The Washington Post National Weekly - June 25, 2017

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY America’s values gap Alienation from cities grows in small towns PAGE 12

Politics Governing in secret 4

Nation NRA’s unusual silence 8

Data Crunch Best staycations 23

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

The Democrats’ Pelosi problem BY

A ARON B LAKE

P

olitico has a pretty stunning quote about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from a fellow House Democrat, after Tuesday’s big Georgia special-election loss: “I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top,” said Rep. Filemon Vela (D­Texas), who sup­ ported Pelosi in her last leadership race. “Nan­ cy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost.

But she certainly is one of the reasons.”

Yikes. That’s a brand of criticism you don’t even generally see from any fellow Democrats — much less ones who voted for Pelosi for leader. Clearly feelings are a little raw after Tuesday night. And, not for the first time, Pelosi is finding herself embattled after Republicans successfully wielded her as a liberal bogeywoman.

Vela is right that Pelosi isn’t the reason Ossoff lost. She may not even be the biggest reason (there was the conservative lean of the district, Ossoff’s residency issues, questions about his message, etc.). But it’s also pretty clear — and has been for some time — that in the types of districts Democrats need to win to retake the majority, she is an effective cudgel.

And more than that, she’s about the only good cudgel Republicans have left right now.

Polls have regularly shown this, of course.

But now that President Barack Obama is out of office, Pelosi is really the only game in town for the GOP. And notably more than six years after her speakership ended after the 2010 election, she continues to draw similarly passionate opposition. Republicans drove her unfavorable rating up over 50 percent in that election, and today it remains right around 50 percent.

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A Quinnipiac poll last month, in fact, showed exactly 50 percent of registered voters had an unfavorable view of her versus just 30 percent who had a favorable one. Even among Democrats, about 1 in 5 (19 percent) didn’t like Pelosi. And independents were overwhelmingly anti-Pelosi, with 58 percent disliking her and 23 percent holding a positive view of her.

Fox News polled on Pelosi in March, and fully 36 percent of registered voters had a “strongly unfavorable” view of her versus just 13 percent who have a “strongly favorable” one.

TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES

Those are bad numbers — almost Trumpian. They suggest both that Pelosi hurts Democrats with swing voters and enthusiasm.

And unfortunately for Democrats, the picture is probably even worse in the districts that matter. That’s because their path back to the majority runs through districts that lean conservative, just by virtue of how the population is dispersed and the congressional map is drawn/gerrymandered.

That means, in the districts where this will all be hashed out, Pelosi is probably even more unpopular than those national numbers. And as shorthand for “liberal,” you can't get much better than the House minority leader from

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San Francisco.

Pelosi’s defenders note that other congressional leaders, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), have similarly bad numbers, and they argue that Republicans will simply demonize whoever replaces her. And that’s true.

But Pelosi seems to be uniquely able to fire up the opposition.

“I don’t know what we’d do without Pelosi,” Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund GOP super PAC, told The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis. “I hope she never retires. Another Democratic leader would not start with that level of name recognition.”

The flip side of all of this is that Pelosi is a fundraiser without compare — and that should not be discounted. That matters to helping Democrats win races, too. And on the legislative front, Democrats have hailed her for years as a successful and well-liked leader.

But that’s also part of the problem for Democrats: Pelosi is hard to dislodge as long as she wants to stay on as leader. By virtue of the party’s minority status, it is actually tilted toward the more liberal wing of the party (i.e. fewer centrist Democrats holding down swingy districts). What’s more, she has racked up years of goodwill in the party that’s much more hierarchical than the GOP. Members who feel like Vela are still the exception, and there has yet to be a real anti-Pelosi groundswell in the Democratic Party.

Something big needs to change if Pelosi doesn’t voluntarily step down. The party took a step in that direction in November when nearly one-third of them (63 in total) voted against her for leader — the most ever. And now Vela’s comments suggest the opposition might be growing. n

© The Washington Post

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY ENTERTAINMENT BOOKS OPINION DATA CRUNCH

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ON THE COVER A roadside store in Bethel Springs, Tenn., started as a fruit stand and later sold pottery before closing. Many Americans worry that their children will not be better off than them. Photography

by MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON, The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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POLITICS

Public business behind closed doors

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

In Trump’s Washington, government leaders hide policy details, won’t answer questions

BY P HILIP R UCKER AND E D O ’ K EEFE

T

he Senate bill to scale back the health-care law known as Obamacare was written in secret by a single senator, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a clutch of his senior aides.

Officials at numerous agencies of the Trump administration have stonewalled friendly Republicans in Congress — not to mention Democrats — by declining to share

internal documents on sensitive matters or refusing to answer questions.

President Trump, meanwhile, is still forbidding the release of his tax returns, his aides have stopped releasing logs of visitors to the White House and his media aides have sometimes banned cameras at otherwise routine news briefings, as happened Monday.

Trump even refuses to acknowledge to the public that he plays golf during his frequent weekend visits to his private golf courses.

More and more in the Trump era, business in Washington, D.C., is happening behind closed doors.

The federal government’s leaders are hiding from public scrutiny — and their penchant for secrecy represents a stark departure from the campaign promises of Trump and his fellow Republicans to usher in newfound transparency.

“I was very frustrated the Obama administration held things so close to the vest . . . but I quite frankly haven’t seen any change with the Trump adminis-

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote the Senate health-care bill in secret with a handful of his senior aides.

tration. In some ways I find it worse,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform before announcing his retirement this spring.

Chaffetz ticked through several controversies, including the transfer of whistleblowers at the Transportation Security Administration, about which he said Trump administration officials have declined to provide key documents to his committee.

“I see a bureaucracy that

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POLITICS doesn’t want documents and the truth out the door . . . and [is] just flipping the middle finger at Congress,” Chaffetz said.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats are furious with federal agencies and White House offices that have not answered their requests for information on a wide range of subjects — from the role of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to specific policy changes being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and other agencies.

By early June, House and Senate Democratic aides had compiled lists of more than 400 written requests that they said had been ignored by the White House or federal agencies.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) described “an overall pattern of fear of any level of transparency.”

“If they can’t control the message or have it come directly from the president via his Twitter account, I think they’re very fearful of any level of sharing basic facts and how they come to their conclusions and decisions what policy should be,” Heinrich said.

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, said, “Secrecy is a human impulse.” He said government officials often assume that public accountability will lead to disruption, but he argued that hiding from scrutiny can have even graver political consequences.

“There’s a tremendous temptation to conduct business in the shadows and that so often is a prescription for problems, even for disaster,” Wehner said.

White House officials strongly rejected the notion that they have been overly evasive during Trump’s first six months in office.

“I disagree, at least from a White House perspective, that things are happening in secrecy,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary. She said reporters walk in and out of her office freely asking questions, noting that a reporter from The Washington Post was “the eighth one in the last 10 minutes” to visit her one afternoon.

“We’ve advocated for transparency,” Sanders added. “One thing to point to is the obstruction by Democrats. There are over 100 nominees for positions in the de-

MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

partments that haven’t been approved, and without a full staff it makes it harder for agencies to communicate and respond to everything they’ve received.”

There are 94 Trump nominees awaiting confirmation, according to a Washington Post tracker. Only 27 of them are ready for an up-ordown vote, according to the Senate calendar.

Still, lawmakers from both parties have been angered by a Justice Department opinion issued in May that instructed agencies not to comply with requests for information from most members of Congress, including Democrats.

The May 1 opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel said that individual lawmakers could not make requests of the executive branch unless they are committee chairmen or participating in a request by a full committee or subcommittee.

“This is nonsense,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in a seven-page letter excoriating the opinion. He said that the OLC demonstrated a “shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity.”

Frustrations with the ongoing Republican-led health-care debate have also spilled out into the open. The bill was written largely

by McConnell (Ky.) and his senior aides, with limited input from a working group of about a dozen Republican senators. Their work was largely kept secret from rankand-file Republicans in the Senate, as well as all Democrats.

During a Senate Finance Com-

mittee hearing this month with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked her Republican colleagues when they would be holding open hearings on health-care reform.

“We have no idea what’s being proposed,” McCaskill said.

“There’s a group of guys in a backroom somewhere that are making these decisions.”

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said there should be “real, robust debate” in the Senate on the bill: “I do believe sunshine is a good disinfectant and that transparency would be helpful in this process that the Senate is going to employ.”

McConnell has defended his conference’s closed-door debate on health care, telling reporters recently that “we’ve been dealing with this issue for seven years. It’s not a new thing . . . Nobody’s hiding the ball here.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say whether Trump is comfortable with the secrecy of McConnell’s process.

Asked Monday whether the president or members of his team had seen the bill’s text, Spicer said, “I don’t know,” although he said the White House legislative affairs team has been in “constant communication” with senators.

Spicer made his comments at a news briefing deemed an “offcamera gaggle,” meaning no video or audio footage was allowed to be broadcast. The White House has dictated such rules for briefings

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) has described “an overall pattern of fear of any level of transparency” under President Trump. He added, “I think they’re very fearful of any level of sharing basic facts and how they come to their conclusions and decisions what policy should be.”

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more and more in recent weeks, inspiring fierce resistance from some journalists.

“It just feels like we’re sort of slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions,” Jim Acosta, a senior White House correspondent at CNN, said on the air after Monday’s gaggle.

The rules are in keeping with other steps taken by the Trump White House to limit transparency. The Obama administration regularly released logs of visitors to the White House complex, but the Trump administration ended that policy.

“I think there’s always been a tendency in politics to be as secretive as possible, but this administration has taken it to extremes the likes of which I have never seen,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist.

Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist and former aide in Ronald Reagan’s White House, defended the decisions by the Trump administration and GOP congressional leaders to conduct business in private.

“It makes it harder to govern if you can’t do things in quiet increments until you’re really ready to talk about a policy position,” Rogers said.

Still, congressional hearings this month grew testy as lawmakers sparred with Trump administration officials. At a June 7 Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and three other top intelligence officials refused to answer questions about their conversations with Trump about fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Heinrich told Coats, “Your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes.”

“It’s just — it’s not a matter of unwillingness, Senator,” Coats said. “It’s a matter of . . .”

Heinrich cut off Coats: “It is a matter of unwillingness.”

“It’s a matter of how I share it and whom I share it to,” Coats responded.

“So,” Heinrich asked, “you don’t think the American people deserve to know the answer to that question?”

Coats declined to give an answer. ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS ANALYSIS

Senate health plan is short-term aid BY

A MY G OLDSTEIN

R

epublicans have vowed for months to undo the Affordable Care Act and stave off the collapse of the nation’s most fragile healthinsurance markets, which serve people who buy coverage on their own. In the Senate, that turns out to be a short-term goal.

Legislation that the Senate’s GOP leaders finally disclosed on Thursday would keep billions of dollars flowing — but for only two years — to health plans that have been begging for continued help with the expense of millions of lower-income customers in ACA insurance marketplaces. After 2019, the payments would stop.

And the cutoff of those payments would coincide with the end of subsidies that help the vast majority of people with ACA health plans afford their premiums. The subsidies would be replaced with smaller tax credits with clear winners and losers. The new credits would not reach as many middle-income Americans, and although the credits would be available for the first time to people below the poverty line, the amounts could be too small to be useful.

Taken together, these and other features of the Better Care Reconciliation Act could drive prices up after a few years for people who buy individual insurance — a core group the ACA is designed to help. After the next three years, it also would begin a sharp downward path in federal support for Medicaid, the cornerstone of the nation’s health-care safety net for the past half-century.

According to health policy experts across the ideological spectrum, the bill’s design amounts to a strategic calculation: Try to allay the immediate fears of insurance companies and states, at the risk of letting problems with affordability and access to coverage accumulate.

“It stabilizes things nicely for 2018 and 2019, and after that is a crap shoot,” said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere, a Washington, D.C.-based health-care consulting firm.

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Republicans’ proposal provides money for two years but may drive up prices for many after that Other elements — touted by the GOP as freeing Americans from burdens of the ACA — could accelerate insurance-rate increases over time and leave health plans with a greater share of unhealthy customers. The bill would defang the ACA’s requirement that most Americans carry health coverage by erasing penalties for being uninsured. Unlike a similar bill that House Republicans narrowly adopted last month, the Senate version would compel insurance companies to take all customers, healthy or sick, and charge them the same prices.

Ending the penalty “is a very big deal,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The individual mandate was the stick that encouraged healthy people to sign up for insurance. Without it, premiums will increase significantly.”

Without any legal prod for people to buy insurance, “you would have a disaster of a marketplace,” said Robert Laszewski, a healthcare industry consultant. The Sen-

ate plan would require insurers to charge the same prices to sick customers as healthy ones, while allowing consumers to wait to buy coverage until they become ill.

“You can let people buy insurance on the barn after it burns down,” Laszewski said.

As the bill emerged from weeks of secrecy Thursday, Senate Republicans were not the only ones to have reached an accommodation. Within the insurance industry, officials have decided to protest the eventual cuts to Medicaid but accept for now the relief — short-term though it is — that the measure would offer them in the individual market.

“The health plans now need to think about, ‘Does this provide stability for the long term, and when do you have those discussions?’ ” said one industry insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity about political discussions that remain fluid.

The long-term uncertainty never was broached Thursday as Senate GOP leaders revealed their

Sen. Bill Cassidy (RLa.) emerges from a meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill about the health-care bill. A key feature of the bill is the dropping of penalties for most individuals who fail to carry coverage.

But it would also compel insurance companies to take all customers, healthy or sick, and charge them the same prices.

health-care plan to fellow senators.

“We agree on the need to stabilize the insurance markets that are collapsing under Obamacare,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared on the chamber’s floor. He promised that the bill would bring “hope to Americans who face the possibility of limited or zero options next year under Obamacare.”

Few Republican lawmakers questioned that outlook as they were absorbing the details of the legislation. Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) told reporters that, with two funds designated to help states keep insurance rates stable, in part by cushioning the costs associated with people with the highestmedical expenses, “there’s a lot of money.”

The $112 billion the legislation would provide through those two pots of money is $28 billion less than parallel funding in a similar bill that House Republicans narrowly adopted last month.

The subsidies in the Senate GOP plan would make insurance more affordable to young adults and more expensive for people from middle age through their mid-60s. While the ACA allows financial help for those with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level, the Senate version would stop at 350 percent of the poverty level.

On the other hand, it would allow insurance tax credits to be given to people living below the poverty line. That would primarily help a group now estimated at 2.6 million in the 19 states that decided not to expand their Medicaid programs under the ACA. This pool of people, policy experts predict, would expand because cuts to Medicaid under the bill could lead more low-income Americans to become uninsured.

“It’s essentially replacing the Medicaid expansion with tax credits for low-income people,” Kaiser’s Levitt said. “Whether those people at the low end really [would] get enough help to buy insurance is a different question.” n © The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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POLITICS

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GOP has victory lap but hurdles await

BY R OBERT C OSTA, E LISE V IEBECK AND K AREN T UMULTY Chamblee, Ga.

R

epublicans in the conservative Atlanta suburbs — and across the country — were elated last week after their party beat back Democrats in a competitive special election and avoided a loss that could have damaged President Trump’s hopes of enacting his agenda.

But the celebration after Republican Karen Handel’s victory in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District may be brief. Trump’s agenda remains stalled on Capitol Hill, and Tuesday’s win failed to resolve mounting concerns among Republicans about next year’s midterm contests.

“I’m encouraged,” said Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), a moderate who faces a tough reelection race against a marquee Democratic recruit. “Of course, it’s a single election in a single district, so you can’t read too much into it, in either direction.”

MacArthur added, “We still have our work to do. We’re going to be judged by voters on what we do, and I’ve got to keep fighting and not take anything for granted.”

Handel beat Ossoff by roughly four percentage points — almost 11,000 votes — in what became the most expensive House race in history. The race was surprisingly tight given the fact the district has only elected Republicans to the House since 1978.

“I’m proud of how close we came,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director Dan Sena said on a postelection call with consultants, according to a listener who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss what was said. “Remember, folks: There are 71 districts that perform better than Georgia-6.”

Democrats could find themselves with a strong edge in the midterms, depending on how Trump performs in the next year and a half.

The president remains unpopular in national polls and presents challenges for candidates even in

JESSICA MCGOWAN/GETTY IMAGES

Republicans have won multiple special elections, but they’ve also seen signs of their vulnerability ruby-red GOP bastions like Georgia. His freewheeling populism remains an anomaly even in his own party, and virtually no other candidate has managed to channel his sensibility and find success at the ballot box.

Observers point to Virginia’s gubernatorial primary this month, where establishment favorite Ed Gillespie triumphed over a Trump-aligned candidate, though narrowly, as evidence the Trump model does not guarantee victory. In another special election Tuesday night, a deep-red South Carolina House district elected Ralph Norman, a conservative businessman who has complimented Trump but did not try to emulate his style on the campaign trail. And Handel, an establishment Republican, managed her association with Trump very carefully ahead of Tuesday night.

Trump’s allies had a strong message for Republicans on Wednesday: Resist the notion you’re in danger of losing power, redouble efforts to advance the party’s agenda, and do more, not less, to embrace the president.

“If they’ve gotten advice to not mention him, that’s bad advice,”

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) said in an interview.

“The president is not an ideologue. He’s a pragmatist. He’s trying to get people shoulder to shoulder and execute on the plan,” Perdue said. “Too many people in the Washington establishment are looking through a traditional lens.”

Trump cheered Tuesday night’s victories on Twitter. “Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O!” he wrote. “All the Fake News, all the money spent = 0.”

After weeks of treading cautiously, Handel on Tuesday night thanked “the president of the United States” along with Vice President Pence for their support.

She did not mention Trump by name.

Nodding to congressional Republicans’ effort to revise the Affordable Care Act, she suggested it was time to move toward concluding that work. “We need to finish the drill on health care,” she said.

But health care is far from the only debate with potential pitfalls for Republican incumbents. Tax reform — the way to achieve the

Republican Karen Handel gives a victory speech Tuesday to supporters in Atlanta after winning the most expensive House race in history.

rate cuts Handel promised voters — is in limbo on Capitol Hill. And the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump tried to obstruct justice is a variable that keeps Republicans on edge.

MacArthur, who has worked closely with Trump on health care in recent months and confronted waves of voter anger at town hall meetings, is now facing a challenge from Democrat Andy Kim, a national security staffer to President Obama who launched his campaign last week.

The southern New Jersey district has been a hotbed of Democratic activity in the past six months, and voters’ heated opposition to MacArthur at public events has become fodder for cable news.

Shrugging off those clashes, MacArthur said the tide had not turned against him back home.

“It’s a loud, angry minority that has an agenda that doesn’t click with my district. I believe that,” he said.

For Democrats to take advantage of the political moment, they will have to overcome ideological fractures in their own party that remain problematic, especially with recriminations still flying over Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election.

The party has faced trouble recruiting strong candidates and turning dollars spent into electoral wins. In the case of the Georgia race, Ossoff was a political newcomer who lived outside the district, and he lost despite raising roughly $25 million and receiving a flood of resources from national Democrats.

Even after Ossoff’s loss, some Democrats said the fact he was competitive in Atlanta’s Republican suburbs could be a positive sign for next year, when they must win 24 GOP-held seats to claim a majority of seats in the House.

“All of these special elections are a symbolic warning to Republicans, should things stay the way they are,” Democratic strategist Robert Shrum said. n © The Washington Post

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NATION

NRA quiet amid outrage over Castile BY

A VI S ELK

A

mid the national fury over the death of Philando Castile at a traffic stop in July — a shooting made more horrific by his girlfriend’s Facebook Live broadcast of his final moments — some condemned the National Rifle Association’s near silence on the matter.

The organization had been quick to defend other gun owners who made national news. Castile had a valid permit for his firearm, reportedly told the officer about the gun to avoid a confrontation, and was fatally shot anyway after being told to hand over his license.

So some NRA members were furious when the organization released a tepid statement more than a day after the shooting that merely called it “troublesome” and promised that “the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”

A year later, the investigation is over, and many more facts are known. Police recordings and court records confirmed initial reports that Castile had tried to defuse the situation, assuring the officer that he wasn’t reaching for his weapon.

Just over a week ago, a jury acquitted the officer, Jeronimo Yanez, of manslaughter.

On Tuesday, video of the traffic stop was made public, showing Castile calmly telling the officer about his firearms — followed within seconds by the officer shooting him and cursing in what sounds like a panic.

So outrage is boiling again.

And still the NRA has nothing to say.

“We don’t want the NRA to be just for old white guys,” a member of the gun group wrote this past week on Hot Air — one of several right-leaning outlets upset with the organization’s failure to speak out on Castile. “It needs to represent everyone who supports and defends the Second Amendment and stays on the right side of the law.”

The Washington Post couldn’t find any statement from the NRA about the verdict or video in Cas-

STEPHEN MATUREN/GETTY IMAGES

Acquittal in fatal shooting has renewed criticism of group for not coming to gun owner’s defense tile’s case, and the organization has not responded to requests for comment for the past week.

Phillip Smith, who leads the National African American Gun Association, said he hasn’t seen any NRA statements since July.

“And I’ve been reading pretty diligently,” he said. “It troubles me tremendously when I see a young man following the rules, doing what he’s supposed to be doing, and there’s still no accountability from a legal perspective.”

The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus told the Associated Press that the jury had effectively told African Americans that “the Second Amendment does not apply to them.”

A writer for Slate also received no response from the NRA when he wrote about the officer’s acquittal, prompting him to write: “If Castile had been white instead of black, the NRA would have been rallying behind him and his family since the moment of his death, and fundraising off his memory for the

rest of time.”

The group also ignored requests for comment from the Guardian, the outlet wrote — though it tracked down a prominent black gun rights activist, a traditional defender of the NRA, who wrote after the verdict: “Covert racism is a real thing and is very dangerous.”

Colion Noir told the Guardian he was speaking only for himself, not the NRA. As described in a criminal complaint from Yanez’s trial, the first moments of Castile’s traffic stop ring true to Smith’s experience as a black gun owner.

“Black men are feared in this country,” he said. “They put their hands on their gun and say, ‘Don’t make any sudden movements.’ ” Smith said he knows the unspoken rules of any police encounter — rules that go beyond laws and constitutional rights.

“Definitely don’t move at all,” he said, keep your hands on the steering wheel, “take baby steps with

Protesters pack the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol building on June 16 in St. Paul.

Demonstrations occurred after Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted on all counts in last year’s shooting death of Philando Castile during a traffic stop.

the officer until they’re comfortable.”

In Castile’s case, according to the complaint, he told Yanez, “I’m not pulling it out” — a few seconds before the officer drew his own gun and killed Castile.

“We should all carry a gun now,” Smith said. “We all have that right.

We’re not going to let a rogue officer or a rogue legal decision sway us.”

Anger about the officer’s acquittal has managed to unite critics from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

The National Review’s David French, for instance, once wrote that “it’s hard to recall a political movement built on more verifiable lies and misinformation than Black Lives Matter.”

But after the Yanez verdict, French’s opinion matched that of Black Lives Matter protesters. He wrote of the officer, “Whether he panicked because of race, simply because of the gun, or because of both, he still panicked, and he should have been held accountable.” He added, “The jury’s verdict was a miscarriage of justice.”

And still, nothing from the normally vocal NRA. But nothing is clear cut when it comes to guns and race in the United States, said Nicholas Johnson, who lectures on both at Fordham Law School, wrote a book called “Negroes and the Gun,” and is a black gun owner.

The NRA has championed black gun rights heroes before, Johnson notes — such as Otis McDonald, who fought Chicago’s handgun ban. In return, he said, the group was accused of exploiting civil rights issues.

On the other hand, he said, gun owners were still “perceived to be kind of an odd minority” within the black community — not exactly a constituency worth angering police over.

“Your political calculation, I think, at the NRA is: Okay, so we can come to the rhetorical aid of a moderately despised contingent of a minority that already doesn’t like us,” Johnson said. “What’s the upside?” n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

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Aboard Navy ship, a painful choice

BY T HOMAS G IBBONS- N EFF AND D AN L AMOTHE

W

ith water rushing around them, sailors aboard the beleaguered USS Fitzgerald faced an agonizing decision.

They had made several rescue attempts into the flooded portions of the 505-foot destroyer, which had collided off the coast of Japan with a much heavier container ship early morning June 17.

But they didn’t know how many of their fellow shipmates were still trapped inside or even alive, and time was running out.

The sailors either had to close off the flooded areas of the ship, or they feared the entire destroyer might go down, according to three active or former members of the Navy familiar with the incident.

They decided to seal the compartments shut.

By last Sunday, the toll of the accident became clear. The bodies of seven drowned sailors were pulled from the areas of the ship that had been cut off. It is not yet clear whether the sailors had already died by the time their shipmates decided to contain the flooding — and it may never be known.

“They were in a situation where they had to make tough choices,” said one member of the Navy with knowledge of the crisis, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

The worst Navy accident in recent memory is now the subject of multiple investigations by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, as well as the Japanese Coast Guard and Transportation Board. Investigators are probing how an agile U.S. warship, capable of speeds of more than 30 mph, loaded with nearly 300 crew members and equipped with some of the most advanced sensors in the world, managed to collide with a lumbering container ship.

The Navy will download data from the Fitzgerald’s Aegis Weapons Systems to help investigators with the reconstruction of the incident, according to Navy docu-

EUGENE HOSHIKO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

After Fitzgerald’s collision, sailors had to seal areas not knowing if they were trapping survivors ments provided to The Washington Post. The crew from both ships will be interviewed, while the “black box” of the container ship will probably be examined.

Adm. John Richardson, the Navy’s top admiral, said in a statement Thursday that he and Master Chief Petty Officer Steven S. Giordano, the top enlisted sailor, were in Japan on Tuesday for the transfer of remains from the Fitzgerald to planes that will take them home. The two Navy leaders were struck by stories of heroism and sacrifice, both by the sailors aboard and their families back home.

“Our immediate focus is to do all we can to properly recognize our fallen shipmates, take care of the FITZ family, and begin to put the ship back together,” Richardson’s statement said. “Our goal is to learn all we can to prevent future accidents from occurring.”

Richardson added that the investigations will “unfold as quickly as possible, but it’s important to get this right.” The Navy needs to

“protect the integrity of those proceedings,” he said, cautioning that “speculation, rumors, hearsay or second guessing won’t be helpful.”

Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who was once the captain of the Fitzgerald’s sister ship, the USS Barry, said in an email that, as a general rule, a flooded area would never be sealed without “knowing that all of your shipmates had escaped.” However, he said there are specific exceptions.

“In an extremis situation in which the safety of the ship is threatened, and thus the lives of all are endangered, the damage control teams would make those decisions in real time,” Stavridis said.

The command to close those doors, Stavridis said, would be given by the damage control assistant, who would be in communication with either the captain or the acting officer in charge of ship.

A “tremendous” amount of water flooded into the ship, said Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, the commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet dur-

The damaged USS Fitzgerald is seen last Sunday at the naval base in Yokosuka, Japan.

Seven sailors died after the destroyer and a cargo ship collided off the coast of Japan on June 17.

ing a news conference last week.

“They had to fight this ship to keep it above the surface. It was traumatic.”

Sixteen hours after the accident, the Fitzgerald limped back to her home port in Yokosuka, Japan, and the remains of the seven sailors were pulled from below decks by Navy divers. They had been trapped in the forward berthing areas — home to more than 100 sailors — after the bulging, bulbous bow of the container ship, named MV ACX Crystal, gored a 12-foot hole below the Fitzgerald’s waterline.

The ship’s captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, also was in his quarters when the Crystal slammed into the right, or starboard, side of the Fitzgerald. The impact almost entirely flattened his room, according to the Navy member.

Benson was eventually helped to the bridge, but a decision was made afterward to put the executive officer of the ship in charge and medically evacuate Benson to Japan, according to a Navy member. Two other sailors were also taken off the ship and have since been released from the hospital.

The Navy member familiar with the incident said that in retrospect, there was little chance that the Fitzgerald was going to sink because of the damage. But he credited the quick actions by the crew with stopping the crisis from getting worse and ensured that the ship was able to return to port under her own power. He added that the Navy will review the actions of the sailors involved — including those who drowned — for potential valor awards.

Those who died hailed from all parts of the United States. They were Gunner’s Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19; Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25; Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25; Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26; Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23; Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24; and Firecontrolman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37. n ©The Washington Post

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Workers pay for companies’ scandal Skilled employees struggle in Brazil’s shattered economy after firms implode amid corruption probe

BY M ARINA L OPES AND N ICK M IROFF

Sao Paulo, Brazil

R

icardo Coelho was a 50year-old engineer at the peak of his career when he traded his calculator for a pair of eyebrow tweezers.

Once a top executive at the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, he found himself stranded with no prospects two years ago when the firm’s chief executive was arrested and jailed, triggering the loss of 100,000 jobs. With his savings dwindling, Coelho opened a hair removal salon, Eyebrow Design, in a mall on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

“I had 27 years of experience and a diploma from Brazil’s best university, but I couldn’t even get an interview callback,” he said.

Coelho is one of thousands of skilled workers trying to navigate Brazil’s wrecked economy in the wake of Operation Car Wash, a sprawling investigation that has used plea-bargain deals to trace corruption from a Brasilia gas station to the highest levels of government.

The investigation has resulted in prison terms for many politicians, as well as executives in Brazil’s construction, petrochemical and meat industries, on charges of trading bribes involving lucrative government contracts. Three years in, the industry purges have sparked mass layoffs, hollowing out companies that were once world-renowned.

Brazilians overwhelmingly support the Car Wash probe and say they hope it will end systemic graft and usher in a new culture of transparency. But although the investigation is expected to pave the way for stronger accountability and governance over the long term, the progress has not been pain-free.

Many Brazilian workers who had no direct involvement in the scandal have paid a steep price.

And as top executives negotiated plea deals with authorities, their employees found themselves trapped under crumbling empires, with whole sectors of the

MARINA LOPES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Ricardo Coelho opened Eyebrow Design, a salon, after the Brazilian construction company where he was a top engineer shed 100,000 jobs.

economy gutted overnight.

“Working at Odebrecht was an engineer’s dream,” Coelho said. “I was on track for retirement.”

Five years ago, Odebrecht and other big firms were riding a commodities boom to international prominence, soaking up the country’s top engineering talent to build highways across the Andes, airports in Miami and World Cup stadiums across Brazil.

That dream came crashing down in June 2015 when chief executive Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison for bribing officials in return for millions of dollars in government contracts. The company imploded overnight, firing more than half of its workforce.

Because Operation Car Wash has relied so heavily on pleabargain agreements, with prosecutors granting defendants shorter sentences in exchange for information on other suspects, the executive ranks of some of Brazil’s leading industries have been decimated. Investigators struck such deals with 77 former employees at Odebrecht, along with dozens of others at the competing construction firms of Andrade Gutierrez

and OAS. The blow to the reputation of those firms and others has left the companies struggling to obtain new domestic and international contracts. As their revenue dries up, their workers have been getting pink slips.

Coelho had no experience in the beauty industry and had never held a pair of tweezers before opening his store. But he learned on the job and put the negotiation and management skills he learned at Odebrecht to use in the salon, a sleekly designed black and white room with a row of reclining chairs.

Coelho makes more money than he did as a civil engineer. “I’ll never go back,” he said.

He is one of the lucky workers who landed on their feet. After 20 years working for Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company, Silvia Boccagini, a 52-year-old pipe technician, was among 170,000 employees sent packing when police charged top executives with bribery and corruption. Two years later, Boccagini has yet to find another job and is surviving with help from relatives.

“The Brazilian engineering in-

dustry is finished,” she said. “Everything has stopped.”

Brazil’s economy has started showing signs of growth again in recent months, after two years of agonizing contractions — the worst depression in the country’s history.

But experts worry that the sudden brain drain from Brazil’s most lucrative sectors will have a lasting impact on the country’s global competitiveness. When skilled workers such as Coelho or Boccagini leave their field, they take their expertise with them. By the time the country’s economy recovers, the next generation of Brazilian engineers may not have seasoned mentors to guide them.

The anti-corruption medicine is bitter, but it’s what Brazil badly needs to get graft under control, said Marcos Troyjo, co-director of the BRICLab at Columbia University, which studies emerging economies. “The damage that the probe causes pales in comparison to the ills it cures,” he said.

Brazil is suffering from the implosion of a state-capitalism model that expanded under the governments of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached last year, according to Troyjo.

In that closed, insular model, big companies paid bribes to secure bloated government contracts paid for by high taxes. That is the burden Brazil must overcome, Troyjo said. “Brazil is showing that, at least in matters of corruption, many institutions — backed by the majority of the population — are rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.”

A whopping 90 percent of citizens want the investigation to continue, even if it means further economic instability, according to an Ipsos poll released last month.

That includes Boccagini, the former Petrobras technician, who hopes her hardship won’t be for naught.

“The Car Wash investigation has to go on, no matter what the costs,” she said. “We have to get to the bottom of it.” n © The Washington Post

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Tourism to N. Korea under scrutiny A NNA F IFIELD Tokyo BY

F

or some intrepid travelers, North Korea is the holy grail. There’s hardly a place that’s more off the beaten path, a travel tale more exotic than one that begins “When I was in Pyongyang . . .”

About 1,000 American tourists visit North Korea each year, looking for an adventure and a glimpse at the “Hermit Kingdom.” But the death of Otto Warmbier, the American student who had been imprisoned in the country for 17 months, has focused a new light on tourism to North Korea, which the regime has been trying to promote.

Warmbier’s father, Fred, said after his son was sent home in a coma this month that companies promoting tourism to North Korea are providing “fodder” for the regime. Rep. Edward R. Royce (RCalif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed. “Otto’s father is right: travel propaganda lures far too many people to North Korea.”

The United States should ban tourist travel to North Korea, Royce said after Warmbier’s parents announced their 22-year-old son’s death on June 19.

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was curious about the world and wanted to explore it, his father said in an interview in April. So, at the end of 2015, the young man joined the “New Year’s Party Tour” run by Young Pioneer Tours, a company that boasts “budget tours to destinations your mother wants you to stay away from!”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has set a goal of attracting a million tourists a year to the Communist-ruled county. Critics have said tourism is a significant source of foreign currency for the regime.

The State Department has steadily ratcheted up its travel advisory for North Korea and strongly warns Americans against traveling to the country because of the risk of arbitrary detention. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison for allegedly stealing a propaganda sign.

WONG MAYE-E/ASSOCIATED PRESS

After an American student’s death, legislators and tour groups are examining travel restrictions Efforts to restrict U.S. citizens from traveling to North Korea are likely to gain new momentum now, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling the regime “barbaric” and “murderous.”

A bill is already before the House to limit travel to North Korea for American citizens, and Warmbier’s death could prompt the Senate to consider the same.

The Trump administration is also considering stopping Americans from going to North Korea as tourists.

Three other Americans are still being detained in North Korea but they were all working there — two at a private Korean American-run university and one at a hotel in a northern special economic zone.

Particular attention is now falling on Young Pioneer Tours, a travel company which takes its name from the youth leagues in Communist countries.

“The devastating loss of Otto Warmbier’s life has led us to reconsider our position on accepting American tourists,” the company

said in a statement Tuesday, calling his detention “appalling” and saying “a tragedy like this must never be repeated.”

Young Pioneer Tours will no longer be taking U.S. citizens to North Korea, it said. “We now consider the risk to Americans visiting North Korea to be too high and as such we can no longer accept Americans traveling on U.S. passports for tours to North Korea.”

The other two main travel companies, British-run Koryo Tours and New Jersey-based Uri Tours, said that they were “reviewing” whether to continue taking Americans to North Korea. All of the companies have had tourists detained in North Korea, but none with the consequences faced by Warmbier.

Young Pioneer Tours had been raising red flags for some time among the relatively small group of people who travel to North Korea regularly.

Five people who witnessed Young Pioneer Tours in North Ko-

North Koreans are seen in Pyongyang this month. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has set a goal of attracting a million tourists a year to the Communist-ruled county.

rea said they saw reckless behavior, with customers drinking heavily, not being respectful and denigrating their local tour guides.

Three of the five people interviewed work in North Korea and the other two were on tours.

“Frankly, this company is run by some hard-drinking dudes and the culture of their tours is infused with that,” said one of the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still works in North Korea.

A person who had been on a Young Pioneer tour said that the company’s spiel about not being a typical travel experience was a big part of its appeal, and that drinking was a part of that.

But taking too casual an attitude toward being in North Korea can foster a “reckless” atmosphere among tour groups, said another frequent traveler to Pyongyang.

One tourist did a handstand in front of Kumsusan, the mausoleum where North Korea’s first two leaders lie in state, one of the most sensitive sites for the regime. This resulted in the North Korean tour guide losing her job, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

“People are quick to embellish their stories when the media are interested,” said Troy Collings, a New Zealander who is one of the partners in the company.

Tour leaders had warned all the customers about the significance of Kumsusan and told them not to act inappropriately near images of the leaders, he said.

“We have taken over 8,000 people to North Korea with only one incident,” Collings said.

Daniel Lahti, a 31-year-old Swede who ran the Pyongyang marathon in April, said he never felt anything less than safe in North Korea, even when enjoying a few beers after the big run.

“It was perfectly fine while we were there,” said Lahti, who went on a tour led by Collings. “He was very concerned about safety and told us that everyone should behave in certain ways. As long as you play by the rules, you’ll be fine.” n ©The Washington Post

COVER STORY

MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

OUR DEEP CULTURAL DIVIDE

BY JOSE A. DELREAL AND SCOTT CLEMENT

T

Jaykob Gilson, 16, works at an amusement park in Conneaut Lake, Pa., near the Ohio line.

he political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big cities, according to a wideranging poll that examines cultural attitudes across the United States.

The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 1,700 Americans — including more than 1,000 adults living in rural areas and small towns — finds deepseated kinship in rural America, coupled with a stark sense of estrangement from people who live in urban areas. Nearly 7 in 10 rural residents say their values differ from those of people who live in big cities, including about 4 in 10 who say their values are “very different.”

That divide is felt more extensively in rural America than in cities: About half of urban residents say their values differ from rural people, with less than 20 percent of urbanites saying rural values are “very different.”

Alongside a strong rural social identity, the survey shows that disagreements between rural and urban America ultimately center on fairness: who wins and loses in the new American economy, who deserves the most help in society and whether the federal government shows preferential treatment to certain types of people. President Trump’s contentious, anti-immigrant rhetoric, for example, touched on many of the frustrations felt most acutely by rural Americans.

The Post-Kaiser survey focused on rural and small-town areas that are home to nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population. These range from counties that fall outside metropolitan areas such as Brunswick, Va. (populacontinues on next page

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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COVER STORY undocumented immigrant workers, lower business taxes and deregulation are “very” or “somewhat” important to boosting jobs in their communities.

“I have a hopeful optimism that he’ll be successful in bringing back that strong American foundation, and part of that is a strong economy. And when you have a strong economy, that produces jobs and then more jobs in a never-ending circle,” said Matthew Wendt, a corrections officer and retired Marine from Ashtabula, Ohio.

from previous page

tion 16,243) to counties near population centers with up to 250,000 residents such as Augusta, Va. (population 74,997), close to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.

Urban residents live in counties that are part of major cities with populations of at least 1 million, while suburban counties include all those in between.

The results highlight the growing political divisions between rural and urban Americans.

While urban counties favored Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points in the 2016 election, rural and small-town voters backed Trump by a 26-point margin, significantly wider than GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s 16 points four years earlier.

But popular explanations of the rural-urban divide appear to overstate the influence of declining economic outcomes in driving rural America’s support for Trump. The survey responses, along with follow-up interviews and focus groups in rural Ohio, bring into view a portrait of a split that is tied more to social identity than to economic experience.

“Being from a rural area, everyone looks out for each other,” said Ryan Lawson, who grew up in northern Wisconsin. “People, in my experience, in cities are not as compassionate toward their neighbor as people in rural parts.”

Economies different, struggles alike In the poll, rural Americans express widespread concerns about the lack of jobs in their communities. Two-thirds of rural residents rate local job opportunities as fair or poor, compared with about half of urban residents.

Nearly 6 in 10 rural residents say they would encourage young people in their community to leave for more opportunity elsewhere.

Rural areas have experienced a weak recovery from the Great Recession, with the total number of jobs down 128,000 from pre-recession levels. Suburban and urban counties have each gained about 3 million jobs, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The rural unemployment rate is only slightly higher than in cities, 5.3 percent vs. 4.8 percent. But rural areas have been affected by a shrinking workforce as people have left towns or stopped looking for work, while the workforce has grown in suburbs and cities.

Still, when asked about their personal situations, rural residents described financial experiences that largely mirror those of urban respondents. The share of people who report experiencing severe economic hardship is roughly equal in urban and rural America: About 1 in 5 say there was a time in the past year when they couldn’t pay their bills. Similarly, about 1 in 5 in both areas say they rely on the federal government at least a fair amount to get by.

The poverty rate is similar in both areas, 16 percent in cities and 17 percent in rural areas, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data.

“There are signs everywhere saying ‘now

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

hiring, now hiring,’ ” said Crystal Schafer, of Linesville, Pa., who voted for Trump, when asked how her local economy is doing. “Granted, it might pay $8.59 an hour, but the jobs are there.”

Rural Americans express far more concern about jobs in their communities, but the poll finds that those concerns have little connection to support for Trump, a frequent theory to explain his rise in 2016. Economic troubles also show little relation to the feeling that urban residents have different values.

Rural voters who lament their community’s job prospects report supporting Trump by 14 percentage points more than Clinton, but Trump’s support was about twice that margin — 30 points — among voters who say their community’s job opportunities are excellent or good. Trump also earned about the same level of support from those who say they don’t worry about paying their bills as those who couldn’t pay their bills at some point in the past year.

Most rural residents say they think key elements of Trump’s economic agenda would help their local economy. Large majorities of rural residents say infrastructure investments, better trade deals, a crackdown on

Top, a man sells produce from his truck on the side of a highway in Hephzibah, Ga. Bottom, patriotic decorations adorn a window of a home in Youngstown, Pa.

Distrust and estrangement The largest fissures between Americans living in large cities and those in less-dense areas are rooted in misgivings about the country’s changing demographics and resentment about perceived biases in federal assistance, according to the poll.

Rural residents are nearly three times as likely (42 percent) as people in cities (16 percent) to say that immigrants are a burden on the country.

“They’re not paying taxes like Americans are. They’re getting stuff handed to them,” said Larry E. Redding, a retired canning factory employee in Arendtsville, Pa. “Free rent, and they’re driving better vehicles than I’m driving and everything else.”

The poll reveals that perceptions about abuse of government benefits often go hand in hand with views about race.

When asked which is more common — that government help tends to go to irresponsible people who do not deserve it or that it doesn’t reach people in need — rural Americans are more likely than others to say they think people are abusing the system. And across all areas, those who believe irresponsible people get undeserved government benefits are more likely than others to think that racial minorities receive unfair privileges.

In response to this poll question — “Which of these do you think is the bigger problem in this country: blacks and Hispanics losing out because of preferences for whites, or whites losing out because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics?” — rural whites are 14 points less likely than urban whites to say they are more concerned about blacks and Hispanics losing out.

Rural Americans also are broadly skeptical that the federal government is fair or effective at improving people’s economic situations.

More than 60 percent say federal efforts to improve living standards either make things worse or have little impact. And those views appear to feed the rural-urban divide: A 56 percent majority of rural residents says the federal government does more to help people living in and around large cities, while 37 percent feel they treat both urban and rural areas equally.

“The culture and the type of people you see, they’re different” in big cities, said Bethany Hanna, a homemaker in Saint Albans, W.Va., who said she visits urban areas on missions with her church. “It tends to be

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COVER STORY For all their differences …

0

20

10

... rural Americans also share commonalities with urbanites

30

40

50

60

0

Household owns a gun URBAN 27%

10

20

30

RURAL 56%

SUBURBAN 42%

Think their children will achieve a better standard of living than them 41% 41%

59%

52%

45%

Say immigrants are a burden on country

0

10

20

30

WEEKLY

About the poll This Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll was conducted April 13-May 1 with a random national sample of 1,686 U.S. adults contacted on landline and cellphones. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The sample of 1,070 rural Americans has an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 points; the error margin is 7 points for the sample of 303 urban residents and 6.5 points for the 307 suburban residents.

51% 51%

Say they’ve not been able to pay their bills at some point in the past year

42% 40

43%

Say grace a few times a week or more

Say Christian values are under attack

31%

60

URBAN SUBURB. RURAL 51% 52% 60%

23% 27% 34%

44%

50

Say media doesn’t respect them

Say whites losing out because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics is a bigger problem than the reverse

16%

40

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21% 22% 23% 50

60

0

10

20

30

40

Source: Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll April 13-May 1, 2017, error margin +/- 3.5 percentage points among 1,070 rural residents, +/- 7 points among 303 urban residents and +/- 6.5 points among 307 suburban residents.

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the type of people who are getting more assistance. . . . And the way you hear people talking, the viewpoints that they have on certain matters, it leans toward a pretty liberal opinion. Some of it’s an entitlement thing. They say ‘that’s not fair,’ or ‘I deserve this,’ that kind of thing.”

That sense of division is closely connected to the belief among rural Americans that Christian values are under siege. Nearly 6 in 10 people in rural areas say Christian values are under attack, compared with just over half of suburbanites and fewer than half of urbanites.

When personal politics is taken into account, the divide among rural residents is even larger: 78 percent of rural Republicans say Christian values are under attack, while 45 percent of rural Democrats do.

Divisions within rural America Still, the poll results show that rural America is far from a monolith. Views about immigrants, for example, are more closely tied to respondents’ party affiliations than to where they lived.

Joseph Cloward, 27, a high school teacher in the border town of Roma, Tex., said he voted for Clinton because he “was really inspired by her message of goodness and trying to help people who really need it.” He said he’s sad about the way immigrants are treated.

“I feel like many of the people who are most

TY WRIGHT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Tyus Nedd, pastor at the International Christian Center, holds hands with his wife, Patricia, as they say grace before their Sunday dinner at their home in Columbus, Ohio.

60

upset don’t actually know any immigrants personally. They’re just talking about them based on what their idea is,” he said. “I wish I could just bring people here and have them meet good people who are coming across looking for a better life, escaping violence.”

Rural Americans overall have mixed views on whether Trump respects them, with 50 percent saying he does and 48 percent saying he doesn’t, a finding that goes against a common theory that Trump won by providing

a relatable alternative to political elites. And while 54 percent of rural Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, 40 percent disapprove. Equal shares of rural Americans — 30 percent — strongly disapprove and strongly approve.

There also are significant divisions in smalltown America between whites and minorities.

One in 5 rural Americans are nonwhite, according to census data. In short, the sense of shared identity that connects many rural Americans — which factors into rural America’s sense of fairness and estrangement — is less intense among rural minorities than among rural whites. While 78 percent of white rural residents say other rural residents share their values, that falls to 64 percent among Hispanics and to 55 percent of black residents.

Still, the vast majority of rural Americans judge their communities favorably as a place where people look out for each other, which in follow-up interviews was cited as a point of pride and distinction they say they cannot find in large urban centers.

“It ain’t nothing like living inside a city,” said Clyde Hampton, 72, of Vienna, Ga. “I’ll say this: Rural areas are a place where you can depend on your neighbor next door. And the town is so small everybody knows something; if something happens on this side of town and an hour later it’s all over the whole town.” © The Washington Post

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ENTERTAINMENT

A ‘GLOW’ that time can’t dim The female wrestling show of the 1980s, the basis of a new Netflix comedy, was dangerous, sexist and beloved by its stars G ENDY A LIMURUNG Los Angeles BY

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he Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling have endured kicks to the head, knees to the groin, body-slams, insults, rivalries, ridicule and spangly neon unitards. Now they face what may be their toughest challenge yet: a new Netflix series based on them.

Their old TV show, “GLOW,” was huge in the 1980s. The women sang, danced, did sketch comedy and flung each other around a ring. “Orange is the New Black” creator Jenji Kohan has brought it back as a half-hour scripted comedy called, well, “GLOW.” The new “GLOW” is a fictionalized version of how the old “GLOW” came to be. None of the original women are in it. Nor were they consulted — a fact that doesn’t exactly sit well.

When asked about it, former wrestler Tracee Meltzer — whose character on the old show was Park Avenue princess Roxy Astor — rolls her eyes. “Some are happy.

Some are sad. Some girls you can’t even bring it up to,” she says.

The women are in their 50s and 60s now. They are accountants, real estate agents, sales associates, tech support workers and pet groomers. Yet wrestling is still very much on their minds.

Meltzer continues, “They say it’s not about us, but then why are they using our name? Why not call it something else?”

If the women feel proprietary about “GLOW,” it’s only because they gave so much of themselves to it. It was brutal work. The pay was measly, the material was campy and racist. For many, however, it

was the best job they ever had.

The joke, of course, is that professional wrestling is fake. But the pain was real. Virtually none of them started out as trained wrestlers. They were actors, dancers and models who answered casting calls for “a new sports entertainment show.”

Dee Booher, who played German villainess Matilda the Hun, recalls that after a match, “these girls sometimes came out with handfuls of hair.” At her apartment in Seal Beach, Calif., in Orange County, she flips through an old photo album while sitting in a motorized wheelchair — the result of wrestling-related spinal deterioration. Her fingers, numb from nerve damage, are tipped with Band-Aids from burning herself while cooking.

“I’d beat ’em up. Eat ’em up! It was beautiful!” she says. “Here’s Spanish Red. Look at this girl.

Look at how she moves. She was a dancer. Here’s Ashley. Look at those ta-tas on her.”

Angelina Altishin, who played Little Egypt, tore her anterior cruciate ligament. Laurie Thompson, a.k.a. Susie Spirit, knocked her elbow out. Everybody suffered cuts to the eyes from cheap glitter weaponized with dried hair spray.

There were broken collarbones, broken shoulders and broken toes.

“And that was just the tryouts,” Cheryl Rusa recalls with glee. “No, it never got easier.”

Patricia Summerland, a.k.a.

Sunny the California Girl, cracked a wrist, broke two knuckles, ripped muscles and ligaments in her waist, and blacked out from being hung upside down and dropped on her head — a piledriver. “It’s the deadliest maneuver in

PHOTOS BY BRINSON+BANKS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Dee Booher, a.k.a.

Matilda the Hun, was a member of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.

DEE BOOHER

“I’d beat ’em up.

Eat ’em up! It was beautiful!” says Dee Booher.

wrestling,” she explains. “They no longer do them.”

She did them every night. Once, after a piledriver, paramedics carried her out on a stretcher.

“I hope you’re getting paid enough for this,” she recalls one of the medics telling her.

She wasn’t.

The women made between $300 and $700 a week. No dental.

No medical.

Then there was the emotional pain.

“The boys” — meaning director Matt Cimber and producer David McLane — “liked to get us riled up,” Booher recalls. The angrier the girls, the better the footage. “It was twisted.”

Cimber, the creative engine behind the show, was a veteran director of Broadway and blaxploitation films. He excelled at the art of casting aspersion. “Your butt looks like mashed potatoes!” he’d yell.

Or, “You’re no good. That’s why she’s making $200 more than

you!” Or, “You are more boring than a Sicilian funeral!”

Still, the girls stayed.

One, in fact, would rather have died than leave. Christy Smith, who played scary fundamentalist preacher Evangelina, slit her wrists when Cimber dropped her from the show during training.

She smeared the blood across the walls. She fought the paramedics and kicked open the cop car doors.

“She was strong as an ox,” her roommate Eileen O’Hara, a.k.a.

MTV, or Melody Trouble Vixen, remembers. “She had all her eggs in that basket.”

Cimber kept her on.

The show was shot in Las Vegas, so each eight-month season, 30plus “GLOW” girls bunked up at the Riviera Hotel (then in later seasons at a dumpy apartment building off the strip).

“We lived together. Worked together. Hurt together,” says O’Hara with more than a little wistfulness.

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Cimber dreamed up their characters, heightened stereotypes all — housewives wielding brooms and plungers, New Orleans voodoo queens, slutty cheerleaders, sexpot Russian communists. But most of the women embraced these personas as if they were being granted superhero identities.

Take Sandy Manley. A genetic anomaly called Turner syndrome makes her short. Cimber cast her as a gremlin.

“It never felt exploitative,” Manley insists. Not when Cimber called her an “ankle biter.” Not even when another wrestler dumped her into a trash can. It was cathartic.

Manley is 4-foot-8, but when playing Gremlina, she felt seven feet tall.

O’Hara says she felt more exploited in the corporate environment she worked in pre-“GLOW.” And the tiny, tacky costumes?

She shrugs. “It was the ’80s.”

Besides, you got to be famous.

“People would stand in line all day to watch us film,” Booher recalls.

The girls made appearances on sitcoms and game shows and latenight talk shows. When they performed in Panama, thousands of fans mobbed their van.

At the center of everything was the ring. It was violent, yet intimate. Careful, yet wild. You had to protect your opponent from injury, yet make the crowd think you were killing her.

“We came alive in the ring,” Booher says. “Like winding up a good-girl doll or a bad-girl doll.”

When Booher pantomimes her signature move, the belly bop, a great weight seems to lift from her

large, slumping shoulders. “I’d take them into my belly and baboom!” A hearty cackle. “Oh, it was joyous.”

Then, in 1990, “GLOW” was abruptly canceled. The show’s main financial backer, Israeli billionaire and Riviera Hotel owner Meshulam Riklis, withdrew his support. To this day, the women are unsure why. Cimber was simply tired of doing it, he says now.

The women dropped back into their ordinary lives. Of the hundred or so who churned through the system, zero went on to fulltime acting careers. Only four became full-time wrestlers. Booher was one of them. She thinks she stayed in it longer than she should have. Afterward, she earned a living doing what she calls “slam-ograms,” singing telegrams with wrestling.

“That’s part of the damage in this business,” she says with a wry laugh. “You don’t want to disappoint. Them or yourself. You don’t want to admit that it might be ending. So for 10 years, I pretended I was still there . . . and I wasn’t.”

Booher had the nagging suspicion that during “GLOW,” while she was struggling to pay her bills, others had made millions off her talent.

“I was angry,” Booher admits.

“For years.”

Some of the girls became drug addicts. Some, alcoholics. At least two wound up homeless. Meltzer’s tag-team partner Sandra Scott, a.k.a. Tiffany Mellon, turned to porn.

Some wanted to be rid of “GLOW.” “Frankly, it was so painful, I didn’t want to bring up those

From left, Tracee Meltzer, a.k.a. Roxy Astor; Ursula Hayden, a.k.a.

Babe the Farmer’s Daughter; and Angelina Altishin, a.k.a. Little Egypt, were members of the show “GLOW.”

memories,” Altishin says.

Some wanted to milk it for all it was worth. Ursula Hayden, a.k.a.

Babe the Farmer’s Daughter, purchased the trademark in 2001 from Riklis. For years afterward, she eked out a living selling videos of the old episodes.

Others simply couldn’t let go psychologically. As Meltzer says, “For me, it was just never quite done.”

The new Netflix “GLOW” turned out to be an easy sell. Showrunner Carly Mensch had worked with Kohan and emailed her the idea.

“Do you want to make a show about women’s wrestling in the ’80s?” she wrote.

“Yes,” Kohan wrote back.

Mensch and co-showrunner Liz Flahive were drawn to the connections among the women.

“There was something amazing about learning that wrestling isn’t really about fighting your partner,” Flahive says. “It’s about trusting your partner.”

“We found that so beautiful,” Mensch adds, “and so exactly opposite of what our assumptions were.”

They spoke with only one of the original wrestlers: Hayden, who owns the trademark. “When we thought about building characters, we really wanted to do it however we wanted to and not feel tied to any real-life stories,” Flahive says.

They hope that the interest in the old world will drive interest in the new, and vice versa.

As to whether they plan to bring in any of the original women: “We can’t answer that at this stage,” Mensch says. “We made Season 1, and now we’re just hoping to get to Season 2.”

In the meantime, the original wrestlers continue to enhance their legacy. Meltzer hosts annual “GLOW”-themed cruises. Fellow “GLOW” girls and fans attend.

Oddly enough, the show touched lives. “Person after person came up to us at the last cruise saying, ‘I was dead inside. You woke me up,’ ” O’Hara says. “They figured, if we could be that outrageous, then so could they.”

And while “GLOW” might not have made the women rich, it did give some of them the confidence to make themselves rich.

Altishin was 19, working in a T-shirt store, when Emily Dole happened in. At 350 pounds, the

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Samoan American Dole played the most recognizable character on “GLOW,” the pure-hearted Mountain Fiji. “You can do better than this,” Dole advised. “You should be doing what I’m doing.” Altishin couldn’t see it. But she borrowed Dole’s belief in her and joined the cast.

When “GLOW” ended, Altishin went into real estate. She was 23.

“Aren’t you a little young?” she recalls doubters saying.

“Young?” she says now. “Try bumping with Matilda the Hun. Try running for your life in a ring with a giant who says she eats raw meat. You think I can’t do real estate? Just watch. Twenty years later, over a thousand sales, five houses paid off, I retired at the age of 45.”

Though the two women hadn’t spoken for years, it was Altishin who came to the rescue when a flood destroyed Dole’s possessions. Altishin reached out to the wrestling nonprofit Cauliflower Alley Club, and within days, they had a check for Dole.

Seated at a banquet hall table at the Gold Coast Casino in Las Vegas, Altishin flicks a tear from the corner of her eye as she talks. In a few moments, she and 14 other “GLOW” girls will be accepting an award from Cauliflower Alley.

Here, the years melt away. The women are doing each others’ lipstick and sitting in each others’ laps.

Says Meltzer, “You mess with one ‘GLOW’ girl, you mess with all of us.”

Currently, no one is speaking much with Hayden. The other “GLOW” girls resent her. Yet they understand her.

“Somebody’s offering you money and you don’t have money?

When she’s selling videos of us to make her money? You’re gonna go, ‘yeah,’ ” Meltzer says. “But I would have also thought, ‘What can I do for the girls?’ ” Asked whether he misses the old show, director Cimber scowls.

“No,” he grouses. “Because it was driving me nuts.” All those women.

All that drama. Netflix didn’t contact Cimber either.

Some of the women planned to binge-watch the new “GLOW” when it debuted Friday. Summerland said she would be there with popcorn: “Whether we’re gonna eat it or throw it at the screen,” she says, “remains to be seen.” ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

The bond of college phenom, coach N ONFICTION

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COACH WOODEN AND ME Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court

By Kareem AbdulJabbar Grand Central. 290 pp. $29

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thletes rarely write books about their coaches. That relationship — player and coach — is often fraught and adversarial. Rare, also, is the college athlete who devotes time to becoming a writer. It helps mightily, of course, to have a story to tell, a celebrated season of glory or even one of unforgettable heartbreak. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has plenty to tell, and it’s a story of stardom and glory, all against the backdrop of a racially charged America.

Abdul-Jabbar was one of the greatest basketball players of all time, who had a phenomenal career at UCLA and then with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. (He remains the National Basketball Association’s alltime leading scorer.) He has since gone on to carve out an eclectic career as an essayist, pop-culture critic, commentator and author.

He’s written many books, sometimes with a co-author. In “Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court,” he goes it alone in writing about his relationship with John Wooden, his college coach and a legendary figure in his own right.

The UCLA coach and his extraordinary player couldn’t have been more different. Wooden was born in 1910 in Indiana, and like all young whites of his era in that state, he knew the powerful influence of the Ku Klux Klan. He had some decency, though, and concluded that the group of vigilantes was nuts.

Abdul-Jabbar (born Lew Alcindor) was raised in the Harlem section of New York. As a teen, he found himself caught in the throes of the infamous Harlem riot of 1964. A white police officer had shot a black kid dead. Abdul-Jabbar at the time was already more than seven feet tall. The Harlem scene, all four days of it, was horrific. “Even crouching,” AbdulJabbar writes of the riot, “I still hovered over everyone else. I had

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UCLA coach John Wooden and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, left, in 1969.

never been so scared in my life as that night. But I’d also never been so angry at the police, who dismissed the protesters by shouting, ‘Go home!’ Holding up photos of the young victim, protesters hollered back, ‘We are home!’ ” His college choice — as the most highly recruited high schooler in the country — was UCLA. The West Coast school was seen by many as progressive. Baseball legend Jackie Robinson had attended at a time when most major colleges rarely bothered to recruit black athletes. Abdul-Jabbar entered college in the fall of 1965, an Afrowearing black hipster. “I was all about fast subways, hot jazz, and civil rights politics,” he writes, and of his coach he adds: “He was John Wooden, a fifty-five-year-old fivefoot-ten-inch white man from a hick town in Indiana. He was all about, what? Tractors, big bands, and Christian morals? We were an odd-couple sitcom waiting to happen.”

Abdul-Jabbar didn’t play varsity until his sophomore year because of nationwide NCAA rules at

the time, but when he did play, the winning seemed unstoppable, and the reign of national championships began. He perfected his “sky hook” with Wooden’s help. The NCAA nincompoops, however, outlawed the dunk; many felt it was a punishment inflicted on the tall kid from Harlem.

Real life and protest intervened in that la-la land of make believe and running up and down a basketball court. The ’60s, the movement, black power were erupting right alongside the sky hook. For all his decency, and his homilies about winning not being all that important, Wooden most certainly wanted to win. The suffering of the black athlete did not really move him. Abdul-Jabbar touches upon this, but far too delicately.

The scenes of fans spearing him with the n-word after games — or in public, with Wooden standing close by in shameful silence — are stomach-churning. Wooden later apologizes in private to his star player about these incidents, but it’s too late. Coaches are teachers, too. “When it came to racism, I

thought Coach Wooden had a good heart, but he was on the sidelines in this game,” AbdulJabbar admits.

“Friendship” can be a tricky word. There are trade-offs in many human relationships.

Abdul-Jabbar became a Muslim; didn’t wish to play in the 1968 Olympics — where Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously raised a black fist and stirred controversy; and got involved in political causes. They were all moments of his life when Wooden was not very visible. Abdul-Jabbar realizes in these pages that many whites viewed him as some sort of “mythological beast” as they ignored the battles of everyday black lives: “I couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t how Coach Wooden saw me, too.”

Wooden was no Al McGuire, who became the Marquette University basketball coach in 1964 and gained insight into his black ballplayers and the politics of the nation.

Still, even if there is some hagiography in this chronicle, there is much to admire. There is a host of lovely revelations of how player and coach managed to stay in touch and connected after both left the game. Here they are, time and time again, sitting in the coach’s den at his home watching old westerns, talking about aging and life. And sometimes history as it relates to black Americans. Who knew that Wooden could easily quote Langston Hughes?

Wooden lived to be 99 years old.

One of his unforgettable players — the tall black kid from Harlem — has bequeathed him an eloquent book about the mysteries of time and remembrance. The coach would be proud. n Haygood is the author most recently of “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America” and a scholar in residence at Miami University (Ohio). He wrote this for The Washington Post.

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Tales of men who have lost women

How to better understand films

F ICTION

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aruki Murakami is a master of the open-ended mystery. Whether in complex, dreamlike novels like “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and “Kafka on the Shore” or the more realistic short stories in his latest collection, “Men Without Women,” Murakami is drawn to the abiding strangeness and unfathomability of life. His meandering, mesmerizing tales of profound alienation are driven by puzzling circumstances that neither his characters nor readers can crack — recalling existentialist Gabriel Marcel’s assertion that “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced.”

Most of the perplexed middleaged men in these seven plain-spoken tales have lost the women in their lives — to other men or death.

This lands them in a condition Murakami labels “Men Without Women” — always in “a relentlessly frigid plural.” Detached from their feelings and missing pieces of themselves, Murakami’s lonely souls struggle to understand what’s hit them. Unexpected connections with strangers shed light, though the illumination is often indirect or partial.

The title story provides a key to the book. A man is awakened at 1 a.m. by a call from the husband of a former girlfriend, who tells him that she has committed suicide.

He had not been in contact with the woman for years, and he ponders the motivation for the husband’s baffling, brief call. “It seemed his intention was to leave me stuck somewhere in the middle, dangling between knowledge and ignorance. But why? To get me thinking about something?”

This suspended state “dangling between knowledge and ignorance” is common territory for Murakami’s characters.

Two of the strongest stories borrow Beatles titles. In “Drive My Car,” a successful actor who has lost his wife to cancer hires a young female driver when his license is suspended after a minor

accident — involving a blind spot in his vision. After months of driving in silence, she reveals aspects of her unhappy childhood, and he opens up about his painful discovery of his wife’s multiple affairs and his frustration that he will never fully understand her.

“Yesterday” is one of two stories in which a writer named Tanimura recalls people who made an impact on him years earlier. Kitaru was a rare friend during Tanimura’s lonely sophomore year in college. A brilliant eccentric who had failed the college entrance exams twice and alienated his girlfriend, Kitaru spent his time mastering a provincial Japanese dialect and making up weird alternate lyrics to the titular Beatles song. “It feels as though these things happened just yesterday,” Tanimura writes.

“Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt.”

The surreal “Samsa in Love,” Murakami’s humorous twist on Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” also involves an unlikely emotional connection set against a dark background. When his protagonist wakes “to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa,” Prague is in the midst of its own upsetting change — a military takeover. But the newly molted man finds walking, dressing and — most hilariously — physical arousal as “wrapped in mystery” as the foreign troops and tanks he hears about from the beguiling hunchbacked locksmith who arrives for a service call.

Amid the mysteries, Murakami sprinkles morals. “Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart,” declares the locksmith.

As the members of Murakami’s lonely hearts club discover in these affecting stories, life, however baffling, is better shared. n McAlpin reviews books regularly for The Washington Post and others.

M MEN WITHOUT WOMEN Stories

By Haruki Murakami Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel Knopf. 228 pp. $25.95

TALKING PICTURES How to Watch Movies

By Ann Hornaday Basic. 289 pp. $26

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ovies are America’s national pastime. But while moviegoing is for everyone, understanding what movies mean can be a more rarefied endeavor. How do we know what a movie is trying to say? How do we account for a movie’s effect on us?

Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for The Washington Post, helps us decipher the medium’s message with “Talking Pictures,” her illuminating new book for anyone who wants more from the movies than popcorn and thrills.

Several years ago, Hornaday began exploring why movies are “good” or “bad” in articles designed “to help readers analyze and evaluate films in the same ways I do.”

Eventually, this led her to write “Talking Pictures” as a full-fledged guide “for appreciating movies more fully when they succeed, and for explaining their missteps when they fall short.”

Hornaday has organized her book like the movie industry itself — by category of film production. Deconstructing the essential elements of moviemaking is an excellent way to understand how the pieces ultimately fit together. Every chapter includes examples of movies that reflect the “best practices” of that category. And she poses basic questions along the way to help readers evaluate a particular film category: Why was the close-up important in Hollywood’s Glamour Years? How did the clack of typewriter keys generate the dramatic pulse of “All the President’s Men”?

She begins with “The Screenplay” and “Acting.” Hornaday thinks the script is “the founding document of every film” and argues that “within the first ten minutes, a well-written movie will teach the audience how to watch it.” Her opinions can be delightfully personal, as when she writes, “I hate plots. I love stories.”

She chooses “Casablanca” to exemplify a movie that creates an instant world for viewers, establishing time and place in the opening credits and quickly introducing key characters.

She believes that “character” mat-

ters but warns that “bad movies are about characters. Great movies are about people.” The difference is why we care what happens when Rick Blaine puts Ilsa Lund on the plane leaving Casablanca.

When is an actor’s performance credible, and how does that happen?

Hornaday uses the actors who portrayed Boston Globe reporters in “Spotlight” as an example, describing how they spent months rehearsing as an ensemble before creating an on-screen performance that felt “organic, un-showy, and rivetingly dramatic.”

Her chapter on “Production Design” focuses on the essential question, “Whose world are we in?” Every physical aspect of filmmaking is included in this category, from backdrops, locations, sets and props to costumes, hair and makeup. Hornaday calls production design “the material culture of a movie: the tactile, palpable ‘stuff’ that establishes a sense of place.”

Other chapters cover “Cinematography,” “Editing,” “Sound and Music” and “Directing.” Hornaday’s comments can be funny, as when she rips into 3-D cinematography as one of the “few things I truly despise in life — other than bullies, white chocolate, and the designated hitter rule.”

Her discussions are driven by pointed questions bound to make any reader a more conscious viewer.

Hornaday’s objective in “Talking Pictures” is to give moviegoers an informed understanding that flickers across the page with movielike ease, and she does this. But her “Epilogue” hints at another book that may be in the works. She notes that movies project “what we believe, what we value as a society.” One hopes she will write more about why movies matter. In today’s fragmented world, film critics have a unique opportunity to explain how we are all connected to our history, and to each other. n Henderson is historian emerita of the National Portrait Gallery and writes frequently about media and culture. She wrote this for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

Should courts decide how partisan is too partisan?

CHARLES LANE is a Post editorial writer specializing in economic and fiscal policy, a weekly columnist, and a contributor to the PostPartisan blog.

On Dec. 12, 2000, the Supreme Court ended the recount of Florida’s votes in that year’s presidential election, effectively awarding 25 electoral votes to Republican George W. Bush and making him president.

The decision was 5 to 4, with the most conservative Republican­appointed justices in favor of Bush. Democrats condemned the ruling as nakedly partisan, saying it was based not on precedent but a cooked­to­order legal rationale: Recount rules didn’t treat all ballots the same way, thus violating the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Many critics saw Bush v. Gore as an indelible blot on the court’s legitimacy.

Seventeen-odd years later, Democrats are pressing a case whose essential premise is that the Supreme Court can and should be trusted to write a whole new category of rules affecting almost every state legislative and congressional election in the United States. Their legal argument rests on the equal protection clause, and their hopes rest on the very swing-voter justice who tipped the 2000 election case, Anthony M. Kennedy.

At issue is the bad habit that state legislature majorities, abetted by like-minded governors, have of skewing congressional and state legislative districts to their party’s advantage.

The specific appeal now before the Supreme Court involves a Democratic challenge to a state legislative district map that Wisconsin Republicans drafted in 2011. (Republicans, in a separate case still in the lower courts, are challenging similar computeraided manipulations by Democrats in Maryland.)

No matter which party does it, partisan districting creates anomalies and unfairness, breeding public cynicism about a “rigged system.” Certainly in

Wisconsin, the GOP acted out of blatantly self-serving motives.

Excluding Democrats from the process, they considered several alternative maps before adopting one that maximized Republican opportunities. In 2012, the GOP won 60 percent of State Assembly seats with just 48.6 percent of votes cast.

Less clear is whether the federal judiciary — meaning, ultimately, the Supreme Court — is the right institution to fix this.

To be sure, the justices long ago waded into the “political thicket,” as Justice Felix Frankfurter called it — with some necessary results.

The Supreme Court decided districts had to be roughly equal in population, on the “one person, one vote,” principle; under the Voting Rights Act, the justices protect minority voters from racially biased districting.

In all those decades, though, the court has never held any alleged partisan excess unconstitutional, for a very good reason: the lack of a consistent, judicially manageable answer to the question “How partisan is too partisan?”

Opponents of the Wisconsin map think they’ve found an objective measurement of undue partisanship, the “efficiency gap,”

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or E.G., which, applied to the Badger State, shows Democratic votes are excessively “wasted” because Republicans “packed” Democrats in a minority of districts where their candidates are all but guaranteed victory.

Rendering Democratic votes less potent in this way violated the equal protection clause, Democrats argued. And two members of a three-judge federal court ruled in their favor, thus prompting the state’s appeal to the justices.

Yet statistics are notoriously open to interpretation. As the dissenting judge, William C. Griesbach, noted, some of Wisconsin’s high E.G. results from demographics, namely the concentration of Democrats in cities such as Milwaukee and Madison. Also, the GOP drew compact and contiguous districts, unlike the “salamander” that made old Elbridge Gerry famous.

Can there be a partisan gerrymander with no gerrymandering?

In any case, the implication that the legislature’s composition should correspond to the party balance statewide smacks of a plea for proportional representation, which the Supreme Court has never supported.

For these and other reasons, even the two-judge majority hesitated to say that E.G. was anything more than a factor in its ruling — a tacit acknowledgment of the subject’s inherent

indeterminacy that may impress Kennedy. In past cases, he conceded that there might be such a thing as unconstitutionally extreme partisan districting, but never actually identified an example.

If past is prologue, Kennedy will find a new way to keep his options open. Ideally, though, he and the other justices would rule once and for all that adjudicating partisanship is a mission impossible.

In its futility, it could prove corrupting. Supreme Court and, indeed, lower court confirmation processes are contentious enough. Do we really want presidents, and senators, vetting judicial nominees for their views on how best to parcel out state legislative and congressional seats between the parties?

To repeat: Partisan districting may fuel public cynicism about politics. Instead of setting up the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of it, however, reformers should promote independent state-level commissions such as those in California and Arizona.

Divided government, too, may help limit excesses; if a legislature dominated by one party draws a grossly skewed map, a governor from the other party can veto it.

Some things may be just as dangerous to democracy as a redistricting process constantly embroiled in partisan politics.

One of them would be a Supreme Court constantly embroiled in partisan politics. n

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TOM TOLES

What’s left of Bill Cosby’s legacy?

EUGENE ROBINSON writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers.

The final chapter of Bill Cosby’s public life is far from the most important spectacle we are witnessing, but it may be the saddest.

Cosby’s trial in Pennsylvania on rape charges ended with a hung jury recently, which means it didn’t end at all — prosecutors announced immediately that they will try him again. I fully understand that decision. This may be the only chance, in a criminal court, to hold the 79-year-old Cosby accountable for dozens of alleged sexual assaults. His accusers deserve a verdict.

And there are so many accusers — at least 60, according to the most reliable count I can find.

I confess that I’ve watched the crumbling of Cosby’s iconic persona mostly with peripheral vision, glancing and then quickly turning away. I haven’t wanted to delve too deeply into the allegations or even closely follow the trial. I didn’t want to deal with the fact that a man I admired so much was accused by dozens of women of being a serial sexual predator.

It is hard to overstate Cosby’s cultural importance. I doubt there are many African Americans of a certain age who don’t remember how thrilling it was when “I Spy” debuted on NBC in 1965. Cosby, a black man, co-starred and shared equal billing with Robert Culp in a

series whose improbable premise — the tennis circuit as a setting for espionage — did not detract from the show’s social impact.

It didn’t matter that Culp played the tennis pro and Cosby played his trainer. Cosby’s character was an equal partner in the duo’s exploits; he was smarter, just as brave, and possessed of great dignity. Culp always got the girl, but it was beyond the realm of possibility that Cosby would have on-screen relationships with white women.

The film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” starring Sidney Poitier, wouldn’t challenge that taboo for another couple of years.

Cosby was also known in my family’s household as the greatest stand-up comedian of his time. Unlike other top black comics, such as Redd Foxx and Moms Mabley, Cosby never

worked blue and never spoke in stereotypical dialect. He was funny in a circumspect, respectable way. Parents could let the children listen.

Fast-forward to 1984 and “The Cosby Show.” This time, Cosby’s influence on the culture was even greater. In its portrayal of an upper-middle-class black family, the show was uplifting and aspirational — not just for African Americans but for the whole country. In retrospect, the show gave a false impression of how far we had come in bridging the racial divide. I believe that failing was outweighed by the fact that the show never allowed white Americans to see the Huxtables as “them.” They could only be seen as “us.”

I’ve met Cosby a couple of times. Once was a chance encounter, six or seven years ago, at a fancy restaurant in Washington. We ended up having a long and pleasant conversation, mostly about education, which has been his great public passion. The second was in 2014 — a few weeks before the rape and sexual assault accusations blew up — when I emceed a fundraising gala for Claflin University, a historically black college in my home town.

Cosby was the headliner.

He was obviously infirm, his

vision so impaired that he had a young man with him to help him navigate. He performed his stand-up routine from a chair.

This was long after he had lost touch with the black American zeitgeist by railing against saggy jeans and preaching as if he had invented the concept of personal responsibility. So there was skepticism in the audience — and, with a magical performance, he totally dispelled it. I came away marveling at his talent.

I write all of this not to excuse Cosby’s alleged crimes, but to explain why I am so conflicted.

Did he, in fact, drug and sexually assault Andrea Constand in 2004? The jurors, who could not reach a verdict, heard testimony from only one of the other women who have accused him of similar deeds. I can’t help thinking the outcome would have been different if, say, a dozen other accusers had told their stories.

After the mistrial was declared, Cosby’s publicist proclaimed that “Mr. Cosby’s power is back!” — a boast that was absurd and obscene. Cosby’s greatness came in the way people could look at him and, in his reflection, see themselves and the nation in a better light. That power is forever gone. n

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OPINIONS

BY CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS

Unifying health-care plan needed

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

illnesses, chronic health problems and drug addiction.

These principles: Improve affordability:

JOHN R. KASICH AND JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER Kasich, a Republican, is governor of Ohio.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is governor of Colorado. They wrote this for The Washington Post.

The fate of America’s health-care system, the focus of our nation’s most important — and most heavily politicized — public-policy debate is in the hands of the Senate, where senators get their turn to find a balanced and sustainable approach to health-care reform.

It is clear that the bill passed by the House in May will not meet the challenges of our health-care system. This bill calls into question coverage for the vulnerable, fails to provide the necessary resources to ensure that no one is left out and puts the health and well-being of millions of hard-working people in our states at risk, while shifting significant costs to the states. Medicaid provisions included in this bill are particularly problematic.

All Americans will come out on the losing end if we simply replace one divisive plan with another, having failed to find a bipartisan solution to bringing lasting reform that can be sustained across administrations. It will be worse yet if senators — like House members before them — decide these questions behind closed doors, avoiding the open discussion and transparency needed to make the American people full participants in this vital debate.

We certainly agree that reforms need to be made to our nation’s health-care system. But as governors from opposite sides of the political aisle, we feel that true and lasting reforms are best

approached by finding common ground in a bipartisan fashion.

Along with other governors — Democrats and Republicans — we agree that the best place to start is to restore stability to our nation’s health insurance system.

We and other like-minded governors have been working together to create a blueprint that can result in an improved health insurance system that is available and affordable for every American. We recognize that this is not an easy task. That is why our first step has been to develop a set of guiding principles that will positively affect the coverage and care of millions of Americans, including many dealing with mental

Insurance reforms that increase access to quality, affordable health insurance coverage must be coupled with reforms that address rising health-care costs.

Insurance reforms should be made in a manner that is consistent with sound and sustainable cost-control practices.

Restore stability to insurance markets: Americans

without access to employersponsored coverage or government plans need to be able to choose from a healthy, stable and competitive market of insurers.

Provide state flexibility and encourage innovation: As

laboratories of democracy, states can develop innovative approaches with the potential to strengthen health insurance for all Americans. Within broad standards, states should have appropriate flexibility to implement reforms in a manner that is responsive to local and regional market conditions.

Improve the regulatory environment: As the principal

regulators of insurance, states are in the best position to promote competition within

state insurance markets. Federal efforts should limit duplicative and burdensome regulations and provide relief to small-business owners and individuals.

The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage, but it needs improvement. Uncertainty in our current health insurance market has helped make it unstable. As passed by the House, the American Health Care Act threatens to create greater uncertainty. Historically, one-party solutions are not sustainable. The bipartisan principles we propose provide a more stable starting point to bring Republicans and Democrats together on lasting reforms.

Ensuring that quality health insurance is available and affordable for every American is a bipartisan responsibility. The states are uniquely positioned to meet this responsibility and to make our health insurance sector vibrant, stable and fair.

As governors, we and our colleagues who have signed on to this effort stand ready to work with our congressional delegations to develop a proposal that is fiscally sound and provides affordable coverage for our most vulnerable citizens.

Our states — and all Americans — deserve nothing less. n

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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KLMNO WEEKLY

DATA CRUNCH

Good places to just stay home Crunched

Congress might flee, but D.C. ranks high for ‘staycations’

Haven’t booked your vacation rental yet? Don’t panic if you live in one of these top 10 cities in the United States for a staycation, according to analysis by RewardExpert, an online service that helps travelers plan trips to optimize points or Haven’t booked your vacation rental yet? Don’t panic. Turns out that Washington, D.C., is among the top 10 cities in the United States for a staycation, according to analysis by RewardExpert, an online service that helps travelers plan trips to optimize points miles (rewardexpert.com). The company crunched data comparing cities on 29 metrics in the areas of recreation, including or miles (rewardexpert.com). The company crunched data comparing cities on 29 metrics in the areas of recreation, including public pools per capita; food and entertainment, including restaurants per capita; and rest and relaxation, including public pools per capita; food and entertainment, including restaurants per capita; and rest and relaxation, including pleasant days per year (which makes us wonder, has RewardExpert been here in the summer?). Here’s the full list, which might give you greater pleasant days per year. Here’s the full list, which might give you greater appreciation for where you live — or other ideas if appreciation for Washington — or other ideas if the thought of staying here for vacation is just unbearable. — Elizabeth Chang the thought of staying home for vacation is just unbearable. n — Elizabeth Chang

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Minneapolis Chosen because it has a relaxing environment while still offering lots of recreational activities.

Plus, it’s easy to get around by foot, bike or public transit.

Pittsburgh Combines proximity to hiking, parks and rivers with proximity to restaurants, art galleries and museums. Also, relatively inexpensive.

Washington The city offers more museums and historical sites per capita, many of which are free, than any other in the country.

Surely there are some you haven’t seen. It ranks No. 1 on the list for arts and culture; No. 3 for outdoor enjoyment (parkland and walkability both help); and No. 5 in sports and activities (bikeability helps).

Orlando The city is ranked No. 4 not just for its amusement parks but for its weather, golf courses and restaurants.

Tampa In addition to beaches, warm weather, nature parks and hiking, the city has lots of restaurants per capita and is affordable.

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Cleveland Has the most pools per capita (as well as beaches along Lake Erie). It also has the second-largest performing arts center in the country (the Playhouse Square Center) — plus the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Sacramento More affordable than other major California cities, plus 183 pleasant days per year. There’s a French Film Festival every June.

Irvine, Calif.

Wonderful weather, relaxing atmosphere and comes in fourth for number of nature parks per capita. The San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary has more than 300 acres of wetlands.

Atlanta Second-highest number of restaurants per capita; ranks fifth and sixth respectively in regard to public pools and public tennis courts per capita.

Cincinnati Has the most nature parks per capita — two per 10,000 people. It also ranks second for number of public pools per capita.

SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2017

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YOU’RE INVITED TO ATTEND WENATCHEE VALLEY BUSINESS WORLD’S

LEADERSHIP BREAKFAST Tuesday, August 1 • 7:30am to 9:00am Pybus Public Market Events Center sponsored by

Join us at our Leadership Breakfast where we will recognize this year’s 30 under 35 honorees as nominated by their peers and community members.

The featured speaker is Ed Phinney, President and CEO of Pacific Aerospace & Electronics in Wenatchee. With over 30 years of engineering experience, and serving as President/CEO for the past seven years, Ed is a dynamic speaker and the ideal choice to speak on organizational leadership.

Tickets are $12 and include breakfast, catered by Cafe Columbia at Pybus Market.

Tickets are available at wenatcheeworld.com/30under35/tickets/ For more information, contact Pattie Mosher at 509-664-7130.

Business orld 30 Wenatchee Valley

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