The Washington Post National Weekly - December 3, 2017

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY 597 days. And still waiting.

10,000 people died in the past year while stuck in a backlog of judges’ disability cases. Will Joe Stewart be next? PAGE 12

Politics Ala. women face hard choice 4 Nation Farming grows popular 9 5 Myths American Indians 23

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

Trump’s drift toward yes men BY

A ARON B LAKE

S

ecretary of State Rex Tillerson’s days appear to be numbered, with the White House planning to remove him in the next few weeks. That news isn’t hugely surprising, given that it was rumored to be the case ever since it was reported that Tillerson had called President Trump a “moron.”

What’s more significant here are the dominoes that would reportedly fall once Tillerson is out: Specifically, CIA Director Mike Pompeo taking over for Tillerson at the State Department, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) replacing Pompeo at the CIA. In one fell swoop, Trump would be removing one of three people who Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said is helping “separate our country from chaos” and promoting two men who would move the Trump administration conspicuously in the direction of Trump allies and yes men.

Pompeo’s elevation, in particular, would come at the expense of U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, another rumored pick to lead the State Department. Haley has often broken with the administration or, at the very least, gotten ahead of its messaging. (At one point, Trump seemed to only half-jokingly say that Haley “could easily be replaced.”) It’s not difficult to see that approach having harmed her, given Trump’s reportedly unpleasant experience with Tillerson as his top diplomat.

Pompeo is decidedly on the other end of the spectrum. Despite holding a job that often requires independence from the White House and politics more generally, he has made conspicuously pro-Trump moves from his perch in Langley, Va. — to the point where he has reportedly given intelligence officers heartburn.

Pompeo has: l Met with the purveyor of a disputed theory

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that the Democratic National Committee’s emails weren’t hacked by Russia but were leaked internally — a theory that flies in the face of the intelligence community’s conclusions — reportedly at Trump’s request. l Used a Trump-ian talking point — also directly at odds with the intelligence community’s findings — that Russian hacking “did not affect the outcome of the [2016] election.”

ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG NEWS

The White House is reportedly planning to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Reportedly been enlisted by the White House to beat back stories about Trump campaign contacts with Russia. l Put a CIA unit charged with investigating possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia directly under his control.

And if Trump were at all worried about replacing a loyalist at the CIA, Cotton would quickly put those fears to rest. Trump’s vocal defender in Congress was once credibly labeled Trump’s “wingman.”

The Trump administration was initially stocked with both allies and more pragmatic picks who were less tied to Trump’s brand of politics and perhaps less willing to indulge his controversial impulses. More recently, the selection of John F. Kelly as chief of staff was l

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. 8

thought to be a move away from yes men and toward people who might keep Trump, for lack of a better phrase, in line.

That clearly hasn't happened, and these picks seem to move the needle more toward Trump die-hards.

But in a lot of ways, this was bound to happen. As his presidency has progressed, Trump has clearly clashed with establishment-friendly officials who have inhabited his inner circles. He seemed to almost torture former chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer before their departures after just six months. He reportedly frustrated Tillerson so much that the secretary of state called him a “moron” in front of other people. National security adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly been exasperated. Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director when Comey declined to declare his loyalty. Corker, who Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) once said talked to Trump more than any other senator, has clearly had it.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke has reportedly told Kelly she will resign over disagreements. And even as Kelly has stood by Trump, he has at times clearly had his patience with the commander in chief tested.

As Trump’s presidency progresses — and as he makes it clearer and clearer that he’s not going to change and may actually drift further from the GOP’s comfort zone — it’s going to become more difficult to pull talent from the ranks of people who might stand up to Trump.

And a reportedly exasperated Trump is likely to be drawn more to yes men and women who promise (either implicitly or explicitly) not to put him through the things he has gone through with Tillerson.

It’s almost an inevitable shift. It just may be happening earlier than some expected. n

©The Washington Post

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

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ON THE COVER Joe Stewart of Mississippi applied for disability support more than two years ago and is waiting for a decision. “I may be blind and toothless before I get any help,” he says. Photograph by BONNIE JO MOUNT, The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

A hard choice for some Ala. women

BRYNN ANDERSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Female voters are uneasy about Roy Moore allegations — or supporting a Democrat D AVID W EIGEL Huntsville, Ala. BY

A

ndrea McCafferty pulled into the parking lot of Sugar Belle, curious why the coffee shop would be so crowded on a Tuesday. The big draw was Louise Jones, whose husband, Doug Jones, is the Democratic Senate nominee. After grabbing some tea, McCafferty took a seat near the front of the room and gave Jones some advice.

“Make sure the Republicans understand that they can vote in this

election if they don’t like Roy Moore,” she told Louise Jones.

“There are a lot of people who want to vote for Jones, but don’t want to cross the party.”

In the closing days of Alabama’s unexpectedly close race ahead of a special election, a battle is emerging for voters like McCafferty: white suburban women who typically support GOP candidates but who, unlike many of their male counterparts, have become uneasy about Moore.

Each side, relying at times on the candidates’ wives to make

their case, is presenting female voters with an awkward choice regarding their vote Dec. 12: Stand by a man accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s, or vote for a Democrat with liberal views on abortion and other issues and whose victory could imperil the Senate’s Republican majority.

Both campaigns consider these women potentially critical, particularly for Jones, whose high-wire strategy in this deeply conservative state depends on peeling away

Doug Jones, Alabama’s Democratic Senate nominee, shown last Sunday at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, is counting on large turnout of African Americans and other Democratic voters, in addition to peeling away white suburban women from opponent Roy Moore’s ranks.

a segment of Republican voters from Moore in addition to mobilizing a massive turnout of African Americans and other core Democratic voters.

In Huntsville, a fast-growing and highly educated “rocket city,” Doug Jones signs have sprung up in cul-de-sacs where President Trump and other Republicans have won easily.

In interviews, suburban Republican women who back Jones said they did not want to face this choice. Suzanne Turner, the chair of the English Department at Cal-

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POLITICS houn Community College in Huntsville, stressed that she went to church every Sunday and helped raise money for Republican Jeff Sessions when he ran for Senate.

“I’d like to see someone in there who’d support Trump, but I believe the women” who have accused Moore, said Turner, 67. “I put a Doug Jones sign in my yard. I felt a little sick doing that. But I had to.”

The Jones campaign has stepped up its outreach to suburban women, with events such as Louise Jones’s coffee visits, designed for undecided voters. A television ad that began running recently portrays eight of Moore’s accusers and asks if voters will “make their abuser a U.S. senator.”

A digital ad, also running heavily, lingers on each photo, and accuses Moore of “immoral” behavior.

Moore has denied the allegations. His campaign, which was massively outspent on the air even before national Republicans abandoned it, has begun to fight back. In its latest ad, Republican women defend Moore, saying that “the establishment is trying to stop” him.

Recent polling suggests that, among women, Jones is making gains. In a Fox News Channel survey released after most of the accusers went public, Jones had an eight-point lead over Moore, based largely on a surge with female voters. The percentage of women in the state who had a favorable view of Moore dropped 11 points between mid-October and mid-November, from 47 percent to 36 percent; among men, Moore dropped by just two points.

Moore’s campaign still sees a path to victory — one that starts with voters choosing to ignore Moore’s accusers. The state’s highest-ranking female Republicans, Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama GOP Chairman Terry Lathan, have reaffirmed their support for Moore. Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.), the sole female member of the congressional delegation, withdrew her 2016 Trump endorsement after the “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed but has remained quiet about Moore.

Part of the argument to GOP voters, including suburban women who are skeptical of Moore personally, is that a Jones victory could put at risk the party’s control of the Senate and make it harder

BRYNN ANDERSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey says she plans to vote for Republican Roy Moore for U.S. Senate even though he faces accusations of sexual misconduct. Moore has denied the allegations.

for Trump to win confirmation of federal judges who oppose abortion. If Jones wins, the GOP’s already tenuous majority in the Senate would narrow to 51 to 49.

Last Sunday, Trump continued his largely solo campaign to help Moore by taking to Twitter to denounce the candidate’s Democratic opponent as other GOP lawmakers continued to oppose their party’s nominee over the sexual misconduct allegations.

“The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning, suggesting that Jones would side with the Senate and House Democratic leaders. “Jones would be a disaster!”

The president later suggested that Republicans “can’t let Schumer/Pelosi win this race.” He did not mention Moore by name in either tweet but each time criticized Jones in a way that made clear he supports the Republican nominee.

Most white, female and conservative Alabamians have no recent experience voting for a Democrat in a federal election. In 2012, the last year an Election Day exit poll was conducted in Alabama, just 16 percent of white women voted to re-elect President Barack Obama, who performed nearly four points better overall in the state than Hillary Clinton would in 2016.

In rural Alabama, few female

voters say they’re ready to bolt from the GOP. Some have started to describe the election as a tricky, but solvable, moral problem — a choice between an alleged sexual predator and a supporter of abortion on demand. Teresa Ferguson, a Moore supporter from a town 50 miles southeast of Huntsville, said she had been advising her peers to think of the Supreme Court and other Republican legislative priorities.

“I’m not calling anybody a liar.

You just don’t know. That’s a private thing. There is just a bigger picture here,” she said. “There is a goal greater, which is we will have to have another Supreme Court justice before too long, and we can’t afford to lose a United States Senate seat.”

There’s less hand-wringing among white male conservatives, who have powered Alabama’s Republicans toward their current dominance. On talk radio, the debates taking place among suburban voters have largely been settled, with predominantly male hosts and callers asking whether Moore has been treated unfairly.

“It was very defiant when the story first broke,” said Dale Jackson, an influential morning host in the Huntsville area. “It shifted a little after one accuser produced the yearbook [bearing an inscription she said is Moore’s] — like, oh man, maybe there’s something to this. And as time’s passed, it’s kind of shifted back.”

As Jones and his wife made their way to Huntsville for the

women’s event the other week, Jackson’s callers took turns defending Moore from the onslaught. Ed Henry, a Republican state representative who had stood by Moore from the beginning, said that the candidate was getting past the story by training his guns on the media.

“He’s in hiding,” Jackson said.

“He’s trying to stay on point,” Henry said.

Over three hours, callers questioned the timing of the accusers’ revelations and pointed to the hypocrisy of Democrats who seemed happy to defend their allies from sex scandals. Anger at the media, Jackson said, was allowing plenty of conservative voters to compartmentalize the story.

Democrats don’t expect to win any votes for Jones on talk radio.

The election will be won or lost with suburban women — some who declare their support in public, and plenty who can’t. Parker Griffith, the last Democratic congressman from the Huntsville area, said that countless Republican women would stay quiet through Election Day, then end up voting for Jones.

“Women are not so brandoriented,” Griffith said. “They look at these things from a survival standpoint: ‘Who’s going to be best for my children?’ A man doesn’t seem to have that problem.”

Yet for every outspoken female voter, both parties wonder how many are staying quiet — or being urged, at home, to come back to the Republican.

Democrats, who say that Moore can still win the race, are gripped with a kind of deja vu.

Weeks before the 2016 election, they speculated that a tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault, accompanied by a wave of accusations of harassment, would turn off millions of female independents and conservatives.

Trump went on to win key states and landslides across the Deep South, even among white female voters, helped by the last-minute news that the FBI would investigate more of Clinton’s emails.

“It surprised me,” said Tina Brown, 49, a social worker who saw Jones speak in Huntsville. “I knew people who had real concerns about Trump, but they went for him anyway because they were so against the alternative.” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

“Women are not so brandoriented. They look at these things from a survival standpoint: ‘Who’s going to be best for my children?’ A man doesn’t seem to have that problem.”

Parker Griffith, the last Democratic congressman from the Huntsville, Ala., area

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Misconduct reactions lack consistency BY

K AREN T UMULTY

T

he swiftness with which NBC got rid of marquee morning host Matt Lauer on Wednesday amid accusations of sexual harassment stands in stark contrast to the slow-rolling justice playing out against political figures of both parties.

That disparity also underscores how the burgeoning national conversation around sexual abuse has both elevated the issue and muddied the question of how to deal with it proportionally and consistently.

New charges are coming from nearly every direction: the political world, newsrooms, Hollywood, Silicon Valley. And they describe a wide variety of behavior, including rape, unwelcome kisses, sexual advances toward minors, and grabbing a breast or buttock.

“We have to preserve the uniqueness of every situation.

That’s at the heart of this,” said Democratic strategist Tracy Sefl, who is on the board of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), which operates a national sexual assault hotline. “In this climate that we’re in, everything has been lumped together.

Then people look at it as if those crimes are all the same.”

The tribal nature of today’s politics, meanwhile, has offered a kind of immunity to charges that, if corroborated, would put an abrupt end to the career of someone in any other field. As the net has spread and enveloped prominent Democrats and Republicans, sexual abuse allegations are turning into yet another battle in a zero-sum partisan war where distinctions are often lost between egregious acts and lesser offenses.

“One of the problems right now in dealing with this in politics is that there have been so many contradictions in what is accepted and what is not accepted,” said Risa L. Lieberwitz, a Cornell University professor of employment law.

Outside politics, clearer standards are in place. That is one reason figures such as movie pro-

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

BRYNN ANDERSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Response to accusations is swift in most fields, but partisanship offers some immunity in politics ducer Harvey Weinstein, NPR news chief Michael Oreskes, television personality Charlie Rose and now Lauer were dealt with so quickly, once allegations against them surfaced.

Physical assault is illegal. And while workplace rules are far from airtight or consistent, they are based on guidelines that have been spelled out over decades by the courts, federal and state laws, and corporate human-resource policies.

Under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans employers from discriminating on the basis of sex, it has been deemed illegal to make unwanted physical contact with workers, to make hiring or promotion decisions contingent on sexual favors, or to take retribution on those who rebuff sexual advances. Employers can also be held liable if they do not take measures to guard against a hostile workplace.

At the same time, the Supreme Court has ruled that Title VII does not go so far as guaranteeing what the late Justice Antonin Scalia called “a general civility code for the American workplace.”

That means a misguided joke or clumsy pass by a co-worker will

not necessarily touch a legal tripwire, although it might run afoul of a company’s policies. It also suggests, some experts say, that lines should be drawn between boorish acts that happened once or twice among acquaintances or co-workers and a pattern of abusive behavior by a boss.

“There is definitely a distinction to be made,” said Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member Chai Feldblum, who co-chaired the EEOC’s task force studying harassment in the workplace, which issued a report in 2016. “Not every act of harassment deserves the same [treatment], because people need to feel the system is fair.”

On the EEOC’s website, traffic on content related to sexual harassment has quadrupled since October, Feldblum added.

This new attention to the issue is also prompting businesses to rethink their policies.

“They’re looking again to make sure that what their policies are and what their cultures demand are actually happening in the workplace,” said Kelly Marinelli, a consultant on personnel issues who advises the Society for Human Resource Management.

From left, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and U.S. Senate GOP candidate Roy Moore of Alabama all face allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct.

In politics, on the other hand, the initial impulse of each side has been to circle around its own while declaring that the transgressions of the other are disqualifying.

Democrats argue that actions for which Sen. Al Franken (DMinn.) has apologized should not end his career as long as President Trump is allowed to sit in the White House. Republicans say Democrats who are in full cry over allegations against Trump showed no such regard for the women who accused former president Bill Clinton of similar behavior.

For politicians and their parties, due process comes at the ballot box.

“Voters decide who gets to serve them in office,” said GOP consultant Katie Packer Beeson. “These offices should represent the best America has to offer. We shouldn’t be dumbing this down so any creep can hold office.”

Beeson — a vocal critic of the president — argues that questions about Trump have been settled but that Franken, who has begun to face allegations only in recent days, should resign.

What makes Franken’s situation different from Trump’s is that “this information was out there about Trump,” she said. “The voters made a decision about Trump.”

Congress is in an unusual situation. It gets to make its own rules for handling sexual misconduct complaints and exempts itself from the workplace rules that often apply to others.

The current procedures put the accuser in the situation of having to undergo mediation with the accused person, guarantee anonymity for the alleged perpetrator and put the taxpayer on the hook for any settlement.

The balance of power could be shifting in sexual abuse cases. The House on Wednesday approved legislation to require sexual harassment training of members and their staffs.

“Sexual harassment has no place in any workplace — let alone the United States Congress,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS ANALYSIS

KLMNO WEEKLY

President stirs pot without concern

BY P HILIP R UCKER AND A SHLEY P ARKER

P

resident Trump this past week disseminated on social media three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos, took glee in the firing of a news anchor for sexual harassment allegations despite facing more than a dozen of his own accusers and used a ceremony honoring Navajo war heroes to malign a senator with a derogatory nickname, “Pocahontas.”

Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential behavior. But despite the now-routine condemnations, the president is acting emboldened, as if he were impervious to the uproar he causes.

If there are consequences for his actions, Trump does not seem to feel their burden personally.

Trump has internalized the belief that he can largely operate with impunity, people close to him said. His political base cheers him on.

Fellow Republican leaders largely stand by him.

His staff scrambles to explain away his misbehavior — or even to laugh it off. And the White House disciplinarian, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, has said it is not his job to control the president.

For years, Trump has fired off incendiary tweets and created self-sabotaging controversies. The pattern captures the musings of a man who traffics in conspiracy theories and alternate realities and who can’t resist inserting himself into any story line at any moment.

“In an intensely polarized world, you can’t burn down the same house twice,” said Alex Castellanos, a GOP campaign consultant.

“What has Donald Trump got to lose at this point?”

Castellanos added that for many voters, and especially Trump’s base, there’s an “upside” to his bellicosity. “A strong daddy bear is what a lot of voters want,” he said. “Right or wrong, at least he’s fighting for us.”

On Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter before sunrise to share three unverified videos with his 43.6 million followers that seemed designed to stoke anti-Muslim sentiments. He then relished in the firing of Matt Lauer from NBC’s “Today” show for allegations of sexual misconduct and fanned unsubstantiated rumors about three other NBC and MSNBC executives and personalities.

Two days earlier, Trump used a ceremony honoring the World War II Navajo code talkers to deride Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) by using his nickname for her, “Pocahontas.” Native American leaders and other Americans have objected to the characterization as a racial slur.

Trump traveled on Wednesday to Missouri,

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

where he pitched the tax overhaul plan. He explained that he did not mind that the bill might close loopholes for the wealthy like himself.

Trump and other wealthy Americans are poised to benefit from the plan, according to tax experts, because of cuts to estate and business taxes and other relief for real estate holdings.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns, so it is impossible to say exactly how he would benefit.

In Missouri, he was talking about taxes, but he might as well been describing his mind-set.

“Hey, look, I’m president,” Trump said. “I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.”

Trump’s anti-Islam tweets on Wednesday — he retweeted videos first posted by a leader of the far-right Britain First party, an extremist group that targets mosques and Muslims — earned him a sharp rebuke from the British prime minister’s office.

The retweets also caught his West Wing team off guard. One aide said staffers were unsure exactly how to respond to — let alone defend — his tweets, while another noted that the tweets were unexpected but not necessarily out of character.

“He got pretty fired up this morning,” said the second aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. “This was not planned.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s post as evidence that he wants to “promote strong borders and strong national security.” But she sidestepped questions on whether the president should give his Twitter endorsement to content whose authenticity was not verified.

“Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real, and that is what the president is talking about,” Sanders told reporters.

Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign ad-

President Trump’s advisers and friends say he feels emboldened, even invincible, to communicate as he chooses.

viser, said the media were overreacting to the president’s sharing of anti-Muslim videos. “A very small number of people, primarily in New York and Washington, are complaining about the origin of the tweets, and most of the rest of the country is talking about the need for stricter border security and the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Miller said.

Still, by sharing the videos, Trump created problems for himself. He undermined the administration’s legal strategy in defending the controversial entry ban by offering evidence of anti-Muslim bias. Federal judges have blocked various versions of the ban because it is akin to an unconstitutional ban on Muslims, which Trump had called for during the campaign.

One of Trump’s aides, deputy press secretary Raj Shah, also may have complicated the legal strategy. Aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, Shah answered a reporter’s question about whether Trump thinks Muslims are a threat to the United States by saying, “No, look, the president has addressed these issues with the travel order that he issued earlier this year and the companion proclamation.”

Trump also strained, at least temporarily, the special relationship with Britain. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a rare rebuke from 10 Downing Street: “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency, tolerance and respect.”

On Wednesday evening, Trump responded on Twitter: “Theresa May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

Trump’s advisers and friends said he feels emboldened, even invincible, to communicate as he chooses — especially on cultural issues, believing that his stances work for him politically by galvanizing his base.

Having long trafficked in conspiracy theories — his political rise was fueled by his role as one of the nation’s leading champions of the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States — Trump continues as president to promote falsehoods and reject facts.

Roger Stone, a former political adviser to and longtime friend of Trump’s, said the president is less strategic and more spontaneous with his controversial comments.

“I just think you’re seeing the president as way too Machiavellian,” Stone said. “He doesn’t necessarily have a strategy. His instincts on the news cycle and how to tweak his enemies is extraordinary. . . . He’s a master marketer, and the only thing worse than being wrong is being boring. We’re talking about this now.” n

© The Washington Post

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NATION

The return of an apex predator K ARIN B RULLIARD Wisdom, Mont.

BY

D

ean Peterson, a fourthgeneration rancher, is used to factoring in all sorts of challenges as he works his vast spread in the Big Hole Valley. Summer wildfires that can sweep down the pineblanketed mountains to the west, harsh winters that can endanger his thousand-plus head of cattle.

Yet in the back of his mind these days is a threat most of his forefathers never faced: grizzly bears.

Settlers pushing West had all but exterminated the hulking predators by the time Peterson’s greatgrandfather arrived here in the late 1800s.

A year ago, however, a trail camera in the nearby forest snapped a grainy photo of a grizzly crossing a stream, marking the first confirmed sighting in the valley in a century. Then in May, Peterson was stunned to see one lope across a snow-dusted road a few miles from his property.

“It will happen,” the 51-year-old rancher says of the looming presence of grizzlies. And he is equally matter of fact about what they’ll mean for him and his neighbors.

“It will be more difficult to run cattle.”

Biologists and their maps agree: The bears are coming to southwestern Montana. Since 1975, when this icon of the American West was listed as an endangered species, grizzlies in the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem to the south have more than quadrupled their range and population. Well to the north, grizzlies in the Glacier National Park region also are spreading out.

The bear pioneers are now migrating so far that they are viewed as the vanguard of a possible union between the two populations, a connection that could help ensure the bears’ health and genetic diversity. At some point, conservationists hope, grizzlies might even set up shop in the Idaho wilderness, recolonizing a small portion of the vast territory they once occupied.

But as grizzlies fan out from the

PHOTOS BY WHITNEY SHEFTE/THE WASHINGTON POST

As grizzlies recover and expand their range, many wonder if the bears and people can coexist parks that have long been their refuges, they are encountering more people, roads and development — and more temptation in the form of trash and livestock.

While their presence raises the risk to humans and makes activities like hunting and hiking more perilous, the reality is that bears tend to be on the losing end of interactions with humans. At least 58 died in 2016 and 51 as of midNovember this year, most killed by people who accidentally hit them with cars, crossed paths with them while hunting, or shot them for harming animals or property.

Americans have spent four decades and millions of dollars to rescue grizzlies from the brink of extinction. Now, experts say, one big question is whether people can live alongside them.

“They’re big, they can be dangerous, and they compete with us for some food resources,” said Steve Primm, a conservationist who has forged relationships with Peterson and other ranchers in the Big Hole Valley, trying to get them

to see the animals as something with which they can coexist. “If we’re living with grizzly bears, then that’s showing that we’ve got quite a strong commitment to living with the natural world.”

Conflicts with people helped to drive the Yellowstone grizzly population to as low as 136 in the 1970s, according to government figures. It has since officially rebounded to around 700, and federal biologists say the number could be as high as 1,000. Such progress prompted the Interior Department to delist that region’s bears this summer, with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a Montana native, hailing the turnaround as proof that the Endangered Species Act works.

Lawsuits are seeking to overturn the government’s action, citing the Yellowstone population’s genetic isolation and the spiritual importance of the species to Native American tribes.

Of prime concern to some are the far-flung bears on the ecosystem’s periphery in Montana, the

Top, visitors watch grizzly bears at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Mont. The center has seven bears, all sent there after having some conflict with humans. Above, Dean Peterson, a rancher in Wisdom, Mont., says he will adapt his practices as grizzlies move into the area.

ones that could meet up with their brethren to the north. The bear photographed near Peterson’s ranch last year is among those that scientists think could eventually help make a historic link.

The rancher does not see it in such sweeping terms. “I just look at it as another one of God’s creations,” he said, sitting in his living room, where a silky charcoal wolf pelt and the heads of other animals he has bagged adorn the walls. “It’s just another species out there, and yeah, it’s had a hard time. It got hunted near extinction, because it was hard for people to live around.”

That doesn’t have to be the case in the 21st century, conservationists say. A project in the Blackfoot River Valley, south of Glacier, has for years used electric fencing, carcass removal and range riders — people who sweep the land, monitoring for bear activity — to reduce conflicts. Property owners have employed similar techniques in an area just north of Yellowstone.

Beaverhead County, where Peterson’s ranch sits, is a different scenario. The local dump consists of two fly-swarmed open containers that could be an accessible bear buffet. Bear-resistant garbage cans are not the norm. Elk hunters aren’t as accustomed to carrying bear spray despite studies showing it is a powerful deterrent that can save human and bear lives.

And as the biggest beef-producing county in the state, Beaverhead has lots of cattle grazing on ranches and in nearby forests. Dead livestock is typically left to decompose or is buried; either way, the carcass can attract grizzlies.

A local alliance is distributing bear-resistant trash cans to residents and set up a compost dump for livestock carcasses at the edge of a desolate state-owned property where snowplows are kept.

Peterson has started sending carcasses to the compost dump — some, anyway — and he thinks more of his neighbors will decide to do the same. “We’ve been leaving them to rot for years,” he said.

“But as we get more bears, we’re going to change our habits.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

Part of a growing movement BY

C AITLIN D EWEY

L

iz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.

The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md. She joined a growing movement of highly educated, exurban, first-time farmers who are capitalizing on booming consumer demand for local and sustainable foods and who, experts say, could have a broad impact on the food system.

For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture. Sixty-nine percent of the surveyed young farmers had college degrees — significantly higher than the general population.

This new generation can’t hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.

“We’re going to see a sea change in American agriculture as the next generation gets on the land,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the head of the Food Institute at George Washington University and a deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. “The only question is whether they’ll get on the land, given the challenges.”

The number of farmers age 25 to 34 grew 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2014 USDA census, a period when other groups of farmers — save the oldest — shrunk by double digits. In some states, such as California, Nebraska and South

MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

The number of farmers under 35 years old is rising as more young people leave their desk jobs Dakota, the number of beginning farmers has grown by 20 percent or more.

A survey conducted by the National Young Farmers Coalition, an advocacy group, with Merrigan’s help shows that the majority of young farmers did not grow up in agricultural families.

They are also far more likely than the general farming population to grow organically, limit pesticide and fertilizer use, diversify their crops or animals, and be deeply involved in their local food systems via community supported agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers markets.

Today’s young farmers also tend to operate small farms of less than 50 acres, though that number increases with each successive year of experience.

Whitehurst bought her farm, Owl’s Nest, from a retiring farmer in 2015.

She grows organically certified peppers, cabbages, tomatoes and salad greens from baby kale to

arugula, rotating her fields to enrich the soil and planting cover crops in the offseason.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, she and two longtime friends from Washington wake up in semidarkness to harvest by hand, kneeling in the mud to cut handfuls of greens before the sun can wilt them. All three young women, who also live on the farm, make their living off the produce Whitehurst sells, whether to restaurants, through CSA shares or at a D.C. farmers market.

Finances can be tight. The women admit they’ve given up higher standards of living to farm.

“I wanted to have a positive impact, and that just felt very distant in my other jobs out of college,” Whitehurst said. “In farming, on the other hand, you make a difference. Your impact is immediate.”

That impact could grow as young farmers scale up and become a larger part of the commer-

Liz Whitehurst, 32, left a job with a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., to buy Owl’s Nest Farm in nearby Upper Marlboro, Md.

cial food system, Merrigan said.

Already, several national grocery chains, including Walmart and SuperValu, have built out local-food-buying programs, according to AT Kearney, a management consulting firm.

Young farmers are also creating their own “food hubs,” allowing them to store, process and market food collectively, and supply grocery and restaurant chains at a price competitive with national suppliers.

That’s strengthening the local and organic food movement, experts say.

There are also hopes that the influx of young farmers could provide some counter to the aging of American agriculture.

The age of the average American farmer has crept toward 60 over several decades, risking the security of midsize family farms where children aren’t interested in succeeding their parents.

Between 1992 and 2012, the country lost more than 250,000 midsize and small commercial farms, according to the USDA. During that same period, more than 35,000 very large farms started up, and the large farms already in existence consolidated their acreage.

Midsize farms are critical to rural economies, generating jobs, spending and tax revenue. And while they’re large enough to supply mainstream markets, they’re also small enough to respond to environmental changes and consumer demand.

If today’s young farmers can continue to grow their operations, said Shoshanah Inwood, a rural sociologist at Ohio State University, they could bolster these sorts of farms — and in the process prevent the land from falling into the hands of largescale industrial operations or residential developers.

“Multigenerational family farms are shrinking. And big farms are getting bigger,” Inwood said. “For the resiliency of the food system and of rural communities, we need more agriculture of the middle.” n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

Provocation or setup for diplomacy?

A NNA F IFIELD Tokyo BY

N

orth Korea’s claim to have built a new intercontinental ballistic missile “tipped with super-large heavy warhead” that can hit any part of the United States marks another unwelcome step from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program.

But beyond the bluster and the boasting, some analysts see a tiny glimmer of hope.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, could the regime — with its pronouncement that it has now completed its missile development — now be more open to talks with the United States?

“Many have expected that Pyongyang would not be ready to negotiate until it deemed it had achieved a deliverable nuclear deterrent,” said Laura Rosenberger, a North Korea expert with the German Marshall Fund in Washington.

Now Kim’s regime says it has achieved that deterrent.

North Korea called Wednesday’s launch of a new model of intercontinental ballistic missile, called the Hwasong-15, a “great success.” This “most powerful ICBM” meets its “goal of the completion of the rocket weaponry system development,” according to a state media announcement.

North Korea’s claims to have the entire United States in range do appear to be justified, experts said, with the missile tested Wednesday showing the range to reach the easternmost parts of the country.

But Kim’s rocket scientists have not proved that North Korea has the ability to attach a warhead to the missile and have it survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, let alone deliver it to a target.

“I don’t believe their claim that they have achieved nuclear missile capability,” said Shin Won-sik, a former deputy commander of the strategic planning department of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“North Korea has not shown any evidence or data proving they have obtained the reentry technology, so I don’t think North Korea has

CHUNG SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES

Some say North Korea’s test of a long-reaching missile may be a signal it is open to negotiations yet completed its nuclear program.”

Although this is difficult, the North is expected to achieve it in time, given the energy it is pouring into its weapons program. “North Korea is moving fast with its nuclear weapons technology,” Shin said.

Like Shin in Seoul, Yu Koizumi, an expert on missile development at the Institute for Future Engineering in Tokyo, said he did not believe that North Korea had crossed the finish line.

“This is definitely a milestone, but it’s not complete yet,” Koizumi said. “The Hwasong-15 has been launched only once, so they will need to test it more.”

North Korea has proved to be an unreliable negotiating partner over the past two decades, reneging on every deal that it has signed.

But despite President Trump’s repeated talk of military options for dealing with Pyongyang, most analysts say that diplomacy remains the only realistic course.

The language that North Korea used Wednesday — saying it had achieved a “priceless victory” and completed the missile development process — gave some analysts hope that Pyongyang was positioning itself to negotiate, albeit on its own terms.

“Once Pyongyang is convinced that we are convinced that it can reach the U.S. mainland with an ICBM,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “it will be willing to discuss a freeze — in testing, not a verifiable freeze of its missile or nuclear programs — in return for what it really wants, which is a lifting of sanctions.”

Rosenberger agreed that North Korea could be more open to talks if it felt it had achieved a technological milestone.

“This may mean the North is preparing to shift to a negotiating posture,” she said, “but one in which it will seek to be treated as a nuclear power and as a peer to the

A television in Seoul shows a news report on North Korea’s latest test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile — one that appears capable of reaching the eastern United States.

U.S., greatly complicating the goal of talks aimed at denuclearization.”

North Korea has said it is willing to talk to the United States — although not about giving up its nuclear program — once Washington drops its “hostile policy.” The U.S. government has privately signaled it is willing to talk without preconditions.

Wendy Sherman, who dealt with North Korea and Iran while she was a senior official in the State Department, said that North Korea appeared to be “setting the table for negotiation.”

Some analysts say that part of the rationale for North Korea’s steady pace of testing this year was to get itself in the strongest possible position before sanctions inflict real pain on Pyongyang.

The latest rounds of sanctions imposed through the United Nations, in August and September, included potentially crippling bans on North Korean exports of coal, iron, seafood and garments.

But they are expected to take several months to bite, and only if China fully enforces the resolutions.

Others see no more reason than usual for any optimism.

“I don’t think we should have any more confidence than before that this signals a consolidation of their abilities or that they’re interested in talks,” said Toby Dalton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It would be nice if that were the case.”

Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said the latest developments underscore the need to redouble efforts to talk to Kim’s regime.

“North Korea has been a spoiler and has backed out of many deals before, but to not negotiate with them or engage with them in positive ways,” she said, would lead them to decide “they can . . . build more nuclear warheads.

“Then we will have even bigger problems.” n ©The Washington Post

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Venezuela’s crisis hits below the belt

BY M ARIANA Z UÑIGA AND A NTHONY F AIOLA

Caracas, Venezuela

Y

orlenis Gutierrez, a 28year-old mother, spent months vainly scouring pharmacies for a drug whose scarcity is complicating her sex life and those of countless other Venezuelans. In a country beset by shortages, this is one of the most difficult: the disappearance of contraceptives.

When she couldn’t renew her supply of birth-control pills, Gutierrez and her husband made a choice. Long-term abstinence was not an option, they agreed.

They tried to be careful, but soon she was pregnant with her second child.

“We barely eat three times a day now,” said a distraught Gutierrez, a former hair washer in a beauty salon who lost her job because of the economic crisis. “I don’t know how we’re going to feed another mouth.”

In Venezuela, a collapse in oil prices, along with nearly two decades of socialist policies, has sparked a severe recession and one of the world’s highest inflation rates. People often wait hours in line to buy bread. Prices for staples jump almost by the day. Medical shortages range from antibiotics to cancer drugs.

But the shortage of contraceptives has put Venezuelans in a particularly bleak quandary: Have sex — or don’t?

For the most part they are, sometimes with dire consequences.

There are no recent official statistics, but Venezuelan doctors are reporting spikes in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases that are adding to the country’s deepening misery.

Mainstream news media outlets have published articles about the “counting method” of contraception that women can use to calculate when they are ovulating and likely to get pregnant. An article on the Venezuelan website Cactus24 offered “15 home remedies to avoid pregnancy,” including eating papaya twice a day and

MANU QUINTERO FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The economic collapse has made contraception impossible to find or prohibitively expensive drinking two cups of tea with ginger.

Many Venezuelan women have found a solution on social media.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have become informal exchanges for the purchase or trading of birth-control pills, intrauterine devices and implants — albeit at black-market prices.

Other women beg friends and relations to bring them contraceptives from outside Venezuela.

“Last time, I got them from my sister-in-law, who brought them from Colombia,” said Alejandra Moran, a 27-year-old Caracas publicist. “And I’ll be traveling to Spain in December, so I’ll stock up for myself and my friends.”

For years, oral contraceptives, IUDs and condoms were available free at many public hospitals or through government programs.

But the cash-strapped government has largely suspended those handouts, leaving some forms of contraception impossible to find and others prohibitively expensive.

“It’s hard for young people especially to access them,” said Vanessa Diaz, a gynecologist at Caracas University Hospital. “Contraceptives like condoms used to be given out and there were many brands available, some of them cheap. But that’s just not the case anymore.”

The shortage, medical experts say, has also fueled an increase in dangerous attempts to terminate pregnancies at home — not a surprising development given that abortion is illegal in Venezuela except when the mother’s life is at stake.

For years, most pharmacies acquired medications through a system in which the government set beneficial dollar-exchange rates for the import of foreign-made drugs. But that system has at least partly broken down, meaning pharmacies have few contraceptives to sell and often charge hundreds of times the normal price for them. Overall, stocks of oral contraceptives have fallen by as much as 90 percent since 2015, according to the Venezuelan Pharmaceu-

Yusdelis, who did not share her last name, stands outside her home in Los Teques, Venezuela, in October. The 19year-old said she became pregnant because of a lack of access to contraception.

tical Federation.

Many name-brand condoms, meanwhile, have disappeared from store shelves. But the cheaper brands taking their place are still imported, and therefore still unaffordable for many. A threepack can now cost several days’ minimum-wage pay.

“I inherited my best friend’s condoms when he left the country to move to the United States,” said Juan Noguera, 28, an unemployed economic researcher.

“Sometimes we just share them between friends. This is the sharing economy.”

In Venezuela’s macho society, many men refuse to wear condoms anyway. But now that they cost more, experts say, the indexes of unprotected sex are getting even worse.

The cheaper brands can also be unreliable. A few months ago, Andres Rodriguez, 28, said he was en route to his girlfriend’s house when he stopped to buy a pack of condoms. All he could find was a brand he had never heard of.

“I bought them anyway. I was in a hurry,” he said. During sex, he said, the condom broke — although his girlfriend did not get pregnant.

“Can you imagine? In this economy?” he said of the prospect of a pregnancy. “What a disaster.”

Doctors blame the situation for an increase in HIV cases and sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes.

María Eugenia Landaeta, head of infectious diseases at Caracas University Hospital, said the number of HIV patients being treated there has surged to 5,600 this year, up from 3,000 in 2014.

“One of the causes is the lack of prevention methods,” she said.

Making matters worse, drug shortages are so severe that doctors often lack what they need to treat patients with STDs. “Something as simple as penicillin — the cheapest antibiotic in the world — can’t be found in the country,” said Moraima Hernández, an epidemiologist at Concepción Palacios Maternity Hospital. n ©The Washington Post

COVER STORY

‘people will die waiting’

BY TERRENCE MCCOY in Webster County, Miss.

O

n the 597th day, the day he hoped everything would change, Joe Stewart woke early. He took 15 pills in a single swallow. He shaved his head. And then he got down to the business of the day, which was the business of every day, and that was waiting. He looked outside and saw his mother there in a green sedan, engine running. So many months he had waited for this moment, and now it was here. Time for his Social Security disability hearing. Time to go.

Stewart, 55, set out on crutches, tottering out of his mobile home and down a metal ramp he’d laid when stairs became too much. “I’m sweating my a-- off,” he said, getting into his mother’s car, his long-sleeved dress shirt hanging open.

He tilted the passenger seat all the way down, placed a pillow at the small of his back and, groaning and wincing, settled in as best he could.

“Did they say long-sleeved?” asked his mother, Jean Bingham, 73.

“It was the only decent shirt I had!” he said.

He knew only what he’d been told by his lawyer, who wanted to see him again before the

hearing, and that was not to wear a T-shirt and to bring along a list of medications he uses to treat the pains that are all he has to show for a lifetime spent installing vinyl siding throughout Webster County. Neurontin for nerve pain.

Baclofen for muscle spasms. Trazodone for depression. Hydroxyzine and buspirone for anxiety, a condition that seemed to worsen each day his wait stretched into the next.

Stewart had first applied for federal disability benefits on May 21, 2015. The application was denied, and so was his appeal. When he appealed the second rejection, he went to the back of one of the federal government’s biggest backlogs, where 1.1 million disability claimants wait for one of some 1,600 Social Security administrative law judges to decide whether they deserve a monthly payment and Medicare or Medicaid.

“A death sentence” is how Stewart, who has no health insurance, has come to think of another denial.

For other applicants, the wait itself may be enough to accomplish that. In the past two years, 18,701 people have died while waiting for a judge’s decision, increasing 15 percent from 8,699 deaths in fiscal 2016 to 10,002 deaths in fiscal 2017, according to preliminary federal data obtained by The Washington Post.

PHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

The rising death toll coincides with a surge in the length of time people must wait for a disposition, which swelled from a national average of 353 days in 2012 to a record high of 596 this past summer.

The simplest explanation is that there isn’t enough money. The Social Security Administration’s budget has been roughly stagnant since 2010, while the number of people receiving retirement and disability benefits has risen by more than 7 million, despite a slight decline in the disability rolls beginning in 2015 as some beneficiaries reached retirement age.

The more complicated explanation, however, also includes fewer supporting staff members helping judges. A recession that increased the number of applications and appeals. A new regulation that requires additional medical evidence, lengthening the files judges have to read. And heightened scrutiny in the aftermath of a 2011 scandal in Huntington, W.Va., where one judge, who approved nearly everyone who came before him, was later convicted of taking $600,000 in bribes.

Since then, according to a September report by the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, the average judge has gone from deciding 12 cases every week to fewer than 10, a relatively small slowdown that,

spread across hundreds of weeks and hundreds of judges, has contributed to the crushing backlog.

“I know that people will die waiting,” said Marilyn Zahm, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges. “This is the reflection of our priorities as an American people. We have decided it’s better for people to die than to adequately fund this program. . . . Will this get worse? Will the number of people who die double?”

While lengthy everywhere, the wait times have stretched longer still in some places, such as in Miami, where people wait an average of 759 days, and Long Island, where the wait is 720 days, and northern Mississippi, where the average is 612 days, and where Stewart couldn’t stop shaking in his car seat.

“My shirt is undone, I ain’t going to be able to put it in my pants. My pants are too tight,” he said, rummaging through a red bag filled with his medications, realizing he had forgotten to bring something to eat.

“You didn’t eat no breakfast?” his mother asked.

“I ain’t have the time!” he said.

He hadn’t felt pressure like this in years — not since he last worked in April 2015, and his world was reduced to food stamps, credit cards

Opposite page: Joe Stewart watches TV in his cluttered mobile home, which he allows no one to enter, not even his mother. He sits in an Ab Lounge exercise chair because he is not comfortable in regular chairs.

Above, Stewart installed a ramp outside his home when stairs became too much.

and the confines of a single-wide trailer, parked along a country road that few cars go down. He had thought about this day ever since. What would the judge ask him? Would he believe him? Or would he think he was lying, too lazy to work? Would he finally get an answer, or would the wait continue?

Stewart took an anxiety pill and looked at the car’s speedometer.

“Never going to get me there in time,” he told his mother as she steered through the remote county of hills and pine where nearly 1 in 5 working-age adults receive either Supplemental Security Income, for the disabled poor, or Social Security Disability Insurance, for disabled workers.

He fidgeted with the air conditioning vents, opening them up.

“I’m going from chills to hot spells,” he said.

“I’ve got hot spells now.”

He leaned back.

“I’m getting cool.”

Then: “I’m sweating.”

Then: “I’m getting worse now.”

F

or most of his life, Stewart had believed things could only get better. He had been raised with the conviction that a man was continues on next page

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COVER STORY was when a bill collector called.

“Yeah? Okay,” he said into the phone, realizing it was only his mother, who was planning to use her Social Security check to buy him more medicine later that day. “That will work.”

He hung up and shook his head, unable to handle the shame of it anymore. He had promised himself that if he was denied again, he’d no longer accept his mother’s help. He’d let his pills run out, and his trailer go dark, and start drinking again. So much in his life depended on others now, from the television his brother had helped pay for, to the groceries delivered by his mother, who also took him wherever he needed to go, including on this morning to see his lawyer before his Social Security disability hearing.

“I just need silence,” he said, in the car, hoping that would calm him.

“I’m not used to all of this, Joe!” she said, giving him a weary look.

“I need — I need silence.”

The car went quiet, and Stewart waited for the anxiety medicine to take hold. For his hands to stop quivering. For the car to carry him past all of the payday loan shops and empty storefronts of Webster County to the office of a lawyer who he believed could help him.

from previous page

only as good as what he could accomplish with his hands, and so he had always felt good, because he could do so much with his. After high school, he built furniture. Then he worked as a carpenter. But vinyl siding was what he loved completely. Cutting the metal. Measuring it out. Hauling it in his truck and completing a job worth being proud of, worth attaching his name to, and that was a promise he made to every customer after opening his company, Premium Siding, 10 years ago.

At the time, the county was in the midst of a steady and precipitous decline, accelerated by a recession that never seemed to end, and Premium Siding’s profits were barely enough for Stewart to survive on, let alone pay for health insurance. So already carrying two decades of work injuries — falling off ladders, getting shocked by hot wires — he would sometimes go to a community clinic that charged $35 per visit. Or more likely, he’d use a heating pad and try to think about anything but pain, until one day in the summer of 2013, when pain became nearly the only thing he could ever think about.

He can’t remember what he tried to pick up.

He remembers only that he had been out at a work site, lifting and cutting 50-pound coils of metal. He remembers reaching for something that had barely weighed anything. He remembers the sharp, immediate pain, the sudden realization that his back might never be the same, and that, for everything he would ultimately lose, he had never even touched whatever it was he had reached for. The doctor would later say he had a compressed vertebra and a pinched nerve in his lower spine. But in that moment, it felt more stabbed than pinched — “vicious, terrible stabbing” — and he went home, to his bed, which was where he was, four years later, on another day of waiting, when an alarm went off.

Nine in the morning. Time for his medication.

He turned on the lights — three bare bulbs — and saw again what his life had become, in this trailer he allowed no one to enter, not even his mother. He stumbled past the leather furniture that hadn’t been sat on since he hurt his back, and the NASCAR toy cars he carefully collected years ago, covered in a thick film of dust along one wall, and the kitchen countertop obscured by months of trash.

“Let’s just get it over with,” he said, looking at his bottles of medicine.

The pills made him drowsy, and he went to the only place he could still sit. The Ab Lounge, an exercise chair he had bought to strengthen his lower back but now used because it could recline just so, was where he conducted his affairs. There were empty peanut jars nearby, a stack of debts and a remote control, which he picked up. A science-fiction show came on, and he tried not to think about the bankruptcy papers he would soon need to file. Or the yard out back he could no longer tend to and had to poison. Or the utter sameness of his life, every day so much like the one before, that his memory felt increasingly blurred. Or that just about the only time his phone rang anymore, as it did at this moment,

“H

PHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

Top, attorney Hugh Gibson’s client Joey Sims leaves a disability hearing in Columbus, Miss., on Sept. 29. Sims broke his neck in an ATV accident in 2013. Center, Gibson returns calls after a day of hearings in his office in Eupora. The disability system is overloaded, and Gibson warns new clients that it may take years to get a decision. Bottom, Ricky Lynn Davidson hired Gibson in 2014 to help with his disability claim but didn’t get a hearing until 2017 — a year after his death.

ugh Gibson Law, this is Samantha, can I help you?” the receptionist was saying to another caller.

On the other side of the counter, sitting on a thick-cushioned couch in the waiting area, was a thin man with gaunt features who grimaced whenever he shifted in his seat. Every now and again, someone at the office would ask him if he needed anything.

Water? Something to eat? Want to lie down?

The man tightened his grip on his cane.

“I want someone to shoot me,” he finally said.

“Hugh Gibson Law,” the receptionist said to another caller.

A few minutes later, Gibson, the most prolific Social Security disability lawyer in Webster County, a tall, garrulous 71-year-old who himself walks with a limp and a cane, came into the waiting room, glanced at the man on the couch and headed into the back of the office. Gibson had spent years witnessing the disintegration of people like him, marooned in a disability adjudication system that he still believed could be a force for good, despite everything. He started taking disability cases four decades ago, when claims in Webster County predominantly involved illnesses and car accidents. But then the factories that once powered the county’s economy closed, and more unemployed workers started applying, and the wait became longer and longer.

When potential clients now ask about applying for disability, Gibson tells them that it could be two years minimum before they get a judge’s decision, and that they can’t work while they wait if they want to be approved. They usually lose the car first, then the house. Next comes bankruptcy. Stresses accrue, marriages fracture, pains and illnesses mount, and some die right before their hearings, when the wait is

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COVER STORY worst, and when Gibson brings clients into his office to prepare one final time, clients like the thin man with the cane, Joey Sims, 36, now seated before him.

“Does he have a good case?” Gibson asked his assistant.

“He hasn’t been to the doctor but twice this year,” she said.

“A semi-idiot then,” Gibson sighed, knowing that the severity of a medical condition mattered only so much as what was documented, and not enough was documented here.

“If I had money to go see the doctors, then I wouldn’t need help,” Sims said, exasperated.

“Yeah, well, we have serious things to deal with to get you approved,” Gibson said, glowering, because it seemed that way with every case.

If clients weren’t too young, then often there were drugs in their pasts. Or they’d return to the job after an injury and, even if they quit soon after, it would look to a judge like they could still work.

“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Sims pleaded, and Gibson began a routine he performs for all of his clients, the same one he did again the next day for an anguished woman in a back brace.

“You can’t just go in there and be an idiot,” he told her.

“They don’t pay liars,” he told her.

“See that shirt you got on? Don’t wear that,” he told her.

Gibson knew how terrible he must sound sometimes, hollering at clients, cutting them off, ordering them around, but he also knew what could happen if he didn’t. They could say something to a judge that would be innocuous in other circumstances — that they could drive, or mow grass — but could lead to a quick denial, which had been happening more often, as the disability approval rate among judges nationwide dropped from 73 percent in 2008 to 55 percent last year.

There were increasingly days when Gibson wondered whether it was time to scale back.

After all, he was paid only if his clients won.

Maybe the other lawyers were right, some cases just couldn’t be won. And that was how he was quietly beginning to feel about Stewart.

O

utside Gibson’s office, Stewart held a stack of medical papers and, disoriented, tried to listen as his mother asked question after question.

“Are you taking those in there?” she asked of the documents.

“How long is this going to take?” she asked.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

“Remind me to tie my shoes” was all he managed to say, going inside the law office, shoelaces flopping this way and that. He took a seat in a back room, head full of doubts. If he couldn’t focus well enough to answer his mother’s questions, how was he going to answer the judge’s?

“Joe,” Gibson said, riffling through all 169 pages of his medical file. “Let’s go over what you do all day.”

Stewart didn’t say anything. His mouth was

dry. He was still wearing sunglasses he’d forgotten to take off.

“What time do you get up?” Gibson asked after a moment.

“Around nine,” Stewart said.

Gibson cringed.

“How many of [your medications] make you lightheaded?” came another question.

“Quite a few,” Stewart said. “About half.”

Another bad look came over Gibson’s face.

He tapped his pen against the folder.

“Make no mistake, if you don’t do this well, you’re going to lose,” he said slowly. “You’ve got to speak up and tell him what is what and not be vague. ‘Sometimes.’ ‘A little while.’ ‘A little bit.’

‘Not very much.’ ‘A whole lot.’ All those words.

They don’t mean anything. They don’t mean anything. You might as well just open your mouth and close it. Because nothing comes out worse than those vague words. And I just want to grab people and slap them — wake up! You can’t just say ‘sometimes’ with a judge!”

“Lord, mercy,” Gibson said, telling Stewart that he could not have drawn a stricter judge.

James Prothro had the 31st lowest approval rating among Social Security administrative law judges, according to a Washington Post analysis of every judge’s disposition record between January 2010 and April 2017. During that period, Prothro decided 2,610 cases, approving 27 percent of them.

Later, Stewart would get angry. He would think about all of the people he had seen in Webster County receiving benefits whose disabilities he considered milder than his and wonder how they had gotten them, and why everything had to be so difficult for him. But at that moment he just nodded slowly, wanting to absorb everything Gibson said — stand to show he couldn’t sit for long; never say, “I don’t know” — until Gibson rose from his seat.

“You have a slim shot,” he said. “People sitting around the house, watching TV all day, they’re not used to talking, and I understand that. But I have to get you to talk. Tell the judge the things the judge needs to know. Can you do that, Joe?” And then Stewart was back in the car, and he was rummaging for his anxiety medicine and saying, “I need to put it in my pocket so I can remember to take it,” and he was going into a courtroom, and the door behind him was closing and he was trying to stay calm.

F

ive-hundred and ninety-seven days.

One-hundred and sixty-nine pages of medical evidence.

One hearing.

How to condense so many years of physical deterioration, so many days of waiting, into one hearing? How to convince someone of pain, when no one can see it? How to remember to say everything that needed saying — the pills taken, the number of pounds that can be lifted, the distance that can be walked, the falls, the different doctors and their names?

So Stewart did his best to follow Gibson’s directions. He carried his back pillow into the courtroom. He stood when he felt pain. He was specific. He said, “burning in the chest.” He

“One lawyer — a good lawyer — they had 13 cases with him, and they didn’t win a one.

Not a one.

Whether or not he’s going to pay you, I do not know. So we’ll wait and see. . . .

You might not get a decision until February. . . . It may be six months.”

Hugh Gibson, the most prolific Social Security disability lawyer in Webster County, Miss.

KLMNO WEEKLY

said, “I went to see my chiropractor, but they wanted $60, so I haven’t been back.” He said, “My mother, she’s tired of driving me around; she has other things to do.”

And he tried to look at the judge, to express with his eyes what he couldn’t with words, but the judge wasn’t in the room at all. He was sitting in front of a camera in another courtroom 65 miles away in another Social Security Administration building in Tupelo, part of a government policy to work down the backlog by holding some disability hearings by videoconference. Stewart heard the disembodied voice of someone whom Gibson called a “vocational expert,” whose role it was to use, among other sources, the government’s list of possible jobs, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, last updated in 1991, to discern whether there was any work someone like him could do anywhere in the United States, regardless of pay, distance from his house, or whether he would be hired.

And then an hour had passed, and the hearing was over, and Gibson was saying, “Thank you, your honor.” Stewart, feeling dazed and unsure whether that was really it, sat for a moment, until he saw everyone else was standing. He got up. He collected his crutches and walked outside with Gibson, who was going on and on about the judge.

“One lawyer — a good lawyer — they had 13 cases with him, and they didn’t win a one,” he said. “Not a one.”

“Whether or not he’s going to pay you, I do not know,” he said.

“So we’ll wait and see. . . . You might not get a decision until February.” And: “It may be six months.”

Gibson said something about errands he had to run, shook Stewart’s hand and got into his bright red truck. And Stewart, now caught in another backlog of people awaiting a disposition after the hearing — which has doubled in the last year, from 35,000 claimants to 70,000 — watched him drive off, then saw his mother.

She was in her car, waving at him to move it, so he climbed in and reclined the seat until he was nearly supine.

“Can I ask you a question?” said his mother, who had sat outside the courtroom but overheard something about a videoconference.

“Was he in there?”

“Who?” Stewart asked.

“The judge.”

“No, he was on TV,” he said, and she looked confused.

“Well, I’m relieved it’s over,” she finally said.

“It ain’t over,” he responded, and there was nothing else to say, so on they went to Webster County, through the endless rows of tall pines, past the houses Stewart had once worked on, stopping at his trailer.

“There’s another day,” his mother said and pulled away, and he was alone again. The trailer was dark inside. He took his afternoon medication. He sat in his Ab Lounge. The television came on. The pills started to do their work. The 597th day was over, and the only thing left to do was to wait for the 598th to begin. n © The Washington Post

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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TELEVISION

The human side of Mideast conflict R UTH E GLASH Kfar Qasim, Israel BY

I

t’s chaos on the set of hit Israeli drama series “Fauda.”

Just after lunch on a sweltering September day, the show’s main cast, supported by a large group of extras, is milling about on a leafy street in this Israeli-Arab village.

Then, as instructions are yelled into a megaphone — first in Hebrew, then Arabic — a classic “Fauda” scene unfolds. Our lead characters are undercover Israeli commandos dressed as Arabs, walking past a mosque in a Palestinian town. Suddenly, a scarf-covered man bursts out of a crowd of supposed shoppers, arm raised with a knife, looking to stab one of the Israelis, who draw their pistols in defense. Their identities now revealed, the Israelis are soon surrounded by an angry, chanting mob. They manage to reach their car and jump in as the crowd pounds on the windows. The driver makes it through the throng, and the director shouts, “Cut!” But the actors, “Fauda” star Lior Raz and newcomer Idan Amedi, keep on driving — they can’t hear him.

“Cut! Cut!” he screams.

Suddenly, the anger dissolves into Jews and Arabs laughing rapturously together. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict has never been so much fun.

“Fauda,” which translates as “chaos” in Arabic, is filming its second season (premiering Dec. 31 on Israeli TV), and, of course, there is nothing fun about its main subject matter: a decadesold intractable conflict and military occupation that has brought myriad wars and deaths, and eluded a succession of U.S. presidents who have sought peace. The show explores these issues through the story of Doron Kavillio (Raz) and his team of elite Israeli undercover agents as they chase a group of Palestinian terrorists around the West Bank. Amid the action, the characters on both sides contend with their own personal battles.

Despite its dark premise, the show has captured the hearts of

YES STUDIOS

‘Fauda,’ a TV series about Israelis and Palestinians, has proved surprisingly popular audiences in Israel and, since its first season was picked up by Netflix last year, it has spread to the United States, as well 190 countries worldwide. Netflix and the show’s producer, Israeli satellite television company Yes, do not typically release ratings, but Raz and the show’s other actors point to the stacks of fan mail they receive as an indication of the show’s popularity. Two months ago, when the trailer for the longawaited second season was finally made public, Israeli channels featured it in their news bulletins.

“Fauda” cast members have become household names in Israel.

Raz, who previously appeared in a handful of Israeli films and TV shows, is also the series co-creator with journalist Avi Issacharoff.

“It allows people to see the complexity of the conflict and to understand that everyone has a backstory, on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians,” Raz said of the show.

Raz added that sometimes the Arab actors will dispute the way their characters are portrayed,

and so they’ll rewrite a scene together.

“Obviously, I am Israeli, so I write with an Israeli narrative,” he said, “but we are also good listeners and will make changes if we feel they are good for the show.”

Issacharoff, a prominent journalist who has covered Palestinian affairs, said it was important for the duo to show Israelis that the Palestinians are real people.

“It is very convenient for Israelis to ignore the Palestinians,” Issacharoff said. Most see little of the Palestinians except through the lens of the military.

The writers admit they did not have high hopes of success when they started writing the series.

“It’s the unsexiest issue on Earth,” Issacharoff said.

The mainstream channels in Israel rejected it outright, but the two shopped it around until Yes agreed to produce and air it, and Netflix came on board soon after.

Raz served in an undercover unit during his mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces, and many of show’s plotlines are based

Lior Raz, right, in a scene from Season 1 of “Fauda.” The actor, who portrays Israeli commando Doron Kavillio, says, “The show talks about the mental price all people who live in a war zone are paying.”

on his real-life experiences.

For instance, in the first season, the girlfriend of one of the central Israeli characters, Boaz, is killed in a suicide bombing carried out by a Palestinian. Boaz must continue his undercover work knowing that his emotions must not get the better of him.

When Raz was a soldier, his own girlfriend was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem. The two had been together for three years — she was his first love. Raz said he did not talk about his loss for nearly 20 years, but now, for the show, he wanted to examine the impact of tragedy on a person’s judgment.

“The show talks about the mental price all people who live in a war zone are paying,” Raz said. “In this conflict, it’s like throwing a stone into water — every ripple, every wave it makes affects so many people.”

Hamed, one of the main Palestinian characters in the first season, is also based in real life: on Ibrahim Hamed, one of the most wanted Hamas figures of the second intifada, the violent uprising against Israel from 2000 to 2006.

“Fauda” portrays Hamed as a ruthless terrorist, prepping suicide bombers and plotting the fight for Palestinian freedom while also showing his love for his family.

On the Israeli side, Doron takes the hunt for Hamed personally.

He refuses to give up trying to catch him, disobeying orders, and risking losing his family and his friends in the unit.

It is perhaps the intimate relationship Doron forms with a Palestinian doctor, Shirin Al Abed, that most challenges stereotypes, as it touches on the taboo of love between a Jew and an Arab.

Raz said that Shirin, though a supporting character, “typifies the show. She comes from France, where she has lived all her life, and then gets dragged into a conflict where both sides take advantage of her.”

Raz added, “It’s really the story of how modern people survive in a radical place.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

17

DATA CRUNCH

KLMNO

Crunched

Ready, set, don’t go Ready, set, don’t go I

It’s at’s common scenario during the holiday season.

As anxious travelers await their flights,flights, harriedharried ticket agents to a common scenario during the holiday season.

As anxious travelers awaitoverbooked their overbooked tickettry agents persuade of them to give up their seats. will it What take? will According an online survey of 1,500 adults insurance try tosome persuade some of them to give up What their seats. it take?toAccording to an online survey offrom 1,500the adults from the comparison sitecomparison Policy Genius, amount of money would of compensate somecompensate travelers forsome losingtravelers a seat. (The average amount of insurance siteno Policy Genius, no amount money would for losing a seat.

(The average amount compensation 2016 credit was $752, tosite travel credit card comparison site Milecards.com, compensation in 2016 was of $752, according tointravel cardaccording comparison Milecards.com, ranging from a high of $1,981 from rangingAirlines from a to high of $1,981 Airlines to a low of $573themselves for United.) should prepare themselves for thefrom possibility Alaska a low of $573from fromAlaska United.)

Who should prepare forWho the possiblity of losing a seat? A report the of losing a seat?

A report fromreveals the Department of Transportation reveals that fliers are most likelyAirlines to be involuntarily bumped Department of Transportation that fliers are most likely to be involuntarily bumped

by Spirit and least likely to be by Spirit Airlines and least likely to be bumped by Delta. Happy travels! n — Elizabeth Chang bumped by Delta. Happy travels! — Elizabeth Chang 3% said $250

What amount makes up for getting bumped?

8% said $500

19% said $1,000

16% said $2,000

14% said $5,000

19% said $10,000

21% said no amount

Rank/ airline 1. Delta air lines 2. Hawaiian airlines 3. alaska airlines 4. Virgin america 5. united airlines 6. frontier airlines 7. skywest airlines 8. american airlines 9. southwest airlines 10. JetBlue airways 11. expressJet airlines 12. spirit airlines

Denied boardings (voluntary) 71,498 153 4,661 1,551 26,848 956 19,604 23,198 28,181 1,120 12,345 6,321

Denied boardings (involuntary) 650 77 482 162 1,964 370 839 4,205 5,179 1,457 763 1,182

Enplaned passengers 64,439,098 5,479,601 12,115,780 3,904,816 44,961,232 7,720,880 15,553,307 64,565,284 76,237,350 18,125,858 8,198,666 11,113,429

Involuntary denied boardings* 0.10 0.14 0.40 0.41 0.44 0.48 0.54 0.65 0.68 0.80 0.93 1.06

*PER 10,000 PASSENGERS; SOURCES: POLICY GENIUS, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION *per 10,000 passengers; sources: policy genius, Department of transportation

WEEKLY

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

How cancer shaped Biden’s choices N ONFICTION

F PROMISE ME, DAD A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

By Joe Biden Flatiron. 260 pp. $27

l

REVIEWED BY

T OM B ROKAW

or almost half a century, Joe Biden has been a conspicuous presence in the nation’s capital, a gregarious old-school Democrat with friends on both sides of the political divide. He ran twice for his party’s nomination as president and lost by wide margins, but he didn’t get on the train back to Delaware. He returned to the life of a public servant. When Barack Obama, the newcomer, looked for ballast on his presidential ticket, Biden was a wise and effective choice.

How ironic that the bookends of Biden’s happy-warrior political career are the deaths of his first wife and 1-year-old daughter in a car accident just before he reached Washington, and then 42 years later, the death of his son Beau, who was stricken with brain cancer. Beau, an Iraq veteran, had planned to run for governor of Delaware after serving two terms as the state’s attorney general, and he was the odds-on favorite. A young man of such promise, many could see the Oval Office in his future.

“Promise Me, Dad” is Joe Biden’s poignant, instructive and deeply affecting account of a family’s struggle against a vicious brain cancer, played out against the demands of his job as vice president and the temptations of another run for the presidency. It is also a touching account of the cruel realities of cancer, especially cancer that strikes your child.

As I have learned from my own cancer battles, when one member of a family develops the disease, all members are affected. “Promise Me, Dad” takes you deep into the Biden family’s approach to sharing roles and emotions when cancer attacks.

Beau Biden’s diagnosis of glioblastoma came after a mysterious siege of muscle and verbal struggles. When neurologists in Philadelphia raised the possibility of glioblastoma, the deadly brain tu-

CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS

Joe Biden, seen at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with his son, Attorney General Beau Biden, left, has written about Beau’s cancer and the effect it had on his family and Biden’s political life.

mor that killed Ted Kennedy, the family doctor was brutally candid when asked where the Bidens should go for treatment. He blurted out, “If it’s The Monster, it doesn’t matter where we go.”

It was The Monster.

The Bidens chose MD Anderson, the Houston temple of cancer treatment staffed with worldrenowned surgeons. (In our current political climate, it is not lost on the reader that Beau’s primary physicians were both immigrants — one from the Middle East, the other from China.) They began an aggressive yet delicate treatment that involved cutting away the tumor without doing damage to Beau’s motor or verbal skills.

The first stage went well, so the vice president left Houston to return to his White House duties and to build a stealth movement for a Biden for President campaign for 2016. His team from earlier campaigns was up and running, and the early signs looked promising, even against the presumption that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

One who did not like the prospect of Biden running for the Dem-

ocratic nomination was his boss, and friend, President Obama. At lunch after lunch, Obama expressed his opposition in clear but subtle terms. It was obvious to Biden that Obama had concluded Clinton was almost certain to be the nominee.

The vice president understood the president’s concerns. How could Biden do his job as vice president, run for his party’s nomination and be there for Beau?

What kind of chaos would that mean for the final 18 months of the Obama presidency?

They were a team, Obama and Biden, and like so many successful teams they represented a yin and yang. Biden acknowledges that “there were times when we were unhappy with each other,” but they kept their differences off the nightly news.

Back home, hopes for Beau’s recovery were fading fast, and he was readmitted to MD Anderson, where his team of specialists was preparing a radical approach. The patient gets a megadose of antibodies, followed by surgery to cut away the excessive parts of the tumor. Then comes the go-for-

broke step: A live virus designed to replicate itself is injected into the tumor and effectively goes to war on the cancer cells. That war between the live virus, Beau’s immune system and the cancer cells would be hard on him, the doctors warned. And so it was. He went home to tough it out, but it was a losing game.

The vice president recorded in his diary: “May 30, 7:51 p.m. It happened. My God, my boy. My beautiful boy.”

His father’s political team continued preparing for a Biden for President campaign, more encouraged every day by what they saw as ever-brighter prospects.

But Biden’s longtime friend and political guru Mike Donilon saw something else: Biden’s continuing pain from the loss of Beau, and he said quietly, “I don’t think you should do this.” It was a moment when friendship overwhelmed politics, a rarity in the high-octane environment of a presidential campaign.

The next day, Biden, with Obama at his side, formally announced that he would not be a candidate. He was at peace with his decision.

As a cancer patient, I am deeply gratified that Biden wants to stay actively involved in the “moonshot,” a monumental undertaking to develop a massive, coordinated effort to accelerate the many breakthrough developments in cancer treatment. His new role is an extension of a conversation he had with Beau in the early stages of his son’s illness. When the gravity of his situation was becoming clear, Beau called his dad to his side and said: “You’ve got to promise me, Dad, that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right. Give me your word, Dad. You’re going to be all right.”

A promise kept. n Brokaw is senior correspondent for NBC News. This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Six dark tales in posthumous book

FBI agents who conned a con man

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

P.

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REVIEWED BY

P ATRICK A NDERSON

D. James, one of the greatest of English mystery writers, died in 2014 at the age of 94, but she and her work live on. “Sleep No More” offers six previously uncollected, quite wonderful “murderous tales” that will delight her longtime fans and can be a fine introduction to her work for others.

Success did not come easily for James. Her mother suffered from mental illness, her father didn’t believe in higher education for girls and Phyllis Dorothy left school at 16 and went to work.

She married a doctor but when he came back from service in World War II, he, too, had mental issues and she became the sole provider for herself and two daughters. She believed she was meant to write, but because of the demands of work and motherhood, she was past 40 when her first novel was published.

Not until James was in her 50s did her mounting success make it possible for her to write full time. In 1991, she became Baroness James of Holland Park. By then, to readers, she was the Queen of Crime.

James is best known for 14 novels that feature the intrepid detective Adam Dalgliesh, but her short stories are excellent as well; she clearly had fun writing them.

James was never much interested in ax murderers or serial killers; she preferred to examine respectable citizens who turn to crime.

The stories collected here are variously surprising, sardonic and darkly humorous, and are always intelligent and beautifully written. As much as any crime writer I know, James transcends genre and should be viewed simply as a writer of exceptional literary skill.

Her plots are always inventive.

In a story called “The Yo-Yo” (there’s a reason), a retired judge recalls how, at age 13, he witnessed a murder and lied to police to protect the guilty party. Children, in these stories, are rarely to be

trusted.

“The Murder of Santa Claus” is set in an English manor house at Christmas of 1939. A boy of 16 is spending the holiday with his wealthy, rather nasty uncle. Other guests include the uncle’s stepson, soon to be a pilot with the Royal Air Force, and the uncle’s hard-drinking mistress. Someone sends the uncle a Christmas poem that urges him to “Go to bed and sleep no more.” Sure enough, that night he is murdered in his bed.

It’s a complex story, in the murder-in-the-manor-house tradition, that recalls Agatha Christie at her best.

In “The Girl Who Loved Graveyards,” we meet a girl whose mother died when she was born and whose father and grandmother die when she’s 10. She’s sent to London to live with an aunt and uncle; her new bedroom overlooks a graveyard that becomes central to her life. Exploring it, she feels “an emotion so rare that it stole through her thin body like a pain.”

It’s “a place of delight and mystery, her refuge and her solace.”

The story becomes an unsettling prose poem about the girl’s passion for the graveyard. Then she grows up and takes a train back to the village of her birth, to find out where her father is buried.

Only then do we learn the chilling reason for her obsession with graveyards.

James is endlessly quotable. A policeman: “The young seldom lie convincingly. They haven’t had time to practice like the rest of us.”

Marriage “is both the most public and the most secret of institutions, its miseries as irritatingly insistent as a hacking cough, its private malaise less easily diagnosed.”

This collection would make an excellent holiday gift for a literate friend, even though the author’s message has precious little to do with peace on earth or goodwill toward men. n Anderson writes regularly about thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.

I SLEEP NO MORE Six Murderous Tales

By P.D. James Knopf. 208 pp. $21

CHASING PHIL The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents With the World’s Most Charming Con Man

By David Howard Crown. 384 pp. $28

l

REVIEWED BY

S COTT B ERG

n October 1976, FBI agent J.J. Wedick Jr. supervised what he thought would be a one-day undercover operation designed to entice notorious confidence man Phil Kitzer into passing along a stolen bond or two. Twelve months, four continents and innumerable close shaves later, Wedick and his partner Jack Brennan closed the case on one of the bureau’s all-time success stories. A smoking crater lay where once had thrived an international bank fraud ring, and they’d finally collared Kitzer, the smooth-talking, hard-drinking and supremely slippery mastermind behind it all.

In outline, it’s a pretty standard, if farther-flung-than-usual, tale of G-men done good. But David Howard’s “Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents With the World’s Most Charming Con Man” is no appreciation of the stoic and methodical march of justice. Rather, it’s a caper, a picaresque, an antiUntouchables.

Posing as two young operators looking for an education in the world of high-finance fraud, Wedick and Brennan were sailing uncharted waters in an FBI that, until J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1972, forbade its rank-and-file agents from operating undercover. Given almost no training in the craft of clandestine work, no assurances of cooperation across state and international borders, and no reliable financial support, Wedick and Brennan mostly winged it.

Often, they winged it pretty badly. At a certain point, “assumed identities begin to feel flimsy; scripts become hard to follow,” writes Howard. “Every word, every conversation carried the potential to dynamite the enterprise.” “Chasing Phil” piles up barely believable near-misses one after the other: recording devices that are nearly revealed, cover stories that come within a single forgotten detail of collapsing, afterhours rendezvous with local FBI agents that are nearly interrupted.

One of Kitzer’s running jabs at Wedick and Brennan is to point out how completely they resemble federal agents; he calls them the “Junior G-Men,” while Howard describes them as “surely the first undercover operatives ever to be teased by their targets for their uncanny resemblance to undercover operatives.”

Howard spends a few solemn pages late in the book reminding the reader that what Kitzer was doing was b-a-d: nest eggs lost, dreams dashed, great pain inflicted. But watching the agents improvise their way along the edge of ruin as they chase him is mostly f-u-n.

Wedick and Brennan’s greatest asset, outside of their never-ending luck, seems to lie in the simple fact that Kitzer likes them. And as the agents are pulled more closely into Kitzer’s orbit, so are we, so much so that when they finally confront the con man and reveal their true identities, I felt the immediate dread of betrayal more than the abstract satisfaction of justice.

Underneath all the boozy good humor of the book’s action, something profound lingers — about the ease with which Kitzer can treat all the world as one great mark and the way Wedick and Brennan can pretend to see it in the same fashion. In fact, the book’s biggest achievement is that its honest people — Wedick and Brennan — are made as human as their quarry, in many ways more so: more uncertain, more prone to error, so easily impressed by the world of financial chicanery and easy bonhomie through which Kitzer guides them.

That Kitzer is betrayed by two honest guys making a pretty interesting hash of being liars is the central paradox of the story — and the core of its appeal. n Berg is an author and teaches nonfiction writing and literature at George Mason University. This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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OPINIONS

Royal engagement shows the monarchy’s evolution AUTUMN BREWINGTON is a journalist in Washington and a former op-ed page editor and royal blogger for The Washington Post. This was written for The Post.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement is more than a palace love story to cheer in a season of cheerless news. The happy union of a playboy­prince­turned­ soldier­and­humanitarian and a biracial, divorced American actress and humanitarian — welcomed by Britain’s power structure — marks a striking evolution for the British monarchy.

After all, Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest­serving monarch, is on the throne only because divorce was unacceptable for the royal family not that long ago. Her accession was unanticipated: She was born in 1926 at the home of her maternal grandparents, not a royal palace.

The daughter of the second son of a king in a system rooted in primogeniture, Princess Elizabeth was expected to marry well and have an unremarkable (though privileged) life. Her future, and history, changed when her uncle David fell in love with an American, Wallis Warfield Simpson, who had married not once but twice before she met the then­Prince of Wales.

The British government and dominions were adamant that a twice-divorced American could not be crowned queen, not when the king was head of the Church of England, which did not then allow divorcés to remarry during the lifetime of a former spouse.

The new king, however, was equally adamant that he would not give up the woman he loved.

He abdicated in 1936, catapulting his younger brother, and later his niece, to the throne, and he was exiled.

Days after Elizabeth’s own coronation in 1953, another divorce scandal broke: Her sister, Princess Margaret, was in love with a divorced equerry, Group Capt. Peter Townsend. Officials and courtiers, still shaken by the abdication, were opposed.

Margaret was told she could marry Townsend — if she renounced her royal rights and

left the country for some years.

She chose her royal position and eventually married someone else — whom she later divorced.

As fifth in line to the throne, Harry is not considered a future king. Still, he is a senior enough royal that he needs the sovereign’s approval to wed — and in years past, permission would not have been granted to marry a divorcée (American or otherwise) without the prince renouncing his claim on the crown.

In some respects, the evolution is unexceptional: Public attitudes toward divorce have relaxed markedly in recent decades, and the share of marriages ending in divorce in England and Wales has risen. Three of the queen’s four children have divorced.

Yet the speed with which the monarchy has shifted on divorce is remarkable for an institution

FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Britain’s Prince Harry and U.S. actress Meghan Markle plan to wed at Windsor Castle in May. They announced their engagement Monday.

that venerates tradition and symbolizes history. When Elizabeth’s daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, remarried in 1992, she did so in Scotland because she could not be remarried in a Church of England service.

When Prince Charles sought to marry his longtime love Camilla Parker-Bowles, things were complicated by the enduring popularity of his first wife, Princess Diana, and by Charles’s position as heir to the throne — and future supreme governor of the Church of England. Although the church had begun allowing divorcés to remarry a few years earlier, finding clergy to conduct the ceremony was a challenge.

Charles and Camilla married in a civil service, in a registrar’s office in Windsor, and followed that with a blessing at St. George’s Chapel, during which, in a nod to societal judgments, they acknowledged their “manifold sins and wickedness.”

Charles’s years-long campaign for public acceptance of Camilla and his insistence on marrying her set a precedent that made it easier for Harry, 33, to propose to 36-year-old Meghan, who was divorced in 2013.

Meanwhile, though Markle’s ethnicity has drawn scrutiny

during their relationship, it speaks volumes that a biracial American commoner is being warmly welcomed into Britain’s royal family, itself the top tier of a class-conscious society. The acceptance of her class and racial heritage as simply part of a modern family also stand out at a moment when racial tensions and class divisions are so pronounced in the United States.

The queen saw the burden the crown placed on her father — who died at 56 — and she models her parents’ belief in prioritizing the monarchy before personal desires. Her reverence for tradition and her silence in the face of criticism sparked outrage in the aftermath of Diana’s death, when an empty flagpole at Buckingham Palace was a lightning rod for public upset.

But she is beloved in part for embodying Britain’s stiff upper lip and carrying on while saying little. Her stewardship over decades of deep social change has protected the monarchy as an institution above, yet reflective of, British life. She has guided the throne to a place where a woman who became sovereign as a result of a divorce scandal could welcome a divorced American into Britain’s royal family. n

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

The road to a healthier sexual ethic CHRISTINE EMBA is a Washington Post opinions writer and editor.

The backlash to the #MeToo movement has begun. As the parade of post-Harvey Weinstein exposés marches on, so do the unhappy reactions to a sexual landscape suddenly turned on its head.

There’s the skittish colleague (“If I ask a woman out at work, am I going to be reported for harassment?”). The nervous cad (“Will one unfortunate hookup land me on a public list of ‘s---ty men’?”). And the vexing question underneath it all: “If we get so worked up about sexual harassment and assault, what will happen to sex?”

This #MeToo paranoia isn’t all baseless. While some worries should rate only an eye roll, others highlight the precariously gray continuum from annoyance to harassment to assault.

But it’s also true that these questions hold something in common. They gesture toward America’s prevailing and problematic sexual ethic — one that is in no small part responsible for getting us into this sexual misconduct mess in the first place.

At the bottom of all this confusion sits a fundamental misframing: that there’s some baseline amount of sex that we should be getting or at least should be allowed to pursue.

Following from that is the assumption that the ability to pursue and satisfy our sexual desires — whether by hitting on that co-worker even if we’re at a professional lunch, or by pursuing a sexual encounter

even when reciprocity is unclear — is paramount. At best, our sexual freedom should be circumscribed only by the boundary of consent. Any other obstacle is not to be borne.

A recent article by Masha Gessen in the New Yorker illustrates just how pear-shaped our understanding has gone.

Cautioning against a “sex panic” after the watershed of abuse revelations, it reported in solemn yet horrified tones: “The policing of sex seems to assume that it’s better to have ten times less sex than to risk having a nonconsensual sexual experience.”

Er . . . Is it . . . not? Is this no longer an assumption we can agree upon? If so, it’s time to

acknowledge that there might be something wrong with how we’re thinking about sex.

It’s not that sex in and of itself is the problem. But the idea that pursuing one’s sexual imperatives should take precedence over workplace rules, lines of power or even just appropriate social behavior is what allows predators to justify sexual harassment and assault.

And it encourages the nonpredators to value their desires above those of others.

A sex-above-all ethic, combined with a power structure that protects and enables men (alas, it’s almost always men) is what allows the Charlie Roses of the world to think that it’s fine to grope and proposition their subordinates: After all, Rose thought he was pursuing “shared feelings.” It’s what makes comedian Louis C.K. think that as long as he “asked first” and women didn’t say no, it was acceptable to make them watch him masturbate.

So what to do?

It’s unlikely that we’ll return to a society in which sexual encounters outside of marriage are disallowed or even discouraged — that sex train has already left the fornication station, if it was ever properly there to begin with. But now

could be the time to reintroduce virtues such as prudence, temperance, respect and even love. We might pursue the theory that sex possibly has a deeper significance than just recreation and that “consent” — that thin and gameable boundary — might not be the only moral sensibility that we need to respect.

But in the meantime, now that the excesses of our current sexual ethic are coming up against their consequences, some uncomfortable readjustment will need to occur.

Perhaps the skittish colleague will have to build a rapport with his co-worker before engaging in romantic pursuit, and then do so after hours. Maybe the nervous cad will have to give up a few borderline sexual encounters to make sure he’s on the right side of the line.

Adjusting to this new understanding may well mean less sex for some, in the short term, and more anxiety for several. Too bad. If we value access to sex over other people’s consent or comfort or basic ability to exist unmolested in their workplace, then we as a society are in the wrong.

And in the long term, as norms resettle, it will mean a healthier sexual ethic — and a better society — for us all. n

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

22

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

Cellphone data is too easily gotten BRUCE SCHNEIER is a security technologist and a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His latest book is “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.” This was written for The Washington Post.

The cellphones we carry with us constantly are the most perfect surveillance device ever invented, and our laws haven’t caught up to that reality. That might change soon.

This past week, the Supreme Court heard a case with profound implications on your security and privacy in the coming years. The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unlawful search and seizure is a vital right that protects us all from police overreach, and the way the courts interpret it is increasingly nonsensical in our computerized and networked world. The Supreme Court can either update current law to reflect the world, or it can further solidify an unnecessary and dangerous police power.

The case centers on cellphone location data and whether the police need a warrant to get it, or if they can use a simple subpoena, which is easier to obtain. Current Fourth Amendment doctrine holds that you lose all privacy protections over any data you willingly share with a third party. Your cellular provider, under this interpretation, is a third party with whom you’ve willingly shared your movements, 24 hours a day, going back months — even though you don’t really have any choice about whether to share with them. So police can request records of where you’ve been from cell carriers without any judicial oversight.

The case before the court,

Carpenter v. United States, could change that.

Traditionally, information that was most precious to us was physically close to us. It was on our bodies, in our homes and offices, in our cars. Because of that, the courts gave that information extra protections.

Information that we stored far away from us, or gave to other people, afforded fewer protections. Police searches have been governed by the “thirdparty doctrine,” which explicitly says that information we share with others is not considered private.

The Internet has turned that thinking upside-down. Our cellphones know who we talk to and, if we’re talking via text or

BY DANZIGER FOR THE RUTLAND HERALD

email, what we say. They track our location constantly, so they know where we live and work.

Because they’re the first and last thing we check every day, they know when we go to sleep and when we wake up. Because everyone has one, they know whom we sleep with. And because of how those phones work, all that information is naturally shared with third parties.

More generally, all our data is literally stored on computers belonging to other people. It’s our email, text messages, photos, Google docs, and more — all in the cloud. We store it there not because it’s unimportant, but precisely because it is important. And as the Internet of Things computerizes the rest our lives, even more data will be collected by other people: data from our health trackers and medical devices, data from our home sensors and appliances, data from Internet-connected “listeners” like Alexa, Siri and your voice-activated television.

All this data will be collected and saved by third parties, sometimes for years. The result is a detailed dossier of your activities more complete than any private investigator — or police officer — could possibly

collect by following you around.

The issue here is not whether the police should be allowed to use that data to help solve crimes. Of course they should.

The issue is whether that information should be protected by the warrant process that requires the police to have probable cause to investigate you and get approval by a court.

Warrants are a security mechanism. They prevent the police from abusing their authority to investigate someone they have no reason to suspect of a crime. They prevent the police from going on “fishing expeditions.” They protect our rights and liberties, even as we willingly give up our privacy to the legitimate needs of law enforcement.

The third-party doctrine never made a lot of sense. Just because I share an intimate secret with my spouse, friend or doctor doesn’t mean that I no longer consider it private. It makes even less sense in today’s hyper-connected world.

It’s long past time the Supreme Court recognized that a months-long history of my movements is private, and my emails and other personal data deserve the same protections, whether they’re on my laptop or on Google’s servers. n

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

American Indians BY

K EVIN G OVER

In the 1500s, Europeans produced fanciful depictions of the “New World” and indigenous Americans. Ever since, captivity narratives, novels, short stories, textbooks, newspapers, art, photography, mov­ ies and television have perpetuated old stereotypes or created new ones — particularly ones that cast indigenous peoples as obstacles to, rather than actors in, the creation of the modern world. Here are five of the most intransigent.

MYTH NO. 1 There is a Native American culture.

Vast differences — in culture, ethnicity and language — exist among the 567 federally recognized Indian nations across the United States. It’s true that the buffalo-hunting peoples of the Great Plains and prairie, such as the Lakota, once lived in tepees. But other native people lived in hogans (the Navajo of the Southwest), bark wigwams (the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes), wood longhouses in the Northeast (Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois peoples’ name for themselves, means “they made the house”), and on and on.

Nowadays, most Native Americans live in contemporary houses, apartments, condos and co-ops just like everyone else.

There is similar diversity in how native people traditionally dressed; whether they farmed, fished or hunted; and what they ate. Something as simple as food ranged from game (everywhere); to seafood along the coasts; to saguaro, prickly pear and cholla cactus in the Southwest; to acorns and pine nuts in California and the Great Basin.

MYTH NO. 2 American Indians get a free ride from the government.

Native Americans are subject to income taxes just like all other Americans and, at best, have the same access to government services — though often worse. In 2013, the Indian

Health Service (IHS) spent just $2,849 per capita for patient health services, well below the national average of $7,717. And IHS clinics can be difficult to access, not only on reservations but in urban areas, where the majority of Native Americans live.

As for reservations, most were created when tribes relinquished enormous portions of their original landholdings in treaties with the federal government. They are what remained after the United States expropriated the bulk of the native estate. And even these tenuous holdings were often confiscated and sold to white settlers. The Dawes Allotment Act, passed by Congress in 1887, broke up communally held reservation lands and allotted them to native households in 160-acre parcels of individually owned property, many of which were sold off. Between 1887, when the allotment act was passed, and 1934, when allotment was repealed, the Native American land base diminished from about 138 million acres to 48 million acres.

MYTH NO. 3 ‘Native American’ is the proper term.

The term Native American grew out of the political movements of the 1960s and ’70s and is commonly used in legislation covering the indigenous people of the Lower 4848 states and U.S. territories.

EDWARD CURTIS/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

Navajo riders in Canyon de Chelly, Ariz., about 1904. Despite Hollywood stereotypes, there is no single Native American culture.

But Native Americans use a range of words to describe themselves, and all are appropriate. Some people refer to themselves as Native or Indian; most prefer to be known by their tribal affiliation — Cherokee, Pawnee, Seneca, etc.

— if the context doesn’t demand a more encompassing description. Some natives and nonnatives, including scholars, insist on using the word Indigenous, with a capital I. MYTH NO. 4 Indians sold Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets.

It is unlikely that the Lenape saw the original transaction as a sale. Although land could be designated for the exclusive use of prominent native individuals and families, the idea of selling land in perpetuity, to be regarded as property, was alien to native societies. Historians who try now to reconstruct early transactions between Europeans and Native Americans differ over whether the Lenape considered it an agreement for the Dutch to use, but not own, Manahatta (the majority view), or whether even as early as 1626, Indians had engaged in enough

trade to understand European economic ideas.

MYTH NO. 5 Mascots honor Native Americans.

The use of Native Americans as mascots arose during the allotment period, a time when U.S. policy sought to eradicate native sovereignty and Wild West shows cemented the image of Indians as plains warriors.

What’s more, social science research suggests not only that some native people recognize the word “Redskins” as a racial slur and are offended by it, but that exposure to mascots and other stereotypes of Native Americans has a negative impact on American Indian youths.

According to a study by Tulalip psychologist Stephanie Fryberg, such mascots “remind American Indians of the limited ways others see them and, in this way, constrain how they can see themselves.” n Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, is the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017

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