The Washington Post National Weekly - September 3, 2017

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Politics Mattis’s independent streak 4

Food Fast-casual dining takes over 16

5 Myths Gene editing 23

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WONKBLOG

Signs the economy is on the rise H EATHER L ONG

now. The 1996 welfare reform put in place a “healthy economy rule” where 18- to 50-yearolds get kicked off SNAP after three months, orget the soaring stock market. Here’s unless they are disabled, have children at the real evidence the U.S. economy is home, are working part-time or participating getting better: Food stamp usage is in a job-training program. Congress and state down, and spending on entertainment leaders waived those rules during the Great — everything from Netflix to Disney World Recession when it was difficult for anytrips — is up. one to find a job.

The average American household now How much the average U.S. household spends But today 16 states are operating under spends more than $2,900 a year, a record on entertainment each year the three-months-and-you’re-out mantra high, on entertainment, according to and another 26 states are implementing data released this past week by the Labor that standard in at least part of the state.

Department. That’s a good sign the midThis higher bar to get benefits has probdle class is feeling better about how much ably pushed some off food stamps, but money is in their piggy banks. experts across the political spectrum say At the same time, the number of Amera better economy is the main cause of the icans on food stamps is dropping rapidly, drop in SNAP usage. according to the latest report from on the As for the middle class, the average U.S. Department of Agriculture, an indiAmerican household has been bumping cation the poor are finally seeing some up spending on entertainment steadily benefits of the recovery too. since 2013. It has now surpassed preFood stamp usage spiked after the crisis levels of spending (at least in nomiGreat Recession when many Americans nal terms), according to the latest data for couldn’t find jobs and struggled to eat.

2016, which the U.S. government released Nearly 48 million people relied on the THE WASHINGTON POST last week.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Pro- SOURCE: SURVEY OF CONSUMER FINANCES Entertainment spending is closely gram (SNAP) in 2013, an all-time high. watched because it’s the fun stuff. People don’t recent months. Two million people left the Since then, businesses have gone on a hiring have to spend on gyms, Netflix or going to a program in the past year alone. spree. As more people get jobs, they are dropfancy new driving range. The fact that they are “In almost every state, a smaller share of the ping out of SNAP, which is exactly what is shelling out more is a good indicator that they population received SNAP in January 2017 than supposed to happen. four years earlier,” wrote Brynne Keith- feel more financially secure.

There were 41.5 million people on food But even in entertainment spending, AmeriJennings, a SNAP expert at the left-leaning stamps in May, the latest month that data is ca’s inequality is evident. Families in the botCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities in a available. tom 20 percent decreased their entertainment recent report.

“SNAP is a program that is designed to help purchases last year, mainly because they endExpect the food stamp numbers to continue people get through difficult times when they ing up paying more for food and rent instead. It to drop. The United States has a record number are not working,” says Robert Doar, a senior was the middle class — those with incomes of job openings, which is forcing employers to fellow at the right-leaning American Enterfrom about $30,000 to $80,000 — who bumped hire workers who don’t have perfect résumés prise Institute and former head of New York up their fun spending. n and qualifications.

City’s public-assistance programs, including It’s also harder for people to get food stamps food stamps, for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. © The Washington Post

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“It’s taken a long time, but more people are working now.”

The number of Americans relying on food stamps is still far higher than before the recession, when fewer than 30 million people were on SNAP. But it’s now at the lowest level since 2010, and the decline has been accelerating in

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 3, No. 47

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

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ON THE COVER Floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey block Interstate 10 on Tuesday in Houston.

Photograph by DAVID J. PHILLIP, Associated Press

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POLITICS

Pentagon chief shows a deft touch

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Mattis has managed to maintain an air of independence without provoking his boss

BY G REG J AFFE AND D AN L AMOTHE

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way from the cameras and apart from the nonstop drama of the White House, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has come to play a role unlike any other Cabinet member.

The retired Marine general has become a force for calm, order and, in the eyes of the president’s critics, quiet resistance to some of President Trump’s most combative and divisive instincts.

In perhaps his greatest political feat, Mattis has maintained

this air of independence without directly provoking a president who demands absolute loyalty.

The latest example came Wednesday morning when Trump vented his frustrations with North Korea after its latest missile launch.

“Talking is not the answer!”

Trump tweeted only a few hours before Mattis met at the Pentagon with Song Young-moo, South Korea’s defense minister, and delivered a very different message to reporters.

“We’re never out of diplomatic solutions,” Mattis said.

On Tuesday night, Mattis seemed again to be in mitigation mode when he announced that he would be pulling together a “panel of experts” to provide advice on how to implement Trump’s ordered ban on transgender troops.

Trump announced the ban in July in a series of tweets that caught the military’s top brass largely by surprise. By contrast, Mattis’s statement promised an exhaustive study and also seemed to leave the door open to allowing some transgender troops who are serving to stay in uniform.

Perhaps the most striking ex-

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, seen last month, has become a force for calm and order in the Trump administration.

ample of Mattis’s inclination to tamp down deep political divisions came in the wake of the recent violence in Charlottesville.

Mattis was recorded in a video uploaded to Facebook speaking off the cuff to a small group of American troops in Jordan. “Our country, right now, it’s got problems that we don’t have in the military,” Mattis told them. “You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”

The comments were interpreted by some as a critique of

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MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS

Trump’s leadership.

Mattis and his top advisers blanch at suggestions that he is resisting the wishes of his commander in chief. As defense secretary, Mattis has steered away from the public spotlight, avoiding Pentagon news conferences and oncamera interviews. And he has expressed frustration with those who scrutinize his remarks for signs of disagreement with Trump.

In his often terse public statements, the defense secretary has repeatedly noted that he is not the ultimate decision-maker on matters of military or foreign policy.

“The American people elected the commander in chief,” Mattis said after Trump’s tweets on the new transgender policy. “They didn’t elect me. . . . He has that authority and responsibility. So that was fully within his responsibility.”

Mattis is far from the only senior Trump administration official who has seemed to be at odds with the president of late. Secretary of

State Rex Tillerson and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn both distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks after the Charlottesville violence for their failure to unequivocally condemn hate groups.

“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson said coolly of Trump’s public statements. Tillerson’s and Cohn’s comments fueled new tensions with the White House and fed speculation that they could soon be gone from the administration.

But Mattis’s deft political touch has surprised many who watched him fall out of favor with the Obama White House. As a fourstar general, Mattis pushed for the Obama administration to take a harder line against Iran’s destabilizing behavior in places such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Ultimately, his aggressive style alienated the White House and the president he was serving.

In the Trump administration he has managed to press his dif-

ferences without provoking a backlash.

In many instances, his opposing view seems shaped by his more than four decades of military service in the Marine Corps than any overt political disagreement with the president.

Some analysts speculated, for example, that Mattis’s slow-rolling resistance to Trump’s order on transgender troops may be motivated by a deeply held military bias for consistency and continuity over sudden shifts in policy.

“He’s clearly saying he’s not going to be a political agent of change inside the military,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan and is now a professor at American University.

Others interpreted Mattis’s response as an expression of respect for the oath that transgender troops took to serve.

During his confirmation hearings in January, Mattis offered unflinching support for the serv-

Mattis gave the commencement speech at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., this year.

“You stand the ramparts, unapologetic, apolitical, defending our experiment in selfgovernance.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to graduates of West Point

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ice of gay and transgender troops.

“Frankly, I’ve never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with,” he said in response to a question from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

Even his unscripted remarks to troops in Jordan, which were interpreted by many as a direct rebuke of Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, echoed an alarm Mattis has previously sounded.

This spring, Mattis was asked in a rare interview with New Yorker magazine about his biggest worries in his new job. “The lack of political unity in America,” Mattis replied. “The lack of fundamental friendliness.”

He sounded a similar theme in a commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. “For those privileged to wear the cloth of our nation, to serve in the United States Army, you stand the ramparts, unapologetic, apolitical, defending our experiment in self-governance — and you hold the line,” he told the graduates.

Mattis’s public worries about the state of political debate in the United States and the climate of divisiveness reflect a long-standing concern of the military. Political infighting has stymied efforts to produce a long-term budget plan for the Pentagon that Democrats and Republicans have described as essential.

“It’s incredibly frustrating to the military that we can’t put aside our political differences for the greater good of the country,” said Kathleen H. Hicks, a top Pentagon official in the Obama administration. “They don’t understand it.”

In Mattis’s recent call for the military to “hold the line” until the country comes to its senses, Hicks heard a common refrain.

“It’s what they all say to each other to pep themselves up,” she said of the military brass.

Other analysts heard in the statement something darker — a fundamental disconnect between the tight-lipped Pentagon chief and his president.

“I think Mattis is a profoundly decent guy working for a profoundly indecent guy,” said Eliot Cohen, a top official in the George W. Bush administration. “That sets up a conflict. . . . The psychic tension has to be acute.” n © The Washington Post

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POLITICS

Democrats walk line in Trump states M IKE D E B ONIS Winchester, Ind. BY

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he worker’s message for Sen. Joe Donnelly was blunt: “President Trump, I think, has got a long road ahead of him,” he said, “and I hope you can back him on some things, because I think he has the country’s best interest at heart.”

Donnelly assured the man that he is working with Trump on creating jobs and combating opioid abuse. Looking out on the construction of a railroad underpass in this rural town, he said, “Anywhere we’ve got some common-sense stuff, count me in.”

“I hope so,” said the worker, who declined to give his name to a reporter. “Because if not, then I’m going to be voting for someone else.”

It’s a message that Donnelly, a burly Indiana Democrat, is hearing a lot. And it’s one that he and other Democrats seeking reelection next year in states that Trump won are responding to in a way that puts them at odds with the leadership and base of their own party: by promising to work with this president.

Donnelly is one of 10 such Democratic senators — and one of five in states where Trump’s margin entered the double digits. (In Indiana, Trump won by 19 points.) They face a seemingly impossible challenge: to appeal to Trump voters while retaining the support of anti-Trump Democrats. They must do so not only for their own political futures but also for their party to win back control of the Senate and compete in states rich with the white working-class voters who drifted to Trump in 2016.

Key congressional forecasters consider Donnelly’s race a tossup, even without a clear Republican opponent. The same goes for the races of Democratic senators in Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, West Virginia and other states — all caught between their constituents’ support for Trump and a national Democratic brand increasingly centered on resistance to the president.

DON KNIGHT/THE HERALD-BULLETIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Indiana’s Joe Donnelly casts himself as ‘common sense’ senator and vows to work with president It’s a delicate dance for many of them. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) described her approach at a recent town hall: “My job isn’t to fight the president. My job is to fight for you.” And it was on full display recently as Donnelly kicked off his reelection campaign, touring the state in an Indiana-built RV. At the highway project, Donnelly basked in the praise of the local mayor, who said that if the senator hadn’t made a phone call to the railroad, the project might still be tangled in red tape.

That’s the kind of prudent, results-oriented governing Donnelly ran on when he pulled off his unlikely 2012 victory, and it’s the image he hopes voters will have in mind when they cast their ballots next year. But he is frequently reminded that his reelection isn’t just going to be about roads and bridges.

A few hours before inspecting

the underpass, Donnelly rose in a union hall in the factory burg of Anderson and denounced the violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville — and, by implication, the president’s tepid response to it.

“There is no place for white supremacy, for neo-Nazis, for KKK in the United States of America,” Donnelly declared to a standing ovation. He later told reporters that Trump’s remarks were “way off the mark” and that he hoped the president “might choose his words more wisely on those types of issues.”

That’s as far as Donnelly went — and he otherwise steered clear of open conflict with Trump, touting instead his own bipartisan initiatives to crack down on corporate outsourcing, address the opioid epidemic and beef up military readiness and services for veterans.

In an interview, Donnelly re-

Sen. Joe Donnelly (DInd.) greets Rebecca Crumes on Aug. 21 in a union hall in Anderson, Ind., at the start of his reelection campaign.

Donnelly is one of several Democratic senators trying to appeal to President Trump voters while retaining the support of anti-Trump Democrats.

layed what he’s heard from Indiana voters over the past eight months: “ ‘Be with him, and don’t try to give him a hard time just because he’s the president.’ That’s pretty universal.”

As much as any congressional Democrat, Donnelly has complied with those wishes. He has voted for more Trump Cabinet nominees than all but four other Democratic senators and was one of three Democrats to vote to confirm Neil M. Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice. He also has sided with Republicans on some efforts to overturn environmental regulations.

Donnelly has kept his Washington profile low, ignoring reporters in the Capitol hallways and eschewing the cable news circuit, preferring instead a robust schedule of local TV and radio appearances back in Indiana.

But he also has been a team player for Democrats on most key issues — including preserving the Affordable Care Act. And that gives GOP leaders in both Washington and Indiana what they claim is a clear path to reclaiming his seat in 2018 by tying him to the national party.

“We know the Trump voters, and they are not Donnelly voters,” said Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. “The reality is, he’s not supportive of the president, and voters in Indiana are going to know that.”

Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita are giving up their safe House seats to take on Donnelly, and five other Republicans have also declared their candidacies.

Donnelly’s air of vulnerability is partially rooted in the circumstances of his 2012 victory. He won comfortably against Republican Richard Mourdock, the incumbent state treasurer, whose campaign imploded after he suggested in a debate that a pregnancy resulting from a rape was “something that God intended to happen.”

But political observers in Indiana say it would be a mistake to dismiss Donnelly’s victory. They credited a skillful campaign that positioned the Democrat as a

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POLITICS bipartisan problem-solver — including TV spots where he literally stood in the middle of a road to play up his centrist outlook. Current public polling is scarce, but strategists cite past surveys and anecdotal evidence indicating Donnelly has built a genuine bipartisan following.

Donnelly’s message is wellcalibrated to a state that is 85 percent white and has seen a decline in low-skill manufacturing jobs, and where three-quarters of the population has no more than a high school degree. It involves a major focus on the effects of foreign trade, highlighting his work on the Armed Services and Agriculture committees, and a hefty dose of reverence for service members and veterans.

In Winchester, he visited a facility for homeless veterans, where he pressed administrators and local officials on how the federal government could do more to help them and quizzed its residents on the challenges they faced.

Greg Beumer, a Republican state lawmaker, attended the event and had little ill to say about Donnelly. Many Republicans were “scratching their heads,” he said, at why Messer and Rokita would risk safe seats to take on Donnelly, “who by and large has done a very good job of being that moderate voice in the Senate.”

Donnelly has been most outspoken on economic issues, introducing an End Outsourcing Act and waging war against Carrier Corp.’s decision to move hundreds of jobs from an Indianapolis furnace factory to Mexico — a crusade that Trump later joined.

For now, it is Trump that appears to weigh heavily on many Hoosiers’ minds. Kaye Whitehead, a farmer and former Republican county party chairman, attended a Donnelly campaign event on a Hartford City farm to hear his thoughts on the upcoming farm bill — and on Trump.

Whitehead said afterward that she was willing to give Donnelly a chance. But she said she would be watching closely, with a particular eye on health care and taxes.

“There’s a lot of issues on the table that the senator will have to vote for or against, and I’m interested in seeing how he proceeds.” n ©The Washington Post

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In this swing state, GOP candidates run from Ryan BY

D AVID W EIGEL

“D

o you plan to vote against Paul D. Ryan continuing his speakership?”

It was an easy-sounding question, asked at the end of a friendly Republican candidate forum at Minnesota’s state fair. To the pleasant surprise of Democrats, four of five Republicans seeking to flip House seats next year declined to support the speaker of the House, offering instead criticisms of Ryan’s leadership.

“He’s going in the wrong direction,” said state Rep. Tim Miller.

“I would prefer someone else,” said pilot Dave Hughes.

“We’ll see who runs for speaker,” said businessman Jim Hagedorn.

“He might not even run for speaker,” said St. Louis County Commissioner Pete Stauber.

Republicans, who plan to make the unpopularity of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi a key campaign issue in the 2018 midterms, remain confident that the “speaker” question breaks their way. Asked about the Minnesota video, which was recorded on Monday, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Jesse Hunt pointed out (twice) that Pelosi’s negative image helped Republicans win 2017’s four competitive special elections.

A Ryan-allied super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), also plowed millions of dollars into three of those races.

“Nancy Pelosi’s team appears quite concerned about her current political standing — but who can blame them after four more losses under their belt?” Hunt asked.

“Speaker Ryan has been instrumental in the passage of key House legislative items and the successful election of four new Republican members in 2017.”

Public polling, however, has seen Ryan’s favorable rating and approval rating tumble since the start of the Trump presidency. According to HuffPost’s poll tracker, Ryan’s approval rating was barely

unfavorable, 35/41, the week of Trump’s inauguration. Today, it’s unfavorable by close to 20 points, 30/49; Pelosi’s rating is 29/49. A Bloomberg poll, conducted shortly before the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed in the Senate, found 61 percent of Republicans approve of Ryan, with every other voting bloc viewing him negatively.

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has seen his poll numbers dive.

“His numbers are no better than mine,” Pelosi said after Democrats lost a special election in Georgia’s 6th District.

Republicans remain confident that Pelosi, who after Hillary Clinton’s defeat has become the focus of most negative conservative ads, is far more polarizing than Ryan.

The reluctance on display in Minnesota came from candidates running in three of the cycle’s 11 Trump/Democrat districts — places where 2016 voters broke Republican for president but sent a Democrat to Congress. Trump’s surge among rural whites nearly took out Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), whose 1st District in the southern part of the state backed Barack Obama by 1.4 points, then backed Trump by 14.9 points.

Hagedorn, who was nearly elected by that swing, was among the candidates who refused to take a stand on Ryan last week. Saying he did not want to alienate any potential supporters, even “Washington Republicans,” he suggested that it was too early to ask candidates who they’d back for speaker.

Walz’s decision to run for governor in 2018 opened up his House seat, and the NRCC has backed Hagedorn over a crowded field of Democrats. The other candidates on the stage in Minnesota are fighting to face Democratic incumbents in the 7th and 8th districts, which Trump won by 30.8 and 15.6 points.

Only one candidate, trucking company owner and 7th District hopeful Matt Prosch, said he would back Ryan for speaker. His rivals, Hughes and Miller, veered between criticism and hope that he could redeem himself.

“We’ve got to have leadership that ensures we do the will of the people,” Miller said. “Whoever that is, I’d support that.” Hughes, who lost to incumbent Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) in 2016, suggested that he was “not impressed” with Ryan and would see who else ran.

Stauber, who has no primary challenger as he seeks to defeat Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.), was just as lukewarm about Ryan.

“When I’m in Congress, I’ll let you know, because people can change their views, change their ways,” he said. “People have the ability to change, and I hope he does.”

Answers like that could come back to haunt Republican candidates. In 2016, the CLF and the affiliated American Action Network spent $4.8 million on advertising against Nolan, a resilient campaigner who held on by just 2,072 votes. This year, as the CLF has focused on defending incumbents, it’s made clear that Republicans who buck Ryan won’t get help. That was demonstrated first when Rep. David Young’s (R-Iowa) initial opposition to the ACA repeal effort ended the CLF’s investment in his district.

“Our mission is to ensure that Paul D. Ryan remains speaker after 2018,” CLF executive director Corry Bliss said. “Obviously in allocating resources to accomplish that goal, CLF will prioritize friends and family first.” n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

A weed killer is devastating farms C AITLIN D EWEY Blytheville, Ark. BY

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lay Mayes slams on the brakes of his Chevy Silverado and jumps out with the engine running, yelling at a dogwood by the side of the dirt road as if it had said something insulting.

Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It’s the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.

“This is crazy. Crazy!” shouts Mayes, a farm manager, gesticulating toward the shriveled canopy off Highway 61. “I just think if this keeps going on . . .”

“Everything’ll be dead,” says Brian Smith, his passenger.

The damage here in northeast Arkansas and across the Midwest — sickly soybeans, trees and other crops — has become emblematic of a deepening crisis in U.S. agriculture.

Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers.

The dicamba system, approved for use this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide — used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba- resistant soybean — promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers.

The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics say that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.

Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system worked as Congress designed it.

The backlash against dicamba has spurred lawsuits, state and federal investigations, and one argument that ended in a farmer’s

ANDREA MORALES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Dicamba was supposed to be save soybeans, but critics say there was insufficient testing shooting death and related murder charges.

“This should be a wake-up call,” said David Mortensen, a weed scientist at Pennsylvania State University.

Herbicide-resistant weeds are thought to cost U.S. agriculture millions of dollars per year in lost crops.

After the Environmental Protection Agency approved the updated formulation of the herbicide for use this spring and summer, farmers across the country planted more than 20 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans, according to Monsanto.

But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it “volatilizes,” or re-vaporizes and travels to other fields. That harms nearby trees, such as the dogwood outside Blytheville, as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.

According to a 2004 assessment, dicamba is 75 to 400 times

more dangerous to off-target plants than the common weed killer glyphosate, even at very low doses. It is particularly toxic to soybeans — the very crop it was designed to protect — that haven’t been modified for resistance.

Kevin Bradley, a University of Missouri researcher, estimates that more than 3.1 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba in at least 16 states, including major producers such as Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. That figure is probably low, according to researchers, and it represents almost 4 percent of all U.S. soybean acres.

“It’s really hard to get a handle on how widespread the damage is,” said Bob Hartzler, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that [dicamba] is not manageable.”

The dicamba crisis comes on top of lower-than-forecast soybean prices and 14 straight quarters of declining farm income. The

Brad Rose looks at rows of soybean plants that show signs of having been affected by dicamba, a weed killer, even though he doesn’t use it on his crops.

He thinks the chemical had to drift about two miles to reach his crops.

pressures on farmers are intense.

One Arkansas man is facing murder charges after he shot a farmer who had come to confront him about dicamba drift, according to law enforcement officials.

The new formulations of dicamba were approved on the promise that they were less risky and volatile than earlier versions.

Critics say that the approval process proceeded without adequate data and under enormous pressure from state agriculture departments, industry groups and farmers associations. Those groups said that farmers desperately needed the new herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients.

The new dicamba formulations were supposed to attack those resistant weeds without floating to other fields. But during a July 29 call with EPA officials, a dozen state weed scientists expressed unanimous concern that dicamba is more volatile than manufacturers have indicated, according to several scientists on the call. Field tests by researchers at the Universities of Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas have since found that the new dicamba herbicides can volatilize and float to other fields as long as 72 hours after application.

The EPA and chemical manufacturers deny that there was anything amiss in the dicamba approval process.

Some critics of chemicalintensive agriculture have begun to see the crisis as a parable — and a prediction — for the future of farming in the United States. Scott Faber, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, said farmers have become “trapped on a chemical treadmill” driven by the biotech industry.

“We’re on a road to nowhere,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The next story is resistance to a third chemical, and then a fourth chemical — you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see where that will end.” n © The Washington Post

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Crashes prompt look at Navy duties

BY A LEX T HOMAS

H ORTON AND G IBBONS- N EFF

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onstant deployments, a shrinking number of ships and high demands on crews have frayed the U.S. Navy, according to naval experts and current and former Navy officers, leading to four major incidents at sea this year and the deaths of 17 sailors.

The collision of the USS John S. McCain and an oil tanker on Aug. 21 — which left 10 sailors dead — was the culmination of more than a decade of nonstop naval operations that has exhausted the service.

Government reports, congressional probes and internal concerns have all pointed to systemic problems related to long deployments, deferred maintenance and shortened training periods within the Navy’s surface fleet that seem to have coalesced in the Pacific, specifically at the Japanbased 7th Fleet.

Bryan McGrath, a former destroyer commander and deputy director of the Center of American Seapower at the Hudson Institute, said there’s no “silver bullet” for the Navy’s issues and that for the past 15 years, the surface fleet has been in decline.

“The biggest problem is that the Navy recognized this and started to make changes, but at the same time the operational requirements became more pressurized,” he said. “The Pacific fleet has really been pressurized in a way that has harmed the surface forces’ proficiency in very basic things.”

In January, the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay, leading to the commander’s dismissal. In May, the cruiser USS Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing boat. And roughly a month later, the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship in the approach to Tokyo Bay. Seven sailors died and the destroyer’s commanding and executive officers were relieved.

The combined death toll eclipses the number of battlefield casu-

CALVIN WONG/REUTERS

Grinding demands on the Pacific Fleet can have an adverse effect on safety, former officers say alties in Afghanistan this year, which stand at 11.

In a written message to his officers, Adm. Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, pointed out that the rash of incidents occurred during “the most basic of operations.”

“History has shown that continuous operations over time causes basic skills to atrophy and in some cases gives commands a false sense of their overall readiness,” he wrote after the McCain collision.

After that accident, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson ordered a 24-hour stand down and a fleetwide review of training and seamanship, including a separate probe evaluating Pacific operations.

The Antietam, McCain and Fitzgerald are all in the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, raising questions over whether there are particular problems in that command. The 7th Fleet is responsible for 48 million square miles in

the Pacific and Indian oceans, the Navy said. Swift also dismissed its commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin.

The spate of accidents also comes amid the Pentagon’s shifting of forces to the Pacific, where it will permanently station 60 percent of its naval and combat air power assets. The Trump administration is also considering plans to expand the Navy to 350 ships. There are currently 276 deployable ships on Navy rolls.

The Navy has been strained by fewer ships taking on more missions. A 2015 study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that deployed ships remained at a constant level of 100 between 1998 and 2014, even though the fleet shrank by about 20 percent.

An inflection point appears to have been the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and ramped-up operations across the Middle East and North Africa. In 1998, about 60 percent of ships were at sea at any

Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, appears at a news conference near the damaged USS John S. McCain at Changi Naval Base in Singapore last month after it collided with an oil tanker, leaving 10 sailors dead.

one time. That number peaked at 86 percent in 2009.

Pressure on the fleets decreased by 2015, yet the Navy still had three-quarters of operational ships constantly deployed as maintenance and fundamental skills such as navigation and shipto-ship communication wilted, the report’s authors said.

The Navy’s missions in the Pacific to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea as well as ramped up patrols and cruises to guard against North Korean attacks have utilized destroyers like the McCain and the Fitzgerald as centerpiece warships, said Ridzwan Rahmat, a defense analyst with IHS Jane’s and an expert on naval operations in Asia.

“This particular platform is being stretched in terms of capability and crew,” he said.

A dearth of ships is felt more sharply in the Pacific, where deployments are more frequent and strenuous than other seas, said Rob McFall, a former Navy officer who served as the operations officer for the Fitzgerald until 2014.

Typical deployments for stateside ships occur in predictable two-year cycles, with about six months underway and 18 months of maintenance, training and workups, McFall said.

The cycle is more unforgiving in the Pacific. Deployments vary on mission, but a common routine is three months out, six months in port as the mission to reassure regional allies balloons in importance, McFall said.

Time in a home port is often overshadowed by nearby adversaries.

“For those six months you’re on a tether. You’re always on call, in range and operational,” he said.

The grind has not been lost on the Navy, which has long understood exhaustion can spiral into fatal mistakes.

“Fatigue has measurable negative effects on readiness, effectiveness and safety,” Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden, commander of Naval Surface Force Pacific, told the fleet last year. n ©The Washington Post

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In Britain, a rise in acid attacks

BY K ARLA A DAM AND W ILLIAM B OOTH

London

J

abed Hussain said he was really lucky. The delivery driver was one of the latest victims in an alarming surge of acid attacks in Britain.

He was still trembling when he said, “But they didn’t get my face.

They didn’t ruin me.”

Attacks by people throwing acid at their victims have tripled in the past three years in Britain, stoking fears that almost anyone can be the victim — from a moped rider to the city banker or politician.

The alarming rise comes amid a clampdown on weapons and fears of a frightening new crime fad involving teenage motorbike thieves using corrosive substances, in part because they are relatively easy to obtain.

Hussain, 30, was riding his three-wheel scooter, stopped at a traffic light in East London last month, when he felt what he thought was water doused on him by a pair of faceless teenagers in wraparound helmets, mounted on a motorbike beside him.

“Then I started to feel the burning, and I knew instantly what it was,” Hussain said. “Because this is what we are all fearing.”

He ripped off his helmet and began clawing at his clothing. His assailants stole his bike and sped away, as Hussain begged passing motorists for help.

“I must have looked like a mad man,” Hussain said.

The United Kingdom is a safe country, but the spike in acid attacks is clearly unnerving — when a possible assailant is anyone with a bottle of bleach, ammonia or drain cleaner.

“Because it is not like seeing a gun or a knife,” said Rachel Kearton, Assistant Chief Constable of the Suffolk Police, the National Police Chief Council’s top investigator on corrosive attacks.

“Because the intent is to maim and disfigure,” Kearton said.

According to the London Metropolitan Police and regional police chiefs, there were more than 700 acid attacks last year, double

REX FEATURES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

As authorities clamp down on weapons, criminals are turning to a frightening new threat the number in 2015.

Kearton told The Washington Post it appears likely that acid attack numbers will increase by another 50 percent this year.

Police chiefs say there isn’t a single motive behind the attacks but acknowledge that gangs and robberies seem to be playing a part. Some of the attackers are only teenagers — of those whose ages are known, 21 percent are under the age of 18. The most common corrosive liquids are bleach, ammonia and acid.

According to leaders in London’s City Hall, “many recent acid attacks are connected to violent and aggressive organized scooter theft.” In a recent statement, they said “this is particularly frightening for people who ride scooters in London.”

Scooter drivers have staged a number of protests to highlight their concerns about being doused with acid in attempted bike robberies.

Police, victims and the gang members agree — there is just something terrifying about being splashed with acid.

Late last year, a London business executive named Gina Miller took the British government to court to decide if it could trigger Brexit, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, without parliamentary approval.

Since then, Miller said she’s been living in fear someone will attack her.

“I have been getting threats of having acid thrown in my face for months and months now. When I see someone walk toward me on the street with a bottle of water or something, I just freak out,” she told Verdict magazine.

Ohid Ahmed, a councilor from Jabed Hussain’s East London neighborhood, said while acid was certainly the latest weapon of choice for assailants, there was something deeper going on.

“If you want to steal a moped,

Two victims of an apparent acid attack have water poured on their heads by a fireman on the side of the road in London in July. There were more than 700 acid attacks in the United Kingdom last year, double the number in 2015.

you can steal a moped,” he said.

The criminal can use a hammer, a knife or his fists, he said. “But throwing acid is a hate crime,” Ahmed said.

You are seeking to destroy your victim, he said.

Some places are taking extra precautions. Last month, officials in some court buildings began asking anyone entering a court with a water bottle — visitors, judges, lawyers — to take a “sip test” to prove their liquid isn’t acid.

Britain is “near the top, or the top of the pack globally,” when it comes to reported attacks, said Jaf Shah, executive director of Acid Survivors Trust International, a London-based nonprofit. He said other countries, including India, probably have far more attacks, but they remain unreported.

The U.K. is unusual in that so many of the attacks are against men. In many other countries, women and girls are disproportionately affected with spurned men or jilted suitors dousing former wives or girlfriends in the hope of disfiguring them for life.

By contrast, Shah said, twothirds of the victims in the U.K. are men. Campaigners say the rise in attacks could be linked to a clampdown on weapons.

In 2015, a “two strikes” rule was introduced so those convicted of carrying a knife for the second time received a mandatory sixmonth prison sentence.

Shah said for some gang members it’s possible acid is becoming “the weapon of choice” because it’s now seen as a “safe crime to commit because you can’t be charged for carrying acid, only charged if police can prove intent.”

The British government is reviewing its guidelines to see if police and prosecutors have the powers they need and if new restrictions will be placed on retailers who sell corrosive liquids.

“We have seen acid used in cases of gang violence, drug trafficking, domestic abuse and so-called honour-based violence,” the Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote in the Sunday Times. “We can and will improve our response.” n © The Washington Post

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Vietnamese wonder who’s in control V INCENT B EVINS Hanoi BY

C

itizens of Vietnam have developed an unusual national pastime: Across the country and on social networks, people trade suspicions that their government is secretly giving in to an aggressive China.

And lately, there has been plenty of fuel for their rumors.

Some blame a visibly diminished U.S. presence for giving Beijing an opportunity to act behind the scenes. Many blame officials in Hanoi for putting economic cooperation or alleged communist solidarity above questions of national pride. In July, when a valuable project overseen by the Spanish oil company Repsol was suspended without explanation, both theories abounded.

“Is Trump weak, so therefore China is getting stronger? Maybe,” said Dung Nguyen, a small-business owner in Hanoi who often deals with foreign countries, including China. “People even worry in the future we could have another war with China. It’s all very scary.”

But with Vietnam’s closed political system keeping diplomatic machinations a secret, most people — even experts, by their own admission — simply don’t know what’s happening, providing the perfect atmosphere for wild speculation.

“We don’t really know what’s going on,” Nguyen said. “Now that everyone is online, we’ve realized that our [state] media wasn’t telling the whole truth, but we don’t have access to that whole truth, either.”

Domestically, China is one of the most sensitive issues for Vietnam’s otherwise stable communist government. Much of the country’s small dissident community attacks the Communist Party on this issue, and perceived weakness regarding Beijing is often seen as its most vulnerable point — more so than calls for democracy, expanded human rights or even the need to maintain economic growth.

Vietnam is a pillar of opposition

HOANG DINH NAM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Hanoi stands up to Beijing publicly but rumors run wild about what’s really happening in private to Beijing — at least in public view.

Of the 10 countries in the ASEAN trade bloc of Southeast Asian nations, which has drifted in a proChina direction since President Trump took office, Vietnam is the last member openly pushing for a tougher stance on China’s expansion in the South China Sea — called the East Sea in Vietnam.

Though many countries express private concerns, Hanoi is now publicly isolated on the issue of using international law to push back against China.

At an ASEAN forum in Manila last month, not long after news broke of the drilling-project suspension, Vietnam reaffirmed its public opposition to Beijing. The United States, meanwhile, played a reduced role, said Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at Manila’s De La Salle University.

For those in the region opposing Chinese expansion, Heydarian said: “Trump has not been very helpful. We have seen a dramatic collapse in confidence in Ameri-

can leadership in Asia. Tillerson didn’t look like he was representing the superpower [at the forum].

He looked more like the representative of a second-tier power, and everyone here knows he is besieged at home.”

Vietnam and China have a centuries-long history of strife, which has continued well into the modern era. Though China did support North Vietnam in its war against the United States, the last war Vietnam fought was with its large neighbor to the north, when China invaded in 1979. Vietnam’s battle-hardened troops surprising Beijing by pushing Chinese forces back, and sporadic clashes continued until a formal peace in 1990.

Vietnam’s fierce rivalry with China often exceeds any lingering resentment against the United States, which is now seen as a crucial counterweight to Beijing’s ambitions. Yet the suspending of the Repsol drilling project in the South China Sea has provided wary Vietnamese with a reason to believe their government is capit-

Because Vietnam’s closed political system keeps diplomatic machinations secret, most Vietnamese citizens don’t know what’s happening.

ulating behind the scenes. Neither the Spanish company nor the Vietnamese government has offered an explanation for suspending offshore activities.

“There are so many rumors swirling around Repsol, as there always are when it comes to China and Vietnam. But there doesn’t appear to be any reason to do what they did other than pressure from Beijing,” said a prominent member of the international business community who frequently interacts with representatives of the three countries involved and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly speak about political matters.

If Vietnam did privately back down, he said, it has not been left with much choice since Trump took office. “The U.S. really left Vietnam at the altar when it canceled TPP. What are they supposed to do?” he asked, referring to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal that included Vietnam and excluded China. Trump had slammed the deal as a job-killer during the presidential campaign, and he withdrew from the pact just days after taking office.

Another theory is China threatened military action if Vietnam did not capitulate. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte — not always a reliable narrator — has said Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned the possibility to him, lending some credibility to the theory. But experts point out war would be disastrous for China’s strategy of persuading neighbors to view Beijing as a font of benevolent stability.

Or the move might simply have been a tactical maneuver by Vietnam. “I think perhaps this is just a short-term withdrawal, as they are waiting for a less difficult geopolitical moment,” said Hoang Viet, a professor of maritime law at Ho Chi Minh City University.

“Maybe China is just too big. All we can really do is deal with them as sensitively as possible,” said Le Dinh Toan, an intellectual property researcher. “Maybe we have to accept we are lesser.” n © The Washington Post

COVER STORY

Water from Addicks Reservoir flows into neighborhoods as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017, in Houston. (AP Photo/ David J. Phillip)

A city submerged

BY SHAWN BOBURG AND BETH REINHARD

H

ouston calls itself “the city with no limits” to convey the promise of boundless opportunity. But it also is the largest U.S. city to have no zoning laws, part of a hands-off approach to urban planning that may have contributed to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey and left thousands of residents in harm’s way.

Growth that is virtually unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s already-limited natural ability to absorb water, according to environmentalists and experts in land use and natural disasters. And the city’s drainage system — a network of reservoirs, bayous and, as a last resort, roads that hold and drain water — was not designed to handle the massive storms that are increasingly common.

Certainly, the record-shattering rainfall on Houston and its surrounding area last week would have wreaked havoc even if stricter building limits and better runoff systems were in place. And local officials have defended the city’s approach to development.

But the unfolding disaster — a death toll that keeps rising as bodies are found and much of Harris County, which includes Houston, flooded — is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston’s approach to city planning and its system for managing floodwater.

“You would have seen widespread damage with Flooding from Harvey no matter what, but Hurricane I have no doubt it could Harvey have been substantially reinundated duced,” said Jim Blackburn, Houston this co-director of Rice Univerpast week. sity’s research center on severe storm prediction and disaster evacuation.

Over many years, officials in Houston and Harris County have resisted calls for more stringent building codes. Proposals for large-scale flood-control projects envisioned in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008 stalled. City residents have voted three times not to enact a zoning code, most recently in 1993.

Rather than impose restrictions on what property owners can do with their land, Houston has attempted to engineer a solution to drainage. continues on next page

DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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from previous page

The region depends on a network of bayous — slow-moving streams that run east into Galveston Bay — and concrete channels as the main drainage system. Streets and detention ponds are designed to carry and hold the overflow.

In previous public comments, the leaders of the Harris County Flood Control District have rejected the idea that the city’s growth is responsible for massive flooding. They also have disputed the scientific assessments. Those officials were not available this past week.

Bill St. John, a retired civil engineer and former project manager for the district, said in an interview: “There are people who would turn around and say there needed to be stronger rules and regulations. And in hindsight, it’s real easy to say that. But the rules and regulations were what they needed to be at the time.

There was no scientific proof it needed to be stronger at the time, so it wasn’t.”

But in a city built on a low-lying coastal plain, on “black gumbo,” clay-based soil that is among the least absorbent in the nation, many experts say those approaches no longer suffice. They say that new homes should be elevated and that construction should be prohibited in some flood-prone areas.

Since 2010, at least 7,000 residential buildings have been constructed in Harris County on properties that sit mostly on land the federal government has designated as a 100-year flood plain, according to a Washington Post review of areas at the greatest risk of flooding. Some other cities also allow building in flood plains, with varying degrees of regulation.

“Houston is the Wild West of development, so any mention of regulation creates a hostile reaction from people who see that as an infringement on property rights and a deterrent to economic growth,” said Sam Brody, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A&M University. “The stormwater system has never been designed for anything much stronger than a heavy afternoon thunderstorm.”

At the same time, severe storms are becoming more frequent, experts said. The city’s building laws are designed to guard against what was once considered a worst-case scenario — a 100-year storm, or one that planners projected would have only a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year. Those storms have become quite common, however. Harvey, which dumped up to 50 inches of rain in some places as of Tuesday afternoon, is the third such storm to hit Houston in the past three years.

In May 2015, seven people died after 12 inches of rain fell in 10 hours during what is known as the Memorial Day Flood. Eight people died in April 2016 during a storm that dropped 17 inches of rain.

Like other coastal areas, Houston and its surrounding areas have repeatedly turned to federal taxpayers for help rebuilding.

Harris County has received about $3 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for losses in the past four decades, federal data show. It ranks third in the amount paid by the National Flood Insurance Program,

Greater Houston has added a lot of concrete Greater Houston has added aAdded lot from of concrete IMPERMEABLE SURFACES As of 2011 1996 to 2010 IMPERMEABLE SURFACES

As of 2011

Added from 1996 to 2010

Lake Houston Lake Houston

HOUSTON HOUSTON

Galveston Bay Galveston Bay 10 MILES 10 MILES

And the city is built on some of the nation’s And the city is built on some of the nation’s least absorbent soils least absorbent soils PERMEABILITY RATING OF SOIL, 1995 PERMEABILITY RATING OF SOIL, 1995 0.1 or less Over 1 0.1 or less Over 1 Seattle Seattle

Chicago Chicago

San Francisco San Francisco Los Angeles Los Angeles

Sources: U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA Sources: U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA

Washington Washington Atlanta Atlanta

Dallas Dallas

Houston Houston

Boston Boston New York New York

New Orleans New Orleans

Miami Miami

REUBEN FISCHER-BAUM/THE WASHINGTON POST REUBEN FISCHER-BAUM/THE WASHINGTON POST

behind Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana, which sustained significant damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In the 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers built two massive reservoirs that serve as holding areas during big downpours. In the following decades, the city carved out additional concrete channels and lined bayous with pavement to shunt water away.

“The system is dependent on bayous that have been there forever and had a certain

capacity,” said Gerry Galloway, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Maryland and a visiting professor at Texas A&M. “Over the years, that was probably a reasonable way to deal with this. As the city grew, and there was more development, there was less and less capacity to carry the runoff.”

Houston’s population climbed to 2.2 million in 2015, a 25 percent increase from 1995. Harris County had an even bigger bump over that time, 42 percent, and now has 4.5 million residents. As the population grew, the city expanded, covering fallow land that had served as a natural sponge.

Between 1992 and 2010, 30 percent of the surrounding county’s coastal prairie wetlands were paved over, according to a 2010 report from Texas A&M. Projects to widen the bayous and build thousands of retention ponds for excess water have not kept pace with the new rooftops, roadways and parking lots needed to accommodate about 150,000 new residents a year, experts say.

As a backup, roads were built below grade and designed to take on excess water when storm drains overflow.

“The philosophy was: Wouldn’t you rather have water in the street than in your house?” said D. Wayne Klotz, a water resources engineer and senior principal at RPS Klotz Associates and a former national president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

When the streets fill up, though, evacuation becomes more difficult.

In the days before Harvey struck, city officials urged residents to stay put. On social media, local officials knocked down predictions that as many as 50 inches of rain were expected — reports that overstated the forecast at the time but turned out to align more closely with the eventual rainfall.

When the rain came, roads turned into waterways, requiring door-to-door boat rescues.

In many areas of the city, especially the older parts, water that breaches the roadways flows into homes that sit on ground-level slabs.

Blackburn said that requiring higher elevations of homes in flood-prone areas — the current requirement is one foot above the level of a “100-year storm” — would have stemmed the losses from Harvey and past storms.

John Jacob, director of the Texas Coastal Watershed Program and a professor at Texas A&M, said he was particularly incensed to hear about a nursing home in Dickinson, southeast of Houston, where residents in wheelchairs were sitting in waist-deep water. They were rescued after photos of them went viral on social media.

“That should never have been built,” Jacob said of the nursing home that sits across the street from the floodplain boundary. “We’re putting people in harm’s way.”

Jacob lives in a neighborhood east of downtown called Eastwood that he said was spared from flooding damage because many lots are above street level, and homes have been built on “pier and beam” foundations that include a crawl space of a few feet. That adds thousands

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Where Harvey hit worst, 80% lack flood insurance BY

H EATHER L ONG

T LUCIAN PERKINS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

ERICH SCHLEGEL/GETTY IMAGES

of dollars to the cost and isn’t required by city or county building codes.

All of Harris County’s 34 municipalities have their own plans for addressing flooding issues whose causes and solutions extend beyond borders.

“There never has been a comprehensive plan that considered all the area that would affect Houston,” Galloway said.

Last year, the state’s high court dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought by 400 Harris County homeowners who suffered flood damage three times in five years — during Tropical Storm Frances in 1998, Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, and an unnamed storm in 2002.

The county argued in court that it had spent tens of millions of dollars on flood control and disputed the homeowners’ claim that developers had free rein. A majority of the court agreed, saying residents failed to directly link development in one part of the watershed with flooding in their particular homes.

“Even by the homeowners’ reckoning the flooding resulted from multiple causes,” the court found, including “acts of God.” n © The Washington Post

Top, volunteer Dustin Langley helps rescue a family from their apartment in Kingwood, Tex. Police and volunteers banded together with boats to get the flood victims to dry land.

Above, Matthew Koser searches his grandfather’s home in Houston for important papers and heirlooms.

he vast majority of homeowners in the area devastated by Hurricane Harvey lack flood insurance, leaving many who escaped the storm with little financial help to rebuild their homes and lives.

“I wish I had flood insurance now,” lamented Leroy Moore, 58, whose home in northeast Houston filled with water, but who had canceled a policy when it became too expensive for him. He and his wife were rescued from the rising waters last Sunday by National Guard troops and are sleeping in a church. “When it’s a choice to make between things and life, sometimes you’ve just got to let the things go and hang on to life.”

Regular home insurance covers wind damage but not flooding. Homeowners have to purchase separate flood insurance policies from the government-run National Flood Insurance Program, which will end in late September unless Congress renews it. In Texas, the average cost for a NFIP plan is $500 a year, but it can rise to more than $2,000 for homes inside a flood plain.

Only 17 percent of homeowners in the eight counties most directly affected by Harvey have flood insurance policies, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data. When disaster hits, the policies cover up to $250,000 in rebuilding costs and $100,000 to replace personal items such as TVs and furniture.

Everyone else who loses their homes to flooding will be dependent on private charity and government aid, especially grants from FEMA. But FEMA’s assistance is a poor substitute for flood insurance: The grants, intended to help residents rebuild homes and cover hotel stays until permanent housing is available, are capped at $33,300. Most people receive significantly less.

To get a grant, “FEMA has to believe your house is damaged so substantially that there’s no area in your house you can live in,” said Saundra Brown, a lawyer whose home in Houston was flooded. She spoke to The Post while removing drywall to prevent mold. Her advice is to take photos of everything.

President Trump has vowed “very rapid action” to help victims, but aid is usually slow to arrive, particularly in large-scale disasters that strain FEMA’s capacity to inspect and assess damage and then dole out grant money.

Money will be even tighter if Congress doesn’t provide additional emergency funding for Texas soon.

Brown has seen firsthand just how long FEMA can take. She heads the disaster response unit for Lone Star Legal Aid, a group of lawyers that works with low-income clients to help them get FEMA money. Some of her clients fought for months to get aid after smaller storms that deluged Houston in 2015 and 2016.

“It’s not like the government comes in with big buckets of cash and just hands it out,” said Robert Meyer, a professor and co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, which studies natural-disaster response. “People who don’t have insurance may have to abandon their homes.”

Moore and his wife were sitting in First Baptist Church North Houston trying to comprehend how quickly everything they worked for had been ruined by a horrendous storm.

The couple fled the home they’d owned for 32 years with just the clothes on their backs.

Moore, a forklift driver, used to buy flood insurance from the government when it cost $200 a year, but he said the premium rose above $300, so he stopped. His home had never flooded until now.

“I’ve been in Houston all my life. . . . I’ve never seen it like this,” Moore said, looking around the room at so many other families in the same situation.

Losing a home without insurance compensation is financially devastating. A home is the most valuable financial asset many middleclass Americans have. The median home value in Harris County, where Houston is located, is $138,000, according to the Census Bureau. A total loss could delay retirement or force people into bankruptcy. Even if they can rebuild, it’s unlikely that their homes will be worth as much, if they are now marked as flood prone.

Flood insurance for homeowners remains rare, even in places at risk. Legally, homeowners in places that FEMA designates as “high risk” flood areas are supposed to have the insurance, but no one enforces that rule.

Across the country, only 12 percent of homeowners have flood insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The rate is a bit higher in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, but even in those coastal areas, only about 20 percent get it.

“We’ve been arguing for a long time that more people should be purchasing flood insurance, but it’s a difficult product to convince people to buy,” says Tom Santos, vice president of federal affairs for the American Insurance Association. n © The Washington Post

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FOOD

Our need to feed with speed BY

T IM C ARMAN

H

oller & Dash Biscuit House is a small, counterservice chain that has made some big promises to diners: Each location of the biscuit-heavy concept will seek out local ingredients, whether naturally raised birds for a fried chicken sandwich topped with goat cheese and sweet pepper jelly, or locally roasted, single-origin beans for drip coffee.

If Holler & Dash sounds like the latest chef-driven fast-casual concept, you’re right. You’re also wrong.

The budding chain is a subsidiary of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, the company with more than 600 restaurants in 44 states.

Cracker Barrel launched its first Holler & Dash last year in Homewood, Ala., and has since opened four more locations, including in Atlanta. H&D aggressively promotes its two chefs, whose résumés include far more refined — and pricey — restaurants.

Should you be surprised that Cracker Barrel has entered the fast-casual market? Not really.

Even though the chain is faring better than its underperforming peers in the casual-dining sector, Cracker Barrel has its reasons for muscling into the territory dominated by Panera Bread, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches and Chipotle Mexican Grill. For starters, Cracker Barrel sees Holler & Dash as its way to crack the urban market without sacrificing its countrified image.

But more to the point, Cracker Barrel is simply doing what almost everyone else is: watching the continued popularity of the fastcasual industry and wondering whether it should adopt its practices or just join the growing number of counter-service restaurants dedicated to speed, customization, quality ingredients and bargain prices.

Make no mistake: Fast-casuals are influencing and attracting chefs, restaurateurs and executives across the hospitality industry. Fast-food companies are improving their ingredients to stay

SCOTT SUCHMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Fast-casual restaurants are responding to the way we want to eat, and changing the industry competitive, and chefs are abandoning or supplementing their full-service temples for a chance to hit it big in the fastest-growing segment of American dining.

“As a society, we are speeding up and moving toward speed-oriented food, which was fast food,” says Jonathan Maze, senior financial editor for Nation’s Restaurant News. “Now, we go to fast-casual restaurants.”

America, it appears, is no longer a Fast Food Nation. It’s a FastCasual Nation.

What people want Chipotle, Panera, Shake Shack and the like didn’t create the demand for affordable, freshly prepared and high-quality meals delivered at breakneck speed.

“Dual-income families, people having less time, people eating away from home more than ever” inspired the movement, says Brett Schulman, chief executive officer of Cava, the fast-casual based in Washington, D.C. People were

“also demanding higher quality.”

But these pioneers have nurtured the trend to the point where sales at fast-casuals are growing far faster than those at fast-food or full-service restaurants. From 2011 to 2016, fast-casuals saw sales grow between 10 and 11 percent annually, according to market research provider Euromonitor International. By contrast, sales of fast food rose annually in the 3 to 4 percent range, while full-service restaurants saw growth rates between 1.5 and 2 percent.

You don’t have to be Warren Buffett to understand that, with their dining habits, Americans are telling the hospitality industry what they want. And the industry is getting the message.

Chefs and restaurateurs with fine-dining pedigrees have entered the fast-casual trade to try to give the people what they want. In Washington, José Andrés developed the vegetable-forward concept Beefsteak. In New York, David Chang created Fuku, a collection

Employees at Beefsteak, a vegetable-focused fast-casual restaurant from chef José Andrés, put together meals at the original location in Washington, D.C. From 2011 to 2016, fast-casual restaurants saw their sales grow between 10 and 11 percent annually.

of fast-casual shops devoted to chicken. In Chicago, Rick Bayless opened counter-service spots including Tortas Frontera and Frontera Fresco.

These name brands in American gastronomy have their selfinterests in mind, too. The counter-service operations don’t require as much real estate, so rents are cheaper. They don’t need as many experienced hands in the kitchen, a real benefit when talented cooks are hard to find. And fast-casuals don’t usually require a change of menu every season.

Many of these chefs enter the fast-casual business hoping to replicate their concept, perhaps building the next great counterservice empire. Fast-casual veterans have their doubts about that.

“Fine dining and chef-driven restaurants are driven by creativity as well as operations,” says David Strasser, managing director of Swan and Legend Venture Partners, a partner in both Beefsteak and Cava. “Chefs’ core competency is really the theater [of dining], and it’s a very different experience you’re providing your customer.”

The largest and most successful fast-casual chains, Strasser says, are process-driven. They know how to manage complex — and massive — tasks without sacrificing the quality of their food or service. They hire, train and manage staffs in multiple jurisdictions.

They move customers quickly through lines during peak lunch hours. They handle food production and food safety for a vast network of restaurants without, they hope, encountering the kind of contamination outbreaks that have battered Chipotle the past few years.

“I think the key to fast-casual is simplicity,” Strasser adds, “and I think the key to success in finedining is complexity.”

For those reasons, among others, some of the fastest-growing fast-casuals are not chef-driven.

They’re run by people such as Cava’s Schulman, who has a background in finance.

Fast-casuals are also not a fixed concept. If these operations were the first to recognize that Ameri-

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LIFESTYLE cans wanted a new style of restaurant, they must now be the ones to acknowledge that customer behaviors constantly evolve. The California-based Sweetgreen chain now operates more than 70 locations, mostly on the coasts. About four years ago, the company decided to invest heavily in digital technologies, and it has paid off handsomely. About 40 percent of its sales now come from electronic sources such as desktop computers and handheld apps, says Nicolas Jammet, co-founder and cochief executive of Sweetgreen.

Those electronic interactions also help Sweetgreen collect a ton of information about its customers: which stores they frequent, which dishes they order, which ingredients they substitute. “Having all the data helps us be smarter,” Jammet says.

Branding Holler & Dash’s tale is not just about a chef-driven menu or locally sourced ingredients. It’s about creating a brand and culture separate from Cracker Barrel’s.

“When you walk into a Holler and Dash, you don’t know that it’s associated with Cracker Barrel,” says Mike Chissler, chief operating officer. “It would confuse people.”

Buffalo Wild Wings, another casual-dining chain, went the opposite direction with its B-Dubs Express, a fast-casual concept that recently debuted with two locations in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area. B-Dubs is essentially a pared down version of Buffalo Wild Wings, offering a compact menu, some craft beer and a few TVs in a counter-service setting.

With its focus on wings, fries and mini corn dogs, B-Dubs is not exactly investing in healthful menus. Instead, says Todd Kronebusch, vice president of market development for Buffalo Wild Wings, B-Dubs is built for speed.

The start-up’s goal is to have food on the table eight minutes after you place an order. The early results, he adds, are positive.

The B-Dubs experiment is just another variation — the sports bar fast-casual — in a dining movement that already encompasses chef-driven fare, seasonal salads, greasy burgers and gourmet sandwiches. The fast-casual restaurant, it seems, is the venue where all concepts will gradually merge, just as the people wanted. n @The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

For those under 50, there’s worse unhappiness to come BY

C HRISTOPHER I NGRAHAM

“T

his is the worst day of my life,” Bart Simpson complains at one point in the “Simpsons” movie.

“The worst day of your life so far,” Homer gently corrects.

What’s true for Bart is true for most of us under the age of 50 or so, according to a new analysis of life satisfaction encompassing seven massive surveys and 1.3 million randomly sampled people from 51 countries.

Happiness, those surveys show, follows a generalized U-shape over the course of a life: People report high degrees of happiness in their late teens and early 20s.

But as the years roll by, people become more and more miserable, hitting a nadir in life satisfaction sometime around the early 50s.

Happiness rebounds from there into old age and retirement.

The graphic above right is what it looks like when you plot the age-happiness curves from all seven of those surveys.

The shape of the curves, rather than any absolute value, are what’s important here. The surveys asked about happiness in different ways — some framed it in terms of “satisfaction,” while others asked people to rate where they fell between “happy” and “unhappy.” So the absolute values of each line aren’t directly comparable.

Two things stand out: First, the curves all follow the same general U-shaped trajectory. Youth and old age are periods of relative happiness, while middle age is something of a rock bottom. Second, they generally agree that the bottom of that U hits some time in the early 50s.

These similarities are even more remarkable given the differences in the underlying surveys, which were administered in different countries. They include the General Social Survey (54,000 American respondents), the European Social Survey (316,000 respondents in 32 European countries), the Understanding Society

The shape of happiness Relationship between happiness (or life satisfaction) and age across seven major surveys. Note: Trend lines are scaled to a common minimum and maximum range.

Source: Blanchflower and Oswald, 2017

survey (416,000 respondents in Great Britain) and others.

Researchers have been finding evidence of a U-shaped happiness curve for years now. It’s even been observed among apes. The strength of this particular study is in demonstrating how consistent that curve is across a variety of different data sources.

Note that rock bottom in the chart above doesn’t denote absolute misery — people in their 50s still generally rate their life satisfaction in the mid-to-high range, a seven out of 10, for instance, or a 3.5 out of five. But that’s substantially and significantly lower than how people in their late teens or early 20s rate their happiness. The difference between the two — happiness at youth and happiness at middle age — is roughly equivalent to the decline in well-being caused by getting divorced or losing a job, according to the analysis.

These trend lines are all adjusted for other factors known to affect happiness and life satisfaction, like income and health.

“There is much evidence,” the paper’s authors conclude, “that humans experience a midlife psychological ‘low.’ ” The exact causes of this aren’t entirely clear. One common explanation is that in

WAPO.ST/WONKBLOG

wealthy countries like ours, middle age is a particularly stressful time. People in their late 40s and early 50s are often at the peak of their careers (will all the headaches that entails), and many are dealing with unruly adolescent children to boot.

There’s also some disagreement about the universality of the Ushaped happiness curve. Researchers who have teased out country-level trends have found different variations on the curve, particularly among less-wealthy nations. Other researchers have examined longitudinal data, which tracks the same individuals over time, and found evidence for flat or wavy happiness trajectories throughout a lifetime.

Still, the authors of this working paper argue that the evidence they’ve mustered is strong enough that “these kinds of plots of happiness and life satisfaction should be shown — with a discussion of appropriate caveats — to all young psychologists and economists.”

For the rest of us under 50, it may simply be enough to know that even if we’re having a particularly bad day, statistically speaking things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. n © The Washington Post

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BOOKS

A reflection of our shifting desires N ONFICTION

A

WONDERLANDSCAPE Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon

By John Clayton Pegasus. 285 pp. $27.95

l

REVIEWED BY

D ENNIS D RABELLE

s Ken Burns put it in the subtitle of his 2009 documentary on the national parks, they are “America’s best idea.” In “Wonderlandscape,” an energetic and insightful new book on Yellowstone, journalist John Clayton shows that, at least as applied to America’s first national park, the “best idea” has been an evolving one.

Several men claimed to have hatched the notion of designating federal land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as a national park.

The semiofficial credit — the nod given by Yellowstone’s influential superintendent Horace Albright at the park’s 50th birthday party in 1922 — went to attorney Cornelius Hedges. In 1870, several wellheeled sightseers with Hedges discussed filing legal claims to the canyons and geysers. As reported by a witness, Hedges argued that “there ought to be no private ownership of any portion of that region, but that the whole of it ought to be set apart as a great National Park.”

Clayton calls this anecdote “the national parks’ creation myth.” Today many historians believe that “Hedges was merely articulating a commonly held view, a previously expressed impulse, to somehow honor this magical land.” Two years after Hedges’s recommendation, at any rate, Yellowstone National Park was up and running.

Advancing his insight that “the story of Yellowstone is the story of what America wants from Yellowstone,” Clayton identifies boosting the national ego as a powerful early desire. Scenic marvels such as Yellowstone set the United States apart from gently picturesque Europe. “America is special,” the reasoning went, “because of its wondrous landscapes.”

Artists and architects gravitated to Yellowstone with something more personal in mind: challenges and fame. A year before the park’s establishment, a painter named Thomas Moran had come

PHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

Yellowstone National Park’s stunning views and thermal features have drawn tourists for almost 150 years.

Over that time, John Clayton argues, Americans’ perceptions of the park have constantly shifted.

into his own there. His watercolors, shipped back to Washington and enlisted in the cause, gave lawmakers a sense of the incomparable scenery they were being asked to save from spoliation by private enterprise.

In a bravura chapter on the park’s architecture, Clayton focuses on Old Faithful Inn, designed by Robert Reamer. “Although multistory lobbies are quite common today,” the author observes, the inn’s “was a huge innovation in 1903: a space so tall and airy that it seemed to be both indoors and outdoors at the same time.” So admired was Reamer’s design that it fathered a new style, known as National Park Service Rustic.

Seven decades after Moran’s visit, during World War II, another visual artist, the photographer Ansel Adams, arrived with a commission from the federal government — and a private agenda. Yellowstone, Adams believed, was being sold to the public as a pleasure ground, whereas to him it was more like a church. Leaving humans out of his shots, “he believed that the spiritual validity of wild,

beautiful places arose in part from our simplicity of experience in them. That usually meant sacrificing comforts and undergoing difficulties.” If this sounds elitist, the pendulum swung the other way a generation later, with the broadcast of the 1960s animated TV series “The Yogi Bear Show.” Fans of the program flocked to Yellowstone to see the inspiration for Yogi’s Jellystone. The cartoon bruin, Clayton writes, “secured [Yellowstone] for the masses.”

By then the masses tended to live in suburbia; accordingly, the Park Service had embarked on Mission 66, a systemwide “infrastructure upgrade” to make its holdings more car-friendly.

Old Faithful and other thermal features are the park’s signature attractions, but Clayton fails to do them justice. Geologists, too, have wanted something from Yellowstone — scientific understanding — and Clayton would have done well to tag along with one of them as he investigated the park’s innards.

On the other hand, I like the author’s frankness. Yellowstone,

he admits, is not an illimitable cornucopia of wild splendor. “Although [the park] unfolds vast quantities of empty backcountry, much of it is monotonous lodgepole-pine forest.”

Clayton closes his book with a discussion of what might eventually happen to Yellowstone: an eruption of the supervolcano beneath it, a blowup that might conceivably unleash 8,000 times the fury of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

The growing concern about such a cataclysm, the author suggests, reflects today’s “zombie apocalypse” mentality. In fairness to the zombies, it should be noted that, in June, tremors felt in Montana suggested that the supervolcano might be waking up from its long nap. In any event, supervolcanic fears nicely round out Clayton’s thesis that throughout its history, Yellowstone has long been both a showcase of natural extravagance and a cultural construct. n Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, writes frequently on environmental issues. This was written for The Washington Post.

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A master of truly stylistic mysteries

An inherited exile and reconnection

F ICTION

N ONFICTION l REVIEWED

E

l

REVIEWED BY

M AUREEN C ORRIGAN

very August for the past few years I’ve read the latest Armand Gamache detective novel by Louise Penny. And, every August for the past few years, I’ve been ruined for reading other books until the spell of Gamache dissipates a bit.

It’s not that all of Penny’s mysteries are great; some are merely good. All of them, however, are infused with an idiosyncratic tone and worldview — fiercely moral though sometimes cruel and filled with poetry, eccentric characters and a reassuring sense of community. Finishing a Gamache novel always feels to me like being expelled from a somewhat more shadowy incarnation of Winniethe-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood.

That feeling is intensified whenever a story takes place, as “Glass Houses” does, in Three Pines, the remote Canadian village where Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, have a house. “Glass Houses,” the 13th in the series, is one of the great Gamaches. Along with the usual attractions, this latest entry offers an intricately braided plot and a near apocalyptic climax.

On the first page of “Glass Houses,” Gamache is already in the hot seat — in more ways than one. It’s high summer in Old Montreal and Gamache, who is now the chief superintendent of the Surete du Quebec, is sweating in the witness box in the stifling Palais de Justice. He’s being questioned about a murder that took place in Three Pines the previous autumn. Under interrogation by the chief crown prosecutor, Gamache describes a Halloween costume party held in the village’s Bistro.

Reminiscent of the climactic scene of Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal tale “The Masque of the Red Death,” the Bistro Halloween party comes to a hushed halt when a macabre figure appears, cloaked in heavy black wool robes, black mask, gloves, boots and a hood. At first, some of the villagers think

the stranger is dressed as Darth Vader. Then, Gamache recalls, “a space opened up around the dark figure. It was as though he occupied his own world. His own universe. Where there was no Halloween party. No revelers. No laughter. No friendship.” When asked what he thought it was, Gamache replies: “I thought it was Death.”

Of course, Gamache was right.

Before “Glass Houses” concludes, that stranger will be identified as wearing the costume of “The Cobrador,” or debt collector.

The Cobrador is a centuries-old Spanish figure whose job it is to follow deadbeats and silently intimidate them into settling their bills. The Cobrador who materializes in Three Pines, however, is a more sinister version of the traditional character: He collects debts of conscience, not cash.

Enough. Any plot summary of Penny’s novels inevitably falls short of conveying the dark magic of this series.

No other writer, no matter what genre they work in, writes like Penny. Her sentences are usually short and her paragraphs often a few brief sentences long.

Her characters are distilled to their essences. The stylistic result is that a Gamache mystery reads a bit like an incantatory epic poem.

Here, for instance, is a passage introducing Isabelle Lacoste, whom Gamache has promoted to be his successor as head of homicide: “Lacoste had simply gone about her job.

“And that job, she knew with crystalline clarity, was indeed simple though not easy.

“Find murderers.

“The rest was just noise.”

It takes nerve and skill — as well as heart — to write mysteries like this. n Corrigan, who is the book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air,” teaches literature at Georgetown University. This was written for The Washington Post.

F GLASS HOUSES

By Louise Penny Minotaur. 400 pp. $28.99

AMONG THE LIVING AND THE DEAD A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe

By Inara Verzemnieks Norton.

288 pp. $26.95

BY

R OBIN S HULMAN

or many Americans, some wars — though long ago and far away — endure, affecting their daily lives. Inara Verzemnieks’s searing memoir, “Among the Living and the Dead,” shows how.

Verzemnieks grew up in Tacoma, Wash., where she was raised by her grandmother, Livija, a World War II refugee. Five years after Livija died, Verzemnieks visited the village in the Latvian countryside where her grandmother was born. All through Verzemnieks’s childhood, Livija’s stories had framed a lost, prewar, rural Latvian world. On her trip to Livija’s home, Verzemnieks set out to experience, as Rebecca West put it, “what history meant in flesh and blood.”

So she delves into the past of one of those small countries that has for centuries been invaded and traded by larger powers. In 1944, as tanks chewed up the streets, bombs fell every night and families disappeared into the forest, Livija fled with her 2-year-old daughter and her infant son, someday to become Verzemnieks’s father.

Inara Verzemnieks inherited exile, she says, as surely as she inherited nearsightedness. Her father fought in Vietnam and wasn’t right afterward. Her mother was physically abusive. At age 2, Verzemnieks went to live with her paternal grandparents, who were doing their best to re-create Latvia in Tacoma.

They took her to church with elderly, war-scarred Latvians to sing old Latvian hymns the congregants had handwritten and photocopied. When one of them died, the others gathered by the coffin to scatter soil someone had smuggled out of communist Latvia. The youngest congregant by 60 years, Verzemnieks felt a clear responsibility. “It was like a silent command running behind everything we did,” she writes: “watch, listen, remember.”

And every day, Livija told stories.

A young child raised by an elderly person can become steeped in the places, people and customs of a time before her own. In Verzemnieks’s case, the phenomenon was amplified by her grandmother’s evocative narration of life on the lost Latvian farm. So a child growing up in Washington state grows up, at the same time, on a farm in Latvia, haunted by events that took place half a century prior.

Of course one exile’s memory of a place is different from presentday reality or even the memories of those who stayed put. When Verzemnieks actually goes to the farm, her grandmother’s sister tells her: “Your grandmother’s stories aren’t my stories.”

Verzemnieks is afraid that there might be no way to make “the pieces of the past fit together in any kind of way to return it to something whole.”

And that is the essential project of this book: a restoration effort.

As Verzemnieks attempts to live among family and come as close as possible to her grandmother’s experience, life is affirmed by her intimate, physical interaction with plants, animals, people, place. “And with each new day, a little more of what had seemed lost finds its way back to me,” she writes.

We are now experiencing another global refugee crisis.

“Among the Living and the Dead” shows the consequences of being forced from home — how that loss is passed through the generations, as children and grandchildren struggle to build their lives.

At its most basic, war breaks connections. This exquisitely written book shows how recovery can come generations later through rebuilding connections — to people, the natural world, the past. n Shulman is a journalist and author of the book “Eat the City.” This was written for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

A career in technology didn’t prepare me for this MELINDA GATES is a business executive and philanthropist. She is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This was written for The Washington Post.

When my youngest child was born in 2002, the flip phone was still the coolest piece of tech you could get. Now I’m told that all three of my children are part of what demographers are calling iGen. I spent my career at Microsoft trying to imagine what technology could do, and still I wasn’t prepared for smartphones and social media. Like many parents with children my kids’ age, I didn’t understand how they would transform the way my kids grew up — and the way I wanted to parent. I’m still trying to catch up.

The pace of change is what amazes me the most. The challenges my younger daughter will be facing when she starts high school in the fall are light­years away from what my elder daughter, who’s now in college, experienced in 2010.

My younger daughter’s friends live a lot of their lives through filters on Instagram and Snapchat, two apps that didn’t exist when my elder daughter was dipping a toe in social media.

But I am optimistic about what smartphones and social media can do for people. I am thrilled to see kids learning on smartphones, doctors using apps to diagnose diseases and marginalized groups such as gay and lesbian students finding support they never had before through social networks.

Still, as a mother who wants to make sure her children are safe and happy, I worry. And I think back to how I might have done things differently. Parents should decide for themselves what works for their family, but I probably would have waited longer before putting a computer in my daughters’ pockets. Phones and apps aren’t good or bad by themselves, but for adolescents who don’t yet have the emotional tools to navigate life’s complications and confusions, they can exacerbate the difficulties of growing up: learning to be kind, coping with feelings of exclusion, taking advantage of freedom while exercising self-control. It’s more

important than ever to teach empathy from the very beginning, because our kids are going to need it.

For other parents trying to decide how to do their job in a way that feels right despite the bewildering array of changes brought on by smartphones and social media, I want to share some of the resources that have helped me and my friends. Hopefully, these tips can spark conversation and help parents become resources for one another. l Learn about the issue: Last month, the Atlantic ran a long article called “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The headline is a little dire, but then again, so is what’s reported in the article. It makes a strong case linking smartphones and social media to emotional distress. For example, eighth-graders who use social media more than 10 hours a week are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than peers who use it less. A lot of the same

ISTOCK

issues are raised in the documentary “Screenagers,” whose producers encourage community groups to host screenings. Many parents have told me they like the film because it provides plenty of practical tips. l Unplug: One of my favorite things you can do is plan a “device-free dinner.” It’s not complicated. It’s exactly what it says: an hour around a table without anything that has an on or off switch. Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org) has provided great resources and is turning this simple concept into a movement. We don’t allow cellphones at the dinner table, and in my experience, the promise of “amazing conversation” is right. l Have

tough conversations:

One of the things that’s likely to come up in conversation with your kids is the Netflix show “13 Reasons Why.” The hype may have subsided a bit since the beginning of the summer, but it’s still a hot topic. Parents have to decide for themselves whether they will let their children watch and, if so, under what conditions.

The Jed Foundation (jedfoundation.org) has excellent resources to help you make these decisions and talk with your kids about the show, suicide and what to do if they need help. And I always make sure to tell people about Crisis Text Line (crisistextline.org), an amazing

counseling service that provides free, 24/7 support and resources via text message. l Advocate for your kids: With my oldest daughter in college and my son entering his last year of high school, I’ve started thinking about how smartphones and social media change the dynamics of college campuses. Many colleges simply don’t have the resources available to cope with the mental health needs of their students, so parents need to make sure their kids have the support they need. l Make a plan: Last, I highly encourage you to try out the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Media Plan, which can be viewed at healthychildren.org.

This site walks you through a process of being intentional about how your family consumes media.

The great thing is that it’s not one size fits all. It helps you build a unique plan for your family.

The Internet is a wonderful thing. It gives kids the freedom to move around in a big world, to experiment, to connect with others. As a parent, though, I know that I am responsible for making sure that my kids are ready for all that freedom — and that they know how to keep themselves safe. Here’s to staying on top of all the changes that social media is bringing to our kids’ lives, so that we can continue to guide and support them in this fast-changing world. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Arpaio pardon could be a test run ROBERT BAUER is professor of practice at New York University School of Law and served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama. This was written for The Washington Post.

Since January, examples have piled up of a pattern of recklessness, impropriety and perhaps outright obstruction in President Trump’s oversight of federal law enforcement. And now, with the pardoning of Joe Arpaio, we have the first exercise of that power in a different context, perhaps serving for Trump as a test run for shutting down the investigation into ties between his campaign and Russia. No doubt the president is acting on his belief that, because the pardon power is “complete,” it cannot cause him real harm, and all the rest is politics.

This is a miscalculation.

The instances of Trump’s warped approach to the law are legion: the demeaning of his attorney general for recusing himself, as required by the Justice Department rules, in the Russia matter; the demand for personal loyalty from James B. Comey and the request that the then-FBI director desist from investigating the conduct of his former national security adviser; the appeal to the heads of intelligence agencies to help him contain Comey; the firing of Comey for his continued pursuit of the Russia case; and the threats to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump has since repeatedly tweeted his denunciation of that investigation — a major, ongoing federal criminal inquiry — as a “hoax.” He has hinted in clear terms that he could end all of

these troubles by the use of the “complete” pardon power.

Trump’s record on “rule of law” issues, now including this pardon, weakens his defenses in the Mueller probe — and in any future debate over impeachment.

Instead, for a president contending with questions of obstruction of justice in the Russia matter, the pardon casts his modus operandi in the worst possible light. The former sheriff was convicted in July of criminal contempt , and Arpaio’s attorney announced that he would appeal.

Only weeks later, Trump highlighted a possible pardon at a political rally. He impugned the seriousness and motive of the court’s judgment, dismissing it as an attack on Arpaio for “doing his job.” Days later, without Justice Department review, he

extinguished the conviction and ended the case.

There is a line that distinguishes a pardon from direct interference with the administration of justice. Trump has crossed it. The difference between this form of interference and the others is, simply, that the use of a pardon has enabled Trump to engage in obstruction unilaterally, not needing a willing partner in the Justice Department. And it is now reported that Trump did, in fact, first try to have the department drop the case against Arpaio.

The statement the White House issued is hopelessly inadequate in justifying the pardon. The true rationale remains a subject for speculation.

But there are clues, and they all point in the same direction: pure political self-interest. The president touted the pardon at a political rally when he encouraged a sympathetic crowd of supporters to register loudly how much they “like” Arpaio, a political ally whom the president also appears to “like” personally.

The timing of the pardon suggests that Trump’s politics may have entered into the decision from another direction: a bid to soften the blows now raining down on him from the Breitbart wing of the party in the aftermath of

Stephen K. Bannon’s departure.

So the president has situated this pardon squarely within the realm of politics, not criminal justice. The action was not consistent with the constitutional norm that pardons are a judiciously considered act of grace, a measure to correct for injustice, or otherwise related to the president’s constitutional responsibility for the public welfare. It exposes, as do Trump’s other interventions in law enforcement, the president’s blindness to the difference between his own interests and his obligations to the constitutional duties, values and norms he took an oath to defend, including the “faithful” execution of the laws.

This supremacy of self-interest is also evident in his refusal to separate himself from his business interests and his continuing promotion of those interests by arranging events on properties from which he derives personal income.

Of course, all presidents must and do, in some cases and to some degree, weigh politics in the balance in meeting their responsibilities. But Trump shows no sign of knowing when political considerations are appropriate, and he does not do “balance.” This is all, it is increasingly clear, beyond him. n

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OPINIONS

BY HORSEY FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

The truth about tax ‘reform’ ROBERT J. SAMUELSON writes a weekly column for The Washington Post on economics.

Can we get real about “tax reform,” the Republican promise to enact deep tax cuts that will spur economic growth? Probably not, but let’s give it a try.

For starters, we can stop calling it “reform.” That’s a charged word, implying that the new tax system will be superior to the old. We don’t know that for a fact; the new system might be worse. Better to call what we’re doing the “tax debate” or “tax overhaul.” (The point is a general one.

Advocates of policy changes routinely label their proposals “reform.” This suggests improvement, which may be nonexistent.)

Second, we cannot afford a net tax cut. If we are to lower tax rates and simplify complex tax provisions, we must offset the revenue losses by plugging loopholes, raising other taxes or cutting spending. Under current policies, the Congressional Budget Office has projected $10 trillion in deficits from 2018 to 2027. President Trump’s tax plan, including provisions that would raise revenue, would add $3.5 trillion in deficits over a decade, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) estimates.

Third, if tax cuts were initially financed by more deficit spending, the costs of today’s lower taxes would be transferred to future generations. “Tax cuts often look like ‘free lunches’ for taxpayers, but they eventually have to be paid for with other tax

increases or spending cuts,” says a new report from the TPC. (The report is based on a broad outline of Trump’s plan, subject to change.) This is not “reform.”

Social Security and Medicare — paid mainly by workers’ payroll taxes — already involve huge intergenerational transfers.

Deficits are both a cause and consequence of those transfers.

Still, the superficial appeal of Trump’s tax plan is undeniable.

For individuals, taxes would be reduced and simplified. There would be only three personal rates — 10, 25 and 35 percent — compared with today’s top rate of 43.4 percent. The top corporate rate would fall from about 35 to 15 percent. To help pay for these cuts, most itemized deductions would be ended (exceptions: the deductions for charitable

BY MORIN FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

contributions and mortgage interest payments).

Roughly 71 percent of households would receive a tax cut, estimates the TPC. The trouble is that the tax cuts are regressive: That is, compared to household incomes and existing tax burdens, they favor the rich and upper middle class as opposed to the poor and lower middle class. The cuts for the richest fifth of Americans would average $19,510, with the cuts for the top 1 percent averaging $196,420, estimates the TPC. Meanwhile, the fifth of Americans in the middle of the income distribution would get an average cut of $1,320.

Actually, nothing would be wrong with this if there were convincing evidence that lower tax rates stimulate significantly faster economic growth. But there isn’t. Tax cuts may cushion a recession and improve the business climate, but they don’t automatically raise long-term growth. A 2014 study by the Congressional Research Service put it this way: “A review of statistical evidence suggests that both labor supply and savings and investment are relatively insensitive to tax rates.”

The truth is that we need higher, not lower, taxes. When the economy is at or near “full

employment,” the budget should be balanced or even show a slight surplus. At 4.3 percent, the jobless rate is surely close to full employment, while the deficit for fiscal 2017 is reckoned to approach $700 billion, about 3.6 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). Both figures are expected to increase, despite continuous (assumed) economic growth. The gap can’t be blamed on the business cycle.

We are undertaxed.

Government spending, led by the cost of retirees, regularly exceeds our tax intake. Letting the federal debt buildup continue is an exercise in self-serving optimism.

It presumes that the possibly adverse consequences (the crowding out of private investment, a currency crisis) will never materialize.

Given the complexities, the best we can probably expect from a tax overhaul is a modest reduction in tax rates paid by tightening or eliminating some tax preferences. This would not be undesirable; the fewer tax preferences, the less lobbying to keep or expand them.

Washington’s “swamp” would be a tad drier.

But we should not delude ourselves that we are fixing the economy, the budget or the tax system. n

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Gene editing BY

B ONNIE R OCHMAN

Gene editing made great strides this past month when scientists re­ ported success using a technique called CRISPR — Clustered Regu­ larly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats — to correct a serious, disease­causing mutation in human embryos. But any new technol­ ogy can spur confusion and hyperbole, and this one is no exception.

Here are five myths about what CRISPR can and can’t do.

MYTH NO. 1 CRISPR can build customized babies.

CRISPR is not on the cusp of creating a super-race for one main reason: We don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how to build baby Einsteins or order up an uber-flexible Simone Biles, because there is no single “smart gene” or “gymnast gene.”

Much of what goes on inside our bodies and our brains is influenced by a combination of genes and environment, nature and nurture. Beauty, athleticism and musicality don’t hinge on a single sequence of base-pairs.

Instead, these characteristics are considered “complex traits” that are shaped by the input of multiple genes, along with lifestyle and environmental factors. This is especially true of intelligence. Studies, many of which have tracked adopted children and twins, have indicated that just 50 percent of the variation in intelligence among people can be chalked up to genetics.

MYTH NO. 2 It’s the only hope for would-be parents with genetic conditions.

While it’s undeniable that the ability to home in on and fix a genetic error would enable some would-be parents to sidestep the possibility of transmitting a disease to their offspring, gene editing is not the only option in such cases. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis has been used for decades to help couples who go through IVF ensure that they

select healthy embryos from among those fertilized in a clinic.

The technology has allowed carriers of genetic disease to conceive unaffected children, starting in 1991, when it was first used to avoid cystic fibrosis.

CRISPR could one day lend a helping hand and repair defective embryos, giving a couple more choices. Still, an essay that accompanied last month’s research report, published in Nature, concluded that “embryo genetic testing during IVF remains the standard way to prevent the transmission of inherited diseases in human embryos.”

previous attempts, in which CRISPR successfully edited the specific mutation in some but not all cells. The technique needs much more practice before it’s ready for widespread public use.

MYTH NO. 3 CRISPR will be available for widespread use soon.

Not so fast. In the United States, a human-embryo research ban has been in place since 1996, prohibiting the use of federal money to support research in which embryos are created, destroyed or discarded. Recent embryo-editing studies were paid for by universities and foundations, but the lack of federal funding slows down the science.

Moreover, just because one experiment was successful doesn’t mean the next one will be.

In fact, even though most embryos were successfully repaired in the recently reported study, more than a quarter weren’t. Another concern is that CRISPR may solve one problem while unintentionally creating another. A challenge is to avoid “off-target” edits or “mosaicism,” a condition that occurred in

MYTH NO. 4 CRISPR means a future without genetic diseases.

It’s impossible to edit out all genetic diseases, because not all genetic diseases are simply inherited. There are about 10,000 single-gene disorders that we’ve discovered — diseases caused by a specific, individual gene mutation. But there are thousands more that are caused by multiple genetic factors.

Moreover, some genetic conditions are the result of new, spontaneous changes in DNA, called “de novo” mutations.

Cancer is a prime example.

While some types of cancer can be inherited, many others don’t appear to have a primary genetic component, and often respond to a variety of environmental factors and other outside causes. Ending genetic disease is a worthy goal, but an extremely complicated one that will require more than eliminating heritable disease.

HAROLD E. VARMUS PAPERS/NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE/NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

DNA data from 1979. Today’s technologies, including CRISPR, have raised both hope and fear about gene editing.

MYTH NO. 5 CRISPR technology will one day be broadly available.

CRISPR may be cheaper than it once was, but it’s hard to foresee a future when all prospective parents who could benefit will be able to afford it. As a rule, genetic technologies are very expensive: Patients don’t pay just for the supplies used, but for doctors’ time, labor and equipment, often over a number of appointments.

You don’t have to look any further than IVF to be reminded that using science to have babies costs a lot of money: The median cost of a single IVF cycle is $7,500. It is unclear whether insurance would cover CRISPR gene editing, but it’s highly unlikely.

If CRISPR were to become a safe, accepted embryo-editing technique, it’s likely that only the well-to-do would be able to afford it, essentially making genetic diseases into diseases of poverty. n Rochman a health and parenting journalist, is the author of “The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids — and the Kids We Have.” This was written for The Washington Post.

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