The Washington Post National Weekly - November 26, 2017

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HOLIDAY SPENDING

Strong forecast hides wealth gap A BHA B HATTARAI

“Households are spending a greater share of their take-home pay while saving less,” the PwC report said. “Absent wage growth, conill shoppers really spend more this sumer optimism alone may not bolster holiday holiday season than they did last spending. Eventually households need to year? It depends on whom you ask. make more money or they will have to rein in By most measures, Americans spending.” are feeling good about the economy: A monthEven if wealthier Americans ly gauge of consumer confidence are willing to spend, that may not is at a 17-year high. The unemtranslate to higher sales for many ployment rate is at a 17-year low. retailers, said Natalie Kotlyar, The stock market continues to head of the retail practice at hit all-time peaks, while gasoline professional services firm BDO. remains relatively cheap.

Amazon.com and Walmart are That optimism is expected to widely expected to be the big help boost holiday shopping winners of the holiday season, sales by as much as 4 percent this analysts said, while many others year, according to data from the — department stores and big-box National Retail Federation. The chains among them — are in for trade group projects that Amerimore of a mixed bag. (Jeffrey P. cans will spend up to a record Bezos, the founder and chief ex$682 billion this year. ecutive of Amazon, owns The But there are also signs that Washington Post.) the optimism may be limited to Target last week said holiday high-income Americans. Data sales may not be as robust as the shows that lower-income housecompany had originally hoped. holds are likely to pull back on JULIO CORTEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS Toymakers like Hasbro and holiday spending this year and Jakks Pacific have already said that, in many cases, their eco- Amazon.com and Walmart are forecast to do well this holiday season. holiday sales may be disappointnomic outlook isn’t as rosy as it ing after the decision of Toys R Us to file for Families with household incomes of less was earlier this year. bankruptcy protection in September. than $60,000 are likely to cut spending on Wages have remained largely stagnant, If the past two years are any guide, it could gifts by 8 percent this year, according to particularly in lower-paying jobs, and many be a rocky quarter for companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s in stark conare on edge over news reports saying changMacy’s, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, J.C. Penney and trast to wealthier households, where shoppers ing tax policies will disproportionately hurt Sears, all of which reported declining sales plan to boost spending on gifts by 3 percent, to lower- and middle-income families, accordduring the last three months of 2016. $822 per person. ing to Doug Hermanson, an economist for the “Even if people are feeling richer these days, Any growth in holiday spending, the profesconsulting and research firm Kantar Retail. there is a conservative confidence about the sional services firm said, will be “driven mainProposed government cuts to food stamps economy,” Kotlyar said. “Consumers are still ly by high-income consumers who’ve seen and other supplemental programs are also on a budget.” n income gains; most other consumers, while expected to burden lower-income families. optimistic, are coping with stagnant wages.”

“We’re starting to see a widening bifurca© The Washington Post BY

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KLMNO WEEKLY

tion,” Hermanson said. “When you look at where the big spending is coming from — home improvements, for example — it’s very wealth-driven. Spending plans are largely unchanged overall, and that’s particularly the case among middle- and low-income households.”

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 4, No. 7

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

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER North Dickinson high school in Michigan is competing in its first season of eight-man football because it didn’t have enough players for an 11-man team anymore. Photograph by JOHN MCDONNELL, The Washington Post

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

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POLITICS

Russia probe splits West Wing aides

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Some think Mueller’s investigation is nearly complete, while others call that naive

BY A SHLEY P ARKER AND C AROL D . L EONNIG

S

ix months into a special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, White House aides and others in President Trump’s close orbit are increasingly divided in their assessments of the expanding probe and how worried administration officials and campaign aides should be about their potential legal peril, according to numerous people familiar with the debate.

Some in the West Wing avoid the mere mention of Russia or the investigation whenever possible.

Others take solace in the reassurances of White House lawyer Ty Cobb that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will be wrapping up the probe soon and the president and those close to him will be exonerated. And a few engage in grim gallows humor, privately joking about wiretaps.

The investigation reached a critical turning point in recent weeks, with a formal subpoena to the campaign, an expanding list of

potential witnesses and the indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates. Some within Trump’s circle, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus, have already been interviewed by Mueller’s investigators, while others such as Hope Hicks — the White House communications director and trusted confidant of the president — and White House counsel Donald McGahn are expected in coming weeks.

One Republican operative in frequent contact with the White

White House communications director Hope Hicks, seen with President Trump aboard Air Force One in Manila this month, is expected to be interviewed by special counsel investigators in coming weeks.

House described Mueller’s team “working through the staff like Pac-Man.” “Of course they are worried,” said the Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. “Anybody that ever had the words ‘Russia’ come out of their lips or in an email, they’re going to get talked to. These things are thorough and deep. It’s going to be a long winter.”

The president, however, has warmed to Cobb’s optimistic message on Mueller’s probe. Cobb had initially said he hoped the focus on

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

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POLITICS the White House would conclude

by Thanksgiving but adjusted the timeline slightly in an interview the other week, saying he remains optimistic that it will wrap up by the end of the year, if not shortly thereafter.

Trump’s lawyers have also repeatedly said the president is not personally under investigation.

“I’ve done my best, without overstepping, to share my view that the perception of the inquiry — that it involved a decade or more of financial transactions and other alleged issues that were mistakenly reported — just wasn’t true, and that the issues were narrower and wholly consistent with the mandate provided by the Justice Department to the Office of the Special Counsel,” Cobb said.

Cobb added that those who have already been interviewed by Mueller’s team have left feeling buoyed. “The people who have been interviewed generally feel they were treated fairly by the special counsel, and adequately prepared to assist them in understanding the relevant material,” he said. “They came back feeling relieved that it was over, but nobody I know of was shaken or scared.”

But the reassurances from Cobb and others — which seem at least partially aimed at keeping the president calm and focused on governing — are viewed by others as naive.

“The president says, ‘This is all just an annoyance. I did nothing,’ ” said one person close to the administration. “He is somewhat arrogant about it. But this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.”

The soothing outlook also comes against the backdrop of new revelations.

In mid-October, for example, Mueller’s office subpoenaed a series of documents from the Trump campaign with a list of Russiarelated search words, according to a person familiar with the request.

The person said the request appeared to be “an effort to be thorough” and not miss any records as the office obtains the communications of campaign members through other methods.

Mueller’s investigators are also still actively mapping out all the attempts by Russian nationals and people with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government

“The people who have been interviewed generally feel they were treated fairly by the special counsel. . . .They came back feeling relieved that it was over, but nobody I know of was shaken or scared.”

JERRY CLEVELAND/ DENVER POST VIA AP

Ty Cobb, White House lawyer. who has said the special counsel’s Russia inquiry will be wrapping up soon and the president and those close to him will be exonerated

to connect with and possibly infiltrate the Trump campaign. So far, at least nine people in Trump’s orbit had contact with Russians during the campaign or the transition to the White House, according to Mueller’s charging documents and interviews and records obtained by The Washington Post.

Witnesses questioned by Mueller’s team warn that investigators are asking about other foreign contacts and meetings that have not yet become public, and to expect a series of new revelations.

Investigators are especially focused on foreign officials’ contacts with Michael Flynn, a campaign adviser and later Trump’s national security adviser, witnesses said.

Cobb said he does not expect the latest revelations to “unduly extend the inquiry.”

Many in the White House also insist they believe the probe is coming to a close, a view shared by the president. Arguing that most investigations start with periphery players and move ever closer to the inner circle, they view Mueller’s recent focus on those closest to Trump as a sign that his probe has reached its final stage.

People close to the investigation, however, say a tidy and quick conclusion is unlikely and would defy the pattern of most special counsel investigations in recent history.

In fact, legal experts and private defense lawyers monitoring the case believe that Mueller’s investigation — which officially began in May and resulted in its first charges against three former campaign aides last month — is still in its early stages.

They expect that the prosecutors have considerable investigative work still to do, and they predict more campaign officials, among others, will face charges.

They expect the probe to extend

deep into 2018 and possibly longer.

The trial of Manafort and Gates, for instance, is many months away. And Mueller’s investigators are still gathering documents and other evidence to evaluate.

Prosecutors have also secured a guilty plea and cooperation from former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who has been talking to investigators about his conversations with other members of the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the probe.

In any white-collar probe, investigative pressure on low-level officials can lead to guilty pleas and cooperation, generating new evidence and leads about those higher on the chain of command, these people noted. And while that process can stall out if people refuse to cooperate or offer nothing of interest to investigators, there’s no indication that has happened in the Russia investigation.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to believe this is almost over,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University.

“Based not just on what we’ve seen but also what we know about white-collar investigations generally, this seems to me like it is just getting started.”

Three separate congressional committee investigations into Russian interference in the election sometimes overlap and track over Mueller’s probe, and pose high-risk complications for Trump aides, politically and legally.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently alleged that it appeared Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had withheld some documents about a Russian gun rights activist’s effort to connect a Putin ally and the Trump campaign. Kushner’s lawyers said

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is one of three people indicted in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

Manafort’s trial is months away.

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the committee never asked their client for records of proposed meetings that never happened — but the episode gave the impression Kushner had something to hide.

Far more serious is the need for Trump aides to answer honestly and consistently; any testimony to a congressional committee that later shifts before an FBI agent or grand jury could be used to charge a witness with making false statements.

Inside the West Wing, many aides describe an atmosphere of relative calm against the backdrop of the investigation, with staffers mindful but not necessarily worried about the probe. Those who are not directly involved said they deliberately avoid the topic of Russia and the investigation, simply refusing to talk about it and only thinking about it on days when it dominates the news.

One White House official said the ongoing investigation has now just become a frustrating part of daily reality for aides, and they attempt to soldier on knowing they personally did nothing wrong.

But some suspect that Mueller’s probe may weigh more heavily on some of their colleagues, especially those who have been compelled to testify before Congress or Mueller’s investigators. More than a dozen, including McGahn and Vice President Pence, have had to hire lawyers, and some junior aides fear their legal fees will rise to three or four times their annual salaries.

One Republican close to the White House likened the lowgrade nervousness to working for the Senate campaign of Roy Moore — the Alabama Republican facing allegations of unwanted sexual and romantic overtures to teenage girls when he was in his 30s — and never quite knowing what else might come out.

The revelation last month that Papadopoulos had been arrested in July and was secretly cooperating with Mueller’s team led many to rack their memories: Had they ever talked or emailed with him?

And sometimes, gallows humor creeps into the West Wing.

“When the staff gather in the morning at the White House now, they jokingly say: ‘Good morning.

Are you wired?’ ” one person close to the administration said. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

GOP’s tax cut is seen as ‘overdue’ T ODD C . F RANKEL Lebanon, Pa. BY

D

ouglass Henry, owner of packaging materials manufacturer Henry Molded Products, admits he could live without a tax cut. He is not going to shutter his factory and lay off his 105 workers here in Pennsylvania Dutch country if Congress fails on tax overhaul. His company is flourishing, the workers and machines humming 24 hours a day.

“We’ve been selling everything but the paint on the wall,” he said.

But Henry, a longtime Republican, says he wants Congress to pass a big tax cut for a different reason: It can.

“Now is the opportunity,” said Henry, 60. “This is not an issue that is going to come up with every Congress. After 30 years, we’re overdue.”

Henry stands at the conflicted heart of the GOP’s push for a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, which is moving forward in the Senate after the House passed its version last week with hopes of a year-end signing by President Trump.

Republican lawmakers argue that U.S. companies need encouragement to spend more and generate additional economic growth.

But business has been good across America, where corporate profits sit near record highs and unemployment near record lows. And although GOP lawmakers say they are focused on delivering benefits to the middle class, Congress’s official scorekeeper says the bulk of the benefits of the proposed legislation flow to the wealthy and to corporations.

The bill features “a very topheavy distribution,” said Edward Kleinbard, a former chief of staff for Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California. The markets “are awash in capital today, and there’s not a sign of needing more investment.”

But for the GOP, the success of the effort to overhaul the tax code has become nearly synonymous with the question of whether Re-

PHOTOS BY MARK MAKELA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

With business booming, wealthy Republican allies are pressuring Congress to move while they can publicans can accomplish anything substantial during a rare moment of unified control of the federal government. The party is acutely aware that an inability to deliver would upset the business interests that have long been a key part of the Republican base.

Donors’ message has been, “Get it done or don’t ever call me again,” Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) said last month.

Henry has donated $10,450 to political causes in the past two years, mostly to the political action committee of the National Federation of Independent Business, which spends the majority of its money to help Republicans, according to data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“There is pent-up demand for our goods and services,” he said.

Whether Republicans succeed in their tax effort could be revealed as soon as next month, as lawmakers try to meet Trump’s demand that they send a bill to his desk before year’s end.

The House bill passed by a com-

fortable margin last week, but Senate GOP leaders still don’t have the 50 votes needed to pass legislation, with several Republican moderates and even one conservative senator voicing concerns last week.

Congressional Republicans have said this is their biggest policy priority, especially at a time when the GOP remains divided over many other issues.

“There’s enormous desire within the entire center-right coalition to pass a pro-growth tax reform bill,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster.

Critics of the tax overhaul say it won’t accomplish what Republicans say it will. Analyses by the Joint Tax Committee and independent nonpartisan groups such as the Tax Policy Center show that working-class and middle-class Americans will receive modest benefits, while the wealthy will benefit from large cuts in a variety of taxes. And the Senate bill goes so far as making the corporate tax cuts permanent but the individual

Business is good in Lebanon, Pa., top, the seat of Lebanon County. The county’s unemployment rate is 3.7 percent.

Douglass Henry, above, owns Henry Molded Products, based in Lebanon.

He says that his business is doing well but that a tax cut would rev up the economy. “There is pent-up demand for our goods and services,” he says.

tax reductions temporary.

The deep divide over the tax plan can be seen in Henry’s home state. Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) recently described the cuts as the “most pro-growth business reforms in over 30 years,” harking back to the last major overhaul plan, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Henry calls Toomey a “good friend.”

But Pennsylvania’s other senator, Robert P. Casey Jr. (D), has charged that the tax bill is “a giveaway to the super-rich and big corporations at the expense of some, even many, middle-class families.”

To Henry, who lives in a deeply conservative part of the state, there should be no doubt that a tax cut would help him — and the economy. He describes his company as a boutique paper mill that takes bales of waste newspaper and cardboard — even candy wrappers from the nearby Hershey plant — and makes “engineered papier-mâché” that can be pressed into almost any shape.

His father started out making biodegradable containers for florists and horticulturists, like the disposable flower containers you might see left behind at cemeteries. Now Henry makes specialized containers for shipping wine bottles, medicine vials, sump pumps and automobile wheels, among other products.

Lebanon County’s economy is bustling, with an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent, well below the national average. But Henry says he’s confident businesses like his can contribute even more to the economy.

His company generates more than $10 million a year in revenue, Henry says, and he gets a salary and draws profits from the company. Taxes on both probably would fall significantly in any overhaul.

“Maybe I can keep a few more shekels in my back pocket, but the vast majority gets reinvested in this company,” Henry said.

Times are good, Henry said, but they can always be better.

“We’re not going to roll over and go home,” he said. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

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For Trump, battling athletes is sport Sports had been a unifier, but president uses it to stoke culture wars

President Trump called LaVar Ball, top, “ungrateful” for not recognizing his help with Ball’s son, LiAngelo Ball, above. He and two other UCLA basketball players were detained and accused of shoplifting in China but later released.

BY

D AVID N AKAMURA

S

ince at least the time of Ronald Reagan, sports have provided American presidents from both political parties a chance to rub elbows with — and, perhaps, gather some cultural stardust from — immensely popular figures who transcend politics.

Inviting championship teams to the White House or throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game was, one former aide to Bill Clinton recalled this past week, the “rare risk-free, high-reward photo op.”

But rather than embrace professional athletes as a way to broaden his political appeal, President Trump has used them as a constant foil for his presidency — fuel for stoking the culture wars and serving as sometimes unwitting antagonists in his personal feuds.

Trump has jousted with National Football League players over their decision to kneel during the national anthem in protest of police brutality; sparred with National Basketball Association stars Stephen Curry and LeBron James over his decision to rescind a White House visit for the Golden State Warriors; and demanded an apology from ESPN anchor Jemele Hill for her criticism of him as a “white supremacist.”

Over the past week or so, Trump has denounced the father of a UCLA basketball player by name on Twitter, calling LaVar Ball “ungrateful” for the president’s help in resolving a shoplifting charge in China for his son, LiAngelo, and two other players and suggesting he should have left them to face jail time. And on Monday morning, Trump suggested that the NFL should consider disciplinary action after Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch failed to stand during the anthem at a game last Sunday.

“Great disrespect!” Trump declared in a tweet. “Next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down.”

TWITTER

Trump’s eagerness to mix it up in the ring has perplexed presidential historians and aides to former presidents who said that while his pugnacious attitude toward athletes matches the rest of his political persona, Trump is needlessly creating political controversy in one of the few areas where his predecessors saw bipartisan opportunity.

It was Reagan, after all, who launched the tradition of inviting championship teams to the White House for a photo op in the East Room or on the South Lawn — and some hokey jokes from the fan in chief. In return for opening the White House doors, presidents have been rewarded with replica jerseys, signed balls and winning headlines in regional newspapers.

Reagan, a college football star who portrayed the Notre Dame player George Gipp on film, appreciated the connection sports stars had with the general public, said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian and author of “Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism.”

“Sports requires discipline and evokes admiration from massive numbers of Americans,” Dallek said. “To put oneself on the right side of a sports issue is to enjoy a degree of popularity any politician would crave.”

By comparison, Trump “doesn’t seem to care about having majority support. He’s the only president in history who in his first year has never had 50 percent approval from the public. . . . It gives him some perverse satisfaction to be involved in combat. It lacks a kind

of political sense.”

Since taking office, Trump has not thrown out a ceremonial pitch or attended a professional sporting event, aside from a pair of professional golf tournaments in New Jersey, including the U.S. Women’s Open championship at his golf course in Bedminster.

By comparison, George W. Bush, wearing a bulletproof vest under a wind-breaker, famously delivered a fastball over the plate in a stirring performance at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 30, 2001, before the third game of the World Series, aimed at demonstrating the United States would not be cowed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although Bush would go on to govern through two lengthy wars that politically fractured the nation, the moment still resonates as a high point and was celebrated in a 2015 ESPN mini-documentary, “First Pitch.”

“When people say my name in certain places, it evokes a lot of emotion, some positive, some negative. This movie transcends politics,” Bush told a reporter for the Grantland website after the movie’s premiere in Dallas. “It really harks back to a moment when the country was united and was recovering.”

Trump has used sports to exploit the nation’s divisions on culture and race. His attacks on NFL players and the league’s handling of the protests have resonated with his political base and have damaged television ratings.

His decision to disinvite the Warriors from visiting the White House after Curry publicly said he probably would not attend

sparked a row with some of the league’s most popular African American players — generating criticism that Trump’s motivations have racial undertones.

“U bum,” tweeted James, the four-time NBA Most Valuable Player and three-time champion now with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“Going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up!”

Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary, said Trump’s attacks on sports stars is of a piece with his general political strategy of attacking all sorts of once-revered cultural icons, including Gold Star military families and a former prisoner of war, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“Most presidents wrap themselves in the flag and the patriotic glow and uplifting feeling that sports provides,” Fleischer said.

“Trump, instead of going with uplift, homes in on the divide.”

Fomer president Barack Obama used sports as an even bigger platform. He was a regular presence on ESPN, annually presenting his picks for the NCAA college basketball tournament brackets. Obama also conducted a town-hall-style event on the sports network in October 2016 during which he discussed race relations.

ESPN contacted the White House in March to offer Trump a chance to do a selection bracket of his NCAA tournament picks, but he declined, a source close to the network said.

Josh Earnest, a White House press secretary for Obama, said the former president was a genuine sports fan who had fun meeting the athletes and participating in the events.

Earnest contrasted that with Trump’s relationship with pro wrestling, where, before becoming president, he participated in fictitious WWE pay-per-view story lines about personal feuds and rivalries settled through physical combat.

“That seems to be a sport Trump is a genuine fan of,” Earnest said, “and one that fits his personality.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

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NATION

Claims for disaster aid soar in 2017 J OEL A CHENBACH Santa Rosa, Calif.

BY

T

he number of Americans registered for federal disaster aid jumped tenfold this year, costing billions of dollars in additional emergency funding as the nation nears the end of a historically calamitous year.

More than 4.7 million Americans — or about 1.4 percent of the population — have registered so far this year for disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 2016, 480,000 sought aid, and fewer than 180,000 people registered for disaster assistance in each of the three previous years.

Three hurricanes — Harvey, Irma and Maria — collectively affected an area with about 8 percent of the U.S. population. The hurricanes were followed by wildfires that killed 43 people and destroyed more than 7,000 homes here in wine country.

The series of record-setting disasters — combined with other storms, floods, mudslides and blazes that struck communities across the United States this year — have taxed emergency resources and left residents struggling to rebuild their lives long after the floods have receded and the flames have stopped burning.

The fallout will cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, much of it approved by Congress in supplemental spending bills. The White House recently asked Congress for an extra $44 billion in disaster relief; FEMA would get the majority of that, and much of the rest would be for a community block grant program.

FEMA has enlisted private phone-bank companies and employees from other federal agencies, including the IRS, to add 3,000 staffers to process disaster claims.

In light of this challenging year of catastrophes, federal emergency officials are calling on Americans to improve their disaster preparedness.

“You have to know the hazards and vulnerabilities, and how to be

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Federal resources stretched as applications for help rise tenfold amid historic catastrophes prepared, based on where you work and where you live and where you visit,” FEMA Administrator William B. “Brock” Long said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“We have to overcome a lot of myths,” he said, and cited the widespread belief that only structures in a flood plain are vulnerable to a flood.

Natural disasters can affect anyone. Here in Santa Rosa, the neighborhood of Coffey Park is nowhere near the wooded, tinderfilled high country where the Tubbs Fire exploded on the night of Oct. 8. But when the wildfire reached the city’s outskirts, it jumped the 101 Freeway and incinerated block after block of homes where residents did not imagine they faced a wildfire danger.

Long and other emergency managers talk often of resilience — having contingency plans for when existing systems break down. In Puerto Rico, for example, Hurricane Maria knocked out

communications across the island. That set off widespread panic and severely hampered the distribution of emergency supplies.

The information blackout was excruciating for family members living off the island, who did not know whether their loved ones had survived.

Such a communications breakdown could happen in any big American city in a natural disaster or terrorist attack, Long said.

That is especially important for families that include children or the elderly. The majority of people killed in the Northern California wildfires last month were elderly.

In Florida, 14 elderly people died in a rehabilitation center that lost its air conditioning in a power failure caused by Hurricane Irma in September.

“How will you communicate with your child or with the childcare provider when you’re miles away at work and not able to get out of an urban area?” Long said.

“We have to start training citizens

Bare chimneys and charred debris attest to the wind-driven fire that struck the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Calif., in October.

to ask these questions, and not only with assisted-living facilities, but also schools and day-care providers, and their own workplace.”

FEMA has been using satellite imagery and other kinds of remote sensing, along with flooding data and housing records, to help calculate the cost of the damage suffered by disaster survivors. But a dismaying development has slowed these efforts: Identity thieves are filing fraudulent claims.

Hackers have used the names of real victims to divert aid to bogus bank accounts. They struck first in California — filing thousands of fraudulent claims — and the scam spread to other disaster areas, FEMA Region IX Director Bob Fenton told The Post. He said that the agency’s inspector general is investigating the fraud and that the legitimate survivors will still get their financial assistance. But thieves already have siphoned away some of the money.

“There is funding that has gone out fraudulently to individuals who have committed this,” Fenton said.

Here in wine country, a massive effort is underway to deal with the destruction of entire neighborhoods. Under California law, it is not enough to clear the slab that remains of a home. The entire foundation must be ripped up, Fenton said.

“There’s no house here that’s rebuildable. They’re destroyed.

The temperatures were in excess of 1,300 degrees,” he said.

One day recently, Dave Frost, 58, visited his home — what was left of it — to look for heirloom silver that had belonged to his grandparents.

His insurance company will pay off his mortgage, he said. But there are things he will never recover.

Before the fire, he had been curating family photos.

Everyone knows a house can catch on fire. No one expects this, though — nothing left.

“It’s just stuff. But a lot of years of stuff. You can’t go out and buy photos from 10 and 15 years ago when my kids were growing up.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

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Fake opioid pills flood into U.S. BY

K ATIE Z EZIMA

M

ore than two dozen patients were rushed into an emergency room in Macon, Ga., over two days with the same array of lifethreatening symptoms, including organ failure and sepsis, flummoxing doctors. But after their breathing tubes were removed, the patients revealed a common thread: All had taken what they believed were Percocet pills they had bought on the street.

Although they looked like the prescription painkillers at first glance, the pills they took were nothing like what they expected.

They were fakes, an amalgam of substances — including one never before seen in Georgia — pressed into a pill that mimicked those a doctor would prescribe. Instead of a low dose of Percocet, the users were slammed with a near-lethal combination of other drugs, including U-47700, a synthetic opioid the Drug Enforcement Administration said has been linked to dozens of deaths.

“I’d never seen any medication or drug present with multi-organ failure, mimicking stroke, sepsis, all at the same time,” said Gregory Whatley, an emergency room doctor at Navicent Health in Macon who called Georgia Poison Control after realizing multiple patients took the same small yellow pills.

Law enforcement officials and medical professionals say that counterfeit opioid pills like those found in Macon have been flooding the illicit drug market and have been sickening — and killing — those who are seeking out powerful prescription drugs amid a worsening national opioid crisis. There is widespread fear that users who believe the prescription drugs are safe — because they are quality-controlled products of a regulated industry — could now unwittingly end up ingesting potent cocktails of unknown substances. In many places, the pills contain fentanyl, a synthetic drug that is driving a nationwide surge in overdose deaths.

The rise of counterfeit pills is in part a consequence of well-intentioned actions taken to prevent

DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION/DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

TOMMY FARMER/TENNESSEE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The counterfeit drugs trick people into thinking they’re safe — sometimes with lethal results overdose deaths; as states enact strict prescription limits and closely monitor doctors, fewer authentic painkillers are available.

While some opioid abusers turn directly to heroin or fentanyl, the cartels and drug dealers are filling the void, and meeting demand, with pills they have manufactured to look like the originals.

And that trade is incredibly lucrative, officials said, without the need to obtain the tightly controlled pills. One kilogram of illicit fentanyl — far cheaper than heroin or oxycodone — can produce 1 million counterfeit pills, netting $10 million to $20 million in revenue, according to the DEA. The pills also are filled with fentanyl analogues — different formulas of the drug concocted to skirt U.S. drug laws — and other chemicals that evade drug screenings and have unknown effects on the human body, until people like those in Macon overdose.

The pills or their component parts come to the United States from either Mexico or China, officials say. In Mexico, cartels process the pills and ship them over the southwest border. Chemicals needed to make the pills are typically bought via the dark web from China. When the chemicals reach the United States, many of the fake pills are created in home operations, akin to the meth labs that proliferated about a decade ago.

The chemicals are bound to-

gether using pill presses, which can churn out thousands of pills at a time and are supposed to be registered with the DEA. In fiscal 2011, Customs and Border Protection confiscated two pill presses at the Port of Los Angeles; in fiscal 2017, the agency confiscated 396.

According to a study by the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a nonprofit organization that has ties to a pharmaceutical lobbying group, counterfeit medications containing fentanyl have been found in at least 40 states and have killed people in at least 17 states between April 2015 and September 2017.

In Arizona, the DEA has seized at least 70,000 counterfeit pills this year, said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the Arizona field office. In August, Coleman’s agents and the Tempe police seized 30,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills after a traffic stop in the city that was part of an operation targeting the Sinaloa cartel.

The blue pills contained fentanyl and were stamped with “M” and “30.” They were so realistic-looking that the manufacturer of the drugs, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, called the DEA’s Phoenix office to say they were “pretty good knockoffs,” Coleman said. Mallinckrodt said it has supported and worked with law enforcement on the problem of fake pills.

“I think that these pills are going to be becoming more and more popular, and I think we’ll see more

The pills in the photos above are among the counterfeit painkillers that have been seized by law enforcement officials. In Arizona, at least 70,000 counterfeit pills were seized this year, officials say. In Utah, authorities say they found nearly 100,000 pills that were made to look like oxycodone and Xanax at a stash house.

and more of them coming across,” Coleman said.

In other cases, typically those involving small-time dealers, pills or the chemicals used to make them are coming through the mail, such as one case in a small South Dakota town that authorities say is indicative of the burgeoning problem.

Prosecutors allege that Trevor Harden was expecting a package at the small brick post office in Chamberlain, S.D., in June that contained 20,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills. Authorities say he planned to sell the drugs to minors in the town of 2,300 on the Missouri River; postal inspectors later intercepted a second package destined for Harden containing an additional 20,000 counterfeit pills. All were made of fentanyl.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Mammenga said Harden ordered the pills on the dark web, and prosecutors believe the pills originated in China but were routed through California before arriving at a postal processing facility in Rapid City, S.D. “They think these are prescription pills, they’re safe,” Mammenga said. “But they’re really pressed pills that are made in China, and we have no idea what’s in them.”

Harden pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to possess and intending to distribute fentanyl; his defense attorney declined to comment.

Mammenga said it is difficult to imagine why Harden needed 40,000 pills: “There’s less than a million people in the state of South Dakota. There’s 2,300 people in the town he lives in.”

Police have discovered one of the major challenges is that dealers are making the pills inside private homes, where people are mixing fentanyl and other substances and churning counterfeit pills out of presses.

“We’ve worked cases where we’ve taken off pill presses where they can make 5,000 pills an hour, and that’s pretty doggone substantial,” said T.J. Jordan, assistant director at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

Sochi’s cost is beginning to pay off D AVID F ILIPOV Sochi, Russia BY

O

n a warm autumn afternoon, skipper Anton Romanov nudged his 23foot powerboat out of the relentless roll of the Black Sea and toward the harbor.

Dead ahead lay the busy port of Sochi, home of the 2014 Winter Olympics and Russia’s most popular resort, with its restaurants, shops, five-star hotels, and hawkers doing a surprisingly brisk business selling trips on the pleasure boats lined up along the pier.

Beyond rose the jagged, white-tipped pyramids of the Western Caucasus range, a 45minute drive away along a river lined with compact settlements, each with more shops, restaurants, and alpine hiking trails reached by ski lifts.

“You have to understand, there was nothing here just a few years ago,” Romanov said, pulling on a cigarette as he sat atop the cabin, legs dangling through the roof hatch, steering with his feet. “And nobody came here in October.”

They come now. Three years after the 2014 Games raised an outcry over the estimated $50 billion price tag, three years after the story of the Kremlin’s Olympic folly was subsumed by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has the all-seasons vacation destination that he promised in Sochi.

Sochi, prized for its subtropical climate and the thermal springs where Joseph Stalin treated his arthritis, was traditionally Russia’s most popular summer destination. But it was neither a popular, nor particularly accessible, winter holiday spot before the 2014 Olympics.

“It was a summer resort. The season ended in October, and then you had to wait until the warm weather came back the next year,” said Andrei Ponomarenko, head of the G8 Language School in Sochi. “Now we are truly a year-round resort.”

City officials say Sochi, home to about 500,000 year-round resi-

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Putin said the site of the 2014 Olympics would become an all-seasons destination — and it has dents, is on track to receive 6.5 million visitors in 2017, the same as in 2016. Hotels along the Black Sea coastline sell out in the summer, and the overflow is picked up by the hotels in the mountains, which provide shuttles to the beaches. The reverse happens in winter, when shoreline hotels offer bargain rates and transportation to the mountains for skiers. Dmitry Bogdanov, a Sochi travel consultant, says some hotels in high season are booked more than two years in advance.

Between seasons, the city hosts hundreds of events, including Formula One racing, singing competitions, festivals and conferences, said Sergei Domorat, head of Sochi’s Department of Resorts and Tourism. A recently opened casino just held a poker tournament. The Fisht Stadium, used for the Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, will host matches when the FIFA World Cup is held in Russia next year.

The result, according to a manager of a seaside luxury hotel who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the behalf of the company, is that the property, filled to near-capacity in the summer, gets enough business in the offseason to average 60 percent occupancy for the year. “It’s enough to make a profit,” the manager said.

In the past year, Domorat said, resort-related activities had pumped $55 million in tax revenue to the regional government. “The expenditures on Olympic construction have been justified,” he said.

It is hard to say exactly what was spent and where it all went.

In 2013, opposition politicians published a report saying that Putin’s inner circle had made off with $30 billion in what they called “a monstrous scam.”

Putin denied that large-scale corruption had taken place, and government assessments of the

A statue of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, stands at an amusement park in Sochi. It cost an estimated $50 billion to prepare the Russian city for the Olympics.

spending have always attributed the cost to the difficulties of creating the infrastructure for the Games. The most costly item was the rail and roadway link to the mountains. Earlier, the beaches and the mountains were connected only by a narrow, winding road.

The years-long project to transform Sochi was controversial in other ways, too. Activists said authorities ignored laws that mandated public hearings for construction projects, illegally evicted residents and damaged the environment in their construction efforts. Human rights organizations say that Russian activists protesting the Olympics were unfairly rounded up.

When the Olympics ended, tourism did not take right away.

But Russia’s ensuing recession, terrorism in Egypt and a diplomatic crisis with Turkey steered Russians away from the tourist destinations that had become popular after the fall of the Soviet Union and toward Sochi.

The government also has done its share, subsidizing tours for state employees and coaxing private companies to organize incentive trips and retreats to Sochi that might once have been held in Europe. Officially sponsored events fill the calendar.

Last month, foreign policy experts and officials were convening at a Sochi mountain hotel complex for a conference attended by Putin. The resort city was hosting more than 25,000 participants in the World Festival of Youth and Students.

One of those participants, Margarita Murzina, a graduate student from St. Petersburg, took advantage of a break in the program to ride a gondola 4,500 feet up a slope where Olympic alpine events were held. The ride itself was worth the trip: The gondola soared over a beech and oak forest of autumn yellows and oranges set beneath the snowcapped peaks. A snowboarding fan who had never been to Sochi, Murzina said she would definitely come back as a tourist. n © The Washington Post

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One of Earth’s ‘most mined areas’ Booby traps riddle the land in Ukraine, posing a danger to civilians and paralyzing towns’ progress

J ACK L OSH Myrna Dolyna, Ukraine BY

I

n an overgrown minefield, Yulia Boiko kneels down and starts gardening. Years of war have caused weeds to grow high in the abandoned croplands of eastern Ukraine. Clad in flak jacket and face mask, she uses shears to snip back sun-scorched scrub, removing vegetation one careful inch at a time to avoid hidden tripwires.

A small patch of earth is eventually exposed. Boiko stands up, then scans the ground with her metal detector to ensure it is clear.

She repeats the painstaking process — one pace farther into a 600acre field where wheat and sunflowers once grew.

The United Nations reports that this Donbas region is becoming one of the most mined areas in the world. Anti-vehicle mines in particular kill more people here than anywhere else in the world, researchers say — surpassing the numbers of victims in Syria, Yemen or battlefields across Africa.

“Nobody knows how big the problem is,” said Henry Leach, the head of the Danish Demining Group’s program in Ukraine. “We just know it’s big.”

Land mines, booby traps and unexploded ordnance are sown across tens of thousands of acres — much of it off-limits because the fighting is still going on and because of obstructions raised by officials.

The Halo Trust, a humanitarian mine-clearance organization, estimates that land mines have caused 1,796 casualties in eastern Ukraine — among them 238 civilians killed and another 491 injured — since the start of the war in 2014. The rate of casualties from mines and unexploded ordnance has increased over the years — a trend likely to continue as displaced families return to areas where fighting has subsided, now riddled with explosive remnants.

In addition to the bloodshed, entire communities suffer. Both sides have laid land mines, denying people use of land for crops and livestock, and endangering

Ukraine leads the world in anti-vehicle-mine casualties Countries and territories with recorded casualties in 2016 Ukraine (101) Afghanistan (34) Western Sahara (12)

Syria (38) Tunisia (10)

Mali (55)

Azer.

South Korea (1)

Pakistan (52)

Leb. Iran (9) Israel India (12)

Egypt (21) Chad (7) Yemen (32) South Sudan (3)

Angola (10)

Cambodia (16)

Somalia (1)

Rwanda (5)

Source: Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining

those who gather firewood. Local economies stagnate, damaged infrastructure goes unrepaired, cease-fire monitors are hampered.

That’s why Boiko — a 29-yearold mother of one from Mariupol — and her mine-clearance colleagues are deployed near the village of Myrna Dolyna (“Peaceful Valley”). Following clashes in 2014 and 2015, the presence of these deadly devices has paralyzed the small agricultural community, close to the front line in government-held Luhansk region.

Deaths of three Ukrainian soldiers from a land-mine blast here last year put the area on the radar of the Danish Demining Group. Its manpower is drawn from the local population — supervisors say that risks are manageable and that training takes just a few weeks. In the Donbas twilight zone, this job is attractive. Pay is decent; the task, empowering. This site is expected to be cleared within a year.

“It’s a mix of gardening and archaeology,” Leach said. “We employ civilians, not specialists, so it’s less expensive and benefits local communities.”

Under a hot autumn sun, 10 men and women are scouring for a smorgasbord of Soviet-era weapons. Directional fragmentation mines look like “a dinner plate packed with explosives,” Leach said. “They’re particularly nasty.”

Powerful TM-62 antitank

THE WASHINGTON POST

mines threaten farmers working the land. OZM-72 “bounding fragmentation” mines jump into the air when tripped, exploding at waist height to spray hundreds of steel shards into their victims.

“Black widow” mines contain up to a half-pound of TNT, while the toylike shape of “green parrots” caused a large number of child casualties during the Soviet-Afghan war. Elsewhere, the Ukrainian military has accused Russian-backed forces of laying mines attached to fishing lines, with hooks that snag soldiers’ clothes, setting off the explosives.

In the field near Myrna Dolyna, deminers have cleared several lanes into the minefield, each one spaced at a safe distance in case of unexpected blasts. The manager is Colin Watson, a Scotsman with experience in Afghanistan, Mozambique, Somalia and elsewhere.

“I’ve always worked in warmer climes, so it’ll be interesting to see how Ukraine’s bitter winter affects the job,” he said, “though these minefields always have more similarities than differences.”

Sticks tipped with red paint mark the division between secured areas and those yet to be cleared. One goal is to find “mine lines” — explosives fanning into an invisible, defensive barrier.

So prevalent are Donbas land mines that some farmers nickname them “potatoes.” Overlook-

ing rebel-held Horlivka, Vadym Kaplya owns “Dynasty” farm (which his mother named after the soap opera). The front line cleaves his land in half. Plots of wheat are scorched by shelling, while wrecked tractors lie mangled by indiscriminate antitank mines.

“We tell ourselves, ‘There’s a potato, don’t go there,’ ” Kaplya told the Ukrainian online television channel Hromadske.

Most minefields are around the front line, where military commanders typically restrict demining. “There’s almost a blanket ban on survey and clearance in those areas,” said Patrick Thompson, operations manager for the Halo Trust in Ukraine. “If we want access, we have to apply to the [Defense Ministry]. . . . Most commonly, we never get a response.”

And banned from separatistheld territory, international mineclearance organizations have no idea of the scale of the problem there.

Eastern Ukraine is “rapidly becoming one of the most mined areas in the world,” the U.N. deputy chief of humanitarian affairs, Ursula Mueller, said recently, “which, if not addressed, will stall reconstruction and development for many years to come.”

International mine-clearance groups say they have retrieved more than 600 land mines, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance — and identified at least 145 hazardous sites across government-held areas.

After one recent operation, the Ukraine’s military said it had retrieved 1,806 explosive items from 154 acres of land — more than 11 per acre.

A report on the impact of antivehicle mines (AVMs) — published this year by a coalition of humanitarian organizations — found that Ukraine has had the most AVM-related incidents and highest number of casualties in the world over the past two years.

With its flat, open topography, history of armored advances and ready access to factory-made AVMs, eastern Ukraine is a prime location for such devices. n © The Washington Post

COVER STORY

f oot ball liv e s on in a s m al l t o wn As participation falls, high schools turn to eight-man teams.

But the transition is not always easy.

BY JACOB BOGAGE in Felch, Mich.

T

With 15 players, the North Dickinson Nordics are in their first season of eight-man football.

eachers, timber truck drivers and lumber salesmen gather be­ fore sunrise at the Nordic Trad­ ing Post to sip black coffee and eat fried eggs alongside former miners who call themselves “semiretired,” given that the mine was shuttered more than three decades ago. They wear Carhartt jackets and worn­in jeans, work boots and cam­ ouflage hats. Old lumber saws hang on the walls. “Fox & Friends” plays on a small television in the corner.

And because rifle season for white­ tailed deer doesn’t open for another month, the main topic of conversation is high school football. It’s Senior Night, when North Dickinson County School will honor the team’s four seniors, and while the ceremonial flourishes may distract from the central attraction of the game, these fathers and uncles — some grandfathers, too — promise to be there to watch it all, even if this season is a bit different. continues on next page

JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

from previous page

North Dickinson County School, 254 students combined in grades K through 12 in one building, held on to football as most of the country knows it for years. But thanks to declining participation in an aging town, the Nordics will soon finish their first season of eight-player football in decades.

As the game of football faces challenges nationally — head injury concerns, rising costs, sport specialization — the effects are being felt first and most acutely in small towns such as this outpost in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“Your football team is really on life support when you’re on eight-man, because there’s no place to go after eight-man,” North Dickinson Athletic Director Michael Roell says. “We’re hoping we can still have a football team for school pride, for homecoming, for all the things that should stay in high school.”

The eight-man version of the game is played on a narrower field. Offenses typically eliminate two linemen and a fullback or tight end.

Defenses drop two defensive backs and a lineman. The rules and fundamentals are mostly the same as the 11-player version; you still have to block and tackle.

Michigan has lost 57 11-man high school football teams in the past five years, but most, state officials say, moved to the eight-player ranks. The state has poured resources into creating separate junior varsity leagues, varsity conferences and playoffs for eight-player teams.

Proud football towns in the Upper Peninsula resisted the adapted version of the game as long as they could. Now they embrace it in much the same way residents did the Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill after the iron ore mine closed: with resignation over how times change and determination to preserve what matters most.

Shifting landscape Michael Miller studies a geometry work sheet while bouncing his leg up and down and reaching for his right hip pocket as if his phone is soon to buzz. He is a senior guard and the Nordics’ kicker, and he is waiting for the allclear to play in his final home game.

A week ago, he left the second half of North Dickinson’s loss to Superior Central because of a concussion. He looked ready to return for senior night, then took a turn midweek when he couldn’t remember some of what showed up on the game film of Phillips High, this week’s opponent.

North Dickinson’s trainer is scheduled to make his final decision at 4 p.m., and then Coach Mike Christian will decide whether Miller should start in his final home game.

Miller’s leg keeps bouncing. It is 8 a.m.

If he is able to play, Miller will replace his usual No. 50 jersey — maroon with plain white numbers, no logos or stripes — with a No. 35 to honor his father, a linebacker from the Nordics’ Class of 1995, who has said he will be in the stands for his son’s last home game.

Miller is expecting a girl from a town over to attend the game, too. Of course, none of it

PHOTOS BY JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST

“Your football team is really on life support when you’re on eightmatters if he isn’t able to play.

Down the hall, Christian, the coach and kindergarten teacher, is working with two dozen 5- and 6-year-olds on handwriting and sight reading. While students eat snacks or go outside for recess, the coach has taken to counting the number of boys in each class in the middle and elementary schools: seven in eighth grade, seven in seventh grade, but just three play sports.

His kindergarten class last year had 13 students and three boys. In 2015, he had 26 kids and four boys. This year’s football team has just 15 players.

“It is a numbers game,” he says.

Felch hasn’t gotten smaller; since 1990, the town has had around 700 residents. But it has gotten older. High school graduates have left town, and they haven’t come back. The median age is 42.7 years old, compared with 37.9 in the rest of the country, according to census data.

The bell rings, and it’s time for Miller to take a bus to a nearby vocational school, where a third of the high school learns trade skills.

Business is good in Felch for carpenters and plumbers and electricians, the men at Trading

North Dickinson players, from left, Jacob Butterfield, Michael Miller and Matthew Bruette prepare for their game against Phillips High. North Dickinson made the state playoffs for 23 consecutive years, but eight-man football has its own calculus.

Post say. There are car repair shops in Iron Mountain, 30 miles south, that could use another mechanic.

But Miller wants to study computer science, and there’s not much in Felch to accommodate that. Learning a trade could help, he reasons, if that goal doesn’t pan out. He weaves through the middle school by hanging on the left side of the hallway, where the lockers go unused.

Practical problems A quarter of the Nordics’ football team is in Chris Mattson’s 1 p.m. physics class on Fridays.

Most players already have started their game preparation. They bob their heads as Mattson speaks, staring into empty space, filling the moments before class starts.

Mattson, the defensive coordinator, sketches a problem on the projector as the bell rings.

There is a 20­point white­tailed deer 400 yards away. The bullet from the rifle you are shooting travels 2,500 feet per second. The deer is running perpendicular to you at 20 miles per hour. How far in front of the deer do you have to shoot to kill it?

This is not a problem out of a textbook. It is a

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“Good,” Mattson shouts back. “Now get your mind right.”

man, because there’s no place to go after eight-man.”

Michael Roell, North Dickinson County School athletic director

practical skill.

North Dickinson thought it could be pretty good at eight-player football entering the season, but the new game has its own calculus.

Christian began the season attempting to implement the run-heavy wing-T offense, which the Nordics have used for decades, but there were no offensive tackles to open up gaps. He tried throwing the ball but realized the field was too narrow for the Nordics’ usual passing game.

The coaching staff revamped it all, but half the team had never played organized football before and needed more coaching on the fundamentals of blocking and tackling than on how to read a defense. In its first game, North Dickinson lost, 60-0, to Powers-North Central, a team coming off back-to-back eight-player state championships.

North Dickinson, which made the state playoffs for 23 years running from 1991 to 2013, realized it had work to do before it could become an eight-man competitor.

“Every week we learn something new,” Christian says.

Fewer players on either side of the ball opens up broad swaths of space on the 100-yard (plus 10-yard end zones) by 40-yard field. Some

Defensive coordinator Chris Mattson draws up plays before the game. Eight-man football is played on a narrower field, though the rules are mostly the same.

states play instead on an 80-yard (plus 10-yard end zones) by 40-yard surface.

Eight-player football team enrollment is up 12 percent since 2009, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, the national governing body of high school sports, as more states encounter declining football participation. Washington, Wisconsin and Hawaii have added eight-player football leagues since then.

Players and coaches from the Upper Peninsula still pine for the 11-man game, though.

North Dickinson administrators waited until a large, talented senior class graduated in 2017 to change over.

“Nobody wanted to go, but nobody said anything bad about it,” North Dickinson senior tight end Jared Miller says. “It was this or nothing. We only would have had eight players on varsity.”

To hit that whitetail, Mattson solves, aim 14 feet ahead.

The next problem, calculating a football punt’s hang time, will be on the upcoming test.

Michael Miller, back from vocational school, pops his head into the classroom.

“I’m clear,” he shouts at Mattson.

Game night Jon Jungwirth, the school’s athletic trainer, arrives at 3 p.m. to Mattson’s physics room and cleans off a lab table with a bleach wipe. He unloads the contents of his morning shopping spree: whole wheat bread, peanut butter, strawberry jam, bananas, cheese sticks and mini Gatorades. Soon, the players are watching game film while munching PB&Js and downing bananas in three quick chomps.

In the locker room, they put in earphones and dress silently until it’s time to pull those maroon jerseys over tight shoulder pads.

“Thirty-five?” defensive lineman Jacob Butterfield says as he helps Michael Miller with his gear.

“My dad is coming,” Miller says. “He wore 35 in high school.”

Jungwirth tapes ankles and wrists. Christian scribbles reminders on the whiteboard. Seated players bounce their legs up and down. Then, 30 cleats clack on tile floors as the Nordics rush out the door, around a corner, through an alleyway and toward the stadium.

When they reach the field, they hold hands in a circle and pray, then break into warm-ups that don’t last very long.

The Nordics receive the ball to start the game, and on the first play from scrimmage, a Phillips defensive tackle bursts through their undersized offensive line and forces a fumble.

The Loggers recover and score on the next play.

North Dickinson fires back. John Nelson, the senior quarterback, hits tight end Jared Miller on a deep play-action pass, then a rotation of running backs hammers away at the Loggers’ defensive front. Nelson drops back on third and long and lobs another pass to Miller, who catches it in the end zone.

A substitute teacher in the stands rattles a cowbell as five cheerleaders sing the fight song in praise of “Nordic High.”

But Phillips goes on a tear on offense and wins, 48-18. In its first season with eight-player football, North Dickinson won only one game. It will not make the playoffs.

Parents and classmates and girlfriends meet the teams’ seniors on the field and take enough pictures and make postgame plans until they all smile again and trudge into the locker room cold and wet.

Michael Miller peels off his No. 35 uniform and stares at his phone in his locker.

His father did not make it to the game. He couldn’t get off work.

The girl who came to see him had sent him a message on Snapchat from the stands.

He smirked and showered, then walked out of the locker room last.

There is only one business in Felch open late on Friday nights: a coffee shop named Alex’s Place, in the back of an old church. Almost all of North Dickinson’s senior class was waiting there, sipping hot chocolate and eating brownies and wondering what to do next. n © The Washington Post

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BUSINESS

When neo-Nazis hijack a brand BY

T RACY J AN

T

he neo-Nazis were hungry. They had spent the day in a Charlottesville, Va., courthouse testifying at the preliminary hearing for a white nationalist jailed for pepper-spraying counterprotesters during August’s deadly Unite the Right rally. Now, after the long drive home to Alexandria, Va., they craved pizza.

“We were going to order from the local place where we get pizza all the time, but we said no, Papa John’s is the official pizza of the alt-right now,” said Eli Mosley, the 26-year-old leader of the white separatist group Identity Evropa. “We’re just supporting the brands that support us.”

That show of support — unsolicited and unwanted by Papa John’s — exhibits an emerging danger to major American brands negotiating the racial politics that have cleaved the country.

It is no longer enough for companies to keep a low profile when it comes to polarizing issues involving race, brand experts say. Instead, some companies are preemptively stating their positions, hoping to avoid being hijacked by white supremacists eager to spread their ideas into the mainstream by tying themselves to household brands that sell products such as pizzas, burgers, sneakers and cars. This month, Papa John’s tweeted an explicit rejection of neo-Nazi ideas.

“Companies need to take a public stand on issues that are affecting consumers in advance of being co-opted,” said Heide Gardner, chief diversity and inclusion officer at IPG, one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing conglomerates.

“Brands need to build a certain level of sophistication around racial issues. They need to be really mindful of how charged the environment is and take pains to look at situations through a diversity lens.”

Papa John’s learned this lesson the hard way after the chain, a

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Unwanted endorsements by white supremacists have become an emerging danger for businesses major sponsor of the National Football League, found itself in the unwelcome embrace of neoNazi groups after its chief executive’s Nov. 1 call with investors, in which he blamed disappointing pizza sales on football players’ protests against racism and police brutality.

After the call, a neo-Nazi website hailed Papa John’s as “Sieg Heil Pizza” with a photo of a pie whose pepperonis were arranged into a swastika.

It didn’t matter that the company immediately condemned racism and all hate groups. “We do not want these individuals or groups to buy our pizza,” a statement from Papa John’s said.

“They can signal all they want, but we know,” said Mosley, praising Papa John’s chief executive John Schnatter’s statements.

The same unwanted attention has come to New Balance, Wendy’s and other companies. The neo-Nazis’ campaign to co-opt brands has forced firms into a familiar pattern: corporate statements disavowing white suprem-

acy, typically followed by silence, in hopes the controversy will blow over without long-lasting damage to their image and sales.

That approach did not work for Papa John’s, whose stock fell by 13 percent between the earnings call and the close of business two weeks later on Nov. 14.

That night, in a renewed attempt to disown the neo-Nazis who have attached themselves to the brand, Papa John’s tweeted an emoji of a raised middle finger to “those guys.” The company also apologized for Schnatter’s “divisive” comments on the earnings call and affirmed its support for the NFL players protesting inequality.

“We will work with the players and league to find a positive way forward,” the company tweeted.

“Open to ideas from all. Except neo-Nazis.”

A spokesman said the company wanted to be “crystal clear” about where it stands with regard to white supremacist groups.

Other companies should take

The Charlottesville, Va., march by white supremacists and their allies in August created an uninvited association with Tiki Brand’s torches.

heed of Papa John’s experience, experts say. As the marketplace becomes the latest battleground in the culture wars, brand strategists are advising companies accustomed to staying out of the political fray to proactively weigh in with bold statements about race — as Nike and Ben & Jerry’s have done — to thwart attempts by hate groups to adopt brands as their own.

More brands are also building up their crisis management teams in preparation for the next racial flare-up, said Tiffany R. Warren, senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Omnicom Group, a global marketing and corporate communications holding company.

“That’s the new reality,” Warren said. “It’s not just nice to have. It’s the way of doing business now.”

Some companies were bystanders when they were swept up in the racially charged atmosphere.

Tiki Brand, owned by Wisconsin-based Lamplight Farms, was minding its business as a purveyor of Polynesian kitsch when its bamboo torches were used by white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville.

Images of angry young white men parading through the University of Virginia campus holding the flaming torches turned the product once evocative of backyard barbecues and luaus into a symbol of white supremacy.

The company declined to comment on whether it has felt any financial effects.

Other companies caught the admiration of neo-Nazis after their executives voiced support for President Trump or his policies.

Yuengling, based in Pottsville, Pa., and touted as “America’s oldest brewery,” became the favored beer of white nationalists after the company’s owner backed Trump in the final days of the campaign.

Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer website, declared New Balance the “official shoes of

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TRENDS white people” after an executive of the Boston shoe company praised Trump’s stance on trade soon after he was elected. Liberals tweeted pictures of themselves trashing or burning their New Balance sneakers.

Other firms attracted the attention of white nationalists through branding mistakes of their own. Anglin proclaimed Wendy’s the “official burger of the neo-Nazi alt-right movement” after the fast-food restaurant mistakenly tweeted a picture of Pepe the Frog, a white nationalist symbol, in the same red pigtails as the Wendy’s girl mascot.

And white supremacists celebrated when a casting call for a Cadillac commercial sought “any and all real alt-right thinkers/ believers.” Cadillac said at the time it did not authorize the casting notice, but Anglin had already pounced, writing in a post titled “Yes, We are Mainstream Now” that “it was natural for a major American corporation to want someone from our movement.”

There is no telling the impact these endorsements have had on companies’ sales or on the movement’s recruitment efforts. But experts expect the co-opting of brands to continue.

“It helps to make the alt-right seem more like normal Americans rather than a fringe,” said Nour Kteily, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University whose research has focused on neo-Nazi groups.

Matthew Heimbach, the 26year-old chairman of the Traditionalist Workers Party, a white nationalist group, said he will keep having Papa John’s delivered to his local chapter meetings in Paoli, Ind. “Condemn us all you want, but we will continue to buy your pizza to support your struggle against the politically correct agenda,” Heimbach said. “We have to prove that we are a reliable economic, social and political bloc within American politics.”

Endorsing brands such as Papa John’s, he said, “provides a platform for us to spread our message so folks will know what we stand for, go to our websites and possibly join us.” n © The Washington Post

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Famjams: The hot new way to embarrass your family BY

A BHA B HATTARAI

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arly in November, Kathy Woods calls a family meeting to discuss the season’s pressing question: Matching Christmas pajamas in stripes or solids?

The routine began casually enough about five years ago, Woods said, but has become an annual holiday tradition that includes her three children, her dog and sometimes her mother and sister. (Her husband, however, declines to participate.)

“It’s like my big challenge every Christmas: Can I get everybody to put on these matching pajamas and sit still for a photo?” said Woods, who lives in Teaneck, N.J. “If I can, it’s a good year.”

Pajamas, of course, have long been standard holiday fare and, at times, a gift-giving cliche. But in recent years, retailers say, social media — a wonderland for cheesy photos — has created a matchingpajama frenzy that has spread from niche retailers such as PajamaGram and Hanna Andersson to mainstream chains. Even Oprah Winfrey has joined in.

Family pajamas by Burt’s Bees Baby are on her “Favorite Things” list.

Coordinating sleepwear, retailers say, is the new ugly sweater: Kitschy, extravagant and somehow irresistible.

Target said sales have grown every year since 2013, and this season, it plans to offer 22 patterns, some with options for dogs and dolls. Walmart, meanwhile, is expecting another year of “hefty” sales growth for its one-piece, zip-up pajamas for adults. New this year: patterns depicting skiing polar bears and Santa riding a unicorn.

“This is definitely a peak year” for matching sets, said Debbie Horton, senior sleepwear buyer for Walmart. “People aren’t just wearing them to bed anymore.

They’re actually putting them on to go out and have fun.”

At PajamaGram, the holiday

boom began in early September, when shoppers began planning photos for this year’s Christmas cards. The online retailer expects to sell 500,000 pairs of coordinating sleepwear this year for moms, dads, children — and, of course, the family dog and cat. Business has been so brisk that matching holiday pajamas now make up 80 percent of the company’s annual sales, up from 15 percent in 2005.

JACQUI MCGURREN

Jacqui McGurren’s family — including husband Jeff, the couple’s son and their dogs — posed in matching pajamas for their holiday cards last year. This year, she plans to include the family’s five chickens.

“It’s great for business,” said Stacey Buonanno, the company’s brand director. “It used to be that people would buy just one pair of women’s pajamas. Now they’re buying four or five pairs for the whole family.”

Prices start at about $20 to outfit the cats and dogs, $30 for children and $60 for adults. For a family of four plus a pet, that’s $200 — although Buonanno said that hasn’t deterred buyers.

“We are seeing opportunities with this as a year-round business,” she said. “Demand is just constantly growing.”

The company has increased its lineup of designs from three to 27, and this year has licensing deals for Looney Tunes and Minions characters.

Matching pajamas have be-

come such a hit on social media, Buonanno said, that the company has begun asking customers to send in their photos. It has received 5,000 submissions over the past few years, many of which have ended up on the company’s website and its catalogues.

“It’s all about the family photos,” said Justin Sonfield, a spokesman for the Company Store, where sales of matching flannel pajamas have grown by double digits for five years in a row. “In the retail world, it’s what we call a home run.”

It has been decades, Sharon Sweeney said, that she’s been buying matching holiday pajamas for her five children and six grandchildren. These days, even if the extended family is apart during the holidays, they have three-way video calls on Christmas Eve so the family can see each other in their matching pajamas.

“This is something we’ve been doing our whole lives,” said her daughter, Susan Pennell, who lives in Newfoundland, Canada.

“It’s just that now it’s a lot more visible because everyone can see our pictures on Instagram.”

Jeff McGurren was against the trend. But he caved last year after his wife, Jacqui, told him he’d ruin Christmas if he didn’t join in.

So he sheepishly put on a pair of reindeer-emblazoned pajamas and posed with their 5-month-old son and two dogs for their annual holiday card.

“You can tell by the look on his face he wasn’t too happy about the family photo,” Jacqui said.

“But he is a good sport [and] agreed to do another one this year.”

Which means, she said, she’ll have to go shopping. The family recently doubled in size, with the addition of five chickens.

“I really want to do one this year with the five chickens matching,” she said, adding that she’s already found fowl-friendly Christmas sweaters. “I just love the cheesiness of it.” n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Behave

need to agree with this assessment to find her book a sad, compelling indictment of the country where she was born, a country so traumatized by its monstrous past that it seems intent on repeating it.

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst $35

By Robert M. Sapolsky Penguin Press If you ever thought that neuroscience was too boring or complicated for pleasurable reading, “Behave” will change your mind.

You’ll find yourself guffawing at Sapolsky’s quirky humor, and you’ll begin to question whether that decision you made so many years ago not to go into the sciences might have been too hasty. A professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Sapolsky brings together a variety of scientific disciplines to tackle a fundamental mystery: What drives humans to harm each other or help each other? He finds the answers in our biology and takes readers on a journey through the nervous system, hormones, evolution and the environment. For any layperson who wants to understand why we behave the way we do, Sapolsky has created an immensely readable, often hilarious, romp through the worlds of psychology, primatology, sociology and neurobiology.

I Can’t Breathe A Killing on Bay Street $28

By Matt Taibbi Spiegel & Grau This gut-wrenching account of the death and life of Eric Garner is a deep dive into every aspect of the case, including its legal impact, which is minimal, and its cultural and political ones, which have been profound. Most revealing are the stories Taibbi tells about other African Americans, mostly male and poor, who were stopped and frisked, stripsearched, sexually assaulted, set up, beaten or killed for the tragic reason that racist cops didn’t like them or the even more tragic one that those kinds of humiliations are ordained by U.S. law and policy. The stories relate to one another and to the Garner case, which gives “I Can’t Breathe” the feel of a police procedural. The narrative unfolds like an episode of “The Wire” but without the comic relief — or the show’s grudging empathy for the cops.

Some readers might object to Taibbi’s tone of sustained outrage.

But the author is mad as hell at the police and the politics that empower their brutality.

The Future Is History How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia $28

By Masha Gessen Riverhead Vladimir Putin has inspired a number of books seeking to explain his remarkable rise — and his remarkable hold on power.

Few accounts are as ambitious, insightful and unsparing as Gessen’s “The Future Is History.” This is a sweeping intellectual history of Russia over the past four decades, told through a Tolstoyan gallery of characters. It makes a convincing if depressing case that Homo Sovieticus, the unique species created a century ago with the Bolshevik Revolution, did not die out along with the Soviet Union. What makes the book so worthwhile are its keen observations about Russia from the point of view of those experiencing its heavy-handed state. Gessen’s provocative conclusion that Putin’s Russia is just as much a totalitarian society as Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany may not convince all readers. But you don’t

I Was Told to Come Alone ILLUSTRAT

TOP 10 of 2017

W

IONS BY

SIMONE

MASSON

I FOR THE

WASHING

TON POST

ho doesn’t feel dizzied by the pace of this year’s news?

If you commute longer than 30 minutes, you arrive at the office to find the world you left at home already transformed by some breaking revelation. That pace is accelerated by a president who communicates largely via Twitter, rocketing the country into some new trajectory of celebration or outrage as fast as he can type.¶ Stop. Just stop. ¶ Ignore the Facebook posts begging to be liked. ¶ You need a good book. ¶ Rediscover the glory of prose that’s polished instead of tweeted. ¶ This year’s roundup of the best and notable books offers the perfect place to find what you’ve been missing — and craving.

My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad $30

By Souad Mekhennet Henry Holt In her memoir of 15 years of covering jihadists, journalist Mekhennet sets out to answer a perennial question: Why do they hate us? As a Muslim woman and brave, resourceful reporter who speaks English, German, French and Arabic, Mekhennet seems well-suited to the task. She explains the nature of reporting on jihad in her role as a Washington Post national security correspondent, the time spent waiting for sources to call back, puzzling over whom to trust. On several occasions, she gets anonymous tips about imminent danger to her life and whether militants or hostile governments intend to kidnap,

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BOOKS torture or rape her. Her portrayals of al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters and sympathizers in countries around the world make her memoir a work of significant merit. But what of her original question? In her telling, the root of hate is not Islam; it’s not U.S. politics or foreign policy, nor is it American racism or Islamophobia. The answer is elusive and troublingly mysterious.

Lincoln in the Bardo $28

By George Saunders Random House “Lincoln in the Bardo” is an extended national ghost story, an erratically funny and piteous séance of grief. The spirit of the story arises from a tragic footnote in American history when President Abraham Lincoln’s 11-yearold son, Willie, died of typhoid fever during the Civil War. Everything about Saunders’s first novel, which won the Man Booker Prize, confounds our expectations of what a novel should look and sound like. It’s composed

WEEKLY

cludes with a damning verdict on Obama’s determination: “While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.”

Saints for All Occasions

Less $26

By Andrew Sean Greer Lee Boudreaux Too often, our standards of literary greatness exclude comic novels — which is usually fine because there are so few great comic novels. But you should make more room for “Less.” In the opening pages, a writer named Arthur Less is depressed about turning 49. His anxiety about aging has been exacerbated by news that his former boyfriend is about to get married to a younger man. Confronted with the prospect of sitting through their wedding, Less decides to send his regrets and flee. He blindly accepts the invitations he’s received from around the world: a hodgepodge of teaching assignments, retreats and readings. Those gigs provide the novel’s structure — a different country for each chapter — and Greer is brilliantly funny about the awkwardness that awaits a traveling writer of less repute. Unfailingly polite, hypersensitive to the risk of boring anyone, Less remains congenial throughout, but “the tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.” This is the comedy of disappointment distilled to a sweet elixir.

KLMNO

entirely of brief quotations — some real, some imagined — from people who worked for the president, his friends, colleagues, enemies, biographers and, most strikingly, ghosts trapped in Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery, where Willie was laid to rest.

Despite that bizarre chorus, the heart of the story remains Lincoln, the shattered father who rides alone to the graveyard at night. As the spirits pass through the president’s body like light through a glass, they catch his thoughts and fears. We can hear Lincoln wrestling with his faith, struggling to maintain his composure against an avalanche of grief and a torrent of criticism from a nation devastated by war.

The Power $26

By Naomi Alderman Little, Brown Excitement about this dystopian novel has been arcing across the Atlantic since it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction earlier this year in England. Alderman’s premise is simple, her execution endlessly inventive: Teenage girls everywhere suddenly discover that their bodies can produce a deadly electrical charge. The capacity of women to shock and awe quickly disrupts the structure of civilization. The narrative moves from an American girl’s bedroom to a British gang’s hangout, to a European forest and beyond, tracing the way this new power surges through families and governments, singeing male pride,

inflaming chauvinism and burning the patriarchy to a crisp. This surprising and provocative story deconstructs not just the obvious expressions of sexism but also the internal ribs of power that we have tolerated, honored and romanticized for centuries. Alderman’s story sparks with such electric satire that you should read it wearing insulated gloves.

Rising Star The Making of Barack Obama $45

By David J. Garrow William Morrow This probing doorstop of a biography explores the calculations Barack Obama made in the decades leading up to winning the presidency. Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence and made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of his goal. Every step — whether his foray into community organizing, Harvard Law School, even his choice of whom to love — was not just about living a life but also about fulfilling a destiny. The book is most revealing in its account of Obama’s personal life, particularly the tale of a woman of Dutch and Japanese ancestry the future president lived with before he met Michelle.

After asking her to marry him, Obama had a change of heart. As Garrow puts it, for black politicians in Chicago, a non-African American spouse could be a liability. Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., con-

$26.95

By J. Courtney Sullivan Knopf From the outside, nothing about this plot seems noteworthy: Irish Catholics settle in Boston; they drink too much; they struggle with the church; they gather for a loved one’s wake. That sounds as fresh as a pint of last week’s Guinness, which makes this quiet masterpiece all the more impressive.

In a style that never commits a flutter of extravagance, Sullivan draws us into the lives of the Raffertys and, in the rare miracle of fiction, makes us care about them as if they were our own family. In the present, the story takes place over just a few days — the period between when 50-yearold Patrick Rafferty loses control of his car and when he’s laid out at his funeral. But within those hours, Sullivan spins the captivating history of Patrick’s mother and her sister, reaching all the way back to a little Irish village in the late 1950s.

Sing, Unburied, Sing $26

By Jesmyn Ward Scribner “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is built around an arduous car trip when a black woman and her children drive to a state penitentiary to pick up their white father. The narration passes back and forth between the convict’s 13-year-old son and his drug-addled mother, Leonie. Ward draws us deep into the bile of a woman who sometimes dislikes her children and often resents their claims on her. But Leonie’s failings, which she knows are numerous, have been aggravated by addiction, grief and a racist culture that offers her no opportunity and little justice.

These are people “pulling all the weight of history.” Ward, one of the most powerfully poetic writers in the country, represents those necrotic claims with a pair of restless ghosts, the unburied singers of the title, who speak to Leonie and her son. The plight of this one family is tied to intersecting crimes that stretch over decades. n ©The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Both Trump and media are stepping over the line CHRIS WALLACE is anchor of “Fox News Sunday.” This opinion piece, which was published in The Washington Post, was adapted from a speech he gave Nov. 9 to the International Center for Journalists.

Whatever side you’re on in the debate over journalism these days, you’re not going to like some of what I have to say. Let’s start with a basic fact. President Trump is engaged in the most direct, sustained assault on the free press in our history. Since early in the campaign, he has done everything he could to delegitimize the media — attacking us institutionally and individually. And I think his purpose is clear: a concerted campaign to raise doubts over whether we can be trusted when we report critically about his administration.

According to the Trump Twitter Archive, between Jan. 10 and the end of October, Trump tweeted about “fake news” 141 times. One stands out. On Feb. 17, the president tweeted this: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy.

It is the enemy of the American People!” And that was precisely his point. If we report negatively about something he’s doing, we are hurting the country.

Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, was my guest on “Fox News Sunday” two days later. When I asked him about the president’s tweet, he complained that, yes, we covered what Trump did, but that “as soon as it’s over, the next 20 hours is all about Russian spies.” I answered: “You don’t get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama. He whined about Fox News all the time. But he never said we were the enemy of the people.”

But don’t take it from me.

Listen to William H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL for 37 years, the man in charge of the missions that captured Saddam Hussein and killed Osama bin Laden.

McRaven graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism. He’s now the chancellor of the University of Texas system. And after the president’s tweet, he told

students: “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

Remember, this is a man who fought the Soviet Union, who fought Islamist terrorism. But when I asked him about his comments, he said, “Those threats brought us together. Both the president and I swore an oath to the Constitution. And the First Amendment of that Constitution is freedom of the press. When the president says the media is the enemy of the people, to me that undermines the Constitution. So I do think it is a tremendous threat to our democracy.”

It turns out McRaven may have understated the threat. A Politico poll a couple of weeks ago found that 46 percent of voters believe that major news organizations make up stories about Trump. A Newseum Institute poll in May found that 23 percent think the First Amendment “goes too far.” And 74 percent don’t think “fake news” should be protected by the First Amendment.

But there is another side to this debate, as there usually is. There’s an old saying: “Even hypochondriacs sometimes get sick.”

And even if Trump is trying to undermine the press for his own calculated reasons, when he talks about bias in the media — unfairness — I think he has a point.

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila during his recent trip to Asia.

On Nov. 10, 2016 — two days after the election, here was the lead paragraph of a front-page article in the New York Times: “The American political establishment reeled on Wednesday as leaders in both parties began coming to grips with four years of President Donald J. Trump in the White House, a once­unimaginable scenario that has now plunged the United States and its allies and adversaries into a period of deep uncertainty about the policies and impact of his administration.” “Reeled . . . coming to grips . . . unimaginable . . . plunged.” Could they have come up with any more buzzwords?

On Feb. 16, this was the lead on the “CBS Evening News”: “It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality.” A week later, this was the lead: “The president’s troubles today were not with the media — but with the facts.”

On Aug. 2, this was the report from CNN’s White House correspondent: “This White House has an unhealthy fixation on what I call the three M’s: the Mexicans, the Muslims and the media. Their policies tend to be crafted around bashing one of

these three groups.”

Now, I’m sure some of you hear those comments and think they’re spot-on. But ask yourself — honestly — do they belong on the front page of the paper? Or the lead of the evening news?

I believe some of my colleagues — many of my colleagues — think this president has gone so far over the line bashing the media, that it has given them an excuse to cross the line themselves, to push back. As tempting as that may be, I think it’s a big mistake.

We are not players in the game.

We are umpires, or observers, trying to be objective witnesses to what is going on. That doesn’t mean we’re stenographers. If the president — or anyone we’re covering — says something untrue or does something questionable, we can and should report it.

But we shouldn’t be drawn into becoming players on the field, trying to match the people we cover in invective. It’s not our role. We’re not as good at it as they are. And we’re giving up our special place in our democracy.

There’s enough to report about this president that we don’t need to offer opinions or put our thumb on the scale. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Taking aim at big-game hunting MONICA MEDINA is an adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She served as senior adviser to former secretary of defense Leon Panetta from 2012 to 2013. This was written for The Washington Post.

Days after the Trump administration ignited a public uproar by moving to allow hunters to bring the remains of dead elephants “bagged” in Zambia and Zimbabwe back into the United States, President Trump unexpectedly changed his tune and vowed to review “the conservation facts” and provide a decision after the holiday.

But elephants and other endangered species aren’t out of the woods yet. Lion “trophies” can still enter the United States from Zambia and Zimbabwe (another reversed policy from the Trump administration this year), and Congress is close to creating a loophole allowing polar bear and elephant remains to be imported from anywhere. Pro-hunting lobbyists have many paths to their trophies.

There is no dispute — elephants are at grave risk of extinction. Consequently, trade in elephant ivory is generally banned internationally, within many countries, and even in some states. For years spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has been a global leader in conserving these majestic but slow-breeding creatures, whose numbers have been shrinking rapidly because of a poaching epidemic in Africa.

Indeed, elephant poaching has been linked to international criminals and even terrorist groups because ivory is extremely valuable on the black market. In response, the world set about crushing illegal ivory to permanently remove it from commerce and drastically limit its trade. But if big-game hunting is not really ivory trade, why is it such a big deal?

Allowing the importation of elephant trophies would be a terrible blow to elephant conservation for three reasons: First, it fosters an illegal trade in ivory that is still not under control. The more legal hunting is allowed and encouraged, the more ivory there will be in the stream of commerce. That makes it harder to isolate and end the illegal trade. Elephant populations in these countries are so small any action that encourages their hunting — legal or illegal — puts them at even

greater risk. For example, in Zambia, the elephant population is down to less than 22,000 animals — only 10 percent of the 200,000 surveyed in 1972.

Second, this policy would economically damage these two nations, where tourism is increasingly tied to people seeing elephants rather than killing them. This is why the neighboring government of Botswana outlawed game hunts several years ago. Tourists come from all over the world to observe elephants in their natural habitat in eco-friendly places such as Botswana, where it is relatively easy to see increasingly scarce but beloved animals such as giraffes, elephants, rhinos and lions.

Moreover, big-game hunting is the last vestige of wealthy colonialism. It has nothing to do with conservation. The tragic killing of “Cecil” the lion a few years ago heightened the public’s condemnation of the conspicuous consumption of Africa’s wildlife.

This is not deer or duck hunting, sports that are common and affordable to many Americans.

Far from it. Game hunting in Africa is something that only the obscenely wealthy can afford to do. The safari alone costs more than $50,000, not including fees for importing the “trophy.”

And that is why reversing

trophy-hunting policy was so appealing at first blush: It stokes the Republican base of hunters who reflexively fight to defend their rights, but it really only benefits ridiculously wealthy.

Finally, lifting the ban also risks harming our national security. Big-game hunting is so expensive that it is difficult to rid it of corruption. Indeed, that is why the U.S. government prohibited the importation of elephant trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe this past week had a de facto military coup, with President Robert Mugabe resigning Tuesday.

Zambia is more politically stable, but it is struggling economically.

With terrorist networks gaining a greater foothold in Africa, this is a bad time for our government to make elephant poaching easier.

Without the sharp pushback from some conservative commentators, it’s likely the policy reversal would have remained. For now, the president has us all guessing: Will he lift the ban or leave it in place? If he really believes trophy hunting is a “horror show,” then he should prove it by banning all together the importation of the remains of all endangered species and by fighting congressional efforts to limit his authority to impose such a ban. n

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OPINIONS

BY CLAYTOONZ.COM

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

Can the descent of American political culture into ugly tribalism be halted? Alabama voters will give their answer when they decide whether to send Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate.

Moore, 70, has built a long, disgraceful career out of smarmy religiosity spiked with tribal grievance. Having posed for years as the most pious of Christians, he now stands accused by nine women of shockingly un-Christian behavior: They claim convincingly that Moore, when he was in his 30s, aggressively pursued romantic or sexual relationships, including with teens barely half his age.

One woman says Moore molested her when she was 14.

Another says Moore called her at her high school — during trigonometry class, she recalls — to plead with her to go out with him. Residents of Gadsden, Ala., where Moore was working at the time, say he was well-known for lurking around places where teenagers hung out, such as the local mall, and approaching young girls.

Hardly any officeholders have said they believe Moore is innocent of — at a minimum — serious moral transgressions.

Even Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, said she has “no reason to disbelieve” any of Moore’s accusers. But Ivey said she nevertheless plans to vote for Moore in the Dec. 12 special election, and her reasons sound

more tribal than political.

“We need to have a Republican in the United States Senate,” Ivey said. But Moore has been as strident in his attacks against the establishment wing of the Republican Party as against the Democrats. He has been a grandstanding maverick for decades, and there is no reason to believe he will change. Having Moore in the Senate would probably mean more grief for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) than losing the seat to Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.

Ivey’s problem is that Moore defeated her handpicked candidate, interim senator Luther Strange, in a bitterly contested primary. Moore pulled this off by positioning himself as the selfanointed voice of Christian

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

grievance and resentment.

“Populist” is too neutral a description. Moore is really a tribal leader, claiming that his followers are the only true Americans — while disqualifying his opponents as illegitimate.

The problem with tribalism is that it is absolute. In Rwanda in 1994, you were either identified as Tutsi or as Hutu; there was no inbetween. For Moore, you are either among the good people or among the evil.

Moore’s philosophy is properly seen as Manichaean, not Christian; it has no room for universal love. The fact that most of his supporters, thus far, are sticking with him — enough to cow the state Republican Party into sticking with him, too — means he has convinced many Alabamians that child molestation is a lesser sin than believing in the Constitution’s separation of church and state.

Successful demagogues can use tribal enmities to blind their followers to such moral and logical contradictions. Some of Moore’s followers have told reporters they believe all the accusers are lying for partisan political reasons, which seems unlikely given what we know about the women’s politics; most describe themselves as conservative and several said they

voted for President Trump. Some Moore supporters charge that the women are seeking publicity, which is ridiculous; reporters sought the victims out and convinced them to tell their stories, and the women must have had some idea of the kind of vicious attacks that would follow.

Moore uses his angry Christianity as a tool of selfaggrandizement. He uses the trust and passion of the Alabamians he defrauds to sully the reputations of women who bravely testify to his allegedly vile and creepy behavior. He rages about filing lawsuits, but don’t hold your breath. Lawyers for potential defendants can’t wait to see what the discovery process might unearth.

Alabama’s three major newspapers ran rare front-page editorials Sunday imploring voters not to send this unworthy man to Washington. It is a sad sign of the times that I am not sure whether that hurt Moore’s prospects or helped them. The “mainstream media” is an enemy whose disapproval Moore cultivates to make his supporters love him more.

Moore is not invincible. He can be defeated — but only if Alabamians decide that honor, integrity and morality are more important than tribe. n

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Texas BY

E RICA G RIEDER

This year, Texas has endured a mass shooting, a bathroom­bill de­ bate, wildfires and historic floods. Recovery from Hurricane Harvey, in particular, will take years. It’s worth paying attention to what’s happening in Texas, because the events that have sent the state reel­ ing may have momentous consequences for everyone. Here are sev­ eral misconceptions.

MYTH NO. 1 Texans love guns.

Texans, collectively, have the same views on guns as other Americans do: Most think the government has a rightful role in restricting access to them under certain circumstances.

According to a June survey from the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of Americans believe that gun laws should be more strict; an October survey from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune found that 52 percent of Texans do, too. And although data on gun ownership is notoriously imprecise, there’s no evidence that Texans are armed at a wildly disproportionate rate.

In 2012, the General Social Survey reported that 34 percent of Americans have a gun in their home. In Texas, the figure is about 36 percent, according to a 2015 study.

MYTH NO. 2 Texas is part of the Bible Belt.

Some 31 percent of Texans are evangelical Protestants (across a range of denominations), according to the Pew Research Center, compared with 25 percent of Americans as a whole.

And yes, large-scale migration from the United States to the territory in the early 1800s coincided with the Second Great Awakening, so Baptists and Methodists have always played an outsize role in civic life.

But Texas is not the beating heart of evangelical America.

The largest single religious group here is Catholics;

23 percent of Texans identify as such — and since more than 70 percent of Texas Catholics are Latino, that share will continue to rise as this group grows.

Beyond that, the state’s faith communities are as heterogeneous as the population itself. Joe Straus, the speaker of the House, is Jewish. Some 422,000 Texans are Muslim, the largest such population in any state, according to the 2010 U.S. Religious Census.

CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Oil once propelled Texas’s economy, but today the state has diversified and isn’t so dependent on the energy industry.

MYTH NO. 3 Texas needs to crack down on illegal immigration.

Unauthorized immigration to Texas is primarily a labor force phenomenon. The “criminals” and “rapists” President Trump warns about are, for the most part, workers from a culturally familiar country, living in a state with a skeletal safety net and ongoing economic growth.

That’s not really a problem from a public safety perspective.

In fact, Texas’s biggest problem with unauthorized immigration is that it has plateaued: In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Houston is facing a labor shortfall as it tries to rebuild, because many of the construction jobs have historically been filled by workers from neighboring Mexico.

demographer’s office projects that Latinos, a traditionally Democratic constituency, will outnumber Anglos by 2020 and will be a majority of the population by 2042. And Washington Post columnist George Will warned last year that Republican vote totals are shrinking.

But this transformation is nowhere close to reality. Putting too much faith in this trend enticed the state’s Democrats, and their national cheerleaders, to doom in 2014. Battleground Texas, established in 2013, helped contest the 2014 midterms so hotly that Democratic candidates for statewide office, led by gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis, lost by at least 20 points.

It’s true that Texas is a “majority-minority” state, a young state and an urbanized state. But all those things were true 10 years ago, too, and Democrats have not won statewide since 1994.

at least, have a rough 2015 ahead, and is at risk of slipping into a regional recession.” His premise, that low oil prices would drag down the entire state, was widely shared.

But Texas no longer rises and falls on the strength of oil, as it did in the 1980s. The economy has diversified (into manufacturing, services, trade, tech), and it now depends on the globalized economic order that Trump campaigned against.

In 2015, Michael Plante, an economist with the Dallas Fed, offered the following notparticularly-terrifying assessment of how the collapse in oil prices over the previous six months would affect the state: “The effects by themselves are not expected to halt job creation in Texas in 2015, but will, nonetheless, be felt in areas heavily dependent on oil production and employment related to the sector.”

In 2017, we can say that he, rather than Feroli, was right. n

MYTH NO. 4 Shifting demographics are turning Texas blue.

This is a plausible myth, given the state’s rapidly changing demographics — the state

MYTH NO. 5 Texas depends on oil.

In December 2014, Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan Chase, issued a warning: “We think Texas will,

Grieder is a metro columnist at the Houston Chronicle and is the author of “Big, Hot, Cheap and Right: What America Can Learn From the Strange Genius of Texas.” This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2017

24

The Wenatchee Valley Visitor Guide Fall 2017 & Winter 2018 Edition lley Wenatchee Va

Visitor Guide

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Fall 2017 and Winter 2018

New This Year!

The Wenatchee World has just published our new 100-page Fall/Winter Visitors Guide, filled with activities, events, places to visit and hundreds of things to do over the fall and winter months.

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wenatcheeworld.com