that our nation is going to take to tackle this challenge and do it in an investment- focused way,” he said. “Backing away from that sends the wrong message.” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

Why North Carolina flipflopped on its ‘bathroom bill’ BY

A MBER P HILLIPS

E

ven by North Carolina standards, the events surrounding its year-long “bathroom bill” drama have been frenetic.

In March 2016, North Carolina became the first state to pass a law restricting which public bathrooms and locker rooms transgender people can use. On Thursday — almost exactly a year later — it became the first state to repeal that law. In between, its voters helped elect Donald Trump to the presidency and kicked out a Republican governor.

Whether the bathroom bill’s eventual demise is a spark of social change in the South or a blip on North Carolina’s otherwise Republican-dominated politics depends on who you talk to.

Even as they decried the repeal as discriminatory, LGBT and civil rights advocates say the battle over bathrooms has awakened a new activist class.

“The political culture of the state has still changed for the better,” said Chris Sgro, a former Democratic state lawmaker and head of Equality North Carolina.

“We've been talking for 370 days in a row now about why transgender people need to be protected and what it means to be transgender.”

Democrats point out that the same voters who narrowly chose Trump in November also ousted the sitting GOP governor — the first time in North Carolina’s history that’s happened. And there’s a strong case to make that former governor Pat McCrory lost by 10,000 votes because of bathrooms: He defended the law so vigorously that he ended up owning it.

Conservatives paint a different story of their state’s transformation this past year — mainly that there was none. Their constituents didn’t have a problem with the fact that the law, known as H.B. 2, aimed to protect their children from predators in bathrooms and locker rooms. It was outside businesses and sports organizations that

seized on the law — with boycotts and economics threats — to advance their political agendas and force the legislature to repeal it.

“Politically, economically, H.B. 2 has not been a major issue,” said state Rep. Chris Millis, who represents a rural and suburban district northeast of Wilmington, N.C. “It's only been an issue for the special interests and the politicians they want to control.”

Democrats might have knocked off a weak sitting governor in 2016, but they failed to win any other big race in the state. Sen. Richard Burr (R) won his reelection. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest was the first Republican in the state to be reelected to the No. 2 job. The North Carolina congressional delegation kept its heavy Republican political balance. Oh, and Republicans kept their supermajority in the state legislature.

The truth — whether North Carolina is a different state than the one that passed a bathroom law a year ago — probably lies somewhere in the middle.

This is a swing state, after all; one that is sharply divided between its liberal urban centers in Charlotte and Raleigh and its conservative rural areas. That tug-ofwar can play out in the whiplash everyone saw on the bathroom debate.

The drama over the bathroom bill engaged many of North Carolina’s traditional coalitions — and it exacerbated their divisions, said UNC law professor Michael Gerhardt: rural vs. urban, legislature vs. executive branch, Democrat vs.

Republican. Everyone had a reason to feel strongly about it.

“All the splits that have defined North Carolina up to now, they’re all still intact,” Gerhardt said.

In the end, it was a GOPcontrolled legislature that passed

the bathroom legislation and a GOP-controlled legislature (with the help of Democrats) that repealed it. Which suggests something else was at play here: economics.

The business, sports and entertainment communities almost universally repudiated the bathroom law. Bruce Springsteen canceled his concerts there. PayPal pulled out of a deal. The NCAA gave lawmakers until Thursday (yes, the same Thursday lawmakers repealed the law) to get rid of it or lose the rights to host all college tournaments in the state for the next six years. An Associated Press review that came out Monday said the law could cost the state almost $4 billion over a 12year period.

The economic pressure on the state became impossible for even supporters of the law to ignore.

“The economic boycott is wrong, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Rep. Chuck McGrady (R).

In a divisive vote Thursday in the state House to repeal it, Republicans were split about whether to change course. About 40 GOP House lawmakers voted for repeal, while 30 voted against it.

Amid the opposition, an awkward coalition formed of conservatives who blamed the NCAA for trying pressure them into moving to the left and of liberals who blamed the governor for selling them out with a compromise they felt didn’t do enough.

The winning argument ended up being basically: This year’s been tough. Let’s just get rid of this law that, fairly or not, has caused the state so much heartache.

“People were tired of fighting that battle,” McGrady said. “They realized . . . they can sort of get out of the bathroom business.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

10

KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD

The peril of dismissing Kim Jong Un A NNA F IFIELD Seoul BY

I

t’s easy to write off Kim Jong Un as a madman. What with the colorful nuclear threats, the gruesome executions of family members, the fact that he’s a self-appointed marshal who’s never served in the military.

Indeed, Sen. John McCain (RAriz.) did it just this past month, calling Kim “this crazy, fat kid that’s running North Korea.” That came on the heels of a pronouncement from Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, that “we are not dealing with a rational person” in Kim. It’s a relatively common view.

World leaders, military chiefs and Hollywood have all painted him as an unhinged maniac.

But this is not just wrong, North Korea watchers and dictatorship experts say. It also risks dangerous miscalculation.

“North Korea has consistently been treated like a joke, but now the joke has nuclear weapons,” said John Park, director of the Korea Working Group at the Harvard Kennedy School. “If you deem Kim Jong Un to be irrational, then you’re implicitly underestimating him.”

Leaders throughout the centuries have realized it can be advantageous to have your enemies think you’re crazy. Machiavelli once wrote that it can be wise to pretend to be mad, while President Richard Nixon wanted the North Vietnamese to think he was unstable and prone to launch a nuclear attack on a whim.

Writing off Kim Jong Un as a lunatic could equally be playing into his hands.

Want proof that he’s no senseless madman?

Exhibit A: “He’s still in power,” said Benjamin Smith, an expert on regime change at the University of Florida. “He and his father and grandfather have stayed in power through a series of American presidents going back to Truman.”

Longevity, of course, is the preserve of dictators, not democrats.

Indeed, the 33-year-old has defied predictions that he would not be

LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

North Korea’s leader is a lot of things, but experts say viewing him as a joke or lunatic is dangerous able to keep a grip on the authoritarian state that has been in his family’s control since 1948. December marked his fifth anniversary in power — a milestone that the democratically elected president in the South did not reach.

In person, Kim is confident and well spoken, said Michael Spavor, a Canadian who runs Paektu Cultural Exchange, which promotes business, sports and tourism with North Korea. Spavor is one of the very few outsiders to have met Kim. “He was acting very diplomatically and professionally,” said Spavor, who accompanied Dennis Rodman, the basketball player, on his trips to North Korea. “He felt old beyond his years. He could be serious at times and fun at times but by no means did he seem weird or odd.”

Smith pointed out that saying Kim is rational isn’t the same as saying “he’s a perfect guy who makes perfect decisions.”

Kim’s decisions to date have enabled him to achieve his primary goal — so far — of staying in power by staving off threats, real

or anticipated, from the elite.

“He has reasons to be afraid of conspiracies in the top levels of his government, especially in the military and secret police,” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian scholar of North Korea who once studied at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang. “You can buy these people off, but they can still betray you.

You have to terrify them, and that’s what he’s doing.”

Kim has sent a message to the elites who keep him in power through a series of executions and purges that keep everyone fearful that they will be next.

Kim has rid himself of 300-plus officials during his five years at the helm. He notably had his own uncle, Jang Song Thaek, executed for disobeying orders and building his own power base.

Other high-level figures have been killed or purged. The state security minister is said to be under house arrest.

“What’s irrational about that?

Irrational is going to the ICC and surrendering,” Lankov said. A

A giant image of Kim Jong Un and confetti cap a concert last year at Pyongyang Arena in the North Korean capital. The 33-year-old has defied naysayers and kept a grip on the authoritarian state that has been in his family’s control since 1948.

United Nations commission of inquiry has recommended referring Kim to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half brother, Kim Jong Nam, in Malaysia with a chemical weapon was a message to outside rivals that the young leader could hunt them down wherever they are, analysts say.

To deal with threats from “hostile powers,” in North Korean parlance, having nuclear weapons makes sense for Kim, said Kongdan Oh of the Institute for Defense Analyses. “Steadily pursuing nuclear weapons is a very rational thing for him to be doing.”

North Korea was established in vehement opposition to the American “imperialist aggressors” and their “puppets” in South Korea. So maintaining a sense of threat from both provides a rationale for the state’s existence and a shared menace to unite the elite and the common people.

Then there’s the economy. The fact that it’s growing is a sign that the leadership knows what it’s doing, said Park of Harvard.

While the North Korean economy is far from booming, it has been steadily expanding in recent years, as evidenced by all the construction in Pyongyang despite increasingly tight restrictions imposed by the outside world.

But being rational is not the same as being predictable, and many analysts say that the youngest Kim appears to be temperamental and hotheaded.

There is reason to be concerned about this, said Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist who founded the CIA’s personality analysis center and has studied Kim and his father.

Kim’s capacity for brutality and his apparent spontaneity could be compounded by President Trump’s own impulsive acts, he said.

“This is all about big boys and their big toys,” Post said. “Will he actively threaten the U.S.? I tend to think not, but I must say I’m concerned about words leading to actions between him and President Trump.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

11

WORLD

KLMNO WEEKLY

Brexit could be costly for all parties

BY M ICHAEL B IRNBAUM AND G RIFF W ITTE

Brussels

I

n the bitter breakup between Britain and the European Union, Britons finally filed the divorce papers last week. But the 27 spurned partner nations of Europe may have far more at stake.

French leaders are fearful of their country’s insurgent anti-E.U. forces, who will chalk up any British gain from the divorce settlement as a reason to file exit papers of their own. Italian leaders are combating anti-establishment parties who may gang up to hold a Brexit-style referendum. And surging anti-E.U. campaigners elsewhere are eager to press any advantage they see from the negotiations.

Wednesday’s move by Britain triggers a two-year clock before Britain drops down the E.U. escape hatch. In the meantime, the two sides will haggle over such matters as the cost of the exit — upward of $65 billion, the European Union says — and whether British retirees can keep living under Spain’s golden sun. The British are hoping that Europe will go easy on them to soften any hit to fragile economies.

But with E.U. unity at stake, Brussels can hardly afford to be kind, leaders say.

The outcome may be a jarring wake-up call to British leaders who say that their nation has opted for a latter-day declaration of independence, one that will give the country back its rightful place as one of the world’s eminent powers.

“The United Kingdom remains a partner of the Union, but by necessity it will pay the consequences, because that is the choice it has made,” French President François Hollande said in the days leading up to the announcement.

Hollande is trying to thwart the surging anti-E.U. leader Marine Le Pen, whose rat-a-tat nationalistic call to arms has made her the most popular politician in France ahead of elections in April and May. Leaders elsewhere in Europe are facing similar concerns — and in a bloc notable for its fractious disputes in recent years, they have

DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES

As Britain officially files the divorce papers, E.U. nations have incentives to take a tough line been unusually unified in taking a tough line against Britain. Any new deal between the European Union and Britain will have to be ratified by all of Europe’s parliaments, giving extra leverage to the toughest holdouts.

“In order to maintain Europe in the long term, but above all to strengthen Europe in the long term, we must preserve and defend the achievements of European integration,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German Parliament.

It was a gentle but unmistakable reminder that Europe’s most powerful leader is committed to preserving club benefits for E.U. members — and cutting them off for those who no longer want to pay the dues.

It would be hard to overstate just how much Britain has at stake in the negotiations. The nation’s international trading relationships and laws will all be on the line when British negotiators square off with their erstwhile European Union partners. Decades of E.U. integra-

tion have meant open access to European markets for British goods, services and workers — and all of it will now need to be untangled during a brief window. Even Britain’s integrity as a single country could be in question since Scottish Parliament voted Tuesday to seek another referendum on independence.

But if Britons’ concerns are focused largely on their pocketbooks, Europeans are facing a more existential threat: the possibility that the E.U. breakup doesn’t stop with Britain. The imbalance creates all the more incentive for European leaders to take a tough line.

“This free-trade agreement cannot be equivalent to what exists today. And we should all prepare ourselves for that situation,” Michel Barnier, a French former politician who has served as the European Union’s lead negotiator, told regional officials recently.

Barnier said he plans to insist on finalizing terms of the split before beginning talks on a new trade deal. Given the speedy negotiating timeline, that stance will

Britain triggered the Article 50 notification on Wednesday, beginning its exit from the European Union.

put pressure on the British. E.U. leaders meet April 29 to finalize Barnier’s negotiating guidelines.

“If Brexit leads to a bright, prosperous future in the U.K., that is something that could lead to a domino effect,” said Janis Emmanouilidis, the director of studies at the Brussels-based European Policy Center, an influential think tank that often advises E.U. policymakers.

Prime Minister Theresa May outlined her negotiating aims in a January speech that identified control over immigration levels, an exemption from the European Court of Justice and freedom to negotiate Britain’s own trade deals as her redline demands.

“We seek a new and equal partnership — between an independent, self-governing, global Britain and our friends and allies in the E.U. Not partial membership of the E.U., associate membership of the E.U., or anything that leaves us half in, half out,” she said.

Many European officials considered the speech a step toward a more realistic British stance because it recognized that the United Kingdom would need to sacrifice some of the benefits of E.U. membership if it also wanted to forsake the responsibilities.

Until then, Britain’s position had been caricatured by the “procake, pro-eating it” stance of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

But analysts say Britain is still probably asking for more than Europe can give and is setting itself up for disappointment.

Simon Tilford, deputy director of the pro-E.U., London-based Center for European Reform, said British officials are “naive” because they don’t realize their demands are seen across the continent as an example of “egregious free riding.”

“It would appear that they realize they can’t have their cake and eat it. But it’s wrong to say that the British government understands now what is possible and what isn’t,” Tilford said. “They’re still much too optimistic about the amount of leverage Britain has in this process, and the amount of wiggle room the other side has.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

12

KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

13

The Trump disciple vs. illegal immigrants A citizen sees a system rigged against her in favor of her undocumented neighbors

A

BY

M ARY J ORDAN AND K EVIN S ULLIVAN // PHOTOS BY L INDA D AVIDSON

Valley View, Tex. t 4:30 a.m. on a windy Monday, Tamara Estes swallows vitamin B12 for energy and krill oil for her arthritic fingers.

Even with her nightly Ambien, she is always up before the sun, getting ready for a job that reminds her of what infuriates her about America.

She drives a school bus on a route that winds through a North Texas neighborhood filled with undocumented Mexicans. She picks up nearly 100 of their children and drops them off at public schools funded by American taxpayers. By her.

One immigrant family lives in the house next door, and in the dark hours before dawn, they are also stirring. As the father leaves for his job at a construction site, the mother is scrambling eggs and scooping them into warm tortillas.

They have been working in the United States for two decades without legal status, but their four children were born here, so they are U.S. citizens — or, as Estes and President Trump call them, “anchor babies.”

The eldest, Rainier Corral, 15, emerges from his bedroom carrying a book bag and a trumpet case. He’s a 188-pound rock of a kid who plays

lineman on the high school football team, a top-notch student who wants to study mechanical engineering at Texas A&M. Rainier’s family has always believed in the promise of America, where they saved enough to buy their own home and their kids go to good schools. But now that Trump is threatening to deport millions — and even change the law that gave their children U.S. citizenship — they are filled with fear.

Estes, meanwhile, is filled with new hope. For years, she has felt she was living the American Dream in reverse, her life sliding backward, in part, she believes, because illegal immigrants take all the good jobs and drive up her taxes. Now she thinks her life will improve because Trump is promising to “take our country back.”

This is what divides them at the dawn of the Trump era: for the president to keep his promise to millions of workingclass white voters like Estes, he is threatening millions of working-class immigrants like the family next door.

‘Anchor babies’ It’s 20 miles to the school-bus depot and, as Estes drives, she flips on conservative talk radio, where she gets most of her news. She tunes to 660 AM and Mark Davis, a popular Texas talker, who is praising Trump, trashing

liberals and making Estes nostalgic for better days.

“I wish we could go back to a time when we could live, not just exist, when everything wasn’t a struggle,” she says.

Estes is 59, divorced and earns $24,000 a year. With four days left to payday, she has $118.72 in her checking account.

She earns a bit too much to qualify for most government assistance but too little to buy health insurance, with its high monthly premiums and impossible deductibles. When she broke her arm last year, she wrapped it in a $15 drugstore brace and popped ibuprofen for a month.

The way she sees it, life is easier for illegal Mexican immigrants than for taxpaying, working-class white Americans. As her life has gotten harder, she believes the fortunes of “illegals” have been rising, and that she’s paying for it.

Little galls her more than “anchor babies,” who are entitled to government benefits, including Medicaid, public schools and food assistance.

Estes resents paying for their safety net when she feels she has none.

“I can’t seem to pull my status back up where it was 20 years ago,” she says.

“Some of it’s my fault. Some of it’s not.”

The United States has been granting continues on next page

OPPOSITE TOP: Rainier Corral, center, eats breakfast with his family in Valley View, Tex. The 15-year-old’s parents are undocumented immigrants. They have four children who were born in the United States and are legal citizens.

BOTTOM: Next door, Tamara Estes, 59, raises chickens for eggs to feed her dogs. Estes feels Americans will have greater job prospects once undocumented immigrants are deported — even those whom she likes and are her neighbors.

14

from previous page

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

Everywhere Estes looks, she’s reminded that her country is changing. She wants a better-paying job but says it’s hard to get one these days if you speak only English. Increasingly, the first question in any job interview is, “Habla español?”

“birthright citizenship” to babies born on its soil, regardless of their parents’ legal status, since just after the Civil War. Congress and the states adopted the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868, primarily to guarantee citizenship to What’s happening now doesn’t seem Rainier was born four months after freed slaves. stuck a Trump sign on her lawn. She has fair to Rainier. Americans hire the unReyes, then 18, entered the United States Over the past three decades, every come to be known as the “Trump Lady” documented to build their houses, pick on a tourist visa hoping to give her child a other developed economy in the world on her school bus, which on this Monday their crops, mow their lawns, wash their better life than the one he would have except Canada has abandoned or remorning approaches its first rider, a tiny dishes. They’re happy to take the hard, faced in her poor mining town in Duranstricted birthright citizenship amid riskindergartner bundled in a gray parka low-paying jobs nobody else wants. In go, Mexico. ing flows of immigrants and refugees. and wearing a purple backpack. return, they’d like to live without fear of He has always felt fully American, no But in the United States, it remains “Love you!” the little girl says in Engbeing deported. Rainier believes families different from his white classmates. But commonplace. In 2014, 7 percent of all lish to her Spanish-speaking mother. like his are being targeted for problems now, in this county that voted 83 percent U.S. births — about 275,000 babies — For two hours, Estes picks up dozens they have not created. for Trump, he suddenly hears people were to parents illegally in the United of children. They chatter in the seats “Most of them are just normal people spitting out: “Go back to your own counStates, according to the nonpartisan Pew behind her in Spanish, a language she that are trying to get a better way of Research Center. life,” Rainier says. “It’s one thing to In Texas, undocumented immideport people who have criminal grants accounted for a quarter of records — that’s fine. It’s another all deliveries paid for by Medicaid thing to deport families that haven’t in 2015 — more than 54,000 babies done anything wrong.”

— according to the Texas Health Trump has argued that undocuand Human Services Commission. mented immigrants take jobs The cost to taxpayers: $116 million. from American workers, depress Defenders of birthright citizenwages and overburden governship say integrating immigrants is ment services. Studies have parpart of what makes the United tially confirmed that view, at least States exceptional and that denying in the short term. these babies citizenship would creLast year, an exhaustive study ate a huge new underclass of people by the respected National Acadeliving outside the law. Critics say it mies of Sciences found that undocencourages illegal immigration umented workers can temporarily and drains public resources. depress wages slightly for the lowEstes was delighted when est category of unskilled jobs. But Trump attacked birthright citizenthe study found “little to no negaship during the campaign, saying: tive effects on overall wages and “A woman gets pregnant. She’s employment of native-born worknine months, she walks across the ers in the longer term.” border, she has the baby in the The same study said that newly United States, and we take care of arrived immigrants are a net cost the baby for 85 years. I don’t think to taxpayers, primarily because of so.” the expense of educating their Polls show that the vast majorichildren. But those children, and ty of Americans oppose mass deRainier Corral takes care of the family dogs in February. He doesn’t know how he will pay for their children after them, more portations, but Trump’s core supcollege, so he’s thinking of enlisting in the Army. “It’s my country, and I want to serve,” he says. than make up for it, contributing porters are solidly for it: Accordfar more in taxes to state and local ing to a recent CNN-Kaiser poll, 55 governments than they take in services. percent of whites without college detry,” or “Go mow a lawn.” doesn’t understand. She boils inside Most economists do not blame illegal grees said they want everyone living in Rumors about deportations are flying. about her tax dollars paying for their immigrants for the decline of the U.S. the country illegally to be deported.

Reyes heard from a friend that immigraeducation. But she likes the kids, and she working class. They argue that immiEverywhere Estes looks, she’s remindtion agents were arresting people at can’t afford to lose this job. So she smiles grants boost the nation’s fortunes by ed that her country is changing. White Walmart. Others say it was at a different and says, over and over: filling undesirable jobs at low pay, cutenrollment in Texas schools recently store. Or at roadblocks.

“Careful on the stairs.” ting the cost of many goods and services. dipped below 30 percent. Hispanics are The family stays home more often “Have a good day, y’all.”

Rainier’s parents have worked for the new majority; Pew estimates that now but still went to church yesterday, Cost and contribution more than 13 percent of Texas students joining 1,400 others at a Spanish- years cleaning homes, working in a glue factory, installing bathroom partitions, are the children of undocumented parlanguage Catholic Mass. Their pastor As Estes heads to work, Rainier is in nailing baseboards. Four years ago, they ents. the kitchen next door, checking his says many more are choosing to skip pooled their life savings to buy their little Estes wants a better-paying job but Mass, worried that federal agents might phone for news. house, paying $40,000 in cash at a foresays it’s hard to get one these days if you stake out the church.

“Quieres café?” his mother, Azucena closure sale. speak only English. Increasingly, the first Reyes is worried, too, but said she and Reyes, 34, asks him, as she stirs eggs on They now pay $1,700 a year in properquestion in any job interview is, “Habla her family agreed to be interviewed bethe stove. ty taxes. They file federal returns on español?” cause they want people to better under“No, thanks,” he says in English, wavincome of about $30,000 in a good year, So when Trump started talking about stand the immigrants who are being ing off coffee to check the Young Turks including withholdings for Social Secudeporting illegal immigrants who “comthreatened with deportation. Amid so news site on YouTube, where today’s rity and Medicare — benefits they are pete directly against vulnerable Amerimuch “uncertainty and fear,” she says, “I headline is: “Trump’s Deportation Force unlikely to ever receive. can workers,” Estes went to his rallies and hope we can do some good.”

Unleashed.”

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

15

COVER STORY Sitting in her car, Estes switches over other constitutional amendment, a comhome with a built-in pool. She even had Nationwide, undocumented immito 820 AM, where Rush Limbaugh is plicated process that requires two-thirds her own horse. Her mother died when grants pay about $11.7 billion a year in singing her tune. approval of both chambers of Congress she was 4, so she lived with her father, a state and local income, sales and proper“Immigration is the primary reason and ratification by three-quarters of the small-business owner who drove a red ty taxes, including about $1.5 billion in Donald Trump was elected,” he says. states.

Thunderbird convertible. Then her faTexas, according to the nonpartisan In“These ICE raids — people are applaudTrump, however, has suggested simther died when she was 19. She quickly stitute on Taxation and Economic Policy. ing them!” ply challenging the prevailing interpremarried and, by 26, was divorced with And more than 4 million people who do tation in court. “Some very, very good two kids. not have Social Security numbers — Alike but far apart lawyers” believe children of undocuShe has worked a lifetime of jobs that most of them undocumented immiBy the time Estes finishes her route mented immigrants “do not have Amerihave paid less and less. She was a scrub grants — file federal tax returns using and arrives back home, the sun has can citizenship,” he said during the camtech at a medical clinic, a courier carryIndividual Taxpayer Identification Numalready set. Her headlights splash across paign. ing blueprints for a developer, a shuttle bers issued by the Internal Revenue her little house, and her dogs start barkIn January, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) driver for a casino. Years ago, she moved Service. ing. She breeds Doberman pinschers for reintroduced the Birthright Citizenship an hour north of Dallas, where she could Rainier’s family has been trying for extra cash.

Act, which would grant citizenship to an afford a tiny house on a two-acre plot two decades to become legal. Since 1997, Minutes later, Nevarez pulls into his infant only if at least one parent was a carved from a vast expanse of wheat his father, Nicolas Nevarez, 38, has had driveway.

U.S. citizen, a lawful permanent resident fields. an application pending for a resident The daily routines are similar in these or a noncitizen serving in the military.

Now she is almost 60, raised in uppervisa through his father, an undocumenttwo small houses on a flat road ed worker granted U.S. citizenship paved into the North Texas prairie. under Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amBoth families raise chickens and nesty program. dogs, work long days for little pay Last year, the United States isand pray for better at church on sued only 801 visas in his category Sunday.

— a Mexican married adult child In four years, the neighbors of a U.S. citizen — out of a waiting have barely spoken. Once, Nevarez list of more than 204,000. His and some other Mexican immilawyer tells him to be patient. grants helped Estes dig a grave for “I’m trying to do everything one of her dogs. She seemed right,” Nevarez says. “But 20 friendly enough. But then the years?”

Trump sign appeared on her lawn, Nevarez and Reyes have no and the distance between them health insurance and constantly grew. worry about getting sick, although At the kitchen table, Rainier, their children are eligible for Medfresh from track practice, devours icaid. When Rainier needed knee four enchiladas. His father eats a surgery last year, it was fully covfew bites. He’s tired and doesn’t ered. say much. He spent the day on a Rainier’s parents tell him valo­ 30-foot ladder, hanging shutters ra la oportunidad — appreciate on houses. His hair is flecked with the opportunity he has in America sawdust.

— and he does. But he has no idea Next door, Estes is in her kitchhow he will pay for college, so he is en, too tired to cook. Sometimes thinking that right after high she eats a few cheese cubes after school he will enlist in the U.S. her evening chores. But when she Army. checks the fridge, there are none “It’s my country, and I want to Tamara Estes looks at her dog show awards and reflects on “a happier time in life.” Estes left. serve,” he says, as he picks up his resents paying for a government safety net for “anchor babies” when she feels she has none.

She says her opposition to “illetrumpet case and backpack and gals” isn’t personal. She says that heads off to school. when she needs help around the house, Some Texas officials have pursued a middle-class comfort and living in Fallen from middle class her Hispanic neighbors offer before “my backdoor approach to cutting benefits to working-class stress. white neighbors do.” She says she doesn’t the children of undocumented parents Estes regrets not going to college and After finishing her morning route, want the kids on her bus to think she is by limiting the forms of parental identifibecoming a veterinarian. On the radio, Estes parks her yellow school bus and heartless for supporting deportation cation they will accept when issuing she hears that good jobs for people with clocks out. It’s 9 a.m. Her afternoon shift raids. But she says something has to birth certificates. Without a birth certifionly a high school diploma have been starts at 2:30. It would take too much gas change. cate, a child cannot prove citizenship stolen by globalization and automation: to drive home and back, so she waits in She flips on the TV. She has recorded and therefore has no access to governChina and robots. She knows that it may the parking lot, unpaid, in her Honda Fit. eight hours of inauguration coverage on ment benefits. take Trump more time to bring those She eats a blueberry muffin out of a C-SPAN and a two-hour History Channel After Mexican and Central American jobs back. plastic bag and listens to the radio, documentary on Trump, which she now parents sued in federal court, Texas offiBut she’s thrilled that he is moving on where Mark Davis is praising Trump’s starts watching. cials agreed last year to accept more his promise to kick out the “illegals.” first weeks in office.

“They are losers! They are babies!” forms of identification, including Mexi“They’ll be out of here so frickin’ fast!”

Estes thinks Trump is off to a great Trump is shouting. can voter ID cards — but only after more Trump said at a Dallas campaign rally in start. She wanted to high-five the presiShe laughs. He sure is entertaining. than 1,000 babies were denied birth September 2015, as Estes and 20,000 dent when he said in his inaugural adTrump’s booming voice fills her small certificates, said Jennifer Harbury, an others cheered. dress, “The forgotten men and women of house: “The working class is going to attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal She’s also grateful that a president is our country will be forgotten no longer.” strike back!”

Aid. finally talking about “anchor babies.”

She says it was as if Trump was speak“Yes,” Estes says. “Yes!” n “The anti-immigrant faction is defiMost legal scholars say that revoking ing directly to her. nitely emboldened,” Harbury said. birthright citizenship would take anEstes grew up in Dallas, in a grand ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

16

KLMNO WEEKLY

BY

FASHION PERSPECTIVE

R OBIN G IVHAN

D

o it for your fellow longsuffering air travelers.

Do it for that seatmate who is feeling a little violated after the indignity of a TSA pat-down. Do it for all the good citizens who, just like you, wish that their knees were not practically tucked under their chins, whose seat backs don’t recline and whose tray tables are too small to hold a laptop. Do it for the thoughtful vacationer who resisted the urge to buy that comforting black-bean burrito and instead purchased a nonodoriferous mixed-green salad to sustain her on a three-hour flight though she knows full well that a few cups of mesclun will leave her more than a little hangry.

Dress not for yourself but for the strangers whose personal space you will be forced to invade.

The conversation about airtravel attire once again rose to a roar after United Airlines recently denied boarding to two teenage girls wearing leggings. A third girl was also stopped at the gate but had a dress with her and pulled it on over the offending spandex.

When a nearby passenger tweeted about it, the incident went viral.

In the midst of a thunderstorm of protest, United Airlines explained that the girls were traveling on employee passes. Thus, they were expected to adhere to the company’s dress code for employees, which does not allow leggings or flip-flops or cropped tops but does allow the equivalent of walking shorts, T-shirts, sundresses and sandals. The dress code bars miniskirts, which are favored by women — but it also bans clothes that reveal any type of undergarment, presumably including low-slung jeans, which are favored by men. It also bars folks traveling on these passes from wearing pajamas, which are favored by people who simply don’t care.

But what really seems to have struck a nerve is the banning of leggings. The outcry suggests that before leggings were popularized as streetwear, women had absolutely nothing comfortable to wear and were routinely forced to truss themselves into girdles and petticoats before wedging into a

Why this look just won’t fly

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

coach seat.

It should be noted, however, that if you purchase a regular ticket, United has absolutely no problem with you wearing leggings. But should you?

There are dressy leggings, after all, that are meant to be worn outside of a gym — paired with sweaters or jackets, as part of fashion’s unrelenting athleisure trend. There are cashmere leggings, for example, and jeggings, if you must. Recently, the designer Giambattista Valli paired his luxurious, elaborately designed jackets with Nike leggings — on the runway in Paris. In many cases, leggings look incredibly chic and sophisticated and cool.

But that’s not why most people are devoted to them. It’s because they’re comfortable. And easy.

And when airlines are making travel as miserable as possible,

many travelers feel the airlines should just be happy they’re not showing up naked.

But dressing for an airplane isn’t the same as dressing for Saturday-morning errands or Sunday brunch. It’s not the same as dressing for any other public space. It’s tight quarters and a sealed environment, which is why most of us understand it’s horribly rude to freshen up with perfume, cologne or scented lotions on a plane. (What are you trying to do? Asphyxiate your fellow man?)

On a plane, clothes register differently than in other places. Who has not received an unwelcome, embarrassing eyeful when a fellow passenger — in a short skirt, an untucked shirt or baggy jeans — reached into the overhead bin to store a bag? On an airplane, passengers regularly and inescapably find

Yes, you can wear leggings on planes, but it doesn’t mean you should

themselves looking directly into another traveler’s backside and crotch.

This isn’t to say that air travelers should never wear leggings.

But it’s to remind you that when you do, it’s likely that people are going to get an up-close and personal view of your rear end. A view that, despite their best effort, they probably won’t be able to avoid. At least make sure those leggings aren’t see-through, that they aren’t so tight that you resemble a walking anatomy sketch. Make sure they do not smell like day-old yoga sweat.

Wear them with intention, not resignation.

This has nothing to do with sexuality or gender. It’s not about body shaming. It’s just being polite. When nothing else about air travel is. n ©The Washington Post

Crunched SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

17

Series, movie, repeat

ENTERTAINMENT

KLMNO WEEKLY

While its customers have been parked on their couches, Netflix has been watching them. After studying 86 million members in more than 190 countries between January and October 2016, the video-streaming giant has learned that its binge-watching customers have a pattern. After finishing a series, most customers (59 percent) take a break for about three days. And most of those break-takers (61 percent) cleanse their palates with a movie before starting another series. But that’s not the only pattern.

Turns out that among the 36 percent of customers who fall into this behavior, there are popular pairings of series and movies.

Some of them are unsurprising: “Narcos” to “Pulp Fiction.” Others are somewhat counterintuitive. “Bloodline” to … “Spotlight”?

Must be the secrets. — Elizabeth Chang

Series, movie, repeat BY

E LIZABETH C HANG

W

hile its customers have been parked on their couches, Netflix has been watching them. After studying 86 million members in more than 190 countries between January and October 2016, the videostreaming giant has learned that its binge-watching customers have a pattern.

After finishing a series, most customers (59 percent) take a break for about three days.

And most of those breaktakers (61 percent) cleanse their palates with a movie before starting another series. But that’s not the only pattern. Turns out that among the 36 percent of customers who fall into this behavior, there are popular pairings of series and movies. Some of them are unsurprising: “Narcos” to “Pulp Fiction.” Others are somewhat counterintuitive.

“Bloodline” to . . .

“Spotlight”?

Must be the secrets. n

 IF YOU JUST FINISHED THIS SERIES, YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF WATCHING THAT MOVIE  SerieS

Movie

Stranger Things

Zootopia

Bloodline

Spotlight

Orange Is the New Black

The Big Short

Breaking Bad

The Do-Over

Narcos

Pulp Fiction

©The Washington Post

House of Cards

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Beasts of No Nation

Sixteen Candles

PHOtOS (leFt tO rIgHt, FrOm tOP): NetFlIx, DISNey, NetFlIx, Kerry HayeS/OPeN rOaD FIlmS, NetFlIx, JaaP BUIteNDIJK/ParamOUNt PICtUreS, UrSUla COyOte/amC, NetFlIx, DaNIel DaZa/NetFlIx, mIramax, DavID gIeSBreCHt/NetFlIx, SHawN greeNe/NetFlIx, NetFlIx, UNIverSal PICtUreS

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

18

KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

New research illuminates a doomed Nixon N ONFICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

A RAM G OUDSOUZIAN

‘N RICHARD NIXON The Life

By John A. Farrell Doubleday.

737 pp. $35.

ever forget, the press is the enemy,” lectured the president of the United States.

It was Dec. 14, 1972 — right after Richard Nixon’s reelection and just before his negotiation of peace in Vietnam. Surrounded by his aides, he bared his animosities. “The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy.

Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”

Nixon’s shadow looms longer and darker than ever. As the current occupant of the White House demonizes the political and intellectual establishment, he harvests the grievances planted by his disgraced predecessor.

Yet it would be simplistic to render Nixon as just a founding father of Trumpism. From the late 1940s through the mid-1970s, he helped steer the course of the Cold War and the evolution of the Republican Party. In “Richard Nixon: The Life,” John A. Farrell narrates this story with punch and insight.

A stack of good books about Nixon could reach the ceiling, but Farrell has written the best onevolume, cradle-to-grave biography that we could expect about such a famously elusive subject.

By employing recently released government documents and oral histories, he adds layers of understanding to a complex man and his dastardly decisions.

Farrell avoids one conventional assumption: that Nixon was always Tricky Dick, a tortured schemer who mastered the dark arts of politics. He does follow the trail of liberal derision throughout Nixon’s life, but he sticks close to the man, depicting not only his anxieties and anger, but also his sincerity and self-discipline. That approach helps explain Nixon’s resonance in American politics over nearly three decades.

The biography illuminates a man of sharp mind and soaring ambition. Farrell sympathizes with a boy who thought he was

JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

hard to love and compensated with an iron will. He understands Nixon’s frustrations with the lack of respect for his accomplishments. But in the end, this portrait is more damning. His Nixon is doomed by his own insecurities, destroyed by his own treachery, damned by his own words.

Nixon’s dazzling rise exposed the rifts in Cold War America. As a freshman congressman, his audacious investigation of Alger Hiss stirred conservative passions about communist spies and their liberal enablers. In California’s 1950 Senate race, he smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas with “pink sheets” suggesting her communist-inspired voting record.

With his 1952 “Checkers” speech, Nixon painted himself as a man of the striving middle class, as well as a victim of the elitist press. It preserved his spot on Dwight Eisenhower’s ticket, even as it disgusted his critics. Foreshadowing his later success, Nixon won political battles by summoning cultural resentments.

Yet his own resentments festered. The vice president could stand toe-to-toe with Nikita Khrushchev, but Eisenhower’s praise or belittlement might reduce him to blubbering tears.

When he lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy and the 1962 race for California governor to Edmund “Pat” Brown, he moaned about the press treatment. Politics favored those with comfortable charisma.

That sense of persecution fed Nixon’s penchant for chicanery.

Farrell’s deep research exposes new evidence of this tendency. In his first campaign, the 1946 congressional race against incumbent Jerry Voorhis, Nixon’s personal notes included a plan to “set up . . . spies” in his opponent’s camp.

During the 1968 presidential election, amid his hard-fought comeback onto the national scene, Nixon almost certainly helped derail a peace settlement in Vietnam, which would have helped his Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey. Anna Chennault of the China Lobby, communicating with the Nixon campaign, urged South Vietnam to thwart negotiations until after the election. Farrell uncovers new archival evidence that suggests Nixon’s direct knowledge and encouragement of this scheme.

Farrell sees tragic promise in the Nixon presidency. Despite a progressive record on issues such as the environment and workplace

safety, Nixon endured abuse from both liberals and conservatives. His administration advanced school desegregation but forfeited moral authority on race with a manufactured “war on drugs” and cynical appeals to the Silent Majority.

Similarly, Nixon’s earth-shattering visit to China and arms limitation treaties with the Soviet Union illustrated his vision in world affairs. But Vietnam haunted him. The war intensified his paranoia. With the 1972 election looming, he indulged his worst instincts for self-doubt and dirty tricks.

The Watergate saga may be familiar, but Farrell dramatically situates Nixon in time and place, illuminating his political circumstances and emotional state with each wiretapping, burglary, payoff, investigation and coverup.

The voice-activated recording system in the Oval Office provided the smoking gun that forced Nixon’s embarrassing resignation in August 1974.

The White House tapes also shrink Nixon’s reputation. They reveal him at his worst, as a skulking liar. He puffs with false confidence, shrivels with self-pity, spews hateful opinions of Jews and blacks, and entertains a host of underhanded plots. His words expose a man who sowed the wind of political division and reaped the whirlwind of his enemies.

On the final day of his historic visit to China, Nixon reflected with Zhou Enlai on a career filled with conquests and crises. “I found that I had learned more from defeats than from victories,” he wrote in his diary. “And that all I wanted was a life in which I had just one more victory than defeat.”

He instead suffered one more defeat. He stained his reputation and that of the presidency. As Farrell’s outstanding biography reminds us, the consequences have endured. They remain toxic. n Goudsouzian, chair of the Department of History at the University of Memphis, wrote this for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

19

BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

A German gumshoe refuses to goose-step

Misty Copeland’s body-image basics

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

F

l

REVIEWED BY

R ICHARD L IPEZ

or such a fat book — 528 dense pages — the 12th Bernie Gunther mystery is as brisk and agile as its German police detective protagonist. It moves back and forth between Nazi Germany in 1939 and the French Riviera in 1956, with two suspenseful tales that for a while seem unconnected but aren’t. Gunther is one of crime fiction’s most gratifyingly melancholy creations, and in “Prussian Blue” we watch him match wits with the officialdom of two Germanys, pre- and postwar. In both cases, there is plenty for Gunther to be melancholy about.

All detective fiction takes place in a political context, but there’s nothing quite so complex, and so fraught, as a cop with a conscience trying to do what’s right while working under the Nazis.

It’s not that Berlin’s most accomplished police sleuth is guiltless.

He makes moral compromises to survive. But as a nonparty member and known social democrat, what Gunther mainly does to stay out of prison is make himself indispensable.

His necessity is what leads Nazi henchman Reinhard Heydrich to assign Gunther to clean up a messy situation at Hitler’s vacation home in Bavaria. The leader is set to show up in a week to celebrate his 50th birthday, but meanwhile an official has been killed by a sniper on the terrace of Hitler’s Alpine house. The tetchy fuhrer won’t like that. Heads could roll — literally.

In all the Gunther novels, Kerr uses real personages as characters, and in this one it’s a Nazi rogues’ gallery of Nuremberg candidates. (The time is April 1939, and the invasion of Poland is five months away.) Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann is Gunther’s chief goad. And then becomes an impediment, as Gunther discovers that nearly everybody in the neighborhood hates the Nazis.

Hundreds had motives to kill Karl Flex, an engineer involved in the

construction of a complex that’s essentially becoming the capital of the new Germany. In the event that Gunther fails to find the real killer, the ever-efficient Bormann has an innocent man in the lockup who will have to take the rap.

Saving this unlucky fellow is part of what spurs Gunther on.

Gunther’s assistant in his investigation, a wily young man named Frederich Korsch, turns up 17 years later as an official of the East German Stasi. His old buddy is now tracking Gunther to kill him for refusing to leave his postwar job as a hotel concierge in Nice and assassinate Gunther’s estranged wife, Elisabeth. To show how serious the Stasi is, Gunther is nearly hanged by Korsch and a couple of other thugs.

In Kerr’s deft hands, the considerable violence in the novel — all of it historically appropriate — leaps off the page. You can’t help but get the picture.

Most of the novel is set in 1939, where Kerr’s picture of daily life in Germany on the brink is hairraising. People snicker about the hapless Poles. Workers around the Hitler compound are encouraged to shoot cats because the Leader likes birdsong. A sign at the entrance to an Austrian village reads “Jew-free since 1938.”

In the midst of all this lunacy is a rational man known for his “smart remarks.” Such as, “Someone has to do the thinking around here now that the police dogs have been sacked.” And, to an East German VIP, “Tell me, General, when is the communist government going to dissolve the people and elect another?” You have to know that things will rarely turn out well for brave, mouthy Bernie Gunther, but that they turn out at all is exhilarating to watch. n Lipez’s latest Don Strachey mystery, written under the name Richard Stevenson, is “www.dropdead.” He wrote this review for The Washington Post.

M PRUSSIAN BLUE

By Philip Kerr Putnam. 528 pp. $27.

BALLERINA BODY Dancing and Eating Your Way to a Leaner, Stronger and More Graceful You

By Misty Copeland Grand Central Life & Style. 240 pp. $30.

l

REVIEWED BY

S ARAH L . K AUFMAN

isty Copeland’s new book, “Ballerina Body,” co-written by Charisse Jones, is handsomely designed and sweetly, earnestly composed. The premise is appealing: Copeland, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, wants us to embark with her on a journey to wellness, to weave workouts throughout our day, and to bypass the mac and cheese and dine instead like elite ballerinas do, on shrimp and sushi, washed down with a glass of prosecco.

What could be more chic? It gets better: If we follow Copeland’s “ballerina body plan,” eating like her and stretching like her, we can, if we’re disciplined enough, end up looking like her.

This message is highlighted by the book’s many barely clothed studio portraits of the petite, leggy, hyper-flexible Copeland.

Copeland’s images are aweinspiring. But the inference is that we can all potentially inspire such awe. “Dancing and Eating Your Way to a Leaner, Stronger, and More Graceful You” is the book’s subtitle. This is all about you, my friend — and “the body you’re in is perfect for you.” Don’t be distracted by that sculpted size-zero beauty in all the photos!

“Rather than comparing yourself to photographs,” Copeland writes, “the only visage you need to focus on is the one that stares back at you from your own mirror.”

Your physique, in other words, shouldn’t “be a replica of your favorite singer’s, athlete’s, or movie star’s.” Or dancer’s, one assumes.

The book may be titled “Ballerina Body,” but that’s not the goal.

Wait, isn’t it?

Copeland mixes her messages: You’re perfect — but see how gorgeous I am just posing in my sports bra. “Don’t compare yourself to anyone else!” she urges (again), in a book full of alluring photos of herself.

One can only expect inconsistencies in promises of shapechanging magic. Like many such

health-and-fitness books, “Ballerina Body” demonstrates the contradictions in entreaties about how easy it is to remake our bodies into the conventional ideal if we just work harder at it. The proposition that you, too, can look like me if you follow these simple steps is seductive for obvious reasons. But in actuality it makes little sense. Especially where ballerina’s bodies are concerned. How many of us can see ourselves in Copeland’s ultrathin, highly trained and bendy form?

Achieving that kind of body, in fact, is a dubious aim, as Copeland’s own experience attests. She writes about her painful history of ballet-related injuries, balletworld prejudice (being told she was “too brown” for ballet), and the tactful but pointed bodyshaming of ballet-company officials, who called her into a meeting after she’d gained a few pounds and told her in ballet’s code that she needed to drop her doughnut habit.

These passages on the physical and emotional costs of her to-diefor figure are the most compelling. Copeland’s journey to becoming the first African American principal ballerina at ABT is poignant and inspiring — and you can read more about it in her 2014 memoir, “Life in Motion.” Copeland has since taken on other commercial ventures — a Broadway role, advertising campaigns, even helping to create a Barbie doll in her likeness. Given her iconic stature, this lifestyle book was inevitable.

But the book breaks little new ground. As a dance critic and dance lover, I’d rather that this dance artist spend more time in the studio than at a desk or on book tours. Excellence in ballet is fleeting, and the window to develop it is narrow, while the array of celebrity diet books is wide. n Kaufman is The Washington Post’s dance critic and the author of “The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life.”

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Trump should start acting like the CEO of America DAVID IGNATIUS writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post.

As the White House reboots for Trump 2.0 after a largely unsuccessful first two months, one lesson should be obvious: The radical, polarizing politics of the campaign trail don’t work well in governing the country.

The United States isn’t Russia or the Philippines. Our system has speed bumps, carefully constructed by our founders. Presidents don’t rule simply by executive order.

They must shape policies that are comprehensible to the public and can be enacted into law.

In President Trump’s first months in office, he too often behaved as an insurgent and disrupter, rather than a chief executive. He paid a severe price, seeing the collapse of his health-care legislation and, in a Gallup tracking poll this past week, receiving the lowest approval ratings for any modern president so early in his term.

There are some signs that Trump’s inner circle gets it. On foreign policy, plans are being assembled carefully as part of a broad national-security strategy.

Before making big announcements on North Korea, China, Russia and the Middle East, officials want to see how the pieces fit. Trade policy, now under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, looks less crazily destructive than it initially did. Similar coordination is badly needed on tax policy.

The biggest danger to Trump 2.0 is the president’s own impulsive, embattled style — which shows most clearly in his handling of the FBI and congressional investigations of Russia’s covert action to influence the U.S. election. The best course for Trump (and our system) is for the White House to cooperate with the inquiry, let

it run its course — and, meanwhile, concentrate on doing the public’s business.

Weirdly, Trump continues to do the opposite. He’s still arguing the discredited, bogus issue of President Barack Obama’s supposed wiretaps on Trump Tower. And he’s coyly dealing with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to foster this distraction.

The Trump-Nunes allegation seems to have morphed into a contention that Trump associates were picked up incidentally in lawful foreignintelligence intercepts of others, but that their names weren’t properly masked (or “minimized,” in the jargon) in subsequent intelligence reports that were then disseminated and leaked.

This may satisfy Trump’s desire for a counterpunch. But does any reasonable person really believe that this technical legal issue is more important than whether Trump associates cooperated in a Russian covert action against the United States, which is what FBI Director James B. Comey has said the bureau is investigating?

A better approach for dealing with the inquiry was shown

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Jared Kushner, left, could be a good example for President Trump.

this past week by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and perhaps now his most important adviser.

Kushner’s Russia problem was that he met after the election not just with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak but also with a Russian banker named Sergey Gorkov, who was prepared to act as an intermediary to President Vladimir Putin. Did Kushner blame leaks, or Nazi-like behavior in the intelligence agencies? No, he agreed to testify to Senate investigators about the meetings.

The message is that Kushner thinks he did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. One assumes he will tell the Senate that he wanted to explore opening a discreet channel to Putin, similar to those he established with numerous other global leaders during the transition. But after the secretary of state nomination went to Rex Tillerson, a genuine friend of Putin, Kushner apparently concluded Trump didn’t need any such back channel. We’ll see if that’s the whole story, but cooperating with the Senate investigation is the right start.

Kushner is apprenticing for the role of Trump’s Henry

Kissinger. He’s the secret emissary, the evaluator of talent, the whisperer of confidential advice. He’s the only person in this White House who Trump can’t fire, really. All these qualities strike me as beneficial, so long as Kushner uses them to make Trump a better president who learns how to compromise and govern.

Trump’s problem is that he’s used to operating a family business, where people such as his daughter and son-in-law and a few hired guns are the only operatives he needs and trusts. He doesn’t seem to understand that he runs a public company now. His stockholders are the American people. He has disclosure requirements. He has fiduciary responsibilities.

If this were a business-school case study, a smart Wharton student would say that the chief executive needs a strong board of directors who can use his best talents but keep him from damaging the enterprise or the public that owns it.

Running a public company in this prudent way is not a choice for the chief executive, it’s an obligation. Any machinations to avoid possible legal problems are cause for dismissal.

Sorry, but that’s the deal. n

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

The part of rural America everyone is ignoring MARA CASEY TIEKEN is an assistant professor of education at Bates College and author of “Why Rural Schools Matter.” She wrote this for The Washington Post.

Last year’s earthshaking election brought new attention to rural America. This attention is overdue — rural America has long been largely ignored by reporters, researchers and policymakers — and much of it is useful, as this increasingly urban-centric country tries to understand and reconnect with those living far from cities.

But so far, the narrative emerging about rural America has been woefully incomplete, because so much of the media coverage has focused on only one slice of it: rural white America. Some stories are clear about their scope: Their authors have intentionally chosen a particular geographic and racial population to explore and explain. Others are less obvious in their focus, though details — region of the country or photographs — soon make explicit what is merely implied or assumed. Either way, though, a particular racial narrative is being told.

There’s another rural America that exists beyond this rural white America. Nearly 10.3 million people, about one-fifth of rural residents, are people of color. Of this population, about 40 percent are African American, 35 percent are nonwhite Hispanic, and the

remaining 25 percent are Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander or multiracial. And this rural America is expected to grow in the coming decades, as rural areas see a rapid increase in Latino immigration.

This rural America, much like rural white America, can be found from coast to coast. But these rural Americans tend to live in different places from rural whites: across the Mississippi Delta and the Deep South; throughout the Rio Grande Valley; on reservations and native lands in the Southwest, Great Plains and Northwest.

This rural America has a different history from rural white America: a history of forced migration, enslavement and conquest. This rural America receives even lower pay and fewer protections for its labor than does rural white America. And, as my own

research shows, this rural America attends very different schools than rural white America, schools that receive far less funding and other resources.

In fact, the relationship between rural white communities and rural communities of color is much like the relationship between urban white communities and urban communities of color: separate and unequal.

And it also appears that these rural Americans vote for different candidates than rural whites. A look at county-level voting and demographic data suggests that this rural America voted for Hillary Clinton.

In defining rural white America as rural America, pundits, academics and lawmakers are perpetuating an incomplete and simplistic story about the many people who make up rural America and what they want and need. Ironically, this story — so often told by liberals trying to explain the recent rise in undisguised nativism and xenophobia — serves to re-privilege whiteness.

Whiteness is assumed; other races are shoved even further to the margins.

The erasure of rural communities of color has other, more immediate risks, too. As community and service organizations rush to temper the effects of recent immigration and voter-ID policies, they may focus on urban areas and overlook the rural populations — immigrants, refugees and black communities — also affected by this legislation. And as hopeful progressives market themselves in the run-up to midterm elections, they risk alienating their rural supporters: rural communities of color.

Interest in rural America is welcome. But we need to make sure it is complete and inclusive — and genuine. We need to press the media for more balanced, more representative coverage of rural places and people. We need to push our politicians for legislation and programs that support rural communities of color. And we need to organize, building political coalitions that bridge lines of race and geography. n

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

22

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

Freedom Caucus blows its chance MARC A. THIESSEN writes a weekly column for The Washington Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

A few days before the House Freedom Caucus brought down the American Health Care Act, Rep. Mark Meadows laid out the stakes for his group: “This is a defining moment for our nation, but it’s also a defining moment for the Freedom Caucus.”

The North Carolina Republican was right. The vote was indeed a defining moment — a test in which the Freedom Caucus had to decide: Would it remain a minoritarian opposition bloc whose only role was to defend truth without compromise? Or could it become something bigger, transforming itself into a majoritarian governing force that could lead Congress toward achievable conservative victories and have a lasting impact on the direction of our country?

For weeks, as President Trump courted the group, members of the caucus used their leverage to make the bill better. They asked for language capping the maximum income to receive the tax credit — and got it. They asked to allow states to choose between a traditional block grant and a per capita block grant — and got it. They asked to allow states to impose work requirements on able-bodied Medicaid recipients — and got it.

They asked for language preventing non-Medicaidexpansion states from becoming expansion states — and got it.

They asked for flexibility for states to change “essential health benefits” — and got it.

But each time they got a

concession and were asked to support the bill, they instead came up with new sets of demands that made the legislation increasingly unpassable. Eventually it became clear to Trump that the Freedom Caucus would never take yes for an answer. So he cut them off, sending former Freedom Caucus member Mick Mulvaney, his Office of Management and Budget director, to Capitol Hill to deliver a message: The president was done negotiating.

That was the moment the Freedom Caucus made its choice.

Caucus members could have pocketed their wins, declared victory and voted to move the legislation forward — vowing to keep working to improve the bill.

BY SHENEMAN

But unable or unwilling to accept success, they chose instead to deliver Trump a major defeat on the first legislative effort of his presidency.

“The result,” one senior GOP official told me, “will likely be that the White House will no longer negotiate with them in future debates and will go to moderate members and Democrats to get things done.

The House Freedom Caucus has made itself irrelevant.”

Indeed, Trump is already writing them off. He blasted the group on Twitter, declaring, “Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!” And in an interview with The Washington Post’s Bob Costa on Friday, Trump said his strategy going forward will be to let Obamacare fail and then work with Democrats to fix it.

That’s the lesson Trump took from this experience: Democrats whose motto is “Resist!” would be more reasonable partners to work with than the Freedom Caucus.

Will the Freedom Caucus learn from its mistake? The group has already lost one member, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), who quit over the health bill debacle, declaring,

“Saying no is easy, leading is hard, but that is what we were elected to do.”

Poe is right. Freedom Caucus members need to understand that they are not in the opposition anymore. In the opposition, you can vote to repeal Obamacare 60 times without giving much thought to what comes next. But governing is different. Governing is messy.

You have to make compromises and concessions. The goal is not to support the most conservative legislation; it is — to paraphrase William F. Buckley’s famous rule — to support the most conservative viable legislation that can win.

Freedom Caucus members had a chance to repeal the individual mandate and the employer mandate, transform Medicaid, end $1 trillion in Obamacare taxes, expand health savings accounts and defund Planned Parenthood. Instead, they chose to keep Obamacare intact.

They failed to lead. They chose to think and act like an oppositional minority, instead of a majoritarian political movement. Unless and until they choose otherwise, they will never fundamentally change the direction of America — which, one assumes, is why its members ran for office in the first place. n

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

College admissions BY

V ALERIE S TRAUSS

Most high school seniors have now heard back about their college applications. But despite the crush of advisers proffering their sup­ posed expertise for money, the endeavor is shrouded in misconcep­ tions. Here are five of the most stubborn.

MYTH NO. 1 Admissions essays don’t matter.

After all, at some schools, the pool of applicants is much too large for every essay to be read — at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, only 1 in 7 essays is a factor in an admission decision, according to the university’s dean of admissions.

But that doesn’t make them irrelevant. In fact, essays can be decisive when it comes to students whom admissions counselors are on the fence about. A student with borderline grades and test scores could secure a spot in the freshman class with an insightful, well-crafted essay, or be rejected because of a lousy one — or when it’s clear to counselors that an adult, not a student, has written it.

And a poorly constructed essay, or one marred by punctuation and grammatical errors, can sour even a great application.

MYTH NO. 2 The more extracurriculars, the better.

This is an outdated way of approaching college admissions.

When colleges and universities were thought to be seeking “wellrounded” students, applicants with long lists of curricular and extracurricular activities stood out as great candidates thanks to their broad interests. Students were expected to engage in sports, cooking clubs, debate and, of course, community service that sounded more meaningful than it really was. But about a decade ago, schools changed their focus from well-rounded students to those with hyper-developed interest in one or two subjects, which became apparent to me in the way

admissions counselors answered my questions about extracurricular activities.

Nowadays, schools look for both kinds of students as they attempt, each year, to create an interesting, diverse, high-performing freshman class. That may include an applicant extremely passionate about the viola and another who plays every sport and is a member of a dozen clubs. The best way to impress admissions counselors, as always, is to authentically pursue what interests you.

MYTH NO. 3 Ivy League schools are the most selective.

There are eight schools in the Ivy League: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. The least choosy among the Ivies, Cornell, took 14 percent of applicants for the Class of 2020; the most choosy, Harvard, took just 5.4 percent.

But these aren’t the most selective schools around. Stanford University often takes less than 5 percent, the smallest share of applicants, and it isn’t in the Ivy League. MIT, Caltech and the University of Chicago, all with acceptance rates of about 8 percent for the Class of 2020, are more selective than some of the Ivies, too. Plus, many schools may take a higher proportion of applicants but are equally picky about their credentials: A liberal arts school like St. John’s would look dubiously at a savant engineer from a technical high school who hadn’t taken humanities classes.

MYTH NO. 4 Average grades in hard classes

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Students graduate in 2016 from Columbia University, one of the Ivy League schools.

Contrary to myth, the Ivy League schools aren’t necessarily the most selective.

are better than A’s in easy ones.

Yes, colleges and universities like to see students take challenging courses in high school.

But in my experience covering education, selective schools usually don’t like grades below a B, and struggling in more than one tough class is not seen as a plus. So unless students can keep their grades in higher-level courses at or over the B range, it probably makes more sense to take regular classes.

Even though grade-point averages are often boosted by challenging classes, which award more points than the typical 4.0 A, colleges can tell when a GPA is bloated, admissions officers say. As Peterson’s, an admissions and test-prep agency, explains, high schools use distinct grading systems and offer courses that have the same name but varying degrees of difficulty. And, as Peterson’s notes, many colleges have their own systems for recalculating GPAs. MYTH NO. 5 Schools don’t need affirmative action to make diverse classes.

Affirmative action programs do appear to increase diversity at colleges and universities. Though

colleges are often cagey about releasing exact numbers on the subject, a look at what happens when such programs disappear tells a worrying story. When affirmative action programs are banned, black and Hispanic enrollment tends to lag. As Haley Munguia pointed out in 2015 at FiveThirtyEight, in states where affirmative action is banned, far fewer universities have shares of black and Hispanic students equal to those in the general population, while states with affirmative action have far better representation in black and Hispanic enrollment. At the University of Michigan, in particular, black enrollment fell 30 percent in the seven years after affirmative action was banned.

Today, affirmative action has lost much judicial support, and public opinion polls on these programs show mixed results.

Meanwhile, most minority groups remain underrepresented on college and university campuses, even though most students enrolled at the country’s K-12 public schools are minorities. n Strauss covers education for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017

24

Calling all businesses in North Central Washington The Wenatchee World has just launched a brand new online business directory.

NCW BUSINESS DIRECTORY

is a comprehensive list of area businesses that are searchable by name or category and can be narrowed down by city.

It’s FREE! Your listing includes your business name, address, phone number, website, e-mail, hours and a Google map.

Want to stand out from your competition? Upgrade to our premium Featured Listing and add your logo, photos, videos, social media links, a full business description, plus a coupon option.

All for just $20 per month or save 25% with our annual plan that’s just $180 per year.

Log on to NCWBusinessDirectory.com where you can: • Upgrade to a Featured Listing • Update your current listing • Add your business to our site Need to reach us? Contact Chris Gerber at gerber@wenatcheeworld.com or 509-664-7121.

wenatcheeworld.com NCWBusinessDirectory.com