Boris Johnson’s victory proves it’s fiction, not fact, that Tories want to hear

requirement that smoked fish be packed with ice is a regulation passed by the British government. On the following day, an unamusing, not at all hilarious spokeswoman from the European Commission confirmed: “The case described by Mr. Johnson falls outside the scope of the E.U. legislation and it’s purely a U.K. national competence.” It didn’t matter. In the end, Johnson emerged victorious, capturing 66 percent of the vote to become Britain’s next prime minister. Though perhaps that slightly misstates the case: the fact is that the Tory party has chosen Johnson not despite the fact that he is an inventor of elaborate and untrue stories about the regulation of kippers, condoms, shrimp-cocktail-flavored potato chips and much else. They have chosen him because he is an inventor of elaborate and untrue stories. It is fiction, not fact, that they now want to hear. And no wonder: In European parliamentary elections held in May, the Conservatives, one of the world’s oldest and most successful political parties, came in fifth place. Not only did the Tories lose to their traditional rivals in the Labour Party, they hemorrhaged votes both to the brand-new Brexit Party, which is angry that they haven’t managed to leave the E.U. yet, as well to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, the two clearly pro-European parties in Britain, who are angry that they still want to go. If they repeat that performance at the next British parliamentary elections, they might be wiped out together. One solution to that problem could be to actually make Brexit happen. But as I have written before, possibly more than once, Brexit requires Britain to make some stark and unpleasant choices, none of which the Conservative Party has yet proved willing to make. At some point, for example, the next prime minister must choose one of three options. Either the country stays inside Europe’s customs union; or a border is rebuilt between the Irish republic and Northern Ireland; or a customs border is placed, in practice, in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country. For different reasons, each one of these decisions would be totally unacceptable to at least one loud and politically important constituency. Theresa May tried to fudge the choice by putting it off, and that failed. Johnson appears to have no alternative, except to offer, as usual, some happy stories: Britain just needs some “can-do spirit”


What to buy (and not to buy) at the dollar store

When a friend recently polled my Pilates classmates about how she could afford two graduation parties for her daughter, the answer was a unanimous “the dollar store.” Selling everything from ketchup to charcoal grills, the ubiquitous dollar store attracts shoppers of all ages and income levels. “Chains such as Dollar Tree and Family Dollar (both owned by Dollar Tree), Dollar General, 99 Cents Only Stores and Five Below have become large corporations with enormous buying power,” says Diane McCrohan, associate professor in the College of Business at Johnson & Wales University. Once seen as dumping grounds for liquidated and off-brand merchandise, today’s dollar stores often buy their inventory from major manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble, Hanes, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Energizer, Crayola and General Mills. “I’m amazed by the dollar store near me in East Greenwich, Rhode Island,” adds McCrohan. “Not only is it up-to-date and relevant to the consumer, but the visual merchandising and displays are as good as any larger retailer. Customers can feel safe shopping them.” But should you? Critics point out that dollar stores aren’t always good for communities, especially in urban centers with few retail options. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, dollar stores take a toll on grocery stores and in many cases reduce people’s access to fresh food. That’s because few carry fresh produce and most offer a limited selection of processed food. In fact, some cities such as Tulsa have imposed restrictions on new stores. Another thing to remember is that you won’t necessarily get the lowest price at dollar stores. “In general, dollar stores provide great value,” says Meaghan Brophy, a senior retail analyst who follows dollar-store trends for FitSmallBusiness.com. “But as many items are custom-made in smaller sizes by manufacturers for dollar stores, shoppers need to compare the price against weight, length and size.” That box of aluminum foil might look identical to those on grocery store shelves but may be only 18 square feet instead of 55. And a $1 can of green beans could sell for 88 cents at the supermarket down the street. Pricing is another variable. Everything still costs $1 at Dollar Tree and 99 cents at 99 Cents Only, but prices vary at others. A recent Dollar General ad touted an 80 cent bottle of Gatorade and a $14 charcoal grill. Plus you’ll find many independently owned dollar stores that stock their shelves with closeout


that dollar stores aren’t always good for communities, especially in urban centers with few retail options. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, dollar stores take a toll on grocery stores and in many cases reduce people’s access to fresh food. That’s because few carry fresh produce and most offer a limited selection of processed food. In fact, some cities such as Tulsa have imposed restrictions on new stores. Another thing to remember is that you won’t necessarily get the lowest price at dollar stores. “In general, dollar stores provide great value,” says Meaghan Brophy, a senior retail analyst who follows dollar-store trends for FitSmallBusiness.com. “But as many items are custom-made in smaller sizes by manufacturers for dollar stores, shoppers need to compare the price against weight, length and size.” That box of aluminum foil might look identical to those on grocery store shelves but may be only 18 square feet instead of 55. And a $1 can of green beans could sell for 88 cents at the supermarket down the street. Pricing is another variable. Everything still costs $1 at Dollar Tree and 99 cents at 99 Cents Only, but prices vary at others. A recent Dollar General ad touted an 80 cent bottle of Gatorade and a $14 charcoal grill. Plus you’ll find many independently owned dollar stores that stock their shelves with closeout merchandise purchased from liquidators or who knows where. Janet Alvarez, executive editor of Wise Bread, a personal finance website, points out that you may get a better deal at your local grocery store with sales, loyalty programs and coupons. “Dollar stores are extremely convenient one-stop shopping, but if you have the time, it pays to compare prices and go where you get the best deal,” she says. I agree. Though I’m a fan of dollar stores and shop them regularly, I always go in with a specific list and budget in mind. (That helps allay any impulse buys.) And I pay attention to product size, even if I have to pull out my calculator and do some math, to ensure that I’m getting the most for my money. Here are the aisles to peruse (and bypass) at your favorite dollar store. Best buys Paper goods Plastic products. Travel-size toiletries. Eyeglasses Home goods. Pregnancy tests. Best to avoid Toys. Anything with a plug Batteries and battery-operated items. Sunscreen. Pet food. Health and beauty products. localliving@washpost.com


Bakersfield, once the butt of jokes, is booming. So are many other inland California cities.

for a 2,700-square-foot home with a pool in Bakersfield. Ortiz and his wife have two children, now 6 and 7 years old, and Ortiz said that if they had remained in Silicon Valley, they probably would only now be considering starting a family. Among other projects, Ortiz has been working with city officials on a new Bakersfield branding campaign. It will be a way to sell the city to those who still think of it as the butt of a joke. The goal is to broaden an economy still largely reliant on the volatile agriculture and oil industries, appealing in part to a tech sector that is finding its political stock falling in many coastal communities. Bakersfield’s oil fields — and those of surrounding Kern County — account for more than half of California’s oil production. “How much do we move toward an urban-L.A.-type model while respecting the fact that our resource-intensive economy is what we rely on?” Ortiz said. “At the same time, how do we diversify our industries to protect against downturns?” The city’s fledgling tech industry received an enormous vote of confidence last month when Bitwise, a Fresno-based technology hub, announced plans to open a new operation in Bakersfield. Irma Olguin Jr. “The story of Bakersfield and the problems it has faced are so similar to the ones Fresno faces,” Olguin said, adding that the “grittiness and scrappiness of the people resonates.” “For too long young people in the Central Valley left to pursue their careers,” she said. “We want to make sure they don’t have to do that anymore.” Young people like fun, never something Bakersfield exuded. But if the microbrew metric is any measure, the city is evolving quickly along with its population. Temblor Brewing Co. Temblor is more San Francisco than Central Valley, with its stainless-steel tanks and leather couches. It hosts the Bakersfield Jazz Workshop on Tuesday nights. “The more young people that move in, the more demand there is for better restaurants and beer and other things bigger cities have,” said Francesca Colombo, Temblor’s 31-year-old operations manager, who moved back to Bakersfield from San Francisco. Since Temblor opened four years ago, three other local breweries have started up across the city. Colombo doesn’t mind the competition because of what it says about Bakersfield and where it is heading. “It’s just not as boring here as it used to be,” Colombo said. scott.wilson@washpost.com


Internal drug company emails show indifference to opioid epidemic

were writing millions of additional opioid prescriptions year over year. Our regulator, the DEA, consistently raised the annual quota of pills that could be produced and distributed, which was a clear statement that the increase in prescriptions was appropriate, expected, and medically necessary. To imply that distributors should have second-guessed or overruled those decisions by the government and the medical community reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our role. For decades, McKesson has consistently reported opioid transactions to the DEA. We have also invested heavily in further strengthening our anti-diversion program.” Until Friday, the documents had been sealed under a protective order issued by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster. The order was lifted a year after The Washington Post and HD Media, which publishes the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia, filed a lawsuit for access to the documents and a DEA database tracking opioid sales, known as the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS. The drug companies and the DEA strenuously opposed the release of the data and the documents, and Polster agreed with them. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Ohio ordered that some of the information should be released with reasonable redactions and the database should be made public. By consolidating cases from around the nation, the Cleveland case, for the first time, provides specific information about how and in what quantity the drugs flowed around the country, from manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies. The case also brings to light internal documents and deliberations by the companies as they sought to promote their products and contend with enforcement efforts by the DEA. The local and state government plaintiffs in the case argue that the actions of some of America’s biggest and best-known companies — including Mallinckrodt, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Purdue Pharma — amounted to a civil racketeering enterprise that had a devastating effect on the plaintiffs’ communities. The case is a civil action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, making use of a law originally developed to attack organized crime. In statements to The Post on Tuesday in response to the release of the DEA database, the drug companies issued broad defenses of their actions during the opioid epidemic. They have said previously that they were trying to sell legal painkillers to legitimate pain patients who had prescriptions. They have


Meet the 0.25 percent of Brits who will pick the next prime minister

YORK, England — At this pivotal moment in Britain’s history, with the future of its economy and its place in the world soon to be determined, the leader of the country will be chosen next week not through a grand national election, but by mail-in ballots from about 160,000 members of the Conservative Party who paid their annual dues. That’s not a thin slice of the population, it’s a crumb — about 0.25 percent of the 66 million people in the United Kingdom, or about 0.35 percent of the total electorate. And it’s an unrepresentative crumb, at that: dominated by white men who tend to be older and better off than your average Brit — and more insistent in their desire to leave the European Union. “They’re consumed, if not obsessed, by Brexit,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London who has studied the party membership. If the general public were voting, polls suggest they would prefer Jeremy Hunt, who as foreign secretary has supported Prime Minister Theresa May’s compromise vision of Brexit, to Boris Johnson, who headlined the winning Brexit referendum campaign in 2016. The most recent polls of Conservative Party members, however, favor Johnson over Hunt by more than 40 percentage points. “Imagine you’re a soldier in battle,” suggested Paul Sullivan, 61, a local councilor who was hoisting a quick pint before the start of a campaign event here in northern England. “You go with the general who wants to win it, right? Or you’ll end up dead on the field.” Johnson — a bombastic, erudite, crowd-pleasing former London mayor — has promised to either strike a fantastic new Brexit deal or leave the bloc without one by October. “Do or die,” he vows. That goes over well here. Many of those at the York convention hall resembled the Tory demographic. Silver-haired, wearing sensible shoes and “Back Boris” stickers, they were the sort that once ran small businesses, served as middle managers or were homemakers. “I think of the hundreds of thousands, the millions of boys who died so we could be a nation,” said Brexit and Johnson supporter Carole Brown, 82. “And we’ve handed it over to Europe? Bring it back home, I say.” This generation harbors lots of World War II nostalgia, even if some don’t recall Winston Churchill so much as movies about Churchill. In addition to these elders, there


Dean & DeLuca’s future is bleak. But when it opened it was a game-changer.

grocer was in grave financial trouble, fancy and non-fancy people alike were distraught. The future is uncertain for its remaining U.S. stores, in New York, the District and Honolulu. Even Dean & DeLuca Stage, a high-design cafe concept that opened only a few months ago in New York, has closed, the Times reported. Giorgio DeLuca and Joel Dean opened the first Dean & DeLuca in 1977 in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, and it went on to change how Americans shopped for specialty food. Many of its imported and precious ingredients, at the time rare and perhaps experimental, have grown up to become household names. The minimalist decor of open wire shelving — then an innovation — is a standard cool look for retail of all types now. The appeal of Dean & DeLuca has always been its European quality, presented with American excess. “The store is stocked for a food fancier’s ‘what if’ games,” wrote Phyllis Richman for The Post in 1979. “What if you could choose from 40 French goat cheeses? Five kinds of dried mushrooms in bulk? A dozen different clam and oyster knives? Fresh truffles and fresh quail eggs and fresh mayonnaise and fresh plums in winter and Russian pashka when it is not even Easter?” Dean & DeLuca claimed to be the first store in the United States to sell radicchio, balsamic vinegar and sun-dried tomatoes. It earned the nickname “The Museum of Fine Food.” The company’s immaculate displays and overflowing cases of prepared food have gone on to influence mainstream grocers. Dean & DeLuca’s style became “the basics of where other high-end retailers would end up going,” said Phil Kafarakis, president of the Specialty Food Association. “When you see the Wegmans format today, if you’ve ever been to Publix, those grocers, I think, would tell you that they emulated some of that early in the day.” The store was also known for its impeccable customer service. “The people who served you behind those cases were extremely knowledgeable. Today, most of that information comes from an app,” said Kafarakis. “These guys, back then, it was on the top of their head — they immediately told you the story of where the product came from, they’d give you a little taste. There was a whole romance.” As it was for me, the grocer became many people’s gateway to fine food and fancy ingredients. Shortly after the Washington


Boris Johnson says he’s prepared for a no-deal Brexit. Critics say he’s reckless.

between Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, a member state of the E.U. Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said that would be a “terrible political miscalculation.” If Johnson stumbles, hard-line Brexiteers have threatened to stage a no-confidence vote that could bring down his fledgling government. British lawmakers who oppose a no-deal Brexit have threatened the same. That could lead to a general election, which would see a wounded Conservative Party challenged not only by its traditional adversary, the Labour Party, but by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and newly invigorated, anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats. Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, said Johnson’s strategy could be to “put lipstick on the pig” — getting the E.U. to agree to minor adjustments to the existing deal but playing it up as a rewrite. “In practice it will be very similar to the previous deal,” Grant anticipated. Johnson may be betting that dressing up the deal could be enough to win support from Conservative lawmakers worried about the Brexit Party. It could also garner support from leave-voting lawmakers, who are worried that Brexit may not happen at all. European leaders, especially French President Emmanuel Macron, are weary of Brexit. Many were appalled to see Brexit Party members take their seats — and salaries — in the European Parliament this past week and turn their backs when the E.U. anthem, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” was played. Yet the Europeans do not want to see Britain jump ship without a life preserver. There is self-interest in this. Britain, after all, still represents the fifth-largest economy in the world. If Johnson wanted more talks, they would probably offer to parley — and if Johnson needed more time, there would be more delay. There are others who expect Johnson to become as frustrated as May and to seek a second referendum to settle the Brexit question — which could see him campaigning for Brexit for yet a third time. “Boris Johnson is doing something very simple: He is telling the people what they want to hear,” said Steven Fielding, a political historian at the University of Nottingham. But Johnson’s problems “will start as soon as he is leader,” Fielding said. “He is making so many promises — and there are no buts, no qualifications on what he says — that if he doesn’t deliver Brexit, he is in big trouble.” william.booth@washpost.com karla.adam@washpost.com


The National Philharmonic’s closing is a loss for schoolchildren

The likely closure of the National Philharmonic orchestra, as reported in the July 18 Style article “The National Philharmonic bows out abruptly,” is a serious loss for the community at large, but especially for elementary school students in Montgomery County. Since the opening of Strathmore Hall in 2005, all second- and fifth-grade students in Montgomery County Public Schools have attended a free educational concert performed by this orchestra. The concert is integrated with the elementary music curriculum, introduces the children to the parts of an orchestra and exposes them to a variety of composers. The concert is presented in a child-friendly manner, with interactive experiences appropriate to each grade. Having taught elementary school in MCPS for 29 years, I can unequivocally state that these concerts ranked among the best programs the school system offered. The National Philharmonic has widened horizons for hundreds of children and should be able to continue this mission. If for no other reason, the county council should find the will to support this institution. Gail Markowitz Read more letters to the editor.


Tokyo Olympics go green with medals made entirely of recycled metal

of a crowdsourcing project that began when people were asked to recycle their cellphones and small devices and appliances over two years ago. “A project that allows the people of Japan to take part in creating the medals is really good,” Koji Murofushi, the Tokyo 2020 sports director, said in a 2017 news conference. “There’s a limit on the resources of our earth, so recycling these things will make us think about the environment.” Tokyo organizers set out to gather as much as eight tons of metal to yield the three tons needed for the gold, silver and bronze medals, and collection boxes were set up starting in April 2017. Organizers said that about 32 kg (roughly 70 pounds) of gold was salvaged from 6.2 million mobile phones, with more than 12,000 pounds of silver and bronze recovered. Following Olympic rules, one side must bear images of Nike, the goddess of victory; the Olympic rings; and the official name of the Games. (Medals for Paralympians will be revealed next month.) The other side is different for each Olympics. The design was chosen from 400 entries and, according to the organizers, “The medals resemble rough stones that have been polished and which now shine, with ‘light’ and ‘brilliance’ their overall themes. The medals collect and reflect myriad patterns of light, symbolizing the energy of the athletes and those who support them; their design is intended to symbolize diversity and represent a world where people who compete in sports and work hard are honored. The brilliance of the medals’ reflections signifies the warm glow of friendship depicted by people all over the world holding hands.” In keeping with that theme of friendship, four robotic versions of mascots Miratowa (for the Olympics) and Someity (for the Paralympics) will greet visitors at venues and shake their hands. The mascots were crowdsourced, too, chosen by more than 16,000 of the country’s elementary-school children. Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics are July 24, 2020, with the Paralympics’ Opening Ceremonies on Aug. 25, 2020. Read more from The Post: USA Swimming relies on ‘secret weapon’ to get smarter, faster Katie Ledecky still isn’t better and her status at the world championships remains uncertain Katie Ledecky withdraws from two races at FINA world championships, citing medical issues China’s Sun Yang confronts another opponent after podium snub After smashing a vial, China’s Sun Yang brings scrutiny, controversy to swimming championships


Trump at odds with Senate GOP over punishing Turkey for purchase of Russian missiles

on Turkey in accordance with the law.” “Without decisive action by the United States, our position in NATO and the strength of our sanctions regime on Russia will suffer,” wrote the group of Democrats, led by Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the party’s top member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But according to several Republicans who emerged from the meeting, the discussion focused more on “how we can negotiate with Erdogan,” as Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) put it, than how the United States could punish him. “What the president’s trying to do is have a much broader approach to this thing,” Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), another Trump ally, said after the White House meeting, suggesting that sanctions-heavy approach only made sense “if you just look at what Turkey’s trying to do now.” “Look at the broader issues of the entire region and then what’s going on with other major countries, you might get in a different situation,” Perdue continued. “We’re trying to develop allies in the world.” Turkey would be the first NATO ally to be hit with sanctions by the United States if the government does not attempt to waive punitive measures that Congress passed in 2017 to punish entities for doing business with Russia’s defense industry. Both Republicans and Democrats have pointed out that it is also the first NATO ally that has purchased a major weapons system from Moscow, the power that NATO was formed to protect against. Earlier this summer, Erdogan said he had received assurances from Trump during the Group of 20 meeting that Turkey would not be punished for accepting the S-400 system. Instead of sanctions, Perdue said, “there may be some things like free trade agreements being talked about,” noting that such an economic relationship with the United States was important to Turkey. “There’s a possibility that you have to bring Russia into some kind of conversation about what their position is in the Middle East — they want trade, they want some kind of commerce with us, too,” Perdue said. Russia has long sought to scale back sanctions that the United States began to impose in 2014, after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The 2017 sanctions bill, in addition to establishing mandatory sanctions on entities doing business with Russia’s defense industry, prevents the president from rolling back Russia sanctions without giving Congress a chance to block his actions. karoun.demirjian@washpost.com seung-min.kim@washpost.com josh.dawsey@washpost.com


How the failure of popular politics triggered the rise of Boris Johnson

kind, has not been this popular in a century. Today, the United Kingdom’s competing nationalisms (including the English variety) have also become inextricably entangled with the European question. English and Ulster Unionist (Northern Irish) nationalists have tended to favor leaving the European Union, believing that this will enable a return to former glory or at least remove an imagined constraint on British political genius. Scottish, Irish and Welsh nationalists, meanwhile, have largely preferred to remain within the E.U., which provides them with legitimizing institutions and links to the world that bypass London. The current Brexit crisis began nearly 10 years ago, when newly elected Tory Prime Minister David Cameron decided to double down on the referendum bets of the past half-century. His gambits addressed the same familiar dilemmas. By calling referendums on their pet issues, he planned to neutralize the most vocal and uncooperative factions in British politics: Scottish nationalists and the anti-European wing of his own party. Cameron believed that his side would win both votes handily, and that he would be free to get on with his real agenda. Like his predecessors, he was wrong. Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom in 2014, but by a shockingly slim margin that has left the question of Scottish independence very much alive. Cameron lost the second referendum, and his job, when Britain voted to leave the E.U. in 2016 despite his campaigning to remain. Brexit, unleashed by the misguided decision to hold a referendum, will not be fixed by holding new ones. But the notion will not die. The Liberal Democrats and several smaller parties advocate a second Brexit referendum. Labour offers a confirmatory referendum on whatever Brexit deal is agreed, as did May before she resigned as prime minister. Nicola Sturgeon recently announced that her Scottish National Party will seek a second Scottish independence referendum in 2020. The reason referendums remain prominent — in defiance of the evidence that they fail — is that they are not being called in good democratic faith. The elected officials who authorize them are not magnanimously granting the people power to settle thorny problems that politicians cannot solve. Rather, they are callously transferring the work and the responsibility of dealing with these problems back to the people who elected them. Small wonder that none of the factions calling for further Brexit referendums can say, when pressed, whether future results should be


Boris Johnson, Brexit cheerleader, to become Britain’s next prime minister

between Britain and our European partners,” Johnson said. “And the simultaneous desire, equally deep and heartfelt, for democratic self-government in this country.” Afterward, Johnson met behind closed doors with Conservative lawmakers. According to a torrent of tweets from the meeting, he vowed to make Brexit a “towering success,” rebuild the navy and supply “broadband into every orifice of every home.” Nick Hargrave, a former special adviser to May, said the first days are “overwhelming” for all new governments. But in several tweets, he suggested that Johnson quickly make some key decisions: Does he want a no-deal Brexit? Or cosmetic changes to May’s withdrawal agreement? And is the pathway to get there a general election or a second referendum or a showdown with Brexiteers in his own party? Despite the do-or-die rhetoric, Johnson would prefer to leave with an amicable divorce, but not with May’s deal, which he called “dead.” All politicians fudge deadlines. But Steven Fielding, a political historian at the University of Nottingham, said, “Johnson has given himself no caveats with the 31st of October. That’s it.” The majority of lawmakers in Parliament are opposed to a no-deal Brexit, signaling a potential clash. Some ministers are resigning their posts before Johnson can fire them over their resistance. On Monday, Alan Duncan quit his job as a Foreign Office minister. He complained that Johnson “flies by the seat of his pants, and is all a bit sort of haphazard and ramshackle.” And he told the BBC that a Johnson-led administration could go “smack into a crisis of government.” Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and David Gauke, the justice secretary, also pledged to quit with Johnson’s ascension. “Things are really about to kick off again in a massive way because the irresistible force of Boris Johnson’s ego is about to meet the immovable force of the House of Commons,” said Rob Ford, a politics professor at the University of Manchester. Over the weekend, Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the Irish government looks forward to engaging with the new British leader but warned against ripping up the existing agreement. “If the approach of the new prime minister is they are going to tear up the withdrawal agreement, then I think we’re in trouble,” Coveney told the BBC. “That’s a little bit like saying, ‘Give me what I want or I’m going to burn the house down for everybody.’ ” william.booth@washpost.com karla.adam@washpost.com


Conservatives want to revive a one-time trick from more than 100 years ago

agendas, or line their own pockets, as often happens in the developing world. In fairness, the United States doesn’t have the kind of rampant public corruption that plagues many of those countries. But then, it’s also short some of the prerequisites to successful industrial policy, such as a highly trusted and effective civil service. If Republicans really want to pursue industrial policy, they’re going to have to agitate for bigger, better-paid government bureaucracies. Even then, however, industrial policy is likely to fail in the United States. It’s likely to work best when poorer countries are catching up to rich ones, because the planners need only look abroad to identify lucrative economic opportunities. When a country is at the technology frontier — as the United States has been for more than a century — the bureaucrats have to outguess the market. They rarely do. There can still be a role for a kind of industrial policy that isn’t really aimed at economic development. The United States has an interest in maintaining domestic defense manufacturing for obvious reasons; we also have an interest in promoting sectors that might bring us a cleaner environment. Those policies might make us safer and healthier. They just won’t make us rich. Moreover, they didn’t even make the Asian model countries rich. Those who look toward Asia for a development model are often blind to their sky-high savings rates, and their enormous development gap. China has a net national savings rate of 22 percent of national income, compared with just under 3 percent in the United States; Japan and South Korea had similar gaps at their prime. Those savings funded them along a development path worn smooth by richer countries, allowing them to experience a century’s worth of European growth in just a few decades. That sort of boom is a great thing to live through, as year by year everyone gets richer and all sorts of social indicators improve in tandem. A lot of the emotional energy behind industrial policy seems like a desire to emulate that feat, and no wonder. The problem is, we can’t replicate it because we practically invented it — more than 100 years ago. And it’s a one-time trick that no country ever gets to repeat, no matter how carefully it plans. Twitter: @asymmetricinfo Read more from Megan McArdle’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.


The dreams and dedication behind our leap to the moon

celebration of the Apollo 11 mission and a corrective to some of the myths that have crystallized around it. The first involves the role of President John F. Kennedy. True, Fishman documents, it was Kennedy who in 1961 announced the goal of putting a man on the moon “before this decade is out,” and who served as “our poet of space, and also our philosopher of space” in public. “We choose to go to the moon, in this decade, and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard,” Kennedy famously declared in a speech at Rice University, after visiting the construction site of a new NASA center in Houston in September 1962. But Fishman argues that it was all about macho Cold War politics for Kennedy, after the Soviets took the lead in sending rockets, men and dogs into space. Privately, Kennedy cooled on the project after superpower tensions eased in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis that October, and he might have dialed it back, Fishman suggests, had he lived. (“I’m not that interested in space,” an exasperated Kennedy blurted out to NASA chief James Webb in a budget meeting when Webb wouldn’t guarantee that $400 million could ensure a victory in the race to the moon.) Only after Kennedy’s assassination did Lyndon Johnson double down on the Apollo program, and Jackie Kennedy tie her husband’s name to space travel for posterity by lobbying to have the space center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., named after him. After all the movies and memoirs focused on astronauts, Fishman skips retelling the personal stories of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins, the third Apollo 11 crew member who manned the Columbia command module. Instead, he introduces us to the scientists and engineers who made it all possible. Charles “Doc” Draper was the bow-tie-wearing ballroom-dance enthusiast who headed the MIT Instrumentation Lab, which designed the inertial navigation system that allowed Apollo modules to all but pilot themselves once in flight. Bill Tindall was the talented writer and orbital mechanics “genius” from the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., who rode herd over the MIT scientists with more than 1,000 “Tindallgrams” in six years, mixing witty cheerleading with relentless flyspecking. Most memorable of all, John Houbolt was the quiet, middle-aged, mid-level NASA engineer who dared to pester his superiors with long, single-spaced letters advocating a “lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR)” —


If the government shuts, don’t plan on visiting Yellowstone, financing your home or getting your tax refund

— or lack of it — that will determine whether the government stops running is playing out in Washington, 85 percent of the federal workforce operates outside the capital city. So Americans in every state would be affected, whether they are late filers hoping to get a speedy tax refund from the Internal Revenue Service or businesses applying for small loans through the Small Business Administration. In a shutdown, the government does not stop operating or serving the public completely. Air traffic controllers stay on the job to keep flights going, and federal prisons stay staffed. The meteorologists at the National Weather Service and the cyber security experts at the Department of Homeland Security come to work. Meat and poultry inspectors at the Agriculture Department stay on the job. Veterans’ hospitals stay open and Social Security checks still go out. [Who gets sent home if the government shuts down] Mail still gets delivered, since the U.S. Postal Service gets only a sliver of its funding from Congress. And the active-duty military — and many of the Defense Department civilians who support it —keeps working, at home and abroad. These operations are considered essential to national security and safety. But hundreds of other services the public depends on from the government would not be available. And whenever Congress agrees to pass a budget that allows federal offices to reopen, the work that got backed up during a shutdown could cause big delays to a range of services. [Federal workers: Are you prepared for a government shutdown?] The head of the National Institutes of Health and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, warned in September that patients with critical illnesses will be turned away and research disrupted during a shutdown. NIH’s clinical facilities at its Bethesda, Md., campus will not admit new patients, they said. At Yellowstone, Park Superintendent Dan Wenk and his staff have worked to determine what new wildlife management programs and services are in place today that weren’t in 2013, when the government closed for 16 days in the most potent shutdown in modern history. The park would close to the public. But there’s a native fish restoration program, for example. Contractors are fixing and upgrading roads in and out of the park. [Van Hollen on government shutdown: Patients will be turned away from NIH] “We are going through the ‘what’s different


Sad the shutdown has killed the panda cam? Here are some alternatives.

As we warned you yesterday, Congress's inability to keep the government open has forced the National Zoo to take away our beloved panda cub cam — along with all of their other animal cams and real-life access to the zoo. But fear not, Internet. There are still plenty of places to watch adorable animals. We've helpfully cataloged a few of them for you below. Pandas Nothing can ever replace Mei Xiang and her as-yet-unnamed female cub in our hearts, but there are still a lot of places you can watch other pandas online. If you want domestic baby pandas, the Atlanta Zoo has not one but two baby pandas, also not named yet, that make appearances on its panda cam. (Fun fact: Pandas are typically not named until 100 days after birth.) For adult pandas, the San Diego Zoo runs a panda cam, as does the Memphis Zoo. If you're willing to watch pandas overseas, there's a site with streams from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the Sichuan province in Southwest China featuring an awful lot of pandas ranging from cubs to adults. Unfortunately, as of posting time, it is night there. Other exotic animals But if you just want exotic animals and don't care if they're pandas, your options open up even more. The Houston Zoo runs giraffe, chimpanzee and elephant cams among others. The Toledo Zoo can help you out with elephants too, as well as primates, seals and polar bears. If you want to be freed from the confines of zoos, Explore.org offers several cams of animals in the wild — like this one of bears in Alaska. Unfortunately, some of their cams (including most of the bear ones) appear to be run by the National Park Service, and it's not clear if they will remain up throughout a shutdown since most of their staff is being furloughed. But luckily, their bison cam is from Canada, so it will probably stay intact. Puppies! Let's be honest, finding these is about as easy as Googling "puppy cam." And you probably already have a favorite. But if you need help, the Pet Collective runs several live cams on Youtube, including Husky and Corgi pup cams.


Boris Johnson will accelerate the decline of Europe

coalition of countries that ultimately accepted the Marshall Plan and worked with the United States to make it a success. London also took the lead in organizing the coalition that became NATO, including the controversial decision to welcome Germany into the alliance in 1955. Britain took a while to enter the European Economic Community, but once it joined in 1973, it became perhaps its most influential member. What is often forgotten in all the talk of the European Union’s rules and regulations is that its central project for decades was the creation of a single market, harmonizing taxes and eliminating tariffs and barriers. That vision was articulated and urged most aggressively by Britain’s free-market prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. And the plan succeeded in large measure. Britain also consistently advocated a Europe of nation-states, not a European super-state. And despite some recent rhetoric to the contrary, that is basically what exists. Brussels has a budget of about $185 billion a year. With a gross domestic product that is roughly comparable to the European Union’s, the United States spends more than $4 trillion. As for bureaucrats, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg once observed that the British county of Derbyshire had about as many bureaucrats as Brussels. “Some super-state!” he said. And to the extent that there was a movement among some European leaders to create a more centralized and unified Europe, that project has largely collapsed. Princeton’s Jan-Werner Müller contends that it has been replaced by “Breurope,” a conception of the E.U. that is much closer to the one articulated by London. Müller points out the irony that Britain wants to exit Europe at the moment that its vision for Europe has won the day. Former U.S. ambassador to the E.U. Stuart E. Eizenstat said Britain was always the United States’ closest ally on substantive issues within Europe. He wrote in a blog post for the Atlantic Council: “With Brexit, the United States would lose a major supporter on a range of important trade and regulatory issues, where the UK’s more free-market approach mirrored ours more closely than most EU member states; on US sanctions regimes against Iran, Russia, and other countries; on data privacy and anti-trust matters; on counterterrorism . . . and on national security issues.” Britain is poised to withdraw from Europe at a time when Europe is withdrawing from the world. Past leaders such as Thatcher, François


In ‘The Lager Queen of Minnesota,’ two long-estranged sisters are brought together by beer

J. Ryan Stradal’s engaging debut, “Kitchens of the Great Midwest,” portrayed heartland foods both traditional and trendy with a knowledgeable eye and a warm heart. He turns to the art and commerce of brewing beer in his second novel, which like its predecessor deftly propels a family drama through a savvy account of changing tastes in a changing culture. In “The Lager Queen of Minnesota,” the family drama concerns two sisters, Edith and Helen, estranged since their father died and left the family farm to Helen in 1967. We meet Edith first, in 2003, and she remains convinced at age 64 that her younger sister finagled this injustice: “Helen had to have manipulated him into changing his will; there was no other explanation.” Her bitterness is uncharacteristic; Edith strives to be as sweet as the pies she bakes at the nursing home where she’s worked for 37 years. Her idea of a salary negotiation is to tell her boss that she’s looking for a second job to make ends meet, then gratefully accept his offer to raise her pay 50 cents an hour. Even after a local paper rates her pies “third-best in Minnesota” and an upscale bakery approaches her, Edith hesitates; in her mind, satisfying a personal ambition makes her too much like Helen. But she has a husband with early-onset Alzheimer’s to support, and the first chapter closes with Edith nervously deciding to pursue her opportunity. Rolling the narrative back to 1959 and shifting to Helen’s point of view, Stradal draws a sharp contrast. Helen is a rule-breaker; she’s just had her first taste of beer at 15, and she wants another one almost as much as she wants to get out of her small Minnesota hometown. Vignettes from her high school years show that Helen can be manipulative, but they also make palpable her desperation for wider horizons and her frustration that no one around her shares her dreams. “These kids were her best friends,” she thinks during one aimless night, “and they made her feel like the loneliest girl in the universe.” At Macalester College, she sets her sights on Orval Blotz, whose desire to revive his family’s brewery business fits nicely with her plans to make beer and get rich. Orval has the brewing equipment but no money; they will have to raise that themselves. Helen is close to her father, and this section closes


The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s musicians are not the problem

Carol Bogash served as orchestra manager of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 1988 and as vice president of education and community engagement from 2011 to 2016. She teaches in the graduate business program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is chair of the board of the Washington Conservatory of Music. In the 38 years that I have been connected in some way with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, there have been extraordinary times and very difficult times. Managements change, board members come and go, music directors arrive and depart, but, through it all, the musicians have remained strong and excellent. These artists, their devoted audiences and the generous donors who have supported this organization — notably the Meyerhoff family and the state of Maryland — are the reasons that we have the great Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I have learned a great deal about how the management and board operate and, I think I know why the orchestra is in a dire financial situation. One thing is clear to me: The root cause of the financial problems that the BSO has faced over these past five years is directly related to decisions made by the management and board. Budgets have been approved that were built on wishful thinking. Huge amounts of money were spent on guest artists and guest conductors with the hope of being recouped through ticket sales and donations. Major projects were undertaken without sufficient underwriting. They were artistically worthwhile but financially went into the red. These are the business practices that lead to serious systemic problems and debt. The board’s decision to eliminate the public relations and marketing departments in 2016 and to replace its professionals with a contracted media firm did not fix the problem. And a decision to end the outreach across the state and around the city didn’t help fulfill the BSO’s mission of “engaging, inspiring, educating, and serving diverse audiences and to enhancing Baltimore and the State of Maryland.” The absence of a senior-level staff person for a long period of time at Strathmore didn’t help develop connections with the residents of Montgomery County. And owing large amounts of money to vendors over extended periods of time, as the Baltimore Sun recently reported, has not endeared the BSO to its valued suppliers. An easy way out is to blame the drop in revenue on the fundraising, marketing and public relations teams.


Fact-checking lawmakers’ claims during the Mueller hearings

group set up by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The U.S. Treasury Department in 2016 imposed sanctions on Prigozhin and Concord over Russia’s occupation of Crimea and military actions in Ukraine, and then imposed more sanctions in 2018 based on “malicious cyber-enabled activities.” “Prigozhin has extensive business dealings with the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense, and a company with significant ties to him holds a contract to build a military base near the Russian Federation border with Ukraine,” the Treasury Department said in 2016 when it announced Prigozhin’s Ukraine-related sanctions. “Russia has been building additional military bases near the Ukrainian border and has used these bases as staging points for deploying soldiers into Ukraine.” In a 2018 news conference with Trump in Helsinki, Putin said Concord did not “represent” or “constitute” the Russian state. But the indictment leaves open the possibility that Russian government officials contributed to the Internet Research Agency’s efforts; it says the named defendants worked “together with others known and unknown to the Grand Jury.” “Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations — such as cyber activity — with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls,’” according to the January 2017 assessment by the U.S. intelligence community. The IRA indictment, however, does not state that the Russian government was behind the troll farm. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who is handling the Concord case, ruled July 1 that out-of-court comments from Mueller and Barr linking the Russian government to the IRA’s efforts would prejudice the jury at an eventual trial. But the judge did not say that the allegation was false or that Russia’s government had no hand in the troll farm’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. “There will be a lot of discussion I predict today and great frustration throughout the country about the fact that you wouldn’t answer any questions here about the origins of this whole charade, which was the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, now proven to be totally bogus, even though it is listed and specifically referenced in your report.” — Johnson As has been well-documented, the memos written by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, on behalf of a firm working for Democrats and the Clinton campaign, did not spark the investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian entities. Even


New U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson promises a ‘golden era’ — and Brexit

— is this: Britain will be out of the Europe Union in 98 days. In the over-warm chambers of Parliament, Johnson’s opponents nipped at the new prime minister’s ankles. They charged that he had no realistic plan to leave the E.U. by October, that it was all speech-written, poll-tested optimism, “all mouth, no trousers” and “fantasy land.” Johnson swatted away their criticisms as the moans of “defeatists” and “gloomsters.” Taking a page from the Trump playbook, he asked why his critics did not believe in Britain as much as he did. Johnson’s plan is to threaten, sweet-talk and cajole the Europeans into reopening talks over the withdrawal agreement former prime minister Theresa May and her E.U. counterparts spent two years negotiating — and to strike “a new deal, a better deal.” He said the provision to guarantee an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland by keeping Britain aligned with European trade and regulatory rules — the so-called “backstop” — was a dead duck. “A time limit is not enough,” Johnson said. “If an agreement is to be reached, it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.” Michel Barnier, the top E.U. negotiator, in a letter to European leadership, poured a bucket of cold water on Johnson’s heated optimism about eliminating the backstop: “This is of course unacceptable and not within the mandate of the European Council.” Barnier called Johnson’s speech “rather combative” and warned, “we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to the planning for ‘no deal,’ partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27.” Britain is trying to figure out which Johnson has just became leader. Is it the liberal Conservative mayor of London who joined gay pride parades and talked up the benefits of immigration? Or the controversial newspaper columnist who has a loose relationship with the truth? Or the hardcore Brexiteer who aligns himself with those on the far right? Does Boris Johnson himself even know? Some first answers were revealed with the shake-up of the cabinet, which struck many as being not so much a reshuffle but a remaking of the British government. Half of ousted May’s cabinet went out the door on Wednesday, and Johnson installed true-believer Brexiteers in their chairs. Thursday’s newspapers will be brimming with descriptions such as “bloodbath,” “revenge” and “summer’s day


WATCH: How do we balance the STEM equation?

and “Surrounded by Science.” Previously, she worked as a senior research associate at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education where she administered the preschool curriculum evaluation program and a grant program in mathematics education. She was director of research for the Rice University School Mathematics Project and has served on the advisory boards for the Merck Institute for Science Education, the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue University and Building Capacity for State Science Education. Meeta Sharma-Holt is the executive director of Techbridge’s Washington D.C. office. Techbridge’s programs aim to inspire middle and high school-aged girls in underserved communities to discover an interest in science, technology and engineering. Sharma-Holt began her career developing corporate mentoring programs for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and later operating a large multi-site after-school teen center, and summer program for at a settlement house. Once in Washington, D.C., she initially assisted over 20 charter school sites to develop their after-school services, and then directed a citywide effort to create the model of after-school program delivery called Project My Time. Russell Shilling Russell Shilling is the executive director of STEM at the U.S. Department of Education, overseeing the department’s policies to drive innovation in science, technology, engineering and math education and enhance interagency coordination. Previously, Shilling served as a Navy captain, retiring after 22 years of service as a Navy aerospace experimental psychologist focusing on education, training and psychological health. Shilling has also held several program management positions at the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Michelle Thaller is the assistant director of science at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. Thaller has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University. After a post-doctoral research fellowship at Caltech, she became particularly interested in public outreach and science communication and served as the public outreach lead for the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before moving to Goddard. She is currently serving a one-year leadership fellowship in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in D.C. Thaller is one of the regular hosts of “The Universe” series on the History Channel, NatGeo’s “the Known Universe” and Discovery Science Channel’s “How the Universe Works,” and “The Stripped Universe.” She also serves as a science advisor for John and Hank Greene’s Crash Course series on PBS Home Video. Biographies are provided by speakers and edited only for length and clarity.


For the bees’ sake and Mother Nature’s, embrace a little wild

As beekeepers, we were delighted to see coverage of this fun and beneficial hobby, including in Kathleen Parker’s July 24 op-ed, “Plant a tree, hug a bee,” and the July 23 Health & Science article “Helping our planet, one tiny, buzzing bee at a time.” But honeybees are not native to the United States, and while they serve an important role in pollination, they don’t provide the same benefits as our native pollinators, also facing staggering population declines. Native insects evolved alongside our plants, birds and animals, making them a critical cog in the circle of life. We encourage people to keep honeybees, but we also support using native plants, leaving tree snags, letting plant stems stand over the winter months for nesting bees and creating brush piles at the back of a property. You don’t have to become a beekeeper to help Mother Nature, just relax the manicured standard and embrace a little wild. Lynley Ogilvie Read more letters to the editor.


VIDEO: What experts in defense, aerospace and infrastructure are saying about public-private partnerships

Investigator of the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He specializes in the management of technological innovation in firms and communities. His research is on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities. Currently Professor Lakhani is investigating incentives and behavior in contests and the mechanisms behind scientific team formation through field experiments on the TopCoder platform and the Harvard Medical School. John MacWilliams was appointed in June 2013 to the U.S. Department of Energy. In this role he serves as the secretary of energy’s senior finance advisor and is a member of his national security team. Previously, he was a partner of Tremont Energy Partners, LLC, was vice chairman of investment banking at JPMorgan Chase and a partner of JPMorgan Partners. MacWilliams was a founding partner in 1993 of The Beacon Group, LLC, a private investment firm located in New York, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2000. He was also partner and co-head of the Beacon Group Energy Investment Funds, a portfolio of more than 30 global private equity investments throughout the energy industry. Jim Manzi Jim Manzi is founder and chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies, the world’s largest cloud-based predictive analytics software company. Previously, he worked as a corporate strategy consultant and developed PC-based pattern recognition software for AT&T Laboratories. Jim is the author of several software patents, as well as the 2012 book Uncontrolled, which advocated the extensive application of trial-and-error learning and was widely reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other national publications. He is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and helped to found the Brookings Institution Project for Experimental Innovation in Policy. He has served on the boards of numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations. Craig R. McKinley Craig R. McKinley came to NIA on Jan. 1, 2015 from the Air Force Association. Previously, McKinley spent 38 years in the Air Force, retiring as a four-star general in November 2012. His last assignment was as the chief of the National Guard Bureau, where he also served as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he was a military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council. Anesa “Nes” Parker Anesa “Nes” Parker is a former GovLab fellow and Manager in the Federal Strategy Practice of Deloitte


Spoiler alert? Not possible in this digital era

A battalion of Mary Poppinses descending from the sky during the Olympics’ Opening Cermonies? Spoiled. Ryan Lochte upsetting Michael Phelps in the 400 individual medley? Spoiled. Aly Raisman edging out world champion Jordyn Wieber? Spoiled. The U.S. men’s gymnastics team falling from grace? Spoiled. For me — and, I suspect, much of the time-delayed American Olympic audience — every wow moment, photo finish or edge-of-your-seat race has been anything but. I thought it would be easy. I’d just unplug. Ignore the Twitter feed. Stay off Facebook. Scroll past the headlines. #Spoileralert, #savethesurprise — all worthy sentiments, but I’ve learned over the past three days that they don’t save you from co-workers, spouses and talking heads telling you exactly what you don’t want to know. As reporter Tom Jackman noted in the Post’s Olympic Live Blog Sunday night: “In the all-electronic world of today, it was impossible not to know that very big stuff happened in women’s gymnastics and one of the men’s swimming relays — it just floats through the air into your brain.” Indeed. Olympics XXX: The year suspense junkies learned to surrender and enjoy the show when they already knew the ending.


This team of scientists launches weather balloons into violent storms. What they learn could improve tornado forecasts.

Penn State professors Paul Markowski and Yvette Richardson have an unusual job. They launch weather balloons into supercell thunderstorms. These rotating storms are what most commonly produce tornadoes, and the data these scientists collect could improve their forecasts. “We’re trying to go where traditional instruments haven’t gone before,” Markowski said. “This is something new.” The team aims to launch miniature weather balloons about 12 to 16 inches in diameter into the air at the periphery of the storm. Attached to each balloon is a probe that measures temperature, dew point and relative humidity. Markowski hopes his team can use the data to re-create the near-surface temperature field of the environment surrounding and within the storm. “The horizontal temperature gradient in storms has a huge role in determining buoyancy,” explained Markowski. Buoyancy describes the air’s affinity to rise. Hot air balloons are positively buoyant. But if you suddenly chilled all the air inside, it would become negatively buoyant and your balloon would sink. The same premise applies to pockets of air in the atmosphere. If air is buoyant and rising, a tornado is more likely to form. “Buoyancy can in turn influence vorticity,” said Markowski. Vorticity describes the amount of spin in the air present at different levels of the atmosphere. It’s one of many ingredients that interact to ultimately contribute to tornadogenesis, or tornado formation. “We’re not launching balloons into tornadoes themselves,” said Richardson. “We’re sampling regions that the inflow air will pass through en route to the tornado.” Launching balloons may seem like a straightforward process, but designing a balloon-carried apparatus that can transmit data in real time is an entirely different challenge. “It used to be that we’d need a different frequency for each probe we launched,” Markowski said. “When we’re launching up to two balloons per minute, that wouldn’t be [feasible without the new technology.]” In recent years, however, it’s been possible to partition “time slots” on an individual frequency. “Let’s say you have 100 probes, and you want data from each of them every second,” said Markowski. “If you have precise time-syncing, you could have each one transmit in a different hundredth-of-a-second window.” It’s sort of like a conference call. If 50 people were in the same phone conversation talking at once, no information would get through. But if the time was divided up and each person took a turn to talk, all the information would


76 Baltimore Police misconduct cases have been allowed to expire since 2016

of officers accused of misconduct. Last month, a judge tossed out a dozen internal affairs charges against Baltimore police officers because the department filed them too late under the provisions of the state’s Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. “I do not grant relief gladly in these cases,” said Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill, noting some involved serious allegations against officers. Sgt. Mike Mancuso, the president of the police union that represents rank-and-file officers, said the judge was right to throw out the cases, but the department’s failure to promptly adjudicate internal affairs cases does not benefit officers. The one-year limit on investigations was put in place to prevent cases from dragging on, but that’s happening anyway, Mancuso said — and not just in the expired cases. Most cases in which officers are exonerated, or in which complaints are not sustained, are ruled on only in the final days before they are set to expire, leaving officers to “sit suspended or with a bogus charge hanging over their head for that long,” Mancuso said. He said the department doesn’t vet the cases for legitimacy early on, as it should. He also said the department is being “unreasonable” with disciplinary offers when it does try to settle cases, resulting in more cases going before full administrative boards than ever. All of that contributes to morale among officers being “the lowest I have ever seen,” Mancuso said. Internal affairs is not the only area in which the department has struggled in recent years. Homicides and shootings have been at historic highs. And both the police department and the police union have suggested crime is out of control in part because the department — with a half-billion-dollar annual budget — is understaffed and can’t recruit fast enough to outpace attrition. The work of the internal affairs unit has long been clouded in secrecy, both for the heightened sensitivity around the investigations it conducts and the state’s protective laws around police personnel files, which are not subject to disclosure under public information laws. Public defenders have accused the office of State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby of further obfuscating the public record of police misconduct by withholding internal affairs files of officers they are putting on the witness stand in criminal cases, though Mosby’s office said it has increased transparency in recent years. The department also has promised increased transparency as part of its efforts to


The Technology 202: Facebook’s political woes aren’t over. But Wall Street is unfazed.

a “hit-job” as he went in front of Congress and spread meme after meme against him. Some experts told Drew that the summit proved to be opposite of what was advertised. Rather than “censoring” conservatives, fringe actors have used claims of bias to launch their own star power. With Republicans on Capitol Hill leading the way — they hosted another hearing on anti-conservative bias just last week  — conservative stars remain convinced of their oppression. “While I might be able to reach a few hundred thousand with suppression, I could reach millions without it,” David J. Harris Jr., a black conservative author who attended the summit, told Drew. “Who knows how far it could grow?” BYTES: With a new $5 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Internet Observatory hopes to give researchers new tools to study the influence of social media on areas including public health, terrorist content and disinformation with a cross-disciplinary academic research. “If you’re an astronomer here at Stanford, you don’t have to go raise $5 billion to launch your own Hubble Space Telescope. You go rent time on existing systems that can be used for scientific study,” said Alex Stamos, the project’s director. “We want to build that telescope to peer into the Internet. You can come and partner with us to do that work without having to get your own graduate students that write Python or without having to sign data-access agreements with the companies.” Among the Internet Observatory’s first policy goals is to deliver recommendations on how to jointly protect the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Congress and the major technology firms. The team has already made dozens of recommendations to Congress and is focusing now on diving into areas where members have expressed interest, including advertising disclosure, and building a consortium between companies to share data. This includes lending advice to legislative efforts, such as the one by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to encourage tech companies to share disinformation data with one another — and hopefully researchers. Funder Craig Newmark, who has put more than $100 million into journalism and information security projects since 2016, said academics are an important part of shoring up defenses against foreign and domestic interference in 2020. “The best analysts aren’t at government, they aren’t at platforms — they’re working at different parts of information warfare sector. They’re individual researchers,” said Newmark. “This is all hands


Trump and GOP leaders will bear responsibility if Saudi Arabia isn’t held accountable

would suspend most U.S. military sales to the kingdom and impose sanctions on all those implicated in the killing of Khashoggi, a Post contributor who was dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last October by a hit team dispatched from Riyadh. The legislation passed over the objections of the committee chairman, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), who had offered an alternative bill he said could win the support of President Trump. But Mr. Risch’s bill, which did not touch on arms sales or the Khashoggi case, was judged too weak by several of his fellow Republicans, including Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Rand Paul (Ky.). Both supported the Menendez-Young bill. The votes send a strong message that the murder of Khashoggi and Saudi war crimes in Yemen continue to complicate U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, in large part because of the refusal of Mr. Trump to hold the regime — and, in particular, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — accountable. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump isn’t getting the message: On Wednesday, he vetoed three previous congressional resolutions blocking arms sales to Saudi Arabia. At the recent Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, he met Mohammed bin Salman for breakfast and declared that the crown prince is doing a “spectacular job” — notwithstanding findings by the CIA and a U.N. investigator that he is almost certainly responsible for the Khashoggi murder. The new legislation would likely be approved by the full Senate if brought to a vote — which is why Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will be inclined to bury it. Mr. Trump’s allies will also seek to block amendments recently added by the House to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which similarly would restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia and require sanctions for those involved in the Khashoggi murder. The end result would be that Mohammed bin Salman would, for now, escape all U.S. sanctions for his brutal and reckless behavior, which includes the jailing and torture of women seeking greater rights, as well as the bombing of schools and hospitals in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi. He may well be emboldened to undertake other adventures damaging to U.S. interests and to arrest or kill other Saudis who, like Khashoggi, advocate liberal reforms. If so, Mr. Trump and GOP leaders in Congress, who block action supported by a bipartisan majority, will bear a measure of responsibility.


Don’t just stand there; do something, Mr. President

Vladimir Putin has pummeled this administration from the get-go. Russia tried to subvert Iran sanctions. It has backed the butcher of Damascus to the hilt. It has repressed human rights to a degree not seen since the communists. (Today, a leading Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced to five years in prison on trumped-up embezzlement charges.) And of course, Putin holds Edward Snowden, taunting the United States and treating the traitor as if he were a human rights victim. The administration has done very little about it. Congress had to force the administration’s hand on the Magnitsky amendment, enabling visa sanctions against Russians who participate in human rights abuses. Mostly, President Obama has rewarded Putin. We ushered Russia into the World Trade Organization. Obama congratulated Putin on his “victory,” in a rigged presidential election. And in Berlin he offered unilateral disarmament with the plea for Russia to follow his example. When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested boycotting the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Olympic fans (and the International Olympic Committee) balked, unsurprisingly. But his sentiment was dead on: We need to demonstrate that there is a penalty to be paid for Russia’s egregious behavior. The New York Times reports That there is any question about cancelling the president’s trip highlights how timid is this administration in dealing with the former KGB official. The president certainly shouldn’t give Putin a photo op by showing up in Russia. Moreover, he should drop any notion of unilateral nuclear disarmament and start holding the Russians accountable for its violations of existing arms agreements. And then he should look for other opportunities, economic and diplomatic, to express our displeasure with the Putin regime. This is the administration that came into office crowing about its expertise in soft power. Great. Now’s the time to use it to communicate to the world’s biggest bully what it will take to attain good relations with the United States.


Rail is critical to moving Northern Virginia forward

reduce our fuel consumption by more than 14 million gallons. Plus, our future workforce does not want cars: One of every five driving-eligible Virginians under the age of 35 does not have a drivers’ license. Amazon recognized this when choosing the Crystal City Metro and VRE stations for its secondary headquarters. Investing in rail will ensure the benefits of Amazon’s HQ2 will stretch from Arlington to Richmond. The largest rail bottleneck on the East Coast is the Long Bridge. The commonwealth’s next top transportation priority needs to be two new tracks over the Potomac River. And, we need to complete the construction on the D.C. to Richmond — DC2RVA — higher-speed rail corridor. We are making progress. In June, the Commonwealth Transportation Board approved $774 million in projects to sustain, improve and expand our Amtrak passenger rail network and hundreds of millions to support and improve our Virginia Railway Express service. This funding will sustain Amtrak service for 6.8 million Virginians, increase Amtrak service by 16 percent and upgrade our rail stations. It also invests heavily in our rail infrastructure to increase our passenger trains’ reliability, safety and speed. Finally, it builds more than 11 percent of improvements to the DC2RVA high-speed rail corridor and invests more than $249 million as a down payment on the Long Bridge. Combined, these two projects will nearly triple the amount of commuter rail service across the Potomac River, including the addition of eight reverse-commute MARC trains from Maryland, almost double the amount of Amtrak service connecting Virginia and the Northeast, make weekend VRE service possible and enhance service all the way to Atlanta while greatly improving the reliability of our commuter and intercity passenger trains. Virginia is doing everything it can, but it needs a strong federal partner. The nation’s interstate system would never have been built without the federal government paying 80 percent of the construction costs. Today, Virginians have been forced to fund nearly all of these rail projects with very little support from our federal partners. That needs to change. The 2020 Surface Transportation Reauthorization must include measurable resources dedicated to a federal passenger rail improvement program so that states don’t have to go it alone. A strong federal funding partner will be vital to expanding the Long Bridge and completing construction on the DC2RVA high-speed rail corridor. That’s why we need infrastructure weeks to end and leadership to begin.


A new autonomous delivery vehicle is designed to operate like a bicycle

clogging traffic. It’s small size allows it to come to a full stop in about five feet, allowing the company to use lower cost sensors like cameras to see ahead and avoid accidents. “We’re trying to emulate what it is to be a cyclist,” Matt Johnson-Roberson, the company’s co-founder and co-director of the UM Ford Center for Autonomous Vehicles (FCAV), told Wired. The REV-1 is already delivering food from two Ann Arbor restaurants and making deliveries to the company’s employees. In the coming months, the company plans to expand its delivery service to the general public. Once service expands, Refraction AI will find itself competing in an increasingly busy space alongside big name companies like Kroger, Domino’s Pizza, Uber , Nuro, Waymo, Walmart, Amazon, Doordash and Starship Technologies that are vying for territory and experimenting with new ways to deliver food to customers. With 16 cubic feet of space inside (enough to hold about four grocery bags), the REV-1 is one of the smallest and slowest autonomous delivery vehicles on the roads. By comparison, Nuro’s R1 autonomous vehicle — which has been delivering groceries for Kroger in Houston and Scottsdale, Ariz., since last year — can reach 25 mph and is about half the width of a Toyota Corolla. Because of the vehicle’s larger size and ability to reach higher speeds, engineers designed it to “prioritize the safety of humans, other road users, and occupied vehicles over its contents," according to the company. Unlike some of it’s competition, the REV-1 doesn’t rely on an expensive and complicated suite of navigational tools like lidar sensors. Instead, the vehicles rely primarily on multiple cameras, radar and ultrasound, allowing them to reduce the cost of the vehicle to around $5,000. For now, the REV-1 is making deliveries between .5 and 2.5 miles away, a distance that could allow Refraction AI to tap into a market of customers eager for safe and quick last-mile delivery solutions, Bob Stefanski, managing director of eLab Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Their vehicles are also lightweight enough to deploy more safely than a self-driving car or large robot,” Stefanski said. “The market is huge, especially in densely populated areas.” MORE READING: Uber plans to start delivering fast food via drone this summer Amazon’s one-day delivery service depends on the work of thousands of robots E-scooter company Spin will place dozens of start-up’s solar-powered docking stations in two cities this summer


Want to stop climate change? Start by planting a trillion trees.

Sometimes, big problems can be solved simply. At the moment, our biggest problem — climate change — could be ended by simply planting trees. Okay, so 1 trillion trees, according to a Swiss study published this month in the journal Science. But how hard is that, really? An equally serious and related problem is disappearing bees. Those cute little black-and-yellow-robed buzzers are essential to our survival, but our pesticides, fertilizers and climate change are killing them along with the insects we hate. Without bees, our ecosystems would collapse, and thus our food supply. Over-the-top? Apocalyptic? Let’s just say, no. This is reality, and we have the means to change it: Plant trees, save bees. Since bees also like flowers, let’s go ahead and make America beautiful again. An emerging theory to combat crime in some parts of the country is called “busy streets.” Research has shown how simple cosmetic changes to urban communities — such as planting flower beds — can help reduce violence. And improve a city’s aroma to boot. Saving bees and trees by planting with purpose would kill two birds, so to speak. If this sounds like a modern version of the Emerald City of Oz, I have no problem with that. Bees love poppies, which, though they provide no nectar, are an excellent source of pollen. That’s nothing to sneeze about, by the way. Most people know that trees are good for them. They absorb carbon dioxide, thus purifying the air for our breathing pleasure. Carbon dioxide is also one of the main greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere, leading to rising temperatures and climate change. Estimates are that about 15 percent of emissions come from deforestation. Trees also curb other harmful gases, such as sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, again releasing pure oxygen into the air. If Congo’s 150 million hectares of forests were lost, it would generate about three times the world’s total emissions in 2012. But scientists, including Thomas Crowther, a co-author of the trillion-tree study, were quick to point out that planting trees alone wouldn’t work. And how does one go about planting 1 trillion trees? And where should they be planted? Although tree-planting is a simple solution — effective and cheaper than any other remedy currently in circulation — it isn’t simply a matter of planting trees helter-skelter. A forest in the wrong place could have detrimental effects by


Time to Dish: What are D.C.’s essential eats for 2015?

Ask 20 people to agree on Washington's best dish, and you'll find them more conflicted than the incoming Congress. Does one of the new arrivals, such as khachapuri, an oblong, gluten-licious butter bomb at Compass Rose, qualify as the city's most memorable morsel? What about the fried chicken at Boss Shepherd's, a dish Post food critic Tom Sietsema describes as so heavenly that it "stains your fingers and puts all conversation on hold"? The sweet, garlicky little tapioca pearls at Doi Moi, or the adventurous fried smelts at Pop's Sea Bar? Or should it be something established and wonderful but found off the beaten path, like the utterly perfect dan dan noodles at Rockville's dim-sum staple A&J? But the big question in this region flush with new dining establishments and excellent older staples: Why stop at just one? Each year, The Post picks 40 of the area's best dishes, as nominated by readers. So, if you will, forget about your resolutions and help us settle the ongoing battle of the biscuit. And as more restaurants spiff up their dessert offerings beyond the now-standard house-made cookie plate, is it a fiery baked Alaska or a simple chocolate salami that you'd order in a heartbeat? Tell us who has the best burger, torta, taco, cocktail or Ethiopian platter. Name your essential eats, leaving out none of the finger-licking details, and we might feature your pick in our annual list. Make your nomination by e-mailing goingoutguide@washpost.com (please include an e-mail address or phone number so we can reach you), or hit us up on Twitter at @goingoutguide (#40eats). See lists from previous years below: 2014 2013 2012


Nine things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of July 18-21

The weekend’s best in nightlife, music and art. For even more, check out Nightlife Agenda. Friday: Friday: Friday-Saturday: Friday-Sunday: Saturday: Saturday: Sunday: D.C. Scoop Sunday Through July 28:


Career Coach: Atten-hut! Here’s how to make the transition to civilian life

jobs. In addition, there are several agencies that rank U.S. firms in terms of how well they help the military find jobs. U.S. Veterans Magazine routinely polls hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies for its annual Best of the Best evaluations. The annual review is an evaluation of the nation’s employers, initiatives, government agencies and educational institutions. The magazine’s research contains helpful resources for jobseekers, business owners, students, consumers, senior management, employment agencies, among others. Similarly, the CivilianJobs.Com group does a comparable thing. Some of the top rated companies in our geographic area and nearby include: 3M, Aerotek, Amazon, BAE, Booz Allen, Capital One, CSC, CSX, Deloitte Federal, Exelon, General Electric, General Motors, Intel, KPMG, Lockheed Martin, ManTech International, Northrop Grumman, PepsiCo, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, USAA, Walmart, among others. Seeing the progress that has been made to help the military is fantastic, yet, despite the improvements that have been made, some employers still lack a good understanding of how the leadership and management skills of the military apply to the commercial world. I certainly hear that from many military folks who are job hunting. Many employers just don’t “understand the transferable skills we can bring to the organization,” one told me. Some employers struggle to figure out exactly what the military person did while serving and how that translates to business today. They may even have distorted or inaccurate perceptions about the military So, what can individuals do? Here are some tips for transitioning out of the military: • First, start your move well before you’re leaving the service. Don’t wait until you have gotten out of the service to be thinking about these issues. The services themselves provide a good first step, through the Transition Assistance Program, or TAP. TAP, a joint program of the Department of Defense, Department of Labor and Department of Veterans Affairs, offers classes and career counseling for service members who are preparing to leave the military. • Involve your family. Make sure they are part of the discussions and decision-making. • Use this time to fill any gaps in your military record while it’s still free to get training. Look for training opportunities, certifications or educational degrees. At the Smith School, we are pleased to have Yellow Ribbon status, meaning the Veterans Administration may help fund or partially fund tuition costs. • Research to see what jobs ares out there. Talk to folks


The European heat wave bears the fingerprint of climate change

frequency and magnitude of extreme events to human-caused climate change. World Weather Attribution, an international scientific collaboration dedicated to exploring the link between extreme weather events and climate change, recently released a preliminary report concerning a previous, though less intense, European heat wave in late June and early July. “Every heat wave occurring in Europe today is made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change,” the study concluded. “The observations show a very large increase in the temperature of these heat waves.” Even a seemingly small shift in the global average temperature can spur disproportionately large changes in the likelihood and intensity of temperature extremes. Our heat-trapping emissions are doing it in two ways: by altering both the mean and variance of temperatures. Mean Human behavior is also increasing the variance of our climate. Variance characterizes the variability or “spread” of a quantity. By increasing the variance of our climate, we “nudge” the extremes further and further from the more “normal” zones in the middle. That also increases the probability of ending up with an extreme event. Coupled together, these two effects are already having dire consequences, given that extreme heat can be deadly. Oftentimes, these deaths go unreported in the media, as it takes months to analyze how and to what extent heat may have played a role in any fatalities. A similar European heat wave in 2003 is estimated to have killed 70,000. “The verdict is in: Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity — by raising average temperatures — have loaded the dice toward more frequent record breaking heat extremes (like this event),” wrote Radley Horton, a climate researcher at Columbia University, in an email. “But the magnitude with which all-time records are being broken — [four degrees] for Paris — suggests an accomplice. Specifically, human-driven increases in the variability of our day-to-day weather.” Heat waves will happen with or without humans. But we’re altering their characteristics in ways that make it harder for humans to cope with them. Shepherd wrote a piece in Forbes comparing human activity to a “performance-enhancing drug” for the climate. Meanwhile, the dome of heat plaguing Western Europe is on its way out, offering some much-needed relief for the beleaguered region. But we’re far from finished seeing the impacts from the system behind the massive heat wave. In the coming days, that system is set to target the Arctic.


The U.S. needs to remind South Korea and Japan who their real enemies are

has done enough. In addition, the thorny issue of tiny Dokdo Islands that lie between the two countries has been simmering for decades. South Korea has controlled the island group, which it regards as part of its sovereign territory, since the 1950s — yet Japan insists that the islands belong to it. The incident involving the Russian and Chinese jets, which flew over the area, predictably triggered a fresh quarrel: Japan protested the warning shots fired by South Korea against the jets because it says Seoul has no jurisdiction in the area. As the two neighbors continue their diplomatic battle, Russia and China carried out their rare joint military exercise as a way of testing the strength of the trilateral military alliance between the United States,, Japan and South Korea — which has been severely weakened, experts worry, by the Seoul-Tokyo feud. Though Moscow denies that its jets flew over the islands, the South Korean government insists that it has evidence showing that the Russian planes violated its airspace. Needless to say, Russia and China are also the two most important supporters of the dictatorship in Pyongyang. It is difficult to see this new instability in the region in isolation from the Trump administration’s seemingly risky diplomatic game with North Korea. Even as he has alienated several traditional U.S. allies, President Trump has been trying to get closer to dictators, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The three Trump-Kim summits created lots of fanfare and headlines, leading the president to claim diplomatic victory. Trump boasts that Pyongyang has not tested another nuclear weapon or launched long-range missiles since he began to talk to Kim. Yet the threat posed by Pyongyang has not diminished in any tangible way, and it has yet to reveal a clear road map for denuclearization. Its latest missile launches add more suspicions about North Korea’s true intentions. Meanwhile, the Seoul-Tokyo spat shows no signs of easing, and the United States appears indifferent. Japan’s move against Korean semiconductor manufacturers will disrupt the global tech industry supply chain while helping alternative suppliers in China and Taiwan. Yet, Washington shows little interest in mediating. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, visited the two countries this week but remained neutral. South Koreans are waging a nationwide boycott against Japanese products and some have canceled planned trips to Japan. Now, Tokyo is considering additional trade restrictions against goods imported from South


Why South Sudan won the war but lost the peace

Eight years ago this month, hopes ran high as South Sudan declared independence after decades of rule from Khartoum. Former rebels — long the de facto leaders in the territory — joined the new government and made grand plans for building a new state. South Sudan seemed to have the odds on its side — and U.S. support. In 2019, those hopes have largely been dashed by years of a civil war that has killed an estimated 383,000 and ongoing disputes in the Sudan/South Sudan borderlands. An estimated 2.3 million South Sudanese have fled the country. What went wrong? How did the situation get so bad, so fast? This is the question Peter Martell sets out to answer in his new book, “First Raise a Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace.” Martell, the BBC’s Juba correspondent during the independence period and a former Agence-France Presse East Africa bureau news editor, uses his decade or more of experiences covering South Sudan to explain what went wrong. Setting the story of South Sudan’s current crisis in deep historical context, Martell shows how the politics of ethnicity and corruption, along with the involvement of regional and international powers, combined to create a poisonous atmosphere in which South Sudanese leaders view ruling as a zero-sum, winner-takes-all game. The deep dive into Sudanese history is a great strength of Martell’s book. He begins in the pre-colonial era, showing how slave raiding and competition for dominance between Egypt, Britain and local leaders shaped the idea that the people of what is now South Sudan were inferior to their northern neighbors. This perception led the British, who colonized Sudan in 1899, to favor northerners in opportunities for education and advancement. After Sudan’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1956, these biases continued, ensuring that southerners always took a backseat to the north. Not surprisingly, in the south there were high levels of discontent, which came to a head in 1955-1972 with the First Sudanese Civil War, then again in the Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983–2005. The near-permanent state of warfare only ended with the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which provided for a 2011 referendum on South Sudanese independence, in which more than 98 percent of South Sudanese voted to secede. The remainder of Martell’s book contains fascinating tales from his reporting as South Sudan prepared for, celebrated


5 things to know about chardonnay, the world’s most popular white wine

orchard fruit like peaches and apricots. The winemaker’s art is to capture that expression without obscuring it with too much oak or other techniques. Some of my favorite chardonnay producers, other than the French classics and those mentioned above, come from cooler climates that emphasize racy complexity. Look for wines from Tasmania (Tolpuddle), the high-altitude vineyards of Argentina’s Mendoza (Catena, Salentein), Sonoma County (Gary Farrell, Hirsch, Flowers), Oregon (Domaine Drouhin, Adelsheim), and Virginia (Linden, Michael Shaps). Good chardonnay can be found up and down the price spectrum, including some pricey grand cru burgundies and blanc de blancs champagnes. Two bargain chardonnays I find consistently delicious and easy to find are Cousiño-Macul from Chile and Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi from California. Here are five that show a variety of chardonnay’s expressions. They include two from California’s San Luis Obispo County, an affordable value from an established winery and a stunner from a newer label with a local Virginia connection. We also have a delicious grand cru blanc de blanc champagne and two reasonably priced burgundies. GREAT VALUE Talley Vineyards, Bishop's Peak Chardonnay 2017 San Luis Obispo County, Calif., $19 Bishop’s Peak is a second label for Talley Vineyards, a mainstay on California’s Central Coast since the mid-1980s. This chardonnay is fermented primarily in stainless steel tanks, with some in “neutral” or older barrels to give structure without the oak flavors. It bursts with ripe orchard fruit flavors and bracing acidity. Certified sustainable. Alcohol by volume: 13.6 percent. Distributed by Winebow: Available in the District at DCanter, D’Vines, Rodman’s. Available in Maryland at Balducci’s, Beer, Wine & Co. and Bradley Food & Beverage in Bethesda, Fenwick Beer & Wine in Silver Spring, Mills Fine Wine and Spirits in Annapolis, Quarry Wine & Spirits in Baltimore, Travilah Square Beer & Wine in Rockville. Available in Virginia at Chain Bridge Cellars in McLean, Mom’s Apple Pie in Round Hill. GREAT VALUE Oceano Chardonnay Spanish Springs Vineyard 2016/2017 San Luis Obispo County, $38 Oceano was created three years ago by Rachel Martin, formerly the director of Boxwood Vineyards in Middleburg, Va., and her husband, Grammy Award-winning music producer Kurt Deutsch. I raved about the 2016 when it was released, and I’m just as enthusiastic about the 2017, which is now reaching the Washington-area market (it is already available in New York City.) Martin and winemaker Marbue Marke enjoy tinkering with the blend from this vineyard


The enduring cruelty of Trump’s immigration agenda

Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? In a parallel universe, the scene could have flooded newspaper front pages and cable news networks for days Last week, President Trump hosted a delegation of some two dozen victims of religious persecution from around the world. The diverse group, which included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, a Tibetan who fled China and a Rohingya Muslim chased out of Myanmar by a government-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing, huddled around the president’s desk at the Oval Office. They took turns explaining their plight to Trump and what drove them to escape their homelands for safe haven elsewhere. It was already an awkward set piece, but it turned all the more cringeworthy with Trump’s comments. One exchange in particular — between the president and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman from Iraq who was raped and tortured and whose family members were murdered by the Islamic State — stood out. The president was not particularly attentive, only perking up when questioning Murad on how she could have won the Nobel Peace Prize. "They gave it to you for what reason?” he asked, with seeming incredulity. “For what reason?” responded Murad, one of the first women to speak publicly about what she and her community endured. “For, after all this happened to me, I didn’t give up. I made it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women.” Trump nodded and moved on. In another sequence, he seemed perplexed to hear about the existence of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom now languish in dire conditions in the world’s largest refugee camp, along Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar. We mention this callous display because of the broader context in which it occurred. Whatever the White House’s posturing over religious persecution elsewhere in the world, it’s in the grips of a different agenda at home. Ever since coming to power, Trump and an inner circle of hard-line ideologues have sought to radically refashion the country’s approach to immigration: They want to deport en masse undocumented migrants living in the United States and block future arrivals of asylum seekers. They want to end America’s traditional role as a beacon for refugees from war-torn countries. They want to dent the political power of cities and regions where many immigrants and minorities live.