“We’re all familiar with the threats of chocolate bars booby-trapped with needles, apples loaded with razor blades, jawbreakers laced with LSD and poisoned peanut butter cups.

But the idea that Halloween has become too dangerous for children is in many ways a myth, although one with the power to deny children a pleasure most of us grew up with.

There are no known cases of children being killed or seriously injured by adulterated treats they received while trick-or-treating. It is simply a persistent urban legend.

According to a myth-busting article in USA Today, ‘The only proven case of a child dying from poisoned Halloween candy occurred in Pasadena, Texas, in 1974. But Timothy O’Bryan’s father, not a stranger, put cyanide in the 8-year-old’s Pixy Stix.’”

 

 

By George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal

October 30 at 6:52 PM

Sometimes the Constitution’s text is plain as day and bars what politicians seek to do. That’s the case with President Trump’s proposal to end “birthright citizenship” through an executive order. Such a move would be unconstitutional and would certainly be challenged. And the challengers would undoubtedly win.

Trump has long argued that birthright citizenship for the children of parents not legally in the United States should be abolished. “It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” he told Axios in an interview released Tuesday, in which he disclosed his plan for the unilateral action.

But at its core, birthright citizenship is what our 14th Amendment is all about, bridging the Declaration of Independence’s promise that “all men are created equal” with a constitutional commitment that all those born in the United States share in that equality.

Birthright citizenship sprang from the ashes of the worst Supreme Court decision in U.S. history, Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that said that slaves, and the children of slaves, could not be citizens of the United States. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans was shed to repudiate that idea.

Afterward, the drafters of the 14th Amendment declared in their very first sentence, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The drafters were motivated by their utter revulsion toward slavery and a system that relegated people to subordinate political status because of their birth. They weren’t thinking of, or concerned with, any exceptions to birthright citizenship other than the absolutely essential.

And what they wrote was simple and clear. Both proponents and opponents of the language at the time knew exactly what it meant: Virtually anyone born in the United States is a citizen. In 1898, the Supreme Court affirmedjust that: It held that the “Fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory” — “including all children here born of resident aliens.” The exception? “Two classes of cases” in which the United States could not apply its laws to foreigners under historic Anglo-American legal principles: “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state.”

Neither of those narrow exceptions supports what Trump proposes to do by executive order. He is threatening, with the stroke of a pen, to declare certain people who are born in the United States ineligible for citizenship — despite the plain words of the 14th Amendment.

The president promised to put justices on the Supreme Court in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia, but we have no doubt what Scalia — who preached adherence to the text of the Constitution and the laws of the United States in light of their original meaning — would think about this proposal. To say that he would have declared it dead on arrival would be an understatement. Whatever one may think of the merits of adding a further exception to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship — and the more conservative of the two of us (Conway), were he redrafting the amendment from scratch, might consider adding another narrow exception — the simple fact is that the amendment, as written, doesn’t permit it.

Beyond this, the president’s proposal suffers from another infirmity — it exceeds the scope of his authority. Our Constitution could not be clearer that it is Congress, not the president, who is in the driver’s seat when it comes to immigration. Congress has specific powers over immigration in Article I; the president, none whatsoever, except as Congress has given to him by statute. And Congress has already spoken. In 1952, Congress declared, “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth . . . a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Indeed, once upon a time, in the fall of 2015, candidate Trump recognized that pesky Article I problem. A television host asked him, “The courts have ruled twice against the anchor baby stuff. You’d have to get a constitutional amendment passed to overturn that.” Mr. Trump’s answer: “You don’t have to do a constitutional amendment. You need an act of Congress. I’m telling you — you need an act of Congress. Everybody thought you needed a constitutional amendment. You don’t need that.”

He was wrong — a constitutional amendment would indeed be necessary to revoke birthright citizenship. But no matter what, an executive order could never suffice, notwithstanding the president’s assertion to Axios: “You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order.” Whoever they are, they have it wrong. An executive order to reinterpret “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” could never pass muster because, if the Constitution provides any leeway to decide the meaning of that phrase, it provides it to Congress, and not the president.

The fact that the two of us, one a conservative and the other a liberal, agree on this much despite our sharp policy differences underscores something it is critically important to remember during a time marked by so much rancor and uncivil discourse: Our Constitution is a bipartisan document, designed to endure for ages. Its words have meaning that cannot be wished away.

In 2017, bitcoin seemed almost unstoppable as investors and consumers poured money into the cryptocurrency.

For one Dutch businessman and father of three, it was the year to make a radical change. Didi Taihuttu sold almost everything he owned, including his business, house and car, and put all that money into bitcoin. He bet everything he had, and everything his family had, on a decentralized cryptocurrency future.

When Mr. Taihuttu first bought into bitcoin in February 2017—with the price around $1,000—he told The Wall Street Journal he was “in it for the long run.” He held on to his investment even as it hit historic highs of almost $20,000. Then came the bitcoin crash.

When we next caught up with Mr. Taihuttu in April 2018, its value had dropped by around two-thirds. Nevertheless, Mr. Taihuttu said he still had “the same amount of bitcoins” and was enjoying a life with his wife and kids “out of the system” on a beach in Thailand. From there, he and his family took to the roads of Europe in a campervan, exploring all the places where bitcoin was accepted as a means of payment.

In this episode of Moving Upstream, we follow the yearlong journey of Didi Taihuttu and his family, as he seeks to find a new, cryptocurrency way of life. 

The script has become familiar in this global season of far-right politics: A fringe politician peddling vitriol and promising order catches the mood of a nation yearning for change, any change, and rides it to the presidential palace.

A year ago, anyone who said Jair Bolsonaro could be elected president of Brazil would have been dismissed as a comic. A former artillery captain turned politician, Mr. Bolsonaro spent 27 years as an obscure congressman opposed to everything left-wing. In the campaign, he came to be best known for his outrageously offensive comments about gays, blacks, indigenous people and women and for defending the old military dictatorship, torture and guns.

His campaign platform, such as it was, was mostly about going backward — pulling out of the Paris climate accord, using strong-arm tactics with criminals (his favorite motto is said to be, “A good criminal is a dead criminal”), giving industry what it wants.

Yet his angry rants caught the mood of a Brazilian electorate sick of an endless corruption scandal that has reached to the far corners of the establishment, rampant street violence and economic dislocation, all of it indiscriminately and often unfairly blamed by many Brazilians on the left-wing Workers’ Party, known as PT. The eagerness to repudiate anything PT — and the political class as a whole — overrode all other considerations, like Mr. Bolsonaro’s total lack of preparation. He came in first in the first round and got a resounding 55 percent of the vote in the second.

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Not surprisingly, President Trump, with whom Mr. Bolsonaro shares views on many issues ranging from gun rights to China, was among the first to proffer warm congratulations along with a cheery tweet(“Excellent call, wished him congrats!”).

Mr. Bolsonaro poses a danger to Brazil’s democracy. Like Mr. Trump, he is a  polarizing force — he was seriously wounded by a would-be assassin during the campaign, and even before the election Brazilian media reported that police were staging raids in universities, purportedly to stop illegal electioneering. He is expected to name several former generals to his cabinet, a troubling move in a nation with a dark history of military control.

Yet in the immediate wake of the election, Mr. Bolsonaro pledged to respect democratic rules. “This government will defend the constitution, democracy and liberty,” he declared. “This is a promise not of a party, not the empty words of a man; it’s an oath before God.”

So far so good. And if he does manage to bring Brazil out of economic crisis, a task likely to be handed to the University of Chicago-trained economist Paulo Guedes, and to bring the crime rate and corruption under control without undermining the rule of law, so much the better. The initial reaction of Brazilian financial markets was a frenzy of stock-buying in the anticipation of policies like selling off inefficient state companies, deregulation and a cut in social spending.

The question is whether Brazil’s still adolescent democratic institutions can withstand a far-right assault. Most of the measures Mr. Bolsonaro might attempt — whether expanding the authority to carry arms or classifying the movement of landless people as “terrorists” — would require either a law, which needs a simple majority in the legislature, or a constitutional amendment, which needs three-fifths. The new Congress is full of untried deputies, but, despite serious losses, the opposition Workers’ Party is still the largest party in the lower house, with the potential to block Mr. Bolsonaro’s more undemocratic initiatives.

Brazil’s left is badly wounded, with the once-wildly popular former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in prison. But the opposition would do best to recognize the election of Mr. Bolsonaro as a cry of desperation rather than a declaration of war, and to support those actions that 

The script has become familiar in this global season of far-right politics: A fringe politician peddling vitriol and promising order catches the mood of a nation yearning for change, any change, and rides it to the presidential palace.

A year ago, anyone who said Jair Bolsonaro could be elected president of Brazil would have been dismissed as a comic. A former artillery captain turned politician, Mr. Bolsonaro spent 27 years as an obscure congressman opposed to everything left-wing. In the campaign, he came to be best known for his outrageously offensive comments about gays, blacks, indigenous people and women and for defending the old military dictatorship, torture and guns.

His campaign platform, such as it was, was mostly about going backward — pulling out of the Paris climate accord, using strong-arm tactics with criminals (his favorite motto is said to be, “A good criminal is a dead criminal”), giving industry what it wants.

Yet his angry rants caught the mood of a Brazilian electorate sick of an endless corruption scandal that has reached to the far corners of the establishment, rampant street violence and economic dislocation, all of it indiscriminately and often unfairly blamed by many Brazilians on the left-wing Workers’ Party, known as PT. The eagerness to repudiate anything PT — and the political class as a whole — overrode all other considerations, like Mr. Bolsonaro’s total lack of preparation. He came in first in the first round and got a resounding 55 percent of the vote in the second.

Not surprisingly, President Trump, with whom Mr. Bolsonaro shares views on many issues ranging from gun rights to China, was among the first to proffer warm congratulations along with a cheery tweet(“Excellent call, wished him congrats!”).

Mr. Bolsonaro poses a danger to Brazil’s democracy. Like Mr. Trump, he is a  polarizing force — he was seriously wounded by a would-be assassin during the campaign, and even before the election Brazilian media reported that police were staging raids in universities, purportedly to stop illegal electioneering. He is expected to name several former generals to his cabinet, a troubling move in a nation with a dark history of military control.

Yet in the immediate wake of the election, Mr. Bolsonaro pledged to respect democratic rules. “This government will defend the constitution, democracy and liberty,” he declared. “This is a promise not of a party, not the empty words of a man; it’s an oath before God.”

So far so good. And if he does manage to bring Brazil out of economic crisis, a task likely to be handed to the University of Chicago-trained economist Paulo Guedes, and to bring the crime rate and corruption under control without undermining the rule of law, so much the better. The initial reaction of Brazilian financial markets was a frenzy of stock-buying in the anticipation of policies like selling off inefficient state companies, deregulation and a cut in social spending.

The question is whether Brazil’s still adolescent democratic institutions can withstand a far-right assault. Most of the measures Mr. Bolsonaro might attempt — whether expanding the authority to carry arms or classifying the movement of landless people as “terrorists” — would require either a law, which needs a simple majority in the legislature, or a constitutional amendment, which needs three-fifths. The new Congress is full of untried deputies, but, despite serious losses, the opposition Workers’ Party is still the largest party in the lower house, with the potential to block Mr. Bolsonaro’s more undemocratic initiatives.

Brazil’s left is badly wounded, with the once-wildly popular former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in prison. But the opposition would do best to recognize the election of Mr. Bolsonaro as a cry of desperation rather than a declaration of war, and to support those actions that address the wrongs while blocking those that endanger democracy.

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts one-third of the total essay section score.)

SCHIESEL (March 13, 2018) - If anything, there may be a stronger connection between school violence and the sort of creative writing educators seek to foster. When the United States Secret Service and the Department of Education studied violence in schools, they found that 37 percent of attackers “exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays, or journal entries,” while only 12 percent exhibited an interest in violent video games.

Video games do not create murderers. With his Thursday meeting, the president was merely engaging in political distraction.

And yet Mr. Trump was absolutely right when he said that “bad things” are happening on the internet. Video games do have a big problem, but it is not stylized virtual violence. Rather, it is the bigotry, social abuse, sexism and other toxic behavior to which players too often subject one another when gaming together online.

In other words: It’s not the content; it’s the culture.

 

 

One of the greatest joys of parenthood is watching your little kids put on their uniforms to hit the football or soccer fields. Growing up in sports-crazed Texas means loving and learning some sport almost as soon as we can walk.

But as more news surfaces about the alarming number of concussions suffered by young people, we can’t continue to be in the dark about the dangers that lurk when we send kids into the game.

Parents need to be armed with information to answer the question: Is it worth the risk?

Credit goes to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for trying to find out more. They’re conducting a study that will look at how concussions affect brains that are still developing. They’ll follow several hundred people as young as 5 who’ve suffered head injuries.

The data will give researchers an idea of how young athletes in North Texas are diagnosed and treated for concussions that occur not just in football, but in sports like basketball, wrestling and soccer, too.

This graphic of concussions in the US is not viewable on your device

This newspaper has long called for more data on how concussions affect young people. We don’t have good numbers on how many young Texas athletes suffer them. And there’s little research on how those injuries affect kids as they grow into adults.

That’s frightening.

Just take a close look at the case of former University of Missouri football player Michael Keck, who died two years ago at age 25. This week, The Washington Post reported that a study of his brain revealed he had the worst case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, doctors had ever seen in someone so young. They attributed it to his years of playing football. He had his first concussion at age 8.

Look, coaches now know not to send kids who complain of dizziness and nausea after on-field collisions immediately back into games. That’s progress.

But Texas should do more.

As we’ve pointed out, the UIL, the governing body of public school sports in Texas, has fallen short by not tracking all concussions. Citing student privacy concerns, it uses only a sampling of high schools to track data.

This graphic of North Texas concussions is not viewable on your device

It reported 295 concussions statewide in 2014. A NBC5 Investigates report revealed 2,500 concussions had occurred in high school and middle school sports in North Texas alone.

The UT Southwestern researchers say they want to educate parents and kids so they can try to protect themselves from the risks.

“I don’t think everyone needs to run out and bubble-wrap their kids and let them stop participating in potentially risky sports,” said Munro Cullum, a UT Southwestern neuropsychologist who’s leading the study.

But he also acknowledged that there’s “still a lot we don’t know about concussions.”

We owe it to our kids to find out. 

Read the following editorial and analyze and write a response editorial for your school newspaper that addresses the issues brought up in the editorial and how these issues affect the citizens of Brazil and other countries surrounding Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro joins the club of reactionary populists rising to power.

The script has become familiar in this global season of far-right politics: A fringe politician peddling vitriol and promising order catches the mood of a nation yearning for change, any change, and rides it to the presidential palace.

A year ago, anyone who said Jair Bolsonaro could be elected president of Brazil would have been dismissed as a comic. A former artillery captain turned politician, Mr. Bolsonaro spent 27 years as an obscure congressman opposed to everything left-wing. In the campaign, he came to be best known for his outrageously offensive comments about gays, blacks, indigenous people and women and for defending the old military dictatorship, torture and guns.

His campaign platform, such as it was, was mostly about going backward — pulling out of the Paris climate accord, using strong-arm tactics with criminals (his favorite motto is said to be, “A good criminal is a dead criminal”), giving industry what it wants.

Yet his angry rants caught the mood of a Brazilian electorate sick of an endless corruption scandal that has reached to the far corners of the establishment, rampant street violence and economic dislocation, all of it indiscriminately and often unfairly blamed by many Brazilians on the left-wing Workers’ Party, known as PT. The eagerness to repudiate anything PT — and the political class as a whole — overrode all other considerations, like Mr. Bolsonaro’s total lack of preparation. He came in first in the first round and got a resounding 55 percent of the vote in the second.\

Not surprisingly, President Trump, with whom Mr. Bolsonaro shares views on many issues ranging from gun rights to China, was among the first to proffer warm congratulations along with a cheery tweet(“Excellent call, wished him congrats!”).

Mr. Bolsonaro poses a danger to Brazil’s democracy. Like Mr. Trump, he is a  polarizing force — he was seriously wounded by a would-be assassin during the campaign, and even before the election Brazilian media reported that police were staging raids in universities, purportedly to stop illegal electioneering. He is expected to name several former generals to his cabinet, a troubling move in a nation with a dark history of military control.

Yet in the immediate wake of the election, Mr. Bolsonaro pledged to respect democratic rules. “This government will defend the constitution, democracy and liberty,” he declared. “This is a promise not of a party, not the empty words of a man; it’s an oath before God.”

So far so good. And if he does manage to bring Brazil out of economic crisis, a task likely to be handed to the University of Chicago-trained economist Paulo Guedes, and to bring the crime rate and corruption under control without undermining the rule of law, so much the better. The initial reaction of Brazilian financial markets was a frenzy of stock-buying in the anticipation of policies like selling off inefficient state companies, deregulation and a cut in social spending.

The question is whether Brazil’s still adolescent democratic institutions can withstand a far-right assault. Most of the measures Mr. Bolsonaro might attempt — whether expanding the authority to carry arms or classifying the movement of landless people as “terrorists” — would require either a law, which needs a simple majority in the legislature, or a constitutional amendment, which needs three-fifths. The new Congress is full of untried deputies, but, despite serious losses, the opposition Workers’ Party is still the largest party in the lower house, with the potential to block Mr. Bolsonaro’s more undemocratic initiatives.

Brazil’s left is badly wounded, with the once-wildly popular former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in prison. But the opposition would do best to recognize the election of Mr. Bolsonaro as a cry of desperation rather than a declaration of war, and to support those actions that address the wrongs while blocking those that endanger democracy. 

Ventura County Star Published 6:00 a.m. PT Aug. 25, 2018

We’re not quite sure what to make of Wednesday’s scare in Ventura and Santa Paula over a school shooting threat that wasn’t really a threat. Did police and school administrators overreact? Were protocols followed? Should parents be concerned?

Two things, however, are clear: Someone started the panic by posting confidential information on social media; and now one young man must bear the burden. And for that, the Santa Paula and Ventura unified school districts and Santa Paula Police Department now share a responsibility to figure out exactly what happened and make sure it does not happen again.

The mess started when an 18-year-old local man allegedly indicated to a therapist that he had thoughts about committing a school shooting in Ventura. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office investigated, put the man on a mental health hold and removed a firearm, BB gun and air-soft handgun from his home.

The man was later released and interviewed again by Ventura police, who determined he was not a threat. Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office shared information about the man with other local police agencies, as is routinely done.

So far, so good. But then Santa Paula police decided to issue a “school safety bulletin” on the man and give it to Santa Paula Unified, which shared it with administrators and other staff. The district marked it as confidential and instructed that it not be shared, but somehow it got posted on social media and, well, you can figure out the rest.

The bulletin said the man had allegedly expressed a desire to “shoot up an unspecified school in Ventura” and included his name, photo, car and license plate number — even though he had not been arrested for any crime. Its public posting was a shameful act, an indictment of social media, and grounds for a very good lawsuit by this young man against those who have wronged him — with taxpayers no doubt footing the bill.

Like three kids in the principal’s office pointing at each other over some mischief, no agency has stepped up to accept blame. Ventura Unified pointed to Santa Paula police, who then pointed to Santa Paula Unified, which could only brag about its new safety campaign, “See Something, Say Something.”

Ventura Unified made matters worse with a hasty, vague robocall Wednesday night that left parents with more questions than answers. Superintendent David Creswell had to follow it up with a letter Thursday that started, “I’d like to begin by apologizing if the information we put out yesterday regarding a potential threat unnecessarily frightened anyone. There never was a credible threat to our students and staff, and we never felt they were in any danger.”

The problem in this post-Parkland-shooting era is that police and schools are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Do they take every possible threat seriously and risk parental panic, truancy and a Chicken Little effect, or ignore what could turn out to be a real threat and become the next Parkland?

The answer lies in policy and protocol, threat assessment and response, and perhaps most importantly, effective communication. Ventura and Santa Paula educators now have some work to do to reassure parents on those counts.

For their part, parents need to put perspective over panic. School safety expert Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Virginia, wrote in March that U.S. students are 67 times more likely to be murdered outside of school than at school.

“From this perspective, U.S. schools are much safer than the surrounding community,” he wrote for TheConversation.com. “The nation does not have a school violence problem but a gun violence problem.”

 

It casts rogue grievances as legitimate obsessions and gives prejudices the shimmer of ideals. 

 

Technology has always been a coin with two sides: potential and peril. That’s what Mary Shelley explored in “Frankenstein,” which is celebrating its 200th birthday this year, and it has been the main theme of science fiction ever since.

The internet is the technology paradox writ more monstrous than ever. It’s a nonpareil tool for learning, roving and constructive community-building. But it’s unrivaled, too, in the spread of lies, narrowing of interests and erosion of common cause. It’s a glorious buffet, but it pushes individual users toward only the red meat or just the kale. We’re ridiculously overfed and ruinously undernourished.

It creates terrorists. But well shy of that, it sows enmity by jumbling together information and misinformation to a point where there’s no discerning the real from the Russian.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from a Silicon Valley giant whose wares depend on our internet addiction. Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, warned, “Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies.”

“Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false,” he added.

This was a week ago — before Sayoc’s arrest, before Bowers’s rampage, before Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, won Brazil’s presidential election. As The Times reported, pro-Bolsonaro forces apparently tried to hurt his opponents and help him by flooding WhatsApp, the messaging application owned by Facebook, “with a deluge of political content that gave wrong information on voting locations and times.”

That same Times article noted that a search for the word “Jews” on the photo-sharing site Instagram on Monday led to 11,696 posts with the hashtag “#jewsdid911,” insanely blaming them for the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, along with similarly grotesque images and videos that demonized Jews. Anti-Semitism may be ancient, but this delivery system for it is entirely modern.

And utterly terrifying. I don’t know exactly how we square free speech and free expression — which are paramount — with a better policing of the internet, but I’m certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives. 

You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.

This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.

As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.


Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave.

My error was waiting so long to walk away. The chance to speak to millions of Americans is seductive, and, with the infinite human capacity for self-delusion, I rationalized that I could make a difference by remaining at Fox and speaking honestly.

I was wrong.

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"Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace says even though President Trump treats the free press like his enemy, journalists shouldn't treat him like he's theirs. (Gillian Brockell, Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)

As early as the fall of 2016, and especially as doubts mounted about the new Trump administration’s national security vulnerabilities, I increasingly was blocked from speaking on the issues about which I could offer real expertise: Russian affairs and our intelligence community. I did not hide my views at Fox and, as word spread that I would not unswervingly support President Trump and, worse, that I believed an investigation into Russian interference was essential to our national security, I was excluded from segments that touched on Vladimir Putin’s possible influence on an American president, his campaign or his administration.

I was the one person on the Fox payroll who, trained in Russian studies and the Russian language, had been face to face with Russian intelligence officers in the Kremlin and in far-flung provinces. I have traveled widely in and written extensively about the region. Yet I could only rarely and briefly comment on the paramount security question of our time: whether Putin and his security services ensnared the man who would become our president. Trump’s behavior patterns and evident weaknesses (financial entanglements, lack of self-control and sense of sexual entitlement) would have made him an ideal blackmail target — and the Russian security apparatus plays a long game.

As indictments piled up, though, I could not even discuss the mechanics of how the Russians work on either Fox News or Fox Business. (Asked by a Washington Post editor for a comment, Fox’s public relations department sent this statement: “There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was ‘blocked’ from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.”)

All Americans, whatever their politics, should want to know, with certainty, whether a hostile power has our president and those close to him in thrall. This isn’t about party but about our security at the most profound level. Every so often, I could work in a comment on the air, but even the best-disposed hosts were wary of transgressing the party line.

Fox never tried to put words in my mouth, nor was I told explicitly that I was taboo on Trump-Putin matters. I simply was no longer called on for topics central to my expertise. I was relegated to Groundhog Day analysis of North Korea and the Middle East, or to Russia-related news that didn’t touch the administration. Listening to political hacks with no knowledge of things Russian tell the vast Fox audience that the special counsel’s investigation was a “witch hunt,” while I could not respond, became too much to bear. There is indeed a witch hunt, and it’s led by Fox against Robert Mueller.

The cascade of revelations about the Russia-related crimes of Trump associates was dismissed, adamantly, as “fake news” by prime-time hosts who themselves generate fake news blithely.

Then there was Fox’s assault on our intelligence community — in which I had served, from the dirty-boots tactical level to strategic work in the Pentagon (with forays that stretched from Russia through Pakistan to Burma and Bolivia and elsewhere). Opportunities to explain how the system actually works, how stringent the safeguards are and that intelligence personnel are responsible public servants — sometimes heroes — dried up after an on-air confrontation shortly before Trump’s inauguration with a popular (and populist) host, Lou Dobbs.

Dobbs has no experience with the intelligence system. Yet he ranted about its reputed assaults on our privacy and other alleged misdeeds (if you want to know who spies on you, it’s the FGA — Facebook, Google and Amazon — not the NSA). When I insisted that the men and women who work in our intelligence agencies are patriots who keep us safe, the host reddened and demanded, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the — you fill in the blank.” As I sought to explain that, no, the NSA isn’t listening to our pillow talk, Dobbs kept repeating, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the — fill in the blank.”

Because I’d had a long, positive history with Dobbs, I refrained from replying: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the talk-show host.”

I became a disgruntled employee, limited to topics on which I agreed with the Trump administration, such as loosened targeting restrictions on terrorists and a tough line with North Korea. Over the past few months, it reached the point where I hated walking into the Fox studio. Friends and family encouraged me to leave, convinced that I embarrassed myself by remaining with the network (to be fair, I’m perfectly capable of embarrassing myself without assistance from Fox).

During my 10 years at Fox News and Fox Business, I did my best to be a forthright voice. I angered left and right. I criticized President Barack Obama fiercely (one infelicity resulted in a two-week suspension), but I also argued for sensible gun-control measures and environmental protections. I made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes. I took the opportunity to speak to millions of Americans seriously and — still that earnest young second lieutenant to some degree — could not imagine lying to them.

With my Soviet-studies background, the cult of Trump unnerves me. For our society’s health, no one, not even a president, can be above criticism — or the law.

I must stress that there are many honorable and talented professionals at the Fox channels, superb reporters, some gutsy hosts, and adept technicians and staff. But Trump idolaters and the merrily hypocritical prime-time hosts are destroying the network — no matter how profitable it may remain.

The day my memo leaked, a journalist asked me how I felt. Usually quick with a reply, I struggled, amid a cyclone of emotions, to think of the right words. After perhaps 30 seconds of silence, I said, “Free.”

Ralph Peters

The Washington Post

 

5 Harvard Friends, and a Frank Talk About How They Got In

By Kate Taylor

Photographs by Tristan Spinski

Ms. Lee — who grew up in Englewood, N.J., Seoul and Marin County, Calif. — said she had long assumed that she would face discrimination in applying to college, partly because she had watched Asian friends with excellent grades and scores be rejected by their desired schools. She said she had thought a lot about how to stand out from other Asian-American applicants. Ultimately, she applied to join the United States Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps. In her applications, she emphasized her enthusiasm for the military and her ambition to be a trauma surgeon.

“I knew that I didn’t — whatever this means — I didn’t want to be the typical Asian,” she said.

Ms. Marshall, who wore dark eyeliner and had a swirl of bleached hair, is an accomplished composer from just north of London. She said she had not felt as though she was competing against other students of Asian backgrounds to get into Harvard because her strengths were creative rather than strictly academic.

Had her talents been in STEM — shorthand for science, technology, engineering and math — she would have felt differently, she said.

“If my grades were amazing and that was my hook — the fact that I’m an accomplished, like, STEM-field scientist or whatever,” she said, “I would feel a little bit — maybe I wouldn’t have ticked the Asian box” on the application.

She said that what she had read about the lawsuit, particularly that Asian-American applicants were rated lower on personality traits than applicants of other backgrounds, made her suspect that some admissions officers were probably prejudiced against Asian-Americans. 

The six or seven thousand people – men, women, and children – who have set out to walk 3,000 miles through Mexico to reach the US are brave, resourceful and determined to better themselves. They might become the kind of citizens that every country needs and whose support any politician should be proud of. Naturally, they are objects of loathing for President Trump, a man whose entire life has been cushioned by privilege. He has done his best to exploit their misery in advance of the midterm elections, claiming that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” are mixed in with them.

There have been many such caravans before now, and there will be many afterwards. They are a natural reaction to the difficulties and dangers that lone travellers, especially women and children, face when they attempt to reach the prosperous world. The wise and sensible thing to do would be to treat them as an opportunity to manage migration – but the nativist reaction is to treat them as a giant jailbreak. For Mr Trump and, indeed, for some other western policymakers, the function of poor countries is to keep poor people locked up. Aid to the Central American countries from which the caravan has fled is conditional on their “doing the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming to the US” to quote another of his presidential tweets. This view of Central America as a prison colony is grimly reflected in the US justice system. Many experts point out that the chaos in Central America can in part be attributed to the mass deportation of gang members and suspected gang members from the US, whether or not they grew up there. These gangs originated inside the Californian prison system and among its clientele on the outside. They are not native to the countries they are now destroying. It is their victims who are fleeing on foot to the US. The murder rate in parts of Honduras is the highest anywhere in the world outside of war zones.

Much of this violence is fuelled by drugs, and the money from the drug trade, which also comes in the last analysis from the US. The idea that these countries and their inhabitants can be walled off from US politics, and the US economy, is a poisonous fantasy. But it has served Mr Trump well and he will continue to exploit it. In theory there is a policy of enlightened self-interest that would help to mitigate the worst effects of this traffic. Sufficient aid to the countries from which they come would help to enable the development of both the economy and the kind of security and access to justice that they desperately need. This was the policy pursued under the Obama administration, which Mr Trump is now demolishing. Since 2015, “addressing the root causes of migration” has also been a key theme of official EU strategy. As a means of stemming the flow of refugees this will be effective only in the long term. Civil societies grow over time. They can’t be prefabricated abroad and helicoptered into place like disaster housing. But increasing aid to help stabilise societies is a policy still worth pursuing, though care must be taken not to undermine poorer countries’ ownership of development policies. In the meantime, these caravans should be treated as the humanitarian emergency they are, and their inhabitants welcomed for their courage and spirit.

 

One of the greatest joys of parenthood is watching your little kids put on their uniforms to hit the football or soccer fields. Growing up in sports-crazed Texas means loving and learning some sport almost as soon as we can walk.

But as more news surfaces about the alarming number of concussions suffered by young people, we can’t continue to be in the dark about the dangers that lurk when we send kids into the game.

Parents need to be armed with information to answer the question: Is it worth the risk?

Credit goes to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for trying to find out more. They’re conducting a study that will look at how concussions affect brains that are still developing. They’ll follow several hundred people as young as 5 who’ve suffered head injuries.

The data will give researchers an idea of how young athletes in North Texas are diagnosed and treated for concussions that occur not just in football, but in sports like basketball, wrestling and soccer, too.

This graphic of concussions in the US is not viewable on your device

This newspaper has long called for more data on how concussions affect young people. We don’t have good numbers on how many young Texas athletes suffer them. And there’s little research on how those injuries affect kids as they grow into adults.

That’s frightening.

Just take a close look at the case of former University of Missouri football player Michael Keck, who died two years ago at age 25. This week, The Washington Post reported that a study of his brain revealed he had the worst case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, doctors had ever seen in someone so young. They attributed it to his years of playing football. He had his first concussion at age 8.

Look, coaches now know not to send kids who complain of dizziness and nausea after on-field collisions immediately back into games. That’s progress.

But Texas should do more.

As we’ve pointed out, the UIL, the governing body of public school sports in Texas, has fallen short by not tracking all concussions. Citing student privacy concerns, it uses only a sampling of high schools to track data.

This graphic of North Texas concussions is not viewable on your device

It reported 295 concussions statewide in 2014. A NBC5 Investigates report revealed 2,500 concussions had occurred in high school and middle school sports in North Texas alone.

The UT Southwestern researchers say they want to educate parents and kids so they can try to protect themselves from the risks.

“I don’t think everyone needs to run out and bubble-wrap their kids and let them stop participating in potentially risky sports,” said Munro Cullum, a UT Southwestern neuropsychologist who’s leading the study.

But he also acknowledged that there’s “still a lot we don’t know about concussions.”

We owe it to our kids to find out. 

Wed 24 Oct 2018

he six or seven thousand people – men, women, and children – who have set out to walk 3,000 miles through Mexico to reach the US are brave, resourceful and determined to better themselves. They might become the kind of citizens that every country needs and whose support any politician should be proud of. Naturally, they are objects of loathing for President Trump, a man whose entire life has been cushioned by privilege. He has done his best to exploit their misery in advance of the midterm elections, claiming that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” are mixed in with them.

There have been many such caravans before now, and there will be many afterwards. They are a natural reaction to the difficulties and dangers that lone travellers, especially women and children, face when they attempt to reach the prosperous world. The wise and sensible thing to do would be to treat them as an opportunity to manage migration – but the nativist reaction is to treat them as a giant jailbreak. For Mr Trump and, indeed, for some other western policymakers, the function of poor countries is to keep poor people locked up. Aid to the Central American countries from which the caravan has fled is conditional on their “doing the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming to the US” to quote another of his presidential tweets. This view of Central America as a prison colony is grimly reflected in the US justice system. Many experts point out that the chaos in Central America can in part be attributed to the mass deportation of gang members and suspected gang members from the US, whether or not they grew up there. These gangs originated inside the Californian prison system and among its clientele on the outside. They are not native to the countries they are now destroying. It is their victims who are fleeing on foot to the US. The murder rate in parts of Honduras is the highest anywhere in the world outside of war zones.

Much of this violence is fuelled by drugs, and the money from the drug trade, which also comes in the last analysis from the US. The idea that these countries and their inhabitants can be walled off from US politics, and the US economy, is a poisonous fantasy. But it has served Mr Trump well and he will continue to exploit it. In theory there is a policy of enlightened self-interest that would help to mitigate the worst effects of this traffic. Sufficient aid to the countries from which they come would help to enable the development of both the economy and the kind of security and access to justice that they desperately need. This was the policy pursued under the Obama administration, which Mr Trump is now demolishing. Since 2015, “addressing the root causes of migration” has also been a key theme of official EU strategy. As a means of stemming the flow of refugees this will be effective only in the long term. Civil societies grow over time. They can’t be prefabricated abroad and helicoptered into place like disaster housing. But increasing aid to help stabilise societies is a policy still worth pursuing, though care must be taken not to undermine poorer countries’ ownership of development policies. In the meantime, these caravans should be treated as the humanitarian emergency they are, and their inhabitants welcomed for their courage and spirit.

 

Most Japanese support their alliance with the United States, especially now that China is flexing its muscles in the region. The problem is the hugely disproportionate burden placed on Okinawa, the poorest of Japan’s prefectures. Okinawa was the site of an enormously bloody battle in the closing months of World War II; today it still hosts 33 American installations and half the 50,000 American troops in the country. The concentration of military gear and troops has created noise, pollution, deadly accidents and a history of assaults — most notably the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three servicemen in 1995.

It was after that episode that the United States and Japan agreed to relocate the big Marine air base clogging the center of the city of Ginowan to a less crowded area and to shift some troops to Guam and Hawaii. But nothing has moved. Local resistance has blocked construction of the new base, partly because of the environmental damage that would come from building a runway in the relatively unspoiled Henoko Bay. The United States military argues that scattering Okinawa’s logistical, air and ground forces to other sites in Japan will degrade their ability to respond quickly in the East China Sea. But the security this brings to Japan and the region cannot come at the expense of an unfair, unwanted and often dangerous burden on Japan’s poorest citizens. Prime Minister Abe and American military commanders should join them with an equal willingness to find equitable solutions.

Voters in Ireland last week removed the crime of blasphemy from that country’s constitution, a change that the minister of justice hailed as “another reflection of the strong public support for a modern, liberal constitution.”

Yet despite Ireland’s example, insulting God or religious figures is still a crime in more than 70 countries, in some places punishable by death. (On Wednesday Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release of a Christian woman who had spent eight years on death row after being convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.)

Equally disturbing, blasphemy laws are being repackaged as prohibitions on “hate speech.” Over the years there has been a campaign, led by some Muslim nations, to have the international community condemn “defamation of religion." This rhetorical sleight of hand allows defenders of blasphemy laws to portray them as protections for persecuted believers rather than the enforcement of a theological orthodoxy. 

Almost mechanically, my legs begin to move, executing the steps I had done numerous times before. My body screams in protest, but the dance flows out of me ignoring the sore muscles and tired limbs. I simply let go, and enjoy the feeling of “one last time”.

Since the age of two, I have spent almost every week night repeating the above scenario. For 3-4 hours, I voluntarily take part in some of the most excruciating forms of physical movement known to man. As a dancer, I need the correct precision, training, and technique in order to sufficiently tell the audience a story using my body rather than words.  It is a hard, often overlooked process that many people do not take into consideration.

Because I knew firsthand what it felt like to truly push myself to the ends of the earth for the perfect performance, I had always considered dance a sport. Even though the fields were replaced by stages, and the referees with their obnoxious whistles were pushed aside for dance instructors with deafening voices, I had never seen dancing as anything other than a physical activity that involved exertion and skill.

This all changed though when, four years ago, as I sat on a crowded stage with hundreds of other hair sprayed, blue eye shadowed dancers waiting to receive their ribbons, a man stepped up to the podium.

At dance competitions, in order to make everyone forget they’ve been dancing for eight plus hours and simply want to go home, they have the slightly annoying habit of blasting cheesy music and throwing t-shirts to get everyone “hyped”.

As the man cleared his throat and adjusted his headset, everyone expected the normal competition spiel which usually goes along the lines of, “You did fabulous today guys! Now, who wants to PARTYYYY?!”  followed by Uptown Funk blasting through the entirely too loud speakers, and the screams and laughter of about a million little girls.

So, of course everyone was shocked when, instead of cueing the music and furiously throwing t-shirts at our faces, the man said he wanted to give us some advice before we started the awards ceremony.

He introduced himself as the director of the competition and explained that he had been dancing since the age of two and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Like us, he said, he sat on stages for hours on end waiting for his award, and continued to grace stages for the rest of his life because it was his true passion.

The director stressed that we, the tired, worn out, overly made up dancers sitting on that stage were not simply athletes, we were artists. He said, “Dance is both a sport and an art form. It is physically and mentally challenging like a sport, but beautiful and abstract like art.”

His words struck something inside of me and, as neon colored t-shirts flew through the air, I realized how right he was.

While dance falls into the category of a sport, it has also proven to be so much more.

“Dance is a sport, but it’s not just a sport,” states freshman Sam Willoughby. “It is athletic because of the high stamina, strength, and precision required, but also extremely artistic as it requires the dancer to dig into his or her creativity and make the choreography come to life.”

The reason people have been in the dark for so long is because the artistry outshines the physical activity. Dancing seems easy because we, as dancers, are trained to mask our pulled muscles and sprained ankles with elegance and grace so unmistakable, it is impossible to tell how hard we are truly working.

Dancing combines sport and art, two completely opposite forms of self-expression, into a truly beautiful mold full of poise and determination.

“I think dance is a sport because…dancers are in class just as much as other athletes are in practice,” says sophomore Ashley D’Esposito. “You’re competing against yourself by trying to be a better dancer in any and every way possible.”

To make my point clear, yes, I absolutely 100% believe dance is a sport because it contains the proper physical exertion and stamina involved in one. But, because dance is unique and awesome in its own right, it is also considered an art form due to the exquisite way dancers interpret their body movements.

So, to all the dancers who are currently on the brink of death while performing your dance “one last time”, simply know that you are amazing.

As you spend your free time perfecting your pirouettes and straightening your arabesques, people will constantly try to convince you that dance, your passion, is simply a hobby, not an activity to be taken seriously.

My advice? Ignore them. They are blind to the beauty of our sport and I feel bad that they will never see how wonderful dancing can truly be. Because that’s what dancing is, a beautiful sport. 

What is going on in this country? Can’t we be safe in our homes, in our schools, in our most sacred places? Once again, Americans are left to ask each other these sorts of questions, after a gunman burst into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on the Jewish Sabbath and opened fire on families in the contemplation of their faith.

Armed with a semi-automatic rifle and three handguns, he killed 11 people and wounded six more, including four police officers. “Jews must die,” he was said to have shouted.

The attack came a day after a man was arrested in Florida for mailing pipe bombs to politicians and journalists across the country. In both cases, the suspects had nourished their animus online, on social media platforms where they could easily connect with people who shared their hatreds.

Violent crime remains at historic lows across the United States. But by various indexes, hate appears to be on the rise. Over the past two years, anti-Semitic attacks have more than doubled, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which says it believes Saturday’s attack was the deadliest against Jews in American history. 

Suspicious of Los Department of Water and Power rate hikes and frustrated that the city-owned utility was treated like a political football, residents in 2011 voted to create a ratepayer advocate.

What they’ve gotten is a ratepayer analyst.

That’s because Fred Pickel, the first person picked to serve as the DWP’s watchdog and to lead the Office of Public Accountability, has adopted a studious, technical, nonconfrontational style.

His underwhelming approach suited the job, at least at first. For years the utility was often mired in tumultuous politics, including a 2010 fight between then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council over electricity rates that threatened to bankrupt the city. All that discord and distrust had a corrosive effect, making it hard to have a rational conversation on what the utility needed to do and what ratepayers should have to pay to provide reliable, environmentally responsible water and power. 

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important elections in modern times. Hate-filled rhetoric and incendiary language are energizing violent extremists. An untrustworthy and reckless president blithely tweets while important democratic institutions are undermined on his watch, international treaties are abrogated and trade deals tossed out. Congress, controlled by Republicans, is so consumed by partisanship and enmity that it can no longer function as a reasonable check on executive power.

By ISD Editorial Board (Dec 19th 2016)

It's easy to say that "life is about choices" — but it's misinformed.

It's easy to think that the homeless man had a choice awhile back that put him into the position he's in. It's easy to say that a struggling single mother with four kids didn't have to have kids. And it's easy to say that those who are impoverished are there because of poor life decisions. But it's difficult to try and understand all of the implications our society puts on the less fortunate that put them into those situations.

To say that "life is about choices" when talking about poverty is easy simply because it puts the blame on the impoverished individuals rather than the society that has allowed the fortunate ones to do well. Now, it's not the fault of the fortunate ones for being fortunate by any means. But failing to recognize that the society that makes some people fortunate also makes others unfortunate is ignorant.

 

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts one-third of the total essay section score.)

Unsatisfied with mere terrestrial disruption, or maybe just eager to change the subject yet again, President Trump recently seized on outer space, blindsiding the Pentagon with a directive to create a sixth branch of the military called the Space Force.

Social media and late-night comedians pounced on the proposal, announced at the White House last month; “The Daily Show” interviewed Trump supporters who extolled the benefits of such a force while voicing confused explanations for why it might be needed — to fight terrorist drones in outer space, for instance.

They can hardly be faulted. As usual, Mr. Trump had few details at hand, including what the new military service — “separate but equal,” according to the president, to the Air Force and presumably the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard — would do. Would it station troops in orbit? And how would it relate to a broader national (celestial?) security strategy?

Mr. Trump is right to call attention to this vulnerability and defend American interests. But his aggressive ambitions — with talk of “dominance in space” and space being a “war-fighting domain” like the land, sea and air — could spur an arms race in space and make war-fighting there more likely.

Congress is making the situation worse by ordering the Pentagon, in the 2019 defense bill, to begin work on a space-based missile interceptor that experts say is provocative, technically infeasible and prohibitively expensive.

Not long ago, national leaders and scientists, if not Hollywood producers, saw space as a horizon for scientific exploration rather than for intergalactic battles. In 1967, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and other countries ratified an international treaty legally binding them to use outer space for peaceful purposes.

 

(CNN) — Passengers at some European airports will soon be questioned by artificial intelligence-powered lie detectors at border checkpoints, as a European Union trial of the technology is set to begin.

Fliers will be asked a series of travel-related questions by a virtual border guard avatar, and artificial intelligence will monitor their faces to assess whether they are lying.

The avatar will become "more skeptical" and change its tone of voice if it believes a person has lied, before referring suspect passengers to a human guard and allowing those believed to be honest to pass through, said Keeley Crockett of Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who was involved in the project.

Instead of the boarding pass, bring your smile to the airport

"It will ask the person to confirm their name, age and date of birth, (and) it will ask them things like what the purpose of their trip is and who is funding the trip," said Crockett.

But privacy groups have raised concerns about the trial.

"This is part of a broader trend towards using opaque, and often deficient, automated systems to judge, assess and classify people," said Frederike Kaltheuner, data program lead at Privacy International, who called the test "a terrible idea."

The technology has been tested in its current form on only 32 people, and scientists behind the project are hoping to achieve an 85% success rate.

"Traditional lie detectors have a troubling history of incriminating innocent people. There is no evidence that AI is going to fix that -- especially a tool that has been tested in 32 people," Kaltheuner added.

"Even seemingly small error rates mean that thousands of people now have to prove that they are honest people, just because some software said they are liars," he added.

Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press.

The panel, created in 1988, synthesizes the findings of leading climate scientists, an undertaking for which it received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is not in the habit of lecturing governments. But its latest report, issued near Seoul on Monday, is very different. One United Nations official described it as “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen” — an alarm aimed directly at world leaders. “Frankly, we’ve delivered a message to the governments,” said Jim Skea, a co-chairman of the panel and a professor at Imperial College, London. “It’s now their responsibility … to decide whether they can act on it.”

Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House or the cranium of its principal occupant. President Trump had nothing substantive to say about the report, preferring, his staff said, to focus on celebrating the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Having already announced that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, having also rolled back a suite of Obama-era efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Trump thus reaffirmed his sorry role as an outlier in the global struggle against climate change — a struggle few believe can be won without the enthusiastic participation of the United States.

The report, written by 91 scientists from 40 countries, came about at the request of several small island nations that took part in the Paris talks, where 195 countries pledged their best efforts to limit increases in global warming to 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels. Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). The panel’s report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe — mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water. 
But how to achieve that lower threshold? Global emissions continue to rise, albeit slowly. The panel said a mammoth effort is needed, beginning now and carrying through the century, to decarbonize global energy systems. The next 10 years are absolutely crucial: Emissions will have to be on a sharp downward path by 2030 for any hope of success. Greenhouse gases must be cut nearly in half from 2010 levels. Renewable energy sources must increase from about 20 percent of the electricity mix today to as much as 67 percent. The use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury.
 

The bottom line: We’ve got a decade or so to get climate change under control, and there is no such thing as a gentle glide path. We have to take a firm grip on the emissions curve and wrench it downward.

This will take enormous public and private investment and technological progress, even a breakthrough or two. Electric cars would become the order of the day. The public would become more actively engaged, instead of tossing the problem to the next generation and those that follow. Individuals have a great deal more power than they think: They can insulate their homes, install smart thermostats, choose public transportation, buy more fuel-efficient cars and appliances, even change their diet — livestock are estimated to account for some 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Perhaps the most important thing the public can do right now is seek out and support candidates who take this threat seriously. Also ballot measures: In Washington State, Gov. Jay Inslee is asking voters to approve a carbon tax. It would be the first of its kind, in any state, and could serve as an inspiration for others. 

  For every outlier like Mr. Trump, there are scores of political leaders who see the problem and know that the world has yet to fully respond to it. “We have presented governments with pretty hard choices,” Professor Skea said. “We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry. Then the final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that. Only our audience can — and that is the governments that receive it.” 

“Donald Trump winning the presidency — I feel kind of responsible for that,” said Ashenafi Hagezom, a 27-year-old from Las Vegas who hasn’t voted in any election since becoming eligible nine years ago. Not in 2012, when young and minority voters — Mr. Hagezom’s parents are Ethiopian immigrants — showed up in record numbers to re-elect President Barack Obama. Not in 2014, when not so many showed up, and Republicans took back the Senate. And not in 2016, when Mr. Trump won the White House on a platform of white grievance and anti-immigrant spite.

That last one still stings, and it inspired Mr. Hagezom to participate in this year’s midterms. “I think I may have been registered before,” he said. “Honestly, I’m not too sure. But this is my first time actually paying attention, knowing the candidates. Doing my job as a citizen.”

Mr. Hagezom’s day job is at a Hudson News in McCarran Airport, but since May he has been on paid leave thanks to his union, the Culinary Workers Local 226, which has 57,000 members and has assembled a remarkable turnout operation in and around Las Vegas. Mr. Hagezom is one of about 250 union members canvassing for votes six days a week, knocking on doors and urging voters to the polls. The stakes couldn’t be much higher: The outcome of the extremely tight Nevada Senate race, between the Republican, Dean Heller, and the Democrat, Jacky Rosen, will be crucial in deciding which party controls the Senate.

With Election Day around the corner, Mr. Hagezom’s transformation — from nonvoter to voter — serves as a useful lesson about the dangers of political disengagement in America, where voter turnout consistently ranks near the bottom of turnout in modern democracies.

Early voting data from Nevada to Texas to North Carolina to Maine show that Americans are voting at unusually high rates for a midterm election. But those rates are still far below what they ought to be.

The obstacles to voting are real. The worst are those put in place by Republican legislators and officials to depress or neutralize turnout by minorities and other Democratic-leaning groups. Strict registration laws, bogus voter-fraud prosecutions, aggressive purges of the rolls, polling place closures and the like echo the poll taxes and literacy tests of earlier generations. The tactics may have changed, but the strategy remains the same.

Many other voters discover that, through the dark art of gerrymandering, they aren’t picking their politicians so much as they are being picked by them. Other voters are thwarted not by malice but by incompetence — poorly run polling places, bureaucratic snafus, confusing ballots and more.

In Kansas, officials moved the only polling place in Dodge City, which has a Latino majority, outside city limits and far from public transportation. And in Georgia, where the Democratic nominee for governor is an African-American woman, the Republican nominee, Brian Kemp, who is currently secretary of state, suspended the registrations of 53,000 citizens— the overwhelming majority of them African-American — for discrepancies between registration and government identification information. Many of the discrepancies are minor, like a dropped hyphen or an obvious typographical error.

Finally, there are the millions of eligible voters who are their own worst enemies. They may be unhappy with the choices before them or unconvinced that their votes will make a difference. Either way, they sit out Election Day, nursing their grudges and telling themselves that they’re making a political statement. Wrong.

Whether or not the cynics believe it, every vote really can make a difference. An election in 2017 for a legislative seat in Newport News, Va. — a seat that happened to determine control of the state’s House of Delegates — was effectively decided by a single vote, out of more than 23,000 cast.

Or take an even more consequential example: In the 2014 midterm elections, barely more than one in three eligible voters turned out; 143 million others stayed home. It was the worst showing in 70 years, and one of the weakest midterm turnouts in United States history. The only people celebrating were Republicans, because smaller electorates tend to be more conservative ones. The abysmal turnout in 2014 followed that pattern, and it allowed Republicans to seize control of the Senate. That gave Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, the power to shift the Supreme Court to the hard right for at least a generation.