Neil deGrasse Tyson blames U.S. schools for flat-Earthers — and teachers aren’t amused

group’s website: In this series we will be dispelling a number of globularist claims. This week we take a look at lunar eclipses in the ball model and using the Parallaxian mind-set put forth by Samuel Rowbotham showing the globe earth theory to be incoherent with observed phenomena. Tyson’s tweet blames America’s schools — most of which are traditional public schools — for such ignorance, but is that really fair? It is true that science education is not a priority in too many schools, and young people don’t learn anywhere near enough about the world. But a refusal to believe basic science like this suggests something other than minimal or lousy teaching, such as willful ignorance, a rejection of science and/or religious beliefs. I sought comment from Tyson but didn’t hear back. It is worth noting, as I wrote here, that the true shape of the Earth has been known since ancient times. Historians say there is no doubt that the educated in Christopher Columbus’s day knew quite well that the Earth was not flat but round — and as early as the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras — and later Aristotle and Euclid — wrote about the Earth as a sphere. Ptolemy wrote “Geography” at the height of the Roman Empire, 1,300 years before Columbus first sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, and considered the idea of a round planet as fact. (Columbus owned a copy.) During the early Middle Ages, it is true that many Europeans succumbed to rumor and started believing that they lived on a flat Earth, but Islamic countries knew better and preserved the Greek learning, and by the late Middle Ages, Europe had caught up and in some cases surpassed the knowledge of ancient Greece and medieval Islam. Several books published in Europe between 1200 and 1500 discussed the Earth’s shape, including “The Sphere,” written in the early 1200s, which was required reading in European universities in the 1300s and beyond. But in the 1800s, a myth was perpetuated that Columbus thought the world was flat. In a 1991 book, “Inventing the Flat Earth,” retired University of California professor Jeffrey Burton Russell pointed to writers, such as Washington Irving, who in 1828, Irving wrote the mostly fictional “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” which says that Europeans learned from Columbus’s trips to the New World that the planet was round. There were some


The curious case of China’s ‘ban’ on Winnie the Pooh

It's not every day that Winnie the Pooh makes global headlines, but recently, amid a rush of serious news, the bear became the talk of the town. Last weekend, the Web went wild over reports that A.A. Milne's “bear of very little brain” had been blocked in China because of his resemblance to Chinese President Xi Jinping, as shown in a 2013 meme that likened Xi to a pudgy Pooh and President Barack Obama to a lanky Tigger. Xi Jinping and Obama walking during summit: Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Gotta love Chinese netizens. http://t.co/hJBqk1l5oK In a front-page story published online July 16, the Financial Times reported that the Xi-Winnie picture has become “too politically sensitive to be mentioned on Chinese social media.” Soon after, stories about Winnie's woes flooded major news outlets. “Winnie the Pooh is the latest victim of censorship in China,” read one headline. “Has Winnie the Pooh done something to anger China's censors?” asked Agence France-Presse. The answer is yes, sort of. But not the way you might imagine. This week's rush of stories made it seem like the political winds had changed, causing China's censors to suddenly scrub the Xi-Pooh meme from the Web. But the data suggests it wasn't that simple. And that shows us something about how Chinese censorship works — and how Chinese censorship is covered by the press. China's censorship apparatus is vast and complex. The so-called Great Firewall blocks Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and — as of this week, it seems — certain functions on WhatsApp. The system can be fearsomely efficient. When China's first Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, died in state custody on July 13, it was nearly impossible to post about it. In the wake of his death, the candle emoji was blocked on several social networks to stop people from publicly expressing grief. Censors managed to pull pictures from one-to-one chats, according to a Citizen Lab report. In short: The death was all but erased. As that played out, attention shifted to the woes of a cartoon bear, which despite talk of “bans,” “blocks” and “blacklists” was easy to find on the Web. We checked how often three Winnie-related Chinese terms showed up in posts on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter. The terms were: Winnie Bear (维尼熊), Little Bear Winnie (小熊维尼), Winnie (维尼). As you can see below, the number of posts using these three


He thought he just had blisters from a hike. He had flesh-eating bacteria and nearly died.

WATCH: Flesh-eating bacteria- 10 P.M. Wayne Atkins thought little of the blisters he had gotten while hiking. He was trekking up and down the 4,500-foot-high Mount Garfield in New Hampshire — 10-miles round-trip — and blisters were no surprise. He was in the Granite State for a family member's early June wedding, which went off without a hitch, even with the blisters. But things soured when he returned to Miami, according to Manchester, N.H., ABC affiliate WMUR-TV. The blisters didn't go away. In fact, they started hurting more than Atkins expected, according to the news station. And he started feeling ill. Worried, he went to the hospital, where he learned things were much worse than he'd thought, his mother told news organizations. Atkins would spend the next month fighting for his life as his body was devoured by flesh-eating bacteria. What Atkins didn't know at the time was that his blisters had allowed Group A streptococcus to enter his body. Anyone who has ever had strep throat should recognize the bacteria's name. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year, 11,000 to 13,000 people are infected with an invasive form of strep A disease that can cause blood infection or pneumonia. In Atkins's case, it caused necrotizing fasciitis, where bacteria feast on a person's soft tissues. Man hospitalized after being exposed to flesh-eating bacteria while hiking https://t.co/VpUsTg8gOX https://t.co/oLxStoEWhV It's potentially deadly. Every year, 1,100 to 1,600 people die of invasive forms of strep A. But acquiring the bacteria through blisters, as Atkins did, is rare — about a 1-in-250,000 chance, doctors told the Associated Press. At the Miami hospital, doctors realized the flesh-eating bacteria were killing Atkins, his mother, Karen Gaudrea told WMUR. Her son's organs were beginning to shut down. Shortly after she arrived at his bedside, doctors told her that they were putting him in a medically induced coma. “He went to the hospital thinking he had a blister that made him sick,” Gaudrea, who is a nurse, told WMUR. “By the time I got to Miami that night, he was already in liver failure, kidney failure. He went into this respiratory condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome where your lungs just fill with fluid.” The CDC says They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins


Fukushima’s melted nuclear fuel likely sighted in ghostly underwater images

“This means something of high temperature melted some structural objects and came out. So it is natural to think that melted fuel rods are mixed with them.” He said it was “highly likely” to be melted fuel. “The pictures that we have gained will assist us in devising a plan for removing the melted fuel,” Kimoto said, according to Bloomberg. “Taking pictures of how debris scattered inside of the reactor was a big accomplishment.” This image captured by an underwater robot provided by International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning shows a part of equipment housing a control rod drive system of Unit 3 at Fukushima Daiichi. (via AP) Triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami that rocked the Japanese coastline March 11, 2011, the reactor disaster at Fukushima was the worst nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Three of the plant’s reactors plunged into 20 feet of water, releasing enough radioactive fallout to force 200,000 to evacuate their homes. Six years later the area remains highly contaminated — so much so only specially designed unmanned robots can explore the region. But the lack of concrete information has been a serious handicap for the cleanup up effort: Corium, the lava-like refuse from a nuclear meltdown, must be located before decontamination begins. So far, the search for melted fuel at Fukushima has not gone well. According to Reuters, previously unmanned crafts have not survived the intense radiation. And previous dives by “Little Starfish” on the two other reactors did not yield any visual confirmation. But on Friday, the reactor’s owners announced that the probe’s footage showed evidence of what might be the melted fuel. Further analysis will be required to be certain. Branch-like material (top left) likely to be nuclear fuel debris is shown in this photo taken July 21 at the No. 3 reactor of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. (Kyodo) With the location of the contaminants possibly identified, the work is just beginning. The Japan Times reports the utility hopes to start the removal process in 2021. Last year the Japanese government released an estimate saying it could cost $72 billion and 40 years to decommission the reactors. More from Morning Mix Utah couple arrested after drugging heroin-addicted newborn to hide symptoms, police say Anthony Scaramucci as ‘That Guy’ from ‘Futurama’: The newest Trump-era meme Four years after 13-year-old Dylan Redwine disappeared, his father is charged with murder


Our Q&A with Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize winner and education advocate

instead of decreasing. That really surprised me. Teen pregnancy is also a big problem. Girls are de-prioritized all over the world — in big and smaller ways. In some communities, girls don’t even have access to working restrooms at school, forcing them to choose between their dignity and privacy or their education. TL: MY: I can stand with them and support them, but they don’t need me or anyone to tell them how to fight for their rights. They’re already fighting. TL: MY: TL: MY: I carry them all with me every day. But right now I am thinking of a girl I just met in Kurdistan. Her name is Najla and she’s a Yazidi girl. When she was a young teenager, her family wanted her to get married. She ran away from home in her wedding dress! She told me, “I left my high heels because I couldn’t run in them.” She was ostracized from her family but still able to go to school. Then ISIS came to her village. They shot at her as she fled and hit her in the hand. She showed me the scar where the bullet hit her. Today she lives in a concrete shell of an unfinished building without electricity or running water. She walks over an hour to school. But she’s happy to be free and back in a classroom. These are the incredible things girls will do to get an education and choose their future for themselves. Malala Yousafzai in a group discussion with some of the students at Yerwa Girls School in Maiduguri, Nigeria, on July 18. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters) TL: MY: TL: MY: I do talk to my friends in Pakistan as well, especially my best friend Moniba. I hope we will be reunited in our hometown someday. TL: MY: TL: MY: Recently I read “Stolen Girls” by Wolfgang Bauer, in preparation for my Girl Power Trip stop in Nigeria. “Stolen Girls” tells the stories of brave and resilient women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. TL: MY: My parents didn’t think I was less than my brothers because I’m a girl. My father Ziauddin says, “Don’t ask me what I did. Ask me what I did not do. I did not clip her wings." TL: MY: TL: MY: One of the girls brought a 6-year-old orphan boy named Yusef with her. Even though it was an outing for girls,


10 mega myths about farming to remember on your next grocery run

Most of us don’t spend our days plowing fields or wrangling cattle. We’re part of the 99 percent of Americans who eat food, but don’t produce it. Because of our intimate relationship with food, and because it's so crucial to our health and the environment, people should be very concerned about how it’s produced. But we don’t always get it right. Next time you’re at the grocery store, consider these 10 modern myths about the most ancient occupation. 1. Most farms are corporate-owned This myth is probably the most pervasive on the list. It is also the furthest off-base. Nearly 99 percent of U.S. farms are family-owned. The vast majority of these are small family farms, but the bulk of our food comes from large family farms. 2. Food is expensive Americans spend a considerably smaller percentage of their income on food than they did in the 1960s. Americans also spend among the least amount worldwide on food as a percent of income. We spend less of our money on food than people in many other developed nations. Between 10 and 20 percent of the cost of food actually reaches the farmer. That means when commodity prices rise or fall, food costs remain relatively constant, buffering consumers from spikes in their grocery bills. That’s not to say that food isn’t difficult for some American households to afford, and nutrition and obesity experts worry about the relatively high cost of nutrient-rich versus calorie-dense foods. 3. Farming is traditional and low tech Self-driving cars are still out of reach for consumers, but tractors have been driving themselves around farms for years. And driving tractors isn’t the only role GPS plays on a farm. Farmers collect geospatial data to monitor variations across a field in soil type, water and nutrient use, temperature, crop yield and more. The average farmer on Farmer’s Business Network, a social media-like platform for farm analytics, collects about four million data points every year. Artificial intelligence helps sort through all this data and maximize performance within a field down to the square meter. A driverless tractor autosteers across a field in Washington. The seeds farmers plant are also carefully crafted by years of state-of-the-art research to maximize yield and efficiency. Gene sequencing and molecular markers help track the best traits when breeding new crops. Chemical mutagens and radiation speed up evolution by introducing new mutations. And genetic engineering enables


Others, like certain insecticides that can also harm larger animals at high doses, cross categories. Pesticides fight bugs and weeds in organic and conventional fields. The difference is that organic pesticides cannot be synthesized artificially. This does not necessarily mean they are less toxic. Toxicity depends on the specific compound and a person’s exposure to that compound. Some pesticides, especially older ones, are toxic at relatively low levels. Others are safe even at very high doses. Pesticides also differ in how quickly they break down in the environment. Different regulations apply to different pesticides. Permits are required to purchase some agricultural chemicals, and many farmers call on crop consultants to diagnose problems in a field and prescribe the proper treatment. 5. Organic farmers and conventional farmers don’t get along Adjacent farms have to cooperate regardless of how they grow their crops. For example, potentially damaging herbicides applied to one field can drift onto a neighbor’s crops. Poorly managed weeds or insects can also spread from one field to another. But many farm families actually grow organic and conventional crops on different fields. Organic and conventional agriculture are different business models. It typically costs more to grow crops organically, but farmers can sell these crops for a higher premium. Some crops are easier to grow organically than others depending on the type of pests they face. Whether a given crop can be grown with more sustainability by conventional or organic methods also differs by crop and by region. 6. A GMO is a GMO is a GMO Farmers and plant scientists find the term “GMO,” or genetically modified organism, frustrating. There are many ways to genetically modify a crop inside and outside of a lab. Yet the term GMO and the regulations that go with it are restricted to particular types of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is a tool that can be used in many different ways. The technique has produced virus-resistant papayas, grains that can survive herbicide application, squash unpalatable to insects and apples that don’t brown. Each of these traits can lead to very different outcomes. For example, herbicide-resistant crops allow an increased use of certain herbicides, while insect-resistant crops enable farmers to use less insecticides. Each GMO food crop currently or soon to be on U.S. shelves (these include canola, corn, papaya, soybean, squash, sugar beets, apples and potatoes) has been individually tested for safety. Collectively, this research


The Energy 202: Russia sanctions carve out will help energy companies

stakes for ExxonMobil following the seven-figure penalty (a pittance compared to Exxon's profits) that the Treasury Department levied after finding that the firm violated U.S. sanctions against Russia. Exxon has decided to contest the fine in court. "The rationale for the lawsuit appears to go beyond the financial impact of the fine," The Times writes. "Exxon feels that its reputation is at stake and that the threat of more sanctions, potentially costlier, is looming." THERMOMETER -- Ice boats =... Henry Fountain in the New York Times has a look at Arctic shipping. As more cruise ships and gas tankers ply the warming but still icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, the more maritime observers worry about what happens when boats collide with icebergs. "Although nations with Arctic lands, including the United States, have agreed to assist each other in the event of disaster, there is very little emergency infrastructure in either American or Canadian Arctic waters, or in Russia along what is known as the Northern Sea Route," Fountain writes. Right now, the U.S. Coast Guard has two working heavy icebreakers. Russia has 41. LOCAL ENVIRONS -- Welcome to Kaboom Town: There is only one commercial facility in the United States permitted to burn explosives and munitions waste with no environmental emissions controls, and it is in the impoverished town of Colfax, La. Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica reports that it's not just noise pollution from the site meant to dispose of unused U.S. bombs and other weapons that concerns Colfax residents. They also worry about the cancer-causing pollutants, thought to be from the facility, that have seeped into the air and water of the mostly black town of 1,532. Clean Harbors, a Defense Department contractor that runs the facility, successfully lobbied against reform efforts in the state, arguing that the toxins comes from other sources. DAYBOOK Coming Up - The Smart Electric Power Alliance hosts the Grid Evolution Summit with events starting on Tuesday and continuing through Friday. - The Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety holds a hearing on clean energy technologies on Tuesday. - The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs holds an oversight hearing on “Assessing Current Conditions and Challenges at the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center in American Samoa" on Tuesday. - The House Natural Resources Committee meets to mark up legislation on Tuesday.


Part of Beach Drive will reopen next month with new road and trail

A crew on Monday works on Beach Drive near the National Zoo. (Luz Lazo/Washington Post) The stretch of Beach Drive that closed for improvements in September will reopen to vehicular traffic next month, officials said Monday. But don’t get too excited. The painful closures in the busy commuter thoroughfare in Northwest won’t end there. After the section between Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway NW and Tilden Street reopens, work will move to the next two miles of Beach Drive, in what will be another year of closures between Tilden Street and Military Road. For some drivers, however, the reopening of this part of Beach Drive near the National Zoo will bring much needed relief. The current closure was likely to be the most painful because the 26,000 cars that travel the section daily are now being diverted to other clogged arteries, such as Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street. Thousands of commuters have endured nightmarish traffic since the route closed. Officials with the National Park Service say crews are also on track to finish the entire three-year project in the fall of 2019. The 6.5-mile road that runs through Rock Creek Park is getting a complete makeover. When completed, drivers will have a brand new road, and pedestrians and cyclists will enjoy a safer trail, officials say. “At the end of August drivers can say goodbye to potholes and puddles on this first stretch of Beach Drive,” said Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service. “That will be the most obvious thing, the beautiful smooth new road surface.” What people won’t see, she said, is the infrastructure underground that will help the road surface last “as long as possible.” During the road reconstruction, crews dug up about a foot-and-a-half down to build a new road surface and installed a new drainage system that will help prevent erosion and keep the road dryer. As part of the project, this sidewalk was widened from two feet to five feet. (Luz Lazo/The Washington Post) The nearby multiuse trail used by thousands of bicyclists and joggers is also getting a makeover. Portions that were six feet wide are now eight feet, and the narrow sidewalk inside the tunnel close to the National Zoo expanded from two feet to five feet. A guardrail will add safety for pedestrians in that stretch, an official said during a tour of the construction zone Monday. Daniel Schaible,


Scientists just found a surprising possible consequence from a very small amount of global warming

A driver climbs out of a window of his car after driving onto a flooded road in Van Nuys, Calif., on Jan. 5, 2016. (Gene Blevins/Reuters) Even if we meet our most ambitious climate goal — keeping global temperatures within a strict 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degree Fahrenheit) of their preindustrial levels — there will still be consequences, scientists say. And they’ll last for years after we stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New research suggests that extreme El Niño events — which can cause intense rainfall, flooding and other severe weather events in certain parts of the world — will occur more and more often as long as humans continue producing greenhouse gas emissions. And even if we’re able to stabilize the global climate at the 1.5-degree threshold, the study concludes, these events will continue to increase in frequency for up to another 100 years afterward. The findings were published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. “It was really a surprise that what we find is after we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius and stabilize world temperatures, the frequency of extreme El Niño continued to increase for another century,” said Wenju Cai, a chief research scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and one of the study’s lead authors. “W The study builds on a 2014 paper, also published in Nature Climate Change by Cai and a group of colleagues, which first suggested that extreme El Niño events will increase with global warming. That paper focused on a business-as-usual climate trajectory, in which greenhouse gas emissions remain at high levels into the future, Cai noted. It found that under this scenario, the frequency of extreme El Niño events would double from their preindustrial levels within this century. The 2014 paper produced mixed responses among scientists at the time. Some experts, including Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, suggested the models they used may not accurately simulate the behavior of El Niño. Nevertheless, after the Paris climate agreement was finalized, and the 1.5-degree temperature goal was established, the researchers were interested in revisiting their previous work. This time, they specifically investigated the way El Niño would be affected if the world actually managed to stay within this climate threshold, a target that many scientists believe is already close to slipping through our fingers. Recent research has suggested that we’re on track to overshoot


Here are five questions Jared Kushner still needs to answer

all of these will be closed door sessions. The committee members appear to believe closed hearings limit grandstanding. But the public will not to get to hear Kushner’s version of events subjected to scrutiny. “Although the statement addresses many of the areas of concern, it’s only his version and his views of what happened, and that doesn’t leave room for additional questions, for probing questions, for exploring whether there’s any wiggle room in some of his statements,” Christopher Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office, told me today. Here are five questions that will likely pique lawmakers investigative interest, following Kushner’s written statement: How did then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak end up at the Trump campaign speech at the Mayflower Hotel in April 2016? Kushner has been facing criticism for meeting with Kislyak during this campaign event and then omitting it from his application for his security clearance. Although he amended the application to include this and 100 other contacts with foreign individuals, the Kislyak meeting has continued to provoke interest. But in his written testimony, Kushner dismissed the criticism. He did acknowledge that he met four foreign ambassadors, including Kisylak, at this event where candidate Trump gave a major foreign policy address. Kushner wrote that he thanked them for attending and told them he “hoped they would like candidate Trump’s speech and his ideas for a fresh approach to America’s foreign policy.” But Kushner also wrote that meeting Kislyak was so inconsequential to him that he had forgotten the Russian’s name. Still, lawmakers are likely to drill down into why Kushner would have even wanted to engage the Russian ambassador about Trump’s “fresh approach” at a time that Russia was under U.S. sanctions stemming from its invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea and human rights violations. As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told MSNBC this afternoon, “the more fundamental question is why Kislyak was at the event in the first place.” If the Trump foreign policy speech was for American voters’ edification, why would he want the ambassador of a foreign adversary there? What did Kushner really know about the June, 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer? Kushner’s statement claimed that he did not know what the purpose of the meeting with the Russian lawyer was. He claimed he had received the email chain about the meeting from his brother-in-law, Donald


Natural History Museum to demolish Imax theater to expand restaurant

of Natural History is set to close. (Smithsonian Institution) The Imax movie theater in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will close Sept. 30 to make room for an expanded cafeteria and exhibition space. Museum officials say the Johnson Imax Theater, a 500-seat venue that opened in 1999, is usually filled to only about 20 percent capacity, while the nearby restaurant, one of the smallest of the Smithsonian cafeterias, is frequently overcrowded. Officials hope to complete the renovation in time for the reopening of the Fossil Halls in 2019. “We want to do something to make people comfortable, and to allow them to spend more time in the museum,” said museum spokesman Randall Kremer. “With the Fossil Halls opening in 2019, we expect more visitors and we want to be ready for them.” A group of 11 Imax documentary filmmakers is protesting the decision. In a letter to museum director Kirk Johnson, the directors and producers of such films as “Amazon Adventure,” “Everest” and “Into the Deep” have asked the museum to reconsider its plan. “The National Museum of Natural History is the one place in the nation’s capital where children can enjoy the highest quality natural history exhibitions, collections and films,” they wrote. “It would be a shame to lose one of the most engaging and successful parts of this remarkable educational offering.” The filmmakers question the museum’s priorities, especially at a time science appears under attack. “In a world where nature is slipping farther from our grasp, Imax educational films have the proven power to educate, engage and inspire a new generation of scientists, environmentalists and defenders of our planet,” the filmmakers said. “We need to serve our children ideas … more than we need to sell them more food.” Kremer said that the museum respects the opinion and work of the filmmakers but that its internal analysis shows the space could be better utilized. The museum attracted 7.1 million visitors in 2016 and sold 312,000 tickets to the Johnson theater. “The problem here is [the theater] isn’t performing anywhere close to capacity and is not meeting the goals we set for it,” Kremer said. “We think the new restaurant will be more attractive.” The Smithsonian operates two other Imax theaters, at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall and at that museum’s satellite space near Dulles International Airport. Those theaters screen space- and flight-themed works.


Transformed after foreclosure, three-bedroom Capitol Hill rowhouse lists for $867,000

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom rowhouse at 1306 C St. NE on Capitol Hill is listing for $867,000. (HomeVisit) While plenty of people dream of finding a foreclosure and making their fortune flipping it, it can be hard to find a bargain-priced house in the pricey D.C. housing market. According to Irvine, Calif.-based ATTOM Data Solutions, foreclosures in the Washington area were down 77 percent compared with the peak of the housing crisis, but they were still 64 percent above pre-recession foreclosure rates during the first quarter of 2017. ATTOM says there were 4,428 properties with foreclosure filings during the first quarter of the year. Navid Sakhi The main level has an exposed brick wall, an open floor plan with a coffered ceiling in the living and dining area and an open kitchen with custom-designed cabinets, marble counters and stainless-steel appliances. The three-level rowhouse has hardwood floors, three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a front porch and parking for one or two cars. The property is listed at $867,000. The rowhouse is within walking distance of Lincoln Park, shops and the H Street corridor. For more photos and a video, click here. For more information, contact Sakhi at 703-625-3369. To pass on a tip or item, contact us at realestate@washpost.com and put “Town Square” in the subject line.


These college students lost access to legal pot — and started getting better grades

students there from neighboring countries suddenly were unable to access legal pot, while students from the Netherlands continued. The research on more than 4,000 students, published in the Review of Economic Studies, found that those who lost access to legal marijuana showed substantial improvement in their grades. Specifically, those banned from cannabis cafes had a more than 5 percent increase in their odds of passing their courses. Low performing students benefited even more, which the researchers noted is particularly important because these students are at high-risk of dropping out. The researchers attribute their results to the students who were denied legal access to marijuana being less likely to use it and to suffer cognitive impairments (e.g., in concentration and memory) as a result. Other studies have tried to estimate the impact of marijuana legalization by studying those U.S. states that legalized medicinal or recreational marijuana. But marijuana policy researcher Rosalie Pacula of RAND Corporation noted that the Maastricht study provide evidence that “is much better than anything done so far in the United States.” States differ in countless ways that are hard for researchers to adjust for in their data analysis, but the Maastricht study examined similar people in the same location — some of them even side by side in the same classrooms — making it easier to isolate the effect of marijuana legalization. Also, Pacula pointed out that since voters in U.S. states are the ones who approve marijuana legalization, it creates a chicken and egg problem for researchers (i.e. does legalization make people smoke more pot, or do pot smokers tend to vote for legalization?). This methodological problem was resolved in the Maastricht study because the marijuana policy change was imposed without input from those whom it affected. Although this is the strongest study to date on how people are affected by marijuana legalization, no research can ultimately tell us whether legalization is a good or bad decision: That’s a political question and not a scientific one. But what the Maastricht study can do is provides highly credible evidence that marijuana legalization will lead to decreased academic success — perhaps particularly so for struggling students — and that is a concern that both proponents and opponents of legalization should keep in mind. Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and is an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.


A former Jets player is suing Jeff Sessions to legalize marijuana

Jeff Sessions, under fire from all sides. (Matt Rourke, Associated Press file photo) Former NFL player Marvin Washington is one of five plaintiffs who are suing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration in federal court to legalize marijuana, the New York Post reported Monday night. Washington, a defensive lineman known mostly for his time with the New York Jets over his 11-year NFL career, is the co-founder of a company that sells hemp-based sports performance products that do not contain THC, the component of cannabis that causes a high in marijuana users. In the lawsuit, he claims that the federal government’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug — in other words, a substance that has a high potential for abuse and one that has no accepted medical use — prevents him from receiving federal grants to open a business that “would allow pro football players to use medical marijuana for pain management in lieu of more addictive opioids,” the Post reports. NFL players “are fed opiates and pharmaceuticals throughout the week, from training camp until the end of season. That can be June to January. It’s not normal,” Washington told the New York Daily News in June. “I think the Players Association should demand that [players] have an alternative to opiates. This is scientific-based. This is not hocus pocus. That’s where I want to see this in the very near future, players that have an alternative to opiates.” As delineated by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA), substances such as marijuana, heroin and LSD are considered Schedule I drugs but drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine are considered less dangerous Schedule II drugs because, while also addictive and subject to abuse, they have accepted medical uses in the eyes of the federal government. “The record makes clear that the CSA doesn’t make any rational sense and the federal government knows it,” attorney Michael Hiller, who represents Washington and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the New York Post. Joining Washington as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Alexis Bortell, an 11-year-old girl who needs medical marijuana to treat her epilepsy, and Jose Belen, a disabled military veteran who uses marijuana to treat his post traumatic stress syndrome. More on the NFL: Police clear Lucky Whitehead after false accusation and arrest warrant The latest brain study examined 111 former NFL players.


No firm travel plans for the solar eclipse? Here’s what to expect if you wing it.

will have overlooked — small towns may not have enough bathroom facilities for thousands of visitors, and “no one likes an overflowing toilet.” I, for one, do not want to be in charge of the bathroom facilities in any of these small towns. Yours truly will be staying in Bryson City, N.C., a little town in far-western North Carolina near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The population on an average day is just 1,400 people. On Aug. 21, it could be more like 14,000. (I’m told the town is making T-shirts to celebrate the event. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those.) I booked a house in advance, but if I decided to drive down from Washington, D.C., on Sunday — or even early Monday morning on the 21st — I probably wouldn’t reach the path of totality in time. That’s not because I’m a terrible driver with no sense of direction (which may or may not be accurate) but because millions of people live within a reasonable driving distance of the path. The total solar eclipse in August 2017 will travel across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina. But if the moon rises in the east and sets in the west, why does the eclipse shadow travel from west to east? Dear Science is on the case. The website Greatamericaneclipse.com pretty much sums it up when they say, “the accessibility of the August 21 total solar eclipse is simultaneously a great benefit and a problem.” The benefit is that for so many millions of Americans, nature’s grandest sight — a total eclipse of the Sun — can be seen by packing a tent and sleeping bags and taking a short road trip from home. To see the stunning spectacle of totality, you have to be within the 60 to 70 mile wide path There is plenty of room inside the path, provided people distribute themselves well. The problem is that these millions of Americans will produce predictable traffic congestion. Imagine 20 Woodstock festivals occurring simultaneously across the nation. Large numbers of visitors will overwhelm lodging and other resources in the path of totality. There is a real danger during the two minutes of totality that traffic still on the road will pull over at unsafe locations with distracted drivers behind them. Average drive time to the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. This doesn’t


Republicans in Congress really don’t trust Trump to get tough on Russia

the week, and Trump will either be forced to sign it or get in a veto standoff with Congress. Margins like the one in Tuesday's vote show that's a standoff Congress could win. The Russia sanctions are retaliation for Russia's alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election. These will be in addition to sanctions President Barack Obama issued on his way out the door, kicking Russian “diplomats” out of Washington and seizing Russia-owned compounds in the United States. If Congress thinks Russia needs more punishment, it's pretty obvious why they aren't confident Trump will do it. The White House has said it's not opposed to sanctions, but it's been wishy-washy on what those would be. Also, the White House's official statements don't match with the president's actions. Trump has refused to acknowledge the overwhelming conclusion of U.S. intelligence officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia to try to influence the U.S. election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump win. He appears to be considering firing his attorney general after complaining about the Justice Department investigation into Russia's actions and any possible help from the Trump campaign. He's considered giving the diplomatic compounds back to Russia. A sizable majority of Congress has a polar opposite view on how to handle Russia and decided to take things in its own hands. An initial version of these sanctions passed the Senate 98-2, and this version is expected to pass the House with at least a two-thirds (read: veto-proof) majority. That's a remarkable demonstration of unity from a Congress that has shown exactly none of it lately. Tying Trump's hands on Russia is one of the only things Congress can agree on right now. “There's a lot of stuff they'd rather be doing,” Oliker said, “and that they're much better equipped to deal with. But in the face of an administration that seems to be having a very difficult time articulating its foreign policy, members of Congress have felt they have little choice but to take foreign policy into their own hands.” From a diplomatic perspective, it's not ideal for Congress to levy sanctions against foreign governments or officials. Both Congress and the president have the power to do so, but the White House's sanctions power is much more nimble. Trump can institute or lift them with the wave of a pen. It's a flexible carrot-and-stick approach and more in line with


Mexico City has mostly been spared from grisly drug violence. Now that may be changing.

Firefighters and police officers work at the scene of a shootout in which eight alleged drug traffickers, including cartel boss Felipe de Jesús Pérez Luna, were shot dead by Mexican marines in Mexico City on July 20. (Pedro Pardo/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) MEXICO CITY — It was a scene straight out of a gang-infested town in provincial Mexico. More than 1,000 Mexican marines and federal and local police moved in on a rough corner of the national capital on Thursday to capture accused drug cartel boss Felipe de Jesús Pérez Luna — nicknamed “El Ojos,” or “The Eyes” — who was then killed in the ensuing shootout. In response, underlings in the Cartel de Tláhuac — named for the semi-urban southern borough where it was based — subsequently hijacked and burned buses and transport vehicles, the first time such “narcobloqueos,” or roadblocks set up by drug traffickers, had been unleashed in Mexico City. The sight of buses burning in the streets shattered the capital’s image as an island of relative tranquility amid the country’s decade-long drug war, which has plunged swaths of Mexico into endemic cartel violence and cost more than 200,000 lives. Even as the killings and other cartel activities, including kidnapping and extortion, consumed adjacent suburbs and nearby states, Mexico City maintained relative calm and seemed immune to the worst of the mayhem plaguing other parts of the country. Now security experts and residents alike express concern that the calm is coming to an end. “What’s happening in Mexico City reflects the national outlook,” said Francisco Rivas, the director of the National Citizen Observatory, a group monitoring security issues, to Reuters. “We have a crisis of organized crime.” Mexico recorded 13,726 homicides over the first six months of 2017, an increase of 32.9 percent over the same period last year. Crime has also increased in Mexico City, where 206 murder investigations were started in May and June — the city’s busiest two month-period ever, according to Reuters. “There are plenty of situations where you want to report something and they just ignore you,” said Alejandro Rojas, owner of a mom-and-pop shop in the sprawling borough of Iztapalapa. Rojas said he tried reporting drug use and petty crime near his store via an anonymous tip line, but police never responded — and the person taking the call asked for plenty of personal information. “It wasn’t very anonymous," he


These experimental treatments target brain cancer like John McCain’s

database. The trial is listed as opening in July in Rochester. McCain has been treated at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. Mayo officials declined to answer questions about the trial. Another version of immunotherapy, called CART T-cell therapy, has shown great promise in studies involving leukemia and lymphoma and is now being tried in brain cancer. It involves extracting immune cells from patients, genetically altering them to boost their cancer-fighting abilities, and injecting them into the patient. In recent years, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have been working on a modified, non-dangerous version of the polio virus for advanced glioblastoma. The virus is delivered via catheter directly to the tumor to kill cancer cells and promote an immune-system response. Darell Bigner, director of Duke's Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, said that more than five dozen patients have been treated and about 20 percent remain alive after two years. Two patients have survived more than five years. He said most of the rest have died. Duke researchers are planning to conduct other trials that add the chemo drug lomustine to the polio-virus treatment. They are also exploring using other immune-boosting agents with the virus to try to increase the response rate. “Obviously, an 80 percent failure rate is nowhere near where we want to go, but when you see responses like this and understand the mechanisms, that’s where you can start building on things,” he said. “I've been doing this for 50 years, and it has been very frustrating, but I do feel now that we are making very good progress.” The Duke results are similar to what other centers are seeing using different oncologytic viruses, said de Groot. “With virus therapies, it seems like a small percentage of patients have a really large benefit, but it's not going to be a therapy that will work for all patients," he said. For people who get conventional treatment, the median survival is only 15 months. But while some people don't live that long, others live much longer. Suzanne Stone, a 62-year-old resident of Fort Worth, Tex., was diagnosed with glioblastoma two and half years ago. She was running in late 2014, she recalls, when she started feeling strange and discovered she had trouble forming words. “I thought I was having a stroke,” she said. The surgeons removed a tumor the size of a “big green olive” that turned out


NAACP sticks by its call for charter school moratorium, says they are ‘not a substitute’ for traditional public schools

talks about problems in traditional inner-city public schools. In the report, which includes recommendations for moving ahead, the panel’s 12 members stuck by the recommendation, setting out the issue early in the report: “Charter schools were created with more flexibility because they were expected to innovate and infuse new ideas and creativity into the traditional public school system. However, this aspect of the promise never materialized. Many traditional inner city public schools are failing the children who attend them, thus causing parents with limited resources to search for a funded, quality educational alternative for their children. … With the expansion of charter schools and their concentration in low-income communities, concerns have been raised within the African American community about the quality, accessibility and accountability of some charters, as well as their broader effects on the funding and management of school districts that serve most students of color.” Ultimately, the task force said, “while high quality, accountable and accessible charters can contribute to educational opportunity, by themselves, even the best charters are not a substitute for more stable, adequate and equitable investments in public education in the communities that serve our children.” Charter schools have been around for 25 years, and there are now thousands in most states and the District of Columbia serving around 6 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren. Charter supporters — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos among them — say they provide a vital choice to parents whose children are in troubled traditional public schools. But critics see charters as part of the movement to privatize public education, and many traditional public school systems say they lose too many public education dollars to charters. Here is a piece with more about the NAACP task force report and recommendations for moving forward to bring reform to charter schools and traditional public schools enrolling children of color in inner cities. It was written by Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is now executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit education advocacy group. She has been chronicling problems with school reform efforts for years on this blog, most recently with a series about problems in the charter sectors in a number of states. Burris was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013 the same organization named her the New York State High School


The Finance 202: Cohn fans take note: There but for the whim of Trump goes Gary.

on a key House panel rejected an attempt by Democrats to force the Treasury Department to turn over any documents it has that show financial ties between President Donald Trump and Russia. Bloomberg TRUMP TRACKER The House voted to advance new financial sanctions against Russia on July 25. — Congressional Republicans just jammed the president on his affinity for Russia, with the House overwhelmingly approving a sanctions package that now heads to his desk for a potential veto. The Post's Mike DeBonis and Karoun Demirjian: "Included in the package, which passed 419 to 3, are new measures targeting key Russian officials in retaliation for that country’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as sanctions against Iran and North Korea in response to those nations’ weapons programs. Members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have resisted the congressional push — in particular a provision attached to the Russian measures that would require Congress to sign off on any move to relieve those sanctions. The legislation was revised last week to address some administration concerns, including its potential effect on overseas oil and gas projects that include Russian partners. But the bill passed Tuesday retains the congressional review requirement." CONTEXT: Sanctions work. The Russian economy is still reeling from punitive measures imposed by the U.S. and European Union in response to its invasion of Crimea. — Trump is once again punting a long-awaited decision on whether to restrict steel imports. The president told the Wall Street Journal that he may wait until after he's wrapped up debates on health-care, taxes and even possibly infrastructure before making a call on the matter, which has divided industry groups. The Post's Ana Swanson: "Administration officials had said they would deliver a report by the end of June determining whether steel imports have compromised U.S. national security by crippling the domestic steel industry. But political and practical obstacles have delayed the decision. Foreign allies that export steel to the United States and U.S. companies that would see their costs rise because of the measure have opposed the plan, as well as some administration officials who fear triggering a trade war." — Trump promised major progress on the rest of his agenda at a Tuesday night rally in Youngstown Ohio. The Post's John Wagner and Jenna Johnson: "Trump praised the Senate for taking a procedural vote earlier in the day


Trump just kicked transgender troops out of the military. This one ugly quote says it all.

President Trump announced that transgender troops won't be allowed to serve in the military on July 26, reversing the Pentagon's 2016 decision to lift the ban. THE MORNING PLUM: President Trump announced this morning that he will be banning transgender troops from serving in the military, and all indications are that this may also end up kicking out thousands of them who are already serving. The Post reports: President Trump said he will ban transgender people from serving in the military in any capacity, a reversal of the Obama administration decision that would have allowed transgender recruits to serve, he announced on social media on Wednesday. Citing the need to focus on victory, Trump said that the military cannot accept the burden of higher medical costs and “disruption” that transgender troops would require. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” According to a recent RAND Corp. study, around 4,000 transgender people currently serve in the U.S. military. They would presumably be expelled. Gay rights advocates are already threatening legal action against the move. As The Post notes, a bipartisan majority in the House (24 Republicans and 190 Democrats) recently rejected a measure that would have “blocked the Pentagon from offering gender transition therapies to active duty service members,” but this has remained a “pet cause” for conservatives. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was supposed to be examining whether to continue former president Barack Obama’s policy of allowing transgender service, and Mattis’s review was due in December. It’s unclear whether Trump simply steamrolled this process to rush forth his ban. There will be plenty of time to debate the legal and substantive merits of the policy. But for now, I wanted to focus on the politics of it. Here is how one administration official justified the move in a quote given to Axios’s Jonathan Swan: This forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin to take complete ownership of this issue. How will blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for reelection in 2018 like Debbie Stabenow are forced


Trump said transgender troops cause ‘disruption.’ These 18 militaries show otherwise.

President Trump greets members of the military at Raleigh County Memorial Airport in Beaver, W.Va., on June 24. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) Last year, the Pentagon lifted its long-standing ban on transgender men and women serving openly in the military. At the time, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter explained: “Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting. … We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer force to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified.” That plan, studied extensively, was meant to be fully implemented by July 1. This morning, President Trump reversed that policy. After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow...... ....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming..... ....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you But would allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military create “disruption”? There's no evidence that that's true. Eighteen countries allow transgender personnel to serve openly in the military, including Australia, Israel, Britain, Sweden and Canada. None of these countries reported experiencing ill effects from opening up their armed services to the transgender community. “They all said the same thing, which is that inclusive policy has not in any way compromised military readiness. And that’s really important,” Palm Center director Aaron Belkin said at a conference last year. The Palm Center put out an extensive report on this issue in 2015. Eighteen countries allow transgender personnel to serve openly in the military, including Australia, Israel, Britain, Sweden and Canada. In fact, the U.S. military studied how other countries tackled the change before drawing up its recommendations. A report by Rand Corp. which the Pentagon cited in its decision to lift the ban, looked closely at four countries: Israel, Britain, Canada and Australia. Researchers found that “while there is limited research on the effects of transgender personnel serving openly in foreign militaries, the available evidence indicated no significant effect on cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness.” In fact, they said that when they talked to British officers, some “reported that increases in diversity had led to increases in readiness and performance.


Trump’s argument against transgender soldiers echoes one used against gays, women and blacks

would alleviate problems later on. This point comes up over and over, even today: Men will simply be too distracted by women for them to serve alongside one another. A Google search for “women in military distraction” yields 857,000 results. 26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together? The 1997 bill barring boot-camp integration prompted an unusual flip side to the argument from Col. Vincent J. Inghilterra, a chaplain at Fort Leonard Wood. “Because of the rigors of [basic training] and the physiological limitations of female recruits to meet the fitness demands,” he wrote in a letter to lawmakers, “some may be tempted to use their sexuality to garner special favors.” The boot-camp bill also had the support of then-U. S. senator Daniel Coats, now serving as Trump’s director of national intelligence. When Coats was put forward as a possible nominee to serve as George W. Bush’s defense secretary, that history of opposition to integrating women more fully into the armed forces was raised by activists opposing his nomination. (The job eventually went to Donald H. Rumsfeld.) Coats’s nomination was similarly opposed by those advocating for an expanded role of gays in the military, also a subject that was debated in the 1990s. Again, a similar argument emerged. “The problem of having homosexuals serve openly,” a retired Army colonel said during a hearing on the issue in 1993, “is the extent to which it becomes a divisive cleavage point in small units.” Another expert testified that the “introduction of sexual attraction,” in the words of Coats, “destroys” military cohesion. “I think we have seen this happen on a heterosexual basis in units in which erotic love between a leader and a soldier has been introduced,” said David Marlowe, the chief of military psychology at Walter Reed. Strange to remember that in 1999, Trump was at forefront arguing gay Americans should be allowed to serve. What he… https://t.co/t8alPa3sGj As recently as 2010, when don’t-ask-don’t-tell was being repealed, Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, echoed a variation of the same line: Gay soldiers could lead to combat deaths. “When your life hangs on the line,” he said, “you don’t want anything distracting. … Mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives.” When the bill was passed, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lamented the decision, echoing Amos. “Today’s a


Beer sales are down…especially among the 35-44 set

(iStock). Thinking of opening a bar? You might want to cut back on the beer. Goldman Sachs recently downgraded the stocks of two major brewers–Boston Beer Company (the makers of Sam Adams and Angry Orchard cider) and Constellation Brands (the third-largest beer company in the United States, and one known for importing Corona and Modelo)–due to “sluggish sales,” according to this CNBC report. The culprit seems to be the 35-44 set. Apparently, some people aren’t drinking as much beer as they used to. The data shows they now prefer wine and spirits instead. Research firm Nielsen showed a slight decline in beer penetration across the United States compared to 2016, although wine and spirits penetration stayed about the same. But Goldman’s research revealed a shift away from beer to wine and spirits among those 35-44. The beer business seems to be fizzling elsewhere too. As reported last month by the BBC, the International Wine and Spirits Record revealed a decline in beer sales worldwide, even though global gross domestic product increased 3.5 percent in 2016 and economic growth “usually correlates with increased alcohol consumption.” China saw its sales of beer fall 4.2 percent, Brazil’s declined 5.3 percent and even Russia’s beer sales declined almost 8 percent. Oh by the way, it’s not just wine and spirits that are catching consumers’ attention. Let’s not forget the growing legalization trend of marijuana too. According to the CNBC report, there was a “notable inverse correlation with cannabis use” as more people apparently turned to weed over alcohol. Goldman Sachs is predicting a sales decline in the overall U.S. beer market in 2017 and, as a result, both Boston Beer and Constellation Brands have seen a drop in their respective share prices. If you’re one of the tens of thousands of bar and restaurant owners across the country, I strongly recommend a reevaluation of your liquor inventories. An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the trend to millennials. They represent only a portion of the age cohort that has seen a drop in beer consumption. The story and headline have been updated.


Metro to open early for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon

Runners make their way along Route 110 just after the start of the running of the annual Marine Corps Marathon. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) Metro will open early for the 42nd Marine Corps Marathon in October, a return to custom a year after SafeTrack repairs forced tens of thousands of runners and spectators to find alternate transportation to the 2016 race. The transit system will open at 6 a.m. for the Oct. 22 marathon, event organizers announced. Organizers were forced to break with tradition last year when Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld declined to make an exception to his moratorium on early openings and late closings. The marathon said it had to “restructure the event timelines and make drastic changes in both the Marathon and [10K] courses,” including allowing a one-hour window for race participants to show up at the starting line. The marathon unveiled the route and transportation plan at a news conference this week. The marathon begins on Route 110 in Arlington between the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery and proceeds into Rosslyn, Georgetown and the Mall, before concluding at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington. The full route is available on the marathon website. The 10K, meanwhile, begins on the Mall, at 12th Street and Madison Drive, while the wheeled race starts before the marathon and 10K on Route 110. This year’s marathon and 10k will begin at 7:55 a.m., organizers said, while the wheeled race starts at 7:45 a.m. Marine Corps Marathon weekend festivities stretch from Oct. 20 through 22 and will be headquartered at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, organizers announced. Besides Metro, free shuttles will be available to ferry participants and spectators between Crystal City and National Harbor, organizers said. The $200,000 total cost for the two hours of extra service must be covered by the Marine Corps Marathon, Metro said. More information is available on the marathon’s website.


In the war on Boko Haram, is the U.S. turning a blind eye to Cameroon’s abuses?

A member of the Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, The Old Guard, carries a Cameroon flag as he waits for Cameroon President Paul Biya to arrive at Joint Base Andrews in 2014 for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. (Cliff Owen/Associated Press) Matthew T. Page, a former Africa analyst for the State Department, is a consultant and fellow with the Centre for Democracy and Development in Abuja, Nigeria. He is author of “Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know,” forthcoming from Oxford University Press. On a hot, humid night two months ago, some U.S. soldiers were photographed kicking around a soccer ball on a remote military base in the town called Salak in northern Cameroon. Later posted to Facebook, the photo shows cellblocks — just yards away from their pickup game — where Cameroonian soldiers reportedly hogtied, tortured and savagely beat suspected Boko Haram sympathizers, according to a meticulously researched investigation and forensic reconstruction video released this week. The Salak base has been used for several years by U.S. military and intelligence advisers helping Cameroon fight a grueling, no-holds-barred bush war against the infamous Nigerian terrorist group. The investigation concluded that, under the noses of their American allies, Cameroonian soldiers operated a secret prison where they routinely tortured and interrogated people suspected of having ties to Boko Haram. As one torture survivor recounted: “I saw white men … many times and I heard them talking in English. I think they were Americans … I saw them running from the back window of my cell … as well as standing in front of our cell.” Like this former inmate, few of those detained at Salak were hardened terrorists. Most were men, women — and in some cases, even children — often arbitrarily arrested by Cameroon’s overzealous security forces on the basis of little or no evidence. Although it is unthinkable that U.S. forces were involved in the abuses occurring at Salak, it is hard to believe that our eagle-eyed special operators could have been oblivious to what was going on. When contacted, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) acknowledged that U.S. personnel are deployed at Salak. AFRICOM said it is conducting an inquiry into the abuse allegations and whether it knew about them before this month. AFRICOM said it “has not received any reports from U.S. forces of human rights abuses by Cameroonian forces to this date.” Since at least 2013, U.S. soldiers have worked and


The Pentagon’s history of resisting transgender troops

Military Times reported in May, some insisted transgender troops should be required to wear bathing suits while showering in communal facilities. Yet perhaps the June 2016 plan’s most controversial feature called for American taxpayers to cover the cost for transgender personnel to receive medical care, including reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments. As part of his accession policy, though, Carter’s order made clear that recruits would have to first complete all necessary medical care at their own expense and then have a doctor certify them as “stable in their identified gender” for 18 months. Troops and military leaders most opposed to the policy derided it as social experimentation and a threat to readiness — the same arguments made when Obama moved to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy precluding military service by openly gay men and women. Those concerns proved unfounded, according to a report compiled by the Palm Center research institute. During Mattis’s Senate confirmation in January, Democrats challenged the retired Marine general on whether he intended to strip away the rights newly afforded to LGBT troops. He had questioned those changes in the past, once saying, “We have to be very careful that we do not undercut battlefield effectiveness with shortsighted social programs.” But when asked, Mattis told Senate lawmakers that he “never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.” “If someone brings me a problem, I’ll look at,” he said then. “But I’m not coming in looking for problems.” Mattis: No Change to LGBT, Women Military Policy This spring, as senior military leaders faced a July 1 deadline for implementing the accession policy, two transgender students preparing to graduate from the Army and Air Force military academies learned they would not be allowed to join the active-duty force. The Pentagon explained that Mattis was conducting a “readiness review” to ensure each of the services was fully prepared to bring on transgender recruits and officer candidates. In fact, senior leaders in the Pentagon were debating whether they should seek a delay. The military’s top brass was still considering various practical questions, including how to fund the retrofitting of showers and the upgrading of shared living spaces; the money for that never materialized. Late last month, just as the Obama accession policy was to take effect, Mattis approved a six-month delay, saying in a memo to the Defense Department staff that the delay


Trump called transgender troops a costly disruption. An expert who studied it says he’s wrong.

one-tenth of 1 percent of medical costs at DoD. What the numbers tell us The Post: Iyengar: And you can say the same thing about the readiness effects. We’re looking at 10-130 active component members who could have reduced deployability. In 2015, about 50,000 soldiers alone were not deployable due to medical reasons in the active component. So the scale of the effects here are relatively small. Eighteen countries allow transgender personnel to serve openly, including Australia, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom. Those are countries that have some operational requirements and in some cases operational tempos that are not dissimilar to the U.S. And we did not find any evidence of effect on unit cohesion or readiness impacts from allowing transgender personnel to serve openly in those countries. What the White House got wrong, according to the expert The Post: Iyengar: The Post: Iyengar: In the core group of Canada, Israel, Australia and the U.K. that we focused on, a lot of what they saw was the need to have a clear process. So explicit policies, training and education for the force, and clear harassment policy and enforcement of that policy to really have this become effectively integrated. We’ve had commanders report that having a more improved attitude toward inclusiveness and diversity was beneficial to their unit overall. And that really speaks to the benefits, but there was really no effect, in any of the cases, of operational effectiveness. They saw these positives but we really didn’t see any of the negatives. What will this new policy mean? The Post: Iyengar What will this mean for recruitment? The Post: Iyengar: There are real costs to the manpower losses of having separation and continued ban on open service, and there are concerns that affect productivity and result in unnecessary separation at a time readiness of service members is really expensive. So we really want to retain those people. A secondary concern is really thinking of how to recruit the best sorts of people and get them into the military. There is a concern that when you have these types of discriminatory policies, that can create different perceptions among recruiting pools the military might like to target. Cyber-based skills, computer skills, that sort of thing. The Post: Iyengar: Read more: The Pentagon’s ban on transgender service just fell, and the details are complicated Trump administration rolls back protections for transgender students


The Daily 202: Growing GOP backlash to transgender troop ban underscores Trump’s political miscalculation

treated as the patriots they are.” From Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a former Army Reserve commander and the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate: “While she believes taxpayers shouldn’t cover the costs associated with a gender reassignment surgery, Americans who are qualified and can meet the standards to serve in the military should be afforded that opportunity,” spokeswoman Brook Hougesen told the Des Moines Register. From Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is up for reelection in one of the reddest and most socially conservative states in America: Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol https://t.co/EDS6JRXJaj From Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who wields a lot of control over the Pentagon’s budget from his perch on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee: “You ought to treat everybody fairly and give everybody a chance to serve,” he said on CNN. In a follow-up statement to the Huntsville Times, he added: “The current policy is a big tent for people who want to serve. You've got to remember, our military force is a voluntary force.” From Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “I would have significant objections to any proposal that calls for a specific group of American patriots currently serving in uniform to be removed from the military.” From Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who served in the Marines: “I’m all about training standards. High, high standards for whoever joins the military,” he told HuffPost. “But my initial reaction is, if you can meet those standards, we shouldn’t care who you are. So, meet the standards, and you should be able to join the military.” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), whose openly gay son prompted him to come out for gay rights in 2013: “The Secretary of Defense is conducting a study of this policy and Rob believes we should wait until that is complete before making any decisions,” a spokeswoman told in-state press. -- Most Republicans in the Capitol tried hard to avoid reacting at all, and their silence spoke volumes about the degree to which they don’t think this is a political winner. -- The Pentagon referred all questions about Trump’s announcement to the White House, but the White House referred questions back to the Pentagon and falsely suggested that the decision had been made at the behest of the military. Listen to James's quick summary of today's Big Idea and the headlines you need to know to


This week in economic statecraft

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approves legislation to tighten sanctions on North Korea by targeting its shipping industry and companies that do business with the reclusive state. This has not been a dull week in economic statecraft. The U.S. government has been tinkering with the sanctions machinery toward Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Russia (also Alaska, but that’s for a different story). To understand it all properly, however, it is worth reading Robert Kahn’s assessment of whether the United States has hit peak sanctions. His conclusion: On the Russia sanctions, the Trump administration does not want to lock in sanctions, but Congress rightly insists on its review. Beyond Russia, there seems to be a greater willingness by the administration to sanction trade and investment to achieve economic and foreign policy objectives, causing concern for those of us who see great value in U.S. leadership and support for an open, integrated global marketplace. There are economic costs, if confidence in the reliability of markets is lost, which can add up over time as sanctions are repeatedly employed. As argued earlier, in each of these current cases, an expansion of sanctions looks to be the best of a difficult set of choices. But looking forward, we should be concerned that the pendulum will swing too far, that sanctions become too easy an option. There are some things for which a Swiss army knife is the perfect tool, but for appendicitis I’d rather see a doctor. I fear that Kahn might be overly optimistic. Consider the Russia and Iran cases. On Russia, Congress seems hellbent on constraining the Trump administration’s latitude to lift the sanctions in place. The bill that was just passed does more than that, however, applying additional sanctions on both Russia and Iran. The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has voiced qualms about this move in the past. Sure enough, now France is declaring that these sanctions would violate international law. Actually, the entire European Union is less than thrilled with Congress’s actions: Sanctions legislation overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday has angered EU officials: they see it as breaking trans-Atlantic unity in the West’s response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Brussels also fears the new sanctions will harm European firms with connections to Russia, and oil and gas projects on which the


How the coming solar eclipse has brought hope to my struggling Kentucky home town

moved production to Mexico. In an 18-month span, unemployment tripled. So my generation, Generation X, got out of Dodge. But now Hopkinsville’s mayor, Carter Hendricks, tells me things are looking up. From 2005 to 2015, Hopkinsville’s per-capita income increased by 50 percent to $20,834, poverty has dropped, and there’s a robust new transit system. Why the turnaround? Hendricks credits much of it to the moment a decade ago when the town discovered it was about to play host to a once-in-a-lifetime natural event. This much is certainly true: On Aug. 21, for a full two minutes and 40 seconds — about the longest eclipse duration in the country — Hopkinsville will be the center of the world. A bench outside the recreation department in Hopkinsville, Ky. depicts two town highlights: the coming solar eclipse, with Hopkinsville-born mystic Edgar Cayce lassoing the moon. (Photo by Terena Bell) The total solar eclipse will be the first solely visible in the United States. Eighty percent of Americans live within 600 miles of its path spanning Oregon to South Carolina. The point of greatest eclipse: a tobacco farm near Hopkinsville. Eclipses are known to draw a crowd. In Mexico, a 1991 eclipse brought so many tourists, the Mexican government closed the border. At dead center, Hopkinsville expects 250,000. At least, that’s the number Christian County Judge/Executive Steve Tribble has heard. Hopkinsville’s solar eclipse marketing and event coordinator, Brooke Jung, has a more conservative figure: 100,000. “We’re asking restaurants to order extra food,” she said, explaining why her projections are lower. “We want to be realistic. We don’t want them buying too much in case fewer people come.” The city has invited out-of-town food trucks; McDonald’s got a refrigeration truck for storing patties out back.” Considering eclipse-chasers once overwhelmed an international border, the residents of Hopkinsville are taking everything in stride. One local said the biggest change he’ll have to make is remembering to lock his house door: “I usually keep it undone.” Another man sees my family in Cracker Barrel while I’m home visiting my parents for Christmas and — knowing our farm is at the epicenter — yells “Y’all ready for that eclipse?” across four tables. Ask Jung who’s most excited, and she points to the digital countdown on her wall showing time left between now and totality. “I can’t wait.” The fact that her job was even created shows everyone knows this


Why so many transgender Americans find refuge in military service

parameters. There was no respect given, once I came out as queer — just the hollow repetition of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” I needed to be straight and gender-conforming, in order to be accepted. In hindsight, it is no surprise that I gravitated to the military. I wanted out of my home town in Greenleaf, Wis. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to learn a trade, because skilled labor inevitably finds employment. I wanted something that would force me to be straight and gender-conforming. In some idealistic way, I was searching for respect. The Air Force and its core values of “integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do” promised me all of this and more. Landon Marchant (credit: Heather Marchant) I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. I am transgender. My story is not unique. The U.S. military employs as many as 15,500 active duty, National Guard and National Reserve transgender troops, according to a Williams Institute study, which could make it the largest employer of transgender Americans. The research institute also estimated there are 134,000 transgender veterans. Transgender people face higher rates of homelessness, unemployment and health-care discrimination than the average civilian population, and military service can offer economic stability and a sense of purpose. By the Williams Institute estimate, transgender people are twice as likely to serve in the military as their cisgender peers. Many enlisted troops have gainful, financially viable employment with only a high school diploma or GED. Housing and food are provided, as well as health care, job training and employment. Successful completion of an enlistment term means access to the GI Bill and Veterans Affairs health care. In the United States, military service often means social mobility. With social mobility comes respect. President Trump’s tweets on Wednesday, announcing his plan to ban transgender people from the military, told me that he believes transgender people do not deserve respect. With three lines, he told me that as a transgender person, I do not deserve opportunities equal to those of my peers. Due to my body and my identity, he does not think I deserve equal treatment. He does not think I’m worthy of the respect that military service conveys. I enlisted in 2009, fresh out of high school. I presented extremely feminine, but considered myself “one of the guys.” Little by little, however, hours of


The surprising way climate change could worsen toxic algal blooms

highlight the need to control the contamination, wrote biogeochemistry expert Sybil Seitzinger and science writer Leigh Phillips of the University of Victoria, who were not involved with the new research, in a comment also published Thursday in Science. The study helps to challenge the idea that water quality is only affected by local factors such as land use and agriculture, said study co-author Anna Michalak, an earth scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “In reality, what happens to water quality is more about this interplay between what we as humans are doing locally — things like land use and land management — and what we as humans are doing globally, in terms of climate change,” she told The Washington Post. Scientists are already well aware that climate change may affect precipitation patterns in the future, causing more frequent or more intense rainfall in certain parts of the country. Michalak and her fellow researchers — Eva Sinha, a graduate student in Michalak’s lab, and Venkatramani Balaji of Princeton University — used a new model to investigate the way these changes might affect nitrogen runoff in the future under different climate scenarios. It’s an “almost embarrassingly simple model,” according to Michalak, who developed and published a paper on the technique with Sinha last year. “If you take into account total precipitation, extreme springtime precipitation, factors related to land use and total nitrogen inputs, you can quite reliably reproduce the observed nitrogen loading historically in different regions across the U.S.,” she said. The same factors can be used to make predictions about what might happen in the future. They used the model to investigate the effects of three different climate scenarios — a business-as-usual climate trajectory in which emissions remain at high levels into the future, and two others in which moderate or partial climate mitigation efforts take place. They examined the outcomes for both the near-future, around midcentury, and the far-future, or the end of the century. They found that nitrogen pollution generally increases at a countrywide scale in all of the scenarios. But the most pronounced effects occurred under the business-as-usual climate scenario at the end of the century. The most severely affected regions of the country included the Northeast, the upper Mississippi Atchafalaya River Basin and the Great Lakes Basin, all of which saw greater than 20 percent increases in nitrogen input. This could make it a lot harder


Angelina Jolie said she had a rare condition. Here’s what we know about it.

my mouth. And I thought 'Oh, my God, I have Lou Gehrig's disease.' Because you know, I wasn't the brightest kid, and eventually, your eye and everything gets paralyzed.” Bell’s palsy, a sudden but temporary facial paralysis, occurs when the nerve that controls the muscles on one side of the face becomes inflamed or swollen, making them too weak to move, according to a fact sheet from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Though the exact cause is not known, it has been linked to viral infections, such as the cold sore virus (herpes simplex), respiratory illnesses or the flu, according to the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic lists the symptoms as: - Rapid onset of mild weakness to total paralysis on one side of your face — occurring within hours to days - Facial droop and difficulty making facial expressions, such as closing your eye or smiling - Drooling - Pain around the jaw or in or behind your ear on the affected side - Increased sensitivity to sound on the affected side - Headache - A decrease in your ability to taste - Changes in the amount of tears and saliva you produce Jones, the neurologist at the Mayo Clinic, said due to the sudden onset of facial weakness, the primary thing Bell's palsy patients fear is a stroke. “And, to be honest, you do have to do a pretty careful clinical evaluation to make sure that it's not something else besides a Bell's palsy,” Jones said. Jones did caution, however, that people who experience facial weakness, and have any risk factors for a stroke, should seek prompt medical attention to rule out something more serious. The NINDS states that mild cases do not typically require treatment and go away on their own within several weeks; in other cases, some steroids can help reduce inflammation and swelling in the nerve, and some antiviral medications can help fight an underlying virus. Physical therapy or acupuncture “may provide a potential small improvement in facial nerve function and pain,” according to the NINDS fact sheet. In Jolie's case, she said acupuncture helped her recover. Surgical treatment is not typically recommended. “The large majority of folks have a complete recovery,” Jones said. “It's an unpleasant memory; it's not something that affects them in the long term.” Read more: Bell’s palsy disables facial muscles of about 40,000 Americans each year


Grocery stores are adapting to more male shoppers — whom they treat like knuckleheads

Raymond Blanks usually takes the bus to Whole Foods to get what he needs in Washington. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) More men are heading to the supermarket these days. That’s according to a new survey by Men’s Health, which found that 84 percent of men are now the primary grocery shoppers in their households, marking a 19 percent increase from a decade ago. The results “challenge many gender stereotypes related to food shopping and cooking,” said Chris Peel, publisher of Men’s Health. “Men have an active role in each stage of the food purchasing process — before getting to the store, while there and when cooking the food they’ve bought.” It is worth noting that Men’s Health surveyed only men. Other surveys of both men and women have concluded that women continue to do slightly more of the country’s food-buying: NPD Group, for example, estimates that men are the primary grocery shoppers in 41 percent of U.S. households, while market research firm VideoMining puts that figure at about 49 percent of shoppers. In any case, there is mounting evidence that more men are shopping for groceries than in previous generations. And when they do head to the store, men tend to buy many items at once, and shop alone, according to Men’s Health. The reasons for those shifts are twofold, experts say. Gender roles are shifting, which means men are taking on more household responsibilities. And Americans are increasingly putting off marriage, so “you’ve got a lot of single men who’ve got to shop for themselves,” says David W. Stewart, a marketing professor at Loyola Marymount University. And it doesn’t hurt that “there’s a younger generation of man who’s actively interested in food,” said Paco Underhill, chief executive of Envirosell, a New York behavioral research firm. Nearly half of those surveyed by Men’s Health, for example, said they’d watched cooking videos in the past year, while 93 percent said they’d prepared meals for themselves. But there are still pronounced differences in how men and women approach grocery shopping. “Men are not terribly strategic,” Stewart said. “They walk in and buy what they remember is needed. They’re buying for right now, or maybe tonight. Anything beyond that is too long-term.” Case in point: Women are most likely to buy 12-packs of beer, while men typically buy six-packs, according to Underhill. “Men tend to be hunters: They want to kill something quickly,


to buy many items at once, and shop alone, according to Men’s Health. The reasons for those shifts are twofold, experts say. Gender roles are shifting, which means men are taking on more household responsibilities. And Americans are increasingly putting off marriage, so “you’ve got a lot of single men who’ve got to shop for themselves,” says David W. Stewart, a marketing professor at Loyola Marymount University. And it doesn’t hurt that “there’s a younger generation of man who’s actively interested in food,” said Paco Underhill, chief executive of Envirosell, a New York behavioral research firm. Nearly half of those surveyed by Men’s Health, for example, said they’d watched cooking videos in the past year, while 93 percent said they’d prepared meals for themselves. But there are still pronounced differences in how men and women approach grocery shopping. “Men are not terribly strategic,” Stewart said. “They walk in and buy what they remember is needed. They’re buying for right now, or maybe tonight. Anything beyond that is too long-term.” Case in point: Women are most likely to buy 12-packs of beer, while men typically buy six-packs, according to Underhill. “Men tend to be hunters: They want to kill something quickly, drag it out and feel successful,” he said. “Women, though, they’re thinking ahead and planning accordingly.” Men also tend to spring for pricier cuts of meat and are more easily influenced by a brand’s name or reputation, Stewart said. They are more likely to buy what is easily visible and catches their eye. As a result, supermarkets have begun adding more special displays in their stores, and rethinking their organization. “Remember: Many male shoppers come to the store without a weekly or even same-day meal plan in mind,” Kellogg’s said in a 2015 report. “Consider organizing aisles and displays around shopper missions, like ‘lunchbox essentials’ or ‘tonight’s dinner,’ and calling out these sections with clear signage so the male shopper can quickly find what he is looking for.” Other chains have begun making smaller changes: Grouping meats and barbecue sauce together, for instance, or displaying wine glasses alongside bottles of wine, Underhill said. “Part of what they’re doing is trying to make the shopping process more fun,” he said. “Men tend to get easily frustrated.” And, added Stewart, just because more American men are buying groceries doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. “There are definite differences in perception: Men


Would transgender troops disrupt the military, as President Trump asserts?

An aerial view of the Pentagon in 2008. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press) In this occasional series, we will bring you up to speed on the biggest national security stories of the week. On Wednesday, President Trump announced on Twitter an abrupt and surprising policy change: He would reverse the Obama administration’s decision to lift the ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. They would not be allowed in the military “in any capacity” because of the supposed costs associated with providing them medical services and the “disruption” he said they would cause. Trump’s decision seemed to surprise both the Pentagon and Congress, and several Republican lawmakers publicly disagreed with the move, saying anyone who meets military standards should be allowed to serve. The following day, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer sent a memo to military leaders saying that the policy remains unchanged until Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reviews Trump’s “direction” and guidelines are set on how to implement it. Here’s what you need to know: Is it true that transgender troops pose a “disruption” to the military? The apparent reversal of Pentagon policy, issued while Mattis was away from Washington on personal travel, brings back a long-running debate within the Defense Department. The question is whether anyone who meets requirements can serve, or if there are too many difficulties involved in integrating transgender people in the military. Trump cited two of the most common arguments used by some service members and veterans — cost and disruption to unit cohesion and readiness — but the “disruption” case in particular is weakened by the relatively seamless way that gay and lesbian troops were integrated after the end of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 2011. Defense Department officials have said that hundreds of transgender service members have come out to their units in the year since President Barack Obama’s administration repealed the ban on them serving — and no significant problems have been reported. Several thousand more are believed to be serving, according to a study commissioned by the Pentagon. A policy reversal actually creates a new kind of disruption: Depending on the specifics of what Trump wants, the Pentagon might face an exodus of hundreds of more service members, some of whom identified themselves last year after being told it was safe to do so. Along with that might come lawsuits that drag out for months, if not years.


Pentagon has made no change yet to its transgender policy, says highest-ranking officer in U.S. military

military would admit recruits who identified as transgender. The question of transgender active-duty members appeared to have been settled. The Obama policy would have allowed the recruits to begin serving July 1, but Mattis delayed that change the day before the rule was to set in, saying more review was required. The six-month delay would have allowed a further review of how integrating transgender recruits would affect the military’s “readiness and lethality,” Mattis said in a memo last month. That review was due Dec. 1. Trump’s ban is also wider-ranging than what many conservative House members were seeking as they debated a new defense spending bill. These lawmakers had sought to prohibit the Pentagon from covering the cost of gender transition therapies for active-duty service members. They did not seek a blanket ban on transgender service members. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) contacted Mattis and the White House before filing an amendment to the defense spending bill barring transgender service members from receiving gender reassignment therapy, according to a GOP congressional aide familiar with the conversations. While Hartzler’s office had heard from some Pentagon staffers on the issue, it was not until the day of the vote that Mattis returned Hartzler’s phone call, the aide said. Mattis did not give Hartzler a clear answer on the Pentagon’s plans on this issue, and so Hartzler went forward with her amendment, which ultimately failed. The amendment’s demise led House GOP members to lobby the White House directly. The impasse threatened military spending, but most important for Trump, it potentially held up money that had been appropriated for the border wall between the United States and Mexico, a key promise he had made during the campaign. Hartzler praised Trump’s announcement Wednesday, saying on Twitter, “President Trump’s decision . . . has the best interests of the #military in mind, and I thank him for taking action.” Trump’s intervention potentially sends the Pentagon back to the drawing board on an issue that had already required years of review and discussion. Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a think tank that has helped the Pentagon research transgender people serving in the military, said in a statement Wednesday that the change would bring about something worse than the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay troops from serving openly that was repealed in 2010. “This is a shocking and ignorant attack on our military and on


President Trump’s trans military ban is far more cruel than you realize

Hundreds of people protested in New York's Times Square against President Trump's decision to ban transgender soldiers. When President Trump casually ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to ban transgender servicemembers from the military, he didn’t just undo months of work by military officers, civilian policymakers and trans advocacy groups. He also cut off transgender Americans from an institution that’s historically been viewed as a microcosm of society — and a bastion of steady employment. The effects of Trump’s shocking strike against the trans rights movement could be much more severe than anyone realized initially. By some estimates, the U.S. military is the single-largest employer of transgender people on the planet, with an estimated 15,500 active-duty trans personnel. Trans people are twice as likely than the general population to serve their country. That’s partly because transgender Americans are patriots like cisgender Americans are, but it’s also partly because we still run far behind our cisgender peers in access to education, affordable housing and employment. Trump’s order means thousands of trans people won’t be able to turn to the military in search of a career anymore. And with his administration’s Department of Justice filing a federal court brief asserting that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is legal, the situation for trans Americans will only get worse. Trans people in America have an unemployment rate of 15 percent, three times higher than the general population. We don’t need righteous anti-Trump rants — we need jobs. It remains to be seen whether the administration will decide to discharge all trans servicemembers, as the Pentagon stated Thursday that it would wait for official White House policy before moving forward, leaving trans people currently serving in place for now. If they return to the old policy under “don’t ask, don’t tell” at some point down the road, trans troops would be receiving general discharges marked “mentally unfit for duty.” As a result, they wouldn’t be able to access any veterans’ benefits, including the VA health-care system or education credits. Troops who did nothing but dare to serve their country openly will be thrown out on the streets with a record that harms their future job prospects. The Trump ban is unnecessarily cruel to our fine trans people in uniform. What are the thousands of trans troops currently serving supposed to do exactly? Many of them were encouraged to begin the process of coming out