U.S. trade negotiators want to end China’s forced tech transfers. That could backfire.

rule in this sector. Analysts anticipate that most foreign auto companies will soon become wholly foreign-owned companies. In fact, Tesla’s first plant in China is already wholly owned. China’s JV partners, who have long hidden behind the foreign brands, have yet to face the market test of their own technological worth. 2. And China’s semiconductor industry lags behind The experience in the semiconductor industry has been similar. The Chinese government invested heavily in the 1980s and 1990s in state-owned companies and established several joint ventures with European, Canadian and Japanese firms. Most of the joint ventures collapsed — with the exception of the 1991 Huahong partnership with Japanese firm NEC. In 1995, Beijing launched “Project 909,” based on the Huahong-NEC joint venture. But Huahong was not able to shake off its dependence on NEC technology for over a decade. Only after 2001, when China turned to expertise from Taiwan and elsewhere, did the performance of Chinese domestic semiconductor firms improve. Even so, China still lags behind industrial leaders in the United States, South Korea and Taiwan. China telecom giant ZTE nearly collapsed last year when the U.S. government threatened to cut off its supply of American-made semiconductors. The fundamental problem of the Trade-Technology-for-Market program is that it encourages Chinese partners to rely heavily on importing technology – rather than developing technology through their own research efforts. With foreign partners required to transfer the technology, why make the costly and risky effort to build up internal R&D capacity? But the rapid pace of global innovation means even state-of-the-art technology transfers would become obsolete within a few years, leaving the Chinese partner in a perpetual state of dependency. In short, China’s past experiences showed that joint ventures with foreign enterprises proved no shortcut to technology leadership, but likely created entrenched dependency by Chinese partners. In fact, some Chinese critics charged that this technology-transfer approach led to worse indigenous technological accomplishments than “self-reliance” policies during the Mao era. Since 2006, the Chinese government has shifted attention from foreign technological transfer to domestic R&D. 3. The real forces behind China’s technological innovation Our book The best bottom-up case is cellphone manufacturing — where China’s domestic firms are building affordable and innovative phones. While the phones utilize core parts or platform from Qualcomm and Google, they are Chinese designed and incorporate market-leading features. In this industry, an innovation ecosystem created by the comprehensive global supply


States, South Korea and Taiwan. China telecom giant ZTE nearly collapsed last year when the U.S. government threatened to cut off its supply of American-made semiconductors. The fundamental problem of the Trade-Technology-for-Market program is that it encourages Chinese partners to rely heavily on importing technology – rather than developing technology through their own research efforts. With foreign partners required to transfer the technology, why make the costly and risky effort to build up internal R&D capacity? But the rapid pace of global innovation means even state-of-the-art technology transfers would become obsolete within a few years, leaving the Chinese partner in a perpetual state of dependency. In short, China’s past experiences showed that joint ventures with foreign enterprises proved no shortcut to technology leadership, but likely created entrenched dependency by Chinese partners. In fact, some Chinese critics charged that this technology-transfer approach led to worse indigenous technological accomplishments than “self-reliance” policies during the Mao era. Since 2006, the Chinese government has shifted attention from foreign technological transfer to domestic R&D. 3. The real forces behind China’s technological innovation Our book The best bottom-up case is cellphone manufacturing — where China’s domestic firms are building affordable and innovative phones. While the phones utilize core parts or platform from Qualcomm and Google, they are Chinese designed and incorporate market-leading features. In this industry, an innovation ecosystem created by the comprehensive global supply chain for hardware, a rapidly expanding universe of phone apps by companies such as Tencent, and the vast and dynamic domestic market provides a powerful synergy to nurture and implement new ideas and features in China’s market — creating diverging paths from foreign phone manufacturers. Critics of Made in China 2025 see Chinese state support as the determining factor for Chinese technological progress. The cellphone industry shows the power of market forces. China’s state policy on forced technology transfers, ironically, produced dependency and lags in technology development for Chinese joint-venture partners, which is why China has now signaled a move to pursue a more autonomous technological path. The growing call in the United States to reduce or even block China’s access to U.S. technology, however, would likely backfire. Doing so is likely to encourage China to double down on this decision — choosing a technological path that is incompatible with products of U.S. tech companies. And that may mean fewer market prospects for U.S. companies in the long run. Yu Zhou


Howard Schultz could effectively wind up as Donald Trump’s running mate

spending $100 million on a candidacy but could go far higher. Schultz might not be able to match that, but he could still have an impact. On who? On voters who fear Trump only less than they do flesh-eating bacteria but do not find the current crop of left-leaning Democrats to their liking. Schultz is an old-fashioned liberal who ran Starbucks in an exemplary fashion with good benefits. At the same time, he is fiscally prudent. Like the late financier Peter Peterson, Schultz insists that someone has to pay for all the programs that Democrats are proposing, such as free college and free health care. Lamentably, he’s right. Normally, independent presidential candidates go from feature stories to asterisks overnight. The one who did best, Ross Perot, yet another billionaire with a presidential bee in his bonnet, got 19 percent of the vote in 1992 but wound up with exactly zero votes in the electoral college. 2020 could be different. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by winning about 78,000 votes in just three states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. He won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes . Politics has become a variety of chaos theory. Just as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings off Hong Kong could theoretically set off a hurricane in Hawaii, so could the introduction of a candidacy such as Schultz’s produce an outcome that causes more damage than any mere tropical cyclone: a second term of Trump. All it takes is a county or two — butterflies that could change everything. Schultz knows the stakes and he knows, too, that he is anathema to Democrats. (Neera Tanden, an influential Democratic activist, tweeted that she was so mad , she was willing to forgo the occasional macchiato: “If he enters the race, I will start a Starbucks boycott because I’m not giving a penny that will end up in the election coffers of a guy who will help Trump win.”) Such naysaying is not likely to matter to Schultz because the difference between the average person and the self-made billionaire is that, at a critical moment, he ignored the braying of the herd and listened to his gut. Schultz did that when he took a risk and left Starbucks to form his own coffeehouse operation after his employers had turned down an idea. Two years later, he bought Starbucks and


Treasury lifts sanctions on companies tied to Putin ally

stake in En+ Group, together with that of his ex-wife, ex-father-in-law and a foundation Deripaska launched years ago will still amount to over 50 percent of the shares. A Russian state-owned bank included on a U.S. sanctions list during the Obama administration will also gain a 14 percent stake in En+ as part of Treasury’s plan to reduce Deripaska’s holdings, a move some members of Congress decried. VTB Bank had previously held the shares as collateral against a loan it made to Deripaska’s empire. Congressional Democrats narrowly failed to pass a measure that would have stopped Treasury from lifting the sanctions, despite attracting the support of many Republicans, in a rare GOP split with the White House. The measure passed in the House, drawing support from 136 Republicans in a significant rebuke to the Trump administration. But the measure fell a few votes shy in the Senate. “The Trump Administration is working seven days a week with favoritism for Russia. This represents just one more step in undermining the sanctions law, which President Trump has obstructed at every opportunity, while Russian aggression remains unabated.” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) said in a statement Sunday, referring to the agreement as a “sordid deal.” Some Democrats said they were wary about relaxing sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, in part because of his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to defraud the United States and obstruct justice in the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Deripaska helped fund consulting work Manafort did for a Ukrainian political party, invested in a Manafort investment fund and lent Manafort millions of dollars, according to court records. When they were imposed last year, the company sanctions caused gyrations in global aluminum prices, sparking criticism from European allies, who have pushed Treasury to lift them. En+ Group’s British chairman has argued that Deripaska’s control is severed by the deal because the agreement limits his voting rights in En+ to 35 percent. The deal also transfers the voting rights of the shares held by Deripaska’s ex-wife, ex-father-in-law and foundation, and the 14 percent stake held by VTB Bank, to third-party trustees with “no personal or professional ties to Deripaska,” according to Treasury and En+ Group. The agreement also mandated a new slate of Treasury-approved board members for En+ Group, whose names the company released Sunday. Several are American or British.


Shutdown cost Washington region more than $1.6 billion and damaged its image

by the shutdown include low-paid maintenance, food service and retail workers on contracts in federal buildings that were closed. The restaurant industry said average sales dropped 20 percent, with some establishments down 60 percent. Restaurant operators “have had to reduce hours, cut staff [and] temporarily reduce the days they are open,” said Kathy E. Hollinger, president and chief executive of Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. “Businesses will have a long struggle to make up the revenue they expected to earn in January.” Some firms harmed in the shutdown were beneficiaries of programs that give preferential treatment in doling out federal contracts to small businesses, and especially to ones owned by veterans, women, minorities, or located in historically depressed areas. Advanced Management Strategies Group in Dumfries, Va., led by two service-disabled military veterans, suffered from suspension of a Federal Trade Commission contract. “The impact to our financials is in the tens of thousands of dollars,” President Jim O’Farrell said. O’Farrell’s company, half of whose employees are veterans, advises federal agencies on how to operate more efficiently. Elise M. Ambrose, president of Elite Personnel, a temp agency in Bethesda, Md., said the shutdown ended just in time. “In a couple more weeks, we would have gone over a cliff,” Ambrose said. Her business dropped 20 percent last week, she said, as local businesses stopped hiring temp workers because of concern over the shutdown. “When businesses gets nervous, the first thing they do is stop hiring,” she said. The shutdown delivered a one-two punch to local governments, who saw tax revenue drop and demand for social services rise. The office of D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey S. DeWitt estimated the total loss of sales tax and fee revenue at $39 million through Friday. The philanthropic community treated the shutdown as a major local crisis and revived emergency assistance programs for unpaid workers that it originally set up in the 2013 shutdown. United Way of the National Capital Area provided $50,000 to local charities to cope with increased demand, a figure matched by $50,000 from Pepco and $10,000 from Bank of America. United Way NCA President Rosie Allen-Herring said the shutdown turned out to be more injurious than initially anticipated, as it dragged on and people outside the federal workforce were affected. “The impact cannot be overstated,” Allen-Herring said. She said people in the area may be less willing to donate to charity as a


How the shutdown ended: Americans just had it up to here

“It’s obviously annoying when you have to wait in line for a long time, but what’s more concerning is whether the planes are being properly checked,” she said. Although she had been talking about the shutdown with friends and family for weeks, this was the first time she felt directly affected. “I’m affected because it’s annoying and it’s a nuisance to me, but for these federal workers, they’re not being paid, even when they’re coming in to work,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.” “Do we have your attention, Congress?” the Association of Flight Attendants said in a statement early Friday that warned that air safety workers were “fatigued, worried and distracted. . . . Our country’s entire economy is on the line.” Democrats and Republicans alike felt public opinion shifting. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Friday that the airport trouble “ratchets up pressure tremendously.” And Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) sensed that the effects of the shutdown “have become very real and very personal for a lot of people who aren’t getting paid, and it obviously has a lot of impacts on ATC and TSA and a lot of other pretty important functions and agencies right now.” The initials stand for air traffic controllers and the Transportation Security Administration. In the end, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, the public’s mounting worry about the shutdown’s economic impact moved politicians off their hard stances. “With public sentiment, you can accomplish anything,” she said. For the president, backing down from his vow not to reopen the government without a down payment of $5.7 billion on the wall he wanted to fulfill a signature 2016 campaign promise was both a convenient distraction and a dangerous retreat. Settling the shutdown crisis provided Trump with a chance to deliver one of his trademark preemptions of bad publicity. His Rose Garden appearance instantly changed the national conversation away from the arrest Friday morning of his longtime adviser, Roger Stone, on charges that Stone lied to Congress about his role in the effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. On cable news channels, a seven-hour-long marathon of coverage of the indictment of one of Trump’s most loyal associates ended, replaced by live video of the president’s lectern. It was another assertion of the president’s ability to change the subject and monopolize the nation’s attention. But Trump also was bitterly attacked for agreeing to end the shutdown without gaining


FAA delays flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, citing staffing shortages amid government shutdown

NEW YORK — There had been signs for weeks: a growing number of TSA officers weren’t showing up for work. Elected officials and union leaders warned the prolonged government shutdown was bad for the safety and efficiency of the nation’s aviation system. On Friday, those warnings played out with astonishing speed after the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was restricting flights into and out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport because there weren’t enough air traffic controllers to manage them safely. Within hours, the White House weighed in. “We are in regular contact with officials at the Department of Transportation and the FAA,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. It was only one airport, but the impact rippled through the system. At one point, arrivals at LaGuardia were delayed for an average of nearly two hours; for departures, it was nearly an hour. Delays also were reported at airports in Newark, Philadelphia and Atlanta. The FAA’s action was the first time staffing shortages hit air traffic control centers during the shutdown. The TSA had struggled to keep security checkpoints operating amid a growing number of callouts, but while those shortages increased wait times at some airports, they didn’t affect planes once in the air. Friday’s staffing shortages affected centers in the Washington area and Jacksonville, Fla., that manage air traffic above 33,000 feet, including the airspace around New York and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, the world’s busiest airport. An estimated 800,000 federal employees had been furloughed or working without pay. That includes TSA officers and air traffic controllers, who normally would have been paid Friday. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said Friday’s worker absences were not part of any coordinated effort. “NATCA does not condone or endorse any federal employees participating in or endorsing a coordinated activity that negatively effects the capacity of the National Airspace System or other activities that undermine the professional image and reputation of the men and women we represent,” NATCA President Paul Rinaldi said in a statement. “Nothing else matters except safety.” At LaGuardia, travelers stared grim-faced at airport information boards, which listed dozens of flight delays. Kevin Maldonado, 28, flew into LaGuardia from Orlando on Friday and missed the delays, but was stuck at the airport waiting for a friend, whose arrival from Georgia was delayed three hours. “I think it’s unfair,” he said, referring to airport workers who weren’t being paid. His best friend


‘Unacceptable’: Coast Guard’s top officer criticizes lack of payment in government shutdown

women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as service members,” he said, speaking on a video posted to his Twitter account. The comments marked the admiral’s most forceful remarks about the shutdown since it began 32 days ago amid a dispute over President Trump’s demands for funding for a southern border wall. While the majority of the U.S. military is part of the Defense Department and has funding, the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, including the Coast Guard, are affected by the shutdown. About 41,000 active-duty service members and 2,100 civilians who are considered “essential personnel” are working without a paycheck under the promise they will get back pay when the shutdown is resolved, said Lt. Cmdr. Scott McBride, a service spokesman. That situation grew more urgent Jan. 15, when service members missed a paycheck. An additional 6,000 civilians working for the service are furloughed. Overall, about 800,000 federal workers are not receiving paychecks amid the shutdown, with nearly half furloughed. Schultz, appearing alongside the service’s top enlisted man, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Jason M. Vanderhaden, noted that civilian employees will miss another paycheck Friday and called it a “sobering” situation. Senior Coast Guard officials and the American public, he said, “stand in awe” of the affected service members' “continued dedication to duty and resilience” and that of their families. The admiral, in keeping with the military’s tradition of not commenting directly on politics, did not blame anyone specific for the shutdown. He and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen are making their case for the service on Capitol Hill, Schultz said. The Coast Guard has continued to carry out operations across the globe during the shutdown. On Sunday, the Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf departed from Alameda, Calif., with about 170 people aboard for a deployment to the Pacific that will last up to six months. The Defense Department will reimburse the service for the deployment, but Coast Guard personnel still will not be paid until the shutdown is resolved. “The crew, like all other [Coast Guard] members, are affected by the lapse of appropriations, and are not being paid,” said Lt. Cmdr. Steve Brickey, a service spokesman. “It is always difficult to deploy for months and leave behind family and loved ones. That stress is of course magnified when you add on the uncertainly of the shutdown.”


Pentagon developing plan to scrutinize recruits with green cards and other foreign ties, memos show

The Pentagon, citing terrorism and espionage fears, is developing a plan to scrutinize prospective recruits with foreign ties, including some U.S. citizens, after a related effort targeting thousands of green-card holders was blocked by a federal judge last year. The new policy, still in development, will be distributed to the military services by no later than Feb. 15, according to two Defense Department officials and several department memos obtained by The Washington Post. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. The new vetting is likely to screen thousands of recruits per year who have what the Pentagon considers “foreign nexus” risks, including some Americans who marry a foreign spouse or who have family members with dual citizenship, the memos said. Anyone identified for the screening would not be allowed to attend recruit training until they are cleared, a process that could take days for some but drag on much longer for others. One draft document, labeled “predecisional,” has circulated in recent weeks among senior officials and others who oversee recruiting. It is attributed to Joseph D. Kernan, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and James N. Stewart, who performs the duties of undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, a post President Trump has left without a permanent political appointee since Robert Wilkie left it to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. “One primary concern associated with qualifying for these positions relates to the potential counterintelligence or terrorism risks,” the memo says. " . . . The Department must implement expanded foreign vetting and screening protocols to identify and mitigate the foreign nexus risks.” Defense officials declined to comment on the memos, saying the new policy is undergoing legal reviews and that some changes could be made. The documents show the Pentagon to be grappling with the dual challenge of thoroughly screening prospective recruits for potential security threats and finding enough men and women willing to join the military. The armed forces have long sought green-card holders as recruits, marketing such jobs as a chance to attain U.S. citizenship. The initiative comes as the Trump administration continues to take unprecedented steps to curb immigration to the United States. Many of its efforts have been halted by federal courts, including the president’s efforts to bar Central Americans from seeking asylum in the United States, end a deferred-action program for young, undocumented immigrants and withhold funds


From the A&P to Amazon: The rise of the modern grocery store

The history of grocery stores — from the A&P to Amazon’s surprise purchase of Whole Foods — can be traced back to a common kitchen product: Baking powder. Really. Back in the late 1800s, the proprietors of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company faced a problem. The tea industry they had controlled for decades had become widely available. Prices fell. It appeared Great Atlantic & Pacific would too. The Hartford family, the owners of the company, decided to diversify. They added a controversial product: baking powder. Housewives loved the stuff, which made bread rise faster. Baking powder became so popular that unscrupulous producers, in rushing the product to stores, weren’t exactly delivering the real deal. Also, the prices were high. Listen to this story on “Retropod”: For more forgotten stories from history, listen online or subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | More options The Hartfords decided to make their own baking powder. They even hired a chemist. And then they packaged the powder in red tins, labeling it A&P — leveraging the company name to denote quality. “A&P Baking Powder was an important product in the history of retailing,” Marc Levinson wrote in “The Great A&P,” a history of the company and grocery stores. “With it, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, and many of its competitors, began a transition from being tea merchants to being grocers. It was a transition that would dramatically change Americans’ daily lives.” The branding of baking powder was important because most merchants back then were just essentially selling, as Levinson wrote, “generic products indistinguishable from what was for sale down the street.” And in selling their powder in a tin, the owners were ahead in another important way — packaging. The invention of the cardboard box changed everything. The company could now make, brand and sell its own condensed milk, butter, spices — just about any staple of the kitchen. “By the early 1890s,” Levinson wrote, “Great Atlantic & Pacific was making the shift from tea company to grocery chain.” Its name: A&P. There was difficult, transformative work ahead. The company needed to upend an entire culture of shopping built around neighborhood stores, a history detailed in a fascinating 2015 paper titled, “The Evolution of the Supermarket Industry: From A&P to Walmart,” by Paul B. Ellickson: A&P built big stores, stocking as many products as possible, many made in


a history of the company and grocery stores. “With it, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, and many of its competitors, began a transition from being tea merchants to being grocers. It was a transition that would dramatically change Americans’ daily lives.” The branding of baking powder was important because most merchants back then were just essentially selling, as Levinson wrote, “generic products indistinguishable from what was for sale down the street.” And in selling their powder in a tin, the owners were ahead in another important way — packaging. The invention of the cardboard box changed everything. The company could now make, brand and sell its own condensed milk, butter, spices — just about any staple of the kitchen. “By the early 1890s,” Levinson wrote, “Great Atlantic & Pacific was making the shift from tea company to grocery chain.” Its name: A&P. There was difficult, transformative work ahead. The company needed to upend an entire culture of shopping built around neighborhood stores, a history detailed in a fascinating 2015 paper titled, “The Evolution of the Supermarket Industry: From A&P to Walmart,” by Paul B. Ellickson: A&P built big stores, stocking as many products as possible, many made in their own warehouses. Products were stored in shelves, not behind a counter for an employee to distribute. No credit — cash. Manufacturers liked the model, selling products directly to the company, not through wholesalers. This kept product costs down for A&P, which passed those savings on to shoppers. The company become obsessed with prices. In the early 1900s, its profit was 3 percent of revenue. This was too high. A new profit goal was set: 2.5 percent. “If the company’s profit margin widened,” Levinson wrote, “it would be not a good sign but a bad one, an indication that A&P was forsaking the cost discipline that would lead it to domination of the grocery market.” A&P’s business model began to sound a lot like the one pursued by its retail descendants — Walmart and Amazon — though it would later fall prey to mismanagement and two bankruptcies that shuttered hundreds of stores. “Their basic strategy was so extraordinarily simple it could be captured in a single word: volume,” Levinson wrote. “If the company kept its costs down and its prices low, more shoppers would come through its doors, producing more profit than if it kept prices high.” Amazon’s tea was


Memo to Republicans: ‘Trump first’ is not the same thing as ‘America first’

Rusal and two other companies owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska — a one-time employer of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a close confederate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska remains personally sanctioned, but, after an intensive lobbying campaign by Deripaska’s companies, the Treasury Department struck a deal to lift sanctions on them in return for a reduction of his ownership stake to below 50 percent. The justification for this move was the impact on the global economy if sanctions were imposed on the world’s second-largest aluminum manufacturer, but there are other ways to keep aluminum prices from spiking. Trump, for instance, could lift his destructive steel and aluminum tariffs. Instead, the Treasury struck what appears to be a sweetheart deal with Deripaska. The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the confidential agreement, reported that it “may have been less punitive than advertised,” because “the deal contains provisions that free [Deripaska] from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company.” A former Treasury official who was not involved in the case told me that it was “shocking” that the U.S. government would approve such an agreement, because it “does not follow the spirit of the legislation or stated policy objectives and sets an incredibly bad precedent for weak enforcement.” It was entirely appropriate that 136 House Republicans joined with Democrats to override this flawed deal. But in the Senate, the bill fell three votes shy of the 60 needed, because supposed hawks such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), in addition to Graham, failed to support it. Even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — who in 2012 described Russia as “our No. 1 geopolitical foe” and in 2016 called Trump a “con man” who was unfit to be president — refused, in the crunch, to vote against said con man and said geopolitical foe. With sanctions now lifted, shares in Deripaska’s companies have shot up, handing the oligarch and his friends at the Kremlin a nice windfall. This is not putting America First. This is putting Trump First, and it has become an unfortunate habit that congressional Republicans need to break. The only thing they have to fear is fear of Trump itself — what President Franklin Roosevelt aptly described, in another context, as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”


Donald Trump’s ‘trans ban’ reverses more than 70 years of military integration

Unit cohesion. Readiness. Lethality. Efficiency. President Trump is not the first person to use such words to rationalize discrimination and oppose military integration. Yet by reversing former president Barack Obama’s opening of the armed services to transgender personnel, Trump stands alone as the first president to overturn the integration of a minority group into the military. This action, and Trump’s justification of it, make it abundantly clear, however, that this is not simply a military decision. It is direct attack on a minority group’s civil rights. We don’t often think of the military as a progressive institution, but defense policymakers have historically opened the armed services to minorities in response to practical needs for personnel. In the cases of African Americans, women and gay people, the opportunities to serve openly and in integrated units have paralleled, if not preceded, moves for equality in the civilian world. In those ways, the military has contributed, sometimes unintentionally, to the expansion of civil rights, even if that was not the intention of the opening of the services to minorities. Trump and his allies are using the military to do the opposite. But Trump’s approach relies on outdated ideas that have advanced discrimination in society at large and been proven to undermine military efficiency, readiness or cohesion. On December 1, 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall wrote in a memo about his concern that the integration of African Americans into the military “was fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale.” He echoed a worry that the Adjutant General’s Office had asserted in 1940: that racial integration of the military would harm morale and military preparedness. Congressional opponents of integration used similar language, arguing that forcing black and white troops to fight side by side would damage morale, efficiency and unit cohesion. Fifty years later, opponents of women’s military service, especially women in combat, appealed to the same concerns about morale, efficiency and cohesion to make the case against expanded military opportunities for women. A 1992 report from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces concluded that women should not only be prohibited from serving in combat but should also be limited even further in the armed forces, because they would undermine “unit cohesion” due to the “lack of privacy on the battlefield,” “traditional Western values” and “sexual misconduct.” One member of the commission, Elaine Donnelly, went


Atop Mount Rainier, digging out from the government shutdown means epic snow plowing

for conservation and ecology projects, trail maintenance, and campground staffing. But much of the onboarding for those workers — interviews, reference and background checks — takes place during the time when the government was closed, said Jim Ziolkowski, the roads and trails foreman, who began working at the park 35 years ago as a summer intern. There is uncertainty around some of the partnerships with conservation, youth and other organizations that provide some summer crews. And as the park plays catch-up, he fears that those groups and individuals might settle on other opportunities that seem more certain. In other words, agreed Deputy Superintendent Tracy Swartout, “we don’t yet know what the impact is going to be on our ability to recruit and attract candidates for the kinds of jobs we would normally fill.” How quickly the route to Paradise will be reopened to the public depends on the condition of the parking lot once the snow has been pushed aside. Ice will also have to be removed from parts of the road to the top, a twisty, winding, miles-long route. With the daytime sunshine and nighttime temperatures, the ice will be back every morning. Between the plows and the rotaries, crews are scooping the snow off the roadway and onto snow banks, where a snow cat then pushes it around. “We are taking care of everything we should have been doing along the way,” Ziolkowski said. “Snow poles get bent, the banks get high.” Equally important are the more mundane projects, he added: getting public bathrooms ready for use, for instance. Monitoring for avalanches on the mountain is ongoing. Two miles west of the park entrance, Megan Jansen and other employees at Copper Creek Inn in the tiny town of Ashford keep an eye on webcam images at Paradise. Their restaurant, suites and cabins live and die by the mountain. The shutdown cost them 50 percent of their business in a month when business is traditionally slowest, Jansen said. Copper Creek kept its staff of about 17 employees — including four husband-and-wife teams — on the job in January despite the park’s closure and continued to pay them despite the lack of customers. Everyone is anxious for them to return, but that will take time, even after the park opens up. Valentine’s Day is usually a popular time for cabin rentals, Jansen said. “Right now we have no reservations.” national@washpost.com


One possible consequence of no-deal Brexit: Fresh-food shortages and higher prices

plenty of new shortages. KFC, McDonald’s and Pret a Manger, along with a number of major British supermarkets, signed a letter sent to British lawmakers this week warning about the risk to Britain’s food supplies if the country leaves the European Union on March 29 without having reached a deal on withdrawal terms. The companies wrote that nearly a third of food consumed in Britain comes from elsewhere in the E.U. In March, when produce is out of season in Britain, “90 percent of our lettuces, 80 percent of our tomatoes and 70 percent of our soft fruit is sourced from the EU,” the letter read. The companies also warned that stockpiling can only help to a certain degree, since “all frozen and chilled storage is already being used and there is very little general warehousing space available.” And fresh food, of course, is hard to stockpile at all. Grocery stores would probably become empty and prices for goods could soar. “We are extremely concerned that our customers will be among the first to experience the realities of a no deal Brexit,” the letter said. The British government has played down concerns over such shortages. A spokesman for the government told CNN this week that Britain has a “high level of food security built upon a diverse range of sources including strong domestic production and imports.” But the fear among some Brits is real: Some have been aggressively stockpiling supplies, from dry food and water to toilet paper and wine. There are even food kits for sale intended to last for 30 days. Others are skeptical that there would be any disruptions at all. One man interviewed by BBC News this week said it was “purely scaremongering.” He then suggested that if Britain did run out of food, it would “do the country good.” “Make them appreciate what they’ve had,” the bespectacled man said. That declaration got quite a response on British social media. “Going without food will make us appreciate what we had. Which, to be clear, was food,” one Twitter user wrote. “It’s scary to think these folk walk among us,” said another. Read more: Order! Order! The sharp-tongued speaker of the House of Commons is changing the rules — and maybe Brexit. The Dutch love to plan, but even they might not be able to avoid a no-deal Brexit What is Brexit? Theresa May’s big defeat, explained.


Parliament asserts that Britain shouldn’t leave E.U. without a deal, sends Theresa May back to Brussels

Jeremy Corbyn agreed to meet with May to discuss how to achieve Brexit. Corbyn had resisted earlier because he wanted the no-deal option first removed from the table. “It is now clear there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this house for leaving the E.U. with a deal,” May said in the House chamber. “We will now take this mandate forward and seek to obtain legally binding changes.” As May prepares to pack her bags for Brussels, she faces deeply skeptical European leaders, who have grown weary with her delays and her inability to win approval for the deal they negotiated with her. That deal suffered a humiliating defeat in Parliament two weeks ago. A spokesman for European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday that the withdrawal agreement was “not open for renegotiation.” The deal painstakingly negotiated between the E.U. and May “is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” Tusk’s spokesman said. The Europeans seem in no mood to grant May what she needs to pass a deal, which is a new way for Britain to guarantee that whatever else Brexit yields, it will not mean a return of a hard border — with checkpoints, passport controls and customs inspections — between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The “backstop” provision negotiated with the E.U. — and rejected by Parliament — locks Britain into a European customs regime unless a free-trade deal obviates the need. May said she would seek “alternative arrangements” to keep the Irish border open and to free Britain from a restrictive European customs regime. But to the frustration of many lawmakers, May and her ministers refused to say what these arrangements might be. Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle told Parliament that there was still “puzzlement” after listening to the prime minister for more than an hour. “We are still no nearer any detail on what the phrase ‘alternative arrangements’ [might] mean, except that the prime minister said that they were ‘arrangements’ that were ‘alternative.’ ” Northern Irish politician Sylvia Hermann agreed. “The prime minister is trying to encourage this house to vote for an amendment which uses the words ‘alternative arrangements’ to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland,” she said. “Forgive me, prime minister, if I say those words are nebulous.” Even after


The shutdown is over — for now. Here’s a financial plan to get workers back on track.

who won’t receive back pay. With many of them already living paycheck to paycheck, these workers will find it hard to recover. If they were contributing to a retirement plan through their employer, their contributions probably stopped with the shutdown. And they aren’t likely to make catch-up contributions. Most troubling is that there’s still a threat of another shutdown in a few weeks. Congress passed only a stopgap funding measure that lasts through Feb. 15 for the affected agencies. Whether you’re a federal employee or contractor impacted by the shutdown or you’re back at work after being laid off or unemployed for another reason, here’s some advice for recovering from missed paychecks. Keep that forbearance in place. If your lender gave you a reprieve on your loan payment for February and even March, don’t rush to end the forbearance if you’re still struggling to cover other expenses. Don’t splurge. Don’t immediately restart your aggressive debt-reduction plan. Keep making the minimum payments Keep your side hustle -- or find one. If you found a job during the shutdown that did not conflict with any ethical rules and you can still do it part time, don’t give it up. Work the job until you’ve accumulated at least three months of living expenses. Whoever you work for, aim to figure out a way to have multiple streams of income. Keep living like you’re in a shutdown situation. Finally, commit to having an emergency fund. I often had government workers -- mostly federal -- argue with me about their need to have an emergency fund. They saw their employment -- barring some malfeasance of their own doing -- as super secure. The people who frustrated me the most were those who earned enough to have an emergency fund but instead lived paycheck to paycheck. They saw no urgency in making sure they had even one month of living expenses saved, pointing to the likelihood they would get retroactive pay in the event funding for their agency lapsed. After a 35-day shutdown, how are you feeling about that paycheck security now? Read more: You have an emergency fund. But where to keep the money until you need it? Not getting paid because of shutdown? Lender forebearance can save your credit score. Affected by the shutdown? Give your bank a call to see if it can help. Here’s one way to stop living paycheck to paycheck


Federal employees return to backlog of work after 35-day shutdown

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees returned Monday to their offices after more than a month away, slogging through long to-do lists as they worried that they could end up furloughed again in February if Congress and President Trump can’t reach a border deal. Across the country, federal employees worked to get the government back up to speed. In airports, security lines were moving faster after five weeks of extended absences sidelined 10 percent of the nation’s baggage screeners. National Park Service rangers assessed the damage from winter weather. The Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo prepared to reopen Tuesday. The shutdown cost the American economy about $3 billion, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Monday. As they returned to work, employees were concerned that they might not receive back pay for several weeks. On Capitol Hill, congressional leaders announced that a joint House-Senate committee would meet Wednesday to try to reach a compromise on border security by Feb. 15, when the temporary funding bill that reopened the government late Friday expires. Trump wants $5.7 billion to build a border wall with Mexico that Democrats have rebuffed. Democrats also urged the Trump administration to quickly issue back pay to more than 800,000 workers and pledged to help compensate tens of thousands of federal contractors who lost pay and, for some, health insurance. Trump over the weekend left open the possibility of another shutdown. But White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday that the president doesn’t want the government to close again. “That’s not the goal,” she said. “The goal is border security and protecting the American people. . . . Ideally, Democrats would take these next three weeks to negotiate in good faith.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement: “Families across the nation are still trying to recover from a month of missing paychecks and overdue bills, but the President is already threatening a second shutdown if he doesn’t get his way. “When the Congress completes its bipartisan, bicameral work to fund government, the President should swiftly sign that legislation to avert another shutdown and restore certainty to our economy and the lives of the American people.” As large segments of the government restarted after 35 days of inactivity, returning employees hugged colleagues, jettisoned sour milk from refrigerators, shared furlough stories and changed computer passwords. The tech support team at the Department of Housing and Urban Development


Brexit: Theresa May and Parliament fight for control

after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future,” Enders said. His remarks came as the company that assembles Jaguars and Land Rovers, Britain’s biggest carmaker, said it would extend its annual spring assembly-line stoppage for an extra week because of Brexit uncertainties. Facing such dour warnings from British business, May will probably try to persuade Parliament to allow her to return to Brussels one more time to try to strike a better deal. In a briefing with reporters on Monday at 10 Downing Street, May’s official spokesman, who goes unnamed according to protocol, said that the prime minister wants two more weeks to try to change the withdrawal agreement she spent two years negotiating in Brussels. Another vote on her new and improved Brexit deal, if she can strike one, would be held Feb. 14. The most contentious section of the failed agreement involves the legally binding guarantee, the “backstop,” which is designed to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland — essentially between the United Kingdom and the E.U. — after Brexit. The Irish border backstop requires Britain to remain closely aligned with E.U. rules and customs arrangements if it is unable in the future to agree a new free-trade deal with the bloc. Critics say the provision could trap Britain in the E.U. forever. Boris Johnson, a leading Brexiteer and former foreign secretary who has previously argued that Britain should have the courage to leave with no deal, now appears to be tacking. If May were able to secure a “freedom clause” from Brussels that would make the backstop time-limited or allow Britain to leave on its own, without permission from the E.U., she would win the “full-throated” approval of the entire nation, Johnson wrote in his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph. This won’t be easy. As reporters were being briefed at 10 Downing, Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission spokesman, told journalists in Brussels that the withdrawal agreement now on the table has the unanimous backing of the leaders of the 27 nations remaining in the European Union. “It is endorsed by leaders and is not open for renegotiation,” Schinas said. European Commission Vice President Jyrki Kateinen said it would be “a stupid thing” for the E.U. to make further concessions that would put the remaining 27 members at a disadvantage, Britain’s Press Association reported. william.booth@washpost.com


Meteorites, a dead cockroach, and 250 unread emails: What greeted Smithsonian workers after the shutdown

For the first time in a month, the alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., and Angela Roberts Reeder rose to go to work. She dressed in the pre-dawn gloom, boiled water for tea, fed the cats so their cries wouldn’t wake her still-sleeping husband. She checked her email — 250 unread messages — and groaned. She put on earrings and applied a smear of lipstick; a little something extra for a day when she might need it. “Here we go,” she said, steeling herself for the commute that for so long had been routine: a 45-minute drive from her Baltimore home to the Greenbelt Metro station, another 45 minutes on the Green Line to downtown D.C., a walk along Constitution Avenue and up the steps of the National Museum of Natural History, where Roberts Reeder is an exhibits writer and editor. The 25 days she’d been furloughed had been listless and lonely, full of frustration about the news and worry about making her mortgage payment. Now she and 800,000 fellow federal employees were finally headed back to their jobs. But what would they find when they arrived? At the Natural History Museum, staff showed up Monday to confront bloated trash cans and blown deadlines. A dead cockroach on an office floor. Exhibits that would need to be revised, meetings that would need to be rescheduled, experiments that would need to be replanned. They returned to their offices demoralized yet determined, relieved to be back at work and anxious about what would happen when this stopgap spending measure runs out. “It’ll be a relief to get a paycheck,” Roberts Reeder said. “But in three weeks, it might all happen again.” It had been surprisingly hard, not being able to do her job. Not being able to talk with her colleagues or stand in the corner of an exhibit and watch visitors respond to the words she had written. Those things are what drew her to the Smithsonian in the first place, what convinced her to keep commuting an hour and a half each way from the city where her husband works, the only place where the couple could afford a house of their own. During the shutdown, Roberts Reeder said, “I really struggled with feeling like the work we do was devalued.” But as she approached the museum Monday, she smiled at its impressive granite facade. “It’s still kind of. .


For students, a semester of promise becomes a month of frustration

Ryan Shorrow was supposed to be working in a nice, heated office this month. Instead, he is braving chilly temperatures and picking up trash along the Klamath River in Northern California. His plans changed when the government partially shut down. Shorrow, 26, was set to intern with the U.S. Forest Service in California, which closed during the shutdown. But Shorrow’s program, coordinated by the California Conservation Corps, still requires him to work a set number of hours each week to get paid by the Corps — so he has been picking up trash, working remotely in community centers and coffee shops and coordinating projects with his furloughed boss. “Everything about the shutdown is so irregular,” said Shorrow, who assumes that in light of the end of the shutdown Friday, everyone will return to the office Monday. He had not received an update as of Friday night. Shorrow is one of hundreds of interns throughout the country affected by the partial government shutdown. Even as the government reopened, interns with federal agencies and federally funded organizations remained in a strange limbo. Some, like Shorrow, have been expected to work through the shutdown, despite furloughs and lapses in federal funding. Many are still unable to work at all, anxiously awaiting emails from their furloughed bosses and scrambling to find backup plans. Hordes of students from local colleges and universities in the District rely on internships with federal agencies to earn credit each semester. Rachel Brown, associate vice president for university career services at George Washington University, estimated at least 150 students at GWU have been affected by the shutdown, including those in federal work-study positions, field placements, externships and internships. Brown said university staff members will contact federal agencies and students over the next few days to see if anything has changed with the government reopening. In the meantime, staff members have been working to find alternative internship placements and register students for classes before the looming deadline to add or drop classes. Without an internship or a full course load, a student’s status could be reduced to part-time, possibly compromising graduation dates and financial aid. Andrew Hutsko, a 22-year-old senior at American University, is registered for only two classes because he was supposed to intern at the Education Department of the National Archives this semester. Hutsko hasn’t received a new start date or spoken to his furloughed supervisor in weeks. Although


Why the increasing retail availability of wine might not be such a good thing

The wine industry is worried, and you, dear consumer (speaking in the global, holistic statistic sense) are the reason. We can chuckle all the way to the bank (do people still go to banks?) as we save money from dropping wine prices. Our search for value is paying dividends. But our drinking habits, as well as our spending, are giving the wine industry fits. Ultimately, that may not be to our benefit, as our buying habits may have the ironic effect of narrowing our options. And wine’s beauty stems to some extent from its diversity. I’m drawing this rather dystopian view from this year’s report on wine market trends published by Silicon Valley Bank. The report is an annual exercise in hand-wringing and navel-gazing that assesses the previous year’s sales trends and tries to project the future. It’s a tough task for an industry that by its very nature cannot react quickly to adverse trends. But the annual report also gives a fascinating glimpse of how we, as consumers, are partaking of wine — and that, perhaps, is changing faster than the industry can keep up. Let’s start with prices: “As an industry, we’re transitioning to a period of flat to negative volume growth, low sales growth and a modest surplus of grapes, which will put pressure on prices,” the report says. On the surface, the reasons are basic economics: abundant supply and flattening demand. The latter stems from demographics and increased competition from craft beers, spirits and a newcomer to the report, cannabis. The wine boom from the 1980s through the 2000 decade was fueled by big-spending baby boomers, a generation that increasingly is entering retirement. Gen-Xers have entered their most affluent years, but the industry has long salivated over the larger millennial generation. Millennials are almost all now of drinking age, but so far at least, they are not becoming wine drinkers. “Millennials aren’t engaging with wine as hoped. They lack financial capacity, currently prefer premium spirits and craft beers, and have been slow getting into careers,” the report says. Legal pot is especially popular with younger males, “and that is also likely playing a role in [their] delayed appreciation for wine.” Negative messaging about alcohol’s effect on health is also dampening demand among younger drinkers. It’s hard to say whether any particular trend starts with the pull of consumers or the push of producers, but this year’s


The Energy 202: 2020 hopefuls love talking about a ‘Green New Deal.’ But they’re short on specifics.

detailed policy proposals on a host of issues. Some longtime Democratic aides like Paul Bledsoe, an adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute who worked on climate change under President Bill Clinton, cautioned White House hopefuls against making vows they cannot keep. “The Democratic presidential candidates want to embrace the energy and enthusiasm of the activists without promising next-to-impossible goals,” Bledsoe said. “So they are naturally hedging.” So far, Ocasio-Cortez and some other new House members who have pressed Democratic leaders to establish a select committee to create detailed Green New Deal legislation have faced some setbacks. While Pelosi has created the special climate panel, she has allowed lawmakers who have taken money from fossil fuel companies to join it — over the demands of activists. Nonetheless, this new crop of progressive lawmakers has succeeded at popularizing the idea among voters. A poll in December from Yale and George Mason University found that 81 percent of them either strongly or somewhat supported a “Green New Deal” when it was described to them. — The polar vortex is here: — How the country is bracing for the cold: “The extreme cold already has been blamed for one death in Minnesota, and it has caused statewide declarations of emergency, school closures, Postal Service interruptions and 1,000 airline flight cancellations across the country... Some in the northern Midwest went about their days, shopping at local businesses, walking their dogs, biking through snow-covered streets and cross-country skiing. But even the hardiest of towns had to push people indoors: Fargo, N.D., canceled part of its annual Winter Frostival, as did organizers of a similar winter carnival in the Twin Cities. And classes at the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin were suspended.” — — How’s this for a subtweet? The agency followed up its tweet with a link explaining the difference between climate change and weather. In a statement, a NOAA spokeswoman disputed that the tweets were a message to the president. “With the blast of severe winter weather affecting the U.S., we often get asked about the relationship between cold weather and climate change,” Monica Allen told ABC News. “We routinely put this story out at these times. Our scientists weren’t responding to a tweet.” POST-SHUTDOWN WATCH — Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo welcome visitors back: No shutdown for the animals: — Climate change letter went through "political censoring," senator says: —


So far, Ocasio-Cortez and some other new House members who have pressed Democratic leaders to establish a select committee to create detailed Green New Deal legislation have faced some setbacks. While Pelosi has created the special climate panel, she has allowed lawmakers who have taken money from fossil fuel companies to join it — over the demands of activists. Nonetheless, this new crop of progressive lawmakers has succeeded at popularizing the idea among voters. A poll in December from Yale and George Mason University found that 81 percent of them either strongly or somewhat supported a “Green New Deal” when it was described to them. — The polar vortex is here: — How the country is bracing for the cold: “The extreme cold already has been blamed for one death in Minnesota, and it has caused statewide declarations of emergency, school closures, Postal Service interruptions and 1,000 airline flight cancellations across the country... Some in the northern Midwest went about their days, shopping at local businesses, walking their dogs, biking through snow-covered streets and cross-country skiing. But even the hardiest of towns had to push people indoors: Fargo, N.D., canceled part of its annual Winter Frostival, as did organizers of a similar winter carnival in the Twin Cities. And classes at the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin were suspended.” — — How’s this for a subtweet? The agency followed up its tweet with a link explaining the difference between climate change and weather. In a statement, a NOAA spokeswoman disputed that the tweets were a message to the president. “With the blast of severe winter weather affecting the U.S., we often get asked about the relationship between cold weather and climate change,” Monica Allen told ABC News. “We routinely put this story out at these times. Our scientists weren’t responding to a tweet.” POST-SHUTDOWN WATCH — Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo welcome visitors back: No shutdown for the animals: — Climate change letter went through "political censoring," senator says: — EPA reportedly introducing new audit policy: — “Congress did not authorize or fund this project”: — State AGs call on Trump energy official to recuse himself from resilience debates: — Trump administration has "taken a wrecking ball to science," report says: — How Citgo became a lifeline for Venezuela: Saudi Arabia not rushing to help: Coming Up — A tragic end for the “world’s loneliest duck”:


What do Thailand and Saudi Arabia have in common?

Chan-ocha, a general who seized power in a coup in 2014, as well as the corrupt and oppressive Thai monarchy. When Surachai, Gasalong and Puchana disappeared, their friends were not immediately aware they had met with foul play. The reason: Lao officials told all the exiles to hide before the arrival of Prayuth, who was on his way to Laos for an official visit. Rumors flew that Prayuth might be bringing a death squad targeting “lèse majesté suspects” (those accused under Thailand’s notorious laws against insulting the monarchy). After Prayuth’s departure, the exiles returned to their homes – but not Surachai, Gasalong and Puchana. An investigation of Surachai’s house turned up ominous signs: Essentials had been left behind, including his escape bag and medicines that he needed to take every day. His friends and family were immediately afraid something bad had happened. Indeed, before his disappearance, Surachai had told his wife there was a $300,000 price on his head. This case is similar to that of Wuthipong Kachathamakul, who was kidnapped and presumably assassinated in Laos on July 29, 2017, just one day after the birthday of the new Thai king. The rumor among the Thai dissidents was that Wuthipong’s murder was King Vajiralongkorn’s present to himself. Wuthipong was tied up and tasered, and the last words heard from him were “I can’t breathe” – eerily reminiscent of Jamal Khashoggi, whose recent assassination by a Saudi hit squad shocked the world. Wuthipong had complained on his YouTube show that he was being “hunted by the king’s servants.” One year earlier, on June 22, 2016, yet another anti-monarchist in Laos, Itthipol Sukpan, a 28-year-old pro-democracy broadcaster known as DJ Zunho, was snatched from his motorcycle by unknown assailants and pulled into the woods, leaving behind just one shoe. He was never seen again. Everyone, including his family, believes he is dead. It is no longer plausible that these are random killings. The five men had all worked on one another’s shows. Notably, Surachai and Wuthipong had both collaborated with a sixth anti-monarchist in Laos, Chucheap Chewasut. On Dec. 8, Chucheap’s nonpolitical wife and son were kidnapped by soldiers in Thailand and held for five days – a period that overlapped with the disappearance of the three regime critics in Laos. Thai political refugees in Laos and around the world are experiencing increased pressure in the lead-up to the coronation of King


Her storm-tested house fell to one strengthened by climate change

[This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] In New Bern, N.C., Hurricane Florence brought historic flooding — and a warming climate probably made it worse. For six generations, Lois Ann Cantlow's family has lived in New Bern, a town in eastern North Carolina located at the mouth of the Neuse River. During Hurricane Florence, the storm surge reached 10 feet in New Bern. Cantlow says her house got five feet of floodwaters. That closely matches the findings from storm surge modeling by researcher Rick Luettich at the University of North Carolina. The National Guard rescued Cantlow and her family the next morning. She was relieved to be safe, but shocked when she returned to her home, which was devastated by water damage. While each hurricane springs from a complex string of atmospheric events, scientists say all are occurring in an environment that's warmer and wetter. Florence traveled across offshore waters that were several degrees warmer than usual (warm seas are the central energy source for hurricanes). Preliminary research has shown that Florence was probably somewhat larger and dumped more rain than it would have if the same storm had arrived in a world without humans' greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. When it comes to how Lois Cantlow was affected, climate change was more directly in play. Her home is some six to seven feet above the local high-tide line — but in the massive storm surge that swept up the Neuse River, her home was not spared. Rising seas, caused by the melting of the planet's ice and the swelling of the ocean as it warms, make any coastal flooding event worse, even on sunny days. They also worsen the impact of hurricanes when they cross shorelines. In Cantlow's case, climate change wasn't the biggest driver behind the water that ultimately wound up in her home — but it did worsen the flooding, experts say. Steven McAlpine is a researcher with the First Street Foundation, which pinpoints the impact of rising seas on specific homes and neighborhoods. He calculates that rising seas made flooding at Cantlow's address "at least two-thirds of a foot deeper." In her Sunnyside neighborhood, the rising seas caused 15 percent more homes "to experience significant flooding." Another sea level expert, Benjamin Strauss


Senator: Climate change letter went through ‘political censoring’ in Chao’s office

length.” Whitehouse raised the issue during a hearing on the nomination of Nicole R. Nason to be administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Nason previously served as administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as well as at the State Department and in other government posts. Whitehouse said the letter — his office would not say how he obtained it — “forces me to ask you your assurance that you will not censor and ignore the facts and the science” if confirmed. Nason, clearly uncomfortable, said she was “unfamiliar with this issue, and I haven’t seen the letter.” But she added that at the traffic safety agency, “we always said, ‘Good data is king.’ And I am a firm believer in good data, and I can commit to you that we will give you the best possible information.” “Good,” Whitehouse said. Nason also said she has not seen, nor would she accept, any type of “political retaliation” within government, and added, “I would not support having staff feeling intimidated for any reason.” Whitehouse described the timing related to obtaining the internal correspondence: “Before receiving the secretary’s formal response, we managed to get our hands on the draft response, the letter the career staff sent up to the secretary’s office for her final approval. And then shortly after that we got the letter from the secretary’s office,” Whitehouse said. Changing “sea level rise” to “sea level variations” distorts what is happening, he said. “The term ‘variations’ implies, wrongly, that the sea level rise that we’re seeing now in Rhode Island is consistent with natural changes over geologic time, when in fact the current rise in sea levels is a direct consequence of human activity, of carbon pollution, and it’s occurring at rates that humankind hasn’t seen in thousands and thousands of years. We actually measure this stuff at Naval Station Newport,” Whitehouse said. A separate section of the letter describing risks that affect the condition of roadways was also deleted, according to the comparison Whitehouse provided. The deleted passage included the following: “risks associated with current and future environmental conditions such as extreme weather events, climate change, seismic activity” and other factors. Whitehouse said “the political staff, presumably in the Secretary’s office, struck out” that section. “Well, we live in Rhode Island in a world of extreme weather events and climate change, and I think we all do,” Whitehouse said.


Europe needs to show Britain the door

over defense. British objections to a common European defense and security policy exacerbated and exploited these differences. A Europe without Britain, however, would find it much easier to set up coalitions of the willing on specific issues while bypassing the E.U., something that France wants because E.U. defense is going nowhere. This suits Britain. It could join such coalitions. As for Germany, it has used Britain’s opposition to more defense integration as an alibi for inaction. Brexit could therefore help the E.U. to clarify what it wants to become. The Irish rightly dread a no-deal Brexit. It could lead to the introduction of border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Such controls disappeared thanks to the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence in the province. The astonishing ignorance shown by Brexit supporters about the impact of a no-deal Brexit on the sustainability of the peace accord exposes the arrogance and shortsightedness of the governing elites, whether they belong to the ruling Tories or the opposition Labour Party. There’s going to more than resentment in Ireland if Britain leaves. A peace process is at stake. It’s time for the Commission and the member states to bring Brexit to its logical conclusion. Get an exemption for Northern Ireland. There is a precedent of sorts. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between E.U. members Poland and Lithuania, obtained a special exemption from the Commission in 2012. It allowed Kaliningraders to enter Poland visa-free as long as they remain within 30 kilometers (19 miles) of the border. It was a hugely successful decision. That deal is now dead. The Polish government failed to appreciate the benefits of the exemption and canceled it — to great dissatisfaction on both sides of the border, since so many had benefited from it. Yet that innovation offers a possible model for a future post-Brexit Irish-Northern Ireland border. The bottom line is that the E.U., freed from British ambivalence, would force European leaders to decide their own destiny. No more excuses. Read more The Post’s View: Britain is left without a Brexit plan. It’s headed toward disaster. Carl Bildt: A second referendum could help avoid a Brexit meltdown George F. Will: Brexit shows how direct democracy can be dangerous Bronwen Maddox: How the Brexit drama is changing Britain Amanda Sloat: Sacrificing peace in Northern Ireland is not acceptable price for Brexit


Back to work

in New Orleans. “That hit us hard. Now we have this shutdown,” she said. Congress only has “so much patience, regardless of what our reasoning is.” Samples of bees sent to the Agriculture Department’s Bee Research Laboratory in Maryland were kept in a cooler during the shutdown and seem usable, said biologist Jay Evans, the lab’s research leader. Some may have the highly contagious American foulbrood disease. “We will be slow to go through them since more are coming now.” The furlough was “slowly strangling science,” said Benjamin Corb, public affairs director at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Maryland. Corb calculated how much grant money the National Science Foundation distributed last year in the same December-to-January period. From Dec. 22, 2017 through Jan. 25, 2018, the NSF awarded 465 grants for a total of $139.2 million. During the 34-day shutdown, the NSF awarded nothing. More than 80 review panels of scientists, who convene to assess grant proposals, were also canceled. A “tremendous backlog” of grant proposals awaits, said Angela Wilson, a chemistry professor at Michigan State University who directed the NSF’s chemistry division from 2016 to 2018. “This is usually the busiest time of year for National Science Foundation, at least. And so this is going to be very very, very, very challenging to recover from.” Shorter shutdowns, like the three-day closure in 2018, have led to months-long grant delays. Scientists on review panels, who work at universities and institutions scattered across the country, must find a new time to meet. One colleague who previously applied for an NSF grant endured “a six-month delay after a three-day shutdown,” Corb said. Corb said it will take months or even years to reveal the extent of the shutdown’s damage to science. “The entire company of Google was really started off of an NSF grant,” Corb said. NSF-funded research led to the gene-editing tool CRISPR. And lasers. “Without lasers, you don’t have smartphones, compact discs or people harassing Tom Brady in the AFC game.” Corb wondered: How many Googles, lasers and CRISPRs weren’t funded during the shutdown? Jan. 31 was scheduled to be NASA’s Day of Remembrance, which honors lives lost in the Apollo 1 fire and the Columbia and Challenger disasters, though Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, postponed it to an unspecified later date, citing the shutdown. “We always have a flyover and a moment of silence and


Hoping that peace comes to Afghanistan? Dream on.

and statistically significant effect on the success of peace agreements in civil wars as well as the duration of postwar peace. In fact, Fortna finds that the chances of going back to war drops by somewhere between 75 percent and 85 percent or more when peacekeepers are present. The Afghan deal meets none of these conditions This tells us a lot about the deal being negotiated in Afghanistan. This deal will almost certainly fail. Afghanistan has none of the conditions that we know lead to success. First, there is no military stalemate. In fact, not only is the Taliban winning the war, but it understands that its military position will improve once U.S. troops are removed. It has made the removal of troops the key condition for signing the agreement. Second, there is no plan for power-sharing. Under the current framework, the Taliban is being asked to “talk” with Ghani (something it has not wanted to do). However, specific power-sharing arrangements have not been discussed. Finally, there is no third-party enforcement mechanism to guarantee this agreement. Any hope for peacekeeping arrangements will disappear when U.S. troops leave. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Taliban continues to fight the war even as negotiations proceed. Neither side really wants a deal So why are the United States and the Taliban negotiating when both probably know the talks are destined to fail? The answer is simple: Both sides have self-interested motives. Trump wants U.S. soldiers home to gain the appearance of a foreign policy victory. The Taliban wants U.S. soldiers out of the country so that they can pursue what they really want: victory. The real losers in this process are Ghani, who will be left without critical U.S. support, and the Afghan people, who will once again face war. The political science suggests that the United States cannot withdraw from Afghanistan and get peace at the same time. Withdrawing U.S. forces will lead to more war, not less. Nor can the Afghans enforce this agreement on their own. Historically, almost no set of combatants in a civil war have been able to enforce a peace agreement without the help of a third party. It is conceivable that new technologies could be used to watch the peace without a large U.S. military presence. Armed drones could be used to monitor the movements of combatants in the field, verify compliance with the terms


Big banks are still paying American savers almost nothing, even as interest rates hit 2.5 percent

have sufficient funds on hand to lend. “Competition among banks has not reached levels where banks need to raise CD rates,” said Kenneth Leon, global director of research at CFRA, an independent analysis firm. He points out that deposits at most large banks like Bank of America have been growing lately despite the low rates. (The one exception is Wells Fargo, which has struggled after numerous scandals, including the creation of fake accounts.) While many Americans say they want to shop around for a bank that better serves them, few actually do. A Bankrate survey in 2017 found that Americans have used the same bank for their checking account for 16 years. Consulting firm Accenture found that only 11 percent of people in North America said they tried to switch banks in 2015 or 2016. The rate was slightly higher for millennials — 19 percent — but still indicates a hesitancy to move. The American Bankers Association, the trade group representing the industry, said customers recognize that banks are giving them more value by upgrading their systems to make banking safer and easier. “Customers look for more than just interest on their deposits. They also value convenience, security and assurance their payments will be made,” said James Chessen, ABA’s chief economist. “When the Fed raises interest rates, all interest rates rise, but often at very different speeds depending on local market competition.” The recent government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, spotlighted how many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and do not have much savings. The nation’s official savings rate is now 6 percent, meaning Americans save only $6 for every $100 they make. The savings rate has been declining for years, which some economists attribute to years of stagnating wages for the middle class. The rate jumped after the Great Recession as people cut back on spending, but it is trending down again now. With so little savings, Americans need to make the most of what they have, personal finance experts say. “People are sloppy with their money. They are leaving a lot of potential interest earnings on the table by not looking for the best rate,” McBride said. Related: ‘Nobody like you has ever done it’: How a high school dropout became president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Why has the personal savings rate declined so dramatically? Non-bank lenders are back and even bigger than before


The Daily 202: Stacey Abrams isn’t the future of the Democratic Party. She’s the present.

also discussed when they could have a formal meeting, the official said. Mr Trump explained that a full meeting with Mr Putin was impossible at the time, and the Russian leader responded by saying he ‘was not in a hurry’ and remained ready to meet when it suited Mr Trump best, the Russian official said.” -- Moscow is advancing a plan to stop punishing officials for “unavoidable” bribes. -- Split-screen: Leaders of the intelligence community, all appointed by Trump, said Russia and China represent two of the most significant national security threats during Senate testimony in which they repeatedly offered assessments starkly at odds with the president’s public posturing. -- Here are five of the main issues where the intelligence community leaders broke with Trump -- “The disconnect between [Trump] and the Republican establishment on foreign policy has rarely been as stark,” THE INVESTIGATIONS: -- Roger Stone pleaded not guilty to the charges laid out by special counsel Bob Mueller. -- The Senate Judiciary Committee’s planned vote on William Barr’s nomination as attorney general was delayed amid Democratic concerns about how he would handle the Mueller probe. -- House Democrats raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest in Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s decision to lift sanctions on the businesses of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. -- The Justice Department's inspector general wants to investigate Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta’s role in securing a cushy plea deal for alleged serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was serving as a federal prosecutor in Florida. But he's currently barred from doing so. -- The first meeting of the new House Oversight Committee, which will oversee investigations of the Trump administration, featured fireworks between Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). THE IMMIGRATION WARS: -- The Trump Organization plans to verify employees’ immigration status following a Post report that one of the president’s golf clubs hired undocumented immigrants for years. -- The United States started instituting its new policy of forcing asylum seekers at the southern border to wait in Mexico as their cases are processed. -- The Pentagon intends to send thousands more U.S. troops to the southern border. -- Following the shutdown, Democrats have taken a rare polling lead over Trump on border security. A SECOND SHUTDOWN? -- Republican lawmakers proposed a debt-ceiling increase as one component of a possible deal in their frantic efforts to avoid another government


Shutdown leads to continuing psychological issues for federal employees

be extremely difficult when facing impending deadlines and trying to dig out from things that have piled up during the shutdown,” said David W. Ballard of the American Psychological Association. “Despite the challenges, recharging requires carving out some time when they’re not working, or even thinking about work, actively doing things to relax and unwind, keeping up with hobbies or nonwork interests, getting enough good-quality sleep, and maintaining supportive interpersonal relationships.” Federal employees have counseling services through their agency’s employee assistance program. Referring to that, Margaret Weichert, Office of Personnel Management acting director, said “the well-being of Federal employees is a central part of our mission." In a message to FEMA staff, Administrator Brock Long said agency leaders are committed to "ensuring that you are supported as we transition back. I encourage you all to take time to talk to each other about the past few weeks and be transparent with your supervisors about any hardships...I want to make sure that you are set up for success before jumping into your normal assignments...take the time to listen and support each other. Our Nation appreciates your sacrifice and service, as do I.” David C. Carrone, an Internal Revenue Service employee in New Orleans, said in an emphatic email that some of his colleagues are dealing with the effects of the shutdown by deciding to leave the hassle of federal employment behind. “Our aging workforce is now focused on RETIREMENT,” said Carrone, in his role as president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) IRS chapter covering Louisiana and Arkansas. He included himself in that category. “All this stress is not worth it and I am too far vested to change jobs.” The emotional impact of the shutdown can be overlooked when more attention is paid to the economic impact, but that is a mistake. “The financial toll of this shutdown has been well documented, both in terms of how families struggled without income for five weeks and how our nation’s economy was damaged,” said National NTEU President Tony Reardon. “But the emotional toll is just as severe, as strong, middle-class working families suddenly found themselves begging mortgage companies for leniency and standing in lines at food pantries. Their bank accounts will be replenished soon, but it will take time for federal employees and their families to fully recover.” Read more: Lasting damage remains from Trump’s shutdown folly Unpaid federal employees recalled


U.N. investigator awaiting permission to enter Saudi Consulate in probe of Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL — A U.N. human rights expert leading an independent investigation into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi said Tuesday that her team was waiting for permission to enter the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul where he was killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi government agents, according to Turkish and Saudi prosecutors. Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “We just wanted to have a sense of it,” she said of the four-person team in Turkey this week, according to a recording of her comments posted by a journalist for the Al Jazeera English news channel. Callamard’s trip to the scene of the crime underscored what she said was her determination to get to the bottom of what happened when Khashoggi walked into the consulate on Oct. 2, as well as the limitations placed on her ability to gather all the facts. Khashoggi was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Callamard, a long-standing advocate of human rights and freedom of expression, was appointed a U.N. special rapporteur in 2016 with a grim mandate to investigate arbitrary executions. But she is not a prosecutor, has no authority to bring criminal charges and can only visit countries that expressly welcome her. So far, Saudi Arabia has not. In an email, Callamard said her mission is to establish the circumstances of Khashoggi’s killing. She said she had initiated the inquiry on her own because the United Nations has given no sign it will conduct an international criminal investigation. “I conceive of this inquiry to be a necessary step, among a number of others, towards crucial truth telling about a former accountability for the gruesome killing of Mr. Khashoggi,” she said in a statement. Turkish officials have called publicly for an international investigation, and but have not made a formal request for one from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, despite pleas from human rights groups. “This is not a replacement for an official U.N. criminal investigation ordered by the secretary general,” said Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “It is a very important first step. There couldn’t be a clearer case where a high level U.N. investigation is needed.” Callamard said she also has requested permission to visit to Saudi Arabia and asked for meetings with U.S. officials, including those in the CIA, the State Department and Congress. Kenneth Roth, the executive director


‘We missed you guys’: Smithsonian museums, National Zoo welcome back visitors after government shutdown

jeopardy. The zoo, which receives 70 percent of its budget from the government and 30 percent from other sources of revenue, including visitors, is still calculating its losses. “There’s a domino effect,” Sajet said. “We have to look at the entire schedule and see what we have to do, what we can postpone and what we will have to cancel so we can catch up.” On the Mall, about 80 people were waiting in the cold outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture as it reopened at 10 a.m. Nick Lautman, an actor from London, was first in line — an hour before the museum opened — and intent on visiting the Smithsonian’s newest attraction. He arrived Jan. 22 for a vacation, celebrating his 27th birthday, that he had booked before the shutdown began. He visited Mount Vernon, the Capitol, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (twice), the monuments, Ford’s Theatre and more while he hoped for the shutdown to end. When he learned that the shutdown would come to a close, he extended his trip to Wednesday. He couldn’t go home without visiting the Smithsonian museums. “From the British perspective, it seems mad to shut down the government,” he said. Businesses offered free food and services to zoo employees who were required to work without pay throughout the shutdown, including more than 120 workers charged with caring for the animals. Frequent visitors and volunteers dropped off snacks and hot beverages. Some, including those who work in the zoo’s commissary, worked alongside the unpaid staff. The live animal cameras that stream the daily comings and goings of giant pandas and naked mole rats went dark. Businesses near the zoo reported a dip in foot traffic and a drop in revenue. The museums, which had been shuttered since the beginning of the year, opened after lawmakers approved a bill that funded the government for three weeks. When the zoo’s gates clattered open at 8 a.m., it was the usual group of locals and joggers who ambled in. They “oohed” and “ahed” as the pandas swung down tree branches and munched on bamboo. Several took photos and videos as the animals clambered around. Although nearly 200 zoo employees worked without pay throughout the shutdown, Smith said, the animals seemed to miss their human visitors. “You realize how much they appreciate having us there as entertainment,” Smith said. “We had zoo


Elon Musk’s highflying 2018: What 150,000 miles in a private jet reveal about his ‘excruciating’ year

is beautiful,” Musk tweeted after the trip.) That trip was three weeks after Musk announced Tesla would lay off about 3,500 employees, or 9 percent of its workforce, as part of a reorganization he called “difficult, but necessary.” A Tesla official said it was the Times’ characterization, not Musk’s, that he left immediately afterward, but that Musk did cut short his participation in wedding festivities scheduled to last several days. The jet is registered to a subsidiary of SpaceX called Falcon Landing, named for its reusable rocket, Federal Aviation Administration records show. Musk or his associates took an additional step, common among top business executives, to request the travel not be logged on public flight-tracking databases. Many of the flights took off from or landed at L.A.’s Van Nuys airport, a short drive from the tony neighborhood of Bel Air where Musk owns five separate mansions. It was on an August drive to his jet there, Musk told the Times, that he tweeted Tesla had the “funding secured” to be taken private — a market-shaking promise that ultimately fell flat. Musk and Tesla later agreed to pay a $40 million settlement and institute new safeguards to resolve a Securities and Exchange Commission case alleging Musk had misled investors about the deal’s prospects. Musk’s jet flew roughly 75 times last year to the San Jose airport, the closest stop to Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto and car-making factory in Fremont, where Musk often said he was so busy he would end up sleeping among the machines. Dozens of other flights were made to airports near SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and the battery-producing Gigafactory outside Reno, Nev. Tesla said Musk never used the plane to fly between different spots in Los Angeles. But the jet would fly to meet him at a closer airport if, say, he began his workday at SpaceX’s office on the south side of L.A. and the plane was on the north side, the company said. Some of these repositioning flights only went about 20 miles, the aircraft data show. Musk’s trips could be a whirlwind of business pursuits, with his role quickly switching from one venture to the next. In early June, Musk flew to a SpaceX office outside Seattle, where he fired a number of high-ranking officials working on a satellite project, unnamed company employees told Reuters. The flight records show Musk returned to California


Your baby’s coldlike symptoms could be RSV, an often overlooked — and sometimes deadly — infection

a new problem. It was recognized in the late 1950s and may have received more attention recently because infections with many of the other germs that cause lower respiratory tract infections can be prevented or treated. Swift in-office tests now allow doctors to distinguish RSV from bacterial infections and thus avoid the overuse of antibiotics. They also enable doctors to give parents specific advice about what to watch for and how the disease might progress, said Ruth Karron, a pediatrician and professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But doctors can do little to combat RSV. There is no effective antiviral drug, such as Tamiflu, which is used against influenza. Monthly injections of an antibody, Synagis, can help prevent serious infections but it is expensive and given only to babies at very high risk. “A good vaccine for RSV would probably have a bigger impact on childhood disease than almost any other vaccine could,” Miller said. Karron has been working with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health on one of several efforts to develop a vaccine. She said she hopes it will be available within the next five to 10 years. A vaccine given to pregnant mothers to protect their babies could be ready sooner. The virus doesn’t evolve much, Karron said, so unlike the flu, which adapts frequently, a vaccine would not have to be updated from year to year. Until then, practice good respiratory hygiene with frequent hand washing and by coughing or sneezing into a tissue or elbow rather than into bare hands, advised Susan Gerber, chief of the respiratory viruses branch at the CDC’s Division of Viral Diseases. Doctors also recommend that adults and children even with mild cold symptoms avoid contact with at-risk infants. “Resist passing the baby,” Karron said. Still, the realities of modern life make it hard to avoid infection with such a highly contagious bug that can survive on doorknobs, shirt sleeves and soft toys and so runs rampant through day-care centers. Being infected delivers some immunity but doesn’t mean you won’t catch RSV again. Almost all children will have had an RSV infection by their second birthday, Karron said. Timo is now back home in Illinois with his 2-year-old brother, who suffered only a runny nose and a bothersome nighttime cough. “Toddlers are the ‘Typhoid Mary’s’ of RSV,” Karron said. frances.sellers@washpost.com


‘I’m just wondering if I’m going to have enough’: Shutdown creates lasting fallout for food stamp recipients

” With $100 left by the end of January, going to the grocery store has become a punishing task. He tries to stick to things like rice and beans, which are cheap but filling enough to carry him through leaner days. But when he looks around the store, it seems as if the average cost for items is $5 or $10. The high prices overwhelm him. “I realize I need to be very careful,” Stewart said. “I feel like I’ve already overspent.” With five mouths to feed, making money last two months is a nearly impossible ask. Shadonna Williams, 37, gets about $700 a month in SNAP benefits to support her and four of her kids: two teenagers, a middle-schooler and an elementary-schooler. The family moved to Columbia, S.C., because Williams had a job opportunity. But the job fell through, leaving her stuck in Columbia with no income, no support network, a truck she can’t afford to fix and a litany of health problems. She and the children are living in transitional housing. School takes some of the pressure off Williams. The children will get a hot meal there, and sometimes the school even sends food home with them on weekends, aware of the hunger they face outside the classroom. But they were home in early January for winter vacation, and school in Columbia has been canceled a few times for bad weather. By the last day of January, Williams had already spent most of February’s benefits, just trying to keep them fed. “When the kids are home, all they want to do is eat and eat and eat,” Williams said. “I wish it could have stretched longer.” With her money dwindling and the fate of SNAP uncertain, Williams sat her children down the other day and tried to come up with other ways to eat. When the family lived in Hilton Head years earlier, they planted their own vegetables in the backyard. Suddenly, staking their food on their farming abilities and the whims of nature seems more reliable than SNAP. “We had a discussion going on about anything we could do to make sense of the situation, how to try to do something to benefit us.” Williams said. “I’m starting to feel like I’m going to have to learn how to do some real farming and grow my own food, because I don’t foresee things getting better anytime soon."


Military service academies see nearly 50% jump in students facing unwanted sexual contact

uses the term “unwanted sexual contact” to encompass a range of sex-related offenses they said were prohibited by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “These offenses include completed or attempted oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by a body part or an object and the unwanted touching of genitalia, buttocks, breasts, or inner thighs when the victim did not or could not consent,” the report said. Alcohol was often involved in the instances of unwanted sexual contact. The report’s authors also found that the offenders were most often fellow cadets and midshipmen, noting that the violations occurred both on and off campus but were more likely to take place off grounds. The Pentagon also measures instances of sexual harassment at the service academies. The rate of sexual harassment increased at the Naval Academy but remained roughly the same statistically at West Point and the Air Force Academy, the report found. The Defense Department noted that the survey was conducted before the military service academies implemented mandated plans in the summer of 2018 to address sexual harassment and sexual assault. As a result, the Pentagon cautioned that the results didn’t “reflect the large investment of attention, time and resources dedicated to these problems.” Galbreath, speaking in an interview at the Pentagon, said that researchers have determined that U.S. service members in the military are far more likely to report sexual assault or misconduct than cadets and midshipmen at the academies, contributing to the problem. “The first couple of years that you’re a cadet or you’re a mid, you’re really concerned about what the leaders and everybody are thinking of you,” Galbreath said. “They don’t want that lasting stigma associated with that. When you’re an older cadet or mid, you want to get out and into the force and graduate. You don’t want to report something that might hold you up.” In surveys, students reported at high rates that they believe leaders at the academies already are closely focused on the problem, Galbreath said. But cadets and midshipmen do not rate leaders in the student body nearly as well. “Really we need those cadet and midshipmen leaders to step up and force those climates of dignity and respect,” he said. “What our data tells us is that a lot of this stuff is happening after-hours and on weekends, when it’s out of the direct supervision of the officers to enforce anything.” paul.sonne@washpost.com dan.lamothe@washpost.com