The Washington Post National Weekly - June 3, 2018

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

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SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

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In Sunday’s edition, you’ll enjoy TV World, the Washington Post National Weekly, Parade Magazine and preprinted advertisements from retailers throughout the area. And in Wednesday’s newspaper, shop the local grocery ads and enjoy Relish Magazine published on the first Wednesday of each month. And both editions feature local, regional and national news & sports, feature articles, opinion pieces plus much more.

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have stable or kids who don’t will extend agreed with The shorter week homes. People who goals of by about 10 it would benefit Nelson said that the are to each class session the idea believed sOn week ts and staff because

By Mikaila Wilker es. studen going to a four-day minut both t, emen the staff ded learning World staff writer Nelson informed increase student achiev it allows for exten of ers teeism memb oom. reduce chronic absen quality and school board time in the classr The State thing h an email WATERVILLE — attract and retain Nelson said the first revising the approval throug has approved and rs. out herself. n is Board of Education teache shortly after finding challenge that’s going to happe absenweek for the the ar to reflect a four-day school “If we decrease the “We’re excited for the school calend l ” l District. schedule. The schoo , then student new model will bring, Waterville Schoo the year’s teeism that next the increase,” ail. to consider a “I was relieved that achievement will she said in the em board is expected so that we ng was onth. “The 23. decision was made A school board meeti Nelson said last m new calendar May Superinpment that public can move forward,” professional develo to our held on April 25 for oned . “We n said e Nelso 73 questi provid Cathi 665-11 me to tendent we’re able comment. So Mikaila Wilkerson: to do help them get week system orld.com just have a lot of work teachers will also how the four-day wilkerson@wenatcheew which will l-needs kids now.” better at their craft, would affect specia the t achievement.”

The board approved day. then affect studen shorter week on Thurs 13, 2018 SUNDAY, MAY

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ing along the TONASKET — Flood ted to Tonasket is expec rising Okanogan River near coming week before decrease early this weekend. up to 21.38 feet next major flood stage — The river reached esday, Wedn a.m.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

A pattern of partisan pardons BY

A ARON B LAKE

The most popular read on President Trump’s pardon of conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza is that he may be sending a signal to other allies — hello, Michael Cohen! — that he will pardon them if they stay loyal.

The more fundamental and clearer takeaway is that presidential pardon powers are being perhaps irrevocably politicized for Trump’s own legal purposes.

The common thread running through four of Trump’s five pardons isn’t so much that these are top allies as it is that they were all allegedly politically and legally oppressed. D’Souza and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio were certainly big Trump backers and allies who fit the Trump mold better than the vast majority of Republicans. But I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, an aide in George W. Bush’s White House, wasn’t a high-profile Trump backer, nor was Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who was pardoned after being sentenced to a year in prison for illegally retaining pictures of a submarine.

Saucier may be the best example of Trump’s pardon strategy. Trump used his case frequently on the 2016 campaign trail as a counterpoint to rival Hillary Clinton allegedly being let off easy by the feds. How did a guy get a year in jail just for having pictures of a submarine, while Clinton got off free and clear?

Saucier may have truly deserved the pardon — his plight wasn’t inherently political, and plenty agree that his sentence was harsh — but Trump’s pardon sure reinforced his message that justice wasn’t being carried out appropriately (and, as a bonus, that perhaps Democrats were getting off easier than the Republicans).

And that has been Trump’s argument for the three other pardons, too. In his tweet about D’Souza on Thursday, Trump said D’Souza “was

KLMNO WEEKLY

LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

President Trump on Thursday pardoned conservative commentator and author Dinesh D’Souza, who violated campaign finance laws.

treated very unfairly by our government!”

Of Arpaio, he said, “I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly when they came down with their big decision to go get him, right before the election voting started. . . . I thought that was very, very unfair thing to do.”

As for Libby? You guessed it: He was “treated unfairly.”

Trump even said the same thing Thursday about Martha Stewart, for whom a pardon would look less partisan but would still reinforce this central theme. “I think to a certain extent Martha Stewart was harshly and unfairly treated,” Trump said, as on-message as ever.

The fact that this talking point has been applied to three pardons and a potential pardon is no coincidence. Trump would have you believe he’s righting wrongs, and that’s certainly in the eye of the beholder. But he’s also righting wrongs that mirror his own legal predicament. The president who routinely

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. © 2018 The Washington Post / Year 4, No. 34

complained about the “witch hunt” that is special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation is using his pardon power in perhaps unprecedented ways to assert that myriad other witch hunts have taken place in recent years.

It’s all self-serving on some level, regardless of how you feel about any individual pardon.

And there are other parallels. Trump’s pardons have keyed on cases that were prosecuted by some of his political adversaries. D’Souza was tried by former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara, whom Trump fired; in Stewart’s case, it was none other than James Comey; and in Libby’s and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s cases, it was Comey’s friend Patrick Fitzgerald.

D’Souza’s crime was also a campaign finance violation, which is perhaps Cohen’s most likely crime in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.

Casting doubt on these prosecutors’ works and the severity of campaign finance violations would all seem to accrue to Trump’s benefit.

Pardons have certainly been used in cases of perceived unfair prosecutions, but much of the time they reflect on situations in which people have paid their debts to society and may have received extreme sentences. And when pardons have been given to political allies, it generally has been done in rare cases and in the twilight of a presidency, such as Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich on his last day in office in 2001. Trump, who has demolished so many political norms, has increasingly laid waste to this one, too. Political pardons are apparently no problem for him.

Trump may indeed be testing the waters for a Cohen pardon, a Paul Manafort pardon, or even — most controversially — a pardon of himself.

But even if none of those come to pass, he’s feeding his overriding narrative in the Mueller case. And that’s controversial enough. n ©The Washington Post

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

4 8 10 12 16 18 20 23

ON THE COVER Christine Duckwitz, who is in the Moms with Babies program at Decatur Correctional Center in Illinois, holds her infant daughter, Isabelle. Photo

by WHITNEY CURTIS for The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Trump calls the shots, aides follow

BY A SHLEY P ARKER, J OSH D AWSEY AND P HILIP R UCKER

T

he White House communications director’s job has been vacant for exactly two months. But in practice, it has been filled since the day Hope Hicks said farewell to her unofficial replacement — President Trump himself.

The president also has unofficially performed the roles of many other senior staffers in recent months, leaving the people holding those jobs to execute on his instincts and ideas.

And that’s exactly how Trump likes his West Wing.

Largely gone are the warring factions that dominated life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the first year of Trump’s term, replaced by solo players — many with personal connections to the president and their own miniature fiefdoms — laboring to do their jobs and survive.

Trump has brought in a handful of senior people who believe in him personally, are temperamentally in sync with the brash boss and are invested in his political success more than some of his first-year aides were. As one top official put it, “Ultimately he’s the only one anyone elected.”

But the staff changes have not led to immediate victories on some of Trump’s top priorities.

Trade talks with China have proved more complicated than Trump expected, marred in part by staff disagreements. The president this past week said he would proceed with tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese imports and introduce new limits on Chinese investment in U.S. high-tech industries as part of a broad campaign to crack down on Chinese acquisition of U.S. technology. The White House is also working to salvage the nuclear disarmament summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump canceled after the rogue state’s regime lashed out over comments by national security adviser John Bolton and Vice President Pence.

Yet Trump is still hopeful that the summit could take place, and

OLIVER CONTRERAS/POOL/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Gone are the West Wing’s warring factions. Most of Trump’s advisers now are those who ‘get’ him.

White House officials maintain that a trade deal with China can be achieved.

Rather than struggling to manipulate the president to follow their personal agendas, the senior staff members of Trump’s Year 2 — or “Season 3,” in Trump’s reality television parlance — focus on trying to curb his most outlandish impulses while generally executing his vision and managing whatever fallout may follow. Most of all, officials said, they “get” Trump.

“Last year was the year of adjustment. He was constrained by an axis of adults and adjusting to

be president,” said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “This year is the year of action. He’s giving the orders, even if there’s resistance.

“Next year,” he continued, “is the hangover year, the year of living with the consequences.”

The new cast of advisers — including national security adviser John Bolton, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani — have generally melded more easily with Trump than their predecessors did. They are generational peers of the 71-year-old president, earned

National security adviser John Bolton is among the new White House staffers who are seen as more in sync with the president.

Trump’s appreciation for their vigorous defenses of him on television over the years and treat him like the boss, even if they do not always agree on specific policies.

“The president has exactly the team he’s always needed,” said Giuliani, 74.

Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend and chairman of Newsmax, explained the dynamic: “A lot of it is just personal chemistry, getting to know him, and understanding his perspective on things and how he approaches things.”

Trump recently has been hunting for aides who have shared damaging information with journalists without authorization, demanding that “leakers” be caught and punished. He has been spurred on by a string of nationalsecurity-related disclosures, as well as recent reports on communications aide Kelly Sadler’s crude

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

5

POLITICS comment about Sen. John McCain’s brain cancer in an internal meeting.

“Leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!” Trump tweeted last month.

Privately, the president has confronted aides about leaks, questioned who the culprits may be and mused that maybe “someone should be made an example of,” according to an administration official.

It is unclear how exactly the White House plans to ferret out and fire people it suspects of leaking. Still, Trump’s personal interest in the matter has heightened the anxiety and fear of a shake-up inside the building.

When Bolton joined the administration in April as the third national security adviser in 15 months, Trump gave him a simple, if stern, directive: “Stop the leaks and fire the leakers,” according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

Bolton began by dismissing a number of National Security Council employees, saying the president expected their removal — even though Trump was not personally displeased with those employees, according to current and former White House aides.

Bolton, a driving force behind Trump’s North Korea strategy, has downsized large group meetings on sensitive national security issues, in part to cut down on leaks.

He did not, for instance, convene a National Security Council Principals Committee meeting before Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. But Bolton did hold multiple other meetings on the Iran agreement and orchestrated an interagency process, a senior administration official said. He also holds regular Wednesday meetings of the security council’s senior directors, the official said.

Though Bolton’s initial string of firings rankled some in the White House — and he entered with suspicion because of his reputation in the George W. Bush administration as a bureaucratic infighter — others in Trump’s orbit say Bolton, 69, has largely been a team player.

They said he has been savvy in aligning himself with some of the administration’s rising stars, as well as staying in regular touch with the president.

“There’s only one bull in this china shop, and I think he gets

CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

that,” said one Republican strategist in frequent touch with the White House.

Trump has an easy rapport with Kudlow, 70, other advisers said, in part because of their long history together in New York.

Kudlow, who replaced Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council, has tried to temper some of Trump’s nationalistic impulses on trade — arguing against tariffs in meetings, for instance, according to administration officials. But on other issues he is very much in sync with Trump, they said.

“Kudlow is much more within his philosophical sphere,” Giuliani said, adding that though the two men have “some disagreements on trade,” they can almost always “meet in the middle.”

Ruddy described Trump’s management style as “Darwinian.”

“The president was going to replace weaker people with stronger people,” Ruddy said. “He brought on people, saw what worked, and those that worked, like [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo, got promoted, and those . . . who were considered weak aren’t there anymore.”

The result: a White House solar system in which the president functions as the sun and his aides and advisers circle around him but with no clear lines of orbit. Giuliani, for instance, weighed in during a recent interview with The Washington Post on a topic totally

outside his Russia-investigation purview: Iran.

“The president down the road is thinking regime change in Iran,” Giuliani said. “There is no doubt that at some point, we have to make that change. What side of history do you want to be on?”

At least two people in Trump’s circle — one current White House official and one former — likened the dynamic in the West Wing to HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” They chose the show, they said, not because of the internecine conflicts and deadly family feuds, but because of the general sense of confusion and seesawing fortunes.

“No one knows where anyone else is, and everyone is playing everyone else a little bit,” the current official said. “Everyone is essentially in business for themselves.”

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has receded somewhat from public view, especially compared with the early months of his tenure, when the retired four-star Marine general attempted to impose military rigor and discipline on a chaotic operation. A senior White House official said Trump has not lost confidence in Kelly but rather is welcoming more voices in internal discussions.

White House officials said a reorganization of the communications shop is under consideration, though no final decisions have been made. They expect the communications director role to re-

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow has an easier rapport with President Trump than his predecessor, Gary Cohn, partly because of their long history together in New York, advisers say.

KLMNO WEEKLY

main vacant for now.

“The president sets the tone for the message,” a senior White House official said. “Trying to use a cookie-cutter personnel structure, whether it’s communications or anything else, in a very unconventional White House is not necessarily going to work.”

Initially, after Hicks’s March 29 departure, an internal struggle to succeed her broke out between Mercedes Schlapp, the director of strategic communications, and Tony Sayegh, the top Treasury Department communicator. Both had their proponents, but the “nuclear fallout” over the quest to replace Hicks, as one official termed it, left many in the West Wing feeling bruised.

Though Trump continues to rage about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the president seems satisfied — for now, at least — with his new legal team, which includes Giuliani and Emmet T. Flood, the official White House lawyer tasked with handling the probe.

Whereas Trump used to leave meetings with his previous legal team red-faced and riled up, said someone familiar with the dynamic, the president these days appears more sanguine after briefings from his lawyers. In many ways, Giuliani, who is prosecuting the case against Mueller in the court of public opinion, has served as a helpful release valve for Trump, this person added.

Throughout the early months of Kelly’s reign, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was persona non grata and barred from the White House.

Still, Trump kept in touch with Lewandowski by phone and talked to others about bringing him onto the White House staff.

So it was that Lewandowski got hired as an adviser to Pence’s political action committee in April, a move that was announced last month. Then the other week, Lewandowski — as well as former deputy campaign manager David Bossie — was back on the White House grounds, outside the entrance of the West Wing for a live interview on Fox News Channel.

It was unclear if Trump was watching, but it was certain that Lewandowski was back in the inner sanctum. n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

6

KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Calif. Democrats play blame game

BY DAVID WEIGEL

AND AMY GARDNER

Brea, Calif.

C

onfused and frustrated, a growing number of Democrats are blaming their own party as they seek to avert a drubbing in Tuesday’s congressional primaries here that would leave their candidates shut out of the November ballot in some races — and with a narrower path to win control of the House of Representatives.

In three Orange County districts, a surfeit of enthusiastic candidates and conflicting messages from Democratic organizations and allies have converged to complicate the party’s road to victory.

All three districts are held by Republicans, and all three are widely seen as crucial to Democratic efforts to pick up the 23 seats they need nationwide to win the House majority.

Democrats have had internal conflicts in other states, but the circumstances in California are far more convoluted because of the state’s “top two” nominating system, in which the two highest votegetters are elevated to the November ballot, irrespective of party affiliation. Two Democrats could make the general election ballot — or two Republicans, as happened in a 2012 House race.

The result, say activists, party officials and some candidates, has been anger among voters who fear destructive splits in the Democratic vote — and a level of chaos not seen in congressional primaries here in years, if ever.

Candidates are scrambling to set themselves apart, Democratic groups are urging unity to gain control of the House — and many voters are wondering how to contend with the despair they would feel if Democrats were locked out in this liberal state.

“I would do a Thelma and Louise — just drive over the cliff,” said Danna Lewis, 66, a doctor who lives in the 48th Congressional District and went door to door over the weekend for her candidate, Harley Rouda.

Across California, seven Repub-

BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

In Southern California, there’s an overflow of candidates and conflicting messages ahead of the primary licans represent districts where Hillary Clinton carried the popular vote in 2016. That fact, coupled with an explosion of liberal enthusiasm since President Trump took office, led dozens of Californians to launch congressional campaigns.

But, separately, national and state Democrats spent much of 2017 recruiting wealthy challengers and encouraging others to switch districts, adding to the candidate mix. More problematic, two incumbent Republicans — Darrell Issa (whose district includes parts of San Diego County) and Edward R. Royce — announced that they will retire this year. What Democrats expected to be races between struggling incumbents and primary-tested Democrats became unpredictable candidate dogpiles.

A third race that has typified the electoral confusion: Republican Dana Rohrabacher attracted a party challenger, former Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh.

Democrats, rather than coalescing, took months to officially back one candidate, businessman Rouda — and did so only after initially encouraging stem-cell entrepreneur Hans Keirstead to enter the race.

Laura Oatman, a candidate in Rohrabacher’s 48th District, said the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee then pressured Oatman to drop out and endorse him — despite what she described as grass-roots enthusiasm at debates and other events for her and Rouda. (The committee denied Oatman’s claim.)

Oatman did drop out, but after the deadline for remaining on the ballot, and endorsed Rouda. The DCCC eventually did endorsed Rouda, too, after misconduct allegations surfaced against Keirstead.

Keirstead denied the allegations, made in connection with his tenure at the University of California at Irvine, and remains in the race.

The state Democratic Party,

Harley Rouda, center, a Democrat running for California's 48th Congressional District seat, speaks during a campaign rally in Laguna Beach last month.

There has been confusion about which candidate the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee endorsed ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

however, had followed the national committee’s lead and endorsed Keirstead. Democrats in the district are receiving sample ballots from the state party urging them to vote for Keirstead — and ads for Rouda touting the DCCC endorsement.

“There’s a lot of frustration,” said Fran Sdao, chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, who described an inbox flooded with emails from voters who don’t know whom they’re supposed to support in Tuesday’s primaries.

Democrats’ ability to avoid a ballot lockout rests in some part on how the vote divides among Republicans in the races, said Paul Mitchell, a number-cruncher and vice president at Political Data who has been tracking absentee balloting in California’s primaries.

“It’s kind of out of Democratic voters’ control whether they’re going to get somebody into that second spot,” Mitchell said.

The Democratic Party’s lack of control was highlighted again recently, after Herbert Lee, a doctor who had skipped most of the 39th District’s candidate forums, put $750,000 of his own money into advertising.

“In some of these races, it’s very difficult because you don’t have any leverage,” said Steve Smith, communications director for the California Labor Federation, which is backing the same candidates as the DCCC. “These are selffunded candidates. If they want to run, they’re going to run whether the DCCC says otherwise or not.”

Still, some voters are seeing through the conflict. Carson Newton had seen the ads, the lawn signs and the piles of glossy campaign mail. He decided to help Gil Cisneros after he learned of the DCCC’s endorsement.

“I’m here because the DCCC chose him as the candidate most likely to win,” said Newton, a 40year-old lawyer, as he scooped up precinct walk sheets at Cisneros’s campaign office. “I read one of those Democrats saying, ‘Now’s not the time for small ‘D’ democracy,’ and I thought, ‘That makes sense to me.’ ” n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Trump renews his attack on Sessions

BY M ATT Z APOTOSKY, J OSH D AWSEY AND R OBERT C OSTA

P

resident Trump said this past week that he wished he had picked someone other than Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, renewing a familiar line of attack against the top U.S. law enforcement official over his self-recusal from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

In a series of Wednesday tweets, Trump quoted Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who during a television interview on CBS voiced sympathy for Trump’s dissatisfaction with Sessions.

“If I were the president and I picked someone to be the country’s chief law enforcement officer, and they told me later, ‘Oh by the way, I’m not going to be able to participate in the most important case in the office,’ I would be frustrated too,” Gowdy said, according to Trump’s tweets. “There are lots of really good lawyers in the country, he could have picked somebody else!”

After that, Trump added, in his own voice: “And I wish I did!”

The president’s remarks are the latest in what his critics view as a prolonged effort to undermine the Justice Department and the FBI — and by extension, the special counsel probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election.

On Twitter and in public, Trump has repeatedly denigrated the law enforcement institutions and their leaders — calling his attorney general “beleaguered,” top leaders at the FBI “crooked” and even putting the word “Justice” in quotes to denote his disdain for the department.

Legal analysts say the president’s constant attacks threaten federal law enforcement’s traditional independence inside the executive branch, and that leaders there have taken unorthodox steps to appease the commander in chief, such as expanding an inspector general investigation

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Despite president’s tweets, the attorney general is unlikely to be fired, presidential advisers say upon presidential request.

“Once people get used to the president pushing the Department of Justice around, it’s just a very slippery slope,” said Matt Miller, who was a Justice Department spokesman under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. A current Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Trump, as president, could fire Sessions at any time, but for nearly a year, he has chosen instead merely to insult his attorney general. People familiar with the president’s thinking said Trump feels bound to keep Sessions because firing him could have damaging political consequences.

When Trump ousted James B. Comey as FBI director, the move became a piece of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct justice. The president also has been told by high-ranking

lawmakers that the GOPcontrolled Senate would be unlikely to have the time or the political capital to confirm a successor this year, people familiar with the matter said.

“Everybody should realize — he may not be happy with officials.

He’s not happy with them. That doesn’t mean he is going to remove anyone,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said in an interview before the president’s tweets. “He realizes that would backfire.”

A senior White House official said Wednesday there is no expectation that Trump will fire Sessions or that he was “doing anything more than blowing off steam.”

“He hates the guy,” the official said. “Everyone in the building knows it.”

Inside the Justice Department, some officials have become numb to the president’s tweets, though

Attorney General Jeff Sessions listens to President Trump during a White House meeting in May. This past week, Trump renewed his Twitter attacks against Session.

others wonder why Sessions does not respond more forcefully.

Already, Trump’s efforts to shame Sessions into quitting, or to reverse his recusal, have become of interest to Mueller’s team, according to witnesses who have been interviewed by Mueller’s investigators.

Just before Sessions stepped aside from the probe, Trump had instructed White House lawyer Donald McGahn to persuade the attorney general not to do so, and McGahn called the department to make his case. Sessions nonetheless turned the supervision of the probe over to his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein.

The deterioration of Trump’s relationship with Sessions is remarkable, given the close bond they once enjoyed. Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump at a time when few Republican lawmakers supported the candidate, and the two men seemed to share a nationalistic worldview that shaped some of the administration’s hard-line policies on illegal immigration and violent crime.

Even as he has faced withering attacks from his boss, Sessions has dutifully implemented Trump’s agenda, instituting a tougher charging policy for drug offenders and instructing border prosecutors to take a zero-tolerance approach to cases of illegal entry.

Though Sessions recently indicated to the White House he might have to resign if Rosenstein were fired, he has done little to push back publicly against Trump’s attacks. He frequently praises the president, by name, in speeches he gives across the country.

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who has long been a Sessions supporter, said that the attorney general should not top the president’s list of disappointments.

“If we’re going to start a list of the people Trump should regret hiring, we’ll be here all day before we get to Sessions,” Coulter told The Washington Post in an email. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

N.J. pushes back on o≠shore drilling D ARRYL F EARS Asbury Park, N.J. BY

T

he Trump administration’s bid to expand offshore drilling sounds like a sweet deal when the oil and gas industry sells it: more jobs, increased local revenue and possibly an energy surplus that could lower home heating costs.

But Mayor John Moor’s opinion of the proposal to drill off the Atlantic Coast for the first time in decades is set: “I don’t think the risk is worth all the money in the world,” he said at City Hall, a few blocks from the popular beach boardwalk that is fueling his city’s economic turnaround.

“You could stack billions atop of billions atop of billions and it’s just not worth the risk.”

Moor’s unwavering view stretches the length of the 142mile Jersey Shore, from northern municipalities such as Asbury Park to Cape May in the south. As beach season begins, several mayors whose economies rely heavily on tourism said they are united in opposition to President Trump’s plan.

New Jersey beaches were an embarrassment 30 years ago, but state officials have poured millions of dollars into efforts to recover from a pollution catastrophe. The shore is revitalized, a state treasure that residents, conservationists and politicians fiercely protect.

Across the Atlantic Coast strip, mayors in nearly every city teamed with council members, conservationists, business leaders and residents to craft resolutions that denounced the proposal to widen federal offshore leasing to 90 percent of the outer continental shelf, an effort that began just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the plan in January.

They helped put New Jersey at the forefront of resistance to Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, crafting obstacles to the five-year lease proposal that at least one other state copied and another is considering.

Last month, New Jersey became the first Atlantic state to adopt a

MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Along the coast, politicians and activists help put state at the forefront of resistance to Trump’s plan legal barrier to offshore drilling.

Lawmakers passed a bill, signed

by Gov. Phil Murphy (D), that prohibits oil exploration in state waters, which extend three miles from shore.

An amendment to the law went further, barring the construction of infrastructure such as a pipeline to deliver oil and natural gas from drilling platforms in federal waters that start where state waters end, a move that would head off the industry’s favored method of bringing energy resources to shore.

New York quickly passed a similar law. And a Republican state senator in Delaware submitted a bill in mid-May that mirrors those of the state’s northern neighbors.

Some chamber of commerce estimates put the economic impact of coastal Atlantic beach tourism at $95 billion a year.

The administration’s proposal

has stood on shaky ground from the beginning. Within days of the announcement, Zinke flew to Florida to assure a political ally, Gov. Rick Scott (R), that his state would be exempt.

After a barrage of bipartisan criticism and requests for the same treatment from other coastal states, Zinke has backpedaled.

At congressional hearings in March, Zinke assured Pacific Coast officials that a paucity of easily extractable oil there makes it unlikely that drilling will happen. Later he said something similar about Maine.

A pair of Republican representatives from New Jersey, Leonard Lance and Frank A. LoBiondo, said the secretary indicated to them that the state would also be left off the plan.

Regardless, they pushed for the state ban as “a backdoor way of blocking the offshore drilling,” ac-

Politicians and activists take part in a “Hands Across the Sand” event at Bradley Beach, N.J. Mayors in nearly every city teamed with council members, conservationists, business leaders and residents to craft resolutions that denounced the proposal to widen federal offshore leasing.

cording to its co-sponsor, state Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D), whose district includes Cape May. But banning gas pipelines in state waters isn’t “necessarily . . . a showstopper,” said Nicolette Nye, a spokeswoman for the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents oil and gas interests. Pipelines are the cheapest way to transport oil and natural gas to a processing plant, she said, but an expensive plant could be built in federal waters or shipped in an offshore vessel.

“While the stated goal is to reduce dependence on oil, the fact remains that a major shift from oil as a fuel is still many years away,” Nye said. “Thus such a pipeline ban will likely actually increase importation of oil from foreign countries.”

But Jersey Shore drilling opponents are deeply influenced by the shore’s dark history, when federal officials allowed state and local governments to dump millions of tons of sewage into the ocean.

The result was an environmental disaster that led to a tourism exodus from New Jersey beaches, billions of dollars in losses and a generation of conservationists and politicians who said “never again.”

In the late 1980s, the Jersey Shore’s reputation was garbage.

It was a victim of a lawful practice that polluted the coast. Six New Jersey cities and three in New York routinely sent barges piled with 8 million wet tons of sewage to a dumping area 100 miles off Cape May. Floating trash washed up on beaches from Long Island to Cape May. “Everything from A to Z,” said Moor, the mayor of Asbury Park.

“We used to call it the tampon index because if you had a certain number of tampon applicators you’d know how much raw sewage washed up on the beach and whether you could swim,” said Cindy Zipf, the executive director of Clean Ocean Action, who sat next to Moor at City Hall.

Near Cape May, Martin Pagliughi, mayor of Avalon, remembered. “We spent every morning, 5:30 in the morning, scouring the

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

9

NATION beaches with shovels and buckets revenue rose to $1 million in 2011, and scoops to kind of get all those,” and last year it topped $5 million. he said.

New retail stores and restauIn 1988, Congress passed a fedrants on a three-block stretch of eral anti-dumping act that ended Cookman Avenue leading to the sewage dumping in 1991 as New boardwalk have drawn internaYork City continued to assert that tional praise. its ocean garbage runs had noth“Every weekend there’s someing to do with the pollution. Meanthing going on” in Asbury Park, while, medical waste continued to Moor said. So when news broke of wash up on beaches.

Trump’s drilling proposal, he felt By that time, oceanfront rentals threatened. and hotels had emptied and the “How do we stop this?” Moor shore was the butt of jokes. recalled wondering.

New Jersey lost between He turned to activists. $900 million and $4 billion, and Out of the muck of the late New York lost between $950 mil1980s, determined environmental lion and $2 billion, according to conservation efforts sprang up. the State University of New York “That was when a lot of us got Waste Management Institute. together and formed the Jersey As the larger dumping Shore Partnership and debacle played out, Ascreated a beach lobbying bury Park was rocked by type of environment,” its own sewage problem said Pagliughi, the mayor starting in 1987. The city of Avalon. botched the mainteZipf became their nance of its sewer lines guide. for two years, then misWorking with Vicki handled a cleanup effort Clark of the Cape May by flushing grease into a Asbury Park County Chamber of Comtreatment plant that Mayor John merce, she pulled togethcouldn’t handle it. Blobs Moor backed a er a network of people of fat mixed with fecal New Jersey law who raised public and pomatter drifted into the prohibiting oil litical awareness. ocean, broke apart and exploration in Zipf also helped craft contaminated the beach- state waters. the amendment that fores of eight cities at the bids oil pipelines in state height of the summer season. waters, which is modeled on a “These beaches were empty,” California law. said John Weber, the Mid-Atlantic David Holt, president of the regional manager for the Surfrider Consumer Energy Alliance, said Foundation, a conservation group. outlawing that infrastructure “And I knew because, if you wantcould lead to the type of catastroed to surf by yourself, if there were phe states are trying to avoid. good waves, you could come to “They’re basically saying ‘no’ to Asbury Park to not bother with the the most environmentally sensicrowds. That was like their little tive way to handle this. It is a secret spot, Asbury Park.” concern for groups like ours.”

“The beaches were terrible beFor others on the Jersey Shore, cause of the sewage,” Moor said. resistance means there is a better The tourism loss led to “the ecochance that ocean views and wanomic decline of the city itself and ters will remain pristine, beckonalso with the boardwalk, which ing to tourists and their wallets. was in terrible disrepair.”

“We’re pretty passionate about Asbury Park was fined nearly protecting our tourism economy,” $1 million, the stiffest fine ever Clark said. She recalled lobbying levied by the state’s environmental mayors and council members to agency against a city. pass resolutions when she Now, after nearly three decades, bumped into them on the streets.

Asbury Park is resurging. The sewPagliughi, who called the oppoage plant was upgraded. The sition a no-brainer, was a quick beach is restored. sell. Cape May Mayor Clarence F. Revenue from the tags people Lear III, who doesn’t want to see a must purchase to access the beach single oil platform on his horizon, is marching upward, from asked what he could do. $85,400 in 2003 to nearly Clark summed up her lobbying $2.2 million last year, money that to fight Trump’s proposal: “It was must be spent to maintain and easy,” she said. n improve the waterfront. Parking ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

U.S. economy is not cruising for all BY

H EATHER L ONG

T

he U.S. economy has a problem. The usual economic benchmarks look really good: America in 2018 is enjoying faster growth, low unemployment, record numbers of job openings and a stock market near an all-time high. Yet an alarming number of Americans are still struggling to get by.

Two recent reports — a Federal Reserve survey asking more than 12,200 Americans about their finances and a United Way report on financial hardship — reveal just how unstable life remains for a large number of people. Here’s a rundown of the key findings: l Forty percent of adults don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense such as an unexpected medical bill, car problem or home repair. l Forty-three percent of households can’t afford the basics to live, meaning they aren’t earning enough to cover the combined costs of housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cellphone, according to the United Way. Researchers looked at the data by county to adjust for lower costs in some parts of the country. l More than a quarter of adults skipped medical care last year because they couldn’t afford it. l Twenty-two percent of adults aren’t able to pay all bills every month. Only 38 percent of nonretired Americans think their retirement savings is “on track.” l Only 65 percent of African Americans and 66 percent of Hispanics say they are “doing okay” financially versus 77 percent of whites.

The Fed and United Way findings suggest the U.S. economy isn’t nearly as strong as statistics such as the unemployment rate and the GDP growth rate suggest. Taken alone, those metrics mask the fact that some Americans are doing well and some are not.

“We have a ‘Two Realities’ economy in America,” said William Rodgers, a professor at Rutgers University and chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. “One segment has truly recovered from the Great Recession and is at full employment. The other continues to experience stagnating wages, involuntary part-time employment, inflexible work schedules and weaker access to health care.”

Rodgers is worried about how families that don’t have $400 in savings are going to handle rising gas prices, higher rents and credit card rates that are climbing as U.S. interest rates rise.

President Trump and many Republicans in Congress are focused on getting people back to work with the belief that once people have jobs they will be able to lift themselves out of poverty. But a growing body of research such as the Fed and United Way studies and anecdotes from people working on the front lines at food banks and shelters indicate that a job is no longer enough.

Wages in the United States, especially for workers who aren’t managers, have stagnated for two decades, making it difficult to save for emergencies, let alone save to buy a home or take extra classes to get ahead.

There’s hope that low unemployment and the large number of companies complaining they can’t find workers will finally cause wages to rise, but that has yet to happen on a wide scale.

The result is that more and more people who have jobs but still don’t have enough income for food and rent are showing up at food pantries.

“Half of the people we serve are above the poverty level. They are working, but they are not making it,” said Catherine D’Amato, president of the Greater Boston Food Bank. “It’s a deep struggle for people to provide for themselves based on their wages.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

10

KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD

Allies feel brunt of Trump’s tariffs

BY D AVID J . L YNCH, D AMIAN P ALETTA AND J AMES M C A ULEY

W

hen President Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from the European Union, Canada and Mexico on Thursday, his actions triggered immediate retaliation from U.S. allies against American businesses and farmers.

The tariffs — 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum — took effect at midnight Thursday, marking a major escalation of the trade war between the U.S. and its top trading partners.

“It’s more than highly unusual.

It’s unprecedented to have gone after so many U.S. allies and trading partners, alienating them, and forcing them to retaliate,” said economist Douglas Irwin, author of a history of U.S. trade policy since 1763. “It’s hard to see how the U.S. is going to come out well from this whole exercise.”

In response, the E.U. said it would impose duties “on a number of imports from the United States,” referring to a 10-page list of targets for retaliation it published in March, which included Kentucky bourbon and HarleyDavidson motorcycles. European leaders also vowed to proceed with a complaint to the World Trade Organization.

“This is protectionism, pure and simple,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.

The Mexican government said it would levy import taxes on U.S. exports of pork bellies, apples, cranberries, grapes, certain cheeses and various types of steel. And Canada levied a surtax on $16.6 billion of American steel, aluminum and other products, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pronounced Trump’s claim to be protecting national security an “affront” to Canadians who fought alongside American GIs from World War II to Afghanistan.

Trump had announced the

STEFAN SIMONSEN/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

E.U., Canada and Mexico criticize president and retaliate over move expert calls ‘highly unusual’ tariffs in March but gave several U.S. allies temporary exemptions while they negotiated potential limits on shipments to the United States.

Thursday’s action was also expected to complicate U.S. efforts to confront China over trade practices that the administration regards as unfair. The E.U. shares many of Washington’s concerns about China’s efforts to acquire advanced technology through compulsory licensing practices, cybertheft and other measures.

But European officials are increasingly irritated by Trump’s aggressive use of obscure provisions in U.S. trade laws against

U.S. allies.

“We are deeply disappointed that the US has decided to apply tariffs to steel and aluminium imports from the EU on national security grounds. The UK and other European Union countries are close allies of the US and should be permanently and fully exempted from the American measures on steel and aluminium,” Britain said in a statement.

“We will defend the UK’s interests robustly. We continue to work closely with our EU partners and will consider carefully the EU’s proposals in response.”

President Emmanuel Macron has couched Trump’s tariffs as a “nationalist retrenchment” remi-

Large steel coils are seen at a furnace at Salzgitter AG in Germany. President Trump announced tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico on Thursday.

niscent of Europe in the 1930s.

Germany has perhaps the most to lose among E.U. nations if the spat escalates into a fullblown trade war.

Although the U.S. market amounts to a low single-digit percentage of German steel industry output, German politicians and industry groups have said they are concerned that tit-for-tat measures could end in damaging tariffs on foreign automobiles, an outcome that Trump has repeatedly threatened.

While Thursday’s action cheered American steel producers, companies that use imported metals said that it endangered U.S. jobs and investment.

Auto parts makers said that they rely on global supply chains and sometimes can buy their specialty steel and aluminum from only one or two sources worldwide.

“Our members could face having to pay double tariffs on some materials necessary to manufacture parts in the US,” said a statement from the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association. “Industries like ours, which require long-term investments in facilities and employees, depend on regulatory and market stability. These actions have thrown all of that up in the air.”

Trump also drew fire from members of his own party, who generally favor fewer trade restrictions.

“Bad news that @POTUS has decided to impose taxes on American consumers buying steel and aluminum from our closest allies --Canada, the EU, and Mexico (with whom we run a trade surplus on steel),” tweeted Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.).

“In addition to higher prices, these tariffs invite retaliation.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was scheduled to leave for China on Friday for the resumption of trade talks. Earlier in the week, there were reports that the talks might be canceled following Trump’s renewed threat to impose import taxes on $50 billion in Chinese products. n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

KLMNO WEEKLY

Africa is fed up with hand-me-downs

BY MAX BEARAK AND DAVID J. LYNCH

Kigali, Rwanda

W

hen spring cleaning comes around in the United States, dropping well-loved clothes into a donation box can feel like an act of selflessness.

Those stained sweaters, summer camp T-shirts and out-of-fashion shorts will clothe someone needier, right?

It’s actually a little more complicated. Most of America’s castoff clothes are sold by the Salvation Army, Goodwill and others to private companies. Bales of used clothing are then shipped by the container-load, mostly to subSaharan Africa, in what has become a billion-dollar industry.

African governments have become increasingly fed up. What many in the West think of as a gesture of generosity, they say, is preventing them from building their own apparel industries. In March 2016, four East African countries decided to raise tariffs on used clothing, in some cases to as much as 20 times the previous rate.

The American used-clothing lobby sounded the alarm, and last year, the Trump administration began investigating whether the four nations were violating an 18-year-old trade agreement with the United States. Under pressure, the East African governments lowered their tariffs to previous rates.

Except Rwanda.

Now, a Rwandan leader who styles himself as a proud visionary is suffering the consequences of his decision to stand up to Washington.

This past week, Rwanda faced the suspension of some of its duty-free trading privileges pertaining to clothing under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Its efforts to foster a domestic clothing industry, meanwhile, have yielded few results. And Rwandans who work in the usedclothing business are complaining that they are suffering.

The deadlock between the

JACQUES NKINZINGABO FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Used clothes sent by West impede nations’ ability to make their own apparel industries, officials say world’s economic giant and one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies doesn’t exactly qualify as a trade war — it’s more like a scuffle.

Rwanda’s total used-clothing imports were less than 7 percent of all of East Africa’s in 2016, according to government statistics. And its clothing exports to the United States were a minuscule $2 million.

But it reflects the difficulties that even a low-wage country like Rwanda can have developing an industry in an intensely competitive global market.

President Paul Kagame is betting that he can kick-start Rwandan manufacturing while weaning his country off the used clothing he sees as undignified. He is one of a number of African leaders who want to stem a tide of used items — from clothes to electronics to medical equipment — that end up on the continent after

someone else has gotten rid of them.

“As far as I am concerned, making the choice is simple,” Kagame told reporters last June, referring to the trade dispute.

“We might suffer consequences,” he said. However, he added, Rwanda and other countries in the region “have to grow and establish our industries.”

Rwanda, like other East African countries, used to produce most of its own clothes. But in the 1980s, regional leaders worked with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to open up their economies and permit greater trade. That resulted in an influx of cheap imports. Political turmoil, including the Rwandan genocide in 1994, further harmed the local industry.

The clothing currently produced in Rwanda for the local market is mostly high-end and

Shoppers at Nyamirambo market in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, often have to sort through piles of used clothing to find what they want. The country’s tariffs on imported used clothes have forced sellers to raise some of their prices dramatically.

aimed at urban professionals.

Kagame’s government recently launched “Made in Rwanda,” a campaign to encourage and subsidize local production. It has, however, made scant progress so far.

The luxury brand Kate Spade now assembles handbags for export in Rwanda, and two other factories have opened — one Rwandan and one Chinese-owned.

Rwanda suffers from numerous competitive disadvantages. It is landlocked and far from shipping ports; its domestic market is tiny and mostly poor; and it lacks a trained workforce. It won’t become the next Vietnam or Bangladesh anytime soon.

While the Rwandan apparel industry has barely grown, the country’s used-clothing business — known as “chagua,” from the Swahili word “choose” — has taken a hit from the new tariffs. The business employs more than 18,000 people here.

“I’ve had to triple my prices,” said Zaetzev Sibomana, 26, who sells used clothes at Nyamirambo market in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. “What they’ve done is kill this business and with it my savings. I still live at my parents’ house, you know?”

The owners of the shops adjacent to his have gone on to sell the cheap Chinese apparel that is now replacing American used clothing. While inexpensive, the Chinese clothing is new and thus not subject to the same tariffs.

Kigali’s purveyors of used clothing say they and their customers have been left in the lurch by the trade shifts.

“Listen, in Rwanda, what we want are permanent things: clothes that last long, jobs that last long, industry that lasts long,” said Nadine Ingabire, who has sold chagua for a decade. “We are not there yet. We need chagua until we get there. We need that choice.

Having only chagua isn’t great, but neither is only having cheap Chinese clothes. And to those who say ‘Buy Rwandan-made clothing,’ I say, not everyone can afford a whole wardrobe full of your best Sunday church outfits.” n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

Raising babies behind bars PHOTOS BY WHITNEY CURTIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

J USTIN J OUVENAL Decatur, Ill. BY

D

estiny Doud thought she had just 48 hours to be a mother.

Like most of the hundreds of pregnant women who give birth while serving time each year, Doud was slated to give up her newborn to a relative just days after the baby was born last May. Doud recalled hugging Jaelynn close at the hospital, waving off nurses’ offers to take the girl to the nursery. She wanted every minute to hold her daughter ahead of that wrenching separation.

But just before handing off the

Inmates forge a mother’s bond in only home their infants know: Prison baby to her own father, Doud learned she had qualified for a radical alternative. She could raise Jaelynn behind bars.

On June 2, 2017, Doud cradled her newborn as she passed through a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, through heavy steel doors to a cell outfitted with a crib. A sign on the door reads: “Doud: Y21214 Baby: Jaelynn.”

The Decatur Correctional Center is the only home the girl with

wispy blond hair and ice-blue eyes has known in her 11 months.

Prison nursery programs remain rare nationwide, but eight facilities in as many states have opened them amid dramatic growth in the number of incarcerated women. The bold experiment in punishment and parenting has touched off a fierce debate.

Advocates say the programs allow mothers to forge a crucial early bond with children, creat-

Destiny Doud talks to her daughter, Jaelynn, at Decatur Correctional Center in Illinois. Doud, who is serving a 12-year sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, has raised her since birth in the prison, which has added vibrant murals and even a jungle gym for the kids.

ing healthier kids and a spur for mothers to improve their lives.

Detractors say prison is no environment for children and that the programs may simply put off an inevitable split between many children and their mothers, making it that much more painful.

Doud and Jaelynn are among dozens of test cases.

Doud faces a daunting road back to routine family life. At 21, she is serving a 12-year sentence for bringing methamphetamine across the Illinois state line. She is trying to tame a drug addiction and figure out a career with only a high school diploma. She’s allowed to send Jaelynn’s father baby photos, but he too is in prison.

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COVER STORY

Still, she said the program has given her fledging family a lifeline — one she intends to seize.

Doud, whose own mother was in and out of jail when she was a child, said she is determined to make sure a third generation of her family does not end up incarcerated.

“She reminds me that I have something that’s great now,” Doud said, smiling at Jaelynn in Decatur’s nursery. “Something to live for.”

Babies behind bars At the end of a hallway on a special wing, the drab, institutional walls of this minimum-security facility erupt in a riot of colorful murals: Children

play on a jungle gym, a bright sun beats down on a church, and a yellow school bus chugs along.

Hand-drawn portraits of children hang nearby, and tiny handprints climb up a column at the center of a large room. Infants giggle, slumber in their mother’s arms and strain to turn over in play gyms.

It’s easy to mistake for a day care — that is, until the uniformed prison guards begin their rounds.

Welcome to the “Moms and Babies” program.

Six women and their infants, ages newborn to 11 months, live in the unit, which is segregated from the prison’s general population. Each pair’s home is a typical

cell, specially outfitted with cribs, changing tables and additional lively murals.

Decatur’s warden, Shelith Hansbro, said the cells are not barred and women are not handcuffed on the wing because it can distress the children, even as young as they are. Still, security remains paramount.

Cameras are perched above each crib. The prison doesn’t house sex offenders. And when a child is taken outside the nursery unit, all prisoners are ordered to stop moving about the facility and remain where they are. The children can play outdoors in a prison yard retrofitted with a jungle gym.

There are strict criteria for

Mothers and their children have access to playground equipment at Decatur Correctional Center in Illinois. Each infant sleeps in a crib in the mother’s prison cell.

KLMNO WEEKLY

selecting participants. The women must have only nonviolent offenses on their records and typically have sentences that are two years or less, so mother and child never have to be separated and the children’s time in prison is limited to their earliest years.

Though Doud’s sentence is longer than most women in the program, she could qualify to serve some of that in a residential drug treatment center.

There are counselors and a child aide to help the mothers, and other inmates at the facility serve as day-care workers so the women can attend classes to get GEDs, improve life skills, and receive drug and alcohol counseling. Hansbro said the approach is

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COVER STORY

PHOTOS BY WHITNEY CURTIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

compassionate, but also tough.

“We tell them we are going to be up in your business,” Hansbro said. “We are going to be telling you things about how to raise your child that you might disagree with.”

On a Monday morning in April, Doud and the other moms gathered in a circle with their babies perched on their prison-issued blue scrubs. Led by a volunteer, each took turns reading passages from “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

Christine Duckwitz, 30, cradled 2-month-old Isabelle and turned the pages. The mother from rural Illinois was caught with heroin last year. Isabelle’s father overdosed and died on Christmas Eve, just a month before the girl was born.

LaTonya Jackson, 38, read to

5-month-old Olivia, who was decked out in a Minnie Mouse outfit, with a black bow on her head. The girl’s brother, the eldest of eight, was gunned down in a drug deal turned robbery in St. Louis soon after Jackson arrived at Decatur for a theft conviction.

Such turmoil is common in the lives of the women, Hansbro said.

Things as simple as reading books to children sometimes fall by the wayside. Other mothers have never had such rudimentary parenting themselves, so the program begins with the basics.

“We have found that if there is going to be anything that keeps women from reoffending, it’s going to be their bonds with their children,” Hansbro said. “If we expect them to be successful, we

need them to give them those tools they need to be successful.”

The reading session ended with the volunteer asking the women what the moral of the story was.

“What’s the lesson?” the woman asked. “That love makes you real?”

As the women answered and talked, Jaelynn tottered off unsteadily and grabbed a ball, before plopping over. Some of the women burst into laughter. Jaelynn had taken her first steps that week.

“She can barely walk, but she thinks she can run,” Doud said proudly.

The bust In October 2016, Doud and her boyfriend were speeding down

From left, inmates Destiny Doud, LaTonya Jackson and Christine Duckwitz play with their daughters at Decatur Correctional Center in April.

Advocates say programs like this one allow mothers to forge a crucial early bond with children.

Detractors say prison is no environment for children.

an Illinois highway with 104 grams of methamphetamine they planned to sell. She noticed police cars streaming toward them in the oncoming lanes.

“Right then, I knew we were going to prison,” Doud said. “I told my boyfriend, ‘I love you; I’ll miss you.’ ” Doud and Jaelynn’s soon-to-be father were charged with meth trafficking, the result of a drug habit that spiraled out of control.

Doud’s situation soon grew more desperate. She said she woke in the middle of the night, sick to her stomach, nine days after her arrest. The jail nurse gave her a pregnancy test. Doud was stunned by the results.

“She said, ‘Congratulations!’ ” Doud said. “I was like, ‘No, this is not positive. I’m going to prison.’ ”

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COVER STORY There are no current figures for how many women give birth while incarcerated, but the growth in prison nurseries is playing out against the backdrop of a massive increase in incarcerated women in recent decades, including mothers.

The number of women behind bars increased more than 700 percent between 1980 and 2016, from roughly 26,000 to nearly 214,000, according to the Sentencing Project. The growth outpaced the increase in male incarceration by roughly 50 percent.

The latest statistics on parents in prison are from 2007, but the Justice Department reported a 122 percent increase in mothers in state and federal prison between 1991 and that year. Nearly 1.7 million children had a parent behind bars.

Some experts attribute the increase in women’s incarceration, in both jail and prison, to spiking drug arrests and an emphasis in some areas on aggressive enforcement of minor offenses such as theft and public drunkenness.

The trends have pushed officials and reformers to focus on mass incarceration’s impact on women and children, as thenAttorney General Loretta E. Lynch put it in 2016: “When we incarcerate a woman, we often are truly incarcerating a family.”

A number of states have done away with the common practice of shackling pregnant women during childbirth, while others have moved to require prisons to have medical plans, proper nutrition and other basics available for pregnant women. Prison nurseries are one of the most progressive approaches.

But not everyone is on board.

Some advocates for female prisoners argue mothers with low-level offenses should be allowed to raise their children in less restrictive settings.

On the other side, James Dwyer, a professor of law at William & Mary who focuses on children and family issues, said many of the mothers are not good longterm prospects as parents, that prisons are dangerous and unstimulating for children, and that it may even be unconstitutional to place a child in prison when no crime has been committed.

He said the programs also don’t take a considered approach to making hard decisions about

what’s best for children in challenging family situations.

“There is no involvement of child protective services or juvenile court,” Dwyer said. “You just have prison wardens or their delegates deciding that a kid should enter into a prison without making any best-interest determination.”

‘We all we got’ Doud eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of meth delivery. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison but is eligible for parole as soon as 2022. Jaelynn’s father got a lengthy sentence for meth trafficking.

Jaelynn was born on May 30.

Doud said getting into the prison nursery program was a relief, but she was also anxious as she headed to Decatur: What effect would prison have on Jaelynn?

When she arrived, she said the

other women in the program had decorated her cell and made her a gift package of diapers, wipes and lotion.

“It was like my own baby shower,” Doud said.

Doud and the other women said they believe their children are better off with them in prison and that their children have not suffered adverse effects behind bars. But there are challenges.

There are no trips to grandmother’s house, no outings to the zoo or story time at the library.

The children are allowed to leave the prison only to attend pediatrician appointments, although family members can make weekly visits to the facility.

Jackson said she recalled taking Olivia into the prison yard one day and the girl tasting the air, as if it were something new and strange.

The women have forged their

Destiny Doud says the prison nursery program has made her determined to ensure a third generation of her family doesn’t end up in prison. “She reminds me that I have something that’s great now,” Doud said, smiling at Jaelynn. “Something to live for.”

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own patchwork family and spend a lot of time trading parenting stories, tips and jokes in the center of the nursery. As someone scrawled on a post: “We all we got.”

Largely cut off from friends and family, Doud said those connections are especially important for her, as a first-time mom. She said she has a never-ending stream of questions: When would Jaelynn’s teeth come in? How do you treat diaper rash?

Duckwitz, who has three other children on the outside, said the program helps women “learn how to be a good mom — an opportunity they wouldn’t have on the outside.”

Doud is taking every class she can at Decatur and has remained sober. In January, Jaelynn watched as Doud graduated from her substance-abuse class. Doud said Jaelynn also appears to be hitting her development marks, even reaching many early.

Because Doud has a longer sentence than most women in the program, she is hoping she will be permitted to finish the last two years at a residential drug treatment program in Chicago. Jaelynn could live with her.

More than 90 women have gone through the Moms and Babies program in 11 years, and only two have returned to prison within three years of release, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Only two women have been removed from the program.

Research on prison nursery programs is limited, but some studies show similar promise.

One found that a group of preschool-age children who were raised in prison nurseries were less anxious and depressed than a control group of children who were separated from their incarcerated mothers in the early years. Another concluded the recidivism rate of mothers who participated in prison nursery programs was only 4 percent.

Doud and Jaelynn still have a long way to go before becoming one of these positive statistics, but Doud’s father said he’s noticed a change in his daughter. He is cautiously optimistic for them.

“In the long run, this might be the best thing that happened to her,” James McQuinn said. “It got her out of her life.” n ©The Washington Post

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SPORTS

NASCAR struggles to keep pace L IZ C LARKE South Boston, Va. BY

T

here’s not a bad seat at South Boston Speedway, a four-tenths-of-a-mile oval in southwest Virginia where a $10 ticket guarantees a view so close, whether from the frontstretch grandstands or on a lawn chair brought from home, that it’s like watching a stock-car race in your front yard.

Built on a county fairgrounds in 1957, “America’s Hometown Track,” as its slogan proclaims, has a carnival feel, with a playground, T-shirt giveaways and pre-race autograph sessions with drivers. As day turned to dusk on a recent Saturday, the smell of funnel cakes, french fries and burgers filled the air, followed by the deep-throated roar of engines.

“Here we go, folks! Nine laps to the finish!” the track announcer declared as the first of two 100-lap NASCAR Pro Series East races wound down. Lynn and Mike Presby shot to their feet, counting down the final laps — three, two, one — on the fingers of their outstretched hands.

Everything the Presbys love about stock-car racing is here — furious passes for the lead and friendly fans. “The racing is so much more exciting,” said Mike, 49, of St. Cloud, Fla., who favors NASCAR’s “minor league” to its elite Cup Series. “Way more exciting and more competitive!”

The problem for auto racing is that the Presbys are in their late 40s — and that made them among the younger fans in a crowd of roughly 5,000 on this night, even though children under 12 were admitted free.

The U.S. motor sports industry is confronting a generational problem: Can it continue to prosper in a world in which fewer young Americans drive cars, let alone show an inclination to watch them race?

Only 24.5 percent of American 16-year-olds had a driver’s license in 2014 — down from 46.2 percent in 1983, according to a study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. The

EAMON QUEENEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

As fewer young Americans drive, the auto racing industry tries to find new ways to make them fans decline was notable though less stark among 20- to 24-year-olds over the same span, dropping from 91.8 to 76.7 percent.

Though the study didn’t analyze the cause, the trend suggests millennials and the coming Generation Z don’t share the traditional American love affair with cars. Moreover, in a 2017 article in Automotive News, former General Motors vice president Bob Lutz predicted that self-driving, autonomous cars would supplant traditional vehicles within 20 years.

What does this mean for the future of auto racing? Who will attend its high-octane parties if the next generation, reared in a ride-hailing world, views cars as a burden rather than a symbol of freedom and independence? And in a driverless world, will anyone pay to watch?

The questions aren’t so farflung that NASCAR, the country’s most popular form of racing,

hasn’t thought about them. And its solution for capturing younger audiences is as far from the oldschool grit of South Boston Speedway as could be imagined: simulated, computer-based racing (sim racing, to devotees), which doesn’t wreck a single car or emit one particle of exhaust.

“It’s a huge opportunity for us,” said Jill Gregory, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “One of the challenges we’ve always had is that you can’t go play NASCAR in your back yard; you can shoot a basket and do other things. But through esports and iRacing, that brings NASCAR into the homes of these young people.”

The hope is twofold: The first is that sim racing proves to be a pipeline for the sport’s next generation of racers. There’s evidence of that now, with 20-year-old William Byron, who’s atop the rookieof-the-year standings in NAS-

Charlie Doss, of Chase City, Va., watches with his grandson Tucker Doss, 7, during a recent race at South Boston Speedway.

NASCAR’s fan base is aging more rapidly than any other major professional sport.

CAR’s top-flight Cup Series, crediting iRacing with honing his ontrack skill. And Wisconsin’s Ty Majeski, 23, landed a job as a developmental driver for Roush Fenway Racing in 2017 largely because he was iRacing’s highestrated competitor.

Just as fervently, NASCAR hopes sim racing proves to be a pipeline for its next generation of fans.

Mark Coughlin, a former motor sports marketing executive who is now head of marketing and revenue at esports holding company Envy Gaming Inc., is skeptical.

“Every sport out there is trying to check the box of, ‘Are we doing esports?’ — the NFL with Madden, FIFA, NBA 2K,” Coughlin said. “They see all the data that point to a generation of folks that have grown up with a controller or phone in their hand and assume that what they play as a kid they’ll watch as an adult.”

But the most popular esports, Coughlin noted, are those with a fantastic, comic-book feel, in which gamers assume personae and special powers, build alliances and fight enemies in mythical worlds. Online versions of traditional games, whether basketball or racing or any other sport, feel two-dimensional by contrast and don’t inspire the same fanaticism.

“It won’t have that crossover appeal,” Coughlin said when asked about the chance of sim racers morphing into real-life ticket- buyers, “but it might bring a small trickle of fans.”

A trickle would help.

NASCAR’s TV ratings for its Cup Series are on a decade-long slide. And race-day attendance has declined so markedly that track owners have razed grandstands to slash seating capacity by 20, 30 and even 50 percent.

Particularly troubling is that NASCAR’s fan base is aging rapidly — more rapidly than any other major sport’s. According to a SportsBusiness Journal analysis of TV audiences, the average age of NASCAR viewers jumped from 49 to 58 between 2006 and 2016.

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HEALTH The only sports with older audiences in 2016 were golf — including the PGA Tour with an average age of 64, and the LPGA Tour at 63 — horse racing (63) and men’s tennis (61).

The average age of an esports enthusiast, Coughlin noted, is 23.5. That’s why the race is on to capture their attention.

NASCAR’s strategy for attracting younger fans is multipronged, Gregory said, and includes shifting content to digital platforms, heavily promoting its 20-something drivers and jazzing up the race-day experience with concerts and communal, bar-style seating options. Increasing its foothold in esports, chiefly via iRacing, is just another tactic.

Track owners are courting gamers, too. In March, Las Vegas Motor Speedway had an esports lounge outfitted with racing simulators in its “Neon Garage” for race weekend. Fans could spend race day watching the Cup stars battle on the 1.5-mile oval or strap into a simulator themselves to play the “NASCAR Heat 2” video game.

Former NASCAR driver Jeff Burton, 50, got his advanced stock-car schooling at South Boston Speedway. He was reared five miles from the track, and a section of the grandstands is named for him, as are others for his brother Ward, Emporia’s Elliott Sadler and Hurt’s Stacy Compton — all local racing heroes who made it to NASCAR’s top ranks.

Today, Jeff Burton is a commentator for NBC Sports, as well as a parent of two Gen-Zers — a son, 17, who races cars and a daughter, 21, who’s an equestrian.

And though his children and their friends grew up in a tech-savvy world, Burton believes the love of competition binds all generations and that, in time, the pendulum will swing back in NASCAR’s favor.

“Millennials have just found a way to compete [online] without leaving their house,” Burton said.

“They’re different than we were.

And guess what? We were different than our parents were. But the attraction for NASCAR is still there. We’ve got to get younger people to the track.

“When we get them to the track, it changes the ballgame.

We’ve just got to find a way to get them there.” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

Study provides an excuse to sleep in on the weekends BY

B EN G UARINO

Sleeping in on a day off feels marvelous, especially for those of us who don’t get nearly enough rest during the workweek. But are the extra weekend winks worth it? It’s a question that psychologist Torbjorn Akerstedt, director of the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, and his colleagues tried to answer in a study published in the Journal of Sleep Research.

Akerstedt and his team tracked more than 38,000 people in Sweden over 13 years, with a focus on weekend vs. weekday sleep habits. This peek at weekend slumber fills in an “overlooked” gap in sleep science, Akerstedt said.

Previous sleep studies asked people to count their hours of sleep for an average night, without distinguishing between workdays and days off. Not in the new study. People under the age of 65 who slept for five hours or less every night, all week, did not live as long as those who consistently slept seven hours a night.

But weekend snoozers lived just as long as the well-slept.

People who slept fewer than the recommended seven hours each weekday, but caught an extra hour or two on weekends, lived just as long as people who always slept seven, the authors reported.

“It seems that weekend compensation is good” for the sleepneedy, Akerstedt said, though he cautioned that this was a “tentative conclusion” of this research.

Epidemiologists described the result as a plausible finding, if not a statistically robust one, that deserves more investigation.

Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine, who was not involved with this work, warned that sleep is not like a financial transaction. We can’t deposit sleep over the weekend and expect to cash it out later.

A superior metaphor, he said, is a diet. For the sleep-deprived,

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCK

People in a study who slept less on weekdays but got a few extra hours on weekends were healthier than if they were always short of sleep.

sleeping in on a weekend is like eating a salad after a series of hamburger dinners — healthier, sure, but from “one perspective the damage is done.”

In September 1997, thousands and thousands of Swedes filled out questionnaires as part of a fundraiser for the Swedish Cancer Society. The study’s authors followed 38,015 participants over 13 years to track their mortality rates. Between 1997 and 2010, 3,234 of these subjects died, most as a result of cancer or heart disease. That’s roughly six deaths per 1,000 per year. By comparison, the world mortality rate in 2010 was nearly eight in 1,000.

The researchers tried to account for the usual gremlins that influence sleep: alcohol consumption, coffee intake, naps, smoking, shift work and similar factors, and used statistical methods to control for their effect.

Akerstedt and his colleagues grouped the 38,000 by selfreports of sleep duration. Short sleepers slept for less than five hours. Medium sleepers slept the typical seven. Long sleepers snoozed nine or more. (The consensus recommendation per the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society, is seven-plus hours a night for adults ages 18 to 60.)

The researchers further divided the groups by pairing weekday and weekend habits. Short-short sleepers got less than five hours a night all week long. They had increased mortality rates. Longlong sleepers slept nine or more hours every night. They too had increased mortality rates.

The short-medium sleepers, on the other hand, slept less than five hours on weeknights but seven or eight hours on days off. Their mortality rates were not different from the average.

Differences between weekend and weekday sleep were most pronounced at a young age. People in their late teens and 20s slept on average for seven hours a night during the week but 8.5 on days off. Those older than 65 reported no difference in weekend sleep duration — they slept for just under seven hours every night, all seven days.

Grandner urged the overworked and underslept not to view sleep as time lost: “We live in a society that considers sleep unproductive. What’s more unAmerican than unproductive time?”

That’s not a healthy approach — as our bodies are built to consume food and water, he pointed out, we are also built to sleep. n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Books we love for summer reading BY

R ON C HARLES

Air Traffic A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America

By Gregory Pardlo (Knopf)

Directorate S The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

By Steve Coll (Penguin Press)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet looks at his troubled youth, his father and the plight of black men in America.

A highly critical account of America’s 17 years of war in Afghanistan.

An American Marriage

By Tayari Jones (Algonquin) When a man is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, his marriage is challenged in unexpected ways.

Asymmetry

By Lisa Halliday (Simon & Schuster) A young publishing assistant has an affair with an American literary giant who sounds very much like Philip Roth.

Beneath a Ruthless Sun A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found

By Gilbert King (Riverhead) Set in 1950s Florida, a riveting tale about a young man wrongly accused of murder, and the woman who helped free him.

Chasing Hillary Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling

By Amy Chozick (Harper) A poignant, insightful and sometimes exasperating memoir by a New York Times reporter who covered Hillary Clinton for 10 years.

Circe

By Madeline Miller (Little, Brown) A thrilling reimagining of the myth of Circe, the witch in Homer’s “The Odyssey.”

Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

By Steven Pinker (Viking) How the values of the Enlightenment — reason, science and fact-based arguments — can triumph in the face of nationalism, tribalism and authoritarian populism.

The Female Persuasion

By Meg Wolitzer (Riverhead) In this almost prescient novel about the women’s movement, a college student’s life is changed after a chance encounter with a feminist icon.

Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House

By Michael Wolff (Henry Holt) The dishiest political book of the year (so far) shows a White House littered with insults and intrigue, backstabbing and dysfunction.

The Flight Attendant

By Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday) The ultimate airplane book: After a passionate one-night stand, a flight attendant wakes up next to a dead man. Did she kill him? She can’t remember.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads A Story of War and What Comes After

By Clemantine Wamariya (Crown) A terrifying but life-affirming memoir by a woman who survived the civil war in Rwanda to find success — and Oprah — in America.

The Great Alone

By Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s) An epic story about a teenage girl trapped in her parents’ toxic home after they move to Alaska.

Happiness

By Aminatta Forna (Atlantic Monthly) Traveling between past and present, this story crosses continents and weaves together lives that intersect years later in London over the course of just 10 days.

The Heavens Might Crack The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

By Jason Sokol (Basic) A deeply researched, dramatic account that reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr. was a radical who ignited passions both good and bad.

A Higher Loyalty Truth, Lies, and Leadership

By James Comey (Flatiron) The former FBI director provides lots of scenes, backstory and details about his career before and during the Trump administration.

The House of Broken Angels

By Luis Alberto Urrea (Little, Brown) Urrea’s boisterous novel revolves around a dying patriarch when three generations gather for a valedictory celebration.

How to Be Safe

By Tom McAllister (Liveright) In this unnerving, timely novel, a high school teacher’s life is ruined after she’s briefly considered a suspect in a mass shooting.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

19

BOOKS How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

By Alexander Chee (Mariner) A memoir in essays that asks us to contemplate larger questions about identity, sexuality, family, art and war.

The Line Becomes a River Dispatches From the Border

By Francisco Cantú (Riverhead) A man who worked for the Border Patrol for four years describes his efforts to stop and help people coming into the United States.

The List A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year

By Amy Siskind (Bloomsbury) The first year of the Trump presidency, broken down into weekly compilations of outrageous acts.

Red Clocks

By Leni Zumas (Little, Brown) In this powerful feminist novel, the Personhood Amendment has criminalized abortion, and a “Pink Wall” along our northern border keeps women from seeking treatment in Canada.

A celebration of female friendships that rejects the popular notion that women’s relationships with each other are fundamentally flawed.

An immersive, intimate, warts-and-all portrait of a troubled comic star.

A riveting page-turner about bonobos — yes, the chimp-like primates — and set in a very near and dire future.

Sociable

By Rebecca Harrington (Doubleday) A delicious romantic comedy about love and work in the digital age.

The Space Barons Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

By Christian Davenport (PublicAffairs)

The Music Shop

By Rachel Joyce (Random House) Can a man wholly dedicated to old vinyl records find modern love? Play on!

Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

The Recovering Intoxication and Its Aftermath

By Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown) An uncompromising look at addiction — and writing about addiction — based on the author’s experience.

Text Me When You Get Home The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

By Kayleen Schaefer (Dutton)

Theory of Bastards

By Audrey Schulman (Europa)

A compelling look at the emergence of the commercial space industry, from the first flight of SpaceShipOne to the prospect of Earth orbit as a venue for tourism and recreation.

The Poppy War

By R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager) Rin is an orphan secretly studying for an elite military academy to escape an unwanted marriage. The first novel in a planned trilogy.

WEEKLY

Robin

By Dave Itzkoff (Henry Holt)

The Maze at Windermere

By Gregory Blake Smith (Viking) Five subtly related stories spread over three centuries in the little seaside town of Newport, R.I.

The Overstory

By Richard Powers (W.W. Norton) This engrossing environmental novel intertwines several stories about people whose lives are devoted to trees.

KLMNO

By Michael Benson (Simon & Schuster) A detailed and often thrilling account of the intense artistic collaboration behind the iconic film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Sunburn

By Laura Lippman (William Morrow) Inspired by “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” a superb psychologicalsuspense tale starring an enigmatic femme fatale.

Trick

By Domenico Starnone (Europa) In this layered, alternately witty and melancholy story, an aging artist sees shadowy apparitions everywhere when he returns to his childhood home in Naples.

Varina

By Charles Frazier (Ecco) The author of “Cold Mountain” returns to the Civil War with a story about Varina Howell Davis, the wife of the president of the Confederate States of America.

Why Baseball Matters

By Susan Jacoby (Yale University) A baseball fan pays homage to a sport that seems doomed in this age of distraction. How, she asks, can America’s pastime be saved?

The Woman in the Window

By A.J. Finn (William Morrow) First-rate entertainment — a beautifully written, brilliantly plotted tale of love, loss and madness. ©The Washington Post

Tangerine

By Christine Mangan (Ecco) Two unreliable narrators share their versions of the events leading up to a murder in this atmospheric thriller set in Morocco.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Canceling ‘Roseanne’ is about race, media in the Trump era MARGARET SULLIVAN is The Washington Post’s media columnist.

That the condemnation of Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet came from a groundbreaking black woman TV executive gave it an undeniable moral authority. ¶ “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsis­ tent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” was the one­line stunner from Channing Dungey, who took on her high­powered job of president of ABC Entertainment Group the same year that President Trump took office. ¶ Those two events are not directly related but they intertwine around America’s stubbornly pervasive race problem, which so often manifests itself in the media — not just the news media but the entertainment branch as well.

As the cancellation of the popular reboot of “Roseanne” magnetized the news media’s attention Tuesday, two other race-related stories played out far more quietly.

A report declared that more than 4,000 people had died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria last year, contradicting the absurdly low official government count of 64.

That these Americans were mostly brown-skinned surely contributed to the relative lack of attention garnered by the disaster — and to the shrug given to the new numbers.

And in Nashville, President Trump whipped up a rally crowd into a frenzied chant (“What was the name?” “Animals!”) as an endorsement of his recent description of MS-13 immigrantgang members. It was a clear racial dog whistle, explicitly meant to ignite anti-immigrant fervor — and it did.

These stories were far less riveting, apparently, than the cancellation of a TV show, but they aren’t unrelated.

They say a lot about a media system that remains too white,

too male and too coastal.

Changing that — when anyone even bothers, as ABC admirably has tried to do — sometimes works out.

And sometimes it backfires.

The very decision to reboot “Roseanne” dates to the morning after the presidential election, as the New York Times wrote, describing a meeting of top ABC executives.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about this country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts,’ ” recalled Ben Sherwood, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group.

Dungey added: “We had not been thinking nearly enough about economic diversity and some of the other cultural divisions within our own country.”

It sounded promising — and made for a wildly positive business decision. Until it didn’t.

Trump himself raved about the show’s first-night success and, at a speech in Ohio, drew a direct line to his own voters.

The ratings “were

MARIO ANZUONI/REUTERS

Roseanne Barr has a history of making controversial remarks and of fanning the flames of conspiracy theories. ABC canceled her recently rebooted show on May 29 after a racist tweet by Barr.

unbelievable,” he crowed to the crowd, “and it was about us!”

Barr reportedly told her costar John Goodman: “As soon as I saw the election results, I knew we’d be back.”

In this divisive America, we’re all speaking in code, and the news media is too often a part of that, tiptoeing around the reality of lies and hate.

We fret about “economic anxiety” in “the heartland” when far too often what’s on display is racism and fear.

Trump talks about gang members as inhuman when, just beneath the surface, is an appeal to keeping out those whose skin is dark, whose religion isn’t Christian or whose country is a “s---hole.”

And network executives tolerate outrageous behavior by stars — administering taps on the wrist. But only until it tips over into something that not only offends “values,” but threatens to cut into profits, sometimes brought about by advertiser boycotts.

I have to give ABC executives their due for being at the often uncomfortable bleeding edge of these issues.

I give them credit for naming Dungey as the first African

American to a post she surely earned, and where she can lead with moral force.

I give them credit for trying to address a population they may not fully understand with a show that succeeded beyond their dreams — until it was brought down, if indirectly, by its association with a president who has always left so many reputations ruined in his wake.

And I give them credit for pulling the plug on Tuesday.

Granted, ABC executives should have — and surely did — know exactly what they were getting into with Roseanne Barr, who has made no secret of her penchant for spreading conspiracy theories, for Islamaphobia and for impetuous social-media blurtings.

But when Tuesday’s ugly tipping point came (with its implications for a Disneyrelated business that must project wholesomeness), ABC brass did the right thing.

And they did it quickly and with clarity.

Dungey’s strong statement — coming within the whole mess of 2018 America — looked like a step in the right direction.

Imperfect progress, but progress nonetheless. n

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Zigging and zagging to a summit DAVID IGNATIUS writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to The Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog.

“Are you on the road or in the ditch?” That’s the question labor reporters used to ask about big contract negotiations back when I covered the United Steelworkers union 40 years ago in Pittsburgh — and it’s the right one to pose now as President Trump zigs and zags toward a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un. Trump and Kim appear to be firmly back on the road to a June 12 meeting in Singapore, after a near-death experience the other week.

Trump sent his coy breakup letter on May 24 (“very much looking forward” to seeing Kim but hurt by his “tremendous anger”). North Korea wafted back a flattering appeal to reconsider (“We have inwardly highly appreciated President Trump”). Result: summit back on.

Trump’s temperamental swings along the way are familiar to anyone who has covered labor talks. (Maybe real estate negotiations are the same way, too.) Over the past year, we’ve seen the full repertoire of bombastic bargaining: threatened walkouts, 11th-hour reversals, oscillating taunts and flattery, and unbridgeable gaps that mysteriously get bridged.

A volatile negotiating style is sometimes a sign of an inexperienced or uncertain bargainer, notes the chief negotiator for one of America’s major unions. He explains in an interview that inconsistency and changing priorities are “inevitably taken as lack of

commitment to the process and a sign of weakness” by negotiators and mediators. But it’s Trump’s approach, and however bizarre the route, he’s nearing a diplomatic breakthrough.

Through it all, Trump has kept returning to his baseline: He wants a deal, but he isn’t willing to alter his demand for denuclearization. North Korea made a series of concessions, including releasing hostages, without any reciprocal U.S. easing of sanctions. “We’re controlling the pace,” insists one key U.S. official. And, for now, this approach seems to be working.

What comes next? What are

the fixed “red lines” for each side, and where’s the wiggle room? How will an initial framework agreement be translated into specific commitments, and how will these be monitored? How will North Korea be rewarded for its compliance? I couldn’t get clear answers from U.S. or South Korean officials, maybe because there aren’t any yet.

The summit seems to have two framing ideas, which are likely to be at the heart of any final communique. North Korea will commit to “complete denuclearization.” The United States will pledge to help transform North Korea into a modern, prosperous nation.

Trump has conceded that denuclearization won’t happen instantly but probably phased in.

Phasing is necessary partly because the denuclearization process could take a decade, according to a report released Monday by Stanford University.

But the U.S. official cautions against assuming this “phasing” will follow “the old playbook” — the “synchronicity” and “freeze for freeze” ideas that animated previous deals with North Korea that failed.

The Trump-Kim dynamic has developed enough momentum over the past year to survive the

recent shock. From his first day in office, Trump has seen North Korea as his biggest test, and he hungers for the deal that escaped his predecessors. This desire (the inner voice chanting “Nobel Prize!”) leaves Trump vulnerable to compromise, but with his breakup letter, he has shown that he can walk away from the table if the terms aren’t right.

For Kim, the momentum is embedded in the process of modernization and change he began outlining in 2013, two years after becoming leader. His images of a modern nation were shaped by his teenage years as a student in Switzerland; clearly, this idea of transformation remains powerful for him.

Building nuclear weapons was part of the vision; but he told the Korean Workers’ Party in April that it was now time to pivot and focus “all efforts” on economic development.

Will Kim really give up the bargaining chip that brought him to the door of a meeting with a U.S. president? It sounds unlikely. But that’s the Singapore bargain, and if it can’t be reached, well, one thing you learn covering labor negotiations is that although strikes can bring devastating harm to both sides, they happen if talks collapse. n

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

22

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

We can’t fail South Sudan children NIKKI HALEY is U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. This was written for The Washington Post.

A child born the year South Sudan achieved independence will be 7 this year. She has no memory of her country at peace. Odds are, violence has driven her from her home. She is malnourished. She has probably never been in school. If she is sheltering in a U.N. Protection of Civilians site, more likely than not, her mother has been a victim of rape or assault.

For nearly five years, the world’s youngest country has been at civil war. I often hear people say we should be patient and wait for the elites who started the war to come to peace on their terms. But the children of South Sudan cannot wait.

Violence has displaced more than 4 million people in South Sudan, and some 21/2 million have fled to other countries. Nearly two-thirds of the refugees are children. Tens of thousands are dead. Seven million South Sudanese need humanitarian assistance.

Nothing prepares you to hear the firsthand accounts of extreme violence suffered by women and children. I listened to their stories when I traveled to South Sudan last year to visit one of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping missions and relief operations.

At the Protection of Civilians site, I lost count of the number of women who told me they had been raped, their husbands had been shot or their children had been stolen.

But the most disturbing thing I saw was the seed of hate being planted in the children of South Sudan. Armed men have separated thousands of young boys from their parents and forced them to fight as child soldiers. Even child soldiers who manage to escape may never fully recover from what they have seen and been forced to do.

In one horrific case recounted to me, two brothers were forced to watch as fighters gang-raped their mother. Afterward, the fighters made the brothers shoot her. They let the brothers stop shooting only after they had killed their mother. This story is difficult to retell, but not sharing it denies the reality a generation of children live with as the conflict persists.

BY TIM CAMPBELL

In 2015, after nearly two years of civil war, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir signed a peace agreement with Riek Machar, who was Kiir’s first vice president at the time and the leader of the armed opposition. It collapsed within months.

For the past year, a regional forum led by Ethiopia has offered a chance at peace. The parties agreed to a cease-fire in December, only for violations to occur within hours. The latest round of talks concluded May 23 with no agreement. After much hard work from Ethiopia and goodwill from the international community, the conflict continues. Something has to change, and it has to change now.

The United States has supported South Sudan since the beginning. American taxpayers have invested more than $11 billion there since its independence. But we have lost patience with the status quo. We must change course if we are to save a generation of South Sudanese and give them hope for a better future.

It is long past time the U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on South Sudan.

This concrete measure can save lives. Rather than continue to hold meetings, the United States is calling on our colleagues on the

Security Council and our partners in the region to act.

By depriving their fighters of weapons and ammunition to wage war, an arms embargo will help convince the warring parties that there is no military solution to this conflict. Above all, an arms embargo is a humanitarian measure: It will decrease the availability of weapons, slow violence and alleviate suffering.

Sanctions on those who continue to destabilize South Sudan represent another critical tool at the Security Council’s disposal. By imposing financial and travel restrictions on those responsible for threatening the peace, we can ensure they pay a cost for perpetuating violence.

Only then can we begin to change the calculus of those who profit from war.

What I saw and heard during my trip made me angry. The experience of observing children displaced by the fighting stays with me as a mother.

Why should we care? Because these children are growing up to be uneducated, unskilled and resentful adults. That should concern us all.

The international community must come together to do what South Sudan’s leaders will not: take action to restore hope to the world’s youngest country. n

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Volcanoes BY

E RIK K LEMETTI

Few geologic events capture the imagination like an erupting volca­ no. With an eruption like the one underway at Hawaii’s Kilauea, the news fills with stories about volcanoes. But they’re usually full of er­ rors about volcanoes and how they operate.

MY TH NO. 1 Volcanoes are more active today than in the past.

The Earth is not becoming more geologically active. Geologic activity over time has an ebb and flow, with some patches that have more eruptions or earthquakes and some patches that have fewer. At any given moment, there are at least eight to 12 volcanoes erupting around the world, which is to say, it’s always happening, and there’s no reason to think those numbers have varied much over time. (The Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program keeps a list.)

With our modern ability to monitor volcanoes in many remote locations thanks to satellites, and the speed with which news travels around the globe today, an eruption that might have gone unnoticed 100 years ago is bound to make headlines in 2018. The world is not more volcanically active, we’re just more volcanically aware.

MYTH NO. 2 Volcanoes belch out smoke when they erupt.

For volcanologists like me, the word “smoke” is deeply frustrating, because it elides some of the real harm volcanoes can do. While it’s true that volcanoes can blast material 30,000 feet up (and sometimes much higher), none of it is smoke. Volcanic ash is not created from anything burning but rather from lava and rock that is shattered into tiny pieces less than two millimeters across.

This ash looks like smoke when it billows upward, carried by

volcanic gases like water vapor, but it’s really a giant cloud of glass shards.

This is why volcanic ash is so dangerous to inhale. Broken glass can damage your lungs if you breathe in enough of it, much as fiberglass can if you work around it without a mask.

Worse, it can kill you, as fluid fills your lungs, mixing with the ash to make a cement.

Volcanic ash is also very bad for airplanes in a way that mere smoke isn’t. The ash will melt in aircraft engines, clogging the fuel lines and other parts, and causing the engines to stall.

That’s why airspace over much of Europe was closed for seven days during the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull.

JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lava flows into the ocean near Pahoa, Hawaii, last month. Kilauea has been very active recently, causing evacuations on the Big Island.

MYTH NO. 3 Volcanoes can be “overdue” for an eruption.

Volcanoes don’t care about schedules; they don’t slowly refill between eruptions and then burst when they’re full.

Although geologists don’t know all the details of how magma rises from its source, more than 60 miles below the summit of a volcano, it doesn’t seem to be a constant drip. Instead, periods of quiet can vary from a few years to thousands, depending on what’s going on deep beneath the surface. Predicting eruptions based on the time since the last one has never been effective.

activity aren’t rising, there is no reason more carbon dioxide would be added to the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions today than at any time in the past, which means there’s no reason that levels would be higher today. Also, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans each year is more than 100 times greater than that produced by volcanoes, according to research by volcanologist Terry Gerlach.

So, annually, all the volcanoes in the world produce roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide as the state of Ohio.

Volcanoes can affect the Earth’s climate, but not typically by warming it. Particulates of sulfur dioxide from a major eruption can rise high into the stratosphere and prevent the sun’s energy from reaching the surface. Most famously, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia led to the “Year Without a Summer.”

MYTH NO. 4 Volcanoes contribute meaningfully to climate change.

No. Because rates of volcanic

MYTH NO. 5 Volcanoes and earthquakes in the “Ring of Fire” are linked.

The phrase “Ring of Fire,”

referring to an area of intense tectonic activity around the Pacific Ocean, is evocative, but that is about as far as it goes.

Geologically speaking, the “Ring of Fire” isn’t anything more than a coincidence of volcanoes and earthquakes. The supposed ring doesn’t even encircle the whole Pacific Ocean; sometimes it includes locations beyond the Pacific, such as Indonesia. Underneath all these regions, large tectonic plates interact as they move on the Earth’s mantle. But the volcanoes and earthquakes in the “Ring of Fire” are not directly linked, so when eruptions or earthquakes occur simultaneously in Japan and Chile, it’s not because they are triggering each other.

In fact, there is very little evidence that earthquakes or other volcanoes can cause a volcano to erupt. n Klemetti, an associate professor of geosciences at Denison University, writes the Rocky Planet blog for Discover and covers volcanic eruptions around the world on Twitter.

This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2018

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