José Andrés ‘learned English’ by watching Julia Child. Now he’s getting an award in her name.

Long before José Andrés was the celebrity chef who fed the island of Puerto Rico, he was an immigrant who was flipping channels on TV, when he landed on a show that happened to catch his eye. He had flipped the channel to PBS and began to watch a show starring “that woman with a very funny kind of tone of voice,” he said in a PBS interview. “I was fascinated by the way she would express herself. The way she will seem to enjoy life. The way she will make you feel like that one chicken she had in front of her was the most important thing in the history of mankind. And I guess, in part, I learned English watching that woman.” The woman was Julia Child. And the younger chef who was so inspired by her sunny TV personality will soon receive an award in her honor. The Julia Child Foundation has announced that Andrés will be the 2019 recipient of the Julia Child Award, to be presented in November at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where Child’s kitchen is an attraction. Each year, the award is given to a figure in the culinary world who best embodies Child’s legacy as a teacher, mentor and communicator. Andrés was selected because he exemplifies Child’s independence and public-spiritedness, said Eric Spivey, chairman of the foundation. “He’s teaching us how to cook, but he’s teaching us how to be humanitarians,” Spivey said. “How to be involved in our public, in the community and … trying to help others before focusing on yourself.” Spanish-born Andrés came to the United States in 1991 and helped launch America’s tapas craze with Jaleo, the Washington restaurant he opened in 1993. Accolades and more than 30 restaurants followed, from the upscale Bazaar in Beverly Hills to the fast-casual Beefsteak chain. All the while, Andrés has racked up awards for his cooking, including an Outstanding Chef Award from the James Beard Foundation and two Michelin stars for Minibar, his molecular gastronomy restaurant, and for Somni, his modernist restaurant in Los Angeles. But Andrés’s public profile rose even more when Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign. The chef faced off against the future president, pulling out of a deal to open a restaurant in Trump’s D.C. hotel after the then-candidate denigrated Mexicans in now-infamous remarks about the country sending “rapists” to the United States. Trump


World Digest: June 11, 2019

represented a stunning reversal by Russia’s powerful security agencies and marked a rare bow to public outrage by the Kremlin. And it was an unexpected victory for a journalism community that has seen media freedoms recede for two decades in Russia. Forensic tests found no proof that the journalist, Ivan Golunov, committed drug-related crimes, Kolokoltsev said. Several hours later, Golunov walked free, greeted by a throng of cameras and cheers. The police officers involved in Golunov’s arrest will be investigated, Kolokoltsev said. — Anton Troianovski MEXICO 9 killed in 2 firefights near border in Sonora Mexican authorities said nine people were killed and a child was wounded in two gun battles in the northern border state of Sonora. State prosecutors said in a statement Tuesday that the first firefight took place the previous afternoon in Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas, Ariz. Four men and a woman were found dead in two cars and lying on a street. Some were clad in tactical vests, and assault rifles were recovered at the scene. About two hours later, more gunfire erupted on a highway in nearby Naco. Four men were found shot dead in a car with Arizona license plates. A 12-year-old boy suffered a minor wound from a stray bullet. Police were investigating the incidents. — Associated Press TUNISIA Authorities refuse to let migrants off boat A rescue boat carrying around 75 migrants, most of them from Bangladesh, has been stuck off Tunisia for 12 days after authorities refused to let them disembark, the Red Crescent said Tuesday. The Egyptian boat rescued the migrants in Tunisian waters, but authorities in the governorate of Medinine say its migrant centers are too crowded to allow them to come ashore, leaving the vessel about 15 miles from the coastal city of Zarzis. A government source said the migrants had refused food and medical aid and were demanding that they be allowed to cross into Europe — their likely target when the group set off. Red Crescent official Mongi Slim said that doctors had reached the boat to provide medical help but that some in the group had refused aid. “After 12 days at sea, the migrants are in a bad condition,” he said. — Reuters Mali massacre victims included 24 children: Envoy says Sudan talks to resume; protests suspended: Macron to send new tree to Trump after oak died: — From news services


The Health 202: No, legalizing medical marijuana doesn’t solve the opioid crisis

solutions,” my Post colleague Lenny Bernstein writes. It was intriguing to think that the problem of opioid overdoses, which have taken more than American 400,000 lives in the past two decades, could have such a simple solution upon which states were already embarking. (Although not every state is embracing medical marijuana products. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vetoed a bill last month that would have expanded a medical cannabidiol program allowing capsules and extracts, saying the state needs to “proceed cautiously” on changes.) South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, criticized the veto: The correlation between medical marijuana and lower opioid overdose seemed to be confirmed in a 2014 study by Johns Hopkins researchers, who found 24.8 percent fewer deaths in the period from 1999 to 2010 after states passed laws legalizing medical marijuana. The Stanford researchers came up with very similar results while looking at the same time period, but the data reversed once they extended the analysis to 2017. “A lot of people interpreted the first study as causal because it’s congenial to their goals,” Chelsea Shover, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry who was part of the Stanford research team, told Lenny. “It did not say that one is causing the other.” “I wish it were true,” she added. “I wish that passing medical cannabis [laws] would solve the opioid crisis. But the evidence doesn’t support that.” Shover told Lenny the conflicting results could be related to the fact that only 13 states had medical marijuana laws for the initial study, and many of them were in the West, where the opioid epidemic arrived later. Many more states had approved medical use of marijuana by the end of the study time period, leaving researchers with few states to use for comparison. Of course, marijuana could still hold some value for trying to combat opioid abuse — especially given the public’s increasing acceptance of it. Because it’s useful as a nonaddictive pain reliever, it can give doctors better options when seeking relief for their patients. Three in 4 The Democratic presidential candidates have been paying close attention to public opinion. Former vice president Joe Biden, who for years opposed the idea, said last month that people shouldn’t be prosecuted for smoking marijuana and added that as president he would allow states to keep making their own decisions on the matter. Even former Colorado


McDonald’s new global menu items taste too much like home

Just like your rich but aimless freshman-year roommate, McDonald’s is taking the summer to go abroad and find itself. Last week, the company debuted four limited-time menu items imported from its international franchises: There’s cheesy bacon fries from Australia, a tomato mozzarella chicken sandwich from Canada, a stroopwafel McFlurry from the Netherlands, and a Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger from Spain. But it’s kind of like the student who boasts of his formative and culturally inspiring time studying abroad, but who only hung out with Americans. With the exception of the stroopwafels, what do any of these standard fast food ingredients have to do with any of the countries with which they are associated? And how are they any different from anything that would appear on the regular American McDonald’s menu? “Listen,” you can almost hear McDonald’s sighing exasperatedly, “I know it’s hard for you to understand because you haven’t been to Madrid,” a city where McDonald’s spent its time drinking cheap beer, clubbing and hooking up with a girl named Christine who goes to Ohio State, instead of seeing the Reina Sofia and trying cocido Madrileño. McDonald’s tweaks its menu to suit regional tastes abroad. That’s why there are chicken, not beef, burgers at McDonald’s in India and no pork products sold in franchises in Muslim countries. But even abroad, McDonald’s is still McDonald’s, and it reflects a distinctly American taste. These four selections were chosen because they are popular in their respective countries — and maybe they’re popular there because they’re quintessentially McDonald’s and represent quintessentially American fast food. McDonald’s international menus tell us more about what citizens of those countries think about American food than they tell Americans about local flavor. The Grand McExtreme, for example, has a nice, smoky Gouda on it. But Gouda is … Dutch. The tomato mozzarella chicken sandwich is like a distant relative of the chicken Parmesan, which is from Italy, not Canada, the last time I checked. When I think of fries with lots of toppings, I think of Canada, not Australia. There’s nothing in the Grand McExtreme that will make you think of Spain. It’s a pretty typical burger: sesame seed bun, quarter-pound patty, slivered onions, bacon, a tangy McBacon sauce (kind of like special sauce, but without relish) and the aforementioned Gouda. It is pretty one-note and needs some sort of acid or crispy element to save it. Pickles would


as flat and featureless as a skating rink. Above them, thin cirrus clouds streak a robin’s egg sky. Watkins stops the drill. “Don’t leave it in,” Bowman says, quickly. If the bit stays in the drill hole, water might refreeze around it, trapping the instrument. Rachel Lekanoff, a graduate student at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, helps them heave the drill upward. After Bowman demonstrates how to better brace themselves, they resume their work. It’s another 20 minutes before water finally burbles up around the drill — a sign they’ve reached the sea. Gently, they pull the three-foot cylinder of ice onto the snow. To some scientists on MOSAiC, cores like this can contain a treasure trove of information about the saltiness of the ocean water, the temperature of the air above, even the microscopic organisms that dwell in tiny, briny air bubbles in the ice. Watkins examines the product of an hour’s work. “That was hard,” he says. On the expedition, researchers will have to collect as many as 30 of these cores in a day. The Arctic is melting so quickly that an experiment like MOSAiC may not be possible for much longer. For the drifting plan to work, the scientists need to lodge the Polarstern in a piece of “multiyear” ice — the thick, resilient sea ice that persists until the end of the northern summer. But, Webster says, “It’s getting more difficult to find ice that’s stable year-round.” During the NSF training in Utqiagvik, Webster leads a snowmobile trip to a towering ridge of multiyear ice a few miles offshore. The young scientist brims with energy; while the other researchers trudge through the snow, she bounds. This is “the old Arctic,” she explains, gesturing toward blocks of frozen seawater as big as minivans and blue as the sky. The ice has the rounded, worn appearance of an ancient mountain range — a legacy of the cycles of crushing and melting it has already endured. Such thick multiyear ice has held this landscape together since time immemorial. In summer, it serves as a protective blanket, reflecting two-thirds of the sun’s rays back into space and helping to keep the Arctic cool. In autumn, it subdues the waves whipped up by storms, preventing them from pummeling communities on the coast. It traps the ocean’s heat in winter, and in the spring, it provides a solid, stable platform


Sweetgreen sets its sights on dinner with purchase of meal delivery service Galley Foods

Sweetgreen has become a lunchtime powerhouse. Now it wants to move into dinner. The salad chain has purchased Galley Foods, a Washington-based meal delivery service that specializes in freshly prepared dinners. The companies did not disclose terms of the cash-and-stock deal announced Tuesday. The acquisition is a first for Sweetgreen, which was founded 12 years ago by three 20-something Georgetown University graduates and has grown into a $1 billion chain with 90 locations. It recently began offering free deliveries to kiosks in offices, stores and co-working spaces through its Outpost service and says the Galley deal will help expand that service. “The brands are very complementary,” said Jonathan Neman, Sweetgreen’s chief executive. “We both have a mission of connecting people to real food, and we realized that Galley could be a very good way to accelerate our delivery and dinner businesses.” Sweetgreen will benefit from Galley’s technology and logistics expertise, he said. The company will also be able to save money by sourcing ingredients in bulk. Galley, founded in 2015, delivers as many as 1,200 meals a day to Washington-area residents. Customers can place orders on its website or mobile app and schedule delivery within a one-hour window between 3 and 8 p.m. The meals are packaged for easy reheating and include such options as butter tofu with rice ($12), chipotle chicken quesadillas ($13) and steak with grilled poblano salsa ($18). Sweetgreen and Galley will continue to operate as separate brands for the time being. “Over the coming months, as we integrate the businesses more, we might think about doing more complementary offerings,” Neman said. “Dinner and family meals are an area Sweetgreen wants to learn more about.” Neman, Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru opened the first Sweetgreen in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood three months after graduating from college, with $300,000 in funding and salad recipes they had fine-tuned in their dorm rooms. The company has expanded rapidly since. In 2016, it moved its headquarters to Culver City, Calif., as part of a broader expansion to the West Coast. It has raised $365 million in venture capital. Earlier this year, Sweetgreen announced it would begin accepting cash at its stores again, reversing a two-year policy that critics said discriminated against customers who don’t use credit cards, debit cards or bank accounts. Read more: Trump’s tariffs are hitting the country’s most vulnerable: Dollar store shoppers The average millennial has a net worth


On the water taxi, a different kind of Metro shutdown

over the same period last year. Having learned quickly that the rear-facing bench at the back of the boat has the most sweeping view, Belote watched the Washington Monument shrink into a pin, and felt the office and its cares fade away. He was asked if he felt guilty that others were instead gazing at someone’s armpit. “Not really,” he said. But he recognizes his good fortune. He lives by the Alexandria waterfront, so it was easy for him to do this. Sitting on the bench behind him, on the other hand, was Michael Reiter. He lives near the Franconia-Springfield station. During the shutdown, his commute has been taking him an hour by either a Metro shuttle or the Virginia Railway Express. He was on the boat only because he went to a happy hour near The Wharf after work. He’d get off the boat that day, take a bus to the closed King Street-Old Town station, and then a Metro shuttle bus to Franconia-Springfield. With the boat ride, it took a half-hour longer than the shuttle or VRE. “It was a nice day and an enjoyable commute,” he said. “But not something I can do every day.” In the enclosed area below, at deck level, Wendy Battaglino was heading home from her job as exhibition coordinator at the National Gallery of Art. “I’d be exasperated right now,” she said, when asked how she’d be feeling if the Yellow Line were running. Her calm, she said, continues on the free Old Town Trolley home, where she’s finding herself noticing the neighborhood’s charm for the first time in a while. “I’d been taking it for granted,” Battaglino said. Nearby, Cannon Cook stared at his phone with a can of DC Brau he’d bought from the deck-level concession stand at his side. Some on the boat had tried a Metro shuttle during the shutdown’s first week. Cook hadn’t even bothered. The taxi takes a little more than the 45 minutes, door to door, that it used to take him to get to his government contracting job near L’Enfant Plaza by train. He’d keep riding the water taxi after the shutdown if Potomac continues offering a discounted fare, as it is during the shutdown. The company hasn’t said yet if it will do that. Cook was asked why he was downstairs. The answer came without hesitation. “It’s where the beer is,” he said.


China hints it will choke off U.S. ‘rare earths’ access. But it’s not that easy.

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif. — Rusty tin shacks are all that remain of the gold miners who once prowled this desert hillside about an hour’s drive southwest of Las Vegas. Almost a century later, their modern-day descendants are prospecting for the more exotic materials that have become the latest flash point in the U.S.-China trade war. This is Mountain Pass, the only mine in the United States that harvests rare-earth elements, the raw ingredients used to produce high-tech products such as smartphones, wind turbines, electric vehicles and fighter jets. China dominates the global market for these materials and has been threatening to take them hostage in the deepening trade conflict. Just the suggestion that Beijing could starve American factories of essential materials has sent rare-earth prices soaring over the past month, with dysprosium oxide, used in lasers and nuclear-reactor control rods, up by one-third. But the alarm overlooks the rise over the past decade of alternative sources of rare earths — including Mountain Pass — and ignores the difficulties China would face in implementing a ban, including the prospect of widespread smuggling and the likelihood of hurting countries that Chinese authorities may prefer not to alienate. “We have an absolutely world-class resource,” said Michael Rosenthal, chief executive of MP Materials, which operates the California mine. “That’s our competitive advantage.” President Trump, fresh from an immigration dispute with Mexico, pivoted Monday to his stalled China trade talks. In a CNBC interview, the president — expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month in Japan — said their “differences can be worked out very easily.” But Xi shows no sign of caving and may use rare earths as a bargaining chip. In the latest sign that China might reprise its 2010 cutoff of exports to Japan, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission said on June 4 that it would set new limits on sales outside China. “We must strengthen export management and control,” the state planning agency said. “We need to establish a mechanism for investigating and tracing the export flow of rare earths.” A U.S. Commerce Department report this month fanned industry worries, warning of a dangerous dependence upon imported materials, including rare earths, and calling for “unprecedented” action to bolster domestic stockpiles. Mountain Pass, which began post-bankruptcy operations only last year, represents the United States’ best hope of weathering any Chinese materials blockade. Along with new output from


These honey hunters in southern China dangle from cliffs to get at the choice hives

When the smoke rises, so do the Lisu honey hunters. On ladders or rope rigs draped against jagged cliffs in southern China, they wait for the smoke from ground fires to scatter the bees from their huge hives wedged into outcrops. Then the hunters use poles and long cutting tools to break away portions of the combs holding the valuable honey, which can sell for more than $20 a pound in Chinese markets. A photographer for Getty, Kevin Frayer, recently chronicled the tradition of honey collection by the Lisu, an ethnic group in the southwest mountainous areas of Yunnan province along China’s border with Myanmar. The hunt for the cliffside honey has changed little over the centuries. But fewer people are taking part in the dangerous and exhausting practice as other work options lure them away. Those who remain, meanwhile, say there are fewer hives made by the giant honeybees, which can grow more than an inch long and deliver a nasty sting. Some honey hunters are stung dozens of times in a day. The reason for the reported decline in the cliffside hives is unclear. But scientists in the United States, Europe and elsewhere have linked global warming to declines in bee populations through loss of habitat and possible earlier flower blooms. That can potentially disrupt the production of pollen that bees use as food. In some places in Nepal and elsewhere in the region, cliff-hugging bees pollinate with rhododendron flowers to produce a honey believed to have medicinal — and sometimes slightly hallucinogenic — properties. “Some honey hunters claim they are finding fewer hives than in the past, because bee populations are impacted by heavy pesticide use among local farmers and global warming,” Frayer told the Atlantic. The Lisu hunters never take all the honey from hives in one area. Enough is left for the bees to return the following season. brian.murphy@washpost.com


The Technology 202: Silicon Valley’s congressman wants tech companies to collaborate on disinformation

have accused the Department of Defense of singling them out; others, like Chinese giant Baidu, have coped by restructuring their investments to avoid government scrutiny. U.S. lawmakers and the FBI have raised red flags about the threat of Chinese venture firms stealing intellectual property from Silicon Valley start-ups and passing it back to the Chinese government. “While many people in Washington understand the gravity of the threat, that’s not true across the country,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), one of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading the charge in briefing American companies against intellectual-property theft. Not all of Silicon Valley is buying it. Rolfe talked to venture investors who said the heavy-handed approach out of Washington is an overreaction that is cutting off the industry from important capital. BYTES: The top antitrust regulator at the Justice Department has a warning for Big Tech: Having free or really cheap products won’t protect you from greater antitrust scrutiny “The antitrust division does not take a myopic view of competition,” Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a speech today. “Price effects alone do not provide a complete picture of market dynamics, especially in digital markets in which the profit-maximizing price is zero.” Delrahim offered that antitrust laws should work to protect competition when evaluating mergers and that “harm to innovation” can hurt consumers. Delrahim blasted the tech giants as “digital gatekeepers” and signaled that as his agency steps up its oversight of Google and Apple, it will be looking to the past for information. Delrahim told the crowd that he did not “pretend to have all of the answers today” but pointed to a few choice examples to demonstrate a “long history of trustbusting in emerging and technologically advanced markets” by the United States. Most notably, Delrahim employed the example of the 1998 Microsoft case that forced the firm to allow rival Internet browsers on its operating system. The action paved the way for companies like Google but ultimately left Microsoft intact. The examples of Standard Oil and AT&T offered more direct analogies for the potential Big Tech breakup called for by Democrats. — News from the public sector: — News from the private sector: — Tech news generating buzz around the Web: Coming soon The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday hosts a hearing on the “National Security Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, Manipulated Media, and Deepfakes.”


Kraft’s salad ‘frosting’ is made with ranch dressing and a parent’s deception

The promise of dessert after dinner can be a powerful incentive for veggie-averse children who see a plate of carrots and leafy greens staring back at them. But what if parents could entice their kids with something indulgent right alongside the broccoli? That’s the premise behind a new social media contest from Kraft Heinz. The food company is disguising its ranch dressing and relabeling it as salad “frosting,” packaging it in a slim white tube with flecks of vibrant color that resembles a confetti cake. The deception that parents can wield to get their kids to eat healthful foods is at the heart of the marketing initiative. "Innocent lies parents tell their kids help alleviate the pressures of everyday parenting, and if it gets kids to eat their greens, so be it,” Kraft’s head of marketing, Sergio Eleuterio, said in a news release Monday. “Simple innocent lies are not only part of parenthood, but a true tactic used by parents everywhere. Kraft Salad ‘Frosting’ is one lie you won’t feel bad telling your kids.” To get hold of the “frosting,” Kraft is calling on parents to share the “best” lies they’ve told their kids, using the hashtag #LieLikeAParent on Twitter. “Lies that receive the most likes and adhere to the contest theme and originality will have the chance to win Salad ‘Frosting!’ ” Kraft said. The company will reward 1,500 winners and send them a free sample of the “frosting.” But the delusions aimed at children may be reflecting back on the parents who deploy them. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most children in the United States still don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, despite evidence that suggests developing healthy eating habits in youth can lead to healthier behaviors throughout life. The concept of tricking children into eating more vegetables isn’t new. But research suggests that more straightforward approaches to healthier eating, such as pairing vegetables with certain entrees, may be effective, while strategies that rely on deception probably won’t be carried on as lifelong habits. In a YouTube video promoting Kraft’s new product, a woman standing in for an innocently lying mom gives the audience some of her go-to lines: “Don’t touch the china cabinet — it will turn into spiders,” she says, with a knowing smile. “The Internet lady turns off the Internet at 6 p.m.,” she says, frowning. Pulling open her refrigerator door,


The best way to help dairy farmers is to get them out of dairy farming

dairy farmers produced 562 million gallons of milk in 2015, and former agriculture secretary, now heads the U.S. Dairy Export Council, which works to maintain agribusiness profits through trade policies and tariffs that promote U.S. dairy exports around the world. It makes sense that the dairy industry would need to lobby so aggressively: Dairy farmers’ dependence on government largesse is staggering. A study released last year found that 73 percent of U.S. dairy producers’ revenue came in the form of various government supports. Such agricultural policies, crafted to serve the shortsighted interest of keeping these farms in business, fundamentally undermine agricultural markets. They are costly and detrimental to society at large. This is especially true because there are numerous opportunities for transforming dairies into other enterprises that are better aligned with the changing marketplace and emerging societal values. These farms could transition to producing fruits, vegetables, legumes, mushrooms, nuts, hemp and myriad other crops that are increasingly in demand. Former dairy farms could also earn income through eco-friendly hospitality and agricultural experiences, including farm stays, retreats, training programs, corporate meetings and other events. In addition, there are opportunities to host and participate in farmers markets, community-supported agriculture programs, farm-to-table events and “pick your own” (or foraging) operations that connect consumers to the sources of their food and also provide farmers with a greater share of consumer dollars. The public is ready for these changes. Citizens are increasingly aware of the impact their food choices have on animals and the environment, and they want to support farms and businesses they trust. The demand for organic and plant-based food is growing, as is the demand for alternatives to animal products. Supermarket shelves are now stocked with milk made from almonds, soy, coconut, oat, hemp, cashews, bananas, walnuts and other nondairy ingredients. Plant-based meats are also increasingly available, even in fast-food restaurants, and multinational agribusinesses with long histories in animal agriculture are investing in plant-based alternatives to traditional animal foods. Trying to keep dairy farmers in the dairy business is a herculean and misguided effort, and it can’t last forever. Rather than perpetuating an untenable status quo and prolonging the distress of struggling dairies, government programs should encourage farmers to transition to plant-based agriculture and other emerging opportunities outside of dairy production. This would benefit farmers, as well as improve human health and environmental sustainability. Exploiting animals for food is a leading cause


UMMS contracts were not competitively bid or properly disclosed, probe finds

employees. An audit by the state’s Office of Legislative Audits also is underway. The findings were supposed to be presented last month to Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County). But Ashworth decided after being briefed by Nygren that the report was insufficiently detailed. Hogan and his predecessors had allowed some board members to remain in their roles for well past a decade, even though state law specifies that they cannot serve more than two consecutive five-year terms. After the self-dealing contracts were revealed this spring, Hogan and other top political leaders in Annapolis expressed outrage, and Hogan vowed to replace most, if not all, sitting board members. Emergency legislation passed by the General Assembly requires that the current board be dissolved in stages, beginning July 1. The board met Wednesday and elected James C. “Chip” DiPaula as its new chairman, replacing Stephen A. Burch, who resigned May 7. Alexander Williams was elected vice-chair. The board also voted to invite back four members — Kelly, August J. Chiasera, Walter A. Tilley Jr. and James A. Soltesz — who have professional service contracts with the hospital system and had taken leaves of absence. Ashworth said the board believed those members should come back because the Nygren report concluded that it was primarily mismanagement within the hospital system that led to their contracts not being properly vetted. On Wednesday, Hogan announced 11 new board members, calling the appointments “another critical step as UMMS works to restore public trust.” They include the governor’s chief of staff, Matthew Clark; Kathleen A. Birrane, a lawyer at DLA Piper; Joseph Ciotola Jr., the health officer in Queen Anne’s County; Wanda Queen Draper, former executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture; Jason Frankl, managing director at FTI Consulting Inc.; Glenn T. Harrell, a retired judge on the court of appeals; Joyce M. Johnson, a physician; Elisa Basnight, senior vice president of supply chain for the American Red Cross; Bonnie Phipp, a senior vice president of Ascension Health; Joseph T.N. Suarez, director for community partnerships at Booz Allen Hamilton; and John T. Williams, chairman of Jamison Door Co. As part of Ashworth’s efforts to clean house, the hospital system’s primary lawyer, chief administrative officer, chief compliance officer and chief performance improvement officer all resigned last week. rachel.chason@washpost.com


Trump’s transgender military ban is losing support even in his own party

It has been two months since the Trump administration put the president’s ban on people in the military into effect, and it has been two years since Trump first announced the ban in tweets that surprised even military leaders. But Trump isn’t convincing even his own supporters of the need for the ban. A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose the ban. And while there is, generally speaking, little change from when Trump first made the announcement in 2017, there is a notable shift among one group: Republicans. While 37 percent of Republicans supported the idea of transgender personnel in the U.S. military two years ago, that number has now increased to 47 percent. The poll is the second this year to show that an increasing number of Republicans support allowing transgender troops. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in 2017 showed 32 percent supported the idea. By January of this year, that number rose to 40 percent. Like the PRRI poll, Quinnipiac showed broad support for transgender troops among both Democrats and independents, meaning this is an issue on which Trump appears to be fighting an increasingly losing battle. And it’s a battle that is very much of Trump’s own choosing. This wasn’t even an issue that was on anyone’s radar before the president tweeted out his decree in July 2017, declaring that the administration would “not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” The ban that has been put in place is slightly scaled back, although activists argue it amounts to what is effectively a ban on new transgender recruits. The new poll is the second tidbit this week to push the ban into the news. Trump claimed in an interview in Britain last week that the military couldn’t allow transgender troops because troops aren’t allowed to take “any drugs.” The Defense Department itself has contradicted him, saying troops are allowed to take all prescribed medications, including hormone treatments for gender dysphoria and other conditions having nothing to do with transgender troops’ needs. The PRRI poll measures Americans’ acceptance of transgender people and rights in a number of different ways, including whether people support laws requiring people to use bathrooms corresponding to their birth gender; how comfortable people would be with transgender people in various aspects of their lives; and whether people believe


The relentless slaughter of wolves paved the way for a predator that refuses to die

haunt humans in a variety of ways, including food and water shortages, and disruptions by invasive species. As the Trump administration seeks to strip away legal protections for the last remaining wolves, state officials are contending with the consequences of a massacre carried out without regard to science. There is no reliable census for the overall population of coyotes in the East but a few states count the number hunters kill. Georgia and North Carolina, states where coyotes were rarely seen before 1990, each reported 40,000 killed. The University of Georgia’s forestry department estimated that 90,000 coyotes likely roam the state. Studies estimate that a half million coyotes are killed nationwide each year. People were fascinated when coyotes started showing up in Maryland, but complaints about nuisance animals increased as the population grew. The public’s enchantment changed to “I do not want this animal in my neighborhood,” according to the state Department of Natural Resources. “Few . . . wildlife species evoke as widespread and passionate disdain by the general public as coyotes.” The situation was worse for native wildlife. Coyotes became the top predator and changed the ecosystem. Maryland’s red foxes were pushed to the edge of their territory, and their numbers declined. Wildlife officials across the East are trying to reduce coyote populations with tactics similar to those used to destroy wolves, but the cash bounties, hunting contests and unlimited daily harvests are not working. Coyotes have a unique response to population pressure: They make more coyotes. Kill half a million one year, experts say, and that many will pop up the next. “To cause a decline in the coyote population, 90 percent... must be removed,” according to North Carolina’s state management plan. “However, the population can recover in less than five years without continued intensive removal, coyote management plan.” Early American settlers started killing wolves, mountain lions and other apex predators centuries ago, largely to protect livestock. Modern developers mounted a far more ambitious effort to remove wolves for urban expansion, which accelerated their decline by erasing large portions of their habitat. “You’ve probably heard the cliche that nature abhors a vacuum,” said DeLene Beeland, author of “The Secret World of Red Wolves: The Fight to Save North America’s Other Wolf.” “Of course they’re going to come in; it’s open habitat.” As early as the mid-to-late 1940s, coyote populations started to creep upward in the Midwest. Early


Baltimore Symphony musicians rally for state funding to save the orchestra

Wearing tuxedos with tails and lugging brass horns and metal music stands, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians rallied in Annapolis on Thursday to urge Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to release funding to help save the orchestra — and their jobs. The orchestra is one of about three dozen programs and projects waiting for the governor to make available money that the General Assembly “fenced off” in the state’s $46.6 billion budget — meaning Hogan could not reroute it to other priorities. The orchestra announced last month that it was canceling its summer programming to reduce costs, cutting the season from 52 to 40 weeks per year. “Governor Hogan, we are the Baltimore Symphony musicians,” Michael Lisicky, a second-chair oboist, yelled into a white megaphone while a half-dozen musicians played “That’s a Plenty” across the street from the statehouse. “We urge you to release the funds.” In addition to $1.6 million specifically to help keep the orchestra afloat, the General Assembly set aside $127 million for school construction, $3.5 million to launch a grant fund to pay for testing a backlog of rape kits and $1 million for a summer youth jobs program in Baltimore, among other things. “These are not frivolous items,” said Del. Maggie McIntosh (D-Baltimore City), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, adding that the legislative priorities are a “small, tiny, fraction” of the state budget. “They are of major importance to our constituents.” The back-and-forth is part of an annual budget battle between the Democratic majority legislature and Hogan that essentially pits the governor’s budget priorities against the General Assembly’s. In past years, Hogan has at times refused to release money for the General Assembly’s priorities, instead placing the money in the state’s rainy day fund. House Democrats this week began waging a social media campaign against that practice, using the hashtag #FreeTheFunds and urging followers to contact the governor’s office to ask him to do so. Hogan on Thursday accused the legislature of playing “political games” by fencing off money for its priorities instead of requesting supplemental funding for them. “We’ve said repeatedly that we’re not going to let them play those kinds of games,” he said. The General Assembly cannot add money to the spending plan that the governor introduces during the budget process but can shift money from one fund to another to pay for programs it prioritizes. Setting aside the money restricts it


Transcript: The Changing Face of America’s Veterans

in our society. We have a problem in our universities. This is prevalent, everywhere. And we take people from society into our military. We expect more from them, right? We absolutely do. But you know, you're taking people in, you're doing the best you can to judge their character as recruiters and those who give, you know, appointments to the academies. And then, we got to inculcate them with our values, and we've got to make sure that they understand that part of what our mission and our moral responsibility is as we go put our lives on the line is that we're not committing crimes against each other, that we have good order and discipline, that we have respect that people--we're willing to put our lives on the line for our freedoms, but to have--to have you be at risk by a teammate committing a crime against you is just unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable. So, where are we where we can--you know, again, reports are going up. That's not necessarily a bad thing because people may feel like the system is more trustworthy to treat their--treat what happened to them in a fair way, where justice has the best chance to be heard, in cases that are very difficult to prove. Just let's be honest with ourselves about that. Even if they're reported right away, they're very difficult to prove. But when somebody does that, we still have real challenges, especially as the process lingers of individuals either--there's either, like, blatant retaliation happening which, again, that needs to be ratted out and people need to be held accountable, especially if it's a supervisor and the climate that they have. That has to be addressed and not tolerated. The other element we have is where there is a sort of social ostracization that happens. Somebody reported, now the perpetrators may be in the same unit. People start to take sides. You're still coming to work together. There's what happens especially with this younger generation, a lot of it's happening online where the victim is now feeling isolated. And we've got to stop that from happening, too. There's a real-- MS. TUMULTY: So, how do you stop it? And have you had--what kind of conversations have you had with your Senate colleagues. I think-- SENATOR MCSALLY: Yeah. MS. TUMULTY: --Senator Gillibrand is--she's one of the people who argues this has to be


just heard from Senator McSally, you're one of the leading female veterans in American politics, when you think about women in the military, which issue is at the top of your list of concerns? REP. GABBARD: That's a tough--that's a tough question, because there are a number of challenges that we face. You heard Senator McSally talk a lot about sexual assault in the military. This continues to be an issue that many women in the military are dealing with and struggling with. But what a lot of folks don't often talk about is that it's an issue that a lot of men in the military are also dealing with. We just wrapped up a marathon meeting in the Armed Services Committee last night, as you know. It started at 10:00 a.m. yesterday. We wrapped up at 7:00 a.m. this morning, but one of the issues that we dealt with was sexual assault in the military, because what we're seeing is that, even from 2016 to 2018, the numbers of sexual assault in the mil--sexual assaults in the military that have been reported have gone up 38 percent. Now, some people are saying, "Well, hey, maybe that's a positive sign in that more and more people are actually reporting; whereas, previously, they weren't." But regardless, what it tells us is that this is something that is still too prevalent, and the current system that is in place within the military justice system is not providing that justice. Amongst-- MR. COSTA: So, what's one step Congress could take on that front? REP. GABBARD: Well, I firmly believe that there has to be a transparent, independent approach, outside of the chain of command, where a young, enlisted soldier can go to someone who she knows--he or she knows--is not going to have the bias that sometimes exists with the commander. And this is something we've heard so often from young soldiers and service members who come forward and say, you know, make the report, "I'm a victim of sexual assault." The commander, the First Sergeant says, "Well, the guy or the girl who you're saying has done this, they're my best soldier. They would never do such a thing. I don’t believe you." MR. COSTA: So, you don't trust the chain of command to handle it. REP. GABBARD: Well, what we have seen is that this problem has just continued to get


address. MR. HORTON: Right. So this isn't 2003. This isn't 2004. This is 2019, and if the war in Afghanistan was a person, in a few months, it can walk down to the recruiting office and enlist to fight itself. And that's how long Afghanistan has been going on. Now we know about these things, but that wasn't true in the early days of Iraq and Afghanistan. So what kind of problems did that present when you had men and women go overseas, be exposed to this stuff, come back and just be totally aware of what was going on at the time? MS. KIME: I mean, there have been‑‑since 2010, there is a tiny group called Burn Pits 360 that sort of started realizing that veterans were getting ill and trying to pull it all together and get a scope as to what was making them sick. It started out really focusing on respiratory diseases because the automatic assumption is you're breathing in this stuff, and a number of vets do have a disease called constrictive bronchiolitis, which is a very rare lung disease. It's sort of scar tissue that sort of builds up. And so that was the initial sort of illness. But now‑‑it's only now that we're starting to see‑‑and Bonnie can talk to this more. There's a lot of cancers, rare cancers in young people that are unexpected and not a whole lot of research being put into exactly what diseases are related. MR. HORTON: Before I get to you, Bonnie, some housekeeping. If you're in the room or watching online, tweet questions to me using the #PostLive, and we'll get to them a little bit later in the program. So, Bonnie, tell me‑‑you have a vast network of military families and surviving spouses. Tell me what they're saying about toxic exposure right now. MS. CARROLL: Well, TAPS is a national organization for all those grieving the death of a military loved one. So we see not just those who have lost loved ones on active duty but guard and reserve whose loved ones died now not in a duty status or veterans or those who have ETSed, gotten out of the service for one reason or another. Over the past five years, we've had a 51 percent increase in the number of surviving families coming to us stating their loved ones died of an illness.


U.S. airstrikes, chaotic firefight between allies kill 6 Afghan troops

they are doing it intentionally.” A spokesman for the provincial governor said the incident would be “fully investigated.” Dozens of deadly “insider attacks” against Afghan and U.S. forces have also occurred in the past decade, as well as incidents of mistaken “friendly fire.” Reports of insider attacks have declined since the number of U.S. troops was drastically reduced in 2014 and extra force protections were put in place. But the toll of dead and wounded Afghan forces has remained high, along with that of civilians in combat zones, as both sides have stepped up efforts to seize or retake contested areas of the countryside. Casualties from airstrikes have continued, despite repeated statements by U.S. military officials after each incident that they would seek to prevent such problems in the future. In an April report, the U.N. assistance mission in Kabul reported that civilian casualties were slightly down but that the greatest increase in such casualties this year had been those inflicted by pro-government forces, especially by aerial attacks. In mid-May, U.S. airstrikes in Helmand province killed as many as 18 Afghan police during heavy fighting with Taliban forces. At the time, Butler said U.S. military personnel had worked with Afghan coordinators to ensure that the targeted areas were clear of friendly forces. “Unfortunately, they were not, and a tragic accident resulted,” he said, adding that U.S. officials were “examining the miscommunication to ensure it is not repeated.” On Thursday, a suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives next to a police vehicle in eastern Jalalabad city, killing nine Afghan officers, officials said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the busy trading city and surrounding Nangahar province have been repeatedly targeted by both Taliban insurgents and militants from the Islamic State, an extremist Sunni Islam movement that has built a regional affiliate there despite being defeated in Syria and elsewhere. In March, at least five Afghan soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in U.S. airstrikes in Uruzgan province while they were patrolling with U.S. forces near an Afghan army checkpoint. U.S. military officials said they had conducted “precision self-defense airstrikes on people firing on Afghan and American forces” but that mistakes in coordination had occurred. Local officials said a firefight broke out between Afghan and U.S. forces who believed they were under attack. A U.S. military spokeswoman called the incident “an example of the fog of war.” pamela.constable@washpost.com


Police make arrest in fatal shooting in Northwest Washington

Police on Thursday arrested a man in connection with a fatal shooting that occurred hours earlier inside an apartment at Tyler House, a complex at N. Capitol Street near New York Avenue in Northwest Washington. George Malik Anderson, 21, of Northwest, was charged with second-degree murder while armed. He is accused of killing Devin Butler, 24, who police said has no fixed address. The shooting occurred shortly before 2 a.m. on the fourth floor of the building in the 1200 block of N. Capitol Street NW. Police said Butler was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene. Police did not comment on a possible motive or say why the two men were apparently inside the same apartment. Additional details could be released after Anderson makes his first court appearance, probably on Friday. peter.hermann@washpost.com


Federal managers who try to protect public lands face threats and violence. Here’s what makes that much worse.

policy. If citizens don’t believe they can influence policy decisions, sometimes they believe they can achieve their goals through unconventional political behavior, including violence. In fact, citizens who don’t want their rights to use federal lands limited by the government may reap quicker rewards by using violence to prevent the BLM from enforcing policy, compared the more traditional methods such as voting and contacting elected officials. For instance, endless accounts indicate that when faced with a violent threat from ranchers, BLM employees will often choose to allow illegal grazing rather than engage in armed conflict with citizens. By this logic, ranchers who are denied grazing permits should prefer using violence to access federal grazing lands, instead of enduring the slow and costly legislative process. So how do we know that constitutionalist sheriffs play a role in driving up violence? After all, it could be that voters most opposed to the BLM are especially likely to elect such sheriffs. That may be. But I collected anecdotal evidence that illustrates ways in which constitutionalist sheriffs have facilitated violence against the federal government. In 2003, Sheriff Lamont Smith of Kane County, Utah, destroyed over 30 “restricted access” signs posted on federal land, publicly undermining the authority of the federal government. Ten years later, Smith signed a pledge to block enforcement of President Barack Obama’s gun control executive action. That same year, while testifying in front of the Utah legislature, he called BLM’s presence “an assault on the sovereignty of the state of Utah.” Unsurprisingly, Kane County has the highest rate of violence against the BLM of Utah’s 29 counties. Sheriffs are the eyes and ears of the federal government A BLM law enforcement agent assigned to the Bundy standoff testified that the mission to round up Bundy’s cattle would have succeeded had “the local sheriff, whom Sagebrush Rebel-types tend to regard as the legitimate law of the land, might have been able to defuse the Bunkerville protest,” according to an interview by High Country News reporter Marshall Swearingen. Instead, constitutionalist sheriffs sided with the pro-Bundy protesters. The BLM was forced to admit defeat. State and county politicians prefer to blame the federal government for unpopular policies that affect their constituents. Deflecting blame is an especially appealing tactic for handling land management issues for which there are few easy or affordable solutions. And although national news often overshadows local sheriff elections, these officials’ beliefs


Transcript: Transformers: Health

is you would regulate them by making available publicly available data set that you would validate, and then you would ask sponsors to validate their tools against that dataset. And so, if they can demonstrate a certain competency, a certain clinical validity, a clinical utility, perhaps, against a publicly available dataset, that would be--that could be a big component of demonstrating, you know, effectiveness for regulatory purposes. And the agency took a similar approach with next-generation sequencing, where they recognized certain publicly available datasets, one of which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health, as sort of the dataset that you would test against for the approval of a next-generation sequencing platform. So, these are whole new concepts of regulation. I think for me the broader message that I was trying to articulate was that we were trying to look at new ways to regulate to accommodate the nature of the innovation we were seeing, as opposed to trying to apply the sort of standard regulatory paradigm to these new tools, and sometimes we were able to do that. Sometimes we had to seek legislation. So, in the case of in vitro clinical tests and even OTC drugs, over-the-counter drugs, we needed to go to Congress. MS. ITKOWITZ: Yeah. I mean, I think this kinds of piggybacks off of that, but we're talking--precision medicine is a term that you hear kind of tossed around all the time. We're talking about cutting-edge treatment models for big diseases, and you made some strides at the FDA for creating a regulatory framework for precision medicine. What else can the FDA do to accommodate kind of the more novel treatments to get them to market faster? DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think the process is pretty efficient right now. You know, you're seeing drugs approved on the basis of a small series of patients in the earlier stages of clinical development because you see the ability to deliver drugs to a very highly targeted patient population show overwhelming benefit in a small, sometimes heavily pretreated patient population. On the gene therapy side, some of the issue--some of these products look so efficacious that, you know, you basically can have confidence that they're going to deliver a clinical benefit on the basis of relatively small trials. There, the bigger issues are questions around sort of theoretical risks associated with the gene therapy. Are you going


Transcript: Transformers: Health

unusual. It's a situation that there's a genetic defect of the expression of the receptor that the virus needs to bind and infect you, and there were two people, one in Berlin, one in London who had AIDS and they needed a stem cell transplant because they had a leukemia or a lymphoma. MR. BERNSTEIN: In addition to AIDS. DR. FAUCI: In addition to AIDS. So they needed a transplant. So they found a person who had the genetic defect that would not get the cells infected, and they gave the person the stem cell transplant from that person to them, and that person then had cells that the virus couldn't replicate in. So that person was now cured. That's really good for that person, if you really need a stem cell transplant. The second patient was from London. It's completely non feasible for the 36 million people who are infected with HIV. So it's a proof of concept, that you can cure. But as something that is applicable on a large scale, it's not. MR. BERNSTEIN: Gotcha. All right, we're out of time, unfortunately. I want to thank you, Dr. Fauci, for being with us again, and we're going to move on to our next panel, which is focused on the measles epidemic. [Applause] Innovative Solutions for a Public Health Emergency MS. SUN: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Lena Sun. I'm a health reporter at The Washington Post on the national staff. I'm delighted to welcome my guests here today. We're going to be talking about the measles outbreak in the United States and some innovative solutions to public health crises like this. So to my left is Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the New York City health commissioner. Next to her is Dr. Nancy Messonnier. She is director of the CDC's Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases Center. And next to her is Dr. Peter Hotez, a dean and professor at the Baylor College of Medicine. You can join our discussion by tweeting to hashtag #PostLive. So let start off by talking to you folks about where we are now. Measles cases are at their highest level in 27 years. CDC's latest update shows there were more than 1,022 cases reported as of Monday. And before we talk about the innovative ways that you guys are going to address this problem, I would like to ask the panelists to briefly talk about how


Transcript: Transformers: Health

innovation in the legal approach by public health authorities and pull out some of those other tools from the toolbox that New York City has used? Or is that too close to government mandate? DR. BARBOT: Do you want me to go first or-- MS. SUN: Yeah, you can go first. DR. BARBOT: So I think that the tools that we have in New York City have demonstrated that they are making a difference. And our response is characterized by leveraging those public health hammers, if you will, along with a strong social media presence, countering messages, and then good old-fashioned public health. One of the things that we are just starting to do is we are partnering with the Jewish Orthodox Women's Medical Association. We are putting them together with the Visiting Nurses Association, and we are offering people in-home vaccinations. MS. SUN: Is it free? DR. BARBOT: The Health Department will pay for it. So it's free to the individuals, but we'll pay for it. And so what I was telling my staff is, you know, I never thought that in my public health career we would be giving immunizations on the downlow, right? And so but whatever it takes, whatever it takes. MS. SUN: Innovation, right? That's innovation. DR. BARBOT: Exactly. And so it's not just about the high-tech. It's about the low-tech as well, and working with communities. MS. SUN: Would you like to weigh in, Dr. Messonnier? DR. MESSONNIER: What I would say is that every outbreak that's going on right now in the United States and every outbreak that went on last year and every outbreak that's going to happen next year is actually different. And it's really hard to have cookie cutter solutions, even in New York City and New York state. While there are some similarities to the outbreaks, there are actually lots of differences because the local contexts are different. So CDC's role is to work with the local and state health departments to empower them, to provide them data. But it would be, I think, incorrect to assume that the exact same things that work in one location would work in another. We do take lessons from one to the other, and we continue to build the evidence and the data so that next year we'll be better-equipped. Our tools will be sharper. We have developed a toolbox to help


The Finance 202: Corporate confidence in the economy drops amid trade fears. But Republicans aren’t budging.

of only 6.7 percent.” — Nintendo is moving some production out of China: “Nintendo Co. is shifting some production of its Switch video game console to Southeast Asia from China to limit the impact of possible U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made electronics, said people who work on Nintendo’s supply chain,” the Wall Street Journal’s Takashi Mochizuki reports. “It is another example of manufacturers adapting to the tariff threat. Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group said Tuesday that it was ready to move assembly of Apple Inc.’s iPhones out of China if necessary, and Japan’s Sharp Corp., which is controlled by Foxconn, said last week that it planned to move production of personal computers to Taiwan or Vietnam. Kyoto-based Nintendo has traditionally relied on the Chinese factories of contract assembly companies to make its video game hardware.” — Huawei presses Verizon over patents: “Huawei Technologies Co. has told Verizon Communications Inc. that the carrier should pay licensing fees for more than 200 of its patents, according to people familiar with the matter, further escalating tensions between the Chinese company and the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Krouse reports. “A Huawei intellectual property licensing executive wrote to the U.S. wireless carrier in February, telling Verizon it should pay to ‘solve the patent licensing issue,’ according to the people. Verizon isn’t a Huawei customer” and declined to comment to the Journal. — Google axes lobbyists: “Google has fired about a half-dozen of its largest lobbying firms as part of a major overhaul of its global government affairs and policy operations amid the prospect of greater government scrutiny of its businesses,” the Wall Street Journal’s Brody Mullins and Ted Mann report. “In the past few months, the company has shaken up its roster of lobbying firms, restructured its Washington policy team and lost two senior officials who helped build its influence operation into one of the largest in the nation’s capital, according to people familiar with Google’s Washington strategy.” “People familiar with the matter say the revamp is part of a continuing modernization of the influence operation Google built over the last 15 years, but it comes as Google faces a number of government investigations into its affairs. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Justice Department is gearing up to conduct an antitrust investigation into the tech giant. Congress and state attorneys general are also reviewing Google’s practices, while on the campaign trail, some


Who are you calling chicken? Tyson Foods is getting into the business of plant-based meat.

Tyson Foods entered the crowded fray of alt-meat Thursday, with the country’s largest meat producer announcing it will produce plant-based meat products under the Raised & Rooted brand. They intend to release nuggets to retailers this summer, with a blended burger product to follow in the fall. The move shows traditional meat companies are eager to get in on plant-based alternatives heralded as the next big thing. The entry of these heavy hitters presents a challenge to start-ups and other fledgling companies that have centered their whole business on plant-based meat. After the announcement, shares of Beyond Meat plummeted about 4 percent in premarket trading. Until recently, Tyson held a 6.52 percent share in the El Segundo, Calif.-based Beyond Meat, but Tyson sold its stake in April in anticipation of launching its own alternative-meat company. As has been widely publicized, Beyond Meat had the strongest initial public offering of the year, with stocks soaring 468 percent and a market value of about $8.3 billion, but Thursday’s fall in share prices may indicate that the market perceives Tyson as a challenge to the younger, smaller company. Tyson is not the only big player entering this heated market. Nestlé announced this month that it will launch a pea-protein-based burger this fall in the United States under the brand Sweet Earth. (Beyond Meat uses pea protein and canola oil, while major competitor Impossible Foods uses a soy-based protein and coconut oil.) Other meat giants such as Cargill have made investments in cell-cultured-meat companies such as Memphis Meats, which is said to be close to launching products. While many of these companies are a rebuke to traditional animal agriculture, it makes sense that key players in traditional ag are angling for a slice of this new pie. It’s a big pie. This country dispatches 50 billion hamburgers annually, three every week for each American. But there is mounting evidence that a diet high in processed and red meat may be harmful. A Lancet study of global diet and health this spring made waves when it called out processed and red meat as “unhealthy items,” along with sugary beverages and sodium. And a study in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal on the topic released Thursday said red meat was associated with increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer, including colorectal. Still other recent studies indicate that red meat is


A museum canceled its Robert Mapplethorpe show — and decades later, it’s finally trying to make amends

drafted a handout with simple but challenging prompts, among them: For whom was it created? For whom does it exist? Who is represented? How are they represented? Yet despite the positive reception, the historical society’s director, Charles Lyle, resigned the following year; the Baltimore Sun described his resignation as “unexpected,” leading to “speculation that the director was forced out by the board’s executive committee.” In a public discussion marking the 25th anniversary of the show, Wilson said the museum fired the director “not because they were mad about the show as it was, but because it was so popular, which meant they had to change.” Museums still struggle with the same questions that Wilson forced Maryland historians to confront. The culture wars are hot again, but in this era, liberals are the ones carrying the protest signs, demanding inclusivity, representation and immediate change. Such grass-roots groups as the Guerrilla Girls and Radical Matriarchy have staged protests over women’s representation in historic museums, and the pressure may be working: Museums with collections once considered encyclopedic are rushing to fill embarrassing gaps. The Baltimore Museum of Art, for example, sold seven works by the likes of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg — modern masters, white men — to make way for such underrepresented artists such as Wangechi Mutu, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Amy Sherald (who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait). Activists also have targeted museums such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington for taking donations from oil and pharmaceutical companies, a corporate practice these critics decry as “art-washing.” As for “6.13.89,” Sethi says the Corcoran school is not looking to cast blame for what happened decades ago, adding that he hopes the effort at transparency and accountability will serve the future as much as the people who were there. “You see an institution in an incredible degree of pain and distress, and a community in a similar degree of pain and distress,” he says. “How do you come to terms with a significant ghost from your past?” For her part, Orr-Cahall is not willing to speak at length about her decision to cancel “The Perfect Moment.” But she says she is happy to hear that “6.13.89” is happening — even though it showcases a letter, dated Oct. 4, 1989, from April Gornik, who was disappointed with her handling of the crisis. “I continue to be


White House pulls rule that would require two-member crew in locomotives

trains, if not yet on the horizon, perhaps just over it. For example, positive train control, with onboard computers and trackside sensors, is expected to virtually eliminate human error when it is fully implemented by the end of 2020. Although they are far less complex, rail shuttles between airport terminals already operate without crews on board. “The railroads losing their minds over this proposal wasn’t about current operations,” said the former Obama official. “It was always about the ability to go to fewer [crew members] in the future. What [the proposed rule] was saying is that if you want to go to fewer than two crew members on a train, that the Federal Railroad Administration and the American public should have a seat at the table to verify that all safety measures were being taken.” Most trains run with two crew members: an engineer and a conductor. On passenger trains, often with more than one conductor, the chief conductor is in the passenger cars, but remains in communication with the engineer. On freight locomotives, however, the conductor may be in the locomotive unless he or she has more pressing duties. Labor unions said the FRA decision to pull the rule “placed corporate profits above public safety.” In a joint statement, two unions cautioned against autonomous trains. “If the ongoing grounding of the Boeing Max aircraft has taught us nothing else, FRA and the Department of Transportation should be mindful of the danger of transferring the risk of a human-factors accident from [crew members] to [a computer] programmer when autonomous technology is implemented.” John Previsich, president of the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, elaborated on the joint statement. “The threat is that, in the face of automation, as we’re seeing in just about every industry, the financial pressure on the railroads is making them desirous of one [crew member] or none,” Previsich said. “They want no crew regulations period. The FRA said not only are we going to drop it, but we don’t believe that we need to oversee automation at all, which is astonishing because there’s no transportation mode in the country that doesn’t have some regulatory oversight for automation.” Warren Flatau, an FRA spokesman, said pushing a new rule into place was “an unnecessary obstacle to future innovation in the rail industry.” Flatau said railroads have “a strong safety record


In Ireland, Bloody Sunday’s ‘communal wound’ reopened on eve of St. Patrick’s Day

dead. Another died a few months later. Fourteen more were injured. The massacre would have a long and dark legacy. The British army insisted protesters had opened fire — a false claim that wasn’t retracted until almost 40 years later. In the meantime, new recruits flocked to the IRA, deepening a sectarian conflict that would claim about 3,600 lives before a peace agreement was reached in 1998. “It hardened people’s hearts,” McCann said of Bloody Sunday. On Thursday, as Ireland and the world prepared to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, those hardened hearts were tested again when prosecutors announced they would charge one of the soldiers who fired his weapon that day. Sixteen other former soldiers will face no action. That decision has rekindled anger over the shootings at a time when Brexit threatens to reimpose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, stoking fears of renewed tensions. On Thursday, fresh graffiti marred a mural near the site of the massacre. “No Justice," it said. “No Peace.” Just shy of 30 at the time, McCann was walking through the crowd to hear a young politician named Bernadette Devlin deliver a speech from the back of a pickup truck when the gunfire began. “My first reaction was bewilderment before terror,” he said. “There was 12 minutes of shooting,” McCann said, during which he crawled on his hands and knees for nearly the length of a football field before reaching a corner to hide behind. “One of the first things I did was have a cigarette,” he recalled. As he leaned against the wall, he peered around the corner at the chaos in the street. It wasn’t the first time he had heard gunshots. “For a year and a half, the war had been winding up,” McCann said. “The Troubles,” as the 30-year-conflict is often called, unofficially had begun in the summer of 1969 with a three-day riot in Derry that was dubbed the Battle of the Bogside. The British army had been sent into Northern Ireland to keep the peace, only to escalate the conflict. In August of 1971, British soldiers killed 11 Catholic protesters in Belfast. The IRA responded by killing seven soldiers in Derry in the six months that followed. Yet neither McCann nor many of the other marchers yet understood how bad the war had just become. "I went to a friend’s house to have


U. S. calls Sudan military crackdown ‘devastating,’ urges independent investigation

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The top U.S. diplomat for Africa pushed Friday for Sudan to carry out an “independent and credible” investigation into a June 3 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left scores dead. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Tibor Nagy described the attack on a long-running sit-in near the military headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, as “just devastating.” Medical organizations linked to the protesters put the toll at least 118, while the military-led transitional government has acknowledged that at least 60 were killed when security forces cleared the square. “We believe very strongly there has to be an independent, credible investigation to figure out what exactly happened, why it happened, who gave the orders, how many victims there were,” Nagy told journalists in Ethiopia after a trip to Sudan. The Transitional Military Council acknowledged late Thursday that it had given the order for the sit-in to be cleared and admitted that some excesses had taken place. It said a number of officers had been arrested. The council said it was carrying out its own investigation and would announce the results Saturday, rejecting an international role. Shams Eddin Kabashi, council spokesman, said it would hold accountable those responsible, regardless of their rank. Nagy, however, said that “when governments investigate themselves, there tends to be a lot of skepticism” and that an independent investigation was important because of the “whole concept of impunity.” “We have seen other countries where the military enjoy impunity and literally get away with murder, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said. He declined to specify what further measures the United States might take and said the main U.S. focus is to support the mediation between the protesters and the military council by representatives from the African Union and neighboring Ethiopia. He said the distrust between the two sides since the bloody crackdown has stymied direct talks. The deposing of dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir on April 11 after three decades of rule was widely viewed with hope around the world, and Nagy said the possibility that this strategically located country of 40 million could sink into chaos has caused concern among neighboring nations. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have in particular been supportive of Sudan, offering billions of dollars in aid — and spurring fears among Sudanese protesters that they were seeking only stability for Sudan, rather than the


The Saudi minor facing the death penalty is not alone. There have been many others.

seeking a sentence of crucifixion, meaning his body will be put on public display after he is beheaded. The case against the now-18-year-old is chillingly familiar. Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have repeatedly shown that they will use capital punishment to crush political dissent — and clearly believe they have impunity to do so. Executing a child is one of the most severe violations of international law imaginable. In response to United Nations criticism, authorities have claimed Saudi Arabia’s Juvenile Code limits sentences against children to 10 years in prison, but their actions flatly contradict this. Four of the 47 victims This is systematic abuse. All were arrested without a warrant following protests in Eastern Province in 2012 during the Arab Spring. All were held in incommunicado detention for long periods. All were tortured into making a false confession that formed the case against them, in the absence of physical evidence. None had pretrial access to a lawyer. In trials at Saudi Arabia’s notorious Specialized Criminal Court — a fortified courtroom that is a forbidding place for any defendant, let alone a frightened teenager — they described being tortured, and recanted their confessions, but the judge paid no heed. Mujtaba al-Sweikat In a similar case, after a round-the-clock beating, 17-year-old Dawood al-Marhoon signed a blank sheet of paper that prosecutors later filled in. The facts of these cases are well known thanks to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions. In January 2017, the group published a report about a minor whose date of birth and date of arrest correspond with those of Murtaja Qureiris. It concluded he had been tortured to extract a confession after he attended peaceful protests. The harsh truth is that the Saudi regime couldn’t care less. It pays lip service to international norms, falsely claiming the death penalty is reserved for serious violent crimes, when in fact 74 percent of those executed this year were convicted of nonviolent offences, according to our tracking of Saudi executions. When the brazen murder of journalist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi comes with no meaningful consequences, the reasons for this sense of impunity are clear. The U.S. State Department did not condemn April’s executions, instead urging the Saudi government to respect the due process rights it has consistently disregarded. President Trump responded in predictable style — by boasting of shaking


Why America is embracing the widening world of non-wheat pastas

Banza’s chickpea pasta boxes boast 25 grams of protein (per 3.5-ounce serving; 14 grams for a 2-ounce serving), while the box for Explore Cuisine’s edamame-and-mung-bean fettuccine showcases front and center that it delivers 24 grams of protein (per 2-ounce serving). Protein was always the driving force behind Explore Cuisine. The company was born out of a trip to China when founder Joe Spronz tried his first protein-rich pasta. That experience coincided with a growing concern for his picky, pasta-loving daughter’s protein intake. Protein-packed pasta seemed (and tasted) like the perfect solution. It wasn’t designed to address gluten allergies, but it happened to tackle that, too. “I think when we look at the growth in the category — which is about 30 to 35 percent at the moment — it’s really driven by this broader acceptance by a much broader group of people who are just looking to try something different, looking at plant-based food, looking at reduction in red meat consumption and looking to find alternative proteins,” Explore Cuisine chief executive Greg Forbes said. Banza founder and CEO Brian Rudolph recognizes that in addition to being attractive to those who can’t eat gluten, his chickpea pasta appeals to protein-seeking vegans and vegetarians, as well as parents of picky eaters who want nutritious options for their children. Protein is a major selling point, but he ultimately describes his target customer as a “healthy realist.” He knows that consumers are becoming more health-conscious, but he also recognizes that they don’t want to “totally abandon the foods they love.” To reach the gluten-avoiders, protein-seekers, healthy realists and everyone in-between, Banza insists its pastas be sold on the “mainstream pasta aisle.” “We want to position Banza as the best option for everyone,” Rudolph said in an email. “It’s been exciting to see major grocery chains merging the ‘alternative’ pastas with the regular pastas.” This shift on alternative pasta isn’t isolated to the pasta aisles of Whole Foods and natural markets; it is permeating the shelves of grocery chains around the country. Banza is the fastest-selling pasta brand at Target stores, and even the 142-year-old pasta giant Barilla launched a legume noodle line in 2018, surging pulse pasta into the mainstream market. The Italian brand now offers earthy brown boxes packed with nutrient-dense, single-ingredient choices: chickpea and red lentil penne pastas. “It is undoubtedly a big step for an Italian brand to create a legume-based


Reexamining opera, one classic at a time

by such important New York composers as Lang; Julia Wolfe, who wrote the oratorio “Fire in My Mouth” about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire; and John Corigliano. The 2019-2020 season will include the start of “Project 19,” commissions from 19 female composers to mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. And last week, the orchestra sounded very good. For Lang’s piece, the orchestra performed in a cage of chain-link fence, many players sporting the same knit caps as the opera’s protagonist, the “Assistant” (Leonore in Beethoven’s version), a woman who has disguised herself as a man to find her husband, a political prisoner. “Fully staged” is a debatable concept in a concert hall, but director Elkhanah Pulitzer and stage designer Matt Saunders created an effective prison behind and around the musicians, separating them from a metal prison door with a central walkway. On a ledge above and behind the stage cowered the men’s chorus, their yellow prison jumpsuits one of the few touches of color (Maline Casta designed the costumes) in a somber palette. Lang’s music, too, is austere but shot through with vivid color, massing the whole orchestra in dark ferocious outbreaks or thinning it down to singing strings behind the voices. (The amplification was evidently adjusted and improved after opening night.) The clarity of music was matched by a clarity of language, yielding a piece that was felt as strong and distilled as vodka. Sometimes the text was a near-literal translation of the German: The Prisoner (the baritone Jarett Ott), captive in a pit beneath the stage and transmitting his first aria via video to the back wall like a modern-day hostage film, opened his aria with the words “Uhhh. So dark,” approximating the “Gott, welch’ Dunkel hier” of Beethoven’s tenor Florestan. Sometimes the aria simply evoked the sense of the original, like the Jailer’s paean to the power of gold, here no jolly ditty but a statement of bitter pragmatism, powerfully sung by Eric Owens, who seems to be in fine vocal form these days. Other moments were entirely new, such as the exegesis of the evil Governor, sung raggedly by Alan Okie, that it is “better to be feared than to be loved.” The tone was set by the Assistant’s opening aria: “I was a woman once,” Julie Mathevet sang, exploring the implications of the character’s cross-dressing in a


Maryland open houses June 15-16

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White House blocked intelligence agency’s written testimony calling climate change ‘possibly catastrophic’

carbon emissions that the world has not curbed. “Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible future scenarios where significant — possibly catastrophic — harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change,” the document said. White House officials took aim at the document’s scientific citations, which refer to work conducted by federal agencies including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to several senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations, Trump administration officials sought to cut several pages of the document on the grounds that its description of climate science did not mesh with the administration’s official stance. Critics of the testimony included William Happer, a National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide and sought to establish a federal task force to challenge the scientific consensus that human activity is driving the planet’s rising temperatures. Schoonover’s draft testimony was peppered with comments from the National Security Council, criticizing his characterization of the threats posed by climate change. “This is not objective testimony at all,” read one comment, according to an individual familiar with the document. “It includes lots of climate alarm propaganda that is not science at all. I am embarrassed to have this go out on behalf of the executive branch of the Federal Government.” In another passage, Happer objected to the phrase “tipping point” when describing how a certain level of warming could trigger devastating climate-related impacts, the individual said. “ ‘Tipping points’ is a propaganda slogan for the scientifically illiterate,” Happer wrote. “They were a favorite of Al Gore’s science adviser, James Hansen.” Administration officials said the Office of Legislative Affairs ultimately decided that Schoonover could appear before the House panel but could not submit his office’s statement for the record because it did not, in the words of one official, “jibe” with what the administration is seeking to do on climate change. The official added that legislative affairs and staffers at the Office of Management and Budget routinely review agency officials’ prepared congressional testimony before they submit it. A House Intelligence Committee aide confirmed that the panel received the written testimony of the two other intelligence officials who testified at Wednesday’s public hearing, but not Schoonover’s. Francesco Femia, chief executive of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate


After days of massive protests, Hong Kong chief executive suspends controversial proposal to allow extraditions to China

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said her government would indefinitely suspend a bill that would allow fugitives to be transferred to mainland China. The bill fueled days of street demonstrations that brought violence and chaos to the global financial hub.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Consumer spending increases; drug companies sue over TV ad rule

RETAIL Consumer spending increased in May Americans stepped up their retail spending last month, a sign that low unemployment and modest wage gains are encouraging consumers to shop. The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales rose 0.5 percent in May, after a smaller gain of 0.3 percent the previous month. April’s figure was revised up from an earlier estimate that showed a decline. The figures suggest that Americans remain confident enough in the economic outlook to spend. Sales at electronics stores jumped 1.1 percent and rose 0.7 percent at auto dealers. Sales in a category that mostly includes online retailers rose 1.4 percent. Retail sales have been choppy this year. But with the unemployment rate at a five-decade low of 3.6 percent and wage gains easily outpacing inflation, most analysts expect consumer spending to keep growing at a decent pace. Still, the economy is forecast to slow in the April-June quarter. Retail spending was healthy in many categories. Restaurants and bars reported that spending rose 0.7 percent. Sporting goods and hobby stores saw sales rise a strong 1.1 percent. — Associated Press WALL STREET Chewy soars during market debut PetSmart-controlled Chewy Inc. surged in its first day of trading after raising $1.02 billion in an initial public offering, as investors bet that pet owners will do more of their shopping online for items from cat food to dog sweaters. Chewy’s shares rose as much as 88 percent in the first hour of trading Friday from the $22 offer price. Shares opened at $36 and were up 59 percent to close at $34.99. PetSmart acquired Chewy in 2017, paying about $3 billion for the company. — Bloomberg News AUTO INDUSTRY VW workers in Tenn. vote against union Workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., have voted against forming a union. A win would have offered the United Auto Workers its first fully organized, foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the traditionally anti-union South. The vote of hourly workers began Wednesday and concluded Friday. The German automaker said Friday night that preliminary results show employees voted against representation 833 to 776. Gov. Bill Lee, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and other top Republicans urged a “no” vote. In 2014, then-U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and then-Gov. Bill Haslam helped workers in the plant to vote against UAW representation. UAW officials questioned why Chattanooga should differ from Volkswagen’s other major, union-represented plants worldwide, or the


U.S. immigration authorities fear mumps outbreak in crowded detention facilities

An outbreak of the mumps virus in the U.S. government’s crowded immigration detention facilities is adding a new strain to a system that the secretary of homeland security warned months ago had reached its “breaking point.” Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Homeland Security agency responsible for the long-term detention and deportation of people who are in the country illegally, said Friday that they have quarantined 5,200 migrants at 39 detention facilities across the country, most after exposure to mumps. The agency said it has confirmed 334 mumps cases since September. Mumps is considered a highly contagious but not life-threatening disease. The quarantines, which were first reported by CNN, come as the Trump administration has struggled to manage an ongoing influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigration authorities have apprehended nearly 600,000 people since October. ICE agents have apprehended another 34,500 people in the interior of the United States, according to official government statistics. The agency says it is currently holding about 52,560 people in detention facilities across the country, 5,000 more than it forecast in its 2019 budget. Nathalie Asher, the executive associate director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said that the need for quarantines to prevent the spread of infection will result in lengthier detention times, and compound backlogs across the system. Asher blamed the influx of migrants — most of whom are families and children — at the southwest border as a “significant” factor in the mumps outbreak. “With 75% of our current detention population coming to us directly from the border, the fact that we’re seeing mumps in nearly 40 facilities across the country and recent outbreaks of mumps in Central America, the preponderance of evidence points to the major influx at our Southwest border being, at minimum, a significant contributing factor of these occurrences,” Asher said in a statement. Another ICE official said news reports of mumps outbreaks in Honduras starting in late 2018 and the occurrence of mumps in dozens of ICE facilities also supported that assessment. There were no confirmed reports of mumps among ICE detainees before 2018, the official said. Mumps outbreaks in the United States are rare. The virus is largely preventable through the same widely used vaccine that protects against measles and rubella. However, health officials have warned in recent months that declining vaccination rates in the United States have spawned measles outbreaks in cities across


Natural wine is the buzziest and least understood style of wine. Here’s where and how to try it.

the Loire Valley. Often called the garden (or jardin) of France, the valley is home to many grape varietals, such as cabernet franc, sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc, Muscadet and others. Come in for one — or more — 2½ -ounce pour (slightly more than a quarter cup), to get a good introduction to the list. But don’t stop there: if you’re looking for a menu with less rotation, the meticulously assembled one-page core list has you covered. Wines include a ruby-hued hondarrabi beltza, a dark-skinned grape believed to be descended from cabernet franc and grown only in the Basque region of Spain. 1336 Ninth St. NW. Primrose The Brookland bistro offers a compact selection of natural wines from France, as well as Maryland and Virginia, where co-owner Sebastian Zutant makes his own wines under the Lightwell Survey label. Zutant describes Primrose’s stance on wine not as 100 percent natural, but “natural-adjacent,” explaining that climate conditions in Maryland and Virginia necessitate the use of some fertilizer (making the wine less than wholly natural, according to purists). With the restaurant’s French focus, you can expect to find bottles from that country’s best-known wine regions — the Loire and Rhône valleys, for example — as well as more obscure areas, such as Côtes Catalanes and Ardèche. Don’t overlook the food, as the wines Zutant selects marry well with the menu’s offerings, from steak tartare to a roasted chicken that’s gaining its own cult following. 3000 12th St. NE. Tail Up Goat On its tight yet eclectic — and natural-leaning — drinks menu, sprinkled with such cheeky names as “Stop Trying to Make Champagne Happen,” the Michelin-starred Tail Up Goat strives to spotlight smaller winemakers, according to co-owner and beverage director Bill Jensen. Focusing on three distinct wine regions — Mediterranean islands, Old World river valleys and the Eastern Seaboard — the playful list actually has a great selection of natural wines, although it may not specifically call them such. It also spotlights wines made with minimal intervention, from grapes that are, according to Jensen, consciously and sustainably produced. At my last dinner there, I was lucky enough to enjoy a trio of orange wines: one from Georgia, one from France and one from Greece. 1827 Adams Mill Rd. NW. 2 Amys A favorite with chefs, the pizza place 2 Amys is famous for its Neapolitan pie, as well as things that go with


Skateboarders wonder whether the Olympics will change sport’s renegade image

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The action can be dizzying — young athletes flying through the air, spinning, grinding, ripping — so it’s no wonder the crowd’s oohs and ahhs could be heard echoing over the nearby beach as the world’s best skateboarders began jockeying for position. The rebellious street sport is headed to the 2020 Olympics, and this weekend’s Dew Tour stop is the first qualifying event in the United States. But even as some 370 athletes from 45 countries try to make their case by sliding on rails and launching themselves skyward, an existential dilemma looms in the background: Is skateboarding about to flip the Summer Olympics end over end? Or will the Olympic rings change a sport that was born in the streets, that grew up on sidewalks, parking lots and urban settings, and that thrived as a counterculture activity that proudly bucked authority and detested conformity? Skateboarding is a culture, a lifestyle and a big business, already mainstream in so many ways. The International Olympic Committee, desperate for a younger audience, saw an opportunity to inject something fresh into its summer lineup, a decision that was embraced by some skaters but cursed by others. What they mostly agree on: Good or bad, the new platform could bring big changes to the sport. “Honestly, I think skateboarding would be just fine if it wasn’t in the Olympics,” said 29-year-old American Ryan Sheckler, a Tokyo hopeful and one of the sport’s most accomplished skaters. “But now it’s here, and I think it can open the eyes to a whole new generation. People are going to see it’s not something to be frowned upon. It’s not a crime. It’s in the Olympics now. It’s like super official.” When the news became public in August 2016, it spread quickly through the skateboarding community. Brighton Zeuner, just 14, is one of the sport’s brightest young stars, already discussed as a podium favorite in Tokyo. She recalls first receiving word via Tony Hawk’s Instagram account. “I remember thinking: ‘Okay, that’s pretty cool. The Olympics — I guess that’s what I want to do now,’ ” said the Californian, who was named to the inaugural U.S. team in March. Others weren’t as sold. Consider what Tony Alva, the skateboarding legend and one of the original members of the Z-Boys competition team, told the culture site Highsnobiety: “Skateboarding as a creative art form needs to