The Washington Post National Weekly - August 19, 2018

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Inside a rural chicken plant, they struggle to fit in.

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5 Myths 3-D printing 23

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WEEKLY

THE FIX THE FIX

Debating Trump’s influence Debating Trump’s influence BY

A MBER P HILLIPSBY A MBER P HILLIPS

I

I

An Alabama HouseAn race: In a near-upset, Alabama House race: In a near-upset, a sitting congresswoman who congresswoman ditched Trump who ditched Trump a sitting in 2016 was forced into runoff a former in a2016 waswith forced into a runoff with a former Democrat. Rep. Martha Roby (R)Rep. is one of theRoby (R) is one of the Democrat.

Martha most conservative members of Congress, but most conservative members of Congress, but analysts in Alabama said she was hauntedsaid by she was haunted by analysts in Alabama her comments in lateher 2016 declaringinTrump, comments late 2016 declaring Trump, after a tape was revealed of ahim bragging aboutof him bragging about after tape was revealed groping woman, as unfit for office.

At the time,for office. At the time, groping woman, as unfit she said she wouldn’t vote for him. she said she wouldn’t vote for him.

In this race, Roby campaigned onRoby how she In this race, campaigned on how she voted for Trump’s priorities in Trump’s Congress.

She voted for priorities in Congress. She won her runoff in July, was something she was won something her runoff she in July, favored to do anyway, but a Trump endorsefavored to do anyway, but a Trump endorsement at the last minute didn’t hurt. ment at the last minute didn’t hurt.

f you’re a Republican in a competitive f you’re a Republican in a competitive primary in 2018, the more you in can cozythe upmore you can cozy up primary 2018, to Trump, the better.to That has been well That has been well Trump, the better. established over the past few months inpast few months as, in established overas, the Republican primary after Republican primary, Republican primary after Republican primary, Trump-like candidates have upset lesser have upset lesser Trump-like candidates Trump-like candidates.

One congressman who Trump-like candidates.

One congressman who refused to hug the president was straight up refused to hug the president was straight up kicked out by Republican primary kicked out byvoters.

Republican primary voters.

Former Minnesota governor Pawlenty Former Tim Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty was the latest Republican to live through that to live through that was the latest Republican political reality on Tuesday night, when lost night, when he lost political reality onhe Tuesday his primary for another at the hisshot primary forgovernor’s another shot at the governor’s CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS seat to an arguably more candidate. seatpro-Trump to an arguably more pro-Trump candidate. CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS Trump kinda But what exactly do we wedo say Kansas Secretary Kris Kobach, of who Butmean whatwhen exactly we mean when we say of State Kansas Secretary State Kris Kobach, who winsTrump kinda wins This is where a little Trump has played a pivotal role in Republican was backed by President Trump, won the GOP This isgets where his more influence gets a little more Trump has played a pivotal role in Republican was backed by President Trump, won the GOPhis influence primary politics? Here’s a breakdown how a breakdown primary forofgovernor murky. primary politics? of Here’s how against primarythe for incumbent. governor againstmurky. the incumbent.

Tennessee’s governor race: A sitting con- race: A sitting conprominent Republican primariesRepublican in which the Tennessee’s governor prominent primaries in which the get a Trump endorsetoturned give Trump too much credit.

Onetoo gresswoman president’s presence loomed largepresence have turned gresswoman who didn’t get a Trump endorsepossible to give Trump much credit. who One didn’t president’s loomedpossible large have ment lost the businessman.

GOP operative pointedGOP out operative that Kobach won by out. Trump-like candidates certainlycandidates have ment to losta the nomination to a businessman. pointed out that Kobach wonnomination by out. Trump-like certainly have Here,asthe absence of Trump was newsworthy. votes, and debatable as toand whether more wins than losses, butwins in athan number of butonly Here, the absence of Trump was newsworthy.

110 votes, it’s debatable to whether more losses, in a110number of it’sonly Dianebefore Black (R) didDiane not get a Trump Kobach was surgingKobach in the was primary before primaries, his influence was debatable.

Rep. Black (R) did not get a Trump surging in theRep. primary primaries, his influence was debatable. endorsement, which left a vacuum for everyone Trump’s endorsement.Trump’s endorsement. endorsement, which left a vacuum for everyone Trump wins Trump wins in Like the race to claim they were Georgia’s governor Georgia’s race: Likegovernor in Kansas,race: in the racethe to most claim prothey were the most proin Kansas, Trump.

An endorsement fromAnTrump’s No. 2, from Trump’s No. 2, neither candidate notablycandidate anti-Trump.

In these Republican In primaries, it’s pretty primaries, Trump. endorsement wasBut notably anti-Trump.

But these Republican it’s prettywasneither Vice President Pence,Vice was President not enough to help surprised theTrump Georgiasurprised political the world clear the candidate seen more pro-Trump Pence, was not enough to help Georgia political world clearasthe candidate seen asTrump more pro-Trump override a veryBlack Trump-like when he picked his favorite, Secretary of State had an advantage. had an advantage. overrideanti-estaba very Trump-like anti-estabwhen he picked his favorite, Black Secretary of State lishment vibe Republican primary BrianIn Kemp.

Kemp eventually wonKemp by aneventually imMinnesota’s governor race: In angovernor upset, race: lishment vibe inpolitics.

Republican primary politics.

Brian Kemp. won by an in imMinnesota’s an upset, Carolina’s governor race: Trump pressive points over Casey 40 Cagle, theover lieu-Casey South the more pro-Trump candidate — Jeff Johnson South Carolina’s governor race: Trump pressive points Cagle, the lieuthe more pro-Trump candidate — Jeff40 Johnson helped state’s sitting governor win asitting runoffgovernor win a runoff was once the front-run— beat Pawlenty. Even— though both of them helped the state’s governor, who was once the the front-runbeat Pawlenty.

Evenhad thoughtenant both ofgovernor, them hadwhotenant by coming to South Carolina to rally for him the to rally for him the ner in the race. Again, Republican operatives dissed Trump during dissed the campaign, Pawlenty by coming to South Carolina ner in the race.

Again, Republican operatives Trump during the campaign, Pawlenty before the election. thisthe raceelection. could But this race could argue that on thethat riseKemp when was Trump struggled to get out struggled from under his out calling nightBut before on thenight rise when Trump to get from under his Kemp callingwasargue also be viewed as a lesson limits.

It’s in Trump’s limits. It’s Trump “unhinged andTrump unfit.” “unhinged and unfit.”jumped into the race. jumped into the race. alsoin beTrump’s viewed as a lesson that McMaster had Henry to go toMcMaster had to go to A an South Carolina House race: If you had Kansas’s governor race: In angovernor upset, therace: In notable that Gov. A South Carolina Housenotable race: If youGov. hadHenry Kansas’s upset, the a runoff in the first aplace. thefirst sitting to apick a single race to that epitomizes Trump’s Trump-backed candidate beat a sitting gover- beat runoffHeinisthe place. He is the sitting pick a single race that epitomizes Trump’s Trump-backed candidate sitting govergovernor, afterInall, he was one theand fewhe was one of the few sway over Republican voters, it’sRepublican this one. Invoters, a nor. This was arguably riskiest en- Trump’s governor, afterofall, sway over it’s this one. a and nor.Trump’s This was arguably riskiest enRepublican leaders South Carolina whoinsupmajor upset, Trump-backed candidate, Kadorsement yet in a primary.

It’s not as aif primary.

Gov. leaders South Carolina who supmajor upset, the Trump-backed candidate, Ka- inRepublican dorsement yet in It’s not as if the Gov. ported Trump’s presidential bid. His presidential race, in tie congressman, Jeff Colyer was anti-Trump, but was Secretary of ported Trump’s bid. His race, in tie sitting Arrington, beat the sitting congressman, Jeff Colyer anti-Trump, butArrington, Secretary beat of the that “local stillthat “local politics still who was an outspokenwho critic ofan Trump.

State Kris Kobach is one of the most pro-Trump particular, is apolitics reminder was outspoken critic particular, of Trump. is a reminder State Kris Kobach is one of the most pro-Trump Rep. Mark Sanford (R)Rep. saidMark Trump sealed(R) his saidmatter,” politicians in the country.

Sanford Trump Heye sealedsaid. his n matter,” Heye said. n politicians in the country. tweet criticizing Sanford.

As with any of the races on any this of list, ©The Washington Post©The Washington Post loss with a tweet criticizing Sanford.

As with theit’sracesloss onwith thisalist, it’s

LMNO KLMNO

CONTENTS

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WEEKLYWEEKLY

CONTENTS ON THE COVER A4researcher 4 POLITICS ON THEholds COVER A researcher holds canola sample at where 8 THEaNATION a canola sample at Calyxt, where 8 Calyxt, wheat soybeans wheat and soybeans 10 THEexperimental experimental WORLD 10 and are also grown. Photo 12 COVER areTIM also grown. Photo by TIM STORY 12 by GRUBER for The16 Washington Post.

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18 BOOKS 18 20 OPINION 20 23 FIVE MYTHS 23

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OPINIONS

Trump takes us another step closer to the abyss DAVID IGNATIUS writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post.

What Donald Trump did Wednesday isn’t supposed to happen in a democracy. A president who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution just carried out a personal politi­ cal vendetta against a career intelligence officer. ¶ In re­ voking the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Trump took another step toward the abyss. He cited the “risk posed by [Brennan’s] erratic conduct and behavior,” a ludicrous charge coming from our unguided missile of a chief executive.

Brennan’s real crime is that he has been in Trump’s face nearly every day, trading insults on Twitter and cable television.

Brennan has taken to using words such as “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “nothing short of treasonous” to describe Trump’s behavior and likened him to convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff. Stripping Brennan’s clearance was presidential payback, dressed up in national security language.

I wrote back in January that I wished Brennan and other former intelligence chiefs would resist slugging it out with Trump — not because their criticisms are wrong, but because they risked tarnishing the credibility and professionalism of their agencies. As I argued, Trump supporters would “fume that the spy chiefs are ganging up on the populist president. Conspiracy theories about an imaginary ‘deep state’ will gain more traction, and the cycle of national mistrust will get worse.”

But let’s be honest: Brennan isn’t a guy who was going to back down in a bar fight, any more than Trump. He’s tough and stubborn, with a chip on his shoulder. He’s a guy who, if you write five positive things about him and one negative, only

remembers the negative. Once Trump insulted Brennan’s integrity, as he did after he won the presidency, these two were going to end up in a cockfight.

The prevailing media explanation of the Brennan move was that Trump was trying to distract public attention from Omarosa Manigault Newman, a disaffected former staffer who just published a tell-all book about the president titled “Unhinged.” But I wonder if that was the real Brennan trigger.

Trump offered a clearer (and more damning) explanation in an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that he punished Brennan because he was one of the original instigators of the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III: “I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham. And these people led it! So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

With Trump, you always have to question what’s rubbing him so raw and driving him toward possibly illegal and unconstitutional actions. As prosecutors like to say: “We may not know what he’s done wrong, but he does.” Does a warped protective impulse drive Trump into these furies of defensive action?

With James B. Comey, ground

SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Former CIA director John Brennan, seen in 2017, has often criticized President Trump, who has now revoked Brennan’s security clearance.

zero may have been the briefing given by the then-FBI director to the president-elect in January, detailing the salacious sexual allegations contained in a nowfamous (but unconfirmed) dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and funded partly by lawyers representing the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Trump brought up this sleazy evidence repeatedly afterward and reportedly pressed Comey for a pledge of personal loyalty.

When Trump didn’t get it, he fired his FBI director and, in a television interview, blamed it on Comey’s pursuit of the Russia investigation.

Brennan poses a similar challenge for Trump. It’s not that Brennan embodies the “deep state.” In truth, he disliked a CIA operations culture that he felt had rejected him as a young officer; while his modernization efforts at the CIA had supporters, I’d bet that many at the agency were relieved to see him go.

What was so threatening

about the former CIA chief ?

Beyond Brennan’s sheer cussedness, I’d guess that Trump was frightened — and remains so to this day — about just how much Brennan knows about his secrets. And by that, I don’t just mean his dealings with Russian oligarchs and presidents but the way he moved through a world of fixers, flatterers and money launderers.

Brennan, like Comey, was there at the beginning of this investigation. Trump must have asked himself: What does Brennan know? What did he learn from the CIA’s deep assets in Moscow, and from liaison partners such as Britain, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands?

Does Trump think Brennan will be a less credible witness without a security clearance?

The Brennan episode is just one more warning of what may be ahead. Trump appears ready to take our country over the waterfall to save himself. Before it’s too late, Trump should realize: Even in his rage, he can’t fire everybody.

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OPINIONS

BY DAVE GRANLUND

Beware the digital censor DAVID GREENE is the civil liberties director and senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This was written for The Washington Post.

We’re finally having a public debate about the big Internet platforms policing content and suspending accounts. But it’s a serious mistake to frame the debate about content moderation around right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars and not around the thousands of other moderation decisions that have been made by such online giants as Apple, Facebook, Google-owned YouTube and Spotify.

Internet companies have removed millions of posts and images over the past decade and suspended hundreds, perhaps thousands, of user accounts.

These silenced voices span the political spectrum and the globe: Moroccan atheists, women discussing online harassment, ads featuring crucifixes, black and Muslim activists reposting racist messages they received, trans models, drag performers, indigenous women, childbirth images, photos of breast-feeding.

We should be careful before rushing to embrace an Internet that is moderated by a few private companies by default. Once systems like content moderation become the norm, those in power inevitably exploit them. Time and time again, platforms have capitulated to censorship demands from authoritarian regimes, and powerful actors

have manipulated flagging procedures to effectively censor their political opponents. Given this practical reality, and the sad history of political censorship in the United States, let’s not cheer one decision that we might agree with.

Even beyond content moderation’s vulnerability to censorship, the moderating process itself, whether undertaken by humans or, increasingly, by software using machine-learning algorithms, is extremely difficult. Awful mistakes are commonplace, and rules are applied unevenly.

Company executives regularly reshape their rules in response to governmental and other pressure, and they do so without significant input from the public. Ambiguous “community standards” result in the removal of some content deemed to have violated the rules,

BY DANZIGER FOR THE RUTLAND HERALD

while content that seems equally offensive is okay.

Moderation systems operate in secret with no public accountability. We’re pretty sure we know why Infowars was suspended, but in many cases the decisions are far more opaque.

And unlike Jones, few of the others have powerful multimedia operations with an audience in the millions that will simply move to using an app when other venues become unavailable, as is happening with Infowars.

Facebook, Twitter, Apple and other companies routinely silence voices in marginalized communities around the world that struggle to be heard in the first place.

The palpable public momentum for private companies to do something to more actively moderate the content that appears on their sites is worrisome. And it’s worrisome even though I share the concerns — about disinformation, extremism, harassment — motivating it.

We must also not lose sight of the fact that while the dominant social media platforms are largely based in the United States, the majority of their users are based outside the country, and the policies the platforms adopt here have outsize influence elsewhere.

If content moderation is here to stay, existing human- rights standards provide a framework for policies that companies could and should voluntarily implement to protect their users.

There have been several worthy efforts to articulate a human-rights framing for content moderation. One framework, which the organization where I work, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, played a part in formulating, is found in the Santa Clara Principles. These principles advance three key goals: numbers (companies should publish the number of posts removed and accounts suspended); notice (companies should provide notice and an explanation to each user whose content is removed); and appeal (companies should provide a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of any content removal or account suspension).

The power that these platforms have over the online public sphere should worry all of us, no matter whether we agree or disagree with a given content decision.

Transparency in these companies’ content-moderation decisions is essential. We must demand that they apply their rules consistently and provide clear, accessible avenues for meaningful appeal. n

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Do children have a right to literacy?

BY

M ORIAH B ALINGIT

W

hen Jamarria Hall strode into Osborn High in Detroit his freshman year, the signs of decay were everywhere: buckets to catch leaking water, rotting ceiling tiles, vermin that crisscrossed classrooms.

In the neglected school, students never got textbooks to take home, and Hall and his classmates went long stretches — sometimes months — with substitute teachers who did little more than supervise students.

“It doesn’t seem like a high school,” said Hall, who graduated in 2017. “It seems like a state prison.”

Hall was part of a class of Detroit Public Schools students who sued state officials in federal court, arguing that the state had violated their constitutional right to learn to read by providing inadequate resources.

A federal judge agreed this summer that the circumstances at Hall’s school shocked the conscience. But what is shocking, he concluded, is not necessarily illegal — even if some graduates of Detroit’s schools struggle to complete a job application.

“The conditions and outcomes of Plaintiffs’ schools, as alleged, are nothing short of devastating.

When a child who could be taught to read goes untaught, the child suffers a lasting injury — and so does society,” Judge Stephen J. Murphy III wrote.

“But the Court is faced with a discrete question: does the Due Process Clause demand that a State affirmatively provide each child with a defined, minimum level of education by which the child can attain literacy?” he wrote. “The answer to the question is no.”

The case illustrated a conundrum that has vexed education advocates for decades: Neither the words “school” nor “education” appear in the Constitution, and federal courts have largely shied from establishing a special right for children to receive an adequate education. That has posed formi-

CARLOS OSORIO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lawyers try a new tactic to force states to improve the quality of education in public schools dable hurdles for those who turn to the courts for help when their school buildings are falling down, or their children are enduring long stretches in classrooms without real teachers, or even when they see evidence of discrimination.

Now, attorneys are trying a new tactic.

They argue that the ability to read and write is key to unlocking other rights — voting, applying for jobs, writing letters to lawmakers — that federal courts have held sacred. An illiterate adult is unable to participate as a full citizen in a democratic republic, they argue.

“These children are being disenfranchised,” said Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm that focuses on social justice issues and represents the Detroit students. “Children are not receiving the basic skills to participate in a democracy.”

The conditions Hall and his classmates faced were not con-

fined to Osborn: In a Detroit elementary school, a lawsuit alleges, grade-schoolers had no English textbooks and no way to access a library.

Attorneys for the state of Michigan rejected the notion that literacy is a fundamental right and argued that the court had no authority to make it one.

“Although there are many important aspects of living in the United States, the mere fact that something is important does not mean that there is a constitutional right to it,” Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette wrote in November 2016, when he asked the judge to dismiss the case. Schuette recently won the state’s Republican Party’s nomination for governor.

“For example, although it is certainly important for a person to have shelter, the Constitution does not create a right to governmental provision of adequate shelter,” Schuette said.

A vacant classroom at the now-closed Southwestern High School in Detroit in 2015. Detroit Public Schools students sued Michigan officials for violating their right to read.

State officials also argued that the suit failed to trace the ills of the schools to their actions. Attorneys for the children “allege unfortunate conditions in the children’s schools, but they do not provide any relationship between the conditions of the schools and any race discrimination,” the attorney general wrote in a court filing in 2016.

The right to learn to read, attorneys for the students argued, is analogous to the right to marry. In court documents, they referenced Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and declared marriage to be a fundamental right.

Rosenbaum also filed suit in California, accusing the state of failing to implement recommendations that came out of a report on literacy.

The suit, which includes young plaintiffs from three schools in Inglewood, Los Angeles and Stockton, alleges that resource-deprived schools did little or nothing when children fell short of state standards. One charter school — Children of Promise Preparatory Academy in Inglewood — had entire grade levels in which no students were rated proficient on state exams. A judge rejected the state’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit last month.

The children suing in the Michigan and California cases attended schools that were overwhelmingly poor, black and Latino. For Rosenbaum, poor test scores are evidence that the state is attempting to further “subordinate” communities that already have the odds stacked against them.

The link that attorneys make between literacy and participation in democracy is hardly new. In many slaveholding Southern states, it was once illegal to teach enslaved people to read, and many states administered literacy tests to bar illiterate men — black or white — from the polls.

“This idea that we needed a literate, educated electorate dates back to before the Constitution,” said Derek W. Black, a University of South Carolina law professor. n ©The Washington Post

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FIVE MYTHS

3-D printing BY

R ICHARD A . D ’ A VENI

Like any fast­developing technology, 3­D printing, described more techni­ cally as “additive manufacturing,” is susceptible to a variety of misconcep­ tions. While recent debates have revolved around 3­D­printed firearms, most of the practical issues in the field come down to the emergence of new manufacturing techniques. Here are five of the most persistent myths.

MYTH NO. 1 3-D printing is slow and expensive.

Early 3-D printing was indeed agonizingly slow, requiring pricey equipment, select materials and tedious trial-and-error fiddling to make improvements. When the stock price of the leading printer manufacturers was free-falling in 2016, Inc. magazine announced that 3-D printing was “dying,” mostly because people were realizing the high cost of printer feedstock.

But a variety of new techniques for additive manufacturing are proving those premises wrong.

Desktop Metal’s Single Pass Jetting, HP’s Multi Jet Fusion and Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis can all make products in minutes, not hours. Lab tests show that these printers are costcompetitive with conventional manufacturing in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of units. Many new printers also use lower-price commodity materials rather than specially formulated proprietary feedstocks, so the cost is falling rapidly.

MYTH NO. 2 3-D printers are limited to small products.

By design, 3-D printers are not large. They need an airtight build chamber to function, so most are no larger than a copy machine.

But some technologies, such as Big Area Additive Manufacturing, work in the open air and can generate highly resilient pieces.

They’ve been used to build products from automobiles to jet fighters. A new method for building involves a roving

“printer bot” that gradually adds fast-hardening materials to carry out the construction. This spring, a Dutch company completed a pedestrian bridge using 3-D printing methods.

MYTH NO. 3 3-D printers produce only low-quality products.

As anyone who’s handled a crude 3-D-printed keychain can probably guess, the hardest part of 3-D printing is ensuring that a product looks good. When you print layer upon layer, you don’t get the smooth finish of conventional manufacturing.

But some new techniques, such as Digital Light Synthesis, can generate a high-quality finish from the start. That’s because they aren’t based on layering. The products are monolithic — they emerge smoothly from a vat of liquid. Other printer manufacturers are building automated hybrid systems that combine 3-D-printed products with conventional finishing.

If we think of quality more broadly, additive is likely to improve on conventional products. That’s because 3-D printing can handle sophisticated internal structures and radical geometries that would be impossible via conventional manufacturing.

other organs; if we could generate artificial organs, we could eliminate a leading cause of death in the United States. We’ve already made major advances with customized 3-D-printed prosthetics and orthodontics, and most hearing aids now come from additive manufacturing. Why not organs?

But scientists have yet to crack the fundamental problem of creating life. We can build a matrix that will support living tissue, and we can add a kind of “cell ink” from the recipient’s stem cells to create the tissue. But we haven’t been able to generate a microscopic capillary network to feed oxygen to this tissue.

The most promising current work focuses on artificial skin, which is of special interest to cosmetic companies looking for an unlimited supply of skin for testing new products.

MYTH NO. 4 3-D printing will give us artificial organs.

One of the most exciting areas of additive manufacturing is bioprinting. Thousands of people die every year waiting for replacement hearts, kidneys and

MYTH NO. 5 Small-scale users will dominate 3-D printing.

In reality, relatively few individuals have bought 3-D printers. Corporations and educational institutions have purchased the majority of them,

SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

3-D printers are best known for small projects. But they can make bridges, cars and jet fighters, too.

and that trend is unlikely to change. Over time, 3-D printing may bring about the opposite of Anderson’s vision: a world where corporate manufacturers, not ordinary civilians, are empowered by the technology.

With 3-D printing, companies can make a specialized product one month, then switch if demand falls. General Electric’s factory in Pune, India, for example, can adjust its output of parts for medical equipment or turbines depending on demand.

As a result, companies will be able to profit from operating in multiple industries. If demand in one industry slows, the firm can shift the unused factory capacity over to making products for higher-demand industries.

Eventually, we’re likely to see a new wave of diversification, leading to pan-industrial behemoths that could cover much of the manufacturing economy. n D’Aveni is the Bakala professor of strategy at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Pan-Industrial Revolution: How New Manufacturing Titans Will Transform the World.”

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POLITICS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Reshaping the nation’s circuit courts

BY S EAN S ULLIVAN AND M IKE D E B ONIS

A

s the Senate moves toward confirming Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are leading a lower-key yet deeply consequential charge to remake the entire federal judiciary.

The Senate returned this past week from an abbreviated summer recess and confirmed two more federal appeals court judges.

They add to a record-breaking string of confirmations: The Senate has now installed 26 appellate judges since Trump was sworn in, the highest number for a president’s first two years in office.

While much of the focus has been on Kavanaugh and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, the Senate’s rapid approval of appellate judges is likely to have its own broad impact on the nation, as the 13 circuit courts will shape decisions on immigration, voting rights, abortion and the environment for generations.

For McConnell, this is the culmination of a years-long gambit that started with stymieing President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees, most notably Supreme Court choice Merrick Garland, and creating a backlog of vacancies on the nation’s highest courts.

Trump’s 2016 election enabled McConnell (R-Ky.) to cement a legacy of judicial confirmations that is likely to be felt long after the two men leave office. The Republican leaders are also trying to use judicial nominations to energize conservative voters, who they worry will sit out the midterm elections.

There are 179 authorized judgeships for the U.S. Court of Appeals.

With 26 confirmations and 11 vacancies to fill, Trump and the Republicans have the power to install more than 20 percent of the judges on the nation’s secondhighest courts.

“One of the most significant accomplishments in President Donald Trump’s first year will serve Americans for decades to come, yet it has received very little

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/POOL/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

With little fanfare, Trump and McConnell are leading a change in the federal judiciary fanfare,” wrote McConnell with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (RIowa) in a January National Review op-ed.

On Thursday, the Senate advanced the nominations of A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. and Julius Ness Richardson, both for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

“The Supreme Court gets the bulk of the attention, but the circuit courts decide the bulk of the cases,” said Arthur D. Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who studies the federal judiciary. “Because the Supreme Court these days is taking so few cases, the law of the circuit is, on many, many issues, the final law for the people who live in that circuit.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (DConn.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said two of his children are beginning law school and that “these judges will be there for

a good part of their legal careers.”

The appeals court is “the backbone of the federal judiciary,” said Blumenthal, who said he regretted the “very unfortunate,” enduring legacy of Trump’s choices.

Virtually all of Trump’s nominees have graduated from top law schools, held Supreme Court clerkships or worked in big-name law firms or the Justice Department. But they also have affiliations with the Federalist Society or other conservative credentials.

That, as well as past writings and cases, have sparked often fierce opposition from Democrats and liberal groups.

“These are not mainstream jurists being nominated because they are legal luminaries, but people who are coming to the bench with clear ideological-driven missions of eroding constitutional rights and legal protections,” said Daniel Goldberg, legal director for the Alliance for Justice, a liberal group focused on judicial issues.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. While the focus has been on Kavanaugh, Trump and McConnell have been working to push confirmation of appellate judges.

Hellman said that Trump’s nominees have, so far, largely replaced retiring Republican-appointed judges, and thus he has yet to wholly remake any of the 13 circuit courts. But he said at least one circuit — the 5th Circuit, covering Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — is at a tipping point.

Last month, that court decided on an 8-7 vote not to reconsider a decision striking down a trial judge’s ruling that the federal law against selling firearms across state lines is unconstitutional. All four Trump appointees on that court would have reconsidered the case, opening the door to overturning a long-standing federal gun law. Since then, another Trump nominee has been confirmed to that court and there is another vacancy that Trump can seek to fill.

Democrats have sought to slow the confirmations, forcing every circuit court nominee to clear procedural hurdles. But a Democratic rule change in 2013 allowed most federal court nominees to advance to confirmation by a simple majority. McConnellchanged the Senate rules in 2017, to apply the same standard to Supreme Court nominees.

Under Trump, the pace of confirmations to the district courts, which are lower on the court hierarchy, has lagged behind Obama and George W. Bush.

During the final two years of the Obama administration, in which Republicans controlled the Senate, the confirmation of judicial nominees slowed to a crawl — giving McConnell and Trump plenty of vacancies to fill starting in 2017.

Republicans face difficult political head winds in November, with some on the right fearful they will soon lose their plum chances to push through court nominees.

McConnell, who titled his memoir “The Long Game,” frequently reminds his allies that the Senate is in the personnel business. He’s had a rocky relationship with Trump since his election, but the confirmed judges have given them a common goal. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COURTS

A case for animal rights and Justice K ARIN B RULLIARD in Estacada, Ore.

BY

J

ustice is an 8-year-old American quarter horse who used to be named Shadow. And when his name was Shadow, he suffered. At a veterinarian’s exam last year, he was 300 pounds underweight, his black coat lice-ridden, his skin scabbed and his genitals so frostbitten that they might require amputation.

The horse had been left outside and underfed by his previous owner, who last summer pleaded guilty to criminal neglect. Now Justice, who today resides with other rescued equines on a quiet wooded farm within view of Oregon’s Cascade mountains, is suing his former owner for negligence. In a lawsuit filed in his new name in a county court, the horse seeks at least $100,000 for veterinary care, as well as damages “for pain and suffering,” to fund a trust that would stay with him no matter who is his caretaker.

The complaint is the latest bid in a quixotic quest to get courts to recognize animals as plaintiffs, something supporters and critics alike say would be revolutionary.

The few previous attempts — including a recent high-profile case over whether a monkey can own a copyright — have failed, with judges ruling in various ways that the nonhumans lacked legal standing to sue. But Justice’s case, the animal rights lawyers behind it contend, is built on court decisions and statutes that give it a stronger chance, particularly in a state with some of the nation’s most progressive animal protection laws.

“There have been a lot of efforts to try to get animals not only to be protected but to have the right to go to court when their rights are violated,” said Matthew Liebman, director of litigation at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which filed the suit in Justice’s name. Those “haven’t found the right key to the courthouse door.

And we’re hopeful that this is the key.”

These efforts have been made amid broad growth in legal pro-

CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST

A neglected horse is suing his ex-owner in a case that could change how the law views nonhumans tections and advocacy for animals. Three decades ago, few law schools offered courses in animal law; now, more than 150 do, and some states have created animal law prosecutorial units. All 50 states have enacted felony penalties for animal abuse. Connecticut last year became the first state to allow courts to appoint lawyers or law students as advocates in animal cruelty cases, in part because overburdened prosecutors were dismissing a majority of such cases.

These developments count as progress, animal rights lawyers say, in persuading lawmakers and courts to expand the traditional legal view of animals — as property — to reflect their role in a society in which dog-sitting is big business and divorces can involve cat custody battles.

“Our legislature acknowledged that people care a lot about animals, and that’s something that’s evolving and increasing,” said Jes-

sica Rubin, a University of Connecticut law professor who serves as an advocate in that state’s cruelty cases. “The law, hopefully, is catching up to where our morals are.”

But expanding the protections for animals is quite different from granting them legal standing, which courts have not been willing to do. In 2004, a federal appeals court shot down a suit in the name of the world’s cetaceans, in which President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were sued over the U.S. Navy’s use of sonar. In 2012, a U.S. District Court dismissed a suit filed on behalf of five SeaWorld orcas, which argued that their captivity was a violation of the 13th Amendment’s prohibition on slavery. This spring, a federal appeals court ruled that a crested macaque that took its own photo could not sue for copyright protection, saying “this monkey — and all animals, since they are not

Justice, front, shares a pasture in Estacada, Ore., with three other rescued horses: Lincoln, Badger and Flick.

human — lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act.” In New York courts, a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project has for several years sought writs of habeas corpus for captive chimpanzees, arguing that they are “legal persons” — a term that can apply to corporations and ships — and have a right to freedom. While judges have occasionally praised the effort, they have ultimately rejected it, saying chimpanzees cannot bear the duties and responsibilities required of legal persons.

Against that backdrop, Liebman says Justice’s case is “more reasonable” than the others. It does not involve the Constitution or historically weighted concepts such as slavery or a writ of habeas corpus. It’s not so, well, silly-sounding as copyright for a monkey.

Instead, he and colleagues say, it is a logical next step. Their argument goes like this: While some state cruelty laws were written to protect animal owners or public morals, Oregon’s anti-cruelty law makes plain it is intended to protect animals, which it calls “sentient beings.” What’s more, state courts have ruled that animals can be considered individual victims. And because victims have the right to sue their abusers, the lawsuit says, Justice should be able to sue his former owner.

Justice, of course, has no idea he is suing. Sarah Hanneken, an Animal Legal Defense Fund attorney in Portland, says that Justice’s ignorance of the lawsuit is irrelevant.

“This whole idea of somebody who has been injured by the acts of another and not being able to speak for themselves in court, so having an adult human do it for them, this is not new,” Hanneken said. “Children are allowed to bring lawsuits, because we recognize that children have interests that laws protect.”

According to court filings, Justice’s former owner, Gwendolyn Vercher, surrendered the horse to a rescue organization in March 2017 at the urging of a neighbor in Cornelius, west of Portland. In a

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SCIENCE letter to law enforcement, an equine veterinarian who examined the horse at the time said he was “severely emaciated,” lethargic and weak. That poor condition probably contributed to a lasting problem — the animal’s penis had prolapsed, and his inability to retract it led to frostbite, trauma and infection.

“When I got him, he was a lot worse than I anticipated,” said Kim Mosiman, executive director of Sound Equine Options, which takes in and finds homes for about 100 horses each year.

Justice, whom Mosiman fondly describes as “like a grumpy old man,” has gained weight and become more social. On a sunsoaked afternoon at the dusty farm in Estacada, he nibbled grass alongside a retired racehorse named Flick and used his nose to nudge the notebook of a visiting reporter. But the lawsuit says his penis may require partial amputation and that his medical conditions will demand longterm care.

“I’m trying to find someone who wants to adopt him,” Mosiman said. “But if they find out they’re going to have to be financially responsible for him, he’s never going anywhere.”

Some animal law experts warn that Justice’s lawsuit is extreme, even dangerous. Richard L. Cupp, a Pepperdine University law professor who has been critical of the chimpanzee personhood cases, said he thinks the horse case has even more radical implications.

Allowing Justice to sue could mean any animal protected under Oregon’s anti-cruelty statute — a class that includes thousands of pets, zoo animals and even wildlife — could do the same, he said.

(Livestock, lab animals, hunting targets, rodeo animals and invertebrates are exempted.) If this approach were adopted elsewhere, Cupp said, a stampede of animal litigation could overrun courts.

“Any case that could lead to billions of animals having the potential to file lawsuits is a shocker in the biggest way,” Cupp said. “Once you say a horse or dog or cat can personally sue over being abused, it’s not too big a jump to say, ‘Well, we’re kind of establishing that they’re legal persons with that. And legal persons can’t be eaten.’ ” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

Solar eclipse shines as most-watched event in U.S. BY

S ARAH K APLAN

“W

e’re all together” during a total solar eclipse. That was Mike Kentrianakis’s promise.

It was July 2017, just over a month before the moon was due to pass between the sun and the Earth and cast its long shadow across the width of the continental U.S. Kentrianakis, who had already witnessed 20 solar eclipses, from every continent except Antarctica, was working on behalf of the American Astronomical Society to ensure his fellow citizens saw the next one.

For a few minutes on Aug. 21, the nation stood united in the shadow of the moon, and we were transformed. At least a little bit.

According to a new survey from the University of Michigan, a stunning 88 percent of American adults — some 216 million people — watched the “Great American Eclipse” in person or electronically. This estimated audience, based on a national probability sample of 2,915 people over 18, was greater than that for the 1969 Apollo 11 landing and each Super Bowl since the contest began. (A 1999 poll found that 7 out of 10 Americans who were age five or older on the day of the moon landing recalled watching the event on television. The mostwatched Super Bowl, in 2015, had about 114 million viewers) “It’s definitely one of the largest ever,” Jon D. Miller, the survey’s organizer and director of Michigan’s International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy, said of the eclipse. He and his colleagues sifted through years of television viewership data and other records and couldn’t find evidence of any event in history that was witnessed by so many Americans.

Miller has been surveying scientific literacy in the United States for more than 30 years.

The results can sometimes be

ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Students at C.W. Harris Elementary School in D.C. use their protective shades to watch the solar eclipse outside their school in 2017.

sobering. In 1987, he found that fewer than half of all Americans knew that the Earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do so. That fraction is now slightly greater than six in 10.

But in the months before last year’s eclipse, Americans started doing something exciting: They began looking for facts. Survey respondents engaged in “information acquisition activities” an average of 15 times in the run-up to the event, Miller said, and they continued to expand their understanding in the months afterward. People talked to their friends, their families, their coworkers. They read newspaper articles. They visited their local libraries. Some people even cracked open a book.

It was the most interest in a scientific event that Miller has ever recorded.

He noted that Americans will track political debates and medical breakthroughs because they believe those events might affect their daily lives. But far fewer people see the inner workings of a bacterial cell or the movements of celestial bodies as essential to their understanding of their world. To get people excited about science, Miller has found, you have to make them curious.

The 2017 solar eclipse did that like nothing ever before.

Last August, on a college campus in Carbondale, Ill., Haja Goggans stood among a crowd of thousands to watch the sun shrink and then disappear entirely, leaving behind a dark circle ringed by the glittering corona.

Their cheers coalesced into a single, ecstatic “woo,” and it took a moment for Goggans to realize she was “wooing” too.

“The only thing we all cared about was the sun, the moon and the sky,” she said later.

The newly-minted high school graduate was about to leave home for a year of living abroad before starting college. This trip to the path of totality was her parents’ going-away gift to her.

“I feel more adventurous now,” she said. “Okay, I saw the eclipse.

What’s next?”

The percentage of people who could correctly define a total solar eclipse jumped to 70 after the event — a 21 point gain from Miller’s previous survey.

“There’s a certain magical quality about when astronomical kinds of things happen,” Miller said. “Things like the eclipse may stimulate an interest, and people start to discover other things.” n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

The rapid wave of edited food New gene-modifying technology could make food healthier, but some warn of low oversight BY

C AITLIN D EWEY in Roseville, Minn.

Gene-edited soybeans at the headquarters of Calyxt in Roseville, Minn.

TIM GRUBER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

KLMNO WEEKLY

I

n a gleaming laboratory hidden from the highway by a Hampton Inn and a Denny’s restaurant, a researcher with the biotech firm Calyxt works the controls of a boxy robot.

The robot whirs like an arcade claw machine, dropping blips of DNA into tubes with pipettes. It’s building an enzyme that rewrites DNA — and transforming food and agriculture in the process.

Thanks to a cutting-edge technology called gene editing, scientists can now turn plant genes “on” and “off” almost as easily as Calyxt scientists flip a switch to illuminate the rows of tender soybean plants growing in their lab.

Calyxt’s “healthier” soybean oil, the industry’s first true gene-edited food, could make its way into products such as chips, salad dressings and baked goods as soon as the end of this year.

Unlike older genetic modification methods, the new techniques are precise, fast and inexpensive, and companies hope they will avoid the negative reputation and regulatory hurdles that hobbled the first generation of genetically modified foods.

But the speed of change has startled consumer and environmental groups, who say the new technology has not been adequately vetted, and they have petitioned regulators to add further safety reviews.

“This is hard stuff,” said Federico Tripodi, Calyxt’s chief executive.

“Consumers accept that technology is good in many aspects of their lives, but technology and food has been something scary. We need to figure out how to engage in that conversation.”

Calyxt’s soybean is the first of 23 gene-edited crops the Agriculture Department has recognized to date.

Scientists at Calyxt, a subsidiary of the French pharmaceutical firm Cellectis, developed their soybean by turning “off” the genes responsible for the trans fats in soybean oil. Compared with the conventional version, Calyxt says, oil made from this soybean boasts far more “healthy” fats, and far less of the fats that raise bad cholesterol.

Tripodi likes to say the product is akin to olive oil but without the pungent flavor that would make it off-putting in Oreos or granola bars. It has earned praise from the Center for Science in the Public

ABOVE: Senior research associate Chunfang “Spring” Wang works in a Calyxt lab in Roseville, Minn.

LEFT: Chief executive Federico Tripodi at a Calyxt greenhouse.

PHOTOS BY TIM GRUBER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Interest, a consumer group that says public health will benefit from ingredients with less trans and saturated fats, regardless of how they were developed.

With the advent of gene editing, the pace of those crop improvements is accelerating, said Dan Voytas, Calyxt’s chief science officer and a professor of biological sciences at the University of Minnesota.

“I never anticipated the speed at which the field developed,” Voytas said, loping through the humid greenhouses where Calyxt is growing jungles of experimental soybeans, wheat and canola.

A tiny pair of genetic scissors Plant breeders have sought to improve crops since the dawn of agriculture. For centuries, farmers have bred their healthiest and highest-yielding plants to produce better offspring. In the 1980s, scientists also began to cut and paste DNA between species in what is known as genetic engineering.

That sparked a fierce backlash among American consumers, nearly 4 in 10 of whom believe

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COVER STORY

genetically modified foods are bad for their health, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center report.

Public concern about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, has driven the growth of a multibillion-dollar non-GM food market and restricted their cultivation in Europe.

But scientists hope the public will prove less hostile to CRISPR and TALENs, the most prominent of the new gene-editing tools, because of their potential to improve taste and nutritional value.

Both work like tiny genetic scissors, snipping the double helix of a plant’s DNA at specific, pre-coded spots. When the DNA heals itself, it sometimes deletes or scrambles the gene next to the break — effectively turning that gene “off.”

Researchers are now working on adding new genetic code at the DNA break, and not merely deleting what’s already there. They are also developing methods to edit multiple genes in a single plant, a goal some scientists say they can achieve within a few years. One start-up, Inari Agriculture, is betting it can one day customize seeds to the conditions of the individual farm where they grow.

“I think that despite all the hype over gene editing, everybody but a few science fiction writers has underestimated the magnitude of the revolution they are ushering in,” said Val Giddings, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. “They will transform dramatically every aspect of the relationship between humans and our environment in overwhelmingly positive ways.”

Scientists in university labs and at companies such as Calyxt are already designing plants that are more nutritious, convenient and sustainable, they say. Gene editing’s low cost has empowered smaller players to compete in a field that has long been dominated by huge agribusiness companies.

Researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba, Spain, have come out with a strain of low-gluten wheat targeted to the booming gluten-free market. Pennsylvania State University has developed mushrooms that do not brown, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has created tomatoes suited for shorter growing seasons.

Meanwhile, universities around the country are working on plants that will withstand droughts, diseases and the ravages of climate change. Such improvements, underway in crops as diverse as oranges, wine grapes and cacao, could protect these plants in the future while cutting down water and chemical use, experts say.

“We have some very real problems in agriculture right now,” said Bernice Slutsky, senior vice president of domestic and international policy at the American Seed Trade Association. “Whether it’s drought or disease pressure or climate change — this is a tool that helps efficiently address them.”

TIM GRUBER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

How TALEN edits DNA TALEN can find and edit DNA sequences, almost like a word processor.

1. Scientists first create a TAL protein, which is made of building blocks that can locate and read specific sequences of DNA letters.

2. The TAL protein is then attached to an endonuclease, a DNA-cutting tool, creating a TALEN.

Each block can recognize one DNA letter.

Endonuclease

3. Two TALENs locate pre-coded sites in a DNA sequence, leaving a spacer on either side of the cleavage site.

4. The endonucleases then work from both sides of the DNA, each cutting a single strand.

5. If left alone, the cell will try to repair the DNA itself, which can turn the gene “off.” An example is turning “off” the genes responsible for the trans fats in soybean oil. Scientists can also insert new DNA to modify the gene.

New, programed DNA Source: The Tech Museum of Innovation, Acta Naturae, July-Sept. 2014, Calyxt.

SHELLY TAN/THE WASHINGTON POST

An epMotion 5075 machine at Calyxt serves as an automated pipetting system.

The risks of an off-target edit But even as gene editing accelerates, some consumer and environmental groups have begun to fear that the field has outpaced regulators. Advocates and critics alike agree that the 30-year-old legal framework for vetting genetically modified crops has failed to keep pace with innovations such as CRISPR and TALENs. Under current rules, the Agriculture Department does not require field tests or environmental assessments for many of these crops, the way it does for most conventional genetically modified organisms. That’s because most gene-edited crops to date, such as Calyxt’s soybean, do not contain foreign genetic material and were not made using the bacteria or viruses that scientists employed in the first-generation GMOs. The agency has said its authority extends only to those methods, because it’s charged with protecting plants from infections and pests. In late July, Europe’s top court came to the opposite conclusion, ruling that geneedited crops should adhere to the same strict regulations as genetically modified organisms.

The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, does monitor the food safety and nutrition of gene-edited foods — but only if the food-maker requests a consultation. Calyxt has made no such request, according to the FDA. The agency is evaluating whether gene-edited foods carry additional safety risks.

Such evaluations are needed, said Jennifer Kuzma, a professor of genetic engineering and society

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COVER STORY

KLMNO WEEKLY

FAR LEFT: Shawn Davison works at Calyxt. In its soybeans, the company turns “off” the genes responsible for the trans fats in the oil.

LEFT: Calyxt soybeans on the farm of Bob Braun outside of Le Sueur, Minn.

PHOTOS BY TIM GRUBER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

at North Carolina State University, to reassure consumers that gene-edited food is safe. Of particular concern is a type of genetic glitch called an off-target edit, or an inadvertent change to a plant’s DNA. These glitches occur both in the lab and in nature but rarely escape breeders’ notice, said Jeff Wolt, a recently retired professor of agronomy and toxicology at Iowa State University. If they did, however, the effects could prove dramatic: preventing growth, introducing allergens and toxins, or exposing the plant to disease.

Plant researchers learned this the hard way in the late 1960s, when they developed a better frying potato that also inflicted severe nausea on anyone who ate it.

“We need a mandatory regulatory process: not just for scientific

reasons, but for consumer and public confidence,” Kuzma said. “I think the vast majority of gene-edited foods are going to be as safe as their conventionally bred counterparts. But I don’t buy into the argument that’s true all the time for every crop.”

Consumer groups have also raised alarms over how geneedited foods will be labeled. While Congress passed a law requiring food makers to disclose genetically modified ingredients in 2016, those rules will probably not apply to foods made with newer gene-editing techniques, said experts who had reviewed it. Calyxt has marketed its soybean oil to food-makers as “non-GMO,” citing the fact that it contains no foreign genetic material.

But consumers are unlikely to accept this distinction, said Mi-

chael Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumers Union.

Hansen argues that GMOs developed a negative reputation in part because biotech companies botched public outreach in the 1980s and 1990s. Should businesses repeat that mistake, he said, consumers will reject a promising technology.

“I don’t understand why the companies don’t want to be labeled,” Hansen said. “Not labeling gives the impression that they have something to hide. And consumer acceptance will depend on that.”

But the seeds of change are already — literally — in the ground. One hour south of Calyxt’s offices, the company’s gene-edited soybeans blanket a long, sloping hill on 62-year-old Bob Braun’s farm.

Braun is one of 75 farmers growing Calyxt beans this season on 17,000 acres of farmland. By July, the plants are roughly kneehigh and sporting pale lavender flowers. They are indistinguishable from the acres of soybeans that stretch in every direction, tufted with stands of trees and crisscrossed by gravel roads.

Within a few years, Braun predicts, consumers also won’t be worried about the difference between gene-edited and conventional foods. It’s the latest of several revolutions, he reasons, in modern agriculture.

“I think you can go back to any time in human history and find people who were afraid of change,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to hear the old-timers complaining about tractors.” n ©The Washington Post

“Not labeling gives the impression that they have something to hide.”

Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at Consumers Union

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KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

From white water to low water J ENNIFER O LDHAM in Kremmling, Colo.

BY

I

n the state known as the “mother of rivers,” the thirdwarmest and driest period in more than a century is wreaking havoc on waterways that provide the economic lifeline for rural communities and high-alpine habitat for Colorado’s signature fish, the greenback cutthroat trout.

The extremes of temperature and precipitation — too much of one, too little of the other — have grounded rafting companies in places that usually offer whiteknuckle rides. With water barely lapping over jagged rocks, some outfitters have moved operations to rivers fed by reservoirs higher up in the parched Rockies.

“Boats can get piled up and people can get hurt if they flip, and guides were having to use their backs to pull the rafts off of rocks,” said Alan Blado, owner of Liquid Descent Rafting, which is based about 40 miles west of downtown Denver. “We didn’t want them to get injured.”

Blado hung on there until his usual run, Clear Creek, was just too low. He relocated his school buses and bright blue rafts to the small Rocky Mountain town of Kremmling and now is trying to salvage the late season by persuading clients to drive the extra 72 miles to float a wide blue-green stretch of the Upper Colorado.

This state boasts more headwaters than almost any in the country.

Heart-stopping rapids, smooth tributaries and deep holes on the Colorado, Arkansas and the Animas rivers, among others, draw outdoors enthusiasts from around the world.

Last year, thanks to the winter’s heavy snows, outfitters served a record number of visitors. Conditions this year are far different — and far more in line with the pattern of recent decades. Since the late 1990s, three intense droughts have buffeted the state’s $193-million rafting industry.

Summer 2018 follows a rough winter in which some areas received 30 percent of what once

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

Rafters and anglers worry as high temperatures diminish the Colorado River and their livelihoods was typical snowpack. A warm spring thawed drifts early, causing rivers to peak in May, weeks before the busy summer season.

Severe to exceptional drought now covers two-thirds of Colorado, and some of the worst wildfires in state history have broken out.

“Not just in Colorado, but U.S. wide and globally, we’re seeing this disturbing warming trend that is amplifying over the last few decades going back to late 1960s,” said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It brings a lot more evaporation and makes semiarid areas like Colorado prone to quick-hitting droughts.”

Beyond diminished livelihoods, for fishing guides as well as outfitters, the restoration work on world-class fisheries is being threatened. With water levels at 25 percent of the historical average on some waterways, wildlife managers instituted voluntary

closures to fishing from 2 p.m. to midnight on several sections.

Near Kremmling, stream temperatures approached the 70s in June.

“When water temperatures are above 65 degrees and fish are stressed . . . they don’t have the ability to recover if they are caught and released,” said Jon Ewert, an aquatic biologist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “We’re trying to put the word out to please don’t fish in the afternoon — we have dozens of signs up along rivers.”

The southwest part of the state has been particularly hard hit.

The 416 fire, as it is called, scorched 54,000 acres and forced an unusual 10-day closure of the San Juan National Forest and other popular attractions around Durango in mid-June. Outfitters say widespread news coverage of the blaze proved as damaging to their business on the nearby Animas River, a boaters’ favorite, as its record-low water levels.

Liquid Descent Rafting employees Angus Harley, foreground, and Kenneth Freeman put away rafts in Kremmling, Colo., after a group returned from a ride on the Colorado River.

Those who are continuing to work the lower Animas risk damaging their rafts.

“There is certainly more wear and tear on the boats. You are hitting more rocks and sliding over more gravel bars,” said Alex Mickel, president at AAM’s Mild to Wild Rafting & Jeep Trail Tours in Durango. Simple math makes each trip more costly, he added.

“We have to take less people per boat since the water is moving lower so they are lighter and more maneuverable.”

Some operators, Mickel included, are trying to focus on the positive. Lower rivers, they say, offer a gentler, friendlier “float” adventure for families that increasingly make up the bulk of their business. And rivers where flows have been maintained are benefiting from other waterways’ misfortune.

A unique agreement among state and county agencies, rafting outfitters and the nonprofit organization Trout Unlimited kept water in the Arkansas River — the state’s most popular for paddlers last year. The pact provides for the early movement of water stored in high-alpine reservoirs to collection points on the plains if the river runs too low for boating.

“Outfitters here, believe it or not, are having a great season,” said Bob Hamel, executive director of the Arkansas River Outfitters Association. “The market pushed rafters to our river.”

Yet even with that 12-year-old pact, officials struggled to keep levels up. Their extra allotment — more than 4.2 billion gallons of water — was all released by early August.

And bigger crowds on the Arkansas have posed different challenges. As more boats plied the waterway this summer, more people got upended. Rangers straddling the current had plucked 384 paddlers through early August, mostly from waters in the Royal Gorge, up from 256 during the same period in 2017, according to statistics compiled by the state Department of Natural Resources. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

How racism and lies poisoned Flint N ONFICTION

• REVIEWED BY

M EARA S HARMA

I WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City

By Mona Hanna-Attisha One World. 364 pp. $28

THE POISONED CITY Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy

By Anna Clark Metropolitan. 305 pp. $30

n every age, there are places whose names come to signify a nation’s gravest problems.

Sandy Hook. Ferguson. San Bernardino. They stand in for America’s mass-shooting crisis, racist police violence, radicalization and domestic terrorism. But there are risks in this kind of metonymy — what writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the danger of a single story.”

Two new books take distinct approaches to flesh out the picture of such a place: Flint, Mich. The headlines of the Flint water crisis — in which residents suffered contaminated water in the face of official neglect for years — are widely known. But “The Poisoned City” by journalist Anna Clark provides the first thorough account of the saga. “What the Eyes Don’t See” by Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha is a far more intimate and subjective memoir about her pursuit of medical evidence to prove that children were being poisoned by city water.

In 2014, the city of Flint decided to switch its water source from a Detroit-controlled Great Lakes supply to its own system. During the transition, the city turned to a temporary source of water: the Flint River. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) failed to treat it effectively or employ federally mandated corrosion control.

As a result, when it coursed through Flint’s aging pipes, metals began to flake off and taint the water with lead, a toxin that can lead to brain damage.

People started developing strange rashes, losing hair, getting aches and pains. But when they complained to the city, they were rebuffed. Authorities said the same thing: The water was fine.

For a long time, Hanna-Attisha repeated that line to her patients, too. But when a trusted friend and former EPA employee tells her there’s talk of lead in Flint’s water, she is horrified. Lead exposure is

JAKE MAY/THE FLINT JOURNAL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Niko Goodrum of the Detroit Tigers looks over water bottles he donated in June to residents in Flint, Mich.

especially dangerous for children: It can lead to a drop in IQ, memory and attention issues, and aggressive behavior. Within hours, Hanna-Attisha is determined to find the “proof of impact” that would shake the authorities out of their stupor.

It’s hard to believe that officials intended to poison residents with bad water, but the strength of the state’s refusal to acknowledge the truth for so long is staggering. In “The Poisoned City,” Clark constructs a bleak portrait of a government marked by opacity, greed and willful negligence in a city where residents are mostly poor and mostly black. Hanna-Attisha sees that firsthand as she confronts the state: “They made no attempts to get to the bottom of anything; their only goal was to recast and massage their lies.”

Both authors conclude that structural racism and inequality allow this culture to thrive. Clark in particular traces the rise and

fall of the auto industry, as well as segregation, white flight, redlining, austerity and incursions on democracy that disproportionately affect African American communities. This lattice of context underscores the point that Flint’s water crisis isn’t an isolated event but rather a result of calculated disinvestment and racist policies.

Consider what one EPA official said: “I don’t know if Flint is the kind of community we want to go out on a limb for.”

“The Poisoned City” is meticulously researched. But in pursuit of comprehensiveness, the book can feel tedious and distant, missing a human element. Clark relies heavily on document dumps and local reporting, so it’s hard to tell what she witnessed and what she gleaned secondhand.

While “What the Eyes Don’t See” can veer into sentimentality and self-congratulation, HannaAttisha, too, is wary of the “single story.” She threads the book with

tales of her immigrant family’s journey from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the suburbs of Detroit.

These recollections turn the book into a condemnation of groupthink and a clarion call to live a life of purpose.

In recent years, there has been some justice for Flint. Admissions of failure. A class-action lawsuit obligating the state to invest nearly $100 million in lead-free infrastructure. A Medicaid expansion.

Criminal indictments against state officials. A report by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission stating plainly that the crisis was “the result of systemic racism that was built into the foundation and growth of Flint.”

But for those who now hold toxins in their bodies, our skewed public health approach offers little to celebrate. n Sharma writes on culture and the environment. This was written for The Washington Post.

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