The Washington Post National Weekly - June 4, 2017

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Politics Trump’s plan: To fix it, privatize it 4 Faith This ark was built to draw tourists 16 5 Myths Beer 23

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KLMNO WEEKLY

ANALYSIS

A war on checks and balances BY

P HILIP B UMP

P

resident Trump is used to being a king.

For decades, his word was the final word in his domain. His advisers, princes and princess might offer their insights, but the decision of what would happen in the Trump Organization was his alone.

No board of directors, no stockholders, just Donald Trump, unchecked.

Unfortunately for Trump’s ambitions, that’s not how the American government works. On Friday morning, we got another reminder of Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of the limited and constrained power of the chief executive of the United States.

Politico reported that the administration had issued a blanket ban on oversight requests sent by Democratic lawmakers. In other words, if Rep. John Smith (D-Somewhere) from the House Intelligence Committee wants the Department of Justice to provide information on an FBI investigation, the department has been informed not to respond to the request. A spokesman for the administration told Politico that departments were told “to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party,” which is a neat trick because the chairmen of committees of a GOP-controlled Congress are all Republicans.

This is the oversight that comes with the job of being president, one of the more nuanced aspects of the checks-and-balances system that was central to the Founding Fathers’ construction of the United States. The point of the Constitution, after all, was to prevent a president who could act with the impunity of a king, not to allow the presidency to be used in that way.

This is only one example of Trump’s bris-

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tling at the formal and informal checks that exist on his power. Others include: Investigations. Trump has repeatedly railed against the investigations into his campaign and the behavior of his administration being run by congressional committees and the FBI. He has dismissed investigations into Russian meddling as being a “total hoax” and told NBC’s Lester Holt that the Russia investigation at the FBI was one reason he decided to fire FBI Director James B. Comey.

CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS

Information. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the administration had “removed or tucked away a wide variety of information that until recently was provided to the public, limiting access, for instance, to disclosures about workplace violations, energy efficiency and animal-welfare abuses.”

The judiciary. The judicial check on the chief executive’s power is explicit in the Constitution, and the judiciary’s willingness to weigh in on things Trump wants to do has earned it the repeated ire of the president.

He’s complained about judicial blocks on his immigration ban, called one judge a “socalled” judge and complained about an entire circuit court.

The filibuster. Senate rules allowing a

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 3, No. 34

member to block legislation indefinitely through the use of a filibuster have unquestionably been abused in recent years to allow for a sort of casual filibuster that forces 60vote cloture requirements on most pieces of significant legislation. Trump, frustrated by the need to cobble together policies that can earn that 60-vote margin, has repeatedly argued that the Senate should unilaterally eliminate the filibuster and adopt a 51-percent margin to pass any legislation.

Approval of his Cabinet. In the early days of Trump’s administration, he repeatedly complained that Democrats were holding up his nominees, which, of course, is the constitutional prerogative of the Senate. Ultimately, the Republican Senate majority changed filibuster rules to approve several of Trump’s Cabinet picks without needing to gain any support from the minority.

Executive orders. Despite years of pejorative Republican rhetoric about the use of executive orders by President Barack Obama, Trump seized on the tool during his first weeks in office as a way of demonstrating a willingness to take action without waiting for Congress to pass legislation. The boundaries of those executive actions were often constrained specifically because Trump’s powers were limited, but, on occasion, he pushed those boundaries. He did so most notably in the case of his immigration ban, with the result we already have addressed above.

The media. While not stipulated in the Constitution, the media’s free-ranging role in questioning and challenging elected officials is a clear and historically validated check on power. Few things frustrate Trump as viscerally and frequently as reporting that positions Trump’s policies or actions in a negative light. n

© The Washington Post

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY DATA CRUNCH BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER A dog is carried to a bus that will take scores of pets from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. Such transports are growing in popularity to reduce euthanasia rates at animal shelters. Photograph by PATRICK T. FALLON for The Washington Post

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POLITICS

Privatizing infrastructure to fix it BY

M ICHAEL L ARIS

T

he Trump administration, determined to overhaul and modernize the nation’s infrastructure, is drafting plans to privatize some public assets such as airports, bridges, highway rest stops and other facilities, according to top officials and advisers.

In his proposed budget, President Trump called for spending $200 billion over 10 years to “incentivize” private, state and local spending on infrastructure.

Trump advisers said that to entice state and local governments to sell some of their assets, the administration is considering paying them a bonus. The proceeds of the sales would then go to other infrastructure projects.

Australia has pursued a similar policy, which it calls “asset recycling,” prompting the 99-year lease of a state-owned electrical grid to pay for improvements to the Sydney Metro, among other projects.

In the United States, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) explored privatizing Midway International Airport several years ago but dropped the idea in 2013, after a key bidder backed away. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao says such projects should be encouraged.

“You take the proceeds from the airport, from the sale of a government asset, and put it into financing infrastructure,” Chao said. St. Louis is working with federal officials to try to privatize Lambert International Airport, she said.

Officials are crafting Trump’s initiative, and he has yet to decide which ideas will make the final cut. But two driving themes are clear: Government practices are stalling the nation’s progress; and private companies should fund, build and run more of the basic infrastructure of American life.

A far-reaching proposal from the Trump administration earlier this year to take the nation’s airtraffic control system out of government hands was fueled, in part, by frustration at sluggish efforts to modernize technology.

MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Plan would entice state, local governments to sell public facilities To speed up infrastructure projects, officials are preparing to overhaul the federal environmental review and permitting system, which they blame for costly delays. Trump asked advisers whether they could collapse that process, which he said takes at least 10 years, down to four months. “But we’ll be satisfied with a year,” Trump said. “It won’t be more than a year.”

In a bid for broader support, Trump and some of his advisers have also signaled an openness to raising the gas tax to pay for needed projects. The 18.4-cent-per-gallon levy is the federal government’s main source of highway funds and was last raised in 1993.

The infrastructure initiative is being shaped by White House offi-

cials and a task force representing 16 federal departments and agencies. In addition, there is a committee of outside advisers cochaired by billionaire developer Richard LeFrak, a Trump friend.

LeFrak said the administration’s effort, which is being led by Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, Chao and others, is a sweeping attempt to rethink how infrastructure gets built. LeFrak said the issues are intensely personal for Trump, who spent his career in real estate and sees this as an area where he can make a lasting impact.

“He does think he’s the president to rebuild America. He’s a builder. It’s just logical,” LeFrak said. “He’s highly enthusiastic about this idea and getting it

Some public-private partnerships have worked, such as the D.C. region’s Interstate 495 Express Lanes. The tolls are unpopular, but the partnership offered more options for faster travel.

done.”

Critics said Trump and his advisers are putting ideology ahead of the national interest and oversimplifying how the process works.

Public stewards should not be “trying to figure out how to extract maximum value” by selling off government assets or “making huge, multibillion-dollar wagers” that span decades, said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group. “Building infrastructure faster and without adequate study or time for community input may be good for developers, but it’s lousy for everyone else.”

Still, there are bipartisan concerns that important projects

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POLITICS have been stymied by politics and bureaucracy, and that Washington has been unwilling to allocate the money for needed improvements. A civil-engineering group in March tallied a “$2 trillion, 10-year investment gap” in the nation’s roads, transit systems, bridges, water systems, power grids, parks, ports and schools.

In February, Trump told Congress that he would seek legislation “that produces a $1 trillion investment” in infrastructure and creates “millions of new jobs.” Officials have since said that the plan will probably include $200 billion in direct federal funds, which would be used to “leverage” the larger figure over a decade. LeFrak sees the chance for a deal, noting that Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also “wants a trillion-dollar program.”

But when Trump’s budget proposal was released, Schumer condemned the president’s “180-degree turn away from his repeated promise of a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan,” saying the budget contains deep cuts in spending on roads, transit projects, public housing and more.

“The fuzzy math and sleight of hand can’t hide the fact that the President’s $200 billion plan is more than wiped out by other cuts to key infrastructure programs,” Schumer said in a statement.

Trump administration officials disputed Schumer’s calculations, saying they included budget items that should not be considered cuts.

At a recent White House event, Trump stood alongside one of his top infrastructure aides, DJ Gribbin, who held up a seven-foot-long flow chart illustrating the highway permitting process. The colorful boxes and baffling array of crisscrossing lines were meant to drive home a point about regulatory overreach.

The chart also could have been a graphic representation of the difficulty of crafting a $1 trillion package capable of making it through Congress at a time beset with political division.

Democrats, including Schumer, and some Republicans favor a heavy reliance on federal spending, while others in the GOP want to cut that spending and push more responsibility onto states.

Agreeing on ways to better manage arcane state and federal regulations would be tough in even the

PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG NEWS

most forgiving of climates.

Add in the priorities of numerous government agencies, and the puzzle becomes even more complex.

“This is a democracy,” Chao said. “They’re not easy questions.”

They also are trying to account for dizzying technological advances. How do you plan for a 10-year broadband expansion, for example, when the technology could easily shift in five years, Chao asked.

LeFrak, who co-chairs the advisory committee with another Trump friend, Vornado Realty Trust Chairman Steven Roth, said they have also been wrestling with another challenge: the controversy over high-speed rail, “which is one of the things people dream about.”

But he has seen studies showing a much lower per-mile cost for using driverless cars instead. So should the government invest in rail, which takes passengers station to station, or in “some kind of road network which is going to allow these cars to travel at relatively high speeds” and take a passenger door to door, he asked.

The administration’s focus on shortening the environmental-review process has concerned environmental groups that point to Trump’s moves to reverse efforts to fight climate change, including Thursday’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Trump’s advisers say it’s possible to speed up projects that have

clear support and a good business case — while also doing more to protect the environment. But Trump’s push for strict new deadlines would require major changes to environmental laws, which would face fierce opposition.

“There’s no reason why the U.S. cannot function as efficiently as other Western-style democracies in getting worthy projects through the system and permitted,” LeFrak said. “The math speaks for itself. What we’re doing in six years, seven years, eight years, 10 years, these other countries get done in a year or two.”

DeGood said Trump’s team is relying on exaggerated figures and playing down recent reforms to speed approvals. Administration officials cited a report saying it took the Federal Highway Administration more than six years to approve major environmental reviews for projects that need them. While that was true in 2011, DeGood said, that figure has since dropped to 3.6 years.

Chao said that things still move too slowly and that many permitting processes can be done simultaneously rather than sequentially. Officials will cut “duplicative or wasteful steps,” she said.

“If we can make these construction projects come online faster without compromising the environmental concerns, it’s good for the quality of life of a community. . . . It helps people. It creates more jobs. It creates less congestion,” Chao said. And faster approvals

“You take the proceeds from the airport, from the sale of a government asset, and put it into financing infrastructure,” said Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, above

KLMNO WEEKLY

create less-risky, more-attractive opportunities to invest in the United States. “What I heard from the private sector is there’s lots of money available, but there are not enough projects.”

The administration plans to push states to use public-private partnerships — P3s in industry jargon.

In such arrangements, a private firm might bring together investors and low-cost federal loans to expand a highway, for example, then collect tolls from motorists to recoup costs and earn a profit.

Companies can more nimbly tap technology and other innovations in building and maintaining such projects, advocates say. Critics say relying on tolls will not work in rural or distressed communities.

Australia, which has long advocated privatization, launched its “asset recycling initiative” in 2014.

Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, said officials are looking at importing the idea.

“Instead of people in cities and states and municipalities coming to us and saying, ‘Please give us money to build a project,’ and not knowing if it will get maintained, and not knowing if it will get built, we say, ‘Hey, take a project you have right now, sell it off, privatize it, we know it will get maintained, and we’ll reward you for privatizing it,’ ” Cohn told executives at the White House. “The bigger the thing you privatize, the more money we’ll give you.”

The Australian treasury said the central government has reached agreements to pay out $1.7 billion in “incentive payments” that will “unlock” $12.6 billion in spending.

All of this still leaves the question: How do you get to $1 trillion?

“Everything’s on the table,” Chao said.

Administration officials are putting together a menu of options to hit that total, including big-ticket possibilities such as “repatriating” funds parked overseas

by U.S. firms, and smaller ideas such as privatizing highway service plazas, Chao said.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that the wish of everybody is we have divine intervention, that somehow a bridge gets floated down from on high. People say, ‘Wow, we got a free bridge!’ ” LeFrak said. “But the answer is, it’s an expensive investment.” n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

Behind Trump’s climate pact decision

BY A SHLEY P ARKER, P HILIP R UCKER AND M ICHAEL B IRNBAUM

T

he pressure on President Trump to remain in the Paris climate accord came from all sides.

Silicon Valley titans, such as Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, contacted the White House directly, making clear just how seriously they viewed the issue of climate change — and how important it was to them that the president not withdraw from the international pact.

European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, used a private summit of the Group of Seven world powers to repeatedly and urgently prod Trump to stay true to the climate deal.

And Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, reached out to chief executives and urged them to call her father to make their pro-business case for staying in the accord.

She even personally appealed to Andrew Liveris, the head of Dow Chemical, asking him to spearhead a letter with other CEOs — which ultimately ran as a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in May — directly appealing to Trump to stay in the agreement, according to a person familiar with the effort.

But in the end, it was not enough.

On Thursday, in a Rose Garden ceremony, the president announced his plan to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

Trump had never liked the Paris accord. He viewed it as a “bad deal” and during the campaign had promised his base he would “cancel” the climate pact that he believed was hurting American workers.

His final, deliberative verdict was the same as his initial, gutlevel one, according to this account of Trump’s decision-making process, which is based on interviews Thursday with more than a

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

He listened as debate roiled his administration, but in the end, he stuck with his gut instinct dozen administration officials, Trump confidants, Republican operatives and European diplomats.

Even so, the president listened and moderated months of often heated, and at times downright contentious, discussions among his own advisers, as well as scores of outsiders.

“He’s stayed where he’s always been, and not for a lack of trying by those who have an opposite opinion,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “He started with a conclusion, and the evidence brought him to the same conclusion.”

Nonetheless, the debate over what Trump should ultimately do — stay in the deal to push for changes or fully pull out — roiled the administration.

The fight pit Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and White House Counsel Don McGahn — who all pushed for a total withdrawal — against Ivanka Trump, economic chief Gary Cohn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — who argued that the president would have more leverage by remaining an ac-

tive participant in the climate deal.

During meetings with the president, Bannon, Pruitt and their allies came armed with reams of documents filled with numbers and statistics showing what they said would be the negative effects on the U.S. economy if the United States remained in the climate deal. They were, in the words of one Republican in frequent contact with the White House, “ready to go to trial.”

“They were presenting facts and figures,” Conway said. “They were really important. That was the evidentiary case.”

Some of those opposed to pulling out of the pact, however, said that much of the data the other side presented was either erroneous, scientifically dubious, misleading or out of date.

The Paris pact was a particular passion for Bannon, who spent the past two weeks consumed by the climate deal, including working feverishly from the West Wing after returning early from Trump’s foreign trip, according to two White House officials familiar with the discussions. He pressed his case directly with the president — arguing that the Paris ac-

President Trump announced his decision for the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate accord in a speech Thursday at the White House Rose Garden.

cord was a product of globalism and unpopular with Trump’s base — and also worked with Pruitt to tilt the talks in that direction, providing political ballast to the policy and legal arguments made by others on his side.

Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, helped lead the effort to stay in the deal. In meetings, she argued that withdrawing could hurt the United States’ global image and weaken its moral authority abroad. She and her allies pushed the case that the president would have more leverage if he remained part of the agreement and negotiated from within.

The opposing camp, however, dismissed the substance of her appeal, brushing off her concerns as a hand-wringing question: “What will the world think of us?”

Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and Ivanka’s husband, agreed with the president that the Paris agreement was a bad deal. He felt that the carbon emissions standards were too high and that a U.N. fund that helps developing countries counter climate change was costing the United States too much. But he, too, felt Trump should not withdraw but simply renegotiate better terms.

Some of the efforts to dissuade Trump from withdrawing actually had the reverse effect, further entrenching his original position.

When Trump heard advocates arguing that the era of coal was coming to an end, Trump only became more adamant that pulling out of the Paris pact could help rescue the U.S. coal industry, said a Republican operative in close contact with the White House.

“When he hears people make comments like ‘Coal jobs don’t matter anymore’ or ‘Those are going away,’ he thinks of all those people who got the election wrong and didn’t realize that, no, these people are important to us,” the operative said. “That’s when his populist message kicks in. It pushes him.”

Pressure from leaders abroad also backfired. One senior White House official characterized disappointing European allies as “a secondary benefit” of Trump’s decision to withdraw. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

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Black women call out Democrats BY

V ANESSA W ILLIAMS

M

ore than two dozen African American women, including political activists and elected officials, have signed an open letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez criticizing him for seeming to take for granted the party’s most loyal base of support.

The letter, published Thursday on NBCNews.com, comes as Perez, who was elected chairman of the DNC in February, is traveling around the country meeting with party leaders in an effort to regroup after last fall’s upset victory

by Republican Donald Trump.

In the letter, the authors say that black women have consistently supported the party but have been ignored by Democratic leaders who seemed to be more focused on winning back white voters who rejected Hillary Clinton in November.

“The data reveals that Black women voters are the very foundation to a winning coalition, yet most Black voters feel like the Democrats take them for granted,” the letter reads. “Since taking office, you have met with and listened to key constituencies. But you have yet to host a Black women leaders convening.”

The letter calls on Perez to hold a meeting with black female leaders and activists to talk about how the party can better work with black women, including hiring them for key staff positions.

“The time is now for progressive power brokers and the very Party that we have carried on our back to the voting booth, year in and year out, to make a sustained and substantial investment in our leadership and priorities,” the letter states.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Perez said, “While black women are at the core of our party and of the resistance, they are too often taken for granted. We must change this.” He went on to say the party would gather women “from across the country, including those that signed the letter, to discuss how we can better engage the

AMANDA VOISARD FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

They have consistently supported the party but say they feel they have been taken for granted issues confronting Black women and partner with them to elect more leaders who share their values.”

Perez met with a diverse group of women in May, including some of the letter’s signees, but will host a meeting just for black women, according to a DNC official. In addition to Karen Carter Peterson, who was elected vice chair of the party in February, the officials said, there are several other black women in leadership posts, including the deputy treasurer and the chief operating officer.

Glynda C. Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights for America, which encourages black women to run for elected office, said the intent of the letter was to “begin a dialogue on how the Democratic Party will address the concerns of this vital bloc.”

Carr, one of the signees, said the party could do more to recruit and support black women to run for office. “Having Black women’s voices at the table as the Democratic leadership determines

strategy for a pathway forward is important to ensure that our issues are included in agenda setting and that investments are made to support our leadership development from grass roots activism to candidate recruitment and pipeline building,” Carr said.

Much of the public discussion within and about the party has focused on the defections among white working-class and rural voters, to whom President Trump appealed with a strong economic message and raw language that hinted at halting the march toward multiculturalism that characterized the tenure of former president Barack Obama.

But even as other traditional Democratic voters shifted to Trump or backed minor-party candidates, black women remained the Democratic candidate’s strongest supporters. Network exit polling indicated that 94 percent of black women who cast ballots in 2016 voted for Clinton. And at least 90 percent or more black women voted for Democratic can-

The Black Women of Congress speak before the Women's March on Washington in January. More than two dozen African American women, including activists and elected officials, sent an open letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

didates in each of the last five presidential elections. In comparison, 82 percent of black men voted for Clinton in 2016.

Symone Sanders, a Democratic strategist, said that in many cases, white working-class voters and working African Americans share some of the same concerns, especially about the economy, and the party need not favor one group over the other.

“If the party believes that black people are going to continue to, on their own, organize and show up and vote for Democrats without serious acknowledgment of our electoral importance, the party will be in for a rude awakening,” Sanders said.

One consequence of failure to engage black voters is that they might stay home on Election Day. After historic rates of turnout in 2008 and 2012, black voter participation dipped last year. Black voter turnout fell from 66 percent in 2012, when it surpassed turnout among white voters, to 59 percent in 2016, according to Census Bureau data. Among black women, 64 percent voted in November, a noticeable drop from the 70 percent who cast ballots in 2012.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), one of the signers, said the letter was “a manifestation of conversations we’ve been having among ourselves. The Democratic Party depends on us, we show up and it doesn’t necessarily recognize that there needs to be much more to this relationship than what happens in late October or November.”

She also said black women are looking for an ongoing dialogue, not just one event in response to the letter.

“We need to have not just one conversation and not a conversation with 100 women at one time, but a series of conversations,” Watson said, adding that black women need to be part of the discussion about how the party goes about polling, plots strategy and shapes messages. “It’s not about what you say, it’s what you do. You can’t tell me I’m important to this enterprise and not act like it.” n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

As budgets shrink, so do school weeks E MMA B ROWN in Newcastle, Okla.

BY

A

deepening budget crisis here has forced schools across the Sooner State to make painful decisions.

Class sizes have ballooned, art and foreign-language programs have shrunk or disappeared, and with no money for new textbooks, children go without. Perhaps the most significant consequence: Students in scores of districts are now going to school just four days a week.

The shift not only upends what has long been a fundamental rhythm of life for families and communities. It also runs contrary to the push in many parts of the country to provide more time for learning — and daily reinforcement — as a key way to improve achievement, especially among poor children.

But funding for classrooms has been shrinking for years in this deep-red state as lawmakers have cut taxes, slicing away hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue in what some Oklahomans consider a cautionary tale about the real-life consequences of the small-government approach favored by Republican majorities in Washington and statehouses nationwide.

School districts staring down deep budget holes have turned to shorter weeks in desperation as a way to save a little bit of money and persuade increasingly hardto-find teachers to take some of the nation’s lowest-paying jobs.

Of 513 school districts in Oklahoma, 96 have lopped Fridays or Mondays off their schedules — nearly triple the number in 2015 and four times as many as in 2013.

An additional 44 are considering cutting instructional days by moving to a four-day week in the fall or by shortening the school year, the Oklahoma State School Boards Association found in a survey in April.

“I don’t think it’s right. I think our kids are losing out on education,” said Sandy Robertson, a grandmother of four in Newcastle, a fast-growing rural community set amid wheat and soybean fields

BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST

More districts have begun taking Monday or Friday off to save money and attract teachers south of Oklahoma City. “They’re trying to cram a five-day week into a four-day week.”

Oklahoma is not the only state where more students are getting three-day weekends, a concept that dates to the 1930s. The number is climbing slowly across broad swaths of the rural big-sky West, driven by a combination of austere budgets, fuel-guzzling bus rides and teacher shortages that have turned four-day weeks into an important recruiting tool.

The four-day week is a “contagion,” said Paul Hill, a research professor at the University of Washington at Bothell who has studied the phenomenon in Idaho and who worries that the consequences of the shift — particularly for poor kids — are unknown.

But in other states, the Great Recession sparked a spike in the growth of four-day weeks that has since slowed, according to data collected by The Washington Post.

Oklahoma stands out for the ve-

locity with which districts have turned to a shorter school week in the past several years, one of the most visible signs of a budget crisis that has also shuttered rural hospitals, led to overcrowded prisons and forced state troopers to abide by a 100-mile daily driving limit.

Democrats helped pass bipartisan income tax cuts from 2004 to 2008. Republicans — who have controlled the legislature since 2009 and governorship since 2011 — have cut income taxes further and also significantly lowered taxes on oil and gas production.

“The problems facing Oklahoma are our own doing. There’s not some outside force that is causing our schools not to be able to stay open,” said state Sen. John Sparks, the chamber’s top Democrat. “These are all the result of a bad public policy and a lack of public-sector investment.”

But Gov. Mary Fallin (R) said a downturn in the energy sector and decreasing sales tax revenue have

Kristie Bradley of Newcastle, Okla., spends time with her children, from left, Leah, 11; Cooper, 3; Macy, 7; and Colton, 9, on a Friday, now that they no longer have school that day because of budget cuts.

led to several “very difficult budget years.”

The governor said in an email to The Post that she thinks “students are better served by five-day weeks” because moving to four days requires a longer school day.

That makes it “hard for students, especially in the early grades, to focus on academic content during the late hours of the day,” she said.

Facing a $900 million budget gap, lawmakers approved a budget recently that will effectively hold school funding flat in the next year. In Washington, President Trump has proposed significant education cuts that would further strain local budgets.

Few states have schools that are worse off.

Oklahoma’s education spending has decreased 14 percent per child since 2008, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the state in 2014 spent just $8,000 per student, according to federal data.

Only Arizona, Idaho and Utah spent less.

“We’ve cut so much for so long that the options just are no longer there,” said Deborah Gist, superintendent in Tulsa, a district that still holds classes five days a week but plans to merge schools and eliminate more than three dozen teaching positions.

This year has been particularly tough, as repeated revenue shortfalls have left districts facing midyear cuts. “I’ve done this job a long time, and this is the hardest I’ve ever had it,” said Tony O’Brien, superintendent of Newcastle schools, which have about 2,300 students.

Elementary class sizes in the town now hover around 26 and 27, far higher than a 20-student limit set in a 1990 state law. In 2016, schools started charging to participate in sports and extracurricular activities and, after considerable community debate, moved to a four-day week, with longer school days.

O’Brien said the schedule change helped Newcastle shave about $110,000 out of its $12 million annual budget, savings that equal more than two teachers. The

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NATION savings come mostly from shutting off building utilities on Fridays and from using less diesel fuel to run buses. Teacher salaries — the bulk of any district’s cost — didn’t change.

Experts say four-day weeks don’t save much money. In Newcastle and elsewhere, school leaders say the biggest benefit has been attracting and retaining teachers in some of the nation’s lowest-paying jobs.

Oklahoma has not raised teachers’ salaries since 2008, and the average salary in 2013 — $44,128 — put the state at 49th in the nation, according to the latest available federal data. Teachers are leaving in droves for better-paying jobs across state lines, superintendents say. And the number of positions filled by emergency-certified teachers — who have no education training — is now 35 times as high as it was in 2011.

Districts figure that if they can’t give teachers a raise, they can at least give them extra time off.

Many parents here said they like the four-day schedule because it gives them more time with their children. Principals were also upbeat, saying grades are up, disciplinary incidents down, and students and staff happier and more motivated. Teachers said students are faring as well or better, academically, than before.

However, the four-day week can mean extra stress for working families that struggle to find day care and poor children who depend on school for meals.

The latter is a concern for David Pennington, superintendent in Ponca City on the western edge of the Osage Reservation, where nearly 70 percent of students qualify for subsidized meals. Ponca City cut 25 positions last year, consolidated bus routes, stopped offering German and wood shop, and packed 38 kids into one high school astronomy class.

Pennington said that four-day weeks are on the table for next fall but that he doesn’t want to go that route. He’s more inclined to stop hiring substitute teachers or to get rid of less-popular extracurricular activities.

“I can’t even remember the last time we sat down and talked about what can we do that’s good for kids,” he said. “Our conversations are what are we going to cut next.” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

There’s one place malls still thrive: Small-town America J ILL R OTHENBERG in Pueblo, Colo.

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air freshly done from the beauty parlor on a recent Friday morning, Ada Clark, 93, and her daughter Carol, 63, met in front of the J.C. Penney in the Pueblo Mall, about 100 miles south of Denver. Their afternoon plan: a walk around the mall, followed by lunch at Red Lobster.

MATTHEW STAVER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The Pueblo Mall in Pueblo, Colo., attracts shoppers from hundreds of miles away. It’s also a social hub for the area.

When the mall was built in 1976, Pueblo was a booming steel town. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. was the city’s largest employer, and a now-empty meatpacking plant also offered good wages. The mall — with its 1,100 retail jobs — has outlasted them both. It’s also the social hub for the city — and for the many small towns east to Kansas and south to New Mexico.

“Any time I get out of town to go to the mall and maybe to Sam’s Club, I guarantee that within an hour or so, I’m going to run into someone I know,” said Steve Francis, 60, of Lamar, a town of nearly 8,000 people 120 miles east of Pueblo near the Kansas border. “You take your family, your neighbors, and you make a day of it. The Pueblo Mall isn’t just the only game in town two hours away, it’s the only game in town for three counties.”

The Pueblo Mall is an outlier in the age of Amazon.com, when socks and laundry detergent and televisions — nearly anything you

can think of — can be delivered to your front stoop within hours.

The rise of online shopping has summoned a death knell for some of the old standard-bearers of retail. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

Macy’s and J.C. Penney, for instance, have in recent years reported crippling losses and widespread store closures. When those big anchor stores close, suburban malls find it hard to replace them. Many ’60s- and ’70s-era enclosed malls have been abandoned, razed or reimagined.

“With department store closings, many malls will have to get creative with how they utilize space,” said Amy Raskin, who follows urbanization trends as chief investment officer at Chevy Chase Trust. She said many malls nationwide have converted space into multifamily residential units, whereas more rural malls may take on nonstandard anchor tenants, such as a Walmart.

Despite Pueblo’s three Walmarts and the arrival of a Dick’s Sporting Goods and an Ulta Beauty store, the Pueblo Mall is bustling. On weekends, its nearly 3,000 outdoor parking spaces fill up. Inside are a few relics of the golden age of American malls: Amy’s Hallmark, Claire’s, Kay Jewelers. And in the food court is an Orange Julius, with its oldschool classics and a modern update: smoothies.

The mall does not track visitors, according to manager Timothy Schweitzer, but based on sales trends, he says traffic has increased 3 percent to 5 percent in the past year. He said the mall’s average sales per square foot are healthy, holding at around $400 over the past six months. He attributed this to the biggername tenants that have opened in recent years, including Bath and Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Charlotte Russe, Hot Topic and Zumi.

It draws kids from all over on the weekends. “It’s still not

unusual to see out-of-town teams from La Junta [65 miles], Rocky Ford [54 miles] or Walsenburg [53 miles] walk around the mall after soccer or basketball games,” said Carol Clark, who works for the CW Railway and lives 25 miles south in Colorado City.

Clark says that when the mall was built, downtown Pueblo suffered and many of its stores closed. The mall became Pueblo’s new town square.

Now it’s among the city’s main employers.

As revenue from online shopping climbs nationally — up 14.7 percent in the first quarter, compared with a year ago — regional malls like Pueblo’s can compete by tailoring themselves to their consumers, said David Mitroff of Piedmont Avenue Consulting in Oakland, Calif.

“People are ordering online, and that changes the whole shopping dynamic,” Mitroff said. “But now the mall has barber shops, gyms, local stores and other things you can’t just buy on Amazon. Or you can go see what they have. You can touch it.”

Shoppers like Carol Clark do order online — in her case, 30-pound bags of specialty dog food that can be obtained cheaper and more conveniently that way than by buying it in Pueblo.

“The mall, whether in Pueblo or in Denver where my daughters live, is more social,” she said, “and we may or may not buy something.”

Civic pride and tradition also play a part. In some markets with older regional malls, people buy from a traditional anchor store such as a Sears because it’s American, Mitroff said.

“It reinforces ‘this is our mall, this is our city, let’s shop there,’ ” he said. “Especially if it’s the same price, why wouldn’t you do that?

And if city officials say, ‘Do you understand that when you buy at J.C. Penney here, we actually get tax revenue off of that? But if you buy from Amazon, we don’t.’ ” n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

For populist right, Brexit’s poison pill G RIFF W ITTE Clacton­on­Sea, England BY

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t was a night beyond all compare.

Less than a year ago, Britain voted to get out of the European Union. And as the country’s new destiny dawned in the early hours of June 24, veteran activists of the U.K. Independence Party — an anti-E.U. movement long derided as extremist — felt the sweet satisfaction of having forced the referendum and steered the national debate with their anti-immigration rhetoric.

“Twenty-one years of being called a closet racist or a swiveleyed loon,” said Tony FinneganButler, a party activist since UKIP was born in the mid-1990s and now the party’s chair in Clactonon-Sea, a pro-Brexit stronghold.

“And one night you learn that more than half the population thought you were right in the first place.”

But if the vote brought vindication, it has not ushered UKIP any closer to political power. In fact, exactly the opposite.

What happens to far-right populist movements when their fondest dreams come true? If the experience of UKIP is any guide, the answer is that they fall apart.

A year after achieving its most sacred ambition, the party long led

by President Trump’s favorite European politician, Nigel Farage, is in disarray, scarred by prominent defections and by vicious feuding — some of it physical — among its remaining members. An election on Thursday, in which the party’s share of the vote is expected to crater, may be UKIP’s death blow.

The arc of UKIP’s story — years of obscurity followed by one astonishing success and now a rapid and possibly terminal decline — illustrates one way of blunting the appeal of populist movements: Give them exactly what they want.

“We’re suffering for our success,” said Finnegan-Butler, 73, who acknowledged that even he is wavering on whether to continue backing the party.

But UKIP’s sudden decline also demonstrates the degree to which

IAN FORSYTH/GETTY IMAGES

A year after its big win, anti-E.U. party is no closer to power as mainstream parties co-opt its views right-wing populists have shifted the European policy debate toward their turf. If UKIP is losing support, it is not because the party’s ideas have lost favor. It is because mainstream parties have coopted their causes and adopted their rhetoric.

“We’re happy that the UKIP vote is going down. But we’re not celebrating,” said Nick Lowles, chief executive of the Londonbased anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. “If anything, it’s the worst of all outcomes, because we’ve seen the mainstreaming of these views that were once considered beyond the pale.”

It’s not just in Britain, where Prime Minister Theresa May, a Conservative, sounds every inch the die-hard Brexiteer with her pledges to carry out a hard break with Europe.

Across the continent, mainstream politicians are attempting to beat back the far-right wave by mimicking the language and policies of the populists on hotbutton issues such as immigration, cultural identity and Islam.

But nowhere in Western Eu-

rope is the mainstream’s acceptance of the populist right’s agenda more complete than in Britain.

And nowhere has the collapse of support for a populist right party been more complete.

For much of its nearly quarter-century existence, the U.K. Independence Party was the equivalent of a rounding error in British political life. With its single-minded devotion to a seemingly quixotic goal — an E.U. exit — UKIP struggled to capture more than a couple of percentage points in national elections.

Future prime minister David Cameron famously dismissed the party as a band of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.”

But amid a surge in immigration after the E.U.’s expansion into Eastern Europe, UKIP suddenly became a major player in 2014, topping British elections for the European Parliament that spring.

Later that year, UKIP gained its first seat in Britain’s Parliament after Clacton’s Conservative representative, Douglas Carswell, defected to the insurgent party and won a special election.

U.K. Independence Party supporters gather outside a pub in Hartlepool, England, ahead of a visit by party leader Paul Nuttall in April.

As Thursday’s election approaches, UKIP is not expected to fare well.

The bombastic, beer-swilling Farage crowed that “the UKIP fox is in the Westminster henhouse” and promised that other anti-E.U. Tories in Parliament would soon turn predator rather than risk becoming prey.

In the end, there was only one more defection. But Cameron had been nervous enough about UKIP’s rise to double down on promises that the country would hold a referendum on E.U. membership if his Conservative Party won the national election in 2015.

It did (UKIP placed third, with 13 percent of the vote), and the referendum campaign was on.

When, against all odds, the nation opted for Brexit, it would have seemed that UKIP’s moment had finally arrived. But perhaps sensing it had already passed, Farage abruptly quit as party leader just days after the vote.

Since then, UKIP has cycled through leaders and would-be leaders.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party quickly coalesced behind a successor to Cameron — May — who, despite having campaigned against Brexit, took to the cause with the zeal of a convert.

Not everyone is convinced. On a recent warm spring day, UKIP candidate Paul Oakley acknowledged that he is likely to lose. But as he campaigned in Jaywick, a neighborhood of tattered seaside bungalows that is among the poorest in Britain, he made his best case for why UKIP still matters.

“The referendum was D-Day. It wasn’t the fall of Berlin. People can’t sit back and assume that we’ve won,” he said. “It’s all very well to sound like UKIP. But Theresa May and Giles Watling voted to remain. We can’t trust people like that to deliver a proper Brexit.”

Farage has been singing the same tune on his radio talk show, warning of the “Brexit betrayal” to come.

“Theresa May can’t satisfy everyone,” said David Cutts, a political science professor at the University of Birmingham. “There’s still a role there in British politics for the populist right.” n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Al-Qaeda looks to a new bin Laden

BY J OBY W ARRICK AND S OUAD M EKHENNET

T

he voice is that of a softspoken 28-year-old, but the message is vintage Osama bin Laden, giving orders to kill. When the audio recording began turning up on jihadist websites last month, it was as if the dead terrorist were channeling himself through his favorite son.

“Prepare diligently to inflict crippling losses on those who have disbelieved,” Hamza bin Laden, scion of the Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind, says in a thin baritone that eerily echoes his father. “Follow in the footsteps of martyrdomseekers before you.”

The recording, first aired May 13, is one in a string of recent pronouncements by the man who many terrorism experts regard as the crown prince of al-Qaeda’s global network. Posted not long before the May 22 suicide bombing in Manchester, England, the message includes a specific call for attacks on European and North American cities to avenge the deaths of Syrian children killed in airstrikes.

The recording provides fresh evidence of ominous changes underway within the embattled organization that declared war against the West nearly two decades ago, according to U.S., European and Middle Eastern intelligence officials and terrorism experts. Decimated

by U.S. military strikes and overshadowed for years by its terrorist rival, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda appears to be signaling the start of a violent new chapter in the group’s history, led by a new bin Laden — one who has vowed to seek revenge for his father’s death.

Encouraged by the Islamic State’s setbacks in Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda is making a play for the allegiance of the Islamic State’s disaffected followers as well as legions of sympathizers around the world, analysts say. The promotion of a youthful figurehead with an iconic family name appears to be a key element in a rebranding effort that includes a shift to Islamic State-style terror-

AL JAZEERA VIA APTN

Experts fear that Osama bin Laden’s son could energize youths as group attempts a resurgence ist attacks against adversaries across the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Hamza bin Laden is hardly new to the Islamist militant world. His coronation as a terrorist figurehead has been underway since at least 2015, when longtime alQaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri introduced him in a video message as a “lion from the den” of bin Laden’s terrorist network. But in recent months, he has been promoted as a rising star on proal-Qaeda websites, with audio recordings from him urging followers to carry out attacks or commenting on current events. Longtime terrorism analysts say the promotion of Hamza bin Laden appears calculated to appeal to young Islamist militants who still admire Osama bin Laden but see al-Qaeda as outdated or irrelevant.

“Hamza is the most charismatic and potent individual in the next generation of jihadis simply because of his lineage and history,”

said Bruce Riedel, who spent 30 years in the CIA and is now director of the Brookings Institution’s Intelligence Project.

Strikingly, for a man who aspires to be the jihadist world’s next rock star, Hamza bin Laden insists on keeping most of his personal details hidden from public view.

Even his face.

No confirmed photographs exist of the young terrorist since his boyhood, when he was portrayed multiple times as an adoring son posing with his famous father. He is believed to be married, with at least two children, and he lived for a time in the tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, although his whereabouts are unknown.

His refusal to allow his image to be published may reflect a wellfounded concern about his personal safety, but it complicates the militants’ task of making him a terrorist icon, said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit or-

A young boy, left, identified as Hamza bin Laden holds what the Taliban says is a piece of U.S. helicopter wreckage in 2001 in Afghanistan. The son of Osama bin Laden is the heir apparent to al-Qaeda, although the 28year-old has largely been hidden from public view. No confirmed photos of him exist since he was a boy.

ganization that monitors Islamist militancy on social media.

“People loyal to al-Qaeda and against the Islamic State are looking for inspiration, and they realize that he can provide it,” Stalinsky said. “But for today’s youth, you need more than audio and an old photograph.”

What is known about Hamza bin Laden comes from his numerous recordings as well as intelligence reports and scores of documents seized during the 2011 raid

by U.S. Navy SEALs on Osama bin Laden’s safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Included in the document trove were personal letters from Hamza to his father, as well as written instructions from the elder bin Laden to his aides on how Hamza was to be educated and provided for.

Terrorism analysts have noted several recurring themes in Hamza bin Laden’s audio postings that distinguish his Islamist militant philosophy from the views expressed by both his father and putative al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri. One difference: Unlike Zawahiri, Hamza bin Laden has eschewed overt criticism of the Islamic State, perhaps to avoid antagonizing any followers of that terrorist group who might be inclined to shift to al-Qaeda.

The other distinction is Hamza bin Laden’s persistent calls for self-directed, lone-wolf attacks against a wide array of targets.

By encouraging and applauding such attacks, Hamza bin Laden appears to associate himself with a more aggressive style of terrorism that appeals to young Islamist militants, analysts and experts said. Such messages also convey an impression of a terrorist network that, while battered, is far from defeated, said Bruce Hoffman, a former U.S. adviser on counterterrorism and director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

“He brings assurance that, even though al-Qaeda has been hammered in recent years, it’s still in good hands, with a junior bin Laden who is ideally situated to carry on the struggle,” Hoffman said. n ©The Washington Post

COVER STORY

At the end of the road, chance for a new life

BY KARIN BRULLIARD in San Fernando, Calif.

M

ay was supposed to be dead by now. The charcoal-andwhite pit bull mix had languished for more than two months at a high-kill animal shelter in east Los Angeles County, and though she’d passed one “temperament test” required for adoption, she failed a second. That essentially put her on death row at the facility.

But a small rescue group got to May and reserved her a spot on a school bus that would take her 840 miles north to Eugene, Ore. There, another rescue group had pledged to find her a home. And so on a sunny Saturday morning, she bounded up the steps of the red bus and quickly settled into a large crate near the back.

She had plenty of company as the wheels rolled along the highway: 105 other dogs and cats collected from crowded shelters in California and destined for the Pacific Northwest, where euthanasia rates are lower and pets are in greater demand. Their four rows of crates were stacked floor to ceiling. “These little souls have engulfed me,” admitted Phil Brous-

Phyllis VanBoxtel says goodbye to two dogs being taken by bus with over 100 others from crowded shelters in California to pet rescuers in the Pacific Northwest, where euthanasia rates are lower and pets are in greater demand.

continues on next page PATRICK T. FALLON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

PATRICK T. FALLON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

from previous page

sard, the garrulous trucker driving them up the coast.

His passengers were among the more than 10,000 animals that will be ferried out of the area this year by Rescue Express, one of the dozens of organizations across the nation fueling a dizzying daily reshuffle of dogs and cats by car, van, bus, and private and even chartered plane.

These transports, mostly from high-kill southern regions, are a small but growing factor in a long-term decline in euthanasia at U.S. shelters. According to some estimates, animal shelters killed as many as 20 million cats and dogs annually in the 1970s. That had fallen to 2.6 million by 2011 and is about 1.5 million today, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The numbers are only estimates, because no central data collection exists and only some states require shelters to report intake and

outcome figures. But animal advocates agree that the decrease in euthanasia has been dramatic, driven mostly by successful spayneuter programs and, more recently, by savvy adoption campaigns, greater efforts to reunite lost pets with owners and the proliferation of advocacy groups both small and large that have swept in to help municipal shelters, which are often poorly funded and sluggish.

“This has been the single biggest success for the animal protection movement,” said Hal Herzog, a psychology professor at Western Carolina University who has long studied human-animal relationships. “It’s been an incredible drop.”

Still, hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized each year, and advocates face challenges to pushing rates lower. For one, pit-bull-type dogs — often perceived as dangerous and prohibited by landlords — disproportionately populate shelters. And feline sterilization continues to lag, one reason cats make up nearly 60 percent of shelter animals

Driver Phil Broussard leads a German shepherd onto the Rescue Express bus in San Fernando, Calif. “These little souls have engulfed me,” he says.

killed, according to the ASPCA. Progress remains geographically lopsided, too. Advocates point to northern cities’ more concerted spay-neuter campaigns and mention “cultural” differences in attitudes about sterilizing pets. Climate is another factor: In warmer regions, cats go into heat more often, pets are more likely to be allowed outside, and strays survive more easily — all of which lead to more kittens and puppies.

Whatever the reason, shelters and rescue groups say an increasing number of communities in northern parts of the country now take in migrants — young and old, small and large.

Nearly a third of the 30,000 dogs and cats received by a Portland, Ore., coalition of six shelters in 2016 came from outside the area, including from Hawaii.

“For a family that’s looking for that solid dog that’s good with kids and other animals . . . those are really tough to find,” said Anika Moje, manager of the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland, which had a 95 percent “live-

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COVER STORY release” rate in 2016.

This overground pet railroad existed on a small scale for years, then rapidly expanded in the eastern United States after Hurricane Katrina left thousands of animals homeless in 2005. Transports more recently have mushroomed in the West, despite concerns in some places about what remains a fairly unregulated practice.

Yet even those who devote their lives to these efforts concede they will not end euthanasia of healthy animals.

“We’re the Band-Aid,” said Ric Browde, a board member of Wings of Rescue in Southern California. The group flies thousands of animals a year in its private plane and, sometimes, a chartered jet that can cost $20,000 a flight. “It’s sort of Einstein’s definition of insanity, repeating things over and over and expecting a different result. I can take dogs out of a shelter every day, but if it fills back up, have I done anything?”

The key is keeping the facilities from filling in the first place, says the ASPCA, which in 2014 pledged $25 million to help do this in the Los Angeles area. One of the public shelters it targeted was Baldwin Park, where May was housed for several weeks; it euthanizes 44 percent of the animals it takes in. On a recent Wednesday, ASPCA staff there counseled people who came to surrender dogs or cats, pointing them toward discounted veterinary care and sterilization services — expenses that often cause individuals to give up their pets.

The following Saturday, volunteer Jana Savage brought May to board the Rescue Express bus. May was a dog the volunteers at Baldwin Park were “worried about,” said Savage, a writer who has helped there for several years.

They all thought that the county’s temperament test had not given her a fair shake.

Onto the bus went May, along with a miniature pinscher, a yellow puppy and several other small pooches. Broussard had driven the vehicle down the night before from the Rescue Express base in Eugene. The longtime trucker runs many of the organization’s weekly transports, which begin in San Fernando and usually end near the Washington-Canada border.

The nonprofit has moved more than 8,000 animals since a former accounting software entrepreneur, a millionaire named Mike McCarthy, founded it two years ago. He’d always had a passion for animals and had donated to several related causes, and after watching a California friend transfer dogs north, he decided there was “a real need for better-quality transports.”

So McCarthy moved to Eugene — a midpoint on the West Coast — to start his own, one that would be free for the small rescue groups he knew were often bleeding cash. He opted to retrofit school buses, which he determined were more durable than the vans favored by many transports, could hold more crates and were cheaper to run than planes.

Nowadays, that cost is about $20 to $30 per

PHOTOS BY PATRICK T. FALLON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Los Angeles County’s Baldwin Park shelter houses a variety of animals, including a peafowl, a pygmy goat and kittens. The shelter euthanizes 44 percent of the animals it takes in. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized each year, although the number has dropped significantly in the past several decades, thanks to spay-neuter programs, savvy adoption campaigns, the increase in advocacy groups and other factors.

Shelters in southern areas tend to be more crowded.

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animal, and Rescue Express, with a three-bus fleet, is set to add a route up Interstate 15 through Utah.

McCarthy, 57, wants to take the model nationwide, though he knows it would make only a small dent in a big problem. “It makes a difference to the animals that are on the bus,” he said. “That’s how I look at it.”

From San Fernando to the Canadian border, the journey takes more than 20 hours and involves a driver swap. Broussard pulled onto the highway at 8:35 a.m. Riding shotgun was Laura Miller, a Target manager who moonlights as a Rescue Express “transport supervisor” — a job that entails checking all the animals in and out, plus keeping their crates clean and water bowls filled.

The animals, separated from the cab by a metal partition, were quiet save for one yippy dog named Brownie. As he drove, Broussard held forth on the local geography and national politics. Miller kept tabs on the air conditioning in the back and texted with contacts at the next stop.

At a public shelter in Bakersfield, a few dozen more animals were loaded, including a litter of 6-week-old kittens bound for a rescue group outside of Portland. Then it was back to the highway.

At 12:30 p.m., at a truck-stop parking lot in Fresno, a group of volunteers helped put about 50 dogs and cats on board. Two dogs got on in Turlock, then four more in Lathrop. By 3:15 p.m., the bus was carrying 84 dogs and 22 cats. By 7:30 p.m., the sight of snow-capped Mount Shasta signaled that Oregon was not far off. Miller held up her cellphone and took photos of the sunset.

It was raining and chilly when the bus pulled over in Roseburg, Ore., where an adopter was waiting to greet his new puppy. After midnight, Broussard turned into a gas station lot outside Eugene. Some 15 people, protected by hoods and umbrellas, lined up in the dark to retrieve two dozen animals.

The second-to-last was May, who was whisked away to a streetlight, where she promptly relieved herself.

Today, May is hanging out at Northwest Dog Project, the rescue organization that had agreed to find her a home. Its 22-acre facility usually hosts 10 to 18 dogs at a time in cottages with piped-in music and even skylights.

There’s a doggy swimming pool, an agility course, a play yard and hiking trails.

“A majority of the dogs we take in come from high-kill shelters in California, where they’ve been living in noise and chaos. This is a good place for them to decompress,” director Emma Scott explained.

Like all the animals the organization accepts, 2-year-old May will spend a few weeks being evaluated and trained. Scott said she has been extremely friendly and “adores people.”

She “already knew how to sit, and now we’re working on her leash manners. . . . We’ll do everything we can to make her as adoptable as we can.” © The Washington Post

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FAITH

In the beginning, there was a big ark K AREN H ELLER Williamstown, Ky. BY

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en Ham built an ark, a biblical-sized ark like Noah’s, in the verdant, landlocked hills of the American heartland.

At the sight of the wooden vessel, tourists gasp in wonder. Christian school students storm the ramps — decidedly more than two by two — many completing science quizzes based on anti-evolutionary teachings. Admission is $40 for adults, $28 for students, but school groups often pay less.

The founder of Answers in Genesis, an online and publishing ministry with a strict creationist interpretation of the Bible, employed 700 workers to erect the $120 million Ark Encounter, which is five stories high, a football field and a half in length, and packs a powerful whoa punch. He had the massive boat designed by a veteran of amusement park attractions, commissioned an original soundtrack to enhance the experience, and stocked the interior with an animatronic talking Noah, along with lifelike models of Earth’s manifold creatures — including dinosaurs.

And he saw that it was good.

The ark opened last summer and is on target, Ham says, to attract more than a million visitors in its first year.

But Ham did not rest.

The 65-year-old Australian and his partners, Mike Zovath and Mark Looy, have launched an ambitious 10-to-12-year plan to recreate a walled city from the time of Noah and a 1st-century village from the time of Jesus.

Also, a Tower of Babel, concept snack shacks, a 3,200-seat amphitheater and a 10-plagues-of-Egypt thrill ride. Frogs! Fiery hail! Lo­ custs!

Instead of building a church, Answers in Genesis is sharing its teachings through a controversial biblical theme park designed to attract believers and nonbelievers alike.

“How do you reach the general public in a bigger way?” Ham muses rhetorically, sitting in his expansive corner office at the Creation

LUKE SHARRETT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Creationists aren’t stopping there, though. They have grand plans for recruiting new believers.

Museum, his first, more sober foray into the family entertainment business, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last weekend.

“Why not attractions that people will come to the way they go to Disney or Universal or the Smithsonian?”

Why not, indeed?

Ham and his brethren are creationists and Christian apologists who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. (Contrary to scientists who say that it’s more like 4.5 billion years — or older.) Apologetics is a branch of Christianity whose adherents actively defend their faith, and Ham is a robust debater.

The author or co-author of 50 or 60 books — he’s not sure, a rare instance of uncertainty — he argues that the Bible is a historical narrative and that “the whole gospel message is found in Genesis.” He believes that dinosaurs prowled the planet alongside humans and that the biblical flood created the Grand Canyon. One of his books is

titled “The Lie: Evolution.” He maintains that Noah labored seven decades to construct his vessel and was 600 years old when the storm surged.

Ham began his career as, of all things, a science teacher in a tiny Australian town. But evolution didn’t sit right with him as the son of parents who subscribed to creationist beliefs.

He realized that America was the best location for getting his message out to the world. “It’s the center of the business world, the center of the Christian world,” he says.

He acknowledges that his views aren’t commonly shared.

“Obviously, we’re in a minority,” he says. But “just because a majority believes in something doesn’t mean it’s right. People love darkness rather than light. If a majority believes something, I’m naturally suspicious because of the sin nature of man.”

How did a former science teach-

Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, a creationist ministry, stands next to a giant reproduction of Noah's ark at the Ark Encounter biblical theme park in Williamstown, Ky.

er, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel (Zovath) and a former radio reporter (Looy), all based in Southern California and with zero tourism experience, come to build a museum and an enormous wooden boat to promote creationism in northern Kentucky?

The founders say they looked at multiple locations in several states and chose the region because of its proximity to the Cincinnati airport, once a Delta hub, and because it’s within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the nation’s population. But the sites are also situated firmly in the Bible Belt, where there’s less competition from other tourist attractions. Plus, Answers in Genesis was able to negotiate attractive incentives to locate there.

Ham proudly points out that where many museums and attractions “are reliant on government subsidies or a few large donations,” the ark was funded by 42,000 small donors. “The average donation was $230,” he says, though there were several large gifts.

But the project’s single largest source of funding was actually $62 million in junk bonds floated by the town of Williamstown, population less than 4,000, home to the Ark Encounter and the county seat of Grant County, which faced bankruptcy this spring.

Unsurprisingly, the Ark Encounter and Answers in Genesis have attracted a loud chorus of critics who question this financial backing.

“Why would the state indirectly subsidize a nonsensible alternative to evolution?” asks Barry Lynn, an ordained minister who is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a frequent critic.

“It’s not good science. It’s not good anything. It ought to be unacceptable for a state at any level to treat this like one more bond-funded enterprise. Most Christians do not accept this as a literal or natural interpretation of the Bible.”

Ham argues that his organization received a tourist tax break while creating jobs in a region battered by the economy.

But a year after the ark opened,

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Crunched

©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

Many have aabout the Many Americans haveAmericans inaccurate perceptions warped impression of U.S.

The Perils of Perception Poll conducted by research company Ipsos Mori just before the 2016 presidential election demo Americans’ poor grasp of data relating to many of the issues that were debated then and continue to reverberate now. Th company surveyed more than 27,000 people from 40 nations; only citizens of India, China, Taiwan and South Africa we accurate than Americans about their countries. (Most accurate? The Dutch.) There was one especially interesting result, A Perils of Perception Poll conducted by research company Ipsos Mori just before the 2016 presidential concerns about Russian meddling in theAmericans’ election:poor Citizens three believed Donald election demonstrated grasp from of datajust relating to nations many of the issues that were Trump debated would then beat H andwas continue The company surveyed more than 27,000 people from 40 nations; only Clinton … and Russia No. 1.to—reverberate Elizabethnow.

Chang citizens of India, China, Taiwan and South Africa were less accurate than Americans about their cultures.

(Most accurate? The Dutch.) There was one especially interesting result, given concerns about Russian meddling in the election: Citizens from just three nations believed Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton . . . and Russia was No. 1. n — Elizabeth Chang

Here some the questionswhere where Americans Americans fell inin their accuracy.

Here areare some of of the questions fellshort short their accuracy.

(So you can testcan your answers the bottom of the page.)

(So you testown yourknowledge, knowledge, wewe putput thethe answers at theat bottom of the page.)

1. Out of every 100 people, about how many do you think are Muslim?

1. Out of every 100 people, about how many AVERAGE GUESS: 17 do you think are Muslim?

AverA ge g ue ss: 17 2. Now thinking about 2020, out of every 100 people, about how many do you think will be Muslim?

AVERAGE GUESS: 23

2. Now thinking about 2020, out of every 100 people, about how many do you think will be Muslim?

3. When asked in a survey, what percentage people AverA ge gue of ss: 23do you think said that, taking all things together, they are very happy or rather happy?

AVERAGE GUESS: 49 PERCENT

3. When asked in a survey, what percentage of people do you think said that, taking all things together, they are very happy or ra 4. What percentage of total household wealth do you think the least wealthy 70 percent own?

AverA ge guess : 4PERCENT 9 p erc ent AVERAGE GUESS: 28 5. What percentage of total annual gross domestic product do you think

is spent on health expenditures everythe year?

4. What percentage of total household wealth do you think least wealthy 70 percent own?

AVERAGE GUESS: 3128 PERCENT AverA ge guess: pe rc ent

6. What do you think the current population of your country is?

AVERAGEproduct GUESS: do 300you MILLION 5. What percentage of total annual gross domestic think is spent on health expenditures every year?

AverA ge gues s: 31 perc ent

7. Out of every 100 households, how many are owned by someone who lives there?

AVERAGE GUESS: 47

6. What do you think the current population of your country is?

AverA ge guess: 300 million ANSWERS: 1. 1; 2. 1.1; 3. 90 PERCENT; 4. 7 PERCENT; 5. 18 PERCENT; 6. 321 MILLION; 7. 63

downtown Williamstown, about two miles from the tourist attraction, still isn’t much more than a collection of resale and “antiques” shops and shuttered storefronts. At lunchtime on a spring weekday, Main Street was devoid of pedestrians, tour buses or open restaurants, except for a coffee shop with a tattoo parlor in the back.

Moreover, Answers in Genesis limits who can fill its jobs, leading the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to charge the organization with discriminatory hiring practices that should make it ineligible for state and local subsidies.

As a condition of employment, the museum and ark staff of 900, including 350 seasonal workers, must sign a statement of faith rejecting evolution and declaring that they regularly attend church and view homosexuality as a sin.

Beyond the boat itself, the Ark Encounter attracts visitors with reproduction dinosaurs, a petting zoo, an insect exhibit, camel rides, zip lines and fudge stands.

The goal is for the ark to become “something on people’s checklist when they’re traveling, like seeing the biggest ball of twine,” says Zovath, who supervised the encounter’s construction. “That gives us an opportunity for people who might never go to church to see something that is mind-blowing and get some information that could change their lives for the better and point them in the direction for a secure eternity.”

The ark is not completed. Still to open is an 800-seat restaurant on the top deck, where guests will be entertained by biblical reenactors.

The theme park, ultimately featuring 80 structures, will be built gradually. The founders hope to open a new attraction every year.

Next up is a 2,500-seat auditorium for events at the Ark Encounter, scheduled to open next spring.

When he looks around at his progress, Ken Ham sees that it is good. A full summer of tourists awaits. The ark, he thinks, will attract twice as many visitors in its second year of operation. That will help fund future projects.

“You’ve got to be risk-takers to do something like this,” Ham says.

“But I see it as stepping out in faith. There are people you couldn’t blow into church with a stick of dynamite that will come and visit an ark.” n

DATA CRUNCH

7. Out of every 100 households, how many are owned by someone who lives there?

AverA ge gues s: 47

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BOOKS

The New Deal as raw deal for blacks N ONFICTION

B THE COLOR OF LAW A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

By Richard Rothstein Liveright.

345 pp. $27.95

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REVIEWED BY

C HARLES L ANE

y the early 20th century, American neighborhoods were highly segregated along racial lines, contrary to promises embodied in the post-Civil War constitutional amendments ending slavery and establishing equal rights.

Segregation was so far advanced by 1930 that neighborhoods in the average U.S. metropolitan area could not have achieved a random distribution of African Americans and whites unless fully 65 percent of blacks relocated, according to studies of census data by modern demographers.

Twenty years later, after the Great Depression and World War II, and after millions of African Americans left the South for the North in search of economic opportunity — and safety from racist violence — segregation had worsened significantly.

In 1950, achieving a random racial distribution of inhabitants in the average metropolitan area would have required nearly 75 percent of African Americans to change residence. And that level of segregation persisted through 1970.

In short, the middle decades of the 20th century were an age of ghettoization. In “The Color of Law,” Richard Rothstein shows how and why this happened, and it wasn’t by accident. Blacks did not move into overcrowded slums as a matter of group preference.

Nor was private racial discrimination by white developers, banks and homeowners’ associations exclusively to blame, though it was certainly a key factor.

Rather, the federal government used its expanding power to promote apartheid-like separation of whites and blacks in cities and towns across the country.

When the U.S. housing market collapsed in the Great Depression, Washington took control and attempted to revive it through New Deal agencies, such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

JERRY MOSEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A blighted part of Newark is seen in 1974. The middle decades of the 20th century saw deepening segregation in U.S. cities.

and Home Owners Loan Corporation.

The segregation that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration inherited reflected preexisting institutions, of which restrictive racial covenants may have been the most important.

They were still relatively new, however. FDR might well have used his unprecedented leverage over housing finance to undo them.

Instead, the New Deal did the opposite. The FHA promoted racial covenants and other instruments of segregation through underwriting standards discouraging home loans in areas “infiltrat[ed]” by “inharmonious racial or nationality groups.” The rationale was the government’s need to protect its investment, and those of white homeowners, against the threat African American neighbors would pose to property values.

No data supported this ostensible concern, as Rothstein notes.

The FHA’s pro-segregation policy reflected racist assumptions that pervaded even progressive circles in the 1930s — plus FDR’s need to

appease his Southern Democratic supporters.

When World War II began, the federal government constructed dwellings for workers who flocked to defense-related factories. This housing, too, was allocated by race. In some affected localities, there was no housing segregation, nor even any particular history of Jim Crow, until the feds created it.

Rothstein tells the story of Richmond, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco. From 1940 to 1945, nearly 14,000 African Americans flowed into what was then a small shipbuilding city. The government housed them in poorerquality, officially segregated buildings, setting aside better homes for whites. This “established segregated living patterns that persist to this day,” Rothstein writes.

“The Color of Law” thus adds a necessary corrective to established narratives about the impact of the New Deal and World War II on U.S. domestic institutions.

And, as Rothstein shows, the effects lingered for decades.

Homeownership was a key path to wealth in postwar America, yet

many blacks were excluded. Today, the median white household’s net worth is 16 times that of the median African American household.

In 1948, the Supreme Court rendered restrictive covenants unenforceable. The postwar FHA eventually abandoned “redlining,” though not before underwriting new whites-only suburbs for returning veterans, including Long Island’s iconic Levittown.

Not until 1968 would a different kind of Democratic administration, that of President Lyndon B. Johnson, enact the Fair Housing Act to undo the damage done by its predecessors (and by the Republican Eisenhower administration, whose Interstate Highway System sometimes displaced minority communities and facilitated the growth of white suburbs).

By outlawing overt discrimination, the Fair Housing Act helped bring about change. As of 2010, randomizing racial residential patterns in major metropolitan areas would require 47 percent of African Americans to move. This is down substantially from previous levels and 17 points away from the 30 percent level indicative of “low” neighborhood segregation, according to University of Michigan demographer William H. Frey.

As Frey shows in his 2014 book, “Diversity Explosion,” some of the least-segregated metropolitan areas in America now are places like Raleigh, N.C., and Las Vegas. Immigration from Asia and Latin America has meanwhile fostered the rise of what Brown University sociologist John Logan has called “global neighborhoods.”

A discussion of such data would have strengthened Rothstein’s otherwise excellent book. The figures quantify how grievously mid20th-century policies harmed African Americans, and the country, but also how close we are — or were — to undoing the damage. n Lane covers housing issues for The Washington Post’s editorial page.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Spain is casualty in pedantic novel

Earnestly coming of age, step by step

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

M

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REVIEWED BY

M ANUEL R OIG- F RANZIA

arian Taylor, the central figure in Mary Gordon’s new novel, “There Your Heart Lies,” rejects her Catholic faith. She enters into a sham marriage with a doctor who had been the lover of her gay brother, who committed suicide in New York after being demonized by her father. Marian poses as the doctor’s nurse, and they run off with a boatload of anarchists and communists to support the cause of government loyalists fighting the fascist, Catholic-backed rebels in the 1930s Spanish Civil War. Decades later, Marian’s granddaughter, Amelia, travels to Spain to find answers about her beloved Meme’s adventures. From there the book toggles between Spain around the civil war and Avondale, R.I., where Marian is dying in 2009.

Gordon frequently writes about Catholic themes, and in “There Your Heart Lies,” her characters are unstinting in their indictment of the Church for its ardent support of the fascist leader Francisco Franco, who would head a military dictatorship in Spain for more than three decades until his death in 1975.

Marian becomes disillusioned as the lopsided conflict tilts inexorably in favor of Franco’s forces, who benefit from the firepower given them by Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini. She tires of the squabbling among the foreign volunteers, who include hundreds of Americans known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Separated from her fake husband, she marries a local surgeon and gives birth to their son. She’s taken in by her husband’s staunchly Catholic family in the seaside town of Altea. Marian’s domineering mother-in-law, a pharmacist, surreptitiously drugs her, regularly feeding her a phenobarbitalspiked tonic that leaves her in a woozy stupor for years. The mother-in-law also inculcates Marian’s son in a twisted, obsessive brand of Catholicism and

turns the boy against his mother.

“She worships the Church, not God, and she worships fascism,” says a priest who attempts to explain the mother-in-law’s cruelty to Marian. “She worships your child as if he were not a child of God, but a little jeweled god himself.” For all her duplicity, the priest says, the mother-in-law may have been motivated out of concern that Marian would be labeled a communist by Franco’s fearsome national police force and that the boy would be taken away to an orphanage.

Isolated much of the time, Marian longs to “rip the pictures from the walls: the bleeding Christs, the bleeding saints, the bleeding bulls.” She looks at an image of “The Sacred Heart, blood shooting out in diagonal needles from what seems like a pimento in the center of the Savior’s chest.” She remembers her husband telling her “about the Spanish love of blood.”

Sadly, this sort of hackneyed and debatable oversimplification of Spanish tastes and manners runs throughout this book, which betrays little of the graceful writing Gordon has displayed during her long, distinguished career. At various times, characters comment about “that Spanish insistence on everything being black and white” and the “Spanish walk, marked by its verticality.”

The plot has all the makings of a fine tale, but the book’s narrator has the tiresome, pedantic habit of stating the obvious. And Gordon leans far too often on tired, watery metaphors. Marian’s love for her father “had run through her life like a stream.” She wishes she’d closed the “sluiceway” on the “current” of her memories. Her thoughts are “minnows in a stream,” her mind “a dirty frozen pool.”

What happens, to borrow from Gordon’s linguistic playbook, is that a good story gets hopelessly drowned. n Roig-Franzia is a writer for The Washington Post.

S THERE YOUR HEART LIES

By Mary Gordon Pantheon. 320 pp. $26.95

WALKING TO LISTEN 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time

By Andrew Forsthoefel Bloomsbury.

371 pp. $28

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REVIEWED BY

A LLAN F ALLOW

tuffing fish skins into bait bags on a lobster boat in Cape Cod Bay was no picnic. But 23-year-old Andrew Forsthoefel hoped it would help pay for his research trip to a West African village, where he intended to study how indigenous communities around the world guide young people into adulthood.

When that scheme fell through, Forsthoefel undertook an epic initiation ceremony of his own: an 11-month, 4,000-mile hike across 13 states, from his home in Chadds Ford, Pa., to California’s Half Moon Bay. “I wanted to learn what it actually meant to come of age, to transform into the adult who would carry me through the rest of my life,” he writes in this earnest, contemplative account of his trek.

“I wanted to meet that man.” What he was seeking, in other words, was “a graduate program in the human experience.”

And so, on a mid-October morning in 2011, Forsthoefel hoisted a 50-pound backpack and headed south, leaving his comfortable existence and doting mother behind.

To advertise the purpose of his project, Forsthoefel fastened a large sign to the top of his gear: “WALKING TO LISTEN.” That simple invitation proved to be an even better icebreaker than the mandolin he also toted with him. A few days into North Carolina, for example, “one woman pulled over in her minivan, her two daughters in the back seat, and after just a couple minutes she told me all about her hysterectomy and how it had changed her life, just like that,” Forsthoefel explains. “It was not an unusual interaction. Often people would go straight to the heart of things, to the alchemical life moments that made them. They told me about motherhood and fatherhood, abandonment and abuse, drug addiction and death, conversion experiences and war trauma.”

These roadside oversharers confided the secrets of lighter folk-

ways, too — of biscuit baking and raccoon hunting, of truck mudding and faceoffs with wild animals.

Conditioned to expect trouble on the road — his mother’s landlord, a retired Philadelphia cop, had pressured him to carry a knife — Forsthoefel was unprepared for the kindnesses he encountered.

“People kept taking me in,” he reports. “Strangers were passing me to one another like I was a baton in a relay race.”

In Horse Pasture, Va., a firefighter presses $100 on him (“This is for your tip jar”) after the author plays a tune on his mandolin. In Blacksburg, S.C., a gray-haired man in hunter’s orange pays his breakfast tab. And on a lonely stretch of highway running from western Texas to Clovis, N.M., a long-haul trucker named Mel Jack shadows Forsthoefel for a week, stopping regularly to ply the author with Gatorade and popcorn.

Jack even buys him a Bubba cooler, explaining: “With the hottest leg of your journey coming up, I want you to have a cold drink whenever you need it.” These episodes make “Walking to Listen” the ideal antidote for even the strongest bout of national doubt.

Despite frequent descriptive gems, “Walking to Listen” often slows to a crawl under its heavy burden of Whitman and Rilke quotes. And the author’s ceaseless interior monologue — in which he dissects everything from his fear of death and his struggles with solitude to his anguish at his parents’ divorce a decade earlier and his yearning for a transformative coming-of-age experience — may remind you that the road does indeed go on forever.

This is a shame, because when Forsthoefel gets out of his head and lifts his eyes unto the hills all around, there is no better walking companion. n Fallow, a freelance writer and editor is a frequent contributor to Book World. He wrote this for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

We all need to take action to fight white supremacy ARJUN SINGH SETHI is a civil rights lawyer, writer, teacher and consultant based in Washington, D.C. He is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt University Law School, where he teaches courses on policing, surveillance and counterterrorism. He wrote this for The Washington Post.

When Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai­Meche boarded a light­rail train in Portland, Ore., on May 26, they never could have imagined they wouldn’t make it home. The two men were stabbed to death after confronting a man for yelling slurs at a Muslim woman and her friend. A third intervener, Micah David­Cole, was treated for serious injuries. The suspect, a white supremacist known to police, openly performed Nazi salutes and shouted racial slurs at an April rally in Portland. White supremacist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic posts were a fixture on his Facebook page.

Communities of color experience hate in every aspect of our lives. It braids through our daily existence, just like friendship, work and family. We encounter it in schools, workplaces and public life. And what we fear most is hate violence, the kind that was on full display in Portland last weekend.

Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs and South Asians are acutely vulnerable to hate. Since the 2016 presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked more than 1,000 biasrelated incidents, many against Muslims. It also has reported that the number of anti-Muslim organizations in the United States grew from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016. Muslim women often bear the brunt of this mistreatment, especially if they wear a hijab. The slurs uttered on the train in Portland occur regularly nationwide.

In the aftermath of a tragedy like this one, there’s usually an outpouring of emotion and an important set of rapid responses.

We decry the violence, raise money for the victims’ families and push local prosecutors to file hate crime charges. Community groups also encourage the reporting and tracking of hate crimes, as reporting remains

voluntary, not mandatory. In addition, we ask affected communities to be vigilant and watchful. The threat of copycat attacks is real and can be deadly.

These are important and timetested interventions, but they aren’t enough. Hate violence will continue to be a scourge in the United States if we don’t root out the bigotry and animus that cultivate it.

We must acknowledge, condemn and combat white supremacy. The belief that white people are superior to other races is responsible for some of the greatest tragedies in modern history. Manifest destiny, the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow and even mass incarceration are inextricably rooted in white supremacy. This belief system proliferates in the United States, including in places such as Portland.

Hundreds of hate groups now champion white supremacy and draw inspiration from President Trump, whose rhetoric and policies have emboldened their nativism and prejudice. The number of hate groups in the nation increased in 2016 for the second consecutive year. Some of these groups skulked in the shadows before Trump; now they bask in the limelight.

Some of what these hate groups say and do is protected by the First Amendment, if it falls short of violence. But there are still plenty of ways to combat their ideology.

JOHN RUDOFF VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jeremy Joseph Christian, seen at a Patriot Prayer event in Portland, Ore., is accused of fatally stabbing two men on a light-rail train May 26.

In the wake of Trump’s travel ban, people rallied in the streets and airports to condemn what they believed to be prejudice and discrimination against Muslims.

This groundswell of support made a difference in the litigation and in the hearts and minds of Muslims and others worldwide.

Why can’t the public show the same energy and resolve when white supremacy and hate violence strike our communities?

Local and national organizations nationwide have been fighting white supremacy for decades. Connect with them, support them and raise your voice. We cannot and must not shoulder this burden alone.

In addition to condemnation and protest, hold teach-ins on white supremacy at your houses of worship and community centers. Invite communities affected by hate violence, listen to their stories — and be guided by their needs and leadership. As a Sikh American and a member of a community acutely affected by hate, I can tell you every intervention matters. Hate thrives in company; it dies in solitude.

Coalitions of diverse professionals, including teachers, coaches, public health professionals, counselors and community leaders, should develop programing and interventions to track, treat and curb hate locally. Networks like

this also allow us to more effectively respond to hate violence. This programming should also include upstander trainings. We must honor the memories of those who were killed in Portland by standing for the same principles they did — courage, sacrifice and justice — not shying away from them.

We must likewise reject government policies that treat our communities as inherently suspect. Such policies foster misunderstanding, fear and bigotry.

Finally, the media and public must be held accountable for double standards that mischaracterize violence and terrorism. White suspects who perpetrate mass atrocities are often humanized and described as shooters and mentally ill lone wolves. They’re seen as holding personal grievances and capable of rehabilitation. But when the suspect is Muslim, brown, black or a combination thereof, they are often described as terrorists, who are deliberately evil, inspired by collective grievance, incapable of intervention.

The greatest threat facing our country comes from homegrown white supremacists, not Muslims or refugees. Yet we don’t treat it with the requisite level of urgency, because we dismiss these acts of violence as isolated incidents rather than manifestations of a deeper ideology rooted in hate. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

It’s time for colleges to cut costs JEFFREY J. SELINGO is the author of “There Is Life After College” and “College (Un)Bound.” He is former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. He wrote this for The Washington Post.

Traditionally, May 1 is the end of the college search for high school seniors. That’s when deposits are due for a spot in the fall’s freshman class on campuses nationwide.

But the college decision process seems more fluid than ever. First came the news last month that the discount that colleges are offering on tuition to new students has reached a record 49.1 percent. That was followed by reports that several schools are sending messages to accepted students that they have not heard from offering them more financial aid in the hopes they might enroll. And dozens of schools report they still have space available for new students in their classes in the fall.

Colleges are pulling out all the stops to recruit students, get them to enroll, and now keep them engaged over the summer when students sometimes change their mind and colleges experience what they call enrollment “melt.”

But rather than always looking at the revenue side of the ledger by figuring out how to attract more students with marketing gimmicks and constant discounting, colleges should start studying the expense side as well for ways to lower their costs.

First, colleges need to reimagine how and where students are taught. Spending on instruction varies widely among schools, from about $6,600 per student at regional public colleges to $21,400 at private

research universities, according to the Delta Cost Project.

However, spending more on classroom instruction doesn’t necessarily buy better outcomes for students.

While not the panacea that many in Silicon Valley suggest, technology can reduce instructional costs with the same or even better results. The nonprofit National Center for Academic Transformation has redesigned courses on more than 200 campuses, reducing costs an average of 34 percent by using, among other things, software and low-stakes testing.

Even small changes in behavior can yield significant savings. Take the use of classroom space. Many students dislike early morning or Friday classes, forcing schools to

offer multiple sections in a variety of time slots. Elon University in North Carolina discovered many of those sections weren’t filled.

That’s like an airline flying empty seats. So Elon reduced the number of course sections and ended up saving nearly $1 million.

Another strategy to cuts costs is to declare a truce in the amenities arms race. Last decade, many schools went deep into debt to build state-of-the-art classroom buildings, palatial recreation centers and plush dorms to keep up with competitors doing the same thing. Many campuses are still paying off that debt even as they are forced to spend more on student services, from career counseling to mental health services.

That kind of spending is growing fast. At private colleges and elite public schools, studentservice expenses jumped more than 20 percent over a decade, according to the Delta Cost Project. In recent years, spending on administration and maintenance rose faster than instructional spending at many four-year colleges.

But if Harvard replaced all of its dorms with rooms that were comparable to a jail cell, I doubt students would refuse to go there.

Georgia State University in

Atlanta tested that theory in 2009, when it opened a new residence hall that was reminiscent of those from a generation ago: double rooms basically twice the size of a twin bed, common bathrooms, and a dining hall.

Students signed up in droves.

Since it was built, the freshman hall has filled up before other residences as students can get a room there plus a meal plan that is equal to the cost of just the apartment-like residence halls.

Finally, colleges need to rethink one of the biggest drivers of costs — personnel, particularly the need to have more flexible work forces. Right now, their faculty ranks are largely immovable because of tenure. An idea that higher education needs to adopt is one floated by, among others, Larry Bacow, a former president of Tufts University, that would put a clock on tenure.

Instead of a lifetime guarantee, tenure would be for a specific time commitment — perhaps 20, 25 or 30 years — followed by oneyear contracts.

Colleges can only discount their prices so much until they are forced to cut actual costs given reduced revenue. So college officials will be forced to confront their expenses whether they want to or not. n

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OPINIONS

BY NICK ANDERSON FOR THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Trump should raise the gas tax HUGH HEWITT is a Washington Post contributing columnist, hosts a nationally syndicated radio show and is author of “The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority.”

President Trump has returned to the White House to be met by a tax-reform effort in crisis. He can get it back on track by embracing a solution that is obvious and equitable — and that ought to be easy.

“The boldest ideas for changing the nation’s tax code are either dead or on political life support,” the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reported Monday. “The clear winner, so far, is the status quo.”

That would be a disaster for the economy, of course. The nation’s high corporate tax rate leaves “stranded” abroad trillions of dollars in profits that could be repatriated and put to work here in business expansion or returned to shareholders via dividends or stock buybacks. A special repatriation window could be used to induce some of this money to return more quickly and create a revenue bump, but it would still be only a portion of what’s needed to finance tax reform and the investments in the military and infrastructure that Trump promised on the campaign trail.

One obvious answer is to raise the existing federal levy that makes the most sense to the most voters: the federal gas tax.

Currently less than 19 cents a gallon (higher on diesel) and stuck there since 1993, the federal gas tax generates about

$35 billion in revenue a year.

Last month, Trump told Bloomberg News that he is open to a tax reform package that raises the federal gas tax. Good.

In contrast to a “border adjustment tax” that few support and fewer understand, an increase in the federal gas tax could be easily explained to voters as the price of three distinct goals: infrastructure investments, the building of the Trump-promised 350-ship Navy and tax reform that ignites broad and sustained economic growth.

If a 50-cent-a-gallon hike brought in $100 billion in revenue annually, it could be coupled with a cut in the corporate rate; repeal of the military-crippling sequester and a real increase in defense spending (especially on the Navy fleet); a dip in marginal incometax rates; and, crucially, a boost in local infrastructure spending.

BY SHENEMAN

The naval buildup has to be devised and supervised by Congress and the president, just as federal tax policy must emerge from inside the Beltway. But there is no reason that, say, a third of any new gas tax revenue couldn’t immediately be returned to the counties of the United States on a per capita basis so local people could decide the local infrastructure needs that deserve priority. Enough of “shovel-ready” declarations from inside the Beltway. Send the infrastructure dollars to local people to spend.

Trump can sell a gas tax hike that does these things because it makes sense and because all drivers will pay it. A “rebuild the fleet” tax would have deep appeal even to those patriots who might

Tax hikes are most accepted when they are understood by most and paid by all.

otherwise reject raising any federal tax but who understand how damaging the Obama-era sequester has been to the ability of the United States to answer the calls upon it.

And, yes, it should be easy to do — if ideologues of both left and right are pushed aside for the common good. The corporate tax rate has to come down. The fleet has to expand. And everyone who drives anywhere in the United States knows that roads and bridges must be repaired, just as anyone who flies knows that some airports need work done yesterday.

Go with your gut, Mr. President, and push the GOP to get in the game. This isn’t that hard. Put some points on the domestic policy board and do so by kickoff of the NFL’s regular season (Sept. 7). If Congress has to stay in town and work through July and August, demand it do so.

Tax hikes are most accepted when they are understood by most and paid by all. With states such as California busy raising their marginal income-tax rates, there’s no risk of the U.S. tax system becoming regressive as a whole. The need to make sure everyone shoulders part of the lift to meet key national goals points to the gas tax. n

SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Beer BY

T HERESA M C C ULLA

Summer for Americans is a time of backyard barbecues, baseball and beer. “This is a golden age for beer lovers,” as The Washington Post reported in 2016. Yet the sheer number of options could confuse even the most enthusiastic consumer. No wonder myths about beer’s past and present abound.

MYTH NO. 1 American beer is a product of the Midwest.

American beer has a long and geographically diverse history.

The continent’s first commercial brewery opened in what’s now Manhattan in 1612. In the late 1700s, hops grew at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

When Gold Rush hopefuls and railroad builders looked west in the 1800s, German immigrants brewed for them in New Orleans, Denver and San Francisco. As the nation grew, beer went with it.

But when Prohibition began in 1920, it shuttered American breweries. Only a few big producers, most in the Midwest (plus Colorado’s Coors), survived.

Their size allowed them to adapt, redirecting factories and refrigerated trucks toward the production of soft drinks, ice cream and even ceramics during years when they couldn’t brew.

They would come to dominate the market and shape Americans’ palates.

MYTH NO. 2 Beer is a man’s drink.

History shows that beer has always been a woman’s drink, too.

In colonial and early republic America, women and enslaved people brewed beer as a domestic task. And, as women entered wage-earning jobs at the turn of the 20th century, they, too, came to patronize urban saloons. Soon, however, advertisers’ nearly exclusive focus on male drinkers reduced its popularity among women. Petite bottles, low-calorie styles and Miller’s declaration that it was the “champagne” of beers sought to bring women

back into the fold. Yet their consumption never equaled men’s. Contemporary beer culture offers a slowly changing story. In 1983, the American Homebrewers Association tapped a woman, Nancy Vineyard, as its Homebrewer of the Year (a feat not repeated until 2013). Since 2008, the Pink Boots Society, a charitable organization with 50 chapters in 10 countries, has awarded educational scholarships to women in the industry. An increasing number of women are studying brewing and founding breweries.

MYTH NO. 3 Craft breweries are small breweries.

According to the Brewers Association (BA), a craft brewer produces 6 million or fewer barrels of beer every year. Six million sounds like a lot, especially in contrast to early microbreweries that typically made a few thousand barrels, at most. Yet despite the success of big craft companies such as Yuengling, Boston Beer and Sierra Nevada, their sales volume counts for a drop, or a few, in the proverbial bucket. According to the BA’s math, even the largest craft brewer produces no more than 3 percent of the volume of beer sold to Americans in a year.

In 2016, craft beer counted for 12 percent of the total American beer market, by volume. The takeaway is not that some craft breweries are very small and others less small, but that companies on top of the beer market — Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Pabst — are extremely, gigantically big.

LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Large breweries such as Anheuser-Busch survived Prohibition, but the history of American beer extends beyond the Midwest.

Ask consumers to define craft beer, and they’ll name a variety of factors other than size that appeal to them. The brewers often concoct new styles that let drinkers experiment; they run taprooms where customers can relax with their friends and neighbors; they build ties to their local communities. Some craft breweries are active in philanthropy, others emphasize environmental sustainability, still others employ innovative management practices such as employee stock ownership plans, and many pursue collegial, collaborative ties with other breweries. Market share is the wrong way to define a beer.

MYTH NO. 4 Craft beer is a recent invention.

American craft beer is much older than that nanobrewery down the block. Loose collectives of home brewers began to tinker in West Coast basements in the 1960s and early 1970s, when home brewing was still illegal.

Bored by light lagers, they found inspiration in English, Belgian and German styles during military or educational travels abroad. Motivation came, too, from the California wine industry, Fritz Maytag’s reborn Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco (1965) and Jack McAuliffe’s New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma County,

Calif. (1976).

Early craft brewers elbowed their way into a market dominated by big beer. They changed consumers’ palates by introducing porters, stouts and hoppy styles, like Sierra Nevada’s iconic pale ale.

MYTH NO. 5 Wine is for aging.

Beer is for drinking fresh.

For many beers, fresh is better.

Certain styles, such as pilsners and most saisons, should be enjoyed close to the date of production. Others, especially hop-forward beers like IPAs, require uninterrupted refrigeration and timely consumption to preserve the volatile flavors of hops.

Nevertheless, certain beers improve in character if aged and cellared. American brewers have long experimented with holding beers in wine and liquor barrels, aging them before they reach the consumer. High-alcohol-byvolume styles, such as barleywines, benefit especially from cellaring at home. Aging a beer softens the high-alcohol edge and allows a complex set of characteristics and flavors (toffee, straw, wood, wine) to emerge. n McCulla is the historian of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She wrote this for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2017

24

JUNE 2017

Look for our popular restaurant guide “Bite Me!” in Friday’s paper.

The Online Auction starts Monday June 12th at 8 am.

Save up to 60% on gift cards from restaurants in this guide. wenatcheeworld.com/auction/

A supplement to The Wenatchee World

Publishes Friday, June 9th

We’ll be featuring

lots of good eats and treats!

We’ve collected gift cards from these featured restaurants and we’ll be auctioning them off on our website.

3 Days Only!

Monday - Wednesday, June 12-14

Bid online at wenatcheeworld.com/auction/ If you’ve bid in the past, you’re already registered.

The Online Auction There will be a $.50 handling fee for each item purchased.

• Save up to 60% off! • Buy it Now option • Incremental Bidding - Don’t be outbid!

Bidding starts Monday, June 12th, at 8am.

Bidding ends Wednesday, June 14th, at 8pm.

Winners can pick up their gift cards after the auction has closed at: The Wenatchee World, 14 N. Mission, Wenatchee Monday - Friday, 8am - 5pm